BREMMER. Becoming A Man in Ancient Greece and Rome Essays On Myths and Rituals of Initiation. Tübingen Mohr Siebeck GMBH & Co. KG, 2021.

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Jan N. Bremmer
Becoming a Man in
Ancient Greece and Rome
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Jan N. Bremmer
Becoming a Man in Ancient

Greece and Rome
Essays on Myths and
Rituals of Initiation
Mohr Siebeck

Jan N. Bremmer, born 1944; Emeritus Professor of Religious Studies at the University of
Groningen.
orcid.org/0000-0001-8400-7143
ISBN 978-3-16-159008-5 / eISBN 978-3-16-159009-2

DOI 10.1628/978-3-16-159009-2
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In gratitude
Ken Dowden
Fritz Graf
Pierre Vidal-Naquet (1930–2006)

Preface
Many scholars have special interests that drive them to return again and again
to specific subjects. Throughout my career I have remained fascinated by an-
cient myths and rituals of initiation, mainly those involving the transition of
boys into manhood. This interest may well have something to do with my own
coming of age during the 1960s, a period that saw an unprecedented explosion
of youth culture. It was certainly in the late 1960s that the most influential stud-
ies of ancient initiation first appeared, attracting the attention of a number of
classical scholars belonging to roughly the same age group: Claude Calame,
Fritz Graf, Christiane Sourvinou-Inwood (1945–2008), Jack Winkler (1943–
1990) and myself. Despite the added impetus provided by the ongoing cultural
revolution of the time, scholarly interest in this topic was not a wholly new
phenomenon. Rather, it had its origins in two different approaches, the ethno-
graphical and the Indo-European, which, as we shall see below, merged in the
course of time.
Before considering the matter in more depth, it will be useful to state briefly
what I mean by male initiation. Unlike in contemporary Western society, where
reaching adulthood is often a protracted and, not infrequently, difficult process,
most tribal societies proclaimed their young men to be adult at a specific mo-
ment in time. They effectuated this sudden transition by making the boys pass
through a special ritual, initiation, which varied in detail from tribe to tribe and
from community to community, but which nevertheless shows a remarkable
family resemblance in structure and content all over the world. After this tran-
sition, the boys were treated as adults and were expected to behave accordingly.
The initiation of girls has received much less attention from anthropologists,
not least because most of the earlier students of initiation were male. It seems
that both male and female initiation shared many of the same characteristics,
but that the initiation of girls was more closely connected to the first menstrua-
tion and/or to marriage.1
The structure of tribal initiatory rituals usually follows the famous triad de-
lineated by Arnold van Gennep: rite of separation, liminality, and rite of incor-
1 For an exemplary analysis of girls’ initiation, see A. Richards, Chisungu: a girl’s initiation
ceremony among the Bemba of Northern Rhodesia (London, 1957). For Greece, see K. Dowden,
Death and the Maiden (London and New York, 1989); C. Calame, Les Choeurs de jeunes filles
en Grèce ancienne (Paris, 20193).

VIII Preface
poration (rite de séparation, rite de marge and rite d’aggrégation).2 First, the
adolescents were separated from their family, often by way of abduction. After
this separation, they had to pass through a time that was, in some cases, com-
pletely different from either childhood or their future adult life. During this
period, which could last in different places for anywhere between a few days
and several years, novices underwent changes in hairstyle, clothing, food, place
of habitation and behaviour. They were often subjected to various kinds of hu-
miliation and tests of their powers of endurance. In this same period, however,
they were also introduced into the social, cultural and religious traditions of
their tribe, usually by way of singing and dancing, and they were prepared for
their future role as husbands. Among some tribes, this marginal period was
even conceived of as a kind of death, and the initiates were accordingly sym
bolically buried or addressed as ‘shades’. Finally, the return of the novices into
society, which was occasionally seen as a rebirth, often took place via a public
procession during a great festival.3
In tribal societies, then, these rites of initiation performed functions similar
to those of schools in modern society. Through this formal education, the new
generations learned how to behave and how to guarantee the continuation of
their society. In this sense, initiation and modern education are not essentially
different. Schematically, we could say that they are rather the two extremes of a
spectrum which runs from initiation in tribal societies, which usually contains
a maximum of symbolism and a minimum of instruction, to education in West-
ern industrialised societies, which are characterised by a maximum of instruc-
tion and a minimum of symbolism. In all cases, however, the formation of the
new generation was and still is treated as an important focus of attention for the
whole community.
The Greeks had no specific term for ‘initiation’, although the names of vari-
ous initiatory rituals and festivals have survived.4 As with ritual in general in
2 A. van Gennep, Les rites de passage (Paris, 1909), translated as The Rites of Passage (Chi-
cago and London, 1960). For van Gennep (1873–1957), see N. Belmont, Arnold van Gennep:
the creator of French ethnography (Chicago, 1979); D. Fabre and Ch. Laurière (eds), Arnold
Van Gennep: du folklore à l’ethnographie (Paris, 2018).
3 The best survey of tribal male and female initiation is still A. Brelich, Paides e parthenoi
(Rome, 1969) 13–112; see also J. L. Brain, ‘Sex, Incest and Death: initiation rites reconsidered’,
Current Anthropology 18 (1977) 191–208 (with rich bibliography); J. P. Schjødt, Initiation
etween Two Worlds: structure and symbolism in Pre-Christian Scandinavian religion (Odense,
b
2008) 22–49. For the difficulty of adapting these rites to modern times, see H. Janssen, ‘Initi-
ation Rites in Africa: tradition and crisis’, Zs. f. Missionswissenschaft und Religionswissen-
schaft 64 (1980) 81–92.
4 See, especially, H. Jeanmaire, Couroi et Courètes (Lille, 1939); Brelich, Paides e parthenoi,
112–480; P. Vidal-Naquet, Le Chasseur noir (Paris, 19832) 125–207; W. Burkert, Greek Reli-
gion (Oxford, 1985) 260–64, 448–49 (excellent short survey); A. Moreau, ‘Initiation en Grèce
antique’, DHA 18 (1992) 191–244; F. Graf, ‘Initiationsriten in der antiken Mittelmeerwelt’,
Der altsprachliche Unterricht 36.2 (1993) 29–40 = ‘L’iniziazione nel mondo mediterraneo’,

Preface IX
Greece, we, as modern scholars, construct a whole and use comparative terms,
while the ancient Greeks were more occupied with the individual parts.5 When
we use the term ‘initiation’, we therefore apply an etic term, which is inspired by
the ethnographic evidence. Keeping this in mind, let us now turn to the histori-
ography.
Modern research starts with Heinrich Schurtz’s Altersklassen und Männer-
bünde, published in 1902, which shows the importance of men’s societies and
men’s houses for non-European peoples. 6 However, it seems that this book only
became influential in the wake of the 1908 publication of Primitive Secret So
cieties by the American sociologist and anthropologist Hutton Webster.7 Just a
few years after Webster’s work, there appeared, almost at the same time, three
studies which compared the initiatory systems of Crete and Sparta with those
of tribal societies.
In 1912, the creative, but at times over-speculative, Jane Harrison published
her Themis, which begins with a detailed analysis of the famous hymn to Zeus
from Cretan Palaikastro.8 The book contains the typical catchwords of the
time, such as ‘mana’, ‘totemism’ and ‘tabu’, but also ‘initiation’. The latter is the
key concept for Harrison’s interpretation of the hymn, which praises Zeus as
‘most mighty youth’ (1: kouros); it also describes the leaping and dancing of his
young followers, whom later sources unanimously identify as the Kouretes, the
male youths on the brink of adulthood (see below).9 While our sources provide
Aufidus 7 (1994) 23–35. Old but still useful: L. Grasberger, Erziehung und Unterricht im klas-
sischen Alterthum, 3 vols (Würzburg, 1864–81).
5 See also J. N. Bremmer, Greek Religion (Cambridge, 20212) 44.
6 Graf, ‘Initiation’, 5, cf. H. Schurtz, Altersklassen und Männerbünde: Eine Darstellung
der Grundformen der Gesellschaft (Berlin, 1902). For Schurtz (1863–1903), who was Assistent
in the Bremen Museum für Völker- und Handelskunde, see the obituaries by F. Ratzel,
Deutsche geographische Blätter 26 (1903) 51–63 and V. Hantzsch, Biographisches Jahrbuch
und deutscher Nekrolog 8 (1905) 30–34; note also J. Reulecke, ‘Das Jahr 1902 und die Ur-
sprung der Männerbund-Ideologie in Deutschland’, in G. Völger and K. Welck (eds), Männer-
bünde–Männerbande, 2 vols (Cologne, 1990) 1.3–10. For the Greek appropriation of the men’s
house, the leschê, see J. N. Bremmer, Greek Religion and Culture, the Bible and the Ancient
Near East (Leiden, 2008) 154–67.
7 H. Webster, Primitive Secret Societies (New York, 1908). For Webster (1875–1955), see
his Genealogical and Autobiographical Notes (Palo Alto, 1952), which, curiously, does not
mention his book on secret societies.
8 J. E. Harrison, Themis: a study of the social origins of Greek religion (Cambridge, 1912)
1–29. For the hymn, see W. D. Furley and J. M. Bremer, Greek Hymns, 2 vols (Tübingen, 2001)
1.65–75, 2.1–20. For the sanctuary: K. Sporn, Heiligtümer und Kulte Kretas in klassischer und
hellenistischer Zeit (Heidelberg, 2002) 45–49; M. Prent, Cretan Sanctuaries and Cults (Leiden,
2005) 350–53. For Harrison (1850–1928), see Bremmer, The World, 533–37 (with bibliography).
9 Eur. Bacch. 120–25; Corinna, PMG 654i 12–16; Call. H. Zeus 52–53; Strabo 10.3.11; Diod.
Sic. 5.65, 70; Hyginus, Fab. 139.3; Apollod. 1.1.6; schol. Pind. O. 5.42b; this volume, Chap-
ters 1.5 and 4.1. The statue of a beardless Zeus on Crete, probably in the sanctuary of Palaikas-
tro, supports the connection with local initiation, cf. Et. Magnum 276.19: ἐνταῦθα δὲ Διὸς
ἄγαλμα ἀγένειον ἵστατο.

X Preface
very little information about Cretan dances, it is plausible that the ecstatic danc-
es of the Kouretes belonged to the final stages of their adolescence, as the ethno-
graphic sources mention that dances occurred at the end of the initiation.10
Whereas the hymn is from Crete, it was Sparta that served as the focus of a
much more detailed study in the same year by Martin P. Nilsson, the authority on
Greek religion during the middle of the twentieth century. Like Harrison, Nils-
son explicitly mentions Schurtz and Hutton, and also compares the Spartan initi-
ation rituals to those of indigenous societies, such as the Namibian Herrero and
Australian Aborigines. But unlike Harrison, he additionally observes that the
oldest cohort of young males can develop into the retinue of a chief’s son, noting
the similarity of this occurrence with the Cretan initiation, in which the son of an
elite Cretan assembles other boys around him (Chapter 11.1: see also below).11
Nilsson briefly mentions the Spartan krypteia in his analysis and remarks
that it reminds him of the cruel and crafty Red Indians of the Indianerbücher,
which he, presumably, had read in his youth, as I did myself. Only one year
later, Henri Jeanmaire concentrated on the same Spartan institution by compar-
ing it to the initiatory practices that emerge from the evidence presented by
Schurtz and Webster,12 although paying more attention to the ethnographic ma-
terial than to the Greek evidence.13 After the First World War, however, such
anthropological comparisons went out of fashion.14 Classics turned inwards
and social anthropology moved away from the kind of big armchair compari-
sons found in Frazer’s Golden Bough, instead adopting the functionalist para-
digm and propagating field work as the correct approach to the study of tribal
communities.15
10 Ephoros FGrHist 70 F149 apud Strabo 10.4.21; Janko on Il. 16.617–19 (Cretan dancers);
F. Graf, ‘Tanz und Initiation in der griechisch-römischen Antike’, in M. Möckel and H. Volk-
mann (eds), Spiel, Tanz und Märchen (Regensburg, 1995) 83–96; A. L. D’Agata, ‘The Power of
Images: a figured krater from Thronos Kephala (ancient Sybrita) and the process of polis for-
mation in Early Iron Age Crete’, SMEA 54 (2012) 207–47, and ‘Warrior Dance, Social Order-
ing and the Process of Polis Formation in Early Iron Age Crete’, in K. Soar and C. Aamodt
(eds), Archaeological Approaches to Dance Performance (Oxford, 2014) 75–83.
11 M. P. Nilsson, ‘Die Grundlagen des spartanischen Lebens’, Klio 12 (1912) 308–40; more
recently: N. M. Kennell, The Gymnasium of Virtue: education and culture in ancient Sparta
(Chapel Hill and London, 1995); J. Ducat, Spartan Education: youth and society in the Classi-
cal period (Swansea, 2006). For Nilsson (1874–1967), see Bremmer, The World, 13–16 (with
bibliography).
12 H. Jeanmaire, ‘La cryptie lacédémonienne’, REG 26 (1913) 121–50; see also this volume,
Chapter 8.1. For Jeanmaire (1884–1960), see L. Gernet, REG 73 (1960) xxxviii–xxxix; A.-J.
Festugière, ‘Henri Jeanmaire’, École pratique des hautes études, Section des sciences religieus-
es. Annuaire 1960–1961, 62–64. For the krypteia, see this volume, Chapter 8 , note 27.
13 As observed by M. Lupi, ‘Sparta Compared: ethnographic perspectives in Spartan stud-
ies’, in A. Powell and S. Hodkinson (eds), Sparta: beyond the mirage (Swansea and London,
2002) 305–22 at 307 f.
14 See also the observations by M. Mauss, Oeuvres III (Paris, 1969) 451–54 (19351).
15 Classics: H. Flashar (ed.), Altertumswissenschaft in den 20er Jahren: neue Fragen und
Impulse (Stuttgart, 1995). Anthropology: H. Kuklick, The Savage Within: the social history of

Preface XI
What is noteworthy, in retrospect, about these early studies is that they all
concentrated on the Dorian areas of ancient Greece, as if the ethnographic par-
allels on which they drew had nothing to contribute to a better understanding
of other parts of Greece. It is also striking in retrospect that they all concentrat-
ed on ethnographic parallels. This was the era of the Indian summer of coloni-
alism, and reports from travellers and missionaries were flooding in thick and
fast, providing scholars with a wealth of sources with which to work. Yet much
evidence had already disappeared or was in the process of disappearing. For
example, in the early eighteenth century, the erudite Jesuit Father Lafitau could
still compare ancient Spartan and Cretan customs with those actually observed
among, for example, the Hurons and the Iroquois. But around 1900 many native
American tribes had already disappeared because of white violence or European
illnesses, and analogous situations prevailed in many other parts of the world .16
The work of Schurtz and Webster also had an influence on students of In-
do-European societies, our second historiographical strand. This development
began in the later 1920s and earlier 1930s with German and Austrian studies of
Germanic and Scandinavian rites of initiation and men’s societies.17 These
works were often driven by an idea of Germanic continuity, an over-accentua-
tion of the tie between men’s societies and the dead, and sympathy with the
Nazi movement.18 Yet despite conveying ideas that are, to say the very least,
politically nefarious, these studies still offer some interesting suggestions and
associations.19 In the later 1930s, ideas about initiation and men’s societies began
to influence various Scandinavian scholars, mainly as a result of their personal
British anthropology, 1885–1945 (Cambridge, 1991); J. Goody, The Expansive Moment: an-
thropology in Britain and Africa, 1918–1970 (Cambridge, 1995). Field work: J. N. Bremmer,
‘De genealogie van de term veldwerk’, in C. Gietman et al. (eds), Huis en habitus (Hilversum,
2017) 33–35.
16 J.-F. Lafitau, Moeurs des sauvages amériquaines comparées aux moeurs des premiers
temps, 2 vols (Paris, 1724) 2.283–96. For Lafitau (1681–1746), see the excellent annotated Eng-
lish translation: Customs of the American Indians Compared with the Customs of Primitive
Times, tr. W. N. Fenton and E. L. Moore, 2 vols (Toronto, 1974–1977); A. Motsch, Lafitau et
l’emergence du discours ethnographique (Sillery, 2001); M. Mulsow, ‘Joseph-François Lafitau
und die Entdeckung der Religions- und Kulturvergleiche’, in M. Effinger et al. (eds), Götter-
bilder und Götzendiener in der Frühen Neuzeit (Heidelberg, 2012) 37–47.
17 See, especially, L. Weiser, Altgermanische Jünglingsweihen und Männerbünde (Bühl,
1927); for Weiser (1898–1989), see H.-P. Weingand, ‘“Sonst ist es natürlich sehr still und ein-
sam für mich, aber die Bücher helfen gut.” Lily Weiser-Aall und ihre Handlungsräume im
besetzten Norwegen 1940–1945’, SAV 115 (2019) 41–60; O. Höfler, Kultische Geheimbünde
der Germanen I (Frankfurt, 1934); for the controversial Höfler (1901–1987), see, for example,
H. Birkhan, ‘Otto Höfler. Nachruf’, Almanach der Österr. Akad. d. Wiss. 138 (1988) 385–406.
18 Cf. H. Junginger (ed.), The Study of Religion under the Impact of Fascism (Leiden, 2008);
S. D. Corrsin, ‘“One Single Dance Form like the Sword Dance Can Open Up a Whole Lost
World”: the Vienna ritualists and the study of sword dancing and secret men’s unions between
the World Wars’, Folklore 121 (2010) 213–33; C. Ginzburg, Clues, Myths, and the Historical
Method (Baltimore, 20132) 114–31.
19 For a brief, balanced evaluation, see Schjødt, Initiation between Two Worlds, 49–52.

XII Preface
contacts with the most influential scholar of this ‘school’,20 Otto Höfler. These
scholars showed the existence of such practices among the ancient Indians and
Iranians, although in doing so they perhaps over-accentuated the importance of
the men’s societies.21 In the case of Celtic traditions, by contrast, interest in
these topics did not take root until the latter part of the twentieth century, al-
though recent decades have seen the appearance of several fine studies that have
concentrated in particular on the tales about the boyhood deeds of CúChulain
and of Finn and his fian.22
The Indo-European studies were not taken into account by the two notable
scholars who still applied the initiation paradigm: Henri Jeanmaire and Louis
Gernet.23 Both were rather shy men who spent most of their career working at
the margins of French academia, and, as a result, did not achieve any great influ-
ence during their lifetimes. However, unlike in his earlier study on the krypteia,
in his wide-ranging study of Greek initiation rites published in 1939, Jeanmaire
looked beyond the Dorian areas of Greece. The title of this work, Couroi et
Courètes, refers to the male youth on the brink of adulthood, to whom we shall
return in several places in the present volume (Chapters 1.10, 4.2, 15.2). In addi-
tion to considering Crete, Sparta and Delphi, Jeanmaire also included Athens in
his study by focusing on Theseus. Theseus’ youth is indeed replete with initia-
tory motifs, such as his education by his mother’s father (Chapter 13.1), his fem-
inine outfit (Chapter 8) and sacrifice of a bull, 24 his wandering with Peirithoos
(Chapter 6), the trip to Crete with the battle against the Minotaur and the return
20 Cf. M. Gasche, ‘Die Beziehungen deutscher und skandinavischer Orientalisten im
Schatten des Nationalsozialismus: Von traditionellen Banden, weltanschaulichen Brüchen

und (teils) getrennten Wegen nach 1945’, Studia Orientalia Electronica 4 (2016) 53–70.
21 Especially S. Wikander, Der arische Männerbund (Lund, 1938); for Wikander (1908–
1983), see M. Timuş, ‘La bibliographie annotée de Stig Wikander (1908–1983)’, Studia Asiatica
1–2 (2000) 209–34 and S. Arvidsson, ‘Stig Wikander och forskningen om ariska mannaför-
bund’, Chaos 38 (2002) 55–68; G. Widengren, Hochgottglaube im alten Iran (Uppsala and
Leipzig, 1938) 311–51 and Der Feudalismus im alten Iran (Cologne and Opladen, 1969); for
Widengren (1907–1996), see A. Hultgård, ‘Geo Widengren’ = https://iranicaonline.org/arti
cles/widengren-geo, accessed 15-11-2020. Recent evaluation: T. Daryaee, ‘The Iranian Män-
nerbund Revisited’, Iran and the Caucasus 22 (2018) 38–49.
22 Cf. J. F. Nagy, The Wisdom of the Outlaw. The Boyhood Deeds of Finn in Gaelic Narra-
tive Tradition (Berkeley, Los Angeles, London, 1985); K. McKone, ‘Hund, Wolf und Krieger
bei den Indogermanen’, in W. Meid (ed.), Studien zum indogermanischen Wortschatz (Inns-
bruck, 1987) 101–54; this volume, Chapters 1.7, 5.2 and 15.2.
23 L. Gernet, Anthropologie de la Grèce antique (Paris, 1960) 154–71 (‘Dolon le Loup’,
19361); many references to initiation also in the posthumously published notes of his Poly
valence des images, ed. A. Soldani (Pisa, 2004). For Gernet (1882–1962), see M. Freedman in
M. Granet, The Religion of the Chinese People (Oxford, 1975) 4–5; S. C. Humphreys, Anthro-
pology and the Greeks (London, 1978) 76–106, 283–88; R. Di Donato, Per una antropologia
storica del mondo antico (Florence, 1990) 1–130; Bremmer, The World, 12–13.
24 Cf. F. Graf, ‘Apollon Delphinios’, MH 36 (1979) 2–22 at 14–18, who shows the close
connection of Theseus with the life of the Athenian ephebes.

Preface XIII
to become king.25 The antiquity of the Theseus myth, which probably goes back
to the Bronze Age,26 suggests the early existence of rites of initiation in ancient
Greece, even though these have not (yet?) been attested in the Linear B texts.
The publication of Jeanmaire’s book at the beginning of the Second World
War did not help to spread his ideas or stimulate interest in initiation. Indeed, it
was not until the end of the 1960s that initiation again appeared on the scholarly
agenda. In 1968, Pierre Vidal-Naquet published his ‘The Black Hunter and the
Origin of Athenian Ephebeia’,27 in which he argued that the ephebe was a kind
of anti-hoplite. His use of the terms ‘cooked’ and ‘raw’ betrays the influence of
Claude Lévi-Strauss (1908–2009). More crucially, it has been justly argued
against him that, instead of a simple opposition between ephebe and hoplite, we
should rather think of ‘the existence of a broad band of youthful status, rather
than a polarity between marginal youth and incorporated adult: incorporation
and socialisation take place over time’.28 Nevertheless, Vidal-Naquet conclu-
sively demonstrated that ancient rites of initiation had survived within Atheni-
an civic practices, even if they had undergone various transformations.
Vidal-Naquet’s influence in French academia and his excellent contacts with
the Anglo-Saxon scholarly world contributed to his article becoming perhaps
the most famous modern contribution to the study of ancient initiation. It cer-
tainly overshadowed the much more wide-ranging study of Greek male and
female initiation by the Italian (but son of a Romanian father and a Hungarian
mother) 29 Angelo Brelich. Having shown an interest in initiation in his early
lectures and his still-fundamental work on the Greek heroes,30 in 1969 Brelich
went on to publish a study, Paides e Parthenoi, that paid considerable attention
to the topic. His work began with a long discussion of global initiation rites that
25 Jeanmaire, Couroi et Courètes, 228–378, whose analysis is refined by C. Calame, Thésée
et l’imaginaire athénien (Paris, 20183) 69–139.

26 Cf. Fowler, EGM 2.468–71. For an origin of the Kouretes in the Bronze Age, see F. Graf,
‘Ephesische und andere Kureten’, in H. Friesinger and F. Krinzinger (eds), 100 Jahre Öster
reichische Forschungen in Ephesos (Vienna, 1999) 255–62 at 260.
27 P. Vidal-Naquet, ‘The Black Hunter and the Origin of the Athenian Ephebeia’, PCPhS
NS 14 (1968) 49–64, which also appeared in French and Italian and received its definitive form
in id., Le Chasseur noir (Paris, 19832) 151–75; see also his ‘Alexandre et les chasseurs noirs’, in
P. Savinel, Arrien, Histoire d’Alexandre le Grand (Paris, 1984) 355–65; ‘The Black Hunter
Revisited’, CCJ 32 (1986) 126–44; ‘Retour au chasseur noir’, in J.-P. Vernant and P. Vidal-
Naquet, La Grèce ancienne 3: Rites de passage et transgressions (Paris, 1992) 215–51 and his
Mémoires, 2 vols (Paris, 1995–1998) 2.222–30. For Vidal-Naquet (1930–2006), see his Mé
moires and F. Dosse, Pierre Vidal-Naquet. Une vie (Paris, 2020); note also O. Murray, ‘The
Reception of Vernant in the English-speaking World’, History of Classical scholarship 2 (2020)
131–57.
28 Thus, incisively, J. Ma, ‘The Return of the Black Hunter’, CCJ 54 (2008) 188–208 at 190.
29 Cf. V. S. Severino et al., ‘Angelo Brelich, incroci tra Italia e Ungheria’, Historia religio-
num 12 (2020) 41–86.

30 A. Brelich, Gli eroi greci (Rome, 1958) index s.v. iniziazioni, and Le iniziazioni. Parte
seconda: sviluppi storici nelle civiltà superiori, in particolare nella Grecia antica (Roma, 1961).

XIV Preface
was based on much more solid ethnographic foundations than was Jeanmaire’s
discussion. Brelich then analysed Sparta, Crete, Arcadia and Athens, as well as
a series of Greek festivals, to limit myself here to his treatments of male rites. He
also persuasively argued that various religious festivals, such as the Hyakinthia
and Karneia, incorporated features of initiation rituals, albeit reinterpreted. A
very young Christiane Sourvinou-Inwood concluded her review of the volume
as follows; ‘Paides e Parthenoi is undoubtedly written by a very brilliant man,
and in masterly style. Its apparent authority should not disguise the fact that it
must be used with caution’.31 This is certainly correct. Yet it is also true that
Brelich was a pioneer in analysing many Greek initiatory festivals and rites as
having a basis in an initiatory past – analyses that have stood the test of time.32
Gradually, then, the whole of the Greek world was becoming the subject of
studies of initiation, and not only the Dorian areas that had been focussed on at
the beginning of the twentieth century. Brelich had cast his net widely, but there
were still gaps in his survey, with Macedonia and Thessaly being perhaps the
most important areas not to be considered. This vacuum was first filled in 1994
when the Greek ancient historian and Macedonian specialist Miltiades Hatzo-
poulos published a book on rites of passage in Macedonia in which he shows
that the Macedonians also had their own initiatory rites for girls and for boys
and that these were remarkably similar to those performed elsewhere in Classi-
cal Greece.33 Inspired by him, subsequent studies have now also demonstrated
the existence of comparable age classes and rites of passage in Thessaly.34
In the meantime, Fritz Graf, inspired by the warrior exploits of medieval
Swiss youths,35 had also embarked on a series of studies of initiatory rites in
Greece, to which he compared the Indo-European evidence.36 It is my acquaint-
ance with him that led me in the same direction (Chapters 1, 5.2 and 15). Com-
31 C. Sourvinou-Inwood, review of Brelich, Paides e parthenoi, JHS 91 (1971) 172–77. For
Sourvinou-Inwood (1945–2007), see the obituary by Robert Parker, The Guardian 31 May
2007; A. Kavoulaki (life and bibliography) in ead. (ed.), Πλειών. Papers in Memory of Christia
ne Sourvinou-Inwood (Rhetymno, 2018) 1–20.
32 Brelich, Paides e parthenoi. For Brelich (1913–1977), see the autobiography in his Storia
delle religioni, perché? (Naples, 1979) 21–115; M. G. Lancellotti and P. Xella (eds), Angelo
Brelich e la storia delle religioni: temi, problemi e prospettive (Verona, 2005).
33 M. B. Hatzopoulos, Cultes et rites de passage en Macédoine (Athens, 1994).
34 See, especially, S. Kravaritou, ‘Cults and Rites of Passage in Ancient Thessaly’, in M.
Kalaitzi et al. (eds), Βορειοελλαδικά … Essays in honour of Miltiades B. Hatzopoulos (Athens,

2018) 377–95 (with thanks to Onno van Nijf).
35 Cf. F. Graf, ‘Von Knaben und Kämpfern. Hans-Georg Wackernagel und die Riten-
forschung’, in M. L. Heyer-Boscardin (ed.), Wider das “finstere Mittelalter”. Festschrift für

Werner Meyer zum 65. Geburtstag (Basel, 2002) 237–43.
36 Cf. F. Graf, ‘Apollon Delphinios’ (1979); Nordionische Kulte (Rome, 1985) 89–90, 219–
27, 415–17; ‘Apollo Lykeios in Metapont’, in A. Kalogeropoulou (ed.), Praktika tou 8. Dieth-
nous Synedriou Hellēnikēs kai Latinikēs Epigraphikēs, 2 vols (Athens, 1984–1987) 2.242–45;
Greek Mythology (Baltimore, 1993) 74, 107–09; ‘Initiationsriten’ (1993); ‘Ephesische und an-
dere Kureten’ (1999); ‘Initiation’ (2003) and Apollo (London and New York, 2009) 103–29.

Preface XV
bining both the ethnographic and the Indo-European approach,37 it seems rea-
sonable to conclude that the proto-Greeks, when arriving in Greece sometime
in the second millennium, brought with them a system of initiation that may
plausibly be thought to be related to those that have been identified for the an-
cient Celtic, Germanic and Indo-Iranian peoples.
Which rites, then, did the early Greeks bring with them? It is obvious that
such questions cannot be answered with any certainty and that our answers
can, at best, only strive for plausibility. They certainly would have had a system
of age sets,38 which started perhaps around 16, if not sometimes earlier, and will
have ended around 20. This system will have comprised the teaching of weapon
skills, running, hunting, singing, dancing and, not to be forgotten, cunning, as
we witness in the later sources for Crete and Sparta. However, it may have orig-
inally also included other aspects of Greek life, such as oaths, healing and sacri-
fice, given that these are mentioned as parts of the teaching of Cheiron, the
mythical initiator par excellence.39
The early rites may have involved pederastic relationships as well (Chapters 11
and 12), but if they did not then we have no idea at what point pederasty was
incorporated into initiation. Towards the end of the initiation, just before the
rite d’aggrégation, there will have been a kind of transvestism (Chapters 8 and 9)
and a period spent outside the civilised community, whether in outlying border
areas or wandering further afield, a theme we will encounter repeatedly in this
book (Chapters 1.7, 5.2, 6.3, 15.2). It seems that sometimes a group did not re-
turn to their original society. Instead, like the Roman ver sacrum,40 they estab-
lished a new community elsewhere, presumably not in an altogether peaceful
manner (Chapter 15). One may even wonder whether such groups played a role
in the Greek colonisation of Asia Minor, given the prominence of the Kouretes
in Ephesus and of the Molpoi in Miletus, who seem to have been a comparable
group.41
37 For the Indo-European evidence, the best survey is Widengren, Feudalismus, 64–101,
but also see the balanced surveys in R.P. Das and G. Meiser (eds), Geregeltes Ungestüm. Bru
derschaften und Jugendbünde bei indogermanischen Völkern (Bremen, 2002).
38 Cf. N. M. Kennell, ‘Age-Class Societies in Ancient Greece?’, Ancient Society 43 (2013)
42–61.
39 Cf. Titanomachia F 11 Bernabé = 6 Davies; Hes. F 283–85; Pherecrates F 162; C. Brillante,
‘Crescita e apprendimento: l’educazione del giovane eroe’, QUCC NS 37 (1991) 7–28; this
volume, Chapter 3.3.
40 Most recently, H. S. Versnel, Transition & Reversal in Myth & Ritual (Leiden, 1993)
304–09; F. Bartol, ‘El ver sacrum del 217 a. C.’, Revista General de Derecho Romano 11 (2008)
1–12; F. Diez de Velasco, ‘Una interpretación ecológico-religiosa del ritual ver sacrum’, in
J. A. López Férez et al. (eds), Πολυπραγμοσύνη. Homenaje al Profesor Alfonso Martínez Díez
(Madrid, 2016) 183–90; L. Sacco, ‘VER SACRVM. Osservazioni storico-religiose sul rito ital-
ico e romano’, Chaos e Kosmos 17–18 (2016–2017) 1–26.
41 Kouretes: Graf, ‘Ephesische und andere Kureten’. Molpoi: A. Herda, Der Apollon-
Delphinios-Kult in Milet und die Neujahrsprozession nach Didyma. Ein neuer Kommentar
der sogenannten Molpoi-Satzung (Mainz, 2006). Kouretes and Molpoi: Graf, Apollo, 110–13.

XVI Preface
Our understanding of these early stages is complicated by the fact that, as the
case of Theseus illustrates and as can also be seen in the ethnographic literature,
the initiation of princes or elite youths sometimes seems to have differed from
that of their peers.42 These cases are even more complicated as we have to recon-
struct them from myth, which not only reflects, but also refracts, clarifies, sim-
plifies or dramatises reality.43 Yet there seem to be certain patterns that are so
close to ritual that it is plausible to think that they reflect once-practised rites.
I would like to mention three examples.
First, in a number of cases, the sons of kings or members of the elite are edu-
cated by shepherds or are depicted acting as shepherds themselves. We find this
theme not only in Greece, but also in Rome and in Persia (Chapter 6.3). This is
probably a status reversal, which is a recurrent theme in depictions of the mar-
ginal period between adolescence and adulthood in Greece, as elsewhere.44
A clear example is provided by the young Cretan boys who had to wear dirty
clothes, sit on the ground in the men’s house and wait on the adults, just as elite
boys had to do at symposia in Athens and elsewhere (Chapter 12.1–2).
Second, several myths relate the defeat of a monster by a prince, such as Od-
ysseus’ defeat of the Cyclops (Chapter 2), Oedipus’ defeat of the Sphinx (Chap-
ter 10), Theseus’ of the Minotaur,45 Perseus’ of the Gorgon,46 and Meleager’s
victory over the monstrous Calydonian Boar (Chapter 4).47 These myths sug-
gest that the killing of an important enemy or dangerous animal was among the
obligations that had to be fulfilled before attaining proper manhood. Such tests
are even widespread in fairy tales, in which they have also been interpreted, at
least partially, as initiatory motifs.48 The Hellenistic author Hegesandros (apud
Athen. 1.18a) reports that, among the Macedonians, a man could recline at din-
ner only when he had speared a boar without a hunting-net. In other words, he
could only join the ‘club’ of adults after he had singlehandedly killed a boar
during a hunt. It seems plausible to suppose that our myths reflect, albeit in
Neither Graf nor Herda compares the Athenian Eumolpids, who may well go back to a simi-
lar group.
42 For various examples, see Brelich, Paides e parthenoi, 28, with notes 38–39.
43 Cf. R. Buxton, Imaginary Greece (Cambridge, 1994) 87–88.
44 For Turner’s influential studies, see this volume, Chapter 1, Introduction.
45 Theseus and Minotaur: Fowler, EGM 2.468–74; G. and E. Giudice, I frammenti Beazley
dal Persephoneion di Locri Epizefiri. Una ricostruzione iconografica (Rome, 2018) 166–67
(iconographical evidence).
46 Cf. L. J. Roccos, ‘Perseus’, in LIMC VII.1 (1994) 332–48; D. Ogden, Perseus (London
and New York, 2008); E. Karamanou, Euripides Danae and Dictys: introduction, text and
commentary (Leipzig, 2012) 1–17, 119–31; Fowler, EGM 2.253–58; M. H. Jameson, Cults and
Rites in Ancient Greece (Cambridge, 2014) 22–40; D. Angileri, ‘La metis di Perseo e Dedalo
sull’oinochoe di bucchero della collezione Casuccini’, Mètis NS 18 (2020) 221–31.
47 For the boar hunt, albeit not always persuasive on the topic, see M. L. West, ‘The Caly-
donian Boar’, in J. Dijkstra et al. (eds), Myths, Martyrs, and Modernity. Studies in the History
of Religions in Honour of J. N. Bremmer (Leiden, 2010) 3–11; this volume, Chapter 4.
48 K. Horn, ‘Prüfung’, in Enzyklopädie des Märchens 11 (Berlin, 2004) 1–5.

Preface XVII
dramatised form, this kind of requirement for youths of the elite. A likely vari-
ant of this theme is the fetching of a valuable and incredibly hard-to-acquire
object, such as the Golden Fleece.49 Indeed, the myth of Jason and the Argo-
nauts is full of initiatory motifs, such as the wearing of one sandal,50 the young
age of the participants (Apoll. Rhod. 1.341, 448; 3.118, 246, etc.), the group of 50
(Chapters 8.2, 15.2),51 and the presence of maternal uncles (Apoll. Rhod. 1.45,
201: Chapter 13.2).
Third, and last, after the defeat of the monster, Perseus marries Andromeda,
just as Oedipus does Iocaste, whilst Jason weds Medea after returning with the
Golden Fleece. In other words, in these myths there is a common connection
between marriage and the end of the initiation. Indeed, we also hear that this
was the case in Crete (Strabo 10.4.20), Samos (schol. Il. 14.296a) and the Troad
(Ps.-Aeschines , Ep. 10.3–5); the collective marriage of the Danaids suggests the
antiquity of such marriages, as, probably, does the myth of the Proitids.52
All these examples demonstrate that there is no straight line from myth to
ritual, but that we have to continuously keep in mind that narratives have their
own laws and logic. Narratives can even contain initiatory motifs without re-
flecting the whole or many elements of the initiatory ritual; employ them in
wholly different constellations; or concentrate on specific elements, such as the
birth of a hero or his stay in the wilderness. In the end, we should never forget
that Greek myths were meant to tell a good story, with which the poets or other
narrators had to entertain their listeners and readers.53
There are three more aspects of myths related to initiation that I would like
to mention in this respect, as they feature in various of the chapters collected
here. First, a number of myths relate that the prince, Oedipus for example, was
not educated by his own parents but was, rather, fostered by another family
until the puberty rites started. Often, this other family was his mother’s rela-
tives, either an uncle or the maternal grandfather. The common thread across
49 For Jason, the Argonauts and the Golden Fleece see, most recently, J. N. Bremmer,
Greek Religion and Culture, the Bible and the Ancient Near East (Leiden, 2008) 303–38;
M. L. West, Hellenica I (Oxford, 2011) 277–312; Fowler, EGM 2.195–234; A. Debiasi, Eumelo,
la saga argonautica e dintorni. La documentazione papirologica (Rome, 2020).
50 Fowler, EGM 2.206–08, with older bibliography; add E. P. de Loos-Dietz, ‘Le Mono
sandalos dans l’Antiquité’, BABESCH 69 (1994) 175–97; R. Carboni, ‘Divagazione sul tema
del sandalo: significato e valenza tra la sfera celeste e quella ctonia’, Gaia 16 (2013) 113–31;
S. Blundell, ‘One Shoe off and One Shoe on’, in S. Pickup and S. Waite (eds), Shoes, Slippers,
and Sandals: feet and footwear in Classical Antiquity (Abingdon and New York, 2018) 216–28.
51 For other crews of 50, see Il. 2.719, 22.421–22; Od. 10.203–09; J. N. Bremmer, ‘Oor-
sprong, functie en verval van de pentekonter’, Utrechtse Historische Cahiers 11 (1990) 1–11.
52 Danaids: T. Gantz. Early Greek Myth (Baltimore, 1993) 203–06. Proitids: Fowler, EGM
2.169–78; Bremmer, The World, 40–41. Collective weddings: see the suggestive observations
of Gernet, Anthropologie, 39–45, 203.
53 As stressed by Fowler, EGM 2.xx-xxi; see also K. Dowden, ‘Initiation: the key to myth?’,
in id. and N. Livingstone (eds), A Companion to Greek Mythology (Oxford, 2011) 487–505;
S. I. Johnston, The Story of Myth (Cambridge, MA and London, 2018) 34–64.

XVIII Preface
myths seems to have run even deeper, with several myths mentioning a role for
maternal uncles during the initiatory rites, as in the case of the Argonauts
(Chapters 13 and 14). Apparently, when the coming-of-age rituals came to be
organised by the polis, this family aspect disappeared, for it is no longer men-
tioned in historical times.
Second, as the myth of the Argonauts shows, Jason went to Colchis with a
following of about 50 youths, just as Telemachos went in search of his father
with a group of hetairoi, ‘comrades’, youths of the same age (Od. 3.363–64). It
seems to have been a recurrent phenomenon until well into the Archaic Age that
a prince was accompanied by a group of youths at the end of his coming-of-age
period.54 However, the disappearance of the noun kouros, ‘youth’, from spoken
Ionic, as can be seen in Homer,55 suggests that such groups were already disap-
pearing in Homeric times (Chapter 1.10). It is likely that there was simply no
longer any room for such enterprising groups of youths in the politically better
ordered Archaic era.56 Yet the fact that in Crete a young son from the elite was
initiated together with boys of clearly lower social status suggests that the cus-
tom did survive into historical times in a version that was adapted to suit the
political and social requirements of the period (Chapter 11.1).
Finally, whereas the ethnographic evidence collected by Schurtz and Webster
often mentions the role of the adult males of the tribe as initiators of the youths,
this aspect is almost invisible in ancient Greece. Perhaps the only trace of it is to
be found in the myth of the Centaurs, where it is given prominence in the tradi-
tion concerning the Centaur Cheiron, who probably ‘survived’ as a result of his
part in the myths of Achilles and Heracles. Burkert has called Centaurs ‘the
wild men of the woods who still belong to the context of initiation’,57 and their
being a group does suggest a kind of men’s society. But their location on Mt
Pelion indicates a hoary antiquity, as does their relatively early disappearance
from our tradition, and that is all we can say on the matter (Chapter 3).
With the Centaurs we come to the end of our survey. It should be obvious
that this is a sketch in very broad strokes, as we cannot differentiate our myths
in virtue of time or place due to lack of sources. In any case, many local commu-
nities and ethnê must have begun to develop their own characteristics already at
54 Cf. Ch. Ulf, Die homerische Gesellschaft (Munich, 1990) 131: ‘Der Kern der sich um eine
Führungsfigur gruppierenden Hetairoi dürfte sich in der Regel aus Gleichaltrigen rekrutier-
en’, comparing Il. 5.325–26, 18.251; Od. 22.208–09, although this does not exclude the pres-
ence of older males (133–34).
55 Cf. A. Hoekstra, Epic Verse before Homer (Amsterdam, 1981) 76–78.
56 Compare the fate of the returning Trojan heroes, who could no longer find a place in the
newly established order of the late Geometric period: R. L. Fowler, ‘The nostoi and Archaic
Greek Ethnicity’, in S. Hornblower and G. Biffies (eds), The Returning Hero (Oxford, 2018)
43–63.
57 W. Burkert, Structure and History in Greek Mythology and Ritual (Berkeley, Los Ange-
les, London, 1979) 30.

Preface XIX
an early stage as it would otherwise be very hard to explain the striking differ-
ences between, say, Athens and Sparta. These differences were not static; with
changing political and cultural circumstances, the initiation of the young will
surely also have changed. The case of Sparta’s militarisation is too well known
to need discussion here, but it has been less noted that we have a close parallel
for the militarisation of initiation rites in the tribe of Native Americans known
as the Crow Nation, amongst whom we can observe the same development to an
often surprisingly close degree.58 In Athens, the training of the youth was put
on a new footing in the later fourth century, although one that was not without
roots in earlier practices,59 while in Macedonia in the Hellenistic period the
male rites became increasingly influenced by those of Athens.60 In Hellenistic
times, the gymnasion became the place for military training.61 Even seemingly
age-old institutions are not beyond the forces of history.
Having looked at the rites of initiation and their historiography, we now turn
to the present book. This is not a systematic analysis of the ancient rites of male
initiation. Originally, the articles should have been part of the second volume of
my Collected Essays. 62 However, their inclusion would have swelled the volume
beyond an affordable size, so they are published here in their own collection.
All of the articles gathered here discuss elements of ancient rites of initiation,
but they offer a kaleidoscopic view rather than a systematic analysis. The reason
is plain: they were all written for different occasions, ranging from a volume on
wilderness (Chapter 3) via one on ancient descents into the underworld (Chap-
ter 6) to a collection on the symposium (Chapter 12). Yet they all discuss initia-
tory aspects of ancient myths and rituals, and at the end of the book the reader
should have a good idea, albeit through the prism of myth, of, especially, the
earlier forms of those rites.
The book starts with an analysis of the myths of the Trojan War. It is evident-
ly the adventurous analysis of an early-career scholar, written ‘in high spirits’ as
58 Cf. J. Lear, Radical Hope: ethics in the face of cultural devastation (Cambridge, MA and
London, 2006), whose analysis would reward a comparison with Sparta’s education and train-
ing of the young.
59 J. L. Friend, The Athenian Ephebeia in the Fourth Century BCE (Leiden, 2019).
60 Cf. M. B. Hatzopoulos, ‘Comprendre la loi ephebarchique d’Amphipolis’, Tekmeria 13
(2015–2016 [2017]) 145–71; D. Rousset, ‘Considérations sur la loi éphébarchique d’Amphipo-

lis’, REA 119 (2017) 49–84. This Athenian influence went further than Macedonia alone; cf.
A. S. Chankowski, L’Éphébie hellénistique (Paris, 2010) and ‘Ideology of War and Expansion?
A Study of the Education of Young Men in Hellenistic Gymnasia’, in M. Champion and
L. O’Sullivan, (eds), Cultural Perceptions of Violence in the Hellenistic World (London and
New York, 2017) 39–57.
61 See D. Kah, ‘Militärische Ausbildung im hellenistischen Gymnasion’, and M. B. Hatzo-
poulos, ‘La formation militaire dans les gymnases hellénistiques’, in D. Kah and P. Scholz
(eds), Das hellenistische Gymnasion (Berlin, 2004) 47–90, 91–96, respectively.
62 J. N. Bremmer, The World of Greek Religion and Mythology = Collected Essays II
(Tübingen, 2019).

XX Preface
Martin West commented. 63 In the original version, I concluded that ‘the origin
of the complex of the Trojan War is for an important part to be looked for in
ancient rituals of initiation’. 64 I would now qualify this conclusion to a certain
extent. The direct shift from an epic poem to practised rituals is certainly too
simplistic. I would now say that the backstories of important protagonists of the
Trojan War – whether from the Iliad itself or from the Epic Cycle – such as
Achilles, Hector, Neoptolemos/Pyrrhos, Odysseus, Paris and Philoctetes, con-
tain many references to initiatory motifs or, as in the case of Hector and the
‘Hectorean hairstyle’, have been connected with such motifs. This had not been
argued before and still seems to me to be the case.
An explanation is more difficult. In addition to the initiatory role of poets in
Archaic Greece, I would now add the youthful age of the Greek army before
Troy, which was mostly made up of kouroi, ‘youths’ (Chapter 1.10). Before the
rise of the hoplite army, the role of youths in war must have been more impor-
tant and their rites of initiation of particular interest to them. In a way, the ex-
pedition against Troy looks like the dramatisation of a raid organised with
young men, such as the expedition of the Argonauts. The dual leadership of
Agamemnon and Menelaos, which finds parallels in Rome (Romulus and
Remus) as well as among the Anglo-Saxons (Hengist and Horsa) and Vandals
(Ambri and Assi), is another archaic feature, although one that is still very pres-
ent in Homer. 65
The next four examples (Chapters 2 to 5) look at myths that can plausibly be
thought to have preceded Homer. The case of the Cyclops is much debated, but
most scholars would probably agree that the poet of the Odyssey had forerun-
ners whose tradition he had appropriated. I follow Burkert in seeing the Cy-
clops as being modelled on the Lord of the Animals, a traditional figure in many
tribal initiations (Chapter 2). Some connection with initiation is also supported
by a ritual in Magnesia where youths dressed in sheepskins ascended to the cave
of Cheiron, the great initiator (Chapter 3.3, but see also 1.4). The latter was al-
ready known to Homer (Il. 4.219, 11.832, etc.), as were the Centaurs (Chapter 3).
The case of Meleager is one of the most frequently discussed examples of
Homer’s innovations with regard to traditional material, but themes in his
63 West, ‘The Calydonian Boar’, 8 note 18.

64 J. N. Bremmer, ‘Heroes, Rituals and the Trojan War’, Studi-Storico Religiosi 2 (1978)
5–38 at 35.
65 H. W. Singor, Oorsprong en betekenis van de hoplietenphalanx in het archaische Grie
kenl and (Diss. Leiden, 1988) 138 compares, amongst others, Il. 4.274 (2 Aiantes) and 4.393
(2 leaders of a group of 50 kouroi), 5.592–95 (Hector and Ares), 12.196 (Poulydamas and
Hector) and 330 (Sarpedon and Glaukos); Od. 14.237 (Idomeneus and Odysseus) as well as
adducing Germanic and Celtic examples; add Il. 2.511–16 (Askalaphos and Ialmenos), 517–26
(Schedios and Epistrophos), 676–80 (Pheidippos and Antiphos); Paulus Diaconus, Hist. Long.
1.7 (Vandals); R. Caprini, ‘Hengist e Horsa, uomini e cavalli’, Maia 46 (1994) 197–214; M. L.
West, Indo-European Poetry and Myth (Oxford, 2007) 190.

Preface XXI
myth, such as the hunt, the Kouretes (Chapter 1.5) and the maternal uncles
(Chapter 13), undeniably bring him close to actual Aetolian ritual practices
(Chapter 4). This is less so in the case of Orpheus. Although he is not mentioned
in our surviving literature before Ibycus (F 306), there can be little doubt that he
preceded Homer, as there is general agreement that he took part in the expedi-
tion of the Argonauts, which was known to Homer. 66 After the loss of his wife,
Eurydice, he is portrayed as wandering the countryside with a group of young
men. We cannot tie this aspect of his tradition to a specific local community,
although we can probably narrow it down to Macedonia or Thracia, but we do
find here the motif of the wandering youths (Chapter 5).
We find the same motif of wandering youths in the myth regarding Theseus
and Peirithoos. They are already mentioned in a line in the Odyssey (11.631) that
has often been suspected to be a later insertion, although probably wrongly, 67
but they are certainly attested in the Archaic Age. We can only wonder to what
extent their wandering as a pair is a variation of that by groups of youths (Chap-
ter 6). And what about the tradition of the stay in the wild by only one Arcadian
youth, as related by various authors?68 Was this a further development of the
stay in the wild by groups of youths or of the wandering by only two? Or did
the myths perhaps concentrate on only one youth while failing to relate that he
was, in reality, accompanied by a larger group of lower status youths, as hap-
pened in Crete (Chapter 11.1)? It is clear that myths can vary considerably in
their focus. Similarly, we hear of the fight of just one hero against a monster
(Perseus), that of a hero with a small company (Theseus went to Crete with a
group of about 14 youths), and that of a hero with a full retinue (Jason with the
Argonauts). However this may be, the plausibility of a Bronze Age origin for
Theseus (above) makes it likely that here, too, we are considering a pre-Homer-
ic motif. If this motif is indeed Athenian, this would point to very early initia-
tory rites in Athens and, consequently, among the Ionians.
We can be less certain about a pre-Homeric initiatory stage of Heracles’ life
(Chapter 7). Undoubtedly, some of the motifs with which he is associated are
rather old, such as his education by shepherds, but the sources are relatively late
(fifth-century mythographers), and it is difficult to locate such a popular hero in
a specific area of Greece. On the other hand, it is clear that the myths about his
youth bristle with initiatory motifs, which in itself is suggestive of an early tra-
dition in this respect.
The next two chapters focus on the theme of transvestism (Chapters 8 and 9),
which was perhaps the earliest initiatory motif identified as such for Greek my-
thology (Chapter 1.1). The discussion of Dionysos collects the evidence for
66 Fowler, EGM 2.211–12; F. Graf and S. I. Johnston, Ritual Texts for the Afterlife (London
and New York, 20132) 167 f.

67 Fowler, EGM 2.470 note 67.
68 Cf. Bremmer, The World, 358–70.

XXII Preface
transvestism in myth and ritual and shows that it could be used in various nar-
rative ways: representing a male youth who was dressed as a girl either as look-
ing feminine or as having actually changed into a girl. At the same time, these
cases illustrate that what happened in ritual could also be transferred to tales
about the gods (Chapter 8). The discussion of Kaineus is a specific example of
such transvestism. His belonging to the Lapiths and his Thessalian origin sug-
gest that a local ritual lies in the background of the myth – this must have been
quite old, as is witnessed by the mention of Kaineus in the Iliad (1.264) – with
the myth dramatising a ritual act by turning transvestism into a sex change
(Chapter 9).
The studies of initiatory motifs in myth conclude with an analysis of Oedi-
pus, arguably one of the most intriguing of ancient mythical figures (Chap-
ter 10). Although most modern interpretations and discussions focus on his
marriage to his mother, it is his life prior to that fatal event that is of interest to
us here. The reports of Oedipus’ youth contain several initiatory motifs, such as
his discovery by shepherds (Chapter 7.3) and his fosterage by the king (Chap-
ter 14). Meanwhile, Oedipus’ defeat of the Sphinx, which leads to him taking
both the throne and the hand of the queen, looks like a narrative employment of
initiatory motifs rather than a close reflection of ritual.
We now turn to history and ritual. The next two chapters (11 and 12) overlap
to a certain extent, as both are concerned with problems and practices of Greek
pederasty. The theme has long been a bone of scholarly contention, starting in
the early twentieth century with Erich Bethe’s famous article on ‘Dorian peder-
asty’. 69 I first argued for a connection between pederasty and Indo-European
initiation in an article in which I, in retrospect, overemphasised the Indo-Euro-
pean connection, partially because the article was meant for an Indo-European
issue of the journal Arethusa.70 However, I would still maintain that our evi-
dence suggests that pederasty was part of early Greek initiation rites and this
view has been strengthened by the discovery of bronze plaques in the sanctuary
of Hermes and Aphrodite in Cretan Kato Symi. One of these, nowadays pre-
served in the Louvre, depicts a bearded hunter face-to-face with a beardless
youth and clutching his arm. Robert Parker persuasively notes that even if we
do not want to connect this scene with Ephoros’ description of Cretan initiation
(Chapter 11.1), ‘the case for associating the plaques with maturation rituals can
stand independently of it’.71 As the plaques with erotic content go back to the
69 E. Bethe, ‘Die dorische Knabenliebe’, RhM NF 42 (1907) 438–75; this volume, Chap-
ter 11.2.
70 J. N. Bremmer, ‘An Enigmatic Indo-European Rite: paederasty’, Arethusa 13 (1980)
279–98.
71 R. Parker, On Greek Religion (Ithaca and London, 2011) 235; see also the balanced dis-
cussion by A. Duplouy, Construire la cité. Essai de sociologie historique sur les communautés
de l’archaïsme grec (Paris, 2019) 242–53 (pederasty), 266–73 (young wine-pourers).

Preface XXIII
seventh, if not the eighth century BC, their chronology suggests that pederasty
was an integral part of initiation at a very early date, even though we do not
know exactly when it became incorporated into the ritual. As texts and vase
paintings show in abundance, boys were present at symposia where erotic rela-
tions took place with older men, who sometimes instructed them via didactic
poetry. It seems that with the disintegration of the older forms of initiation,
some of its parts were preserved and transferred to the symposium.
The final chapters (13 to 15) elaborate on issues that have been touched upon
elsewhere in the volume. We start with the importance of the maternal family,
of which we have seen several examples in the expedition of the Argonauts
(above), but which can also be noted in the boar hunts with maternal uncles by
Odysseus (Chapter 1.4) and Meleager (Chapter 4). The close relationship be-
tween uncle and nephew lasted well into Byzantine times, and its educational
aspect clearly survived the disappearance of initiation as an institution. Earlier
scholars considered the avunculate an Indo-European phenomenon, but this is
clearly not the case as it has been found, in varying forms, from Native North
America through Africa to Fiji.72 However, its incorporation into rites of initi-
ation does seem to have been more frequent among Indo-Europeans (Chap-
ter 13).
Maternal uncles sometimes played a role in fosterage (Chapter 14), a practice
that did not survive the Archaic period in Classical Greece. It did, however,
continue to be practised in Macedonia, although in a different way, as it was
used to tie important families to the court through so-called alliance fosterage.73
This is one of those old elite institutions that long survived in Europe in outly-
ing areas, such as in medieval Ireland, and, albeit gradually, developed into the
public school system that continues today in the United Kingdom. The promi-
nence of the old Etonians David Cameron and Boris Johnson, who both served
as prime minister in the last decade, shows the lasting influence of this institu-
tion.
The final chapter (15) moves from Greece to Rome. Here, the fortuitous dis-
covery of an archaic Latin inscription enables us to see the contours of a group
of young men in action in the full light of history, instead of in myth as with our
Greek sources. The discovery has also thrown new light on historical Italic fig-
ures, such as Coriolanus and the Vibenna brothers, and is therefore a fitting
conclusion to our search for traces of ancient practices of initiation. Admittedly,
our search has only been able to find individual elements and never a ‘thick de-
72 D. Potts, ‘The Epithet “Sister’s Son” in Ancient Elam. Aspects of the Avunculate in
Cross-cultural Perspective’, in K. Kleber et al. (eds), Grenzüberschreitungen. Studien zur

Kulturgeschichte des Alten Orients: Festschrift für Hans Neumann (Münster, 2018) 523–55 at
536–40.
73 Cf. P. Parks, ‘Fostering Fealty: a comparative analysis of tributary allegiances of adop-
tive kinship’, CSSH 45 (2003) 741–82.

XXIV Preface
scription’ of an ancient initiatory ritual. Still, I hope that my discussions have

shown that knowledge of rites of initiation of tribal and other Indo-European
peoples does in fact throw light on traditions of the ancient world which would
otherwise remain obscure.
I would like to thank the friendly and efficient staff of Mohr Siebeck, Rebekka
Zech in particular, for making this such a nicely produced book. My thanks also
to Brill (Leiden), Droz (Geneva), De Gruyter (Berlin), Habelt (Bonn), Japadre
Editore (Rome), Labor et Fides (Geneva), Les Belles Lettres (Paris), Les Études
Classiques (Namur), the Norwegian Institute at Athens, Oxford University
Press and Routledge (London) for their permission to reprint the articles in-
cluded in this collection. It is of course impossible to completely redo one’s own
research of more than four decades. Yet I do not wish to reprint views that I no
longer support or to offer the reader out-of-date references. I have therefore
updated the bibliographies, made a number of small changes and corrections,
removed overlaps where possible, and added more evidence when available.
Naturally, this could not be done in every case, but I have always tried to bring
the volume up to date with regard to the more important issues. In two chapters,
on Meleager (Chapter 4) and Heracles (Chapter 7), I have adapted the original
English text instead of reprinting the French translations.
The many debts I have incurred in the course of the years spent writing these
articles I mention at the end of each chapter. Here I would like to single out Ken
Dowden and Fritz Graf, whose own writings often moved along similar lines,
and Pierre Vidal-Naquet, with whom I had personal contacts in the 1970s and
1980s.74 His work as a scholar, a public intellectual and a fearless opponent of
torture remains a monument to a remarkable man.75
74 In the front matter of the second edition of his Le Chasseur noir he thanks ‘tous ceux qui
m’ont signalé des erreurs et notamment mon collègue néerlandais J. Bremmer’.

75 I am most grateful to my friends Laura Feldt, Bob Fowler and Julia Kindt for their com-
ments, to Tobias Stäbler for saving me from several mistakes, and to Paul Scade for his skilful
and insightful correction of my English.

Contents
Preface . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . VII
Abbreviations . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . XXVII
Section I
Myths
1. Initiation and the Heroes of the Trojan War . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3

2. Odysseus versus the Cyclops . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 29
3. Demons of the Wilderness: the Centaurs . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 45
4. The Myth of Meleager in Homer . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 65
5. Orpheus: from Guru to Gay . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 81
6. Theseus’ and Peirithoos’ Descent into the Underworld . . . . . . . 95
7. Initiating Heracles . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 107
8. Transvestite Dionysos . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 125
9. Kaineus the Invulnerable . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 143
10. Oedipus and the Greek Oedipus Complex . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 159
Section II
Rituals
11. Initiation and Greek Pederasty . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 177

12. Adolescents, Symposion and Pederasty . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 191
13. Maternal Uncles and Grandfathers as Initiators, Educators
and Role Models . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 205
14. Fosterage, Kinship and the Circulation of Children . . . . . . . . . 219
15. The Suodales of Poplios Valesios . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 237
List of First Publications . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 251

Index of Names, Subjects and Passages . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 253

Abbreviations
ABV J. D. Beazley, Attic Black-figure Vase-Painters

(Oxford, 1956)
AC L’Antiquité Classique
AJA American Journal of Archaeology
AJPh American Journal of Philology
ANRW Aufstieg und Niedergang der römischen Welt
ARG Archiv für Religionsgeschichte
ARV2 J. D. Beazley, Attic Red-Figure Vase-Painters
(Oxford, 19632)
ARW Archiv für Religionswissenschaft
ASAA Annuario della Scuola Archeologica di Atene
ASNP Annali della Scuola Normale Superiore di Pisa
BABESCH Bulletin Antieke Beschaving – Annual Papers on Mediter
ranean Archaeology
BCH Bulletin de Correspondance Hellénique
BICS Bulletin of the Institute of Classical Studies
Bremmer, The World J. N. Bremmer, The World of Greek Religion and Mythology
(Tübingen, 2019)
CA Classical Antiquity
CCJ Cambridge Classical Journal
CJ Classical Journal
C&M Classica et Mediaevalia
CPh Classical Philology
CQ Classical Quarterly
CR Classical Review
CRAI Comptes rendus des séances de l’Académie des Inscriptions
et Belles-Lettres
CSSH Comparative Studies in Society and History
DHA Dialogues d’Histoire Ancienne
FGrH F. Jacoby, Die Fragmente der griechischen Historiker
(Berlin and Leiden, 1923–1958)
G&R Greece & Rome
GRBS Greek, Roman, and Byzantine Studies
HSCP Harvard Studies in Classical Philology
IC Inscriptiones Creticae
IG Inscriptiones Graecae
JAC Jahrbuch für Antike und Christentum
JDAI Jahrbuch des deutschen archäologischen Instituts
JHS Journal of Hellenic Studies

XXVIII Abbreviations
JIES Journal of Indo-European Studies

JÖAI Jahreshefte des Österreichischen Archäologischen Instituts
JRS Journal of Roman Studies
LEC Les Études Classiques
LIMC Lexicon iconographicum mythologiae classicae
(Zürich and Düsseldorf, 1981–2009)
MD Materiali e Discussioni per l’analisi dei testi classici
MEFRA Mélanges de l’École française de Rome
MH Museum Helveticum
MSS Münchener Studien zur Sprachwissenschaft
PCPhS Proceedings of the Cambridge Philological Society
PMG D. Page, Poetae Melici Graeci (Oxford, 1962)
PP La Parola del Passato
QUCC Quaderni Urbinati di Cultura Classica
RE Paulys Realenzyclopädie der classischen Altertumswissen-
schaft (Stuttgart, 1884–1973)
REA Revue des études anciennes
REG Revue des études grecques
REL Revue des études latines
RhM Rheinisches Museum
RHR Revue de l’histoire des religions
RIDA Revue internationale des droits de l’antiquité
RPh Revue de philologie
SAV Schweizerisches Archiv für Volkskunde
SEG Supplementum Epigraphicum Graecum
SMEA Studi Micenei ed Eegeo-Anatolici
SMSR Studi e Materiali di Storia delle Religioni
SO Symbolae Osloenses
TAPA Transactions of the American Philological Association
ThesCRA Thesaurus Cultus et Rituum Antiquorum
(Los Angeles, 2004–2012)
VigChris Vigiliae Christianae
WJA Würzburger Jahrbücher für die Altertumswissenschaft
WS Wiener Studien
ZPE Zeitschschrift für Papyrologie und Epigraphik

Section I
Myths

Chapter 1
Initiation and the Heroes of the Trojan War
Whereas our ancestors could believe in the historical reality of the Trojan War,
our own generation has grown more sceptical. It is hard to disagree with Moses
Finley (1912–1986) when he concludes his analysis of that great war by saying:
‘We certainly do not try to write medieval French history from the Song of
Roland or medieval German history from the Nibelungenlied. Why should we
make an exception of Homer’s Trojan War?’1 Neither will we find the story of
the Trojan War in ancient ruins, whatever we may hope, 2 nor can the discovery
of a single Hittite word, such as Wilusa (Ilion?), explain the contents of Homer’s
epic.3 But if this is the case, the question of the material on which Homer drew
becomes more urgent. Where did he and his predecessors find their inspira-
tion?4 The aim of this chapter is not to provide the final answer to this question
(if that were in any case possible), but to contribute towards a solution to this
problem by studying the nature of the most important heroes involved in the
war. We will concentrate on the protagonists of the Trojan War in the Iliad,
Achilles (§ 1) and Hector (§ 7), and on those whose presence and help were a
conditio sine qua non for the fall of Troy, Pyrrhos/Neoptolemos (§ 2) and
Philoctetes (§ 3). At the same time, however, we will also pay attention to that
other iconic hero of the war: Odysseus (§ 4).5
Every analysis presupposes certain conceptual tools. I take it that the reader
is acquainted with initiation, rites of passage and men’s societies,6 but I will
1 M. I. Finley, Aspects of Antiquity (Harmondsworth, 1972) 31–42.
2 For recent evaluations of the archaeological publications, see D. F. Easton et al., ‘Troy in
Recent Perspective’, Anatolian Studies 52 (2002) 75–109; J. Haubold, ‘Dream and Reality in
the Work of Heinrich Schliemann and Manfred Korfmann’, in D. J. Bennett and E. S. Sherratt
(eds), Archaeology and Homeric Epic (Oxford, 2016) 20–34. For Schliemann (1822–1890), see
A. Louis, L’invention de Troie. Les vies rêvées de Heinrich Schliemann (Paris, 2020).
3 Note the skeptical discussion by D. Schürr, ‘Ist Troja das Wilusa der Hethiter? Über
Namensassoziationen und ihre fatale Rolle bei der Historisierung Hisarlıks’, Gephyra 18 (2019)
33–57.
4 For an older but detailed state of the questions, see A. Heubeck, Die Homerische Frage
(Darmstadt, 1974) 153–77; more recently, J. Burgess, The Tradition of the Trojan War in
Homer & The Epic Cycle (Baltimore, 2001) 47–85; B. Currie, Homer’s Allusive Art (Oxford,
2016) 55–62, 242–43.
5 Achilles: Apollod. 3.13.8; schol. Il. 19.326. Pyrrhos/Neoptolemos: Soph. Ph. 113 ff; Apol-
lod. Ep. 5.11; Philostr. Jun. Imag. 18.3. Philoctetes: Ilias Parva, Arg. 2b West = Arg. 1 Bernabé;
Soph. Ph. 604 ff; Ovid, Met. 13.320; schol. Pind. P. 1.100.
6 See this volume, Preface.

4 Section I: Myths
briefly explain the idea of liminality. When Arnold van Gennep (1873–1957)
published his classic study of the rites of passage, he concentrated primarily on
the rites of separation and reintegration, but the in-between period hardly
received his attention.7 This transitional stage between the old and the new sit-
uation has been brilliantly analysed by Victor Turner. 8 Turner shows that the
liminal period, as he calls this period of transition, is characterised by a confu-
sion or reversal of status and a series of other reversals, such as differences in
hairstyle, clothing, behaviour and place of habitation. Such liminal situations
occur during the major events of the life-cycle – birth maturity, marriage, par-
enthood and death – but also during all kinds of transitional stages, such as the
change from the Old to the New Year, from peace to war, from impurity to
purity, and the movement from one territory to another. In this study, I will use
Turner’s analysis by arguing that the major heroes of the Trojan War are all
characterised in their tradition as being in such a transitional state.9
Every analysis also presupposes certain rules of the game, certain principles
that are consciously or, more often, unconsciously applied. In addition to the
normal rules that are relevant to the analysis of Greek mythology, we also have
to follow a number of others: (1) the point of departure of an analysis must
always be that the story is not a tale told by an idiot. It is, consequently, not
enough to catalogue the single motifs and look only for parallels to these. We
must, rather, also look for the internal coherence of the different motifs and take
into consideration the possibility of an underlying pattern or structure. (2) An
explanation should not ignore important details, as is usual for those scholars
who want to retain the Trojan War but have no place for Achilles and the other
heroes.10 (3) Myth, legend and fairy-tale are not concepts that are mutually ex-
clusive, but they can contain the same motifs.11 It is, therefore, a case of explain-
ing obscurum per obscurius when the one is explained only in terms of the other.
But enough of methodology! Let us now turn to the actual protagonists.
7 A. van Gennep, Les rites de passage (Paris, 1909); this volume, Preface, note 3.
8 Cf. V. W. Turner: The Forest of Symbols (London, 1967) 93–111; The Ritual Process (Har-
mondsworth, 1974) and ‘Comments and Conclusions’, in B. A. Babcock (ed.), The Reversible
World (London, 1978) 276–96. For Turner (1920–1983), see B. Babcock and J. J. MacAloon,
‘Victor W. Turner (1920–1983): commemorative essay’, Semiotica 65 (1987) 1–27.
9 For Turner’s influence on Fritz Graf, Henk Versnel and myself, see H. S. Versnel, ‘Een
klassiek antropoloog in de klassieke wereld’, Anthropologische verkenningen 13.4 (1994) 46–

56.
10 Cf., with bibliography, H. Geiss, ‘Troja – Streit ohne Ende’, Klio 57 (1975) 260–67.
11 Cf. J. de Vries, Betrachtungen zum Märchen besonders in seinem Verhältnis zu Helden
sage und Mythos (Helsinki, 1954) and ‘Märchen, Mythos und Mythenmärchen’, in K. Ranke
(ed.), Internationaler Kongress der Volkserzählungsforscher in Kiel und Kopenhagen 1959
(Berlin, 1961) 464–69; G. Widengren, Religionsphänomenologie (Berlin, 1959) 171–83; V. Propp,
Morphology of the Folktale (Austin, 19682) passim; F. Hampl, Geschichte als kritische Wissen
schaft II (Darmstadt, 1975) 1–60; H. Bausinger and K. Ranke, ‘Archaische Züge’, in Enzyklo
pädie des Märchens I (Berlin, 1977) 733–43.

Chapter 1: Initiation and the Heroes of the Trojan War 5
1. Achilles
Knowing that Troy could not be taken without Achilles, the Greeks fetched
him from the island of Skyros where he stayed at the court of Lycomedes,
dressed up as a girl.12 As early as 1897, this disguise was recognised as a typical
feature of the rite of passage from boyhood to adulthood, an interpretation that
has generally been accepted since.13 For our purpose we deduce from this inter-
pretation that Achilles’ arrival at Troy fell in that transitory period of his life.
2. Pyrrhos/Neoptolemos
When Achilles’ son Phyrrhos/Neoptolemos was still a boy,14 he was fetched

from Skyros (Od. 9.508), where, in typical Indo-European manner,15 his moth-
er’s father was educating him.16 This boyhood must have been a clear character-
istic of Pyrrhos, for the Greeks considered him to be the inventor of the pyr
rhichê, the armed dance of the boys.17 He received his name Neoptolemos from
his tutor Phoenix (Paus. 10.26.4), but formerly he was called Pyrrhos. Marie
Delcourt persuasively interpreted this change of name as belonging to the rites
of initiation. And indeed, a change of name is mentioned for a number of heroes
and always in their youth.18 Jason received his name from his tutor Cheiron
(Pind. N. 4.119), whom he left at the age of twenty (ibid., 104). According to one
tradition, Theseus received his name after having been acknowledged as a son
by his father Aegeus (Plut. Thes. 4.1), when he was a meirakion,19 ‘lad’ (ibid., 6).
12 Cypria F 19 Bernabé, but M. L. West, The Epic Cycle (Oxford, 2014) 104, rejects the
a scription to the Cypria; Polygnotos apud Paus. 1.22.6; Eur. F 585–86; Bio 2; schol. Il. 19.326
(Cyclic poets); E. Crawley, ‘Achilles and Scyros’, CQ 7 (1893) 243–46; A. Kossatz-Deissmann,
‘Achilles’, in LIMC I.1 (1984) no. 94–185 and ‘Achilleus’, in LIMC, Suppl. 1 (2009) 2–15 at 4–5;
P. Grossardt, Achilleus, Coriolan und ihre Weggefährten (Tübingen, 2009) 76–88 (who notes
its early character); this volume, Chapters 8.2 and 9 (later passages).
13 Some examples: H. Jeanmaire, Couroi et Courètes (Lille, 1939) 354–55; A. Brelich, Gli
eroi Greci (Rome, 1959) 242; L. Gernet, Antropologie de la Grèce antique (Paris, 1968) 203;
J.-P. Vernant, Mythe et société en Grèce ancienne (Paris, 1974) 39; H. S. Versnel, Transition &
Reversal in Myth & Ritual (Leiden, 1993) 56; W. Burkert, Kleine Schriften VI (Göttingen,
2013) 17; M. González González, Achilles (Abingdon and New York, 2018) 58–62.
14 For Neoptolemos’ ephebic nature in Sophocles’ Philoctetes, see J.-P. Vernant and P. Vidal-
Naquet, Mythe et tragédie en Grèce ancienne (Paris, 1973) 159–84 (by PVN).
15 J. N. Bremmer, ‘Avunculate and Fosterage’, J. Indo-Eur. Stud. 4 (1976) 65–78; this volume,
Chapters 13 and 14.

16 Il. 19.326–27; Soph. Ph. 239–44; Strabo 9.5.16; Apollod. Ep. 5.11; O. Touchefeu-Meynier,
‘Neoptolemos’, in LIMC VI.1 (1992) 773–79 at 777.

17 Archilochus F 304; Lucian, Salt. 9; Et. Magnum 699.1; P. Ceccarelli, La pirrica nell’an
tichità greco-romana (Pisa, 1998) 187–218.

18 M. Delcourt, Pyrrhos et Pyrrha (Paris, 1965) 34. For Delcourt, see Chapter 10, note 5.
19 The Greek word corresponds with the Indo-Iranian terms marya-, mairya-, marika
(maryaka), mérak, terms for members of men’s societies, cf. G. Widengren, Der Feudalismus

6 Section I: Myths
Achilles was called Ligyron before Cheiron gave him the name Achilles (Apol-
lod. 3.13.6). Bellerophon used to be called Hipponoos or Leophontes (schol.
Il. 6.155; schol. Lycophron 17). Paris’ name was Alexandros when he was a
neaniskos, ‘young man’, 20 and it should be noted that his education, as told by
Apollodorus (3.12.5), strongly resembles the initiatory education of Cyrus.21
Heracles was first called Alcaeus, Alcides or Neilos.22 In Western Europe, a
change of name in an initiatory context is testified in the legend of Cúchulainn
and in the ceremonies of the guilds.23 Moreover, a change of name as rite of
passage is well known from the monastic world.24 Such a change of name could
be acted out very seriously. Among the African Sara, the returning novices had
to be introduced to their parents, who were no longer supposed to know them.25
Finally, the ephebic nature of Neoptolemos cannot be separated from the
Pyrrhos who was killed in Delphi, in the realm of Apollo.26 Burkert has pointed
out how this killing happened in the way of the men’s societies and how ‘wolf-
ish’ the killers behaved.27 It can hardly be accidental that this murder was
thought to have occurred in the realm of Apollo. What Burkert states regarding
the relation between the ephebic god Apollo and Achilles, must also apply to the
relation between the god and Achilles’ son: ‘Der Heros als umdunkeltes Spie
gelbild des Gottes in der unauflöslichen Polarität des Opfers’.28
im alten Iran (Cologne and Opladen, 1969) 83; R. Beekes, Etymological Dictionary of Greek,
2 vols (Leiden, 2010) 2.921–22. Paus. 6.23.8 mentions an Aphrodite Philomeirax, ‘Loving
boys’, near a gymnasium in Elis.
20 Apollod. 3.12.5; Ennius F 20 Jocelyn = 16 Manuwald: quapropter Parim pastores nunc
Alexandrum vocant; Ov. Her. 16,359–60 paene puer caesis abducta armenta recepi/ hostibus
et causam nominis inde tuli; for further discussion, see I. Karamanou, Euripides,“Alexandros”
(Berlin and Boston, 2018) 6 f.
21 A. Alföldi, ‘Königsweihe und Männerbund bei den Achämeniden’, SAV 47 (1951) 11–16;
G. Binder, Die Aussetzung des Königskindes Kyros und Romulus (Meisenheim, 1964) and
‘Aussetzung’, in Enzyklopädie des Märchens 1, 1048–65.
22 See this volume, Chapter 7.1.
23 Cúchulainn: A. and B. Rees, Celtic Heritage (London, 1973) 247; the other great Celtic
hero, Finn, was first called Damne: K. Meyer, ‘Macgnimartha Find’, Revue Celtique 1 (1881–
83) 195–204 at 201, c.18. Guilds: H. Grotefend, ‘Die Handwerksnamen’, Korrespondenzblatt
des Gesamtvereins der deutschen Geschichts- und Altertumsvereine 1911, 81–98. For guilds
and Hansa as deriving from ancient men’s societies, see E. Benveniste, Le vocabulaire des in
stitutions indo-européennes, 2 vols (Paris, 1969) 1.70–79.
24 See the brief but excellent discussion of the ‘rite de passage’ elements during the novitiate
period by R. Molitor, ‘Symbolische Grablegung bei der Ordensprofess’, Benedikt. Monatss. 6

(1924) 54–57. Greek monks often choose a name starting with the same letter as their old
name, see J. F. Boissonnade, Anecdota nova (Paris, 1844) 24; Analecta Bollandiana 14 (1895)
153, note 4.
25 R. Jaulin, La mort Sara (Paris, 1967) 115.
26 Pind. Paei. VI.116–20, N.7, 40–47 (with schol.), 58, 62; Sophocles, Hermione, p. 192
Radt; Eur. Andr. 49–55 and 1122–57, Or. 1654–57; O. Touchefeu-Meynier, ‘Neoptolemos’, in
LIMC VI.1 (1992) 773–79 at 777–78; Fowler, EGM 2.557–60, with full bibliography.
27 W. Burkert, Gnomon 38 (1966) 440.
28 Burkert, Kleine Schriften VI, 17.

3. Philoctetes
A much more complicated case is the one of Philoctetes. The legend is well
known. The Thessalian prince Philoctetes was with the other Greeks on his
way to Troy when he was bitten on his foot by a snake. Because of the un
bearable smell of the wound, he was left all alone with his bow on the island of
Lemnos, 29 where he had to live from the hunt for nine years, which suggests a
skilful archer. In the tenth year, Odysseus and Diomedes fetched him because it
was prophesied that Troy could not be taken without him. After his arrival at
the battlefield, he killed Paris who was then the great hero of the Trojans.30
We take as our point of departure for the analysis the bad smell, which we
will discuss separately from the wound in the foot since it is typical of stories to
project simultaneity into succession and to turn a relation into causality.31 In
Greece, the bad smell could undeniably belong to a liminal period. One day in
the year, the women of Lemnos kept their men away by means of a terrible
smell, just as Athenian women did during the Skira festival.32 The bad smell
does not mean that humans naturally smelled nicely: that was reserved for the
gods.33 This suggests the following scheme as regards the place of smell in Greek
life. Liminal humans (= non-humans): normal humans: gods = bad smell: no
smell: nice smell: humans as mediators between non-humans and the gods.
The wound in Philoctetes’ foot links up with the theme of the wound in the
leg, a recurrent feature in stories with a special pattern. In the Grimm fairy-tale
Eisenhans (KHM 136), of which Otto Höfler has argued the initiatory pattern,
the hero, called Goldener because of his golden hair, is wounded in his leg, a
wound by which he is recognised and which establishes his identity.34 Similarly,
in the Normandian legend Robert le Diable, of which Höfler also argued the
initiatory structure, the hero is recognised by a wound he had received in his
thigh.35 Odysseus, whose adventures contain a plausibly initiatory pattern (§ 4),
29 See also M. L. Napolitano, Philoktetes e l’arco della Magnesia all’Oeta (Rome, 2002).
30 Cf. C. Robert, Die griechische Heldensage III.2 (Berlin, 1923) 1207–17; T. Gantz, Early
Greek Myth (Baltimore and London, 1993) 635–39; M. Pipili, ‘Philoktetes’, in LIMC VII.1
(1994) 376–85; S. L. Schein, Sophocles, Philoctetes (Cambridge, 2013) 1–10; E. Giudice,
‘Filottete in Etruria’, in E. and G. Giudice (eds), Studi miscellanei di ceramografia greca IV
(Catania, 2018) 11–28.
31 Thus, persuasively, L. Brisson, Le mythe de Tirésias (Leiden, 1976) 33.
32 Lemnos: Myrsilos FGrH 477 F1; ?Kaukalos FGrH 38 F2; Dio Chr. Or. 33.50; Apollod.
1.11.17; schol. Apoll. Rhod. 1.609. Skira: Philochoros FGrH 328 F89.
33 Hom. H. Dem. 277–78; Hom. H. Hermes 231; Hes. F 140; Theognis 9; Aesch. PV 115;
Eur. Hipp. 1391; E. Lohmeyer, Vom göttlichen Wohlgeruch, SB Heidelberg 1919; W. Déonna,

‘EYΩΔIA. Croyances antiques et modernes: l’odeur suave des dieux et des élus’, Genava 17
(1939) 167–263.
34 O. Höfler, Germanisches Sakralkönigtum I (Tübingen, 1952) 205–13. For Höfler, see
this volume, Preface.

35 E. Löseth (ed), Robert le Diable (Paris, 1903) line 3485: car (la lance) Robert feri en la
quisse, cf. Höfler, ibidem, 243–47.

8 Section I: Myths
had a scar above the knee, surely the thigh (Od. 19.450), ‘that was to reveal his
identity’.36 Heracles was bitten in the leg during his visit in the underworld,
and in Tegea there was a statue of him showing a wound in his thigh.37 Athena,
the goddess par excellence to be associated with young heroes, had a statue in
Teuthis with a wound in the thigh, which was bound with a crimson bandage
(Paus. 8.28.6).
Elsewhere the marking of the leg is connected with Apollo, the god closely
associated with initiation.38 Each of the Seleucids, who considered themselves to
be descendants of Apollo,39 had a birthmark on the thigh (Justinus 15.4.3–9),
and the Ethiopians were reputed to have a golden thigh with an image of Apollo
on the knee cap of their children (Lydus, Mens. 4.53). The most famous case is
Pythagoras, who was reputed to have a golden thigh on which an image of
Apollo was imprinted (schol. Luc. 124, 6–7 Rabe).40 If really old, the tradition
uses initiatory themes without us being able to really explain this particular
usage. However this may be, the wounds in the leg/thigh seem to reflect an an-
cient, possibly Indo-European, practice of marking the leg of the passant from
boyhood to adulthood.41
It has been repeatedly observed that wounds inflicted on novices were some-
times a sign of death.42 The wounds in the leg may once have had the same mean-
ing in Greece, too, as we find the wound in the leg connected with death in two
figures, who are both closely associated with initiation: the Centaur Cheiron
(Ch. 3.3) was fatally wounded around the knee (Apollod. 2.5.4) and Achilles in
the heel (Hyginus, Fab. 107; P. Köln 10.402); in medieval exempla, with an initi-
atory pattern, young men are killed by fire starting in their feet and thighs.43 The
36W. Burkert, Homo necans (Berkeley, Los Angeles, London, 1983) 120.
37Tegea: Paus. 8.53.9, cf. W. Burkert, Lore and Science in Ancient Pythagoreanism (Cam-
bridge MA, 1972) 160.
38 For Apollo’s ties with initiation, see F. Graf, Nordionische Kulte (Rome, 1985) 56–57
(A. Delphinios), 220–27 (A. Lykeios) and Apollo (Abingdon and New York, 2009) 103–29;
M. H. Jameson, Cults and Rites in Ancient Greece (Cambridge, 2014) 41–61 (A. Lykeios).
39 For the connection of Apollo and the Seleucids, see L. Robert, Laodicée du Lycos
(Québec and Paris, 1969) 295 and Fouilles d’Amyzon en Carie I (Paris, 1983) 141; K. Nawotka,
‘Apollo, the Tutelary God of the Seleucids, and Demodamas of Miletus’, in Z. Archibald and
J. Haywood (eds), The Power of Individual and Community in Ancient Athens and Beyond:
essays in honour of John K. Davies (Cardiff, 2019) 261–84.
40 For recent bibliography, see C. Macris, ‘Pythagore de Samos’, in R. Goulet (ed.), Dic
tionnaire des philosophes antiques VII (Paris, 2018) 681–884 at 814.

41 Cf. Höfler, Germanisches Sakralkönigtum, 212, note 470 on the wounds in the leg of
Goldener and Robert le Diable: ‘Ein alter “Merkungs “Brauch”?’ The ‘rite de passage’ charac-
ter of the wound is also noted by K. Spiess, ‘Ferse, Abschlagen der’, in L. Mackensen (ed.),
Handwörterbuch des deutschen Märchens II (Berlin, 1939–40) 92–104.
42 Brelich, Paides, 80 note 85 (with bibliography); M. Eliade, Australian Religions (Ithaca
and London, 1973) 90–91; V. Propp, Die historischen Wurzeln des Zaubermärchens, 19461
(Munich and Vienna, 1987) 110 f.
43 J. C. Schmitt, Le Corps, les rites, les rêves, le temps (Paris, 2001) 153–82 (‘“Jeunes” et
danse des chevaux de bois’). In tales of the Middle Ages, the wound in the leg was a frequent-

wounding of the heel as a symbol of killing may also be assumed in the case of
the Austrian Lutzelfrau, a figure akin to Percht and always enacted by young
men. During Christmas time, she goes round threatening to cut off the heels of
naughty children,44 but also with the threat of gastrotomy and cutting off the
head.45
The wounding of a hero in the leg during his visit to the underworld, as in the
case of Heracles, may also be a sign of the close connection between wound and
death. The connection is frequent in a type of folktale, especially found in Cen-
tral-Europe, where the hero just escapes the slamming door of the underworld
or a magic mountain, but he loses his heel(s) in the process.46 The connection
between the slamming doors and the loss of the heel(s) seems to be a later devel-
opment47, so what we seem to have is the connection of the wounded heel and
the underworld.
The origin of the idea of wounding the thigh or knee probably is to be looked
for in the world of the hunters. From such far away parts of the world as the
native Americans, African Bushmen and Laotian Koui, Frazer collected evi-
dence that hunters cut out a piece or removed a sinew from their game’s thigh or
hamstrung it. As in all these cases, the practice is connected with the idea of
laming the game or the hunter.48 The idea of wounding the heel probably also
originated in the world of the hunters, as Eurasian hunters caught their game by
cutting the Achilles’ heel so that they could not run away.49 The same hunting
method is testified by Strabo (16.4.10) for the Elephantophagoi and by Diodorus
(3.26.2) for the Elephantomachoi. We can hardly separate this hunting method
from the cutting of the sinews of Zeus’ hands and feet by Typhon (Apollod.
1.6.3), the hamstringing of the smith Wayland in the Icelandic Völundarkviða
(17, pr. 1) and Yahweh’s command to Joshua to hough the horses of his oppo-
ly occurring phenomenon, and in medieval plays the loser was often hurt in his leg or started
to limp, see F. Socolicek, ‘Der Hinkende im brauchtümlichen Spiel’, in H. Birkhan and
O. Gschwantler (eds), Festschrift Otto Höfler, 2 vols (Vienna, 1968) 1.423–32.
44 On Percht: J. Hanika, ‘“Bercht schlitzt den Bauch auf”: Rest eines Initiationsritus?’,
Stifter Jahrbuch 2 (1951) 39–53; L. Schmidt, ‘Berchtengestalten im Burgenland’, Burgen

ländische Heimatblätter 13 (1951) 129–61; R. Bleichsteiner, ‘Perchtengestalten im Mittelasien’,
Arch. f. Völkerkunde 8 (1953) 58–75; L. Schmidt, Perchtenmasken in Österreich (Vienna,
1972); K. Meuli, Gesammelte Schriften, 2 vols (Basel, 1975) 1.102–14.
45 Cf.. A. Haberlandt, ‘Zu einigen Problemen der österreichischen Gegenwartsvolkskunde’,
Mitt. Antrop. Ges. Wien 83 (1953–54) 191–99 at 196–99; L. Kretzenbacher, Santa Lucia und
die Lutzelfrau (Munich, 1959) 60–65.
46 Many examples in P. Sartori, ‘Der Schuh im Volksglauben’, Zs. Ver. f. Volkskunde 4
(1894) 412–27 at 416–17; A. H. Krappe, Balor with the Evil Eye (New York, 1927) 106–13;
Spiess, ‘Ferse, Abschlagen der’.
47 Sartori, ‘Der Schuh’, 417; Krappe, Balor, 11 f.
48 J. G. Frazer, Spirits of the Corn and the Wild II (London, 1913) 264–67.
49 B. Gunda, ‘Das Abhauen der Achillessehne der Tiere in der eurasischen Jagdkultur’,
Zs. f. Ethnologie 70 (1938) 454–56.

10 Section I: Myths
nents (Joshua 11.6).50 Originally, the wounding of the leg probably was a sym-
bolic laming to contrast the novices with the adult hunters, for whom running
was of such great importance. Running is also a frequently mentioned quality of
the young warriors in the Iliad, most often of course of Achilles, the paradig-
matic young warrior,51 and in Crete the free adult males were even called ‘run-
ner’ (δρομεύς).52
The wound of Philoctetes did not heal on Lemnos. The detail is not unimpor-
tant since in this way Philoctetes is separated from the non-wounded (the non-
initiated) but also from those who have already passed their initiatory period.
His stay on Lemnos lasted nine years and he could leave the island only in the
tenth. The period of time seems to be significant. In primitive Arcadia, it was
told how the Olympian victor Demarchos was changed into a wolf and became
human again after nine years.53 And a certain Euanthes relates how in an Arca-
dian family – presumably his own – once in a while a boy was selected, taken to
a lake where he undressed, swam across the lake and disappeared into the wil-
derness where he lived on as a wolf. If he had not become a cannibal, he could
become human again in the ninth year. This nine-year period is illuminatingly
compared by Burkert with the nine-year period Odysseus had to stay away
before he could return home in the tenth.54
Philoctetes’ stay was imagined to be in complete isolation from civilisation.
He had to live by hunting, an activity which for the Greeks had an ideological
aspect. In a number of myths, the hunt precedes agriculture.55 As the coming of
agriculture – on a mythological level sometimes represented by the arrival of
Demeter56 – constituted the beginnings of civilisation, the hunter, consequently,
will have been considered as someone outside civilisation. This is also attested
by Greek vocabulary which closely associates ‘hunt’ and ‘non-cultivated area’.57
In addition, his bow was rated an inferior weapon, which a normal Greek male
would consider to be below his dignity.58 Finally, the hunt is characterised by
50 See also Genesis 49.6; 2 Samuel 8.4. Among the ancient Arabs: J. Wellhausen, Reste des
arabischen Heidentums (Berlin, 18972) 181.

51 Achilles: πόδας ὠκὺς Ἀχιλλεὺς (about 30 x), but also note Polites (2.792), Meriones
(12.249), Antilochos (15.570, 23.756; Od. 3.112 = 4.202), Euphorbos (16.808) and Polydoros
(20.410); Ch. Ulf, Die homerische Gesellschaft (Munich, 1990) 67.
52 Y. Tsifopoulos, ‘“Hemerodromoi” and Cretan “Dromeis”: athletes or military person-
nel ? The Case of the Cretan Philonides’, Nikephoros 11 (1998) 137–70.

53 Paus. 8.2.6. Olympic Victor: Paus. 6.8.2 = L. Moretti, Olympionikai (Roma, 1957) no. 359.
54 Arcadia: Burkert, Homo necans, 84–93, 133 (Odysseus); Bremmer, The World, 358–70
(Arcadia).
55 The myths are discussed by G. Piccaluga, Minutal (Rome, 1974) 77–94; see also M. De-
tienne, Dionysos mis à mort (Paris, 1977) 64–77.

56 F. Graf, Eleusis und die Orphische Dichtung Athens (Berlin and New York, 1974) 160–63.
57 P. Chantraine, Études sur le vocabulaire grec (Paris, 1956) 40–65.

the absence of force and the presence of dolos, ‘ruse’ – a theme that we will en-
counter repeatedly in this chapter.59
Lemnos was an island that long fell outside Greek civilisation. According to
Greek tradition, the Etruscans had lived on it (Philochoros FGrH 328 F100)
and, indeed, Etruscoid inscriptions have been found on the island.60 Not sur-
prisingly, then, Homer (Od. 8.294) calls the islanders agriophônoi, ‘with rough
voice’. Its inhabitants, the Sintians, were reputed to be magicians (Erathosthenes
FGrH 242 F41), the makers of the first weapons and inventors of the robber
bands. 61 It is therefore understandable that Sophocles (Ph. 144), in spite of all
historical reality, can call the island an eschatia, ‘the uncultivated area beyond
the valleys’. 62
So far then we have found the following oppositions:
positive x negative
scarified/non-wounded x wounded
good smell x bad smell
with status x without status
culture x nature
agriculture x hunt
hoplite x archer
Greek x non-Greek
When we now try to reach a conclusion of our analysis, the outcome can hardly
be surprising. In the tale of the elite youth who, marked by a wound, is left alone
for nine years, a period characterised by a series of reversals, on a place outside
Greek civilisation and who, after his return to the civilised world defeats the
great enemy, we unmistakably recognise an initiatory pattern. 63 Such a solution
takes into account all the details of the legend and therefore fully answers our
‘rules of the game’.
59 For the contrast force-ruse, see M. Detienne and J.-P. Vernant, Les ruses de l’intelligence
(Paris, 1974) 52, note 2. For dolos and hunt, ibid., 52–54.
60 C. de Simone, ‘Le lingue etrusco-tirsenica (Lemno, Efestia [teatro]) e retica tra due
documenti epigrafici chiave’, ASAA 88 (2010) 85–100; H. Eichner, ‘Neues zur Sprache der
Stele von Lemnos (Erster Teil)’, Journal of Language Relationship 7 (2012) 9–3 and (‘Zweiter
Teil’), ibid. 10 (2013) 1–42.
61 Anacreon PMG 504 Page/Bernsdorff = F Eleg. 3 West 2; Hellanicus FGrH 4 F71 = 71
Fowler; Philochoros FGrH 328 F101.

62 L. Robert, Opera Minora Selecta 2 (Amsterdam, 1969) 820–21; V. D. Hanson, The Other
Greeks (New York, 1995) 79–85; D. M. Lewis, Selected Papers in Greek and Near Eastern
History (Cambridge, 1997) 291–93; M. H. Jameson, ‘Attic Eschatia’, in K. Ascani et al. (eds),
Ancient History Matters (Rome, 2002) 61–69; Ch. Constantakopoulou, ‘Landscape and
Hunting: the economy of the eschatia’, Land 7.3 (2018) = https://doi.org/10.3390/land7030089,
accessed 3–11–2020.
63 Similarly: M. Massenzio, ‘Anomalie della persona, segregazione e attitudini magiche.
Appunti per una lettura del “Filottete” di Sofocle’, in P. Xella (ed.), Magia (Rome, 1976) 177–95.

12 Section I: Myths
4. Odysseus
Odysseus’ figure has been much clarified by Walter Burkert, who has pointed
out the presence of the werewolf scheme in the various traditions concerning
this fascinating figure. 64 I will discuss the meeting with the Cyclops in the next
chapter and limit myself here to some additional observations. The description
of Odysseus’ youth (Od. 19.390–466) is full of initiatory motifs. Here, we have
the stay at Autolykos (the wolf!), his mother’s father (Chapter 13.1), who gave
him his name, a typical initiatory theme,65 and where he received the scar in his
thigh (§ 3). According to Homer, the scar was received during a boar-hunt with
his uncles, which looks like another case of a relation transformed into causali-
ty: during his stay, Odysseus will have received the scar and participated in
a boar-hunt, two events which the poet has combined. The boar hunt was a
common heroic ordeal,66 which in Alexander’s time still had initiatory value in
Macedonia: a man could only recline at dinner, i. e. have the status of an adult,
when he had speared a boar without a hunting-net (Hegesandros apud Athen.
1.18a: Chapters 4.2, 11.1 and 12.2).
Odysseus returned home as a beggar, a typical case of a status reversal, as is
his wearing of the pilos, ‘felt cap’. Burkert notes that the pilos is worn too by
Hephaistos, the Kabeiroi and the Dioskouroi, and wonders if Odysseus be-
longed to the circle of the Kabeiroi Mysteries. 67 There is no evidence for such a
connection, and that is why we offer a different explanation. Felt is very cheap
material, 68 and the felt cap was basically the hat of the lower classes.69 As such
the felt cap was naturally worn by the metal workers, which explains Hephais-
tos and the Kabeiroi. Consequently, worn by a prince it denotes a status rever-
sal. The felt cap may well once have been a regular feature of the novices, who in
our traditions virtually always belong to the social élite, since we have an illus-
tration of Theseus lifting the rock under which the gnorismata were hidden
64 Burkert, Homo necans, 130–34.
65 Cf. V. J. Propp, ‘Oedipus in the Light of Folklore’ (19441), in L. Edmunds and A. Dundes
(eds), Oedipus: a folklore casebook (Madison, 19952) 76–121 at 101 f.
66 H. Beck, Das Ebersignum im Germanischen (Berlin, 1965) 154–76; this volume, Chap-
ter 4.
67 Burkert, Homo necans, 133.
68 B. Laufer, ‘The Early History of Felt’, Am. Anthrop. 32 (1930) 1–18. Illustrative for the
low standing of felt and the felt-cap are also the entries of Filtz and Spitzhut in Grimm,
Deutsches Wörterbuch. The symbolism of felt is studied by L. Olschki, The Myth of Felt
(Berkeley and Los Angeles, 1949) and Dante “Poeta Veltro” (Florence, 1953).
69 Cf. E. Saglio, ‘Caelatura’, in C. V. Daremberg and E. Saglio, Dictionnaire des Antiquités
Grecques et Romaines, 10 vols (Paris, 1873–1919) 2.778/2–809/1 at fig. 937, 942, 955; this entry
is still the best discussion available, but note also the discussion by the prolific Jesuit Th. Ray-
naud, Tractatus de pileo, caeteris capitis tegminibus (Lyon, 1655) = Opera XII (Lyon, 1665)
581–640. The book was reprinted under the pseudonym Anselmus Solerius (Amsterdam,
1671) and, finally, under the author’s own name, in J. G. Graevius, Thesaurus Antiquitatum
Romanarum VI (Utrecht and Leiden, 1697) 1212–1310.

whereby his father Aegeus holds the sword and, instead of the normal sandals,70
a pilos.71 Because Theseus lifted the rock at the age of sixteen (Paus. 1.27.8), the
felt cap seems to be associated with his entry into the initiatory period; the
Dioskouroi, too, are noble young men.
The felt cap is perhaps even an Indo-European inheritance since we find this
hat as the headgear of the members of Indo-Iranian men’s societies,72 the Koure-
tes,73 young Roman aristocrats,74 Lacedaemonian (Thuc. 4.34, with Hornblow-
er ad loc.), Oscan,75 Scythian,76 and Anglo-Saxon warriors.77 Besides, they were
worn by the Dacian (DC 68.9.1) and (still?) in the sixteenth century by Russian
nobles,78 both groups having war as their main profession.79 And it did not es-
cape the great Renaissance military historian Paolo Giovio (1483–1552) that in
the battle of Marignano (1515) 80 the young Swiss soldiers, whose behaviour and
place in society strongly looked like those of novices,81 wore felt caps which
were decorated with feathers, headgear, as is reported of ancient Lycian warri-
ors (Hdt. 7.92).
We notice here a close resemblance between warriors and novices. This is not
surprising. The French medievalist Georges Duby (1919–1996) has called the
70 All sources: C. Sourvinou-Inwood, ‘Theseus Lifting the Rock and a Cup near the Pithos
Painter’, JHS 91 (1971) 94–109; J. Neils and S. Woodford, ‘Theseus’, in LIMC VII.1 (1994)
922–51 at 924 f.
71 A. D. Trendall and A. Cambitoglie, Apulian Red-figured Vase Painters of the Plain Style
(s.l., 1961) 20 = A. D. Trendall and T. B. L. Webster, Illustrations of Greek Drama (London,

1971) 73, pl. III, 3.3.
72 G. Widengren, ‘Harlekintracht und Mönchskutte, Clownhut und Derwischmütze’,
Orientalia Suecana 2 (1953) 41–111.

73 O. Walter, ‘Κουρητικὴ τριάς’, JÖAI 31 (1939) 53–80; for the Kouretes, see also this vol-
ume, Chapter 4.
74 M. H. Crawford, Roman Republican Coinage, 2 vols (Cambridge, 1974) 1.no. 3461 and
48020–22. The hats are worn by noble desultores, see A. Alföldi, ‘Die Herrschaft der Reiterei in
Griechenland und in Rom nach dem Sturz der Könige’, in Festschrift für Karl Schefold = An
tike Kunst, Beiheft 4 (1967) 13–47 at 23–26.
75 H. Sichtermann, Griechische Vasen in Unteritalien (Tübingen, 1966) Taf. 102–03, 105;
A. D. Trendall, The Red-figured Vases of Lucania, Campania and Sicily (Oxford, 1967) 329,
no. 761.
76 G. Dumézil, Mythe et epopée I (Paris 19742) 445.
77 C. A. Ashdown, British Costume during XIX Centuries (London, 1910) 13.
78 S. von Herberstein, Rerum Moscoviticarum Commentarii (Basel, 15562) 55: Vestes ob
longas, pileos albos apicatos ex lana coacta, qua panulas barbaricas confectas videmus, soli
dosque ex officina gestant (i. e. the nobles). Sigismund von Herberstein (1486–1566) stayed
more than half a year in Moscow in 1526, see his autobiography in Fontes Rerum Austria
carum I (Vienna, 1855) 67–396 at 273–75.
79 P. Jovius, Historiarum sui temporis I (Paris, 1549) 869: audacissimorum iuvenum glo
bus… neque alio felicis audaciae insigni a ceteris perditi dignoscuntur, quam candidissimis
pennarum manipulis, quos more ducum e pileis speciosa luxurie defluentes in tergum vertunt.
80 E. Usteri, Marignano. Die Schicksalsjahre 1515/16 im Blickfeld der historischen Quellen
(Zürich, 1974).
81 H. G. Wackernagel, Altes Volkstum der Schweiz (Basel, 1956) passim.

14 Section I: Myths
youth ‘l’organe d’agression’.82 The same function was assigned to the young
men of the African Lugbara and Masai, 83 American Cheyennes and Caucasian
Kubachi,84 and, perhaps, occupied by the youths of the Parthians and ancient
Turcs.85 In these cases, though, there has been a development of that age group
which was the most energetic and the most physically strong, and which often
had a big say in the running of the tribal affairs, a position which the same age
group plausibly once occupied in ancient Rome.86
Odysseus returned on the day of the new moon (Od. 14.162, 19.307), 87 a spe-
cial moment which signified the end of the liminal period, the end of the chaos
and the arrival of ordered civilisation.88 The ideological value of the new moon
appears from the nick-name proselênoi, ‘people from before the moon’, for the
Arcadians, 89 who were considered to be primitive people as appears also from
their other nick-name balanêphagoi, ‘acorn-eaters’, that is, eaters of the food of
the pre-cereal agriculture era,90 cereal agriculture in the eyes of the Greeks be-
ing associated with the arrival of civilisation (§ 3). The emergence of ordered life
is also symbolised in another way. Burkert has compared the arrival on a raft by
Dardanus, the founder of Troy, in the Troad with Odysseus’ departure from
Calypso’s island Ogygia on a raft (Od. 7.264).91 Ogygia’s name cannot be sepa-
rated from the name of Ogygos, the primeval king of Boeotia who gave his
name to the oldest Greek Flood, the Ogygian Flood.92 The departure on a raft
thus suggests Odysseus as a survivor of the Flood. As Borgeaud has argued, 93
82
G. Duby, Hommes et structures du Moyen Âge (Paris, 1973) 216.
83
Lugbara: G. Balandier, Anthropo-logiques (Paris, 1974) 92. Masai: H. Schurtz, Alters
klassen und Männerbünde (Berlin, 1902) 129.
84 Cheyennes: Schurtz, Altersklassen, 156. Kubatschi: R. Bleichsteiner, ‘Masken- und
Fastnachtsbräuche bei den Völkern des Kaukasus’, Österr. Zs. f. Volkskunde 55 (1952) Kon-
gressheft, 3–76 at 59.
85 K. V. Trever, ‘Drevneiranskii termin “Parna”’, Izwestija Akademia Nauk SSR, Ser.,
Hist. Filos. 4 (1947) 73–84.

86 E. Benveniste, ‘Pubes et publicus’, RPh 81 (1955) 7–10; J.-P. Morel, ‘Pube praesenti in
contione, omni poplo’, REL 42 (1964) 375–88; this volume, Chapter 15.

87 For other ‘rite de passage’ moments in Odysseus’ return, see C. P. Segal. ‘Transition and
Ritual in Odysseus’ Return’, PP 22 (1967) 321–42.

88 For the close connection between moon and initiation, see M. Eliade, Traité d’histoire
des religions (Paris, 19532) 158 f. New/full moon and new beginning: Graf, Nordionische
Kulte, 163–70.
89 Hippys FGrH 554 F7; Eudoxos F 315 Lasserre; Call. F 191; schol. Lycophron 482; schol.
Arist. N. 397; Et. Magnum 690.11.

90 Arcadians: Hdt. 1.66; Paus 8.1.6; Galen VI.621 Kühn; schol. Lycophron 482. Persian
novices ate acorns: Strabo 15.3.18.

92 Ogygos: Acusilaus FGrH 2 F23 = 23 Fowler; Hellanicus FGrH 4 F47 = 47 Fowler. Ogy-
gian Flood: Varro apud Cens. 21.1; Julius Africanus apud Eus. PE 10.10.9 = F 34 Wallraff;
Nonnos, D. 3.204–08; schol. Plato, Tim. 22a; Fowler, EGM 2.118–20.
93 Ph. Borgeaud, ‘The Open Entrance to the Closed Palace of the King: the Greek laby-
rinth in context’, History of Religions 14 (1974) 1–27.

in Greek tradition – he discusses the cases of Zeus, Lycaon and Theseus – the
survivor of a great catastrophe becomes a king and the founder of the cultural
order, and his initiation, during which all his companions are set apart or killed,
serves as the model for future initiations with the difference that the survival
only concerned the king. Borgeaud’s observation may give us, consequently,
the clue to a part of the tradition not yet explained before: the lonely arrival on
Ithaca of Odysseus and the gradual disappearance of his companions.
The connection between the restoration of the cultural order and initiation is
too well known to need any further discussion.94 Especially important in Greek
tradition is the case of Lycaon because we find here, too, the complex of initia-
tion and the Flood. This complex may well be very old, as we find a similar one
among the Mandan Sioux Indians, of whose initiation festival, the O-Kee-Pa,
the famous painter of the Red Indians, George Catlin (1796–1872),95 has given a
fascinating description. The ceremony was opened by the arrival in the village
of a man with a ‘robe of four white wolf skins falling back over his shoulders’
and ‘on his head he had a splendid head-dress made of two ravens’ skin’. When
asked who he was, ‘he replied by relating the sad catastrophe which had hap-
pened on the earth’s surface by the overflowing of the waters’, saying that ‘he
was the only person saved from the universal calamity; that he landed his big
canoe on a high mountain in the west, where he now resides; that he had come
to open the medicine-lodge (i. e. a kind of Mandan’s men’s house), which must
needs receive a present of some edged-tool from the owner of every wigwam,
that it may be sacrificed to the water … if this is not done, there will be another
Flood, and no one will be saved, as it as with such tools that the big canoe was
made’. At the end of the ceremonies the young men had to undergo their noto-
rious tortures.96
94 See the examples by V. Lanternari, La grande Festa (Bari, 19762) 102–06 (Fiji), 114–15
(New Ireland), 121 (New Guinea), 162 (Fireland) and 168 (Kwakil). Jaulin, La mort Sara, 122
was told that initiation preceded the foundation of the tribe.
95 G. Catlin, Letters and Notes on the Manners, Customs and Conditions of North Ameri
can Indians, 2 vols (London, 18441, rep. New York, 1973) 1.158–77; note that the illustrations
of the first edition are clearer than those of the reprint. There is also an elaborate description
in A. W. Bowers, Mandan Social and Ceremonial Organization (Chicago, 1950) 111–63. On
Catlin: J. C. Ewers, ‘George Catlin, Painter of Indians and the West’, Annual Report of the
Smithsonian Institute 1955 (Washington, 1956) 483–528; H. Hartmann, George Catlin und
Baldin Mölhausen (Berlin, 1963) 11–45. The Mandan were as good as wiped out by a smallpox
epidemic a couple of years after Catlin’s visit.
96 The ceremonial tortures described by Catlin were so incredible that he was accused of a
fake. For that reason, he published in 1867 a separate edition of the O-Kee-Pa description with
corroborative statements of other witnesses and some supplementary material that was left
out in the first edition because of its supposed indecent character, cf. J. C. Ewers, O-Kee-Pa.
A Religious Ceremony and other Customs of the Mandans by George Catlin (New Haven and
London, 1967). The method of torturing is put in a wider cultural context by W. C. Macleod,
‘Hook-Swinging in the Old World and in America’, Anthropos 26 (1931) 551–61.

16 Section I: Myths
We have already interpreted or will interpret later some themes of Odysseus’

life as belonging to the initiatory period such as his nine-year (§ 3) wandering
(Chapters 6.3 and 15). And one may wonder if his ‘Don Juan’ activities with
Calypso and Circe, too, belong to the initiatory period, since heavy sexual in-
volvement is also testified for the Iranian mairya,97 the Celtic fian (§ 7),98 and the
Swedish werewolves.99 Finally, if any Greek figure was renowned for his cun-
ning (§ 3), it was Odysseus.
What conclusion can we draw? In the original version of this chapter I con-
cluded ‘that we recognise an evident case of royal initiation in the tale of the
prince, who has to leave home, wanders around, is present at cannibalistic activ-
ities, visits the underworld, has a wound in the thigh, is an archer, is sexually
very active, returns as a beggar, restores the cultural order as a symbolic survi-
vor of the Flood and finally becomes king’.100 Indeed, as I will argue in the next
chapter, there are a number of motifs in the traditions regarding Odysseus that
clearly derive from initiatory rituals, but his figure is evidently too complex to
be reduced to just one scheme, and we will come back to this problem shortly.
5. Kouretes
Before we come to Hector, we will first discuss, by way of a détour, some other
Greek figures with a hairstyle resembling the so-called ‘Hectorean hairstyle’
(§ 7). We begin with the Kouretes, that is, the mythical ones, as groups of Koure-
tes also existed in historical times.101 Although the two groups are obviously
related, the case of the historical Kouretes constitutes a problem, the discussion
of which would carry us too far.102
In the Iliad (19.193, 248), the Kouretes still figure as young men, but they are
called gods by Hesiod (F 123.3), whereas in the story about Meleager and the
Calydonian hunt they are mentioned as a more or less ethnic group (Il. 9.529–
99: below, Chapter 4.1). From this story we gather that the Kouretes were hunt-
ers, like Philoctetes, (§ 3), but Hesiod also describes them as dancers. They seem
to have been especially dancers of the pyrrhichê (§ 2) since this dance was sup-
97
S. Wikander, Der arische Männerbund (Diss. Lund, 1938) 84 f.
98
Rees, Celtic Heritage, 65.
99 B. Almqvist, Norrön Niddiktning I (Uppsala, 1965) 41 and note 14.
100 For initiation preceding inthronisation: A. E. Jensen, Beschneidung und Reifezeremo
nien bei Naturvölkern (Stuttgart, 1933) 87, 103; J. Vansina, ‘Initiation Rituals of the Bushong’,
Africa 25 (1955) 138–53 at 152.
101 S. Luria, ‘Kureten, Molpen, Aisymneten’, Acta Ant. Hung. 11 (1963) 31–36. For the
mythical Kouretes, see Jeanmaire, Couroi, 593–616; N. Belayche, ‘Strabon historien des reli-
gions comparatiste dans sa digression sur les Courètes’, RHR 234 (2017) 613–33; this volume,
Chapter 4.
102 But see this volume, Preface.

posed to have been invented by, besides Pyrrhos (§ 2), Pyrrhichos, one of the
Kouretes.103 Worldwide, dances constituted a very important part of initiatory
education,104 and the connection of dancing with the age group of the young
could still be seen in Western Europe in historical times. In Montaillou, it was
the special activity of the age group of twenty-five;105 sword dances are first and
mainly attested for the groups of young men in the towns and in the country-
side as well as the journeymen of the guilds;106 and, more in general, dances used
to be organised by the Knabenschaften of the villages.107
In Crete, the mythical Kouretes were also connected with the promotion of
fertility as appears from the famous hymn of Palaikastro, which connects them
with the young citizens.108 A similar fertility connection has been attested for
groups of young men in many countries.109
Now the Kouretes had a special haircut, which is of great interest to us, as the
following paragraphs will show. The local Euboean historian Archemachos
(FGrH 424 F9) relates that they had their hair short at the front and long at the
back. Felix Jacoby (1876–1959: ad loc.) explained this haircut as deriving from a
popular etymology caused by Homer’s description of the Abantes as ‘wearing
their hair long at the back’ (Il. 2.542). In view of the etymologising activities of
the Hellenistic historians, this is a reasonable explanation, but it had escaped
Jacoby that the special haircut was already mentioned by Aeschylus (F 313) in
a way that makes his explanation less probable. The dramatist describes the
Kouretes as having a plokamos, a hairstyle explained by Eustathius (on Od.
5.123) as being a skollus, which implies exactly the hairstyle of short at the front
and long at the back (§§ 6 –7); the late fifth-century tragedian Agathon (TGrF 39
F3) also connected the Kouretes with the shearing of their hair. A distinguish-
ing hairstyle is not only attested for many ‘primitive’ initiations,110 but also for
the young men of other Indo-European peoples: in ancient Iran, the young war-
rior, the mairya, was characterised by the partition of the hair onto his back; the
young warrior of ancient India, the marya, was noted for his plaits,111 and Tac-
itus gives a detailed account of the knot worn by the Suebian free males but adds
103 Ephoros FGrH 70 F149 apud Strabo 10.4.16, with Radt ad loc. For Kouretes and pyr
rhichê, see Ceccarelli, La pirrica, 208–11.

104 Brelich, Paides e parthenoi, 32.
105 E. Le Roy Ladourie, Montaillou, village occitan de 1294 à 1324 (Paris, 1975) 397 f.
106 R. Wolfram. Schwerttanz und Männerbund, 3 vols (Kassel, 1936–38); N. Humburg,
Städtischer Fastnachtsbrauchtum in West- und Ostfalen (Münster, 1976) 93–105.
107 Meuli, Gesammelte Schriften, 1.134.
108 IC III ii 2, cf. W. D. Furley and J. M. Bremer, Greek Hymns, 2 vols (Tübingen, 2001)
1.68–76, 2.1–20; this volume, Preface.

109 O. Höfler, Kultische Geheimbünde der Germanen I (Frankfurt, 1934) 286–91; Wikander,
Der arische Männerbund, 75.

110 Brelich, Paides e parthenoi, 71 f.
111 Widengren, Feudalismus, 19.

18 Section I: Myths
that it is rare among other tribes ‘and confined to the period of youth’ (Germ. 38:
intra iuventae spatium).
In the just quoted fragment of Aeschylus, the Kouretes are compared to girls.
Strabo (10.3.8), too, observes that some historians mention that they wore fem-
inine clothes. This may well be just an etymological association, caused by the
Greek kourê, ‘girl’. On the other hand, it is precisely male youth in the period
before adulthood that sometimes wore female clothes, such as we have seen in
the myth of Achilles on Skyros (§ 1; Chapters 8 and 9).
As with Philoctetes we have found here a number of oppositions:
positive x negative
agriculture x hunt
permanent x temporary hairstyle
man x woman (?)
culture x nature (§ 7)
Since the Kouretes are young men and designated as a liminal group, the conclu-
sion suggests itself that they are the mythical reflection of groups of young war-
riors in the transitional state from boyhood to adulthood.112 In the Iliad, the
Kouretes belong to an older stratum than the heroes since they are already im-
agined as some kind of ethnic group (Chapter 4). Again, our interpretation has
shown that the tradition contained a coherent structure, which is further
strengthened by the observation of Louis Gernet that the megaron of the histor-
ical Kouretes in Messene (Paus. 4.31.9) strongly reminds of the leschê, ‘men’s
house’.113.
6. Theseus and the Athenian ephebes
Theseus had exactly the same hairstyle as the Kouretes. In his youth, he went to
Delphi (Apollo!) to sacrifice from his hair.114 Plutarch (Thes. 5) tells that he cut
112 For the initiatory background of the Kouretes, a subject that needs further study, see
Graf, Nordionische Kulte, 416–17; B. Legras, ‘Mallokouria et mallocourètes. Un rite de pas-

sage dans l’Égypte romaine’, Cahiers du Centre G. Glotz 4 (1993) 113–27; F. Graf, ‘Ephesische
und andere Kureten’, in H. Friesinger and F. Krinzinger (eds), 100 Jahre Österreichische
Forschungen in Ephesos (Vienna, 1999) 255–62; this volume, Preface and Chapter 4.
113 L. Gernet and A. Boulanger, Le génie grec dans la religion (Paris, 19702) 72. Men’s
house: S. E. Peal, ‘The Communal Barracks of Primitive Races’, J. Asiatic Soc. Bengal II 61
(1893) 246–69; Schurtz, Altersklassen, 202–17; V. Elwin, The Muria and their Ghotul (Oxford,
1947) 269–319. For the leschê, see J. N. Bremmer, Greek Religion and Culture, the Bible and
the Ancient Near East (Leiden, 2008) 153–67.
114 See also D. Leitao, ‘Adolescent Hair-Growing and Hair-Cutting Rituals in Ancient
Greece: a sociological approach’, in D. B. Dodd and C. A. Faraone (eds), Initiation in Ancient

Greek Rituals and Narratives (London and New York, 2003) 109–29.

off his hair only at the front, just like the Abantes (§ 5). This particular hairstyle
was called the Theseis (§ 7).115
On Theseus we can be brief. Since Jeanmaire,116 it may be considered proven
that Theseus embodied the ephebic nature. Of course, this conclusion does not
exhaust his tradition in which different layers can be found, but his youthful
exploits in particular show a clear initiatory pattern (above, Preface). The T heseis
was the hairstyle of the Athenian ephebes and was also known as skollus (§ 7).
The Alexandrian grammarian Pamphilus (apud Athen. 11.494 f) mentions that
the ephebes offered a cup to Heracles before their skollus was cut off. Its appear-
ance must have looked like a kind of top since Eustathius (§ 5) mentions that the
plokamos and skollus were also called koryphê or koryphaia, ‘head, top, sum-
mit’, and kerkê, ‘top’, and a mountain between Arcadia and Elis was called Skol-
lis or Skollion (Strabo 8.3.7, 10). Other names for the skollus seem to have been
hierôma, mallos and konnos.117 The last two terms were also productive in ono-
mastic respect, witness names like Mallion and Komallos as well as names like
Konnon, Konnos and Konnidas.118 The latter was also the name of Theseus’
tutor (Plut. Thes. 4) and, thus, confirms the connection with the period between
youth and adulthood.119
7. Hector
After this detour, let us now turn to Hector, whose name repeatedly occurs in
the Linear-B tablets,120 which supports the idea that he belonged to the older
layers of the mythical tradition.121 The fact that certain epithets – χαλκοκορυστής,
ὄβριμος, κορυθαιόλος – are limited to Hector points into the same direction.
Given his antiquity, it is most interesting to see that exactly the same hairstyle
115 All sources: H. Herter, RE Supp. XIII (1973) 1059. For possible representations, see
E. B. Harrison, ‘Greek Sculptured Coiffures and Ritual Haircuts’in R. Hägg (ed.), Early
Greek Cult Practice (Stockholm, 1988) 247–54.
116 Jeanmaire, Couroi et Courètes, 228–383.
117 Adesp. F 371 KA, cf. A. Sommerstein, CQ 77 (1983) 489; Hsch. κ 3533: κοννοφορῶν‧
σκόλλυν φορῶν; ι 335: ἱέρωμα‧ τὸν κόννον Λάκωνες, ὅν τινες μαλλὸν <ἢ> σκόλλυν and κ 3728
κορυφαῖος‧ τέλειος. ἡγεμών [κόρυμβος‧ οἱ δὲ μαλλόν, τὰ τῶν παιδίων κορυφάνια]. For the term
mallos, see Legras, ‘Mallokouria et mallocourètes’.
118 Mallion, etc.: O. Masson, REG 103 (1990) 495 and Gnomon 64 (1992) 635. Konnon, etc.:
N. Firatli and L. Robert, Les stèles funéraires de Byzance gréco-romaine (Paris, 1964) 168;
O. Masson, Onomastica Graeca selecta III (Geneva, 2000) 62.
119 See also this volume, Chapter 14, Introduction.
120 J. Chadwick and L. Baumbach, ‘The Mycenaean Greek Vocabulary’, Glotta 41 (1964)
157–271 at 197.
121 A pre-Homeric origin for Hector is persuasively argued by F. M. Combellack, ‘Homer
and Hector’, AJPh 65 (1944) 209–243; similarly Hampl, Geschichte als kritische Wissenschaft,
64; A. Dihle, Homer-Probleme (Opladen, 1970) 131–32; J. Burgess, The Tradition of the Trojan
War in Homer & The Epic Cycle (Baltimore, 2001) 64–66.

20 Section I: Myths
that we have found for the Kouretes, Theseus and the Athenian ephebes, was
also called Hektoreioi komai, ‘Hectorean hairstyle’, and connected with Hec-
tor.122 The tradition can be traced back to the playwright Anaxilas (F 37) in the
middle of the fourth century, but it must be older, since the poet evidently con-
siders the expression as something familiar, although the hairstyle is not men-
tioned in the Iliad. Apparently, at least in part of the tradition, Hector, just like
Achilles, was designated as an ephebe. As regards Achilles, his initiatory tradi-
tion of Skyros is post-Iliad, just as some initiatory details of Theseus are known
only from Plutarch. There is therefore no reason – given the most likely assump-
tion that Hector belonged to the pre-Homeric tradition – why details of Hec-
tor’s life that do not occur in the Iliad cannot be found in later times.
At this point we can finally return to the problem of the Kouretes as an ethnic
group and the origin of the Theseis. The ‘Hectorean hairstyle’ was also worn by
the Daunians and Paucetians, peoples living in Southern Italy (Hsch. ε 1745),
and the Theseis was ascribed to the Arabs and Mysians (Plut. Thes. 5). All these
peoples have in common that they are living at the margin of the Greek world,
and the occurrence of the Kouretes in Aetolia, Acarnania, and Euboea can be
explained similarly.123 From the point of view of Thessaly and Boeotia, where
we must look for the origin of the epic cycle, since in these areas Achilles,
Pyrrhos, Philoctetes and the pyrrhichê originated,124 these parts of Greece were
lying at their margin; the legend that the Kouretes were living in Acarnania will
have arisen only when the Greeks occupied Aetolia where the Kouretes obvi-
ously were not to be found. The marginal function of Euboea also appears in
another myth. In Plataia, it was told that Hera once in anger withdrew from
Zeus to hide in Euboea (Paus. 9.3.1), the same island where Dionysos was hid-
den (Chapter 8.1).
It is well known that initiation normally takes place outside civilisation.125
This stay can assume different forms. One of them is confinement to a foreign
country as in the case of Philoctetes.126 Another form is the obligation to roam
around, a wandering of which the duration was not fixed. The novices of the
122 Hector and ‘Hectorean hairstyle’: DServius on Aen. 2.277: non sine ratione etiam hoc
de crinibus dolet Aeneas, quia illis maxime Hector commendabatur, adeo ut etiam tonsura ab
eo nomen accepterit, sicut Graeci poetae docent; see also Timaeus FGrH 566 F54; Lycophron
1133 and schol. ad loc. The link between the Theseis and the ‘Hectorean hairstyle’ was made
by J. Boardman, ‘Heroic Haircuts’, CQ 23 (1973) 196 f.
123 Sources: O. Immisch, ‘Kureten und Korybanten’, in W. H. Roscher (ed.), Ausführliches
Lexikon der griechischen und römischen Mythologie II.1 (Leipzig, 1890–97) 1587–1628.
124 The suffix -ichos points towards Boeotia and the Dorian areas as has often been seen:
most recently, F. Marchand, ‘Rencontres onomastiques au carrefour de l’Eubée et de la Béotie’,

in N. Badoud (ed.), Philologos Dionysios (Geneva, 2011) 343–76 at 359–62.
125 Brelich, Paides e parthenoi, 29–31.
126 Brelich, Paides e parthenoi, 67 note 51: ‘un motivo piuttosto raro (o per lo meno rara-
mente osservato)’.

Babinga from Gabon had to wander around five days,127 the WaRega from Zaire
for fifteen days,128 the Nilotic Schillyk through the whole of the country,129 and
the Australian Wihumkan for two years.130
This wandering can also be found among the Indo-European peoples. The
Swedish Iranist Geo Widengren has repeatedly discussed the wandering of the
Iranian young men.131 The ancient Irish had in the fian their groups of roving
young men,132 and it seems almost beyond any doubt that the Arthurian
knights-errant must be explained from a similar tradition. The wandering must
have been part, too, of the ancient Germanic education since it was customary
in the early Middle Ages that the iuvenes, the sons of nobility (!), were roaming
through the country.133 These iuvenes showed all the characteristics of an age-
group in the liminal period between youth and adulthood. Not only were they
wandering away from home, but they also were notorious for their lawless be-
haviour and their free morals. The educational character of their jeunesse period
appears from the fact that, at least in the early times of this period, they were
accompanied by a mentor.134 Wandering was not restricted to nobility, however.
We can hardly separate the obligatory wandering of the journeymen of the
guilds when they were learning their trade from the initiatory tradition either.135
We see a different development of the traditional stay outside the home civili-
sation in Athens where, at least from the late fifth century onwards, the frontiers
were patrolled by the ephebes, who were called peripoloi, ‘they who move
around’.136 A similar development occurred in Central-Asia where the youths of
127 W. Dupré, ‘Die Babinga-Pygmäen’, Annali del Pontificio Museo Missionario Etnologico
26 (1962) 9–172 at 114.

128 C. Delhaise, Les Warega (Brussels, 1909) 165.
129 W. Hofmayr, Die Schilluk (Mödling/Vienna, 1925) 286 f.
130 U. Mc. Connel, ‘The Wik-Munkan and Allied Tribes of Cape York Peninsula, N. Q.’,
Oceania 4 (1933/34) 310–67 at 337.

131 For bibliography, see this volume, Preface, note 2 2 and Chapter 5, note 27.
132 See this volume, Chapter 5.2 with note 25 (bibliography).
133 Astronomus, Vita Hludowici pii imperatoris (MG SS 119), c 46 sicut moris talibus est, cf.
U. Helfenstein, Beiträge zur Problematik der Lebensalter in der mittleren Geschichte (Diss.
Zürich, 1952) 41–81; M.-L. Chênerie, ‘“Ces curieux chevaliers tournoyeurs” des fabliaux aux
romans’, Romania 97 (1976) 327–68 and Le Chevalier errant dans les romans arthuriens en vers
des XIIe et XIIIe siècles (Geneva, 1986). It is the great merit of Helfenstein to have first noted
the initiatory character of the behaviour of the young men but he does, like Wackernagel, Altes
Volkstum, sometimes, try too much to press his material into the direction of groups of organ-
ised young men. The interesting fact is rather that, although the official initiation gradually
disappeared, the place of the young men in society and their behaviour did not change.
134 Duby, Hommes et structures, 213–25 (‘Les “jeunes” dans la société aristocratique dans
la France du Nord-Ouest au XIIe siècle’).

135 W. Reininghaus, ‘Die Migration der Handwerksgesellen in der Zeit der Entstehung der
Gilden (14/15 Jahrhundert)’, Vierteljahrschrift für Sozial- und Wirtschaftsgeschichte 68 (1981)

1–21; Ph. Didier, ‘L’apprentissage médiéval en France’, Zs. Savigny Stiftung (Germ. Abt.) 101
(1984) 200–55.
136 Thuc. 4.66.2 with Hornblower ad loc., 8.92.2, 5; Aristot. Athen.42; IG II 2 1006, 1011,

22 Section I: Myths
the Turkmenes, Uzbeks and Kirghisians were charged with the task of guarding
the frontiers.137 In all these cases, we can still discern the same pattern: the place
of the young men is not inside but outside or at the margin of the community.138
8. Troy and the Wooden Horse
One of the curious aspects of the expedition to Troy is the fatal way the expedi-
tion influenced the life of the participants. Some heroes died during the siege as,
e. g., Hector and Paris, Ajax and Achilles; some soon afterwards like Agamem-
non, Ajax the son of Oileus and Pyrrhos. Others could not return home imme-
diately (if ever) and had to wander a long time as Aeneas and Odysseus.139 For
all of them, the stay at Troy was the pivotal point in their life.
The name Troy occurs in Celtic, Germanic and Finno-Ugrian countries
where it designates a kind of labyrinth laid out in stones or pebbles. However,
these labyrinths are not always called Troy, as in Finland, they were named
Nineveh, Jericho or Lisbon, and in Russia Babylon.140 These labyrinths have
been compared with the famous Tragliatella vase (about 600 BC) on which ‘Tru-
ia’ is inscribed next to a labyrinth.141 The suggestion is of course very attractive –
and the conclusion has indeed been drawn142 – that all these cases point to a
mutual connection. Since labyrinths are typically liminal places, such a conclu-
sion would have suited the facts we have found so far, and the (admittedly mea-
gre) indications we have actually seem to point to a connection between these
labyrinths and groups of young men.143 However, the chronological distance
1028; L. Robert, Hellenica 10 (1955) 283–92; P. Vidal-Naquet, Le Chasseur noir (Paris, 19832)
155–74; P. Cabanes, ‘Recherches épigraphiques en Albanie: péripolarques et péripoloi en Grèce
du Nord-Ouest et en Illyrie à la période hellénistique’, CRAI 1991, 616–76; J. Ma, ‘Black
Hunter Variations’, PCPhS 40 (1994) 49–80 and, especially, ‘The Return of the Black Hunter’,
CCJ 54 (2008) 188–208.
137 Bleichsteiner, ‘Masken- und Fastnachtsbräuche bei den Völkern des Kaukasus’, 73.
138 See also this volume, Chapters 5.2, 6.2, 7.3 and 15.2.
139 Cf. R. L. Fowler, ‘The nostoi and Archaic Greek Ethnicity’, in S. Hornblower and
G. Biffis (eds), The Returning Hero (Oxford, 2018) 43–63.

140 Cf. E. Krauss, Die Trojaburgen Nordeuropas (Gologau, 1893); W. Hunke, Die Troja
burgen und ihre Bedeutung (Diss. Munich, typewritten, 1941), especially valuable for its his-
torical material and illustrations; J. de Vries, Untersuchung über das Hüpfspiel, Kinderspiel,
Kulttanz (Helsinki, 1957) 50–83; E. Mehl, ‘Trojaspiel’, in RE Supp. VIII (1958) 888–905;
O. Höfler, Siegried, Arminius und die Symbolik (Heidelberg, 1961) 77–89; E. Mehl, ‘Der Aus-
weg aus dem Labyrinth’, in K. Beitl (ed.), Volkskunde, Fakten und Analysen. Festgabe für
Leopold Schmidt (Vienna, 1972) 402–18.
141 For this famous vase see, most recently, J. P. Small, ‘The Tragliatella Oinochoe’, Röm.
Mitt. 93 (1986) 63–96; L. B. van der Meer, ‘Le jeu de Truia. Le programme iconographique de
l’oenochoé de Tragliatella’, Ktema 11 (1986 ) 169–78; Versnel, Transition & Reversal, 325–27.
142 Höfler, Siegfried, 77–89; J.-P. Guépin, The Tragic Paradox (Amsterdam, 1968) 135 f.
143 Hunke, Trojaburgen, 83–105.

between the seventh-century vase and the oldest known examples of the Troja
burgen, the Swedish Troyobodhe (1307) and Thrögiaborgh (1447), is really too
large to warrant such a conclusion.
Yet, it will have been noticed that Greek Troy, too, looks like a typically mar-
ginal place – at least from a geographical point of view. Just like Ithaca, Euboea,
Skyros and Crete, it lies beyond the water, and when Helen is supposed to have
been taken away to Troy and Egypt (Stesichorus F 90; Hdt. 2.115.1), the thought
suggests itself that, like Egypt,144 in early myth Troy was indeed just a place
beyond the borders of civilisation.
The burning of the citadel of Troy has been compared by Hermann Usener
(1834–1905) to the setting on fire of the construction that looked like a palace at
the Delphian Septerion festival (§ 9).145 It may be relevant here to observe that
the storming of a castle was a traditional part of the liminal period in the year,
especially the periods around Christmas and New Year, and Carnival. Such a
storming was the prerogative of the young men (!) and has been attested for the
Alsace,146 Switzerland,147 Germany and Austria,148 and the Caucasus.149 In the
Hansa colony in Norwegian Bergen, this storming even happened in an initia-
tory context.150
Troy fell through a ruse, a theme we have noted several times in the life of the
novices. The ruse itself, the Wooden Horse, has until now remained an enig-
ma.151 Already in Antiquity people were puzzled and offered rationalistic inter-
pretations. Pliny (NH 7.202) thought of the Horse as a battering ram, a sugges-
tion Gilbert Murray (1866–1957) hardly improved upon.152 Not much better
was the suggestion of Fritz Schachermeyr (1895–1987),153 to mention only one
of the most fanciful modern ideas, that the horse symbolised an earthquake.
Such explanations are obviously reductionist,154 since they either explain away
144 Cf. Guépin, Tragic Paradox, 126–28.

145 H. Usener, Kleine Schriften IV (Leipzig and Berlin, 1913) 452–53 (see also § 9).
146 E. L. Rochholz, Tell und Gessler in Sage und Geschichte (Heilbronn, 1877) 6.
147 Wackernagel, Altes Volkstum, 26–27. In Bern 13–4-1550: ‘Am 13ten April macht man
ein papierenes Schloss auf dem Kilchenfeld, und zogen die jungen Gesellen (!) aus mit spiessen
und stürmten es’, from an ancient Swiss chronicle quoted by L. Zehnder, Volkskundliches in
der ältern schweizerischen Chronistik (Basel, 1976) 312.
148 R. Siemens, Germanengut im Zunftbrauch (Berlin, 1942) 42; N. Grass, ‘Das Widum-
und Kloster-“Stürmen” sowie verwandte Faschingsbräuche in Süddeutschland und der

Schweiz’, Zs. Savigny Stft., Kan. Abt. 40 (1954) 159–200.
149 Bleichsteiner, ‘Masken- und Fastnachtsbräuche’, 26–28.
150 J. Harttung, ‘Die Spiele der Deutschen in Bergen’, Hansische Geschichtsblätter 1877,
89–114; K. Koppman, ibid., 140–43.

151 For representations, see C. Ingoglia, ‘Il cavallo di Troia su una kotyle corinzia da Gela
e nell’Ilioupersis di Arctino’, QUCC 65 (2000) 7–14.

152 G. Murray, Euripides: The Trojan Women (Oxford, 1905) 86.
153 F. Schachermeyr, Poseidon und die Entstehung des Griechischen Götterglaubens ( Munich,
1950) 189 f.
154 As was my own ‘Athena and the Trojan Horse’, Museum Africum 1 (1972) 4–8.

24 Section I: Myths
the warriors or the horse as a horse. Yet, there may be a solution that does not
explain away these features and, moreover, fits in with the drift of my argument.
In a fine analysis, the French medievalist Jean-Claude Schmitt has drawn
attention to three medieval exempla, in which he distinguished an initiatory
pattern with the following motifs: 1. the time is Whitsuntide, the typical time of
the iuvenes; 2. the actors are the iuvenes; 3. it is night; 4. they pass the graveyard,
the area of the dead; 5. they are on, or in, an auxiliary animal, the horse; 6. they
are masked; 7. they are wounded on typical places such as the feet and the thighs;
8. they are ‘devoured’ by a dark place. The whole episode pictures, as Schmitt
acutely argues, the transition to the age group of the jeunesse.155
In this legendary story, there is one point of great interest. The young men
enter into a wooden horse: cum dictus iuvenis in equo ligneo intraret. These
wooden horses, English ‘Hobby-Horse’ and French ‘cheval-jupon’, were, and in
some places still are, a characteristic feature of the masquerades in the whole of
Europe, and they even occur in Central-Asia. These masquerades are and used
to be the prerogative of the groups of young men and the members of the guild.156
The horses were not only formed by one man alone but there are descriptions of
single horses with eight feet, that is, horses constituted by four men.157
It is in these masquerades that we find a wooden horse with men and already
the oldest tradition about the horse insists that it was made of wood.158 In the
medieval exempla, we have an initiatory context and our argument suggests that
the heroes of the Trojan War also have to be understood in that context. It is
perhaps significant that the other horse that carried more people than normal,
the medieval horse Bayard of the four Haymon’s children, also figures at the
time of passage from childhood to jeunesse.159 The wooden horses were not un-
known to the Greeks, as Georges Dumézil (1898–1986) already argued in his
classic study of the Centaurs and related figures.160 And precisely those Cen-
taurs figure, witness Cheiron, in an initiatory context in ancient Greece.161
155
Schmitt, Le Corps, les rites, 169–74.
156
A. van Gennep, Le Cheval jupon = Cahiers d’ethnographie folklorique 1 (1945), whose
documentation on Southern-Europe and Central-Asia is deficient; Bleichsteiner, ‘Masken- und
Fastnachtsbräuche’, 56, 62, 67–68; L. Kretzenbacher, ‘“Russa” und “Gambela” als Equiden-
masken der Slowenen’, Lares 31 (1965) 49–74; V. Alford, ‘Some Other Hobby Horses’, Folklo
re 78 (1967) 207–11; R. Wildhaber (ed.), Masken und Maskenbrauchtum aus Ost- und Südost
europa (Basel, 1968) passim.
157 R. Wolfram, ‘Robin-Hood und Hobby Horse’, Wiener Prähist. Zs. 19 (1932) 357–74.
158 Od. 4.272 and 8.492–93; W. J. Abaew, ‘Le cheval de Troie. Parallèles Caucasiens’,
Annales ESC 18 (1963) 1041–70.

159 Schmitt, Le Corps, les rites, 170.
160 G. Dumézil, Le Problème des Centaurs (Paris, 1929); W. Burkert, Greek Religion (Ox-
ford, 1985) 173; this volume, Chapter 3.

161 After I had written this passage, inspired by Schmitt’s (note 43) article, I noticed that
Hunke, Die Trojaburgen, 144–45, had suggested the same solution on the basis of an initiation
ceremony of the guilds with a horse-masquerade… The ‘rite de passage’ character of the entry
into the horse appears in Greek tradition also in the story of Gyges (Plato, Resp. 359/60b), see

9. Festivals
Our dossier, however, is not yet finished. The fall of Troy was associated with
various festivals in the Greek world. Do they perhaps support our argument?
Here, we move onto slippery ground. Greek heortology is a subject on which
opinions are likely to differ widely, and the danger of choosing an interpretation
which is in line with what one should like to be seen demonstrated is obvious.
Besides, it would exceed the limitations of an article to discuss all the facets of
every festival in great detail. Yet, even in a limited compass some facts are evi-
dent, and some conclusions can be drawn.
At the Septerion festival in Delphi, a noble boy, whose parents were still
alive,162 had to set fire to a structure resembling a king’s palace during the night
and then to flee to Tempe for purification.163 His flight is described as a wander-
ing (§ 7), during which a servitude (a case of status reversal) took place, after
which he triumphantly returned. This structure – leaving of the community,
wandering, servitude and return – has been plausibly interpreted by Brelich as
the transformation of an, originally, initiation ritual.164 Such a reinterpretation
was not uncommon – Theseus’ initiatory trip to Crete was imagined to be
caused by the need of a purification for the murder of Minos’ son Androgeos –
and could easily take place when the initiatory rites had lost their educational
content because the period of purification is also a liminal period (above, Intro-
duction), and thus can show characteristics of an initiation ritual. In the proper
purification ritual, however, there is no liminal period outside the civilised
world, neither is a big enemy defeated. Where the initiation often implied a
‘death’ and ‘rebirth’, the accompanying myth spoke of a real death, and in this
way it can be understood that with the gradual disappearance of initiation ritu-
als in large parts of Greece – a process the exact reasons of which are still un-
clear, but which can hardly be separated from the growing urbanisation with its
accompanying curtailing of the elite’s prerogatives – the ritual became reinter-
preted as a purification from murder.
W. Fauth, ‘Zum Motivbestand der platonischen Gygeslegende’, RhM 113 (1970) 1–42; Burkert,
Homo necans, 160. For the ‘initiatory’ role of the horse, see also Propp, Die historischen
Wurzeln, 207–26.
162 For the pais amphithalês: G. v.d. Leeuw, Virginibus Puerisque. A Study on the Service of
Children in Worship (Amsterdam, 1938); L. Robert, Hellenica 11/12 (1960) 560; Opera Minora
Selecta I (Amsterdam, 1968) 633–43, III (1968) 1628 and, with J. Robert, REG 77 (1964) 245.
163 Sources: Pind. Pae. X, cf. I. Rutherford, Pindar’s Paeans (Oxford, 2001) 201–03; Epho-
ros FGrH 70 F31b; Theopompos FGrH 117 F80; Call. F 86–89a Pfeiffer/Harder and 194.34–
36 Pfeiffer; Plut. Mor. 293c, 417e–418d, 1163a; Usener, Kleine Schriften IV, 317–28; Jeanmaire,
Couroi et Courètes, 387–411; Burkert, Homo necans, 127–30.
164 Brelich, Paides e parthenoi, 387–438; M. P. Nilsson, Griechische Feste (Leipzig, 1906)
157 already noted that the purification explanation was a later reinterpretation.

26 Section I: Myths
The nightly attack was called the Doloneia and the (often too) imaginative
Usener, in one of his last and perhaps boldest studies, did not fail to see the re-
semblance with the Doloneia of the Iliad (Book 10). Usener located this ritual
in the month Ilaios, inspired by the name Ilios/n for Troy. He connected the
month with a postulated festival Ilaia on the postulated 22/23rd day of that
month and concluded that this festival imitated the conquest of Troy. Unfortu-
nately, there is no proof whatsoever for this postulated festival. We will there-
fore not proceed with this house of cards.165
Yet Doloneia is both the name of one of the Books (10) of the Iliad and an
episode in the Trojan War about the nightly capture of the Trojan spy Dolon by
Odysseus and Diomedes; which is also discussed in pseudo-Euripides’ tragedy
Rhesus.166 The incident becomes transparent against the background of an initi-
ation ritual and must have been the transposition of an ancient ritual into epic
song.167 In support of his explanation, Gernet pointed to the mentioning of
head-hunting (Rhesus 219–20),168 the wearing of a wolfskin (Il. 10.334; Rhesus
208–15) and the name Dolon, ‘cunning’, hardly a proper name, as he observed,
and reminding us again of the theme of the ruse which we encountered time and
again with the initiands. We may add that Dolon, like Philoctetes (§ 3), was an
archer (Il. 10.459). It seems that the poet who included the Doloneia in the Iliad
was still sensitive to the initiatory background.
Troy’s fall was remembered at a well-attested festival, the Spartan Karneia
(schol. Theocr. 5.83b,d), as already seems to appear from a fragment of Alcman
(F 52).169 The Karneia was a full moon festival (Eur. Alc. 449) of the phratries
(Demetrius of Scepsis apud Athen. 4.141e) and organised by the unmarried, i. e.
young men (Hsch. κ 838). Brelich has analysed the few data and concluded that
the Karneia was the festival that concluded the Spartan agogê, that is, the tran-
sition to adulthood.170 A different case is presented by the third and last Greek
festival with which the sack of Troy was sassociated: the Athenian Skira (Clem.
Alex. Strom. 1.104). This festival is not easy to reconstruct because of the con-
fusing state of our sources, but, like the Karneia, it seems to have contained a
race by youths with vine branches and green grapes in a context of the dissolu-
165
Usener, Kleine Schriften IV, 447–67.
166
For a comparison of the Doloneia and the Rhesus: W. Ritchie, The Authenticity of the
Rhesus of Euripides (Cambridge, 1964) 64–78; B. Fenik, “Iliad X” and the “Rhesus”: the myth
(Brussels, 1964); Dihle, Homer-Probleme, 34–44; V. Liapis, A Commentary on the Rhesus
Attributed to Euripides (Oxford, 2012) xvii-xxxiv.
167 As is persuasively argued by Gernet, Anthropologie, 154–71. For the Doloneia, see also
F. Lissarrague, ‘L’iconographie de Dolon le Loup’, Rev. Arch. 1980, 3–30; D. Williams,

‘Dolon’, in LIMC III.1 (1986) 660–64; A. Burlando, ‘Bâlla coi lupi (ovvero il travestimento di
Dolone)’, Orpheus 14 (1993) 255–74.
168 Headhunting and initiation: Schurtz, Altersklassen, 99.
169 Burkert, Greek Religion, 235 f.
170 Brelich, Paides e parthenoi, 148–53.

tion of the social order and the restoration of normality, but that is all we can
say.171
Finally, although not connected with the sack of Troy, mention must be made
of the Roman lusus Troiae. This was a play for the noble (!) Roman youths on
the verge of taking the toga virilis. It contained a clear initiatory substratum, as
a number of scholars have noted. The interesting fact is that here, too, we find
the name of Troy associated with the age group we have so often encountered in
our argument.172
10. Conclusion
In our analysis, we have argued that the traditions about Achilles and Hector as
well as Pyrrhos/Neoptolemos and Philoctetes, not to forget Odysseus, contain
many elements of young men in the transition from boyhood to adulthood.
Moreover, we found that the Trojan War was associated with three Greek festi-
vals of which two concerned young men of the same age group. The suggestion
presents itself therefore that the origin of the myth of the Trojan War is, for an
important part, to be looked for in ancient myths and rituals of initiation.
Since we have seen that the traditions about the protagonists display similar
structures, the most plausible inference is that the one initiatory structure at-
tracted the other one. Even as late as the sixth century BC, the initiatory myth
and ritual of the Locrian Maidens could be incorporated into the Trojan Cy-
cle.173 The Doloneia will have been attracted in a similar manner.
This conclusion bears exclusively – a fact I cannot stress too strongly – on the
archaic ritual background of these heroic myths, not on the poetic creation out
of them. In the course of time, the poets welded the different myths into one
great coherent complex. They could expand some motifs, reduce others or
change them altogether.174 They could add figures from other cycles, such as
Diomedes, Aeneas or Glaukos,175 or insert mythical ancestors for noble fami-
lies. To elucidate this process, however, was not the aim of this chapter.
171 R. Parker, Polytheism and Society at Athens (Oxford, 2005) 173–77; S. C. Humphreys,
Kinship in Ancient Athens, 2 vols (Oxford, 2018) 2.556, 645.

172 For all sources, see G. Piccaluga, Elementi spettacolari nei rituali festivi romani (Rome,
1965) 135–47. The initiatory content had already been indicated by Hunke, Die Trojaburgen,
130–32, who is followed and elaborated by Versnel, Transition & Reversal, 325–27, with full
bibliography.
173 F. Graf, ‘The Locrian Maidens’, in R. Buxton (ed.), Oxford Readings in Greek Religion
(Oxford, 2000) 250–70.

174 See the perceptive remarks of C. S. Mundy, ‘The Cyclops in Turkish Tradition: a study
in folklore transmission’, in Ranke, Internationaler Kongress der Volkserzählungsforscher,

229–34.
175 Diomedes: H. Erbse, ‘Betrachtungen über das 5. Buch der Ilias’, RhM 104 (1961) 156–89
at 186; Heubeck, Die Homerische Frage, 165. Aeneas: L. Malten, ‘Aineias’, ARW 20 (1931)

28 Section I: Myths
Finally, the connection of poetry and the world of initiation should not be
surprising. The Arcadian youths (once the whole of Greece?) practised songs in
which their national heroes were celebrated (Polybius 4.20.8). Spartan boys sang
about their future braveness (Plut. Lyc. 21) and Cretan boys had to learn songs
that were ‘prescribed in the laws’ (Ephoros), which consisted of their laws,
hymns to the gods and praises of brave men. Plato (Laws 666d) still knew them
but rated their quality rather low. Persian novices rehearsed the deeds of the
bravest men in their songs (Strabo 13.3.18), and the ballads about Robin Hood
derive from rituals of the young men, as did the songs about William Tell.176
Also the French chansons de geste must be assigned to the world of the jeunes
se.177 It can therefore hardly be a coincidence that these songs reflect in some
way the life and ideology of the world in which they were practised and sung,
and often must have originated.
This is certainly also the case for the world of the Iliad. As Christoph Ulf has
plausibly argues in a detailed analysis, the Greek army before Troy consisted for
an important part of kouroi/neoi, precisely the age group between youth and
mature adulthood.178 This composition fits what we have tried to show, namely,
that the most important warriors on either side consisted of young men, the
myths of whom display a number of initiatory motifs. Yet a linguistic analysis
of the early usage of the term kouros shows that the term must have been more
important in pre-Ionian times than in the age of Homer:179 apparently, the age
group of the young was already losing its importance in the early Archaic Age.
There still remains something of a paradox in the fact that one of the finest fruits
of Greek civilisation found its origin precisely in the world of those whose place
was in the margin of that civilisation.180
33–39; F. Jacoby, Kleine philologische Schriften I (Berlin, 1961) 43–47. Glaukos: L. Malten,
‘Homer und die Lykischen Fürsten’, Hermes 79 (1944) 1–12.
176 Wolfram, ‘Robin-Hood und Hobby Horse’; Wackernagel, Altes Volkstum, 246 and
‘Volkstum und Geschichte’, Basler Zs. f. Geschichte und Altertumskunde 62 (1962) 15–38 at
30–32.
177 Duby, Hommes et structures, 221–23; J. Flori, ‘Qu’est-ce qu’un bacheler? Étude histori-
que de vocabulaire dans les chansons de geste du XIIe siecle’, Romania 96 (1975) 289–314 at
308 f.
178 Ulf, Die homerische gesellschaft, 68–69, but his analysis of the Homeric kouroi (59–67)
is also most instructive.

179 A. Hoekstra, Epic Verse before Homer (Amsterdam, 1981) 76–81.
180 I am indebted to W. J. Verdenius (1913–1998) for friendly assistance, to Rolf Bremmer,
Fritz Graf, Theo Korteweg (1949–2019) and Ite Wierenga for reading and improving the man-
uscript. Holly Maggiore kindly and carefully corrected the English of the final version.

Chapter 2
Odysseus versus the Cyclops
Monsters have probably always been with us. They are so good for exploring
the margins of civilisation that they must have been invented in very early
times.1 Indeed, male and female monsters are already present in the oldest sur-
viving poems of the Western world, the Iliad and Odyssey of Homer. In Book 9
of the Odyssey, Homer describes how Odysseus landed on the island of the
Cyclopes.2 With his comrades he visited the cave of one of them, Polyphemos,
who locked the Greeks in and started to have them for dinner. In the end, Od-
ysseus managed to get him drunk, told him that his name was ‘Nobody’, blind-
ed his one eye and escaped underneath the Cyclops’ sheep with his surviving
comrades. The monstrous Cyclops has often fascinated scholars and the episode
has regularly been analysed. Unlike most other Homeric episodes, though, var-
iants of this one have been found in countries as far apart as France, Turkey and
Estonia. Their unexpected presence is the reason that the following analysis will
not limit itself to Homer, but it will also look at some folkloric parallels. Subse-
quently, we will try to answer the following questions. First, what is the con-
nection with the variants of the story outside Greece (§ 1)? Secondly, who were
the Cyclopes according to Greek tradition (§ 2)? And finally, are there narrative
or ritual traditions behind the figure of Polyphemos and his cannibalistic activ-
ities (§ 3)? Let us start with the non-Homeric variants.
1. The travelling Cyclops
After Homer, the story of the Cyclops immediately became popular, and we
find already early representations in numerous places outside Attica, the main
producer of ancient Greek vase paintings.3 In fact, the story was so popular that
1 E. Moignard, ‘How to Make a Monster’, in M. Austin et al. (eds), Modus operandi. Essays
in Honour of Geoffrey Rickman (London, 1998) 209–17; L. Feldt, ‘Monster Theory and the
Gospels: monstrosities, ambiguous power and emotions in Mark’, in J. Verheyden and J. S.
Kloppenborg (eds), The Gospels and Their Stories in Anthropological Perspective (Tübingen,
2018) 29–52.
2 The standard work, with excellent bibliography, is now M. Aguirre and R. Buxton, Cy
clops: the myth and its cultural history (Cambridge, 2020); add M. Alden, Para-Narratives in
the Odyssey: stories in the frame (Oxford, 2017) 222–54.
3 O. Touchefeu-Meynier, ‘Kyklops, Kyklopes’, in LIMC VI.1 (1992) 154–59.

30 Section I: Myths
during the Roman Empire people even dreamt of the Cyclops or his cave (Ar-
tem. 1.5.26). But similar stories to Homer’s have also been recorded by modern
folklorists, and in an analysis of Odysseus’ encounter with Polyphemos Walter
Burkert uses these tales as independent evidence to explain the motif of the es-
cape underneath the ram.4 Is such an approach justified?
It is now nearly two hundred years since scholars started to note folklore
versions of the Polyphemos episode. The discovery seems to have been made
first by the German scholar H. F. von Diez (1751–1817), who had been Prussian
chargé d’affaires in Constantinople. In 1815 he discovered in the Royal Dresden
Library a sixteenth-century manuscript with a collection of unknown Turkish
stories, The Book of Dede Korkut. The stories are situated in the heroic age of
the Turkish tribe of the Oghuz, who in the eleventh century became the most
important power in what later would be the Ottoman Empire, but they were
probably recorded around 1400 in North-East Anatolia.5 To his surprise, Von
Diez read the following story:
A Cyclops-like figure terrorised the land of the Oghuz, who invoked the help of their
seer Dede Korkut. He persuaded the monster to be satisfied with two persons and 500
sheep a day. When a mother had to give up her second, last son, she went to the great
Oghuz hero Basat, who finally agreed to get rid of the monster. The ‘Cyclops’ pushed
Basat’s arrows away like flies, grabbed the hero and put him into his boot. When Basat
had liberated himself, he put a spit into his eye and left his cave wrapped in the skin of a
ram. The ‘Cyclops’ did give him a ring, but Basat killed him shortly afterwards.6
Von Diez recognised that this episode was inspired by Odysseus’ confrontation
with Polyphemos, and only fifty years later the lesser known of the Grimm
brothers, Wilhelm (1786–1859), had already collected ten more versions, some
of which came from Northern Europe.7 About a century later, there appeared
the first monograph, with 221 variants from all over the world, and the industry
of modern folklorists has added many more. 8
4 W. Burkert, Structure and History in Greek Myth and Ritual (Berkeley, Los Angeles,
London, 1979) 33; similarly, C. Calame, The Craft of Poetic Speech in Ancient Greece (Ithaca
and London, 1995) 139–73. Burkert, Kleine Schriften I (Göttingen, 2001) 203 is more careful:
‘…a widespread type of folktale which, even if it were ultimately dependent on some Odyssey,
owed its success to its intrinsic structure and dynamics, and not to special poetical skill’.
5 H. F. von Diez , Der neuentdeckte oghuzische Cyklop verglichen mit dem homerischen
(Dresden, 1815); O. Spies, ‘Dede Korkut Kitabi’, in Enzyklopädie des Märchens 3 (Berlin and
New York, 1981) 371–75; J. Conrad, ‘Polyphemus and Tepegöz Revisited: a comparison of the
tales of the blinding of the one-eyed ogre in Western and Turkish traditions’, Fabula 40 (1999)
278–97.
6 G. Lewis, The Book of Dede Korkut (Harmondsworth, 1974) 140–50. The exact date of
the individual tales is impossible to establish.

7 W. Grimm, Die Sage von Polyphem, Abh. königl. Ak. Berlin, Phil.-Hist. Klasse 1857,
1–30, repr. in his Kleinere Schriften IV (Gütersloh, 1887) 428–62.

8 O. Hackman, Die Polyphemsage in der Volksüberlieferung (Helsinki, 1904); Burkert,
Structure and History, 156, note 13 (with earlier bibliography); H. P. Naumann, ‘Das Poly
phem-Abenteuer in den altnordischen Sagaliteratur’, SAV 75 (1970) 173–89.

Chapter 2 : Odysseus versus the Cyclops 31
Wilhelm Grimm thought that the versions of the Estonians, Finns, Greeks,9
and other peoples all derived from the same primeval original and that it was
irrelevant that those from Northern Europe had been noted down more than
2500 years after Homer. Many later folklorists equally did not concern them-
selves with the precise chronology determination of their versions. Apparently,
the romantic idea of the people as the carrier of age-old traditions made such
questions superfluous. Moreover, the folklore versions often contained addi-
tional motifs which made them appear to be independent from the Homeric
version. A good example is the oldest version recorded in Western Europe and
already noted by Wilhelm Grimm. In his Dolopathos (ca. 1190) the Cistercian
monk Johannes from Alta Silva in the Lorraine relates the following story:
Robbers had heard that a giant (gigas) possessed a great amount of gold. They decided to
rob him but were taken prisoner. The giant immediately selected the fattest among them
to be cooked alive. After him all the robbers were eaten until the story-teller, who was
forced to participate in the cannibalism, was the last one left. Through a trick he man-
aged to blind the giant, but he could not escape until he had wrapped himself into the
skin of a ram and thus got free. The giant gave him a ring, which forced him to betray his
position. That is why the giant could continuously trace him until he cut off the finger
with the ring.10
Unfortunately, in a second robber adventure Johannes tells that the name of the
cannibal was Polyphemos. So, directly or indirectly, he had derived his story
from a text of Homer. But how? The learned monk had some knowledge of
Greek mythology and even of Greek itself, as illustrated by his explanation of
the title: Dolopathos: id est dolum vel dolorem patiens, ex greco latinoque ser
mone compositum (4.7–8).11 However, by the time of Johannes, the Greek text of
Homer was no longer known in the West:12 after the fall of the Roman Empire,
knowledge of Greek had disappeared fairly quickly, and even scholars such as
Isidore of Seville or the Venerable Bede had only a superficial and defective
9 But the Greek parallels are not impressive: P. Faure, ‘Le mythe des Cyclopes dans la
Grèce contemporaine’, BAGB 1967, 384–407 and ‘Du nouveau sur les Cyclopes crétois’, ibid.
1970, 119–32; S. Imellos, ‘Aus dem Kreis der Polyphemsage in Griechenland’, in W. Siegmund
(ed.), Antiker Mythos in unseren Märchen (Kassel, 1984) 47–52.
10 A. Hilka, Historia septem sapientium. II. Johannis de Alta Silva Dolopathos sive De rege
et septem sapientibus (Heidelberg, 1913) 73–75, tr. B. B. Gilleland, Johannes de Alta Silva,
Dolopathos: or The King and the Seven Wise Men (Binghamton, 1981) 64–66. Cutting of fin-
ger: W. Burkert, Creation of the Sacred (Cambridge MA, 1996) 37–40.
11 For Johannes’ erudition see B. B. Gilleland, ‘The Dolopathos of Johannes de Alta Silva: a
new evaluation’, in H. Niedzielski et al. (eds), Studies on the Seven Sages of Rome (Honolulu,
1978) 32–42; W. Maaz, ‘Johannes de Alta Silva’, in Enzyklopädie des Märchens 7 (Berlin and
New York, 1993) 570–75; P. Simons, ‘Reading and the Book: frame and story in the Old
French Dolopathos’, in A. Classen (ed.), The Book and the Magic of Reading in the Middle
Ages (New York, 1998) 35–56.
12 W. Kullmann, Homerische Motive (Stuttgart, 1992) 353–72 (‘Einige Bemerkungen zum
Homerbild des Mittelalters’).

32 Section I: Myths
knowledge of Greek,13 what remained known of Greek was chiefly based on

Greek and Latin parallel texts of the Bible and Greek-Latin wordlists.14 Theo-
retically, Johannes could somehow have learned of the story via the Latin tradi-
tion, since Odysseus’ encounter is told in detail by the mythographer Hyginus
(Fab. 125), but this is not very likely. Hyginus was not a popular author: the one
manuscript to survive the Middle Ages was written around AD 900 in Ben-
eventan script, and its fragments have been discovered only in Bavaria.15 Given
that Johannes is also the first Western author to use motifs from the Book of
Sindbad, it is more attractive to think of a Crusader or pilgrim to the Holy Land
via Byzantium as his (ultimate?) source, but other possibilities, such as mer-
chants, can not be excluded.16
In any case, the knowledge of the Homeric Cyclops must have been fairly
recent, since a Homeric colouring is still absent from the account of the Cyclo-
pes with their unum oculum in the Liber monstrorum (ca. AD 900: 1.11), which
is nearly literally based on an episode from Aeneid III (588 ff) and does not be-
tray the slightest familiarity with the Odyssey.17 Neither, somewhat later, does
Adam of Bremen (d. ca. 1081: 4.41) in his History of the Archbishops of Hamburg,
who only mentions the giant size and abnormally bloodthirsty dogs of the Cy-
clopes.
The Dolopathos is not unique in betraying literary influence. For example, a
Sicilian fairy tale calls the giant Ciclopu,18 and in an Icelandic version the two
heroes (monks in this case) remark that in Latin the giant is called monoculus.19
Admittedly, most of the folklore versions miss the Homeric ‘Nobody’ episode
13 W. Berschin, Griechisch-lateinisches Mittelalter (Berne, 1980) and ‘Liudprands Grie
chisch und das Problem einer überlieferungsgerechten Edition’, Mittellat. Jahrb. 20 (1985)
112–15; T. Noble, ‘The Declining Knowledge of Greek in Eigth- and Ninth-Century Papal
Rome’, Byz. Zs. 78 (1985) 56–62; M. W. Herren (ed.), The Sacred Nectar of the Greeks: the
study of Greek in the West in the early Middle Ages (London, 1988); B. M. Kaczynski, Greek
in the Carolingan Age: the St. Gall manuscripts (Cambridge, MA, 1988).
14 See, in addition to Berschin (previous note), especially W. J. Aerts: ‘The Knowledge of
Greek in Western Europe at the time of Theophano and the Greek Grammar Fragment in ms.
Vindob. 114’, in V. D. van Aalst and K. N. Ciggaar (eds), Byzantium and the Low Countries in
the Tenth Century (Herne, 1995) 78–103; ‘Froumund’s Greek’, in A. Davids (ed.), The Em
press Theophano: Byzantium and the West (Cambridge, 1996) 194–210 and ‘The Symbolon
and the Pater Noster in Greek, Latin and Old French’, in K. Ciggaar et al. (eds.), East and West
in Crusader States (Leuven, 1996) 153–68; J. Osborne, ‘The Use of Painted Initials by Greek
and Latin Scriptoria in Carolingian Rome’, Gesta 29 (1990) 76–85.
15 M. D. Reeve , ‘Hyginus’, in L. D. Reynolds (ed.), Texts and Transmission (Oxford, 1983)
187–90. For other possibilities, the excellent survey of M. W. Herren, ‘The Earliest European
Study of Graeco-Roman Mythology (A. D. 600–900)’, Acta Classica Universitatis Scientiarum
Debreceniensis 34–35 (1998–99) 25–49.
16 D. Fehling, Amor und Psyche (Wiesbaden, 1977) 89–97 and ‘Die Eingesperrte (“Inclusa”)
und der verkleidete Jüngling (“Iuvenis femina”)’, Mittellat. Jahrb. 21 (1986) 186–207 at 191–207.
17 G. Bologna, Liber monstrorum de diversis generibus (Milano, 1977) 46.
18 G. Pitré, Fiabe, novelle e racconti popolari Siciliani II (Palermo, 1875) no. 71.
19 F. Settegast, Das Polyphemmärchen in altfranzösischen Gedichten (Leipzig, 1917) 7.

and have added a scene with the ring similar to the one in the Dede Korkut ver-
sion, but it is hardly to be doubted that directly or indirectly they all ultimately
derive from Homer.20
That conclusion was not the one always drawn by folklorists. In more recent
times, one of them noted that various features of medieval versions of the
Polyphemos episode occurred on Greek vases but were absent from Homer:
Cyclopes with two or three eyes (below, § 3), more Odyssean comrades than are
mentioned in the Odyssey, and the roasting by Polyphemos of one of Odysseus’
comrades instead of eating him raw.21 Yet it would go much too far to deduce
from these variants, as many folklorists do, that they point to an independent
oral tradition which for two millennia went underground and only emerged
during the Crusades. All these differences can easily be explained as variations
by an artist who knows how to make a familiar story interesting to his audience.
In fact, in recent years it has become increasingly clear that the oral tradition
is highly vulnerable. Only when a story is connected with a rite, a certain object
(such as a statue or a ruin) or an activity of vital importance for the community
(§ 3), may we expect archaic traditions to survive relatively unchanged over a
long period of time.22 Classical motifs in modern fairy tales invariably turn out
to be derived from literary influences:23 we must never forget that Western Eu-
rope remained exposed to Greek myth because of the popularity of Ovid in the
Latin school curriculum.24
2. The Cyclopes in and outside Homer
Let us now turn to the Greek tradition. Recent research has increasingly real-
ised that Homer was an independent poet who regularly, to a larger or smaller
extent, modified pre-existing traditions in order to fit them into his own epics.25
20 As was already observed by K. Meuli, Gesammelte Schriften, 2 vols (Basel, 1976) 2.639–40.
21 L. Röhrich, Sage und Märchen (Freiburg, 1976) 234–52, 326–28 (‘Die mittelalterlichen
Redaktionen des Polyphem-Märchens und ihr Verhältnis zur ausserhomerischen Tradition’).
22 Note also the view of the influential early modern historian Keith Thomas, ‘The Mean-
ing of Literacy in Early Modern England’, in G. Baumann (ed.), The Written Word (Oxford,
1986) 97–131 at 120–21: ‘Authentic oral tradition, unaffected by any written text, is never easy
to find’.
23 See, convincingly, Fehling, Amor und Psyche, 89–97 and ‘Die alten Literaturen als
Quelle der neuzeitlichen Märchen’, in Siegmund, Antiker Mythos, 79–92; D.-R. Moser, ‘Die
Homerische Frage und das Problem der mündlichen Überlieferung aus volkskundlicher
Sicht’, Fabula 20 (1979) 116–36. It is typical that this discussion has been completely ignored
by W. F. Hansen, ‘Homer and the Folktale’, in I. Morris and B. Powell (eds), A New Companion
to Homer (Leiden, 1997) 442–62.
24 W. Burkert, ‘Vom Nachtigallenmythos zum “Machandelbaum”’, in Siegmund, Antiker
Mythos, 113–25.
25 See now B. Currie, Homer’s Allusive Art (Oxford, 2016).

34 Section I: Myths
In order to find out whether Homer has done so also in the case of the Cyclopes,
I will first look at the non-Homeric tradition. The oldest certain mention of
Cyclopes outside Homer occurs in that mine of mythological information,
Hesiod’s Theogony. He relates that they were like the gods (142) and that their
works displayed ‘strength and powers of invention’ (146). Both these qualities
appear in the Cyclopean tradition. When after ten years Zeus’ battle against the
Titans still proved unsuccessful, the goddess Ge (Earth) predicted victory if
Zeus would release ‘the Cyclopes who had been hurled down into the Tartarus’
by their father Ouranos for reasons obscure to us. So Zeus killed their ‘gaoleress
Kampe’, and in gratitude the Cyclopes forged his thunder, flash and lightning-
bolt, and in addition a helmet of invisibility for Hades and the trident for Po
seidon.26
Our source, the late mythographer Apollodorus, seems to derive this epi-
sode, directly or more probably indirectly, from a lost Archaic epic, the Titano
machy, but he also follows Hesiod, who gives as the names of the Cyclopes:
Brontes, ‘Thunder’, Steropes, ‘Lightner’, and Arges, ‘Flash’ (140).27 Given their
early role as smiths, it is not surprising that mythographers (historians?) told
that the Cyclopes were the first to make weapons in a Euboean cave, Teuchion
(P.Oxy. 10.1241). This primacy is confirmed by the Hellenistic historian Istros,
according to whom they were the inventors of weapons in bronze (FGrH 334 F
71). Orphic poets even stated that the Cyclopes instructed Hephaistos and Ath-
ena in the art of casting statues (OF 228, 269). The Cyclopes were out of place in
the ‘new order’ instituted by Zeus: they belonged to the divine generation be-
fore Zeus and they practised the dangerous activity of making weapons. That is
probably why according to an early tradition Apollo killed them or, according
to a later and ‘softer’ version, their sons.28 However, later poets did not want the
Cyclopes to disappear from the mythological scene altogether and made them
into helpers of Hephaistos. They settled them in the volcanic area of Sicily or
adjacent islands, and as assistants of the divine smith they became popular in
Roman art; as such they were even occasionally alluded to in later inscriptions
with literary pretensions.29
Given that forging iron requires physical strength, it is understandable that
the Cyclopes were also considered to have been giants, as immediately after
Hesiod and Homer the Spartan poet Tyrtaeus (12.3) mentioned their ‘size and
26 Hes. Th.. 504–5; Pind. F 266; Apollod. 1.1.2, 2.1, 3.10.4; J. Nollé, Side im Altertum, 2 vols
(Bonn, 1993–2001) 1.no. 3.

27 Pherecydes FGrH 3 F46 = 46 Fowler also mentions a Cyclops named Aortes; Hyginus,
Fab. 157 an Euphemus.

28 Pherecydes FGrH 3 F35 = 35 Fowler; Eratosth. Cat. 29; Hyg. Fab. 49 (sons); Apollod.
3.10.4.
29 Helpers: Eur. Cyc. 20; Thuc. 6.2; Callim. H. Artemis 46 ff; Nisbet and Hubbard on Hor.
C. 1.4.7; add P.Mich. 760. Roman art: Touchefeu-Meynier, ‘Kyklops, Kyklopes’, nos. 32–41.
Inscriptions: SEG 30.1254, 34.1308. Sicily: Aguirre and Buxton, Cyclops, 76–78.

strength’, and a later tradition ascribed to them the building of the first altar. In
view of their negative characterisation overall, it is not surprising that this feat
is recorded only once. On the other hand, early traditions ascribed imposing
buildings to the Cyclopes, such as the walls of Mycenae and Tiryns, and as
builders they remained famous all through antiquity.30 However impressive
these activities may seem to us, the Greek upper-classes looked down upon
those who had to work for a living. That is why Sophocles referred to the artisan
Daedalus as ‘living by his hands’ (F 164a) and why the Cyclopes were disparag-
ingly named ‘Bellyhands’, a description already existing in the fifth century BC
and lending further support to the antiquity of the ‘building’ tradition.31
Do these mythological representations also in some way reflect a historical
reality? Hesiod mentions only three Cyclopes, and later notices do not give the
impression of a larger group either. In fact, a group of smiths is not unique in
Greek mythology. Similar groups of people who are closely associated with iron
working and similarly abnormal in their physical appearance have been report-
ed for the island of Rhodes, where the local smiths, the Telchines, were repre-
sented as half-man, half-seal, and for Crete, where the smiths of Mt Ida were
called Daktyloi, ‘Tom Thumbs’: smiths could evidently be represented larger or
smaller than normal people.32 Such representations may look strange to us, but
all over the world the smith was a kind of outsider, whose work placed him
outside the normal activities of hunting or agriculture.33 It is plausibly this mar-
ginal position that led to these ‘monstrous’ representations. The consistency
with which smiths are represented as groups also suggests that early Greek
smiths did not work alone. However, the mythological imagination tends to
simplify real life in order to make the narrative more effective. It may well be
that iron working groups consisted of more than three workers, but we have no
evidence to decide the point.
30 Pind. F 169a.7; Bacchyl. 11.77; Pherec. FGrH 3 F12 = 12 Fowler; Soph. F 227; Eur. HF 15,
IA 1499; Hellanicus FGrH 4 F88 = 88 Fowler; Eratosth. Cat. 39 (altar); Verg. Aen. 6.631;
Strabo 8.6.8; Apollod. 2.2.1; Paus. 2.25.8; Anth. Pal. 7.748; schol. on Eur. Or. 965; Et. Magnum
213.29.
31 Hecataeus FGrH 1 F367 = 367 Fowler; Kassel and Austin on Nikophon F 6–12; Lloyd-
Jones and Parsons on Antimachus 77 SH; U. von Wilamowitz-Moellendorff, Der Glaube der
Hellenen, 2 vols (Darmstadt, 19593) 1.272: ‘offenbar aus altionischer Mythographie’.
32 M. Detienne and J.-P. Vernant, Les ruses de l’intelligence (Paris, 1978) 244–46, 254–55;
V. Dasen, Dwarfs in Ancient Egypt and Greece (Oxford, 1993) 196–97; F. Graf, ‘Mythical
Production: aspects of myth and technology in antiquity’, in R. Buxton (ed.), From Myth to
Reason? (Oxford, 1999) 317–28.
33 M. Eliade, The Forge and the Crucible (New York, 19712); A. Margarido and E. Wasser-
man-Germain, ‘Du mythe et de la pratique du forgeron en Afrique noire’, Diogène 78 (1972)

91–122; E. Marold, ‘Die Gestalt des Schmiedes in der Volkssage’, in L. Röhrich (ed.), Prob
leme der Sagenforschung (Freiburg, 1973) 100–11; K. Hauck, Wielands Hort (Stockholm,
1977); P. Boyer, ‘Le status des forgerons et ses justifications symboliques: une hypothèse cog-
nitive’, Africa 53 (1983) 44–63.

36 Section I: Myths
In Homer, we encounter a different kind of Cyclops. When Odysseus lands

in the land of the Cyclopes, it initially looks as if he has disembarked in a land
of Cockaigne. Here nature supplies everything without human effort, since the
Cyclopes need not sow or plough (108–9). But the initial impression soon proves
to be deceptive, since the lushness of nature is just one more sign of the absence
of a normal human community.34 In fact, the Cyclopes have no political institu-
tions or laws (106, 112), and do not live in houses but in caves (113–5), a kind of
habitation normally only ascribed in Greece to its primeval inhabitants or to
faraway peoples.35 Moreover, they are unfamiliar with commerce (127 ff), agri-
culture (134) and ships (136). In the light of this absence of civilisation, it is not
surprising that they are called ‘arrogant’ (106).
Within this uncivilised community, Polyphemos is even less civilised. He is
‘monstrously tall’ (187, 191) and has a ‘thundering voice’ (257). His cave is situ-
ated far away from the other caves; he never goes to visit other shepherds with
his herd (188); he always eats alone, which was unfavourably looked upon in
Greece,36 and he does not ‘rule’ over a wife and children (115, 188). Moreover, he
distinguishes himself from the civilised Odysseus by his culinary behaviour.
He is not only a cannibal, but even an uncivilised one, since each day he smash-
es some of Odysseus’ comrades against the ground ‘like young dogs’ (!) and
evidently consumes them raw (289).37 In addition to this ignorance about the
proper way of preparing meat, the Cyclops is also ignorant of the right way of
drinking, since Odysseus can make him drunk by supplying him with exquisite
wine. For the Greeks, wine mixed with water was the drink par excellence and
neigbouring peoples were regularly represented as either drinkers of milk or as
ignorant of the right way of drinking wine, correctly diluted with water.38 It is
now hardly surprising that Polyphemos even lacks the most elementary quali-
ties of normal human life: piety and hospitality (272 ff).39
34 In Greek culture, lushness of nature often is not a good sign, cf. J. Gould, Myth, Ritual
Memory, and Exchange (Oxford, 2001) 235–43.

35 R. Buxton, Imaginary Greece (Cambridge, 1994) 104–08; G. Siebert, ‘Imaginaire et
images de la grotte dans la Grèce archaïque et classique’, Ktema 15 ([1994]) 151–61; K. Sporn,
‘Mapping Greek Sacred Caves: sources, features, cults’, in F. Mavridis and J. M. Jensen (eds),
Stable Places and Changing Perceptions: cave archaeology in Greece (Oxford, 2013) 202–16.
36 Cf. S. M. Braund, ‘The Solitary Feast: a contradiction in terms’, BICS 40 (1995) 15–38;
J. N. Bremmer, Greek Religion (Cambridge, 20212) 58. For monophagos, ‘solitary eater’, as
insult, see Ar. Ve. 923; Amipsias F 23.
37 For the Greek view of cannibalism, see W. Burkert, ‘Aggression und Behagen: Die heili-
gen Schauer des Essens’, in A. Keck et al. (eds), Verschlungene Grenzen. Anthropophagie in
Literatur und Kulturwissenschaften (Tübingen, 1999) 243–56; A. A. Nagy, Qui a peur du can
nibale? (Turnhout, 2009).
38 F. Graf, ‘Milch, Honig und Wein. Zum Verständnis der Libation im griechischen Ritual’,
in Perennitas. Studi in onore di Angelo Brelich (Rome, 1980) 209–21; B. Marzullo, ‘Plat. Leg.
I 637e (akratopotai?)’, Museum Criticum 30–31 (1995–96) 177 f.
39 See also Aguirre and Buxton, Cyclops, 139–67.

It is part of Homer’s art that he does not stress the monstrous appearance of
the Cyclopes.40 Admittedly, he tells that Polyphemos is a giant and thus able to
throw rocks (481), but he does not explicitly mention that the Cyclopes have
only one eye.41 However, this is the implication of Odysseus’ blinding of
Polyphemos by putting a red-hot stake (below) into only one eye. The physical
description is only partly mirrored by the vase-painters. They clearly try to
picture him as a hairy giant, but there are very few early representations of a
one-eyed Cyclops; most vases give him two, and several, mostly later ones, even
three eyes,42 but Euripides’ Cyclops makes Polyphemos and the other Cyclopes
explicitly monocular, and Cratinus (F 156) calls him monommatos, ‘one-eyed’.43
In Greek mythology, the nature of mythological figures is often determined
not only by their activities but also by their genealogy. Whereas the Hesiodic
Cyclopes are children of Ouranos and Gaia, the father of Polyphemos was
Poseidon (Gellius 15.21.1). In pre-Homeric times, the later god of the sea had
occupied a more important position in the Greek pantheon. Apparently, he had
originally been closely connected with the world of the warrior, including initi-
ation. In this context he was also associated with macho and monstrous figures,
such as Kaineus (Chapter 9) and Kerkyon.44
When we now compare the Homeric representation of the Cyclopes with the
mythical tradition outside Homer, it is clear that besides their name and giant
appearance Homer has borrowed very little else from the Cyclopean tradition.
This difference already caused problems in antiquity and, as early as the
fifth-century mythographer Hellanicus, the solution was looked for in different
kinds of Cyclopes, a solution also adapted by modern scholarship.45 This seems
unnecessary. There is no reason to deny Homer the skill of invention and adap-
tation, as more recent scholarship has started to recognise (above). Instead of
depicting the traditional activity of the Cyclopes, Homer has transformed the
one marginal activity, that of smiths, into another one, better suited to the nar-
rative, that of herdsmen: Polyphemos tends his lambs (277–78) and he makes
cheese (240–41). Does that mean that Homer completely neglects their iron
working activities? Perhaps not. When Odysseus puts the redhot stake into
40 Contra Burkert, Kleine Schriften I, 119, who suggests that Homer simply forgot to men-
tion the detail.

41 This was already noted by Accius apud Gellius 3.11.5.
42 Touchefeu-Meynier, ‘Kyklops, Kyklopes’, no’s 17–31 and ‘Polyphemos I’, in LIMC
VIII.1 (1997) 1011–19 at 1017. For a possible Near Eastern origin of the one-eyed monster,
see M. Knox, ‘Polyphemos in his Near Eastern Relations’, JHS 99 (1979) 164–65; T. Poljakov,
‘A Phoenician Ancestor of the Cyclops’, ZPE 53 (1983) 95–98.
43 For Polyphemos in the Cyclops, see G. Mastromarco, ‘La degradazione del mostro. La
maschera del Ciclope nella commedia e nel dramma satiresco del quinto secolo a.’, in A. M.
Belardinelli et al. (eds), Tessere. Frammenti della commedia greca: studi e commenti (Bari, 1998)
9–42; Aguirre and Buxton, Cyclops, 117 (monocular).
44 Poseidon: Bremmer, The World, 21–27. Kerkyon: Choerilus F 1.
45 Hellanicus FGrH 4 F88 = 88 Fowler; Heubeck on Od. 9.106–15.

38 Section I: Myths
Polyphemos’ eye, Homer compares the foaming blood with the boiling water
in which a smith cools a big axe or a hatchet. Would it be too far-fetched to see
in this comparison also a subtle reference to the iron working activities of the
Cyclopes?
In his analysis of Odysseus’ confrontation with Polyphemos, to which we
will turn next, Walter Burkert writes that he would immediately forget the de-
tails of the Cyclopean life, if he ever had to memorise this story.46 I am sure this
is true, since we are fascinated by the confrontation proper, but this makes it all
the more important not to neglect Homer’s picture, which was evidently impor-
tant to him. It is not difficult to recognise in his enumeration of all these details
the robust self-confidence of a civilisation that is proud of its achievements and
looks down on those who have not yet reached that level of refinement. It is
exactly the mentality we would expect at the beginning of the Archaic Age
when colonisation brought the Greeks into contact with all kinds of foreign and
often less developed peoples. Homer, then, very much depicts the Cyclopes as
Victorian authors depicted ‘savages’.47
3. A pre-existing story?
If Homer hardly used the original Cyclopean tradition, the question becomes
legitimate whether he perhaps drew upon other traditions originally uncon-
nected with the Cyclopes. This is the direction taken by Walter Burkert in his
challenging observations on Polyphemos. According to Burkert, in his portray-
al of the Cyclops Homer drew on a primeval mythological tradition, even older
than the birth of the very first Indo-European community. Burkert approached
the problem by putting the question whether there exists a parallel to a giant,
who lives far away in a cave and tends a large herd of cattle. If put in this way,
the question is not difficult to answer. As Burkert saw, there is only one figure
who fits this description: the Lord of the Animals.48
Virtually all hunting peoples on earth appear once to have worshipped a di-
vine figure who was considered to be the owner of the game. This Lord or Lady
of the Animals looked after the animals and prevented hunters from hunting
more than was necessary. In addition to the more general Lord or Lady of all the
animals, there were also Lords or Ladies of different kinds of animals, included
46
Burkert, Structure and History, 31.
47
For the contrast between Odysseus and the Cyclopes, see also C. Calame, ‘Mythe grec
et structures narratives: le mythe des Cyclopes dans l’Odyssée’, in B. Gentili and G. Paioni
(eds), Il mito greco (Rome, 1977) 369–91; P. Vidal-Naquet, Le Chasseur noir (Paris, 19832)
39–68; C. Calame , ‘Les figures grecques du gigantesque’, Communications 42 (1985) 147–72
at 157–60; J. N. O’Sullivan ‘Nature and Culture in Odyssey 9?’, SO 85 (1990) 7–17; Ch. Auf-
farth, Der drohende Untergang (Berlin, 1991) 92–344.
48 Burkert, Structure and History, 33.

those of the sea. It is amazing that descendants of this figure, which so clearly
belongs to the vanished world of the hunting peoples, could maintain them-
selves in conservative and once more remote areas of Europe, such as Switzer-
land and the Tirol, until last century, witness the following Tirolian tradition
about certain giants:
They (the giants) protected the singing birds, … and sheep; hunters were even forbidden
to kill the first category. They opened the stables to sheep which had been kept indoors
too long, set free badly treated cattle and punished cruel people through avalanches.
They cried for sheep with fatal accidents.49
Given the persistence of this tradition in Western Europe until last century, it is
hardly surprising that we also find its offshoots in ancient Greece. As has often
been seen, among the gods Artemis, especially, and Pan incorporated elements
of the Lord or Lady of the Animals complex.50 Among heroes, it is the enigmat-
ic figure of Heracles in whose myths the Lord of the Animals stayed alive. Time
and again, he is pictured as the hero who manages to steal cattle from a monster
living far away in a cave. His most famous opponent is probably Geryon, who
lives on Erytheia, the ‘Red Island’, even beyond Okeanos, and in Greece vari-
ous herds of cattle were said to descend from Geryon’s original herd; according
to Roman myth, he also robbed the cattle from the monstrous Cacus.51 Burkert
persuasively connects these raids of Heracles with rituals in which shamans of
primitive hunting peoples acted out a fight with the Lord or Lady of the Ani-
mals in order to take possession of the precious game. This shamanistic origin
does not of course mean that Heracles himself once was a shaman. Apparently,
the myths continued to be handed down because of the continuing importance
of game and in Archaic times they became clustered round Heracles, the most
powerful Greek hero.
Already in the nineteenth century the resemblance between the myths of
Heracles and Indian Visvarupa had been noticed. In the brahmanas it is told
how Indra killed this demon, whose name means ‘of many shapes’, and liberated
the cattle he had hidden in his cave. Burkert compared this Visvarupa with one
of Heracles’ opponents, Periklymenos, the ‘very famous’, who, thanks to his
father Poseidon,52 could change himself in all kinds of shapes until Heracles
shot him in the shape of a bee and liberated the cattle of Neleus from his cave.53
49 I quote from the splendid study of the Lord of the Animals in Western Europe by
Röhrich, Sage und Märchen,142–95; further bibliography, J. N. Bremmer, The Early Greek
Concept of the Soul (Princeton, 1983) 129; E. Siegmund, Der “Herr der Tiere” in europäischen
Volksmärchen (Diss. Giessen, 2009) = https://d-nb.info/1001137132/34, accessed 15–10–2020.
50 Artemis: W. Burkert, Greek Religion (Oxford, 1985) 149 f. Pan: Ph. Borgeaud, Recherches
sur le dieu Pan (Rome, 1989) 100 f.

51 Geryon: Burkert, Structure and History, 83–85. Cacus: J. N. Bremmer and N. M. Horsfall,
Roman Myth and Mythography (London, 1987) 53.

52 Eur. Phoen. 1156–57; Hyginus, Fab. 157; Apollod. 3.6.8; schol. on Pind. N. 9.57a.
53 Burkert, Structure and History, 86.

40 Section I: Myths
If we combine Periklymenos’ characteristics – Poseidon, cattle and his name –

we seem to come very close to Polyphemos. Burkert thinks that the latter de-
rived his name ‘The very famous’ from the fame of the story. If that would have
been the case, the Cyclops should have had a different name first. This seems
highly improbable, since in Greek myth poets hardly ever changed the name of
their main protagonists; changing names happened to wives (Chapter 10.2) and
minor figures. It seems more likely that the name of Polyphemos is a calque on
that of Periklymenos. Just like Periklymenos, the Cyclops is a non-human fig-
ure, the owner of a large herd, living in a cave, ‘very famous’, and closely associ-
ated with Poseidon, his father. Moreover, the land of the Cyclopes is close to
that of the gods (Od. 7.206), just as the shamans had to fetch their game from the
Jenseits and Heracles had to travel to the Far West. Burkert, then, seems rightly
to have recognised the figure of the Lord of the Animals in the background of
Polyphemos.
Burkert also considers another element of the confrontation as referring to
prehistoric times. According to him, Odysseus could have blinded Polyphemos
with a sword instead of behaving like Palaeolithic man and hardening a stake
made from Polyphemos’ club in the fire. However, it seems very unlikely that
this element of the myth eventually reaches back into prehistory. First, the in-
vention of weapons or tools is rarely a theme in hunting myths.54 Secondly, the
blinding of Polyphemos is nowhere part of the myths and stories surrounding
the Lords and Ladies of the Animals. There is therefore no narrative tradition
to support Burkert’s suggestion. Thirdly, hardening of spears by fire was still
very common in the time of Homer and later periods. It was a technique availa-
ble to those who had no iron tools, such as less developed peoples like Libyans
and Mysians (Hdt. 7.71, 74), barbarians like the Germans or the poor, such as
the followers of Cataline; in fact, Vergil frequently associates it with peasants or
mentions it as a make-shift weapon.55 On the other hand, the use of fire to hard-
en Polyphemos’ club once again distinguishes the civilised Greek from the ‘sav-
age’ Cyclops. A club was typical for those at the margin of civilised society, like
Heracles, and remained so well into the Middle Ages.56 By using fire, Odysseus
favourably distinguishes himself from the Cyclops, who possessed only a ‘nat-
ural’ weapon and did not even use fire for his meals.57
The cannibalistic activities of Polyphemos may also be suggestive. In 1923,
the French folklorist Pierre Saintyves (1870–1935) published a study of the fairy
54 J. Bauer, ‘Jägerzeitliche Vorstellungen’, in Enzyklopädie des Märchens 7 (Berlin and
New York, 1993) 427–32.

55 Tac. Ann. 2.14 (Germans); Sall. F 87 (Cataline); Verg. Aen. 7.506 and 524, 11.894, 12.298;
Prop. 4.1.27–8; P. Kovács, ‘Hasta pura’, Acta Arch. Acad. Scient. Hung. 55 (2004) 81–92.
56 G. Widengren, ‘Harlekintracht und Mönchskutte, Clownhut und Derwischmütze’,
Orientalia Suecana 2 (1953) 41–111 at 93.

57 For eating raw, see C. P. Segal, ‘The Raw and the Cooked in Greek Literature: structure,
metaphor, values’, CJ. 69 (1973–74) 289–308.

tales of Perrault, in which on the basis of Tom Thumb he postulated that those
tales in which a cannibalistic giant keeps children or young men prisoner once
were connected with rites of initiation. Those African tales which he quoted as
proof do indeed refer to rituals, but this is not the case with the fairy tales of
Perrault, which mostly derive from literary sources.58 But if this example is not
very persuasive, the connection of some fairy tales with rites of initiation was
also argued by the famous Russian folklorist Vladimir Propp (1895–1970) and
has been accepted by the authoritative Enzyklopädie des Märchens.59
A typical example of such fairy tales, which has not been yet cited in this
context, was recorded in the Caucasus in 1913:
A king was unable to have children until he met a stranger who gave him an apple cut in
two. By eating the parts his wife would get sons, of whom the stranger would request
one. When the sons grew up, the stranger indeed returned and took one boy with him.
He educated him into a strong young man. One day, the youth heard from one of the
houses in his neighbourhood a voice which told him that each day his educator con-
sumed a prisoner from that house. Through a ruse the youth managed to let his educator
fall into the big kettle in which he cooked his prisoners. He opened the houses and the
prisoners appeared all to be young men. During two days they cooked their educator
until his flesh was separated from his bones (apparently he was a kind of giant!). Then
everybody went home. After some more adventures the strong youth became king.60
Here, we see a boy who grows up with a cannibal far from his parental home.
He escapes precisely at the age of becoming adult. In historical times, the young
novices of ‘primitive’ tribes do not stay with real cannibals but with the adult
males who keep them under control by intimidation. In the narrative world,
pretences can become reality, but the loss of the ritual means that we cannot
reconstruct its historical context. The presence of a kettle, however, in the story
seems to point to rites of rebirth. Kettles figure also in Greek myth, for example
in Medea’s ‘cooking’ of her father-in-law Pelias. 61 In the context of our theme it
is important to note that among many tribes the cannibalistic opponent of the
novices is the Lord of the Animals. 62
Cannibalism is also a theme in a curious ritual complex in Magnesia, a remote
Greek region, where the Hellenistic traveller Heraclides (2.8 Pfister) observed
the following ritual:
58 P. Saintyves, Les contes de Perrault (Paris, 1923), but see A. J. Dekker, ‘De kunst van het
interpreteren van sprookjes’, Volkskundig Bulletin 9 (1983) 160–80.

59 V. Propp, Die historischen Wurzeln des Zaubermärchens, 19461 (Munich and Vienna,
1987); H. Bausinger and K. Ranke, ‘Archaische Züge’, in Enzyklopädie des Märchens 1 (Berlin
and New York, 1977) 733–43 at 735.
60 I. Levin, Märchen aus dem Kaukasus (Düsseldorf, 1978) 26–35 (abbreviated).
61 M. Halm-Tisserant, Cannibalisme et immortalité: l’enfant dans le chaudron en Grèce
ancienne (Paris, 1993.

62 A. Brelich, Paides e parthenoi (Rome, 1969) 36 f.

42 Section I: Myths
On the top of Mt Pelion, 63 there is a cave, the so-called cave of Cheiron, and a sanctuary
of Zeus Aktaios. That is where the most distinguished young men of the citizens (τῶν
πολιτῶν οἱ ἐπιφανέστατοι καὶ ταῖς ἡλικίαις ἀκμάζοντες) climb to at the time of the ascent of
Sirius, when the heat is at its height. They are selected by the priest and are girded with
fresh, thrice-shorn sheepskins. It is that cold at the top!
Apparently, our observer thought that he saw a group of mountaineers, who

had armed themselves against the cold. 64 Burkert, on the other hand, has argued
that we have here the description of a sacrifice after which, in order to atone for
the killed sheep, the youths ascend to the sanctuary and cave of Cheiron. 65 One
need not follow Burkert here in his suggestion of atonement in order to recog-
nise that there is more to the description than just a day out mountaineering.
Unfortunately, the exact meaning of the Greek expression for the mountaineers
is not that easy to establish. My translation takes as its point of departure the
fact that ἡλικία is a term often used for the age-group of the young men; in fact,
on Crete an adolescent was called a βαλικιώτης. 66
Certainly, young men would well fit an expedition associated with Cheiron,
who was the Greek mythical educator and in his cave raised many Greek he-
roes, in particular Achilles and Jason, and indeed he appears on local coins.67
There were even whispers of pederastic activities in his cave, and elsewhere in
Thessaly he was connected with cannibalism,68 both motifs sometimes connect-
ed with rites of initiation. 69 Regarding the name of the sanctuary of Zeus our
traveller (or scribe) clearly made a mistake. As local inscriptions demonstrate,
the epithet of Zeus was Akraios not Aktaios. The sanctuary was the centre of
the Magnesian confederacy and the priest of Zeus Akraios one of its chiefs;70
this sanctuary must have been the place where once the Magnesian youths were
declared adult.
63 For an interesting description of Mt Pelion, see E. Janssens, ‘Le Pélion, le Centaure Chi-
ron et la sagesse archaïque’, in J. Bingen et al. (eds), Le monde grec. Hommages à Claire Préaux
(Brussels, 1975) 325–37.
64 For the ritual, see A. Henrichs, Greek Myth and Religion (Berlin and Boston, 2019)
93–95.
65 W. Burkert, Homo necans (Berkeley, Los Angeles, London, 1983) 112, 130–34.
66 Cf. P. Chantraine, Études sur le vocabulaire grec (Paris, 1956) 156–60, who compares
Hsch. β 159: βαλικιώτης· συνέφηβος. Κρῆτες. For the explanatory (specifying) force of καί, see
W. J. Verdenius, Mnemosyne IV 9 (1956) 249, 11 (1958) 194 and 21 (1968) 146. My translation is
also preferred by Borgeaud, Recherches, 117, note 11 (‘des jeunes gens’) and P. Bonnechere Le
sacrifice humain en Grèce ancienne (Athens and Liège, 1994) 147 (‘certains aristocrates, parmi
les plus jeunes’).
67 M. Gisler-Huwiler, ‘Cheiron’, in LIMC III.1 (1986) 237–48. Coins: B. V. Head, Historia
nummorum II (Oxford, 19112) 300.

68 Eratosth. Cat. 40 (pederasty); Monimos apud Clem. Al. Protr. 3.42.4 (cannibalism).
69 Pederasty: this volume, Chapter 11. Cannibalism: below on Damarchos.
70 Burkert, Homo necans, 113–14. Priest as chief: W. Ruge, ‘Magnesia’, in RE XIV (1930)
459–73 at 470.

Burkert has perceptively connected this ritual with the Polyphemos pas-
sage.71 He pointed out that in folklore versions of the episode the hero escapes
not under the ram but wrapped in its skin. Given the debatable value of these
versions as proper parallels (above, § 2), it is more important to note that to es-
cape hanging under sheep is in practice hardly possible and looks like the narra-
tive version of a ritual dressing up in ram’s skins. Moreover, as Burkert points
out, the cannibalistic meal is the turning point for Odysseus. After the encoun-
ter with Polyphemos, he has still nine more years to wander before returning,
restoring order and becoming the king of Ithaca. In a similar way, it was told of
the Arcadian Olympic winner Damarchos (ca. 400 BC) that after a cannibalistic
feast in honour of Zeus Lykaios he had to wander around ‘as a wolf’ for nine
years in order to return in the tenth year as human and adult.72 It seems not
unreasonable to conclude that the ritual witnessed by our Hellenistic traveller
in some way might have been connected with rites of initiation, however ob-
scure that connection may be to us now or to Heraclides.
In various ways, then, Odysseus’ encounter with Polyphemos seems to refer
to a background in rites of initiation.73 This is perhaps not surprising. We know
that various important Greek myths were closely associated with rites of initia-
tion, such as Jason and the Argonauts (Preface)74 or Meleager and the Calydoni-
an Hunt (Chapter 4). Initiatory motifs also abound in myths connected with
important figures of the Trojan War, such as Paris, Hector, Achilles, Philoctetes
and Odysseus himself (Chapter 1). As poets often acted as initiators/educators
in Greece – but also elsewhere, as, for example, in the already mentioned Turk-
ish Book of Dede Korkut – it would be strange if they had not woven initiatory
motifs into the myths which set standards for the young novices to follow.75 In
the time of Homer, the traditional rites of initiation for the elite youths had
mostly disappeared, disintegrated or were being reinterpreted in many parts of
Greece.76 This is why, I suggest, we do not find a standard initiatory scenario
underlying his poems. Yet the transvestism of Achilles and Dionysos, the
change of name of Paris, the wound in the foot of Philoctetes, and Odysseus’
hunt with his maternal uncles all show that Homer, too, elaborated a tradition
72 Cf. R. Buxton, Myths & Tragedies in their Ancient Greek Contexts (Oxford, 2013) 33–51
(werewolves); D. Ogden, The Werewolf in the Ancient World (Oxford, 2021); this volume,
Chapter 1.6 (nine years).
73 For some further comparative observations, see K. R. McCone, ‘The Cyclops in Celtic,
Germanic and Indo-European Myth’, Studia Celtica 30 (1996) 89–111.

74 See also F. Graf, ‘Orpheus: a poet among men’, in J. N. Bremmer, Interpretations of
Greek Mythology (London, 19882) 80–106 at 95–99 and ‘Medea, the Enchantress from afar’, in
J. Clauss and S. I. Johnston (eds.), Medea (Princeton, 1997) 21–43; this volume, Preface.
75 Bremmer, The World, 421.
76 For an illustrative example of the later reinterpretation of original rites of initiation, see
F. Graf, ‘The Locrian Maidens’, in R. Buxton, Oxford Readings in Greek Religion (Oxford,
2000) 250–70.

44 Section I: Myths
in which initiatory motifs played a major role.77 Even if we are no longer able to
trace its precise background, Odysseus’ encounter with Polyphemos would
perfectly fit such a context.
4. Conclusion
It is time to reach a conclusion. We have seen that early Greek mythology knew
a group of smiths, the Cyclopes. Homer borrowed the name of these monstrous
figures, but very little else of their tradition, in his tale of Odysseus and
Polyphemos. In addition to employing initiatory motifs, he used the Cyclopes
as a foil to Odysseus to stress the civilisation and cleverness of his contempo-
rary audience. His narrative shows that monsters need not always be employed
to frighten the audience, as usually happens in the modern media, but can also
be used for sociological explorations. At the same time, Homer told such a good
story that through oral and written channels it reached people in all corners of
Europe and even beyond. A good monster always transcends national borders.78
77For discussions of these motifs, see this volume, Preface, Chapters 1, 3, 8, 9 and 13.
78
A first version of this chapter appeared as ‘Op zoek naar de Cycloop’, Hermeneus 56
(1984) 10–19 For information, I am grateful to Jacqueline Borsje and Nicholas Horsfall (1946–
2019). Ken Dowden helpfully corrected my English.

Chapter 3
Demons of the Wilderness: the Centaurs
Thinking of wilderness, I inevitably came to recall the books I read in my youth

about brave trappers and cruel Red Indians, as they were still called in those
days. It was typical of that wilderness that it was in the process of being civi-
lised, as the white settlers built their log huts and gradually developed the land,
despite being frequently attacked by the Indians. In short, the wilderness has a
strong American connotation for me. Yet the idea of a wilderness, of an area
outside, but sometimes close to, civilisation is hardly limited to the USA. On
the contrary, we find it in Archaic Greece, where we have a very typical type of
landscape that both in reality and in myth can be seen as wilderness: the moun-
tains. This already becomes apparent in one of the earliest Greek literary texts,
Homer’s Odyssey, where the poet characterises the one-eyed Cyclopes as fol-
lows: ‘they have neither assemblies for council nor appointed laws, but they in-
habit the peaks of high mountains in hollow caves’;1 in later times the Greek
word for mountain, oros,2 was even used to denote the Egyptian desert.3 Now
Richard Buxton has well analysed the mountains and their ‘wilderness aspects’,
both in reality and in the Greek mythological imagination.4 In his studies, he
has isolated three main aspects of mythical mountains:
1. the mountains are outside and wild,
2. they are ‘before’,
3. they are places of reversals.
1 Od. 9.112–14; this volume, Chapter 2.

2 For the Greek views of mountains, see W. W. Hyde, ‘The Ancient Appreciation of Moun-
tain Scenery’, CJ 11 (1915–1916) 70–84 and ‘The Mountains of Greece’, Bull. Geograph. Soc.
Philadelphia 13 (1915) 1–16, 47–64, 110–26, summarized in Classical Weekly 12–13 (1919)
97–99; M. H. Jameson, ‘Mountains and the Greek City States’, in J. F. Bergier (ed.), Mon
tagnes, fleuves, forêts dans l’histoire (St. Katharinen, 1989) 7–17; B. Meissner, ‘Vorstellungen
der Griechen von den Bergen’, in E. Olshausen and H. Sonnabend (eds), Stuttgarter Kolloqui
um zur historischen Geographie des Altertums 5 (Amsterdam, 1996) 50–69. Olshausen and
Sonnabend’s book also contains many other interesting studies on aspects of Greek moun-
tains.
3 H. Cadell and R. Rémondon, ‘Sens et emplois de to oros dans les documents papyrolo
giques’, REG 80 (1967) 343–49.

4 R. Buxton: ‘Montagnes mythiques, montagnes tragiques’, Ktema 15 (1990 [1994]) 151–72;
Imaginary Greece (Cambridge, 1994) 81–96 and Myths & Tragedies in their Ancient Greek
Contexts (Oxford, 2013) 9–31.

46 Section I: Myths
Buxton paid little attention, though, to the most prominent mythological in-
habitants of the mountains, the Centaurs. That is why I have chosen to look at
those beings, half horse, half human or, put differently, humans, usually males
and only much later females, first with the barrel and the hindquarters of the
horse joined to the buttocks of a full-length man, later males with an equine
lower body, who lived on the mountains.5 By focussing on these mythological
mountainous beings, we will inquire to what extent they corroborate Buxton’s
conclusions or may perhaps somewhat nuance them.
1. The Centaurs: general observations
The Centaurs have regularly been studied, but modern research started only in
the 1870s. It was a time in which nature was seen as the key to unlock Greek
mythology. 6 Thus the great Wilhelm Mannhardt (1831–1880) admirably collect-
ed the then available evidence, made important observations regarding the an-
tiquity of the various motifs, persuasively concluded that the Centaurs went
back to a period before Homer,7 but interpreted the Centaurs as the personifi-
cations of tornadoes. Around the same time, the meritorious, if often misguid-
ed, Wilhelm Roscher (1845–1923) interpreted them as the personifications of
cascading mountain brooks.8 Moreover, Mannhardt had also been impressed by
the then popular construction of late nineteenth- and early twentieth-century
etymologists of a connection between the Centaurs and the Indian Gandharvas,
which was also taken up by Georges Dumézil (1898–1986) in ‘ein luftiges Hy-
pothesengebäude’,9 although ‘the names do not correspond by the rules of pho-
nology, and the creatures have virtually nothing in common mythologically’.10
5 C. Robert, Die griechische Heldensage I (Berlin 1920 4) 426 (still valuable for the literary
evidence); more recently, T. Gantz, Early Greek Myth (Baltimore, 1993) 14347; M. Leven-
topoulou et al., ‘Kentauroi et Kentaurides’, in LIMC VIII.1 (Zürich, 1997) 671–721; P. Linant
de Bellefonds, ‘Kentauroi et Kentaurides’, in LIMC, Suppl. 2009 (Düsseldorf, 2009) 1.306–10;
A. Pasquier, ‘De la néréide à la centauresse. Un porte-lampes en bronze inédit conserve au
musée du Louvre’, Monuments Piot 90 (2011) 5–43; M. Di Fazio, ‘Il problema dei centauri’, in
M. C. Biella et al. (eds), Il bestiario fantastico di età orientalizzante nella penisola italiana
(Trento, 2012) 315–35; M. Herranz, Imágenes de centauros en los vasos áticos de figuras negras
y de figuras rojas: siglos VIII A.C. – IV A.C. (Oxford, 2017).
6 For this period, see Bremmer, The World, 520–25; R. Gordon, ‘The Greeks, Religion and
Nature in German Neo-humanist Discourse from Romanticism to Early Industrialisation’, in

T. Scheer (ed.), Natur – Mythos – Religion im antiken Griechenland (Stuttgart, 2019) 49–70.
7 W. Mannhardt, Wald- und Feldkulte, 2 vols (Berlin, 1876–77) 2.39–102.
8 W. H. Roscher, ‘Kentauren’, in id. (ed.), Ausführliches Lexikon der griechischen und
römischen Mythologie II (Leipzig, 1890–92) 1032–88 at 1058 f.

9 G. Dumézil, Le problème des Centaures (Paris, 1929); note also A. Carnoy, ‘Le concept
mythologique du gandharva et du centaure’, Muséon 49 (1936) 99–113; M. P. Nilsson,

Geschichte der griechischen Religion I (Munich, 19411, 19673) 231 (quotation).
10 M. L. West, Indo-European Poetry and Myth (Oxford, 2007) 285, note 14.

Chapter 3: Demons of the Wilderness: the Centaurs 47
Around 1900, Martin P. Nilsson (1874–1967), a Swedish farmer’s son, consol-

idated the turn away from myth to ritual in the study of Greek religion. He also
canonised the agrarian interpretation of ritual in his Handbuch der griechischen
Religion, the authoritative handbook of Greek religion in the middle of the
twentieth century.11 Nilsson did not make any progress beyond Mannhardt,
although he still paid the necessary attention to the Centaurs. Walter Burkert,
on the other hand, in the authoritative handbook of Greek religion of our own
times, hardly considers them at all.12 Unlike Nilsson, Burkert concentrates on
the sociological and psychological aspects of Greek religion and, in general, is
much less interested in its agricultural side. Yet the Centaurs constitute an im-
portant part of early Greek mythology, connected as they are with the great
mythological heroes Achilles and Heracles. Moreover, as we will see, they
proved to be ‘good to think with’. As they have been neglected for a long time,
there is thus room for a new discussion.
Yet before entering into a discussion of specific episodes, let us first make
some general observations on the nature of the Centaurs. In the earliest Greek
literature there are already a number of pointers to their wild nature and to their
lack of those qualities that characterise civilised mortals. This is immediately
clear from the place where they live, as Homer calls them φηρσὶν ὀρεσκῴοισι,
‘mountain-bred animals’.13 The place of habitation also reflected itself in their
names: in pseudo-Hesiod’s Shield (186) we find a Centaur named Oureios,
‘Mountainous’, and on the famous François Vase of about 570 BC one of the
Centaurs is called Orosbios, ‘Living in the mountains’.14
In Greece, the landscape can easily be divided into the fertile plains and the
wild mountains. In a structuralist manner, we can see the plain as the civilised
area of the polis that was in opposition to the sea and the mountains.15 A Greek
curse states ‘to the mountain or into the sea’ in order to indicate the two places
from where no return was possible,16 as is also clear from the myth of Oedipus
who was exposed either in the mountains or, according to the alternative ver-
sion, in a basket in the sea.17 Yet mythology, as we have gradually come to real-
ise, not only reflects, but also refracts, clarifies and simplifies reality. This is also
apparent in the opposition plain/mountain. In reality, there was often an inter-
mediate area of marginal, waste or scrub land on the slopes of the mountains
11 On Nilsson, see Bremmer, The World, 13–16.

12 Nilsson, Geschichte der griechischen Religion I, 229–32; W. Burkert, Greek Religion
(Oxford, 1985) 173, 209, 232. On Burkert (1931–2015), see Bremmer, The World, 16–19.
13 Il. 1.267–68, cf. Bacchylides F 66: ὀρικοίτας Κένταυρ[ος]; Eur. Her. 364–5: τάν τ᾽ὀρεινόμον
ἀγρίων Κενταύρων ποτὲ γένναν, IA 1047: Κενταύρων ἐν ὄρεσι.

14 R. Wachter, ‘The Inscriptions on the François Vase’, MH 48 (1991) 86–113 at 99 (no. 6 4).
15 The plain/mountain contrast is also noted by the Greeks themselves: Theophrast, Hist.
plant. 1.8.1, 3.11.2; Polybius 18.31; Arrian, Anab. 7.9.2.

16 H. S. Versnel, ‘Polycrates and His Ring’, Studi Storico-religiosi 1 (1977) 17–46 at 41 f.
17 This volume, Chapter 10.1.

48 Section I: Myths
and near the sea, which was exploited in times of economic expansion and aban-
doned in times of economic decline. This land was called eschatia.18 However,
we do not find this marginal land in mythology, which often likes to keep things
clear and simple: just plains and mountains.
Furthermore, whereas phêr normally means ‘wild animal’, in this case it
looks like an archaic expression that is becoming extinct: apparently, Homer no
longer understood the phrase and interpreted Phêres as a name for the Centaurs,
which suggests an origin for the Centaurs in the Dark Ages.19 This is all the
more likely since the discovery in Euboean Lefkandi in 1969 of a large terra
cotta Centaur, of the second half of the tenth century BC, and the occurrence of
a Centaur on the bottom of a Cypriot plate of the late tenth century as well as
their appearance in Attica and Olympia on vases and statuettes in the eighth
century. By the mid-seventh century they were even known in West Greece.20
This widespread occurrence supports the ancient character of the Centaurs,
who seem to have been imagined as living in Greece in other areas besides the
canonical Mt Pelion (below), witness ‘the grave of Nessos and the other Cen-
taurs’ on Aetolian Mt Taphiassos (Strabo 9.4.8).
The ‘animal type’ character of the Centaurs is also expressed by their early
epithets λαχνήεις, ‘hairy’ (Il. 2.43), μελαγχαίτης, ‘black-haired’, and λασιαύχην,
‘with shaggy neck’, an epithet that also is applied to bears and, not surprisingly,
to horses.21 Yet they are not only hairy like animals, but their diet also runs
contrary to that of humans and resembles that of the more dangerous beasts of
prey, as they are ὠμόφαγος, ‘raw eating’, like lions, wolves, jackals and fish as
well as, and not to be forgotten, the Sphinx, itself called an οὔρειον τέρας,
‘mountain prodigy’, by Euripides.22 In fact, an Archaic epic poet succinctly
states: ‘the Centaurs have no nous, ‘mind, reason’,23 even though Pindar (P. 3.5)
says of Cheiron, the most civilised Centaur (below), that he had a ‘noos friendly
to men’. It will not be surprising, then, that although many Greeks carried the-
ophoric or herophoric names, there were very few people with the element
18 For bibliography, see this volume, Chapter 1 note 62.

19 A. Hoekstra, Homeric Modifications of Formulaic Prototypes (Amsterdam, 1965) 152–53;
J. Latacz et al., Homers Ilias. Gesamtkommentar I.2 (Leipzig, 2000) 108. Hesiod F 209.5
a lready updated the expression by writing Κενταύροισιν ὀρεσκώιοισι, ‘mountainous Centaurs’.
20 For the early, post-Mycenaean Centaurs, see J. M. Padgett, ‘Centaurs and Satyrs in Ear-
ly Greek Art’, in id. (ed.), The Centaur’s Smile (New Haven and London, 2003) 3–46 at 5–14
(with wonderful photos); slightly different, S. Langdon, Art and Identity in Dark Age Greece,
1100–700 B. C. E. (Cambridge, 2008) 95–98.
21 Mελαγχαίτης: Hes. Sc. 186; Soph. Tr. 837; λασιαύχην: Hom. H. Hermes 224, cf. Hom. H.
Dionysos 46 (bear); Soph. Ant. 350 (horse).

22 Homer, Il. 5.782, 7.256 (lions), 11.479 (jackals), 16.157 (wolves); Ibycus F 40.4 (fish);
C. Segal, ‘The Raw and the Cooked in Greek Literature: Structure, Values, Metaphor’, CJ 69
(1974) 289–308. Sphinx: Aesch. Sept. 541; Eur. Phoen. 806.
23 Pisander F 9 Davies = Bernabé, cf. Kassel and Austin on Teleclides F 49.

‘Centaur’ in their name.24 Clearly, Centaurs were not beings a civilised Greek
wanted to be associated with.
The Centaurs, then, not only lived in the wilderness, but were also wild
themselves, transgressing the norms of civilisation. In the pseudo-Hesiodic, but
early, poem Kaminos (F 302) they even appear as potential wreckers of human
artefacts; this may well be the reason that Centaur names recur as the names of
dogs already in the Archaic Age.25 Although interest in the Centaurs lasted in
literature until late antiquity – Centaurs are still mentioned in the ancient Greek
and Roman novel, 26 in Phlegon, 27 and in Jerome’s biography of Paul, the (ficti-
tious) very first Christian hermit 28 – I will limit myself to the older traditions,
mainly those attested before the end of the fifth century BC, as from the fourth
century onwards Centaurs increasingly figured in contexts in which they did
not play a role before;29 in fact, even female and baby Centaurs now appeared on
the scene.30
Admittedly, references to the Centaurs are rather few and far between in old-
er Greek literature, which shows that their myths were well known and did not
need to be spelled out by the poets. Longer, more detailed narratives, often go-
ing back to much older sources, can be found only in later mythographers, such
as Diodorus Siculus, Hyginus and Apollodorus, all dating from around the turn
of the Christian era or well after. These authors operated in a world where
knowledge of mythology had become part of people’s cultural capital, and thus
they fulfilled a social need with their handbooks.31 From them we can isolate
24 As noted by L. Robert, Opera Minora Selecta 1 (Amsterdam, 1969) 650–52, who also
collects the few examples.

25 Wachter, ‘The Inscriptions on the François Vase’, 97 and Non-Attic Greek Vase Inscrip
tions (Oxford, 2001) 290.

26 Apul. Met. 4.8.22; Lollianus, fr. B 1 verso, 14–15 Henrichs.
27 K. E. Shannon-Henderson. ‘Phlegon’s Paradoxical Physiology: Centaurs in the Peri
Thaumasion’, in G. Kazantzidis (ed.), Medicine and Paradoxography (Berlin and Boston, 2019)
141–62.
28 Jerome: P. C. Miller, ‘Jerome’s Centaur: a hyper-icon of the desert’, J. Early Christian
Stud. 4 (1996) 209–33; R. Wisniewski, ‘Bestiae Christum loquuntur ou des habitants du désert
et de la ville dans la Vita Pauli de saint Jérôme’, Augustinianum 40 (2000) 105–44; S. Rebenich,
‘Inventing an Ascetic Hero. Jerome’s Life of Paul the First Hermit’, in A. J. Cain and J. Lössl
(eds), Jerome of Stridon. His Life, Writings and Legacy (Farnham, 2009) 13–27; A. Cain‚ ‘An-
tony’s Onocentaur: the symbolism of a mythological curiosity (Athanasius, Vita Antonii
53,1–3)’, WS 133 (2020) 107–18.
29 G. Morawietz, Der gezähmte Kentaur (Munich, 2001) 13; M. Alganza Roldán et al.,
‘The Reception History of Palaephatus1 (On the Centaurs) in Ancient and Byzantine Texts’,
Polymnia 3 (2017) 186–235 = https://polymnia-revue.univ-lille3.fr/pdf/2017/Polymnia-3–2017-
7-Alganza-Barr-Hawes.pdf, accessed 4–1-2021.
30 But there is good reason to doubt the authenticity of Lucian’s description of their occur-
rence in a painting by Zeuxis, cf. M. Pretzler, ‘Form over Substance? Deconstructing Ecphrasis
in Lucian’s Zeuxis and Eikones’, in A. Bartley (ed.), A Lucian for our Times (Cambridge, 2009)
157–71.
31 Bremmer, The World, 511–14.

50 Section I: Myths
five important scenes: after the ancestor of the Centaurs (§ 2) we will first look
at the Centaur Cheiron, the educator of Achilles (§ 3), then the battle between
Centaurs and Lapiths (§ 4) and the attempted rape by the Centaur Nessos of the
wife of Heracles (§ 5) and, last but not least, Heracles’ visit to the Centaur Pho-
los and the subsequent battle against the Centaurs, which ended in the extinc-
tion of the Centaurs (§ 6), an element of their myth that has not received the at-
tention it deserves. Together these five scenes, which we will try to reconstruct
from the older sources, will throw light on the nature of the Centaurs and will
enable us to sketch a nuanced picture of their embodiment of wilderness.
2. The Birth of the Centaurs
Our oldest source, Pindar, relates how Ixion, the prototypical Greek trickster,
tried to rape Hera, but instead lay with Nephele, a cloud in the shape of ‘the
foremost heavenly goddess, Kronos’ daughter’. As a result, ‘that unique mother’
bore ‘a unique son, who was overbearing and respected neither among men nor
in the ways of the gods’, who was called Kentauros by his nurse.32 ‘He (Kentau-
ros) mated with Magnesian mares in the foothills of Pelion. And from them
issued a wondrous herd of offspring, similar to both parents, with the mother’s
features below, the father’s above’, thus reflecting the iconographical develop-
ment of the sixth century.33 Martin West has compared the Greek myth with
that of the Indian one about the immortal Saranyu, who became pregnant of the
Asvins with the mortal Vivasvat and then assumed the shape of a mare, but also
ran away leaving her husband with a facsimile of herself. One is also reminded
of Poseidon turning himself into a stallion when Demeter tried to escape from
his advances in the shape of a mare, thus begetting the very first horse, Arion.34
We dimly seem to see here the remnants of Indo-European myths connected
with the birth of the first horse and other equine beings, which in itself should
not surprise us, given the huge importance of the horse for the expansion of the
32 Although in later times other Centaurs also seem to have been considered their off-
spring, cf. the Hellenistic poem published by M. Huys, Le poème élégiaque P.Brux.inv.E.8934
et P.Sorb.inv.2254: édition, commentaire et analyse stylistique (Brussels, 1991) 41 (on line 6);
Hyginus, Fab. 33.1.
33 Pind. P. 2.33–48, tr. Race, Loeb, overlooked by West, Indo-European Poetry and Myth,
192–93, who compares a scholion on P.Oxy. 3.421 and Il. 1.263; Nonnos, D. 7.125; Eustathius
on Il. 1.268; add also Aesch. F *89. For a possible iconographical identification of Kentauros,
see M. Steinhardt, ‘Demeter Lernaia und Kentauros’, in E. Moormann and V. Stissi (eds),
Shapes and Images. Studies … Herman A. G. Brijder (Leuven, 2009) 179–85 at 182–84.
les, London, 1979) 127–28; W. Doniger O’Flaherty, Women, Androgynes, and Other Mythical
Beasts (Chicago and London, 1980) 166–212 (interesting parallels, improbable interpreta-
tions).

Indo-Europeans.35 In any case, it is clear that from such an unnatural birth,

based on rape, no normal civilised offspring could be expected. And that is of
course what we will see.
3. Cheiron
Of all the Centaurs known to us, by far the most famous was Cheiron.36 As his
name shows, there are a few named individuals among the Centaurs as an, in
general, anonymous group. This is typical of Greek mythology,37 as can also be
seen in another group of wild men, the Satyrs and Silenoi, who, later, were often
associated with the Centaurs. In antiquity, Cheiron’s name was already etymol-
ogised as ‘handy’, from Greek χείρ, ‘hand’ (Isid. Orig. 4.9.12), which is not im-
mediately unconvincing considering his handiness in medicine (Il. 9.832) or as
χείρων, ‘lesser, worse’ (Et. Magnum 810.37), which is less persuasive. Yet lin-
guistic arguments speak against the connection with ‘hand’, just as the name
‘Centaur’ has not been properly explained yet, and these obscure non-Greek
etymologies may well be additional arguments for the great antiquity of the
Centaurs.38 Cheiron was the son of Kronos and Philyra, the daughter of
Okeanos, although later times confused his father with the just mentioned
Ixion.39 Kronos had become a stallion to sire his hybrid son, a myth that was
quietly omitted by Homer, who was generally above such unlikely tales.40 This
particular version of the myth cannot be too old, as Kronos entered Greek my-
thology and religion fairly late,41 but the motif of the metamorphosis of a god
into a horse can also be found in Indo-European mythology as we just saw (§ 2),
and probably derives from there. It is clear that the myth had to explain the
equine shape of Cheiron, but it also positioned him close to Kronos, the older
35 For the Indo-European background of the mention of horses in early Greek poetry, see
R. Platte, Equine Poetics (Washington DC, 2017).

36 M. Gisler-Huwiler, ‘Cheiron’, in LIMC III.1 (1986) 237–48; G. Guillaume-Coirier,
‘Chiron Phillyride’, Kernos 8 (1995) 113–22; E. Aston, ‘The Absence of Chiron’, CQ 56 (2006)
349–62.
37 A. Brelich, Gli eroi greci (Rome, 1956) 325 f.
38 Cheiron: Wachter, Non-Attic Greek Vase Inscriptions, 263–64. Centaurs: A. de Angelis,
‘Tra dati linguistic e fonti letterarie: per un’etimologia del gr. Kéntauros “divoratore di vis-
cera”’, Glotta 85 (2009) 59–74 (not persuasive).
39 Souidas FGrH 602 F1.
40 Titanomachia F 9 Davies = 10 Bernabé; Hes. Th. 1002; Pind. P. 3.1–3, 4.115, 6.22, 9.30;
Pherecydes FGrH 3 F50 = 50 Fowler; TrGF Adesp. *734b. For Homer’s minimising of the
supernatural, see J. Griffin, ‘The Epic Cycle and the Uniqueness of Homer’, JHS 97 (1977)
39–53, reprinted with minor revisions in D. Cairns (ed.), Oxford Readings in Homer’s Iliad
(Oxford, 2001) 365–84, even though he may overstate his case, cf. the sensible comments of
S. I. Johnston, Restless Dead (Berkeley, Los Angeles, London, 1999) 32–35.
41 J. N. Bremmer, Greek Religion and Culture, the Bible and the Ancient Near East (Leiden,
2008) 82.

52 Section I: Myths
divine ruler, who had been defeated by Zeus. As Okeanos also belonged to the
oldest generation of gods,42 the message of this genealogy is clear: Cheiron basi-
cally belonged to a generation of gods that had to be removed from power before
Zeus could institute the present world and the rule of the Olympian gods.43
Cheiron lived in Magnesia on Mt Pelion in a cave, the so-called Chironion,44
close to the sanctuary of Zeus Akraios,45 the most important god of the Magne-
sians, where he even appears on local coins.46 In the Greek imagination, caves
were typical of wild or aboriginal beings. People lived in caves before houses, as
did monstrous figures like the Cyclopes (Introduction, above), the snake Echid-
na or the terrible Harpies.47 Cheiron, then, not only lived on a mountain, but,
even there, he did not have a civilised place in which to live.
In the Iliad (11.832), Homer mentions Achilles, ‘whom Cheiron taught’.48
The reference is allusive, as we hear no more about it in the passage, which
shows that the audience was supposed to know the story. In fact, the Iliad is
very sparse with information regarding Cheiron, and this has persuasively been
connected with the already mentioned minimising of the supernatural by
Homer.49 Interestingly, the wider passage suggests that a Homeric hero was
acquainted with the art of medicine. The medicinal expertise of Cheiron also
appears in another Iliadic passage where he is said to have given herbs to As-
clepius (4.217–19), which, however, need not already imply his later education
by Cheiron as related by Pindar (P. 3.5–8), as has often been suggested.50 Still,
42 Bremmer, Greek Religion and Culture, 2–4

43 For Cheiron as divine, see Pind. P. 4.119; Aesch. Prom. 1027 (?); Soph. Trach. 714–15;
Apollod. 2.5.4.
44 Il. 2.744; Hes. F 40.2 and 204.87; Pindar, I. 8.42–3, P. 2.45, 3.4, 4.102, 9.30; Eur. IA 705;
Nicander, Ther. 502; Heraclides, Periegesis 2.8; Strabo 9.5.19; Diod. Sic. 4.70; Statius,
Ach. 1.106–08; schol. Il. 1.268, 16.144 (precise location); Eustathius on Il. 22.832–34; SEG
1.248; M. and R. Capon, Magnesia, a Story of a Civilisation (Athens, 1982) 98 (identification).
For interesting descriptions of Mt Pelion see E. Janssens, ‘Le Pélion, le Centaure Chiron et
la sagesse archaïque’, in J. Bingen et al. (eds), Le monde grec. Hommages à Claire Préaux
(Brussels, 1975) 325–37; P. Louis, ‘Monstres et monstruosités dans la biologie d’Aristote’,
ibidem, 277–84.
45 Our source, Heraclides, Periegesis 2.8, writes Zeus Aktaios, but this is a scribal mistake,
cf. F. Graf, ‘Zeus and his Parhedroi in Halikarnassos. A Study on Religion and Inscriptions’,
in A. Martinez Fernandez (ed.), Estudios de Epigrafia Griega (La Laguna, 2009) 333–48 at 339,
note 26; see also IG IX 2, 1128 (a dedication of a priest with the second name Kentauros to
Zeus Akraios in Demetrias, close to Mt Pelion).
46 Robert, Opera Minora Selecta 1, 651 , 50; A. Moustaka, Kulte und Mythen auf thessali
schen Münzen (Würzburg, 1983) 73, Taf. VI.20; this volume, Chapter 2.3.
47 G. Siebert, ‘Imaginaires et images de la grotte dans la Grèce archaïque et classique’,
Ktema 15 (1990 [1994]) 151–61; Buxton, Imaginary Greece, 104–08; K. Sporn, ‘Espace naturel
et paysages religieux: les grottes dans le monde grec’, RHR 227 (2010) 553–71.
48 See also Hes. F 204; Bacchylides F 27. For a very full account of Achilles’ education,
which almost certainly goes back to old sources, see Statius, Ach. 2.96–167.
49 C. J. Mackie, ‘Achilles’ Teachers in the Iliad’, G&R 44 (1997) 1–10 at 3 f.
50 Contra Mackie, ‘Achilles’ Teachers’, 2.

his Thessalian origin fits the connection with Mt Pelion well: before the begin-
ning of Byzantine times, Cheiron himself is never depicted in a medicinal role.51
The allusive character of the Homeric passage about Cheiron’s teaching also
struck later readers,52 who knew from other sources that his father Peleus or, as
some younger poets report, his mother Thetis, had handed over young Achilles
to the Centaur, who forecast the early death of the hero to his mother.53 The
earlier version, however, was always represented on the older vases, which
already feature the theme in the later seventh century.54 Hesiod knew that Chei-
ron had also educated Jason, the famous hero of the Argonauts, who took to sea
from Iolkos, a harbour below Mt Pelion, to fetch the Golden Fleece, just as he
had educated Medeios, Jason’s son.55 Actaeon was also educated by Cheiron
before being torn to pieces by his own dogs, but the latter event took place on
Mt Kithaeron, not Mt Pelion, and thus is a clear case of poetic expansion, not an
age-old tradition. The fact that in later times a whole list could be given of he-
roes who had been pupils of Cheiron, such as Heracles, Asclepius, Aristaeus
and Cyrene,56 is probably an illustration of the same phenomenon.57
Later poets also had more to tell about Achilles’ education.58 Pindar (N. 3.43–
55) relates that he was already hunting at an early age, being extremely nimble
and fast-footed (Chapter 1.3), just as the Centaurs themselves were renowned for
their speed (Isocr. Hel. Enc. 26). From the fact that Achilles was able to play the
lyre in the Iliad, subsequent generations concluded, not implausibly, that Chei-
ron had also taught music to Achilles,59 and a number of later vases do display
music-making Centaurs. 60 All this education did not mean that it was for free.
The philosopher Antisthenes (F 28: ca. 400 BC) relates that he saw a painting
51 As observed by E. Simon, ‘Heilende Heroen’, ARG 6 (2004) 39–43, cf. Gisler-Huwiler,
‘Cheiron’, nos. 104 f.

52 The scholia on Il. 9.486, 489 and 11.832 note that Homer does not know of Achilles be-
ing raised by Cheiron.

53 Statius, Ach. 1.143–58; P.Köln VIII.328.
54 Peleus: Apollod. 3.13.6; schol. Il. 18.57a; schol. Pind. N. 3.76b; schol. Apoll. Rhod. 1.558.
Thetis: schol. Il. 18.438a. Vases: Gisler-Huwiler, ‘Cheiron’, nos. 44–64; A. Kossatz-Deiss-
mann, ‘Achilleus’, in LIMC, Suppl. I (2009) 1–15 at nos. add. 3–8.
55 Jason: Hes. F 40.2; Pind. N. 53–4, P. 4.102–3; M. van Rossum-Steenbeek, Greek Readers’
Digests? (Leiden, 1997) No. 56, fr. 5; Ovid, Met. 2.628–30; Apollod. 3.10.3; schol. Od. 12.69;
schol. Hes. Th. 993; schol. Pind. P. 4.135. Medeios: Hes. Th. 1001–02.
56 E. Robbins, ‘Cyrene and Cheiron’, Phoenix 32 (1978) 91–104.
57 Actaeon: Acusilaus FGrH 2 F33 = 33 Fowler; Apollod. 3.4.4. List: Xen. Cyn. 1. Heracles:
schol. Theocr. 13.9b. Aristaeus: Apoll. Rhod.2.506–10; Asclepius: Pherecydes FGrH 3 F3 =

3 Fowler; Apollod. 3.10.2; S. Mathé, ‘Les enfances chez Chiron’, in D. Auger (ed.), Enfants et
enfances dans les mythologies (Paris, 1995) 45–62.
58 See M. Stark, Göttliche Kinder (Stuttgart, 2012) 148–63; Al. Cameron, ‘Young Achilles
in the Roman World’, in S. M. Trzaskoma and R. R. Smith (eds), Writing Myth (Leuven, 2013)
253–88.
59 Il. 9.186 (lyre); schol. Il. 4.219 (Cheiron); A. Kossatz-Deissmann, ‘Achilleus’, in LIMC
I.1 (1981) nos. 51–63.

60 Leventopoulou, ‘Kentauroi’, nos. 316–25, probably starting in the late sixth century BC.

54 Section I: Myths
displaying Achilles serving Cheiron. The theme seems old, as it was for a long
time normal for young people to be employed as servants, as the European vo-
cabulary – French garçon, Old English cniht, Dutch knecht, German Knecht and
Dutch dienstmaagd – abundantly shows, and menial tasks for young people are
well attested in rituals that seem to have a base in former rituals of initiation. 61
Yet Cheiron apparently also practised other activities. There were whispers of
pederastic relations with Heracles in his cave in honour of Pan, himself a peder-
astic god, and in ancient comedy pederasts who indulged their sexual appetites
too often were called ‘Centaurs’ and ‘wild ones’; even the vagina was called
‘Centaur’ in ancient comedy as it roused sexual lust. 62 Elsewhere in Thessaly,
Cheiron was connected with cannibalism, in addition to pederasty. 63 Both mo-
tifs, pederasty and cannibalism, are sometimes connected with rites of initiation
in ancient Greece and other parts of the world. 64 And indeed, Achilles’ stay and
education in the wilderness clearly reflect initiatory traditions, as was already
seen by Henri Jeanmaire. 65 The initiatory interpretation also fits other charac-
teristics of Achilles’ education, such as his change of name and dressing up as a
woman just before he joined the Greek expedition against Troy.66 As the nearby
sanctuary of Zeus was the centre of the Magnesian confederacy, and the priest
of Zeus Akraios one of its chiefs, this sanctuary must have been the place where
once the Magnesians sacrificed to Cheiron and initiated their youths into adult-
hood. 67 Cheiron’s initiatory activities are clearly a reflection of these rites in the
Archaic Age, and the idea that the Centaurs owed their hybrid nature to ini
tiatory adults with wooden horse masks still has certain plausibility. 68 Yet his
genealogy shows that the poets had also adapted older traditions about him to
newer mythological developments, and we should claim no more than that ini-
tiation was a part of Cheiron’s persona.
Education is a civilising activity, and it is therefore not surprising that early
traditions knew that Cheiron was properly married to the Naiad Chariclo, who
61 F. Graf, ‘The Locrian Maidens’, in R. Buxton (ed.), Oxford Readings in Greek Religion
(Oxford, 2000) 250–70 at 262 (menial tasks); this volume, Chapters 12 and 14.
62 Ar. Nub. 350, F (dub.) 972; Theopompos F 92 (vagina); Eratosthenes, Cat. 40 with Pàmias
ad loc.; Hsch. κ 225; Photius α 259; Ph. Borgeaud, Recherches sur le dieu Pan (Rome, 1979)
115–17.
63 Monimos apud Clem. Alex. Protr. 3.42.4 (cannibalism).
64 Pederasty: this volume, Chapter 11. Cannibalism: Bremmer, The World, 365.
65 H. Jeanmaire, Couroi et Courètes (Lille, 1939) 371 and ‘Chiron’, Annuaire de l’Institut
de Philologie et d’Histoire Orientales de l’Université Libre 9 (1949) 255–65; L. Gernet, Poly

valence des images. Testi e frammenti sulla leggenda greca (Pisa, 2004) 66.
66 Change of name: this volume, Chapter 1.2. Transvestism: this volume, Chapters 8 and 9.
67 W. Burkert, Homo necans (Berkeley, Los Angeles, London, 1983) 113–14. Priest as chief:
W. Ruge, ‘Magnesia’, in RE XIV (1930) 459–73 at 470. Sacrifices: Plut. Mor. 647a; this volume,
Chapter 2.3 for a more detailed discussion.
68 Burkert, Greek Religion, 173. Note that Dumézil, Le problème des Centaures, 258 de-
rived the rites from the myths, whereas Burkert the myths from the rites. For the myth/ritual
relation, see Bremmer, The World, 427–45; this volume, Chapter 7, Introduction.

is always represented as completely human on the vases.69 Both of them appear

among the gods on the François Vase, which is another indication of Cheiron’s
special status compared to that of the other Centaurs.70 Moreover, Cheiron was
also connected with the institution of justice – he was called ‘the most just of the
Centaurs’ by Homer (Il. 11.832) –, oaths, sacrifices and the movements of the
stars.71 He thus has the traits of a culture hero, in mythology often indeed a
character that is not wholly part of culture himself.72 In other words, in our
oldest sources Cheiron is already a complicated figure, who, despite living in the
wilderness, is only partially ‘wild’ himself. In Victorian language: he is a savage
but, importantly, a ‘noble’ savage.
4. Centaurs versus Lapiths
The third theme regarding the Centaurs was their battle against the Lapiths,
a Thessalian tribe.73 Battling was, so to speak, a generic feature of the Centaurs,
and representations of fighting Centaurs start already to appear on vases of the
last half of the seventh century. Interestingly, one of the oldest certain rep-
resentations, the just mentioned François Vase, depicts the Lapiths as hoplites,
that is, normal soldiers, but the Centaurs as using branches of pine trees as
weapons and, from the sixth century onwards, pieces of rock. Moreover, on the
vase, a Lapith receives the name Hoplon, ‘Weapon’, whereas a Centaur is called
Petraios, ‘Rockman’, and we find the same opposition in the more or less con-
temporaneous pseudo-Hesiodic poem Shield (178–90). 74 In other words, in
their manner of fighting the Centaurs are not really civilised either, even though
fighting with fir trunks torn up from the ground is a signal of their great
strength.75 In this respect, too, Cheiron was a civilised outsider, as he was fa-
mous for having presented a proper ash-wood spear to Peleus, Achilles’ father,
at the occasion of the latter’s wedding.76
69 Hes. F 42; Titanomachia F 6 Davies = 10 Bernabé; U. Finster-Hotz, ‘Chariclo’, in LIMC
III.1 (1986) 189–91. Name: Wachter, Non-Attic Greek Vase Inscriptions, 253.
70 Gisler-Huwiler, ‘Cheiron’, no’s 41–42; add M. Iozzo, ‘Un nuovo dinos da Chiusi con le
nozze di Peleus e Thetis’, in Moormann and Stissi, Shapes and Images, 63–85 at 69.
71 Titanomachia F 6 Davies = 11 Bernabé.
72 Brelich, Gli eroi greci, 171–85; J. H. Long, ‘Culture Heroes’, in L. Jones (ed.), Encyclo
paedia of Religion 3 (Detroit, 20052) 2090–93.

73 E. Aston, ‘Centaurs and Lapiths in the landscape of Thessaly’, in G. Hawes (ed.), Myths
on the Map: the storied landscapes of ancient Greece (Oxford, 2017) 83–105.
74 Leventopoulou, ‘Kentauroi’, no’s 154–69 at 154 (François Vase) and p. 702; D. Tomei,
‘I kantharoi greci a figure nere e rosse’, Ostraka 17 (2008) 111–80 at 122–23; N. Dietrich, Figur
ohne Raum? (Berlin, 2010) 79–89 (trees), 89–92 (rocks), 311–12 (names, rocks, trees).
75 As noted by West, Indo-European Myth and Poetry, 461.
76 Cypria F 4 West = Bernabé; Ilias Parva F 5 Bernabé; Janko on Il. 16.130–54, 141–44.

56 Section I: Myths
Our earlier literature, though, focuses on only a few famous battles. The old-
est seems to be mentioned in the first book of the Iliad, which lists a number of
Lapiths and states that ‘they used to fight with the strongest, the mountain-
inhabiting animals’ (1.267–68, cf. § 1). The iterative form of the imperfect used
here strongly suggests a series of fights,77 and indeed, the fact that Nestor was
called up from Pylos in order to help the Lapiths (1.270) suggests a sequence of
previous incidents. Moreover, the resemblances in the Homeric list of Lapiths
with that of the Shield (179–82) indicate that both Homer and ‘Hesiod’ drew on
a current tradition of oral poetry, even though those poems have been irretriev-
ably lost.78 These fights eventually came to a climax at a battle that must have
taken place at least nine months after the wedding of Peirithoos, the king of the
Lapiths, with Hippodameia, as she gave birth to his son on the very day of the
battle (Il. 2.742–43).
The ultimate cause of the fighting is probably related in the Odyssey, where
the brash suitor Antinoos addresses Odysseus in a moralising tone and com-
pares his behaviour with that of the Centaur Eurytion who ‘did bad things’ in
the house of Peirithoos. Consequently, ‘the heroes’, that is, the Lapiths, leapt up,
dragged him out of the palace and cut off his nose and ears – a type of mutilation
that strongly suggests contemporary Assyrian influence.79 However, Homer
does not tell us which bad things Eurytion did, and there is no reason to think
of a wedding feast, as he was the only Centaur to have been invited to the feast.80
The earlier fifth-century poet Bacchylides probably took this line as inspiration
for a poem in which he changed the nature of the event and moved the venue of
the crime to Elis. Here its king, Dexamenus, says in an only fragmentarily pre-
served poem:
And he said this: ‘I am grieved at heart …: uninvited (he came) to the lovely feast, the
Centaur (Eurytion) whose bed is in the mountain … and he asks me for my (slender-
ankled?) daughter, wishing to take her as his bride to Malea (below): but to me (this is
repellent), and since I am unwilling (he threatens me) more harshly …81
77Latacz ad loc.
78Wachter, ‘The Inscriptions on the François Vase’, 106.
79 Od. 21.295–304; Ovid, Met. 12.219–536; R. Rollinger, ‘Herodotus, Human Violence
and the Ancient Near East’, in V. Karageorghis and I. Taifacos (eds), The World of Herodotus
(Nicosia, 2004) 121–50 at 140 (Assyrian examples). For similar cruelty among the Persians, see
B. Jacobs, ‘Grausame Hinrichtungen – friedliche Bilder’, in M. Zimmermann (ed.), Extreme
Formen von Gewalt in Bild und Text des Altertums (Munich, 2009) 121–53; R. Rollinger,
‘Extreme Gewalt und Strafgericht. Ktesias und Herodot als Zeugnisse für den Achaimenid-
enhof’, in B. Jacobs and R. Rollinger (eds), Der Achämenidenhof (Wiesbaden, 2010) 559–666
at 601–02 (more Assyrian examples in addition to the Persian ones); this volume, Chapter 7.3.
80 Contra J. P. Barron, ‘New Light on Old Walls: Murals of the Theseion’, JHS 92 (1972)
20–45 at 25 f.
81 Bacchylides F 66, tr. Campbell, and note also F 44; Huys, Le poème élégiaque, 40, line 7;
Diod. Sic. 4.33.1–2; Ovid, Ibis 403–4 with schol. ad loc.; Hyginus, Fab. 31.11, 33.1–2; Paus.
7.18.1.

The occasion is clearly not a wedding but some kind of feast at which the Cen-
taur arrives uninvited. In the fifth century, that was the typical behaviour of
parasites, the people who came uninvited to your symposium but whom you
could not refuse. 82 In other words, Eurytion also broke the laws of hospitality.
Fortunately, Heracles stopped by at the right moment and killed the Centaur. In
one way or another, then, it was the behaviour of Eurytion that started the ma-
jor battle between the Centaurs and the Lapiths.
The wedding seems to have become the scene of the great confrontation only
at the beginning of the fifth century, when it is mentioned, for the first time, in
a fragment of Pindar (F 166), which probably belonged to a poem about Peirit-
hoos’ wedding. 83 More or less at the same time we see the wedding battle appear
on Attic vases, where it can be read also as a reflection of the battle of the Greeks
against the barbarous Persians.84 It is clear that somebody, not necessarily Pin-
dar, had the idea of combining the wedding and the battles in a way that dram-
atised the action, although the transfer of the battle against the Centaurs from
out in the open to the feast also accentuated the barbarity of the Centaurs who
now, in addition, committed a violation of hospitality. 85 Pindar describes how
the Centaurs pushed the milk from the table and started to drink wine ‘from
silver horns’, an interesting detail that suggests the Persian rhyton. Can it be
that the poet here too wanted to stress the fact that the Centaurs were not like
the Greeks, not even when drinking wine? The Greeks themselves did not drink
the milk of cows, and goats’ milk was usually drunk where it was produced, as
it could not be kept long. On the other hand, the Scythians, and related tribes,
who were the typical ‘other’ of the Greeks, were known as ‘mare-milkers’, pre-
sumably a reference to the disgusting koumiss.86 The reference to milk-drink-
ing Centaurs, then, must have suggested their affinity with the uncivilised no-
mads of the Black Sea.
As a consequence of their immoderate drinking, the Centaurs started to paw
the bride and the Lapith girls but, as has been well noted, ‘continuous accounts
82 Asius F 14; Cratinus F 46, 47 and 182; Ar. F 284; Alexis F 213, 259; Timotheus F 1; Apol-
lodorus Carystius F 29 and 31; Lynkeus of Samos in Athen. 6.245a; Lucian, Demonax 63;
B. Fehr, ‘Entertainers at the Symposion: the akletoi in the Archaic Period’, in O. Murray (ed.),
Sympotica (Oxford, 1990) 185–95.
83 C. Brillante, ‘Ixion, Peirithoos e la stirpe dei centauri’, MD 40 (1998) 41–76 at 53 f. For a
detailed description see Ovid, Met. 12.210–535 with Bömer ad loc.

84 Leventopoulou, ‘Kentauroi’, no’s 171–73, p. 703.
85 S. Woodford, ‘More Light on Old Walls. The Theseus of the Centauromachy in the
Theseion’, JHS 94 (1974) 158–65.

86 Scythians and other nomads: Il. 13.5; Hes. F 150, 151; Aesch. F *198; Hdt. 1.26.4, 1.216
and 4.2, with Asheri ad loc.; Hipp. De aëre, aquis et locis 18; B. D. Shaw, ‘“Eaters of Flesh,
Drinkers of Milk”: the ancient Mediterranean ideology of the pastoral nomad’, Ancient So
ciety 13–14 (1982–83) 5–31; S. West, ‘Introducing the Scythians: Herodotus on koumiss (4.2)’,
MH 56 (1999) 76–86.

58 Section I: Myths
in literature are surprisingly few’. 87 The vases mainly represent two scenes of
battle. In the one, the Centaurs fight the Lapiths outside with no women pres-
ent, whilst in the other the Centaurs fight the Lapiths in the banquet hall and try
to get hold of the women. The two great violations of Greek civilised behaviour,
namely raping women and drinking wine immoderately, which come to the fore
in these scenes, are further explored in two other scenes in which Centaurs play
an important role, namely in the attempted rape of Heracles’ wife Deianira by
the Centaur Nessos and in Heracles’ visit to the Centaur Pholos.
5. Heracles, Nessos and Deianira
The story of Heracles, the Centaur Nessos and Deianira is well known, al-
though it seems to have developed only in the course of the Archaic Age into the
well-known version that was used by Sophocles in his Trachiniae.88 In Hesiod’s
Theogony (341), Nessos is just the name of a Thracian river, 89 and in the Hesiod-
ic Catalogue of Women he is not yet directly connected with the death of Hera-
cles, as here Deianira gives the herald Lichas a garment that she had sprinkled
with poison. When Heracles received the garment from Lichas and put it on,
death came quickly. In this version, which we can follow from Archilochus to
Bacchylides as well as on vase paintings until the beginning of the fifth century,
the connection between the death of Nessos and that of Heracles has not yet
been made.90 While ferrying her across the river, Nessos tried to carry Deianira
off, and Heracles killed him in close combat. On black-figure paintings, this is
virtually always done with a sword, presumably on or near the bank of the river
Evenos (schol. Apoll. Rhod. 1.1212). In a poem by, probably, Bacchylides (F 64
dub.), the poet leaves no doubts about the way he sees the Centaur, even though
the text has only been partially recovered. After Nessos ‘(filled with) Aphro-
dite’s (madness), rushed (at the young woman); she cried out and begged her
husband to hurry … (brandishing) his great club in his right hand he (struck)
the middle of the savage beast’s (head over) the ear and smashed…’ The Centaur,
87 Nisbet and Hubbard on Horace C. 2.12.5, cf. Hor. C. 1.18.7, 4.2.14; Verg. G. 2.455,
Aen. 7.304.
88 For the story, see C. Robert, Die griechische Heldensage II.1 (Berlin, 1920) 573–76;
F. Jouan, ‘Déjanire, Héraclès et le Centaure Nessos. Le cheminement d’un mythe’, in H. Limet

and J. Ries (eds), Le mythe, son langage et son message (Louvain-la-Neuve, 1983) 225–43;
J. March, The Creative Poet (London, 1987) 49–77; Gantz, Early Greek Myth, 431–34; F. Díez
de Velasco, ‘Nessos’, in LIMC VI.1 (1992) 838–47; M. Maass and I. Kilian-Dirlmeier, ‘Aegina,
Aphaia-Tempel. 18, Bronzefunde ausser Waffen’, Arch. Anz. 1998, 57–104 at 60–61; I. Peppa-
Papaïoannou, ‘Un relief mélien trouvé à Trézène’, BCH 125 (2001) 109–31.
89 T. Kotula, ‘Νέσσος et Νάϊσσος: problème topographique et historique des campagnes de
Gallien et de Claude II contre les Goths’, Eos 79 (1991) 237–43.

90 Hes. F 25.17–22; Archilochus F 286–88; K. Fittschen, ‘Zur Herakles-Nessos-Sage’,
Gymnasium 77 (1970) 161–71; March, The Creative Poet, 52–3.

then, is called a phê[r]os agriou, ‘savage beast’, the same term we already found
in Homer but now explicitly connected with wildness.
However, the more canonical version, in which Heracles kills Nessos with his
bow and arrow, is seen in both Sophocles and again, rather surprisingly, in Bac-
chylides (Dith. 16). This can be understood as clear proof of the great impact the
tragedian had with his version.91 In the Trachiniae, Deianira relates that Nessos
used to carry people in his arms across the river Evenos. As she recalls, ‘while he
was carrying me upon his shoulders, when I was first accompanying Heracles
as bride, after my father had sent me off, while I was in mid-stream he laid lust-
ful hands upon me, and I called out. At once the son of Zeus (Heracles) turned
and let fly a feathered arrow,92 and it went whizzing through his chest into his
lungs. As he expired, the monster said so much’, and then follows Nessos’ in-
struction to Deianira to take the clotted blood from his wound and to use it as a
charm so that Heracles will never love another woman instead of her.93 To intro-
duce her story, Deianira starts with: ‘I had an ancient gift from an age-old mon-
ster (ἀρχαίου ποτὲ θηρός), hidden in a brazen pot, a thing I received, when I was
still a girl, from the blood of the dying Nessos with the hairy chest’.94 We can
see in this myth once again that one of the inhabitants of the wilderness is not
only unlike normal people with his ‘hairy chest’, but also displays an uncon-
trolled sexual lust. The Centaur really is a ‘savage beast’.
6. Heracles, Pholos and the End of the Centaurs
Our last episode brings us back to a more civilised Centaur, Pholos, and the end
of these hairy beasts.95 The scene, which on vase paintings starts to appear in the
middle of the seventh century, now shifts to Mt Pholoe in Arcadia, although in
his Heracles (364–74) Euripides was somewhat casual about its situation and
located it in Thessaly, undoubtedly influenced by the traditional battle of the
Centaurs against the Thessalian king Peirithoos (§ 2). The best continuous
description comes from the late second-century mythographer Apollodorus
91 March, The Creative Poet, 62–66.

92 But the arrow is very rare on the vase paintings: Díez de Velasco, ‘Nessos’, 846.
93 Soph. Trach. 565–81, tr. H. Lloyd-Jones, Sophocles II (Cambridge MA, 1994) 183–85;
see also Diod. Sic. 4.36.4–5; Ovid, Met. 9.101–65; Hyginus, Fab. 34; Apollod. 2.7.7; schol.
Lycophron 50.
94 Soph. Trach. 555–58, where I have adapted the translation of Lloyd-Jones, Sophocles II,
183, as he translates ἀρχαίου with ‘long ago’, which would have been παλαιοῦ, cf. M. Casevitz,
‘Remarques sur le sens de ἀρχαῖος et de παλαιός’, Mètis NS 2 (2004) 125–36; E. Levy, ‘Ἀρχαῖος
et παλαιός chez Hérodote’, Ktema 32 (2007) 497–510; see also Trach. 680: Ἐγὼ γὰρ ὧν ὁ θήρ με
Κένταυρος, 1162: Ὅδ᾽ οὖν ὁ θὴρ Κένταυρος.
95 Gantz, Early Greek Myth, 390–92; Leventopoulou, ‘Kentauroi’, pp. 706–10.

60 Section I: Myths
(2.5.4), who, however, used Archaic and Classical sources and whose account
can be well illustrated by the vase paintings. It reads as follows:
So passing through Pholoe Heracles was entertained by the Centaur Pholos, the son of
Silenos and a Melian nymph. He set roast meat before Heracles while he himself ate his
meat raw. When Heracles requested wine, he said he feared to open the jar, which be-
longed to the Centaurs in common. But Heracles bid him to be of good courage and
opened it. Not long afterwards, scenting the smell, the Centaurs arrived at the cave of
Pholos, armed with rocks and firs. The first who dared to enter, Anchios and Agrios,
were repelled by Heracles with a shower of brands, and the rest of them he shot and
pursued as far as Malea.
This part of the mythical cycle of Heracles is confirmed by much older literary
sources. Stesichorus (F 22) already mentions the fact that Pholos put a vast beak-
er with wine in front of Heracles. It is clear that he is one of the more civilised
Centaurs, as he knows how to drink and to be hospitable, even though he lives
in a cave and eats his meat raw, which of course normal horses, being vegetari-
ans, never do. This is different from the other Centaurs, who rush out to get
drunk and are not armed with proper weapons but with rocks and firs.96 Evi-
dently, the thematising of proper, that is moderate, ways of drinking can hardly
be separated from the rise of the symposium with its rules in the sixth century.97
Interestingly, Pholos is also connected with another group of wild beings in-
habiting the wilderness, the satyrs, through his birth from Silenos, the patriar-
chal satyr who was the educator of Dionysos. The detail need not be old, but can
still date to the Archaic Age, as the connections of the Centaurs with the satyrs
are increasingly stressed from the sixth century onwards.98 However, the satyrs
survived, so to speak, in mythology, because one could perhaps meet them in
Dionysiac worship, and of course one would see them in the theatre.
As a result of Heracles’ fight against the Centaurs,99 so Apollodorus notes in
his somewhat garbled version, they fled in all directions, and later generations
told stories about Centaurs even fleeing to Samos (Strabo 8.3.19). We witness
96 K. Schauenburg, ‘Herakles bei Pholos’, Athen. Mitt. 86 (1971) 43–54; A. Verbanck-
Piérard, ‘La rencontre d’Hérakles et de Pholos’, in L. Hadermann-Misguich and G. Raepsaet

(eds), Rayonnement grec: Hommages à Charles Delvoye (Brussels, 1982) 143–54; D. Noël,
‘Du vin pour Héraklès!’, in F. Lissarrague (ed.), Image et céramique grecque (Rouen, 1983)
141–50; N. Valenza Mele, ‘Il ruolo der Centauri e di Herakles. Polis, banchetto e simposio’, in
C. Annequin (ed.), Les grandes figures religieuses (Paris, 1986) 333–70; D. Noël, ‘Centaures en
société autour d’une jarre de vin’, DHA 25 (1999) 55–82.
97 See, most recently: Murray, Sympotica; M. L. Catoni, Bere Vino Puro: Immagini del Sim
posio (Milan, 2010); M. Wecowski, The Rise of the Greek Aristocratic Banquet (Oxford, 2014).
98 Leventopoulou, ‘Kentauroi’, p. 702, 709; Eur. IA 1058–61; R. Osborne, ‘Framing the
Centaur: reading fifth-century architectural sculpture’, in S. Goldhill and R. Osborne (eds),

Art and Text in Ancient Greek Culture (Cambridge, 1994) 52–84; Morawietz, Der gezämte
Kentaur.
99 For a more detailed discussion of the representations of this fight, see S. Muth, Gewalt
im Bild (Berlin and New York, 2008) 417–26.

here a theme that has not received any attention in recent discussions. Yet,
Homer already states that Peirithoos, the king of the Lapiths, chased his ene-
mies away from Mount Pelion to the Aithikes on Mount Pindos, that is, to the
border area of Thessaly.100 Other narratives present a more sombre picture. Al-
ready around 470 BC, Pindar (P. 3.1–3) wishes that Cheiron, φῆρ’ ἀγρότερον,
‘wild beast’, was still alive. Pholos had died immediately after having inadvert-
ently dropped one of Heracles’ poisoned arrows on his foot in the aftermath of
the latter’s fight against the Centaurs,101 and Nessos was killed by Heracles. As
Euripides simply states, ‘the mountain-dwelling tribe of fierce Centaurs he laid
low, killing them with his winged shafts’.102
It is clear from these notices that already from the early Archaic Age onwards
the Centaurs were continuously marginalised. First, they were removed to the
‘outskirts’ of known civilisation, such as Cape Malea and the Aithikes on Mount
Pindos, but later there was no longer any place at all for them, and Greek myth
just had them killed or let them die or, to the same effect, related that Poseidon
had hidden them in a mountain near Eleusis (Apollod. 2.5.4).103 Consequently,
when the Augustan traveller Strabo visited the Aithikes he noted: ‘they now tell
that they (the Centaurs) have disappeared’ (9.5.12). We witness here the death of
a myth (that of the Centaurs) in myth. Evidently, however interested poets and
painters were in them, intellectuals could no longer tolerate the thought of such
equine-human beings in their own backyard, so to speak. It is a sign of the rising
rationality in certain areas of Greek culture that already around 500 BC the
philosopher Xenophanes (F 1.22) stated that he did not want to sing of the
Titans, Giants or ‘Centaurs, fictions of the earlier generations’. Evidently, such
mythical beings gradually ceased to be believable and acceptable.104
It is a corollary of this development that fifth-century authors increasingly
noted their anomalous character, and that from about 400 BC their animal char-
acter was stressed by giving them the new name Hippokentauroi, ‘Horse Cen-
taurs’.105 And when Sophocles lists six Labours of Heracles in his Trachiniae
(1095–96), all of which concern the killing of monsters, he mentions as one of
these feats the defeating of the Centaurs:
Of double nature, not mingling with others, going on horses’ feet, the band of θηρῶν,
‘beasts’, wanton, lawless, pre-eminent in might.
100 Il. 2.742–44; note also Strabo 9.5.12, 9.5.19; Apollod. 2.5.4 (Cheiron now living at Cape
Malea).
101 Diod. Sic. 4.12.8; Apollod. 2.5.4.
102 Eur. Her. 364–74 (cf. 1272–73), tr. D. Kovacs, Euripides III (Cambridge MA and Lon-
don, 1998) 343.

103 Poseidon’s connection with monsters and uncivilised behaviour: Bremmer, The World,
21–27.
104 Cf. U. von Wilamowitz-Moellendorff, Der Glaube der Hellenen, 2 vols (Darmstadt,
19593) 1.192 on the destruction of the Centaurs: ‘weil man an ihr Vorkommen nicht mehr glaubt’.
105 Plato, Phaedr. 229d; Xen. Cyr. 4.3.17.

62 Section I: Myths
Once again they are called ‘beasts’, but Sophocles now stresses their asocial and
lawless character, and the Greek verb used for the killing of the Centaurs,
ἐναίρω, Euripides uses especially for the killing of monsters.106 It looks as if, in
the later fifth century, probably through the discussions of the Sophists about
the place of law and civilised behaviour, the anomalous aspects of the Centaurs
had come to be perceived as a kind of threat to civilised mankind: they were
monsters that had to be completely eradicated.
7. Conclusion
It is time to come to a close, and I would like to draw the following conclusions:
1. The Greeks did not have a clear-cut concept and vocabulary of what we call
‘wilderness’. This is probably not surprising, as in English the Old Testament
seems to have been of paramount influence in creating the popularity of the
term. Yet the early Greeks had a notion of an area outside civilisation, which,
influenced by their ecology, they located in the mountains. They were not
unique in this respect as mountains and wilderness were also closely associated
in ancient Mesopotamia and Rome.107
2. The Greeks verbalised the ‘wild’ character of the mountains through myths
about the mountains themselves but also through myths of human-equine be-
ings that populated Mt Pelion. The latter myths concentrated less on the actual
wilderness than on its ‘wild’ inhabitants, and verbalised human interaction with
the wilderness as interaction with the wild creatures of the mountains (as op-
posed to interaction with the landscape per se). Moreover, through these myths
the Greeks explored the limits of proper hospitality, proper treatment of women
and proper drinking of wine.
3. In the actions of and stories about the Centaurs we can recognise the main
aspects of the mountains as identified by Buxton (§ 1): they are wild in their
violent dealings with humans, males and females, they are ‘before’ by eating raw
food and living in pre-civilisation caves, and they embody reversals by mixing
with humans. However, and this aspect has to be added, the Centaurs were not
only seen in a purely negative light. On the contrary: both Cheiron and Pholos
are relatively civilised, and Cheiron is even a kind of culture-hero.
4. The close connection of Cheiron with the myths surrounding Peleus and
Achilles points to an origin well before Homer, but that is as far as we can go.
He is clearly the prototype of an initiator, who lives away from civilisation high
106Bond on Eur. Her. 367.

107R. Rollinger, ‘Berg und Gebirge aus altorientalischer Perspektive’, in W. Kofler et al.
(eds), Gipfel der Zeit. Berge in Texten aus fünf Jahrhunderte (Freiburg, 2010) 11–52; D. Acolat,
‘Le modèle de la montagne sous le haut-empire: vrai “locus horridus” ou prétexte littéraire?’,
LEC 77 (2009) 61–77.

in the mountains, where he educates the children of the local aristocracy. The
Centaurs themselves, as being closely associated with Cheiron, look like the
mythical reflection of groups of unruly young men, such as we will encounter
also later in this book (Chapters 5 and 15), whose wooden horse masks turned
them into horse-men in myth.108 Yet their early disappearance suggests that
they were no longer a living presence in the later Archaic Age, which indeed has
little to tell about them.
5. In the course of the Archaic Age (800–500 BC), the Greeks started to ex-
plore the world around them, became more urbanised, introduced the symposi-
um with its drinking rules, and initiated more rational ways of thinking. These
developments gradually brought it about that the Centaurs were no longer per-
ceived as more or less human opponents but more and more as monsters that
had to be eradicated, even the more civilised ones. The annihilation of the Cen-
taurs shows that, in the rationalising fifth century BC, the ideas of the Greeks
about their mountains had considerably changed. They may have remained
dangerous territory, but the mountains were now no longer inhabited by ani-
mals symbolizing their ‘wild’ nature. We see here how ‘wilderness’ is not a fixed
concept, but one that remains constantly subject to changes in cultural con-
struction and perception.
6. The ambivalent nature of the Centaurs can hardly be separated from the
ambivalent nature of the mountains.109 However wild and dangerous they were,
the mountains were also useful as places for pasturage, the supply of wood, the
hunting of game and even the worship of the gods.110 By combining the negative
qualities of the Centaurs with their education of the greatest Greek hero as well
as with aspects of the birth of civilisation, the Greeks stressed both the positive
and negative qualities of the mountainous wilderness. They recognised that in-
teracting with the wilderness can be dangerous and destructive as well as bene-
ficial and instructive and, moreover, that it can lead to cultural creativity. It is a
message that still has something to say to us today.111
108 For the connection of the Centaurs with the Wooden Horse and initiation, see also this
volume, Chapter 1.8.
109 This suggestion comes close to G. S. Kirk, Myth (Cambridge, Berkeley, Los Angeles,
1970) 152–62 at 160 (in a still valuable discussion of the Centaurs). The connection of the
Centaurs with the mountains is also stressed by E. Aston, Mixanthrôpoi (Liège, 2011) 215–20.
110 For the useful side of the mountains, see Buxton, Imaginary Greece, 82–86; for the
worship of the gods on mountains, add M. Langdon, ‘Mountains in Greek Religion’, Classical
World 93 (2000) 461–70; D. Accorinti, ‘La montagna e il sacro nel mondo greco’, in A. Gros-
sato (ed.), La montagna cosmica (Milan, 2010) 17–42; M. Facella, ‘Twin Peaks: on a new royal
Hellenistic coin from the auction market’, ZPE 178 (2011) 223–35 at 224–26.
111 I am very grateful to Bob Fowler for his comments, Laura Feldt for her careful editing,
and Richard Buxton and Henry Gordon for correcting my English.

Chapter 4
The Myth of Meleager in Homer
The episode of Polyphemos (Chapter 2) is not the only case where Homer made
use of pre-existing stories. In fact, his work contains a number of allusions to
myths unconnected with the Trojan War.1 Unfortunately, many of these are just
tantalising fragments of a tradition irrevocably lost, such as ‘the grave of Aipytos
where men like to fight hand to hand’ (Il. 2.604) or Amyntor who lived in a ‘strong
home’ in Eleon (Il. 10.266 f). And even when Homer does relate a myth in great
detail, lack of further information can still prevent us from tracing the pre-
Homeric version, as is the case with Nestor’s youthful, initiatory exploits.2 Other
passages refer to myths which enjoyed great popularity in later times, such as
Heracles’ capture of Cerberus (Il. 8.362) or the expedition of the Argonauts
(Od. 12.69–72), but they are told in insufficient detail to be fruitfully analysed.
On the other hand, the myth of Meleager, as related in Iliad Book 9 (529–99),
is more promising.3 Homer relates Meleager’s story at the dramatic moment
when the Trojans were getting the upper hand through Achilles’ sulking over
the loss of Briseïs. In a final effort to turn the tide, a high-powered embassy of
the Greeks arrived at his tent with the offer of truly splendid gifts, although
these were vehemently refused by Achilles. Subsequently, his old tutor Phoenix
tried one more time. In a skilful way, he related his own youth in which he had
also suffered because of a concubine – an implicit reference to Briseïs, as a scho-
lion (on Il. 9.449) neatly notes. Having recalled the hero’s youth, he ends his
account with the myth of Meleager:
Two peoples, the Aetolians and the Kouretes, battled for Kalydon, the capital of the
Aetolians. The war was caused by the wrath of Artemis, who had been neglected during
1 On pre-Homeric mythology, see F. Graf, Greek Mythology (Baltimore and London, 1993)
68–78; K. Dowden, ‘Homer’s Sense of Text’, JHS 116 (1996) 47–61; B. Currie, Homer’s Allu
sive Art (Oxford, 2016) 141–43 (knowledge by the audience); Bremmer, The World, 419–22.
2 On Nestor’s youth, see P. Vidal-Naquet, ‘The Black Hunter Revisited’, PCPhS 32 (1986)
126–44 at 129–30; Graf, Greek Mythology, 63 f.

3 For the discussions of the myth, see the bibliographies in A. Heubeck, Kleine Schriften
zur griechischen Sprache und Literatur (Erlangen, 1984) 128–35 (‘Das Meleagros-Paradeigma
in der Ilias’, 19431), who overlooked L. H. Galiart, Beiträge zur Mythologie bei Bakchylides:
die Meleagrossage, die Herakles-Deianeirasage, die Zeus-Iosage (Freiburg, 1910) 13–62, the
only older analysis still worth consulting; A. Heubeck, Die homerische Frage (Darmstadt,
1974) 74–77; P. Grossardt, Die Erzählung von Meleagros (Leiden, 2000), whose excellent dis-
cussion replaces virtually all previous studies. For the name of Meleager, see C. Watkins, How
to Kill a Dragon (Oxford, 1995) 411.

66 Section I: Myths
a sacrifice by king Oeneus. In reprisal, the goddess had sent an enormous boar, which
went round destroying the countryside. After assembling a great number of hunters,
Meleager killed the boar, but immediately war broke out between the Aetolians and
Kouretes over the spoils, the boar’s head and hide. As long as Meleager defended Kaly-
don, the Kouretes were on the losing side. However, when Meleager killed his mother’s
brother, his mother Althaea cursed him, and the situation changed. In anger, Meleager
retreated from battle, and the Kouretes now successfully attacked the city. Friends and
family unsuccesfully tried to entreat the hero to resume fighting, but Meleager only
returned to the battlefield when Kalydon was burning. He saved the city but did not re-
ceive the presents he was promised.4
The myth of Meleager attracted vase-painters,5 lyric poets, 6 tragedians,7 writers

of comedy,8 and mythographers,9 remaining popular through Hellenistic and
Roman times until the end of Late Antiquity.10
Modern research shares this interest, although for different reasons. Natural-
ly, the nineteenth century connected the myth of Meleager with the origin of
the Homeric epic. In 1835, Friedrich Welcker (1784–1868), one of the great Ger-
man classicists, suggested that the genesis of the Iliad had been influenced by
the existence of an (admittedly hypothetical) Urepos about Meleager: the wrath
of Meleager had served as the example for the wrath of Achilles.11 Subsequent
generations followed his idea, but around 1920 the fascination with origins
started to wear off, and scholars began to prefer thinking of a Homeric adapta-
4 The prominence of gifts in the Homeric version of the Meleager myth has surprised some
scholars, but greed is typical of the heroic sphere, cf. Il. 1.213, 24.139, 594. Od. 8.396–405,
14.231–4, 15.83–85. On the possible Mycenaean antecedents of the offer of a temenos (Il. 9.578)
to the son of the king, see W. Donlan, ‘Homeric τέμενος and the Land Economy of the Dark
Age’, MH 46 (1989) 129–45; C. J. Ruijgh, Scripta minora, 2 vols (Amsterdam, 1996) 2.145.
5 S. Woodford and I. Krauskopf, ‘Meleagros’, in LIMC VI.1 (1992) 414–35; A. Schnapp,
Le chasseur et la cité (Paris, 1997) 268–317; Grossardt, Meleagros, 233–44; D. Emmanuel-

Rebuffet, ‘La légende du sanglier de Calydon sur un nouveau miroir étrusque’, Studi Etruschi
70 (2004) 117–32.
6 Ibycus F 290, cf. Grossardt, Meleagros, 59–60; Pind. F 48, cf. Grossardt, 63, and F 70d,
cf. Grossardt, 63–67; Bacchylides 5 and F 20D (?), cf. Grossardt, 67–72. Grossardt, 72–5 now
persuasively ascribes Bacch. F 25 to Kleomenes of Rhegion.
7 Aesch. Cho. 603–12; Soph. F 401–6 (but see also F 830a, 838, 916, 1111); Eur. F 515–39,
with Kannicht ad loc., and Phoen. 1104–09; Antiphon TrGF 55 F 1b-2; Sosiphanes TrGF 92
F 1; TrGF Adesp. 81, 625, 632; Arist. Poet. 13, 1453a 18; SEG 42.454. For the reflections of
Sophocles and Euripides in Apollodorus, see Grossardt, Meleagros, 187–91.
8 Dinolochus T 3; Theopompus F 3–4; Philetaerus F 11; Antiphanes F 148; Rhinton F 2;
Sciras F 1.
9 Pherecydes FGrH 3 F123 = 123 Fowler.
10 For these later sources, see the detailed discussion by Grossardt, Meleagros, 113–231; add
M. Mundell Mango, ‘Un nouveau trésor (dit de “Sevso”) d’argenterie de la basse antiquité’,
CRAI 1990, 238–54 at 249.
11 F. G. Welcker, Der epische Cyclus oder die Homerischen Dichter I, 18351 (Bonn, 18652)
VII, cf. W. Kullmann, ‘Friedrich Gottlieb Welcker über Homer und den epischen Kyklos’, in
W. M. Calder III et al. (eds), Friedrich Gottlieb Welcker. Werk und Wirkung (Stuttgart, 1986)
105–30 at 118 f.

Chapter 4: The Myth of Meleager in Homer 67
tion of the original myth of Meleager.12 In fact, it is now generally agreed that in
Phoenix’ account Homer changed or omitted various aspects of the poetic tra-
dition about Meleager. The amount of Homeric invention and omission will
always remain a matter of debate, but the fact itself of invention is hardly con-
troversial: the similarity between Achilles and Meleager is simply too good to
be true.13 Homer’s innovation in this passage conforms to his now well-estab-
lished practice of inventing new themes or details when using mythological
paradeigmata, the explanation of which is generally to be found in the demands
of the immediate context.14
In 1935, the Greek Hellenist Ioannis Kakridis (1901–1992) opened up new
vistas by taking into consideration modern Greek folktales whose content
closely resembled the myth of Meleager as related in post-Homeric versions
(below): the life of a man is connected with a log of wood, which is burned by
his mother in retribution for the killing of her brother. From this resemblance,
the Meleager myth was inferred to go back to an ancient folktale.15 This view
seemed to find support in Bacchylides’ mention of the log (published only in
1897), and it has become widely accepted by Homeric philologists and histori-
ans of Greek religion. In fact, it may be considered today’s received wisdom.16
It is the aim of this chapter to reconsider once again the problems which have
so long vexed the scholarly world. Limiting myself mainly to an analysis of the
earliest versions, I will therefore attempt (1) to reconstruct the pre-Homeric
tradition of the Meleager myth, and (2) analyse its content, the interpretation of
which has long been neglected.17
12 See especially C. Robert, Die griechische Heldensage I (Berlin, 1918) 91 and E. Bethe,
‘Ilias und Meleager’, RhM 74 (1925) 1–12 at 11. U. von Wilamowitz-Moellendorff, Die Ilias
und Homer (Berlin, 1916) 335 had advocated the priority of the ‘Meleagris’ and only followed
suit considerably later, see his Kleine Schriften V.2 (Berlin, 1937) 86.
13 Fowler, EGM 2.137: ‘That Homer introduced innovations to the traditional story in the
interests of his exemplum is generally recognised’.

14 Cf. M. M. Willcock, ‘Mythological Paradeigma in the Iliad’, CQ 14 (1964) 41–53, repr. in
D. L. Cairns (ed.), Oxford Readings in Homer’s Iliad (Oxford, 2001) 435–55; J. H. Gaisser,
‘Adaptation of Traditional Material in the Glaucus-Diomedes Episode’, TAPA 100 (1969)
165–76; B. K. Braswell, ‘Mythological Innovation in the Iliad’, CQ 65 (1971) 16–26; M. M.
Willcock, ‘Ad hoc Innovation in the Iliad’, HSCP 81 (1977) 41–53; M. Edwards, Homer, Poet
of the Iliad (Baltimore and London, 1987) 67–70; M. Finkelberg, ‘The First Song of Demodo-
cus’, Mnemosyne IV 40 (1987) 128–32; S. Swain, ‘A Note on Iliad 9.524–99: the story of Me-
leager’, CQ NS 38 (1988) 271–76; J. Burgess, ‘The Tale of Meleager in the Iliad’, Oral Tradition
31 (2017) 51–76.
15 J.Th. Kakridis, ‘Meleagreia’, Philologus 90 (1935, 1–25) 25; Homeric Researches (Lund,
1949) 11–42, 127–148 (modern folktales) and Die alten Hellenen im neugriechischen Volks
glauben (Munich, 1967) 46–56.
16 Cf. Heubeck, Homerische Frage, 75; W. Burkert, Greek Religion (Oxford, 1985) 63;
Edwards, Homer, 224–9; Heubeck on Od. 9.517–21; J. Griffin, Homer: Iliad IX (Oxford,
1995) 135; differently, L. Edmunds, ‘Myth in Homer’, in I. Morris and B. B. Powell (eds),
A New Companion to Homer (Leiden, 1997) 415–40 at 425–32.
17 But see N. F. Rubin and W. M. Sale, ‘Meleager and Odysseus: a structural and cultural

68 Section I: Myths
1. What was the pre-Homeric version?
How can we reach beyond Homer? To concentrate firstly on the Homeric

account seems to be the soundest approach. Allusions, inconsistencies and ob-
scurities in his text may already establish the existence of an earlier tradition.
Following this ‘internal’ critique, we will look at the adaptations of the story
caused by its use as exemplum, while also taking into account other epic testi-
monies and the post-Homeric tradition concerning Meleager. In this way, we
may perhaps solve the long-standing problem of the nature of the pre-Homeric
tradition with reasonable certainty.
The source that Phoenix adduced for his didactic exemplum, the klea andrôn
(Il. 9.524), seems to suggest an existing poetic tradition about Meleager. Earlier
students of the Meleager myth construed a contrast between a, presumably pro-
saic, Sage and the Homeric poetic version. In early Greece, however, myths
were nearly always the territory of poets; versions in prose only arose long after
the introduction of writing. Now Phoenix’s account clearly presupposes that
his audience had full knowledge of the myth. His mention of Meleager’s murder
of his maternal uncle – ‘she cursed him because of the killing of her brother’
(567) – is so allusive that it could hardly have been understood by someone not
familiar with the story. The events leading up to the war between Kouretes and
Aetolians (533–49) are also told very swiftly, unlike Homer’s normal, unhurried
narrative style.
Now even if allusiveness is typical for the epic style, Phoenix’s account con-
tains some puzzling passages. The Kouretes are said to have been unable to stay
outside the wall of Kalydon (550–52),18 whereas in fact they were not supposed
to have been in the city at all. And, among the various delegations that came to
beseech Meleager his mother is also mentioned (584), even though she had
caused his withdrawal by her curse. These passages, too, are perhaps easier to
understand if Phoenix’s account is based on an existing poetic tradition than if
it was a straightforward Homeric invention.19 If, then, Homer used an existing
poetic tradition, can we recover the outline of that tradition? Let us take a clos-
er look at some of the more debated problems.
In Homer’s account, all attention is focused on Meleager. This will be the
reason that his uncle, whose death would be the cause of his own demise, is left
nameless. Homer mentions only one uncle, whereas later tradition virtually
unanimously mentions at least two brothers, the sons of Thestios. Moreover,
whereas the name of Meleager’s grandfather is always the same, the names of the
study of the Greek hunting-maturation myth’, Arethusa 16 (1983) 137–71; B. Sergent, L’Homo-
sexualité dans la mythologie grecque (Paris, 1984) 249–56.
18 For the siege of Kalydon, see also Bacchylides F 25.
19 These observations have often been made, see especially the valuable discussion by Will-
cock, ‘Mythological Paradeigma’, 148–49; Graf, Greek Mythology, 64–66.

uncles greatly vary: all in all, abut eighty different names are attested!20 Under-
standably, Homer equally omits to mention the other participants in the Caly-
donian hunt. Yet, contemporary poetry almost certainly already knew of lists
of hunters. Our oldest source for the participants in the great chase is the famous
François vase. This Attic black-figure volute-krater, which is dated to ca. 565
BC, mentions twenty hunters, eight of whom are also mentioned in later liter-
ary accounts; one of the hunters, Akastos, is also mentioned on a slightly older
Attic black-figure dinos only to reappear in Ovid. Unfortunately, fuller lists
become visible only in Hellenistic times.21
After Meleager had killed her brother, Althaea cursed her son and called on
Hades and Persephone. The curse is not mentioned by Bacchylides or Ovid, but
it can be reconciled with the version of the Iliad, since the gods also fulfilled the
curses of Phoenix’s father, although he had invoked the terrible Erinyes (453–57).
According to Homer, Althaea’s curse was followed by Meleager’s withdrawal
from the battlefield.22 If, however, Meleager’s wrath was a Homeric invention
where does this leave his wife Cleopatra whose only function in the tale is close-
ly connected with this wrath? Homer elaborately introduces her and even men-
tions that she was called Alcyone by her parents. Heubeck accordingly suggest-
ed that it was Homer who changed her name into Cleopatra.23 Is this probable?
As we noted above, the first part of Phoenix’ exposition (529–49) was told
very swiftly, evidently assuming a basically known story. The second part (550–
98) is related in much greater detail – not surprisingly if the author is telling an
unfamiliar tale. If this observation is correct, the inference must be that Homer
invented a wife for Meleager. In fact, it has long been seen that Cleopatra’s posi-
tion in Phoenix’s account closely resembles that of Patroclus’ in relation to
Achilles, even to the extent that her name is modelled on his; 24 accordingly, the
20 For the names of the uncles, see A. Henrichs, ‘Three Approaches to Greek Mythography’,
in J. N. Bremmer (ed.), Interpretations of Greek Mythology (London, 19882) 242–77 at 253;

M. Davies and P. J. Finglass, Stesichorus, the Poems (Cambridge, 2014) 518, note 19.
21 François vase: R. Wachter, ‘The Inscriptions on the François Vase’, MH 48 (1991) 86–113
at 87–88, 91–95. Dinos: M. B. Moore and M. Z. P. Philippides, The Athenian Agora XXIII:
Attic Black-Figured Pottery (Princeton, 1986) no. 610 (= ABV 23 and SEG 36.91). Lists of
Calydonian hunters: Eur. F 530; Ovid, Met. 8.298–328; Hyginus, Fab. 173; Apollod. 1.8.2;
Paus. 8.45.6–7; P.Duke inv. 752 (= P.Robinson inv. 10), cf. Henrichs, ‘Three Approaches’,
252–54 and M. van Rossum-Steenbeek; Greek Readers’ Digests? (Leiden, 1997) 129–30, 315–
6 (text); P.Oxy. 61.4097 fr. 2, re-edited by Van Rossum-Steenbeek, 314; M. Ciappi, ‘Il catalogo
dei partecipanti alla caccia calidonia nelle “Metamorfosi” ovidiane (8, 298–328)’, Orpheus
29–30 (1998–99) 270–98.
22 Homer: similarly, those mythographers, like Apollod. 1.8.3; Ant. Lib. 2;, who directly
follow him. Althaea’s curse: L. Gernet, Anthropologie de la Grèce antique (Paris, 1968) 237;
A. Heubeck, ‘Erinús in der archaischen Epik’, Glotta 64 (1986) 143–65 at 148–9; see also
E. Simon, ‘Althaia’, in LIMC I.1 (1981) 578–80.
23 Heubeck, Kleine Schriften, 114.
24 Cf. R. Oehler, Mythologische Exempla in der älteren griechischen Dichtung (Aarau,
1925); G. Nagy, The Best of the Achaeans (Baltimore and London, 1979) 105.

70 Section I: Myths
first element of the name Cleopatra is not very early, since it is formed from
kleos and not from the more archaic form *klewos. Moreover, the story of Cleo-
patra’s mother, Marpessa, resembles other biographies of heroines loved by
Apollo in Hesiod’s Catalogue of Women – a resemblance hardly pointing to an
early age either.25
Contrary to what Homer’s version seems to suggest, Meleager is an adoles-
cent in part of the mythographical tradition, a tradition that goes back at least to
Simonides (F 564); Apollonius of Rhodes (1.195) also refers to him as ‘being a
youth’ (kourizôn). Meleager’s essentially adolescent status is also borne out by
his connection with Atalanta, which however does not pre-date Euripides and
appears on vases only in the fourth century.26 The adolescent status clearly be-
longs to the oldest layers of the myth, but once Homer had changed the original
struggle for the spoils into a straight war between two peoples, he could not
maintain the youthful nature of Meleager: cities are not saved by adolescents but
by more adult warriors. He therefore had to introduce a wife for Meleager, and
the mention of the name given by her parents directed the attention of his audi-
ence to the resemblance between the names of Patroclus and Cleopatra.
Let us now turn to the manner of his death. In the only two other detailed
versions of the myth, Bacchylides (5.95–154) and Ovid (Met. 8.260–546), Al-
thaea heard the news of her brothers’ death, took out the piece of wood that
represented Meleager’s life and threw it on the fire, thus causing his death. It is
important to note that, in those versions in which the wood is burnt, Meleager’s
death follows immediately, whilst in the versions in which his mother curses
him some time has still to pass before he dies. The two motifs are therefore
mutually exclusive and indeed only connected by the Hellenistic poet Nicander
(in Ant. Lib.2). Unless we assume that Althaea’s curse was a Homeric invention
(quod non), the inference must be that Homer’s sources did not contain the mo-
tif of the fire-brand.
According to Pausanias (10.31.3), Meleager died in the Iliad from the curse of
his mother, but in the Hesiodic Eoeae and the Minyas he was killed by Apollo.
25 Name of Cleopatra: H. Mühlestein, Homerische Namenstudien (Frankfurt, 1987) 48–9;
the comparable name Cleobulus (Il. 16.330) belongs to an otherwise unknown Trojan warrior,
who is most likely another Homeric invention, cf. P. Wathelet, Dictionnaire des Troyens de
l’Iliade, 2 vols (Liège, 1988) 1.682 f. Marpessa and Apollo’s love-affairs: Sim. F 563 » Schol.
Il. 9.557; Apollod. 1.7.8; Willcock, ‘Mythological Paradeigma’, 149; M. L. West, ‘The Hesiodic
Catalogue: New Light on Apollo’s Love-Life’, ZPE 61 (1985) 1–7; L. Jones Rocco, ‘Marpessa’,
in LIMC VI.1 (1992) 364–66.
26 The attempt by Rubin and Sale, ‘Meleager and Odysseus’, to prove that Atalanta was
part of the Archaic Meleager myth has been refuted by G. Most, ‘Of Motifemes and Mega-
texts: comment on Rubin/Sale and Segal’, Arethusa 16 (1983) 199–218 at 203–11, who over-
looked that his arguments had already been presented by Galiart, Beiträge, 47–62. The coun-
ter-arguments of Rubin and Sale, ‘Meleager and the Motifemic Analysis of Myth: a response’,
Arethusa 17 (1984) 211–22 are unconvincing; see also J. Boardman, ‘Atalanta’, in LIMC II 1
(1984) 940–50; G. Arrigoni, Atalanta e le altre (Bergamo, 2019).

Pausanias’ report of Meleager’s death evidently misinterpreted the end of the

Iliadic account – ‘they did not give him the presents’ (598) – as meaning that his
death prevented Meleager from receiving his presents, whereas in fact the men-
tion of his death would have been singularly inappropriate in this context;27
elsewhere, the Iliad (2.642) mentions the fact of his death without supplying any
details.28 The only remaining accounts of Meleager’s death in the Archaic Age,
therefore, are the Minyas and Hesiod. Regarding the first poem we have to trust
Pausanias’ statement, but subsequent discoveries of papyri have confirmed his
information about the latter. In his Catalogue of Women, Hesiod relates that
Meleager was killed by the hands of Apollo while he battled against the Koure-
tes for high Pleuron.29 This account clearly excludes the fire-brand.30 For Apol-
lo as killer, we have of course a fine epic parallel in the death of Achilles, who
was also killed by the god. Both the Iliad (22.359) and the Aethiopis (Arg. 3a
West = Arg. Bernabé) specify that Achilles was killed by Paris and Apollo. An
Attic pelike of the Niobe painter (about 460 BC) clearly shows that the god was
supposed to have directed the fatal arrow to his heel;31 similarly, Athena direct-
ed Diomedes’ spear when he aimed at Pandarus (5.290). Given the agreement
between Hesiod and the Minyas, it seems hypercritical not to accept Meleager’s
death through Apollo as the dominant epic tradition.32
Why, then, is the version with the fire-brand usually considered to be the
ancestor of the Homeric version? The answer evidently lies in the impact made
by Kakridis with his parallels from Greek folktales, which seemed to constitute
irrefutable proof for an immemorial tradition of the version with the fire-brand.
But how persuasive is Kakridis’ analysis really? He himself admitted that at first
he was inclined to believe that the Aetolian folktales with the Meleager motif
27 As was already observed by P. La Roche, Die Erzählung des Phönix vom Meleagros
(Il. IX. 529–600) = Programm d. kgl. Ludwigs-Gymnasiums (Munich, 1858–59) 19. Pace
Wilamowitz, Kleine Schriften V.2, 85: ‘Wer da meint, Meleager wäre hier nicht in den Tod
gegangen, hat das Gedicht so wenig verstanden, dass man mit ihm nicht streiten mag.’
28 For other possible allusions see Grossardt, Meleagros, 40 f.
29 Hes. F 25.12–13, 280.2; Minyas F 3 Davies = Bernabé; Apollo also appears on a number
of third-century Roman sarcophagi that go back to Attic prototypes, cf. G. Koch, Meleager
(Berlin, 1975) nos. 65, ?76, 79, 81- 84, 94.
30 This is rightly noted by Graf, Greek Mythology, 68 who, however, accepts Kakridis’
claims about the antiquity of the Greek folktales and therefore has to define the version with
the fire-brand as ‘older typologically’ (65) – a debatable concept.
31 See A. Kossatz-Deissmann, ‘Achilleus’, in LIMC I.1 (1981) 37–200 at 183, no. 851, doubt-
ed by F. Lissarrague, L’autre guerrier (Paris, 1991) 109.

32 According to J. Burgess, The Tradition of the Trojan War in Homer and the Epic Cycle
(Baltimore and London, 2001) 220, note 103, the epic tale is ‘essentially a variant of the folk-
lore version’, but he does not offer any argument for the priority of the folklore version or the
latter’s early existence. In support of his argument, he refers to L. Muellner, The Anger of
Achilles (Ithaca and London, 1996) 146, note 32, whose main argument is that ‘any myth is
multiform from the beginning’. Even if this were to be the case, which I do not believe, it can
easily be shown that not all variants are always present from the beginning.

72 Section I: Myths
had been influenced by a literary source. However, he was swayed by the fact
that similar folktales were also attested in different parts of Greece. ‘Who can
believe’, he rhetorically asked, ‘that literary tradition has succeeded in reviving
the same tale in three widely separated parts of Greece?’33 For at least three
reasons, it is in fact not difficult at all to accept such a development.
First, the modern Greek version of the Erysichthon story as told on the island
of Cos (!) is a 19th century compilation from Callimachus and from Planudes’
translation of Ovid’s Metamorphoses, and we now know that Apuleius’ Amor
and Psyche generated a world-wide diffusion of similar tales.34 In the same way,
as we already have seen, the numerous folktales resembling Odysseus’ encoun-
ter with Polyphemos are all descendants of the successful Homeric account.35
Evidently, Kakridis saw the oral and written tradition too much like two sepa-
rate streams, whereas studies of medieval narrative traditions and of the rela-
tionship between the fairy-tales of Perrault and those of the Brothers Grimm
have shown that oral and written tradition frequently influence one another.36
Secondly, it is important to note that the category of the folktale is not attest-
ed in early Greece, where we only find myths with clearly identifiable protago-
nists. This should not be taken to mean that this period did not know of oral
literature other than myth. It is clear, for example, that the fable was already
current; comic tales will hardly have been absent either. However, the anony-
mous tales that we call folktales are only a relatively modern branch of the gen-
re of the traditional tales, as is the case with the fairy-tale.37
Thirdly and finally, it is uneconomical to postulate the existence of a pre-Ho-
meric folktale, which was subsequently incorporated into Greek mythology
and then purified from its folkloristic contents by Homer, whereas the original
version lingered on, one must suppose, in the backwoods of Aetolia – only to
emerge again in modern times. We conclude that Kakridis’ postulated primeval
folktale has to be eliminated from the ancestors of the Homeric version.
This elimination still leaves the emergence of the motif of the fire-brand un-
explained. In the course of time, two explanations for the change of the myth
have been put forward which both deserve serious consideration. The first
33
Kakridis, Homeric Researches, 136.
34
See the innovative studies of D. Fehling, ‘Erysichthon oder das Märchen von der
mündlichen Überlieferung’, RhM 115 (1972) 173–96 and Amor und Psyche (Wiesbaden, 1977).
35 Cf. Fehling, Amor und Psyche, 89–97; D. Moser, ‘Die homerische Frage und das Problem
der mündlichen Überlieferung aus volkskundlicher Sicht’, Fabula 29 (1979) 116–36; this vol-
ume, Chapter 2.1.
36 Cf. J.-C. Schmitt, ‘Menschen, Tiere und Dämonen. Volkskunde und Geschichte’, Saecu
lum 32 (1981) 334–48 (Middle Ages); A. J. Dekker, ‘De Huizinga-sprookjes van Darnton’,
Volkskundig Bulletin 11 (1985) 28–33 (Grimm).
37 Note that W. F. Hansen, ‘Greek Mythology and the Study of the Ancient Greek Oral
Story’, J. of Folklore Research 20 (1983) 101–12, the fullest study of the relation between Greek
mythology and oral literature, does not produce a single example of an early folktale.

looked for a specific poet. In 1898, the French classicist Maurice Croiset (1846–
1935) noted the clear chronological division between the two versions of Melea-
ger’s death.38 The death through Apollo belongs to the epic stage, whereas the
version with the fire-brand appears virtually simultaneously around 500 B.C. in
Phrynichus (TrGF 3 F6), Aeschylus (Cho. 602–12) and Bacchylides (5). From
this development, Croiset rightly concluded that the motif of the fire-brand
originated between the stage of epic and the date of Phrynichus. If the motif was
the invention of a specific poet, it has to be Stesichorus, since we know of vari-
ous examples where he changed the tradition. For example, Athena jumping
fully armed from Zeus’ head (F 270),39 Paris taking Helen’s phantom to Egypt
(F 91a-j), Typhoeus being the son of Hera (F 273), Heracles being armed with
club and bow (F 281) or a new version of the Orestes story (F 180); moreover,
the fragments of his poetry which were published since Croiset’s article have
shown a preference for highly dramatic situations. In addition to Stesichorus’
innovative qualities, Croiset also pointed to the misogynist character of his
work: Scylla betraying her father,40 Eriphyle betraying her husband, Helen leav-
ing the marital hearth and Clytemnestra murdering Agamemnon. Unfortu-
nately, only the slightest remains of Stesichorus’ Boarhunt (F 183–84) have
come down to us, but the fact that he apparently mentioned only the hunt and
not the war strongly suggests that he used the motif of the fire-brand: a splendid
confirmation of Croiset’s hypothesis.41
The second explanation looks toward ritual. Burkert has suggested that the
motif of the destruction by fire is a reflection of the destructive sacrifice in the
cult of Artemis Laphria.42 Admittedly, we know this sacrifice only from Patras
in Imperial times,43 but the cult was moved from Kalydon, as we are informed
by Pausanias (7.18.11–3),44 who also describes in great detail how edible birds
38 M. Croiset, ‘Sur les origines du récit relatif à Méléagre dans l’ode V de Bacchylide,’ in
Mélanges Henri Weil (Paris, 1898) 73–80, repr. in W. M. Calder III and J. Stern (eds), Pindaros
und Bakchylides (Darmstadt, 1977) 405–12.
39 But see F. T. van Straten, ‘Ikonographie van een mythe. De geboorte van Athena’,
L ampas 17 (1984) 162–83 at 174 f.

40 This is an error by Croiset: this Scylla is not the betrayer of her city (Aesch. Cho. 612–
22), but the monster of the Odyssey.

41 Thus, persuasively, Grossardt, Meleagros, 51.
42 Burkert, Greek Religion, 63. The thought had also occurred to K. E. Petzoldt, ‘Die Me-
leagros-Geschichte der Ilias’, Historia 25 (1976) 146–69 at 163, note 67.

43 Most recently, M. Osanna, ‘Artemis in Patras: Wandel einer Polis im Spiegel ihrer Kulte’,
in P. Berktold et al. (eds), Akarnanien. Eine Landschaft im antiken Griechenland (Würzburg,

1996) 183–93; A. Petropoulou, ‘The Laphrian Holocaust at Patrai and its Celtic Parallel. A
Ritual with Indo-European Components?’, in J. Dalfen et al. (eds), Religio Graeco-Romana.
Festschrift für Walter Pötscher (Graz and Horn, 1993) 313–34; V. Pirenne-Delforge, ‘Ritual
Dynamics in Pausanias: the Laphria’, in E. Stavrianopoulou (ed.), Ritual and Communication
in the Graeco-Roman World (Liège, 2006) 111–29 (with excellent bibliography).
44 For Artemis Laphria and her cult in Kalydon, see D. von Detten, Darstellungen der
Artemis Laphria (Diss. Bochum, 1976); S. Barfod, ‘Rediscovering Artemis Laphria at Kaly-

74 Section I: Myths
and all kinds of wild animals, such as bears and wolves, were thrown alive onto
the altar of the goddess – probably an adaptation to the taste of the Romans with
their preference for animal massacres.45 Working along similar lines, Fritz Graf
has in addition pointed out that similar fire festivals are connected with the ini-
tiatory Kouretes (§ 2) in Messene (Paus. 4.31.9), the Idaean cave on Crete and the
warrior cult of Artemis Tauropolos in Phokaean Hyampolis. As he persuasive-
ly concludes, these cults point to an initiatory background for these fire festi-
vals.46 Kouretes also belong to the pre-Iliadic tradition of the Meleager myth,
since they are mentioned by Phoenix (9.529, 532 etc.), Hesiod (F 25.13) and
Bacchylides (5.126). The combination of Kouretes and fire festival therefore
suggests the existence at one time of an initiatory cult of Artemis Laphria in
Kalydon.47
But if the motif of the fire-brand was connected with the Kalydonian cult,
was it also necessarily old? Burkert postulates a pre-Iliadic origin for this part
of the myth,48 but we have seen that the evidence does not bear out such a sug-
gestion. There is in fact no reason why the motif of the fire-brand could not have
originated in the sixth century as a closer look at the myths connected with the
fire-festivals may show. A clear case is the death of Heracles by fire on Oeta,
which is not mentioned by either Homer or Hesiod and which on the vases
starts to appear around 470 BC. We do not know who invented this myth, but
it seems certain that it originated only in the sixth century.49 The myth connect-
ed with the holocaust in the sanctuary of Artemis Laphria (or Elaphebolos) in
Hyampolis will not be very old either. The Phocians explained it by a vow they
once made to burn their women and children in case of defeat against the Thes-
salians, but the myth hardly pre-dates the sixth century when the sanctuary was
renovated.50 The case of Heracles’ children in Thebes, which Pindar connects
don: preliminary results’, in K. Winther-Jacobsen and N. von Eggers Mariegaard (eds), Pro
ceedings of the Danish Institute at Athens IX (Athens, 2019) 189–96.
45 So, persuasively, Ch. Auffarth, ‘“Verräter – Übersetzer”? Pausanias, das römische Patrai
und die Identität der Griechen in Achaia’, in H. Cancik and J. Rüpke (eds), Römische Reichs
religion und Provinzialreligion (Tübingen, 1997) 219–38 at 233.
46 F. Graf, Nordionische Kulte (Rome, 1985) 410–17 (with full bibliography); W. D. Furley,
Studies in the Use of Fire in Ancient Greek Religion (New York, 1981) 116–62 (Artemis’ cult
in Patras and Kalydon); H. Verbruggen, Le Zeus Crétois (Paris, 1981) 71–99 (Zeus on Ida). On
Kalydon and Pleuron, see K. Freitag, Der Golf von Korinth. Historisch-topographische Un
tersuchungen von der Archaik bis in das 1. Jh. v. Chr. (Munich, 2000) 35–52; S. Handberg et
al., ‘Topographical Work in Ancient Kalydon, Aitolia (2015–18)’, in Winther-Jacobsen and
von Eggers Mariegaard, Proceedings of the Danish Institute, 161–88.
47 For the Kouretes, see this volume, Preface and Chapter 1.5.
48 Burkert, Greek Religion, 63, seemingly followed by Graf, Nordionische Kulte, 417.
49 Cf. J. Boardman, ‘Herakles in Extremis’, in E. Böhr and W. Martini (eds), Studien zu
Mythologie und Vasenmalerei = Festschrift K. Schauenburg (Mainz, 1986) 127–32; T. C. W.

Stinton, Collected Papers on Greek Tragedy (Oxford, 1990) 493–507; M. Winiarczyk, ‘La
mort et l’apothéose d’Héraclès’, WS 113 (2000) 13–29.
50 Plut. Mor. 244a-d (hence Polyaen. 8.65); Paus. 10.1.6–10, 10.35.7; Ph. Stadter, Plutarch’s

with a fire-festival, is more complicated.51 From our earliest detailed sources,

Pherecydes (FGrH 3 F14 = 14 Fowler) mentions that Heracles threw the chil-
dren in the fire, whereas Euripides (HF. 969–1001) had him shoot them with
arrows. Until now, the burning has always been accepted as the older tradition,
but is this really necessary? The priority of the shooting remains a possibility, as
Pindar (N. 4.62 ff) also seems to have known the shooting version.
In the myths associated with fire-festivals, then, the motifs of Meleager’s fire-
brand, Heracles’ suicide on Oeta, and the vow of the Phocians of Hyampolis are
relatively late, as may also be true of the case of the burning of Heracles’ chil-
dren. This coincidence can hardly be chance. In many places in Greece, the
time-honoured initiatory rituals started to disintegrate towards the end of the
Archaic Age. It is precisely around this period that we would expect the devel-
opment of new myths and the adaptation of old ones in order to give a new
meaning to rituals losing their traditional significance. We cannot be fully cer-
tain that the motif of the fire-brand was inspired by the cult of Artemis Laphria
in Kalydon, but the available evidence suggests this to be a plausible solution.
When we now take into account Homer’s allusions, his use of the Meleager
myth as an exemplum, and other early versions, we can trace with some confi-
dence the most important motifs of the pre-Homeric myth of Meleager. The
Aetolian king Oeneus of Kalydon forgot Artemis during a first-fruit sacrifice,
and in anger the goddess sent a huge boar which ravaged the king’s fields. The
king’s son, Meleager, collected ‘the best of the Greeks’ and killed the boar. When
he divided the spoils, a quarrel arose over the head and the skin, which were
apparently claimed by his maternal uncle, the brother of his mother Althaea. In
the subsequent struggle, Meleager killed his uncle. Greatly saddened by the
death of her brother, Althaea cursed her son and called on Hades and Perse-
phone. As a result of his mother’s curse, Meleager died.52
2. The pre-Iliadic myth of Meleager
Having discussed the various motifs of the earliest versions of the Meleager
myth, we will now look in some detail at the pre-Iliadic version that we have
reconstructed, in order to see whether it adds up to a coherent whole. In the
Archaic Age, the hunt was the most important part of the myth of Meleager, as
numerous vases illustrate (see note 5). The quarrel for the head and the skin of
Historical Methods. An Analysis of the Mulierum Virtutes (Cambridge, MA, 1965) 34–41, who
shows that these sources go back at least to the fourth century BC; P. Ellinger apud R. C.
Felsch et al., ‘Kalapodi’, Arch. Anz. 1987, 1–99 at 88–99 (date of the legend).
51 Pind. I. 4.65–67 and schol., cf. A. Schachter, Cults of Boiotia 2 (London, 1986) 26–30.
52 It would be a great advantage if we knew more about the Meleagreion mentioned in an
Argive inscription (SEG 36.336). Unfortunately, we do not.

76 Section I: Myths
the boar was also typical for the same period; later comedy could only mock
such an insignificant cause.53 Hunting was a typically initiatory activity in
archaic Greece,54 but unfortunately no early epic sources about the age of the
participants in the Calydonian Hunt have survived. On the other hand, some
other boar hunts suggest that these activities were typical for the young. As we
have seen, Odysseus hunted a boar when he was on the brink of adulthood (be-
low). In Herodotus’ (1.36) novella about Atys, a boar hunt occurs which looks
like a calque of the Calydonian Hunt. When an enormous boar devastated the
fields of the Mysians and their own efforts against the boar proved to be fruit-
less, they sent messengers to the king and begged him ‘to send his son and a
party of chosen youths’.55 When in Aristophanes’ Wasps (1202) Bdelycleon
wants to make his father acceptable to decent company, he suggests that he
should relate something about his youthful exploits, for example, ‘hunting a
boar or a hare, or running a torch-race’. Last but not least, the boar hunt still
had an at least partially initiatory significance in Macedonia, since males could
only lie down at dinner (i. e. join the adults) after having speared a boar (Hege-
sandros apud Athen. 1.18a).
Moreover, Meleager did not go hunting unaccompanied. The presence of his
maternal uncle(s) is an integral part of all versions. In early Greece, as in many
other early Indo-European societies, the maternal uncle was responsible for the
initiation of his nephew. Odysseus (Od. 19.394, 414, 418–9) went boar hunting
with his maternal uncles at the moment of reaching puberty, just as Boeotus and
Aeolus accompanied the brothers of Theano, their foster mother, on a fateful
hunt (Eur. F 495). Numerous other Greek testimonia show that the maternal
uncle had great influence on the education of his nephew long after the disinte-
gration of the initiatory rituals proper (Chapter 13).
Considered in this light, the Calydonian Hunt is to some extent analogous to
the voyage of the Argo: in both cases, a son of a king assembles a number of
contemporaries to perform an outstanding feat, together with his maternal un-
cle.56 In historical times, we find the same principle still operating in Crete
where the young aristocrat is accompanied during his initiation by his lover, a
somewhat older man, and a group of friends from the same age group . Among
the participants of the Calydonian hunt, the Kouretes, the initiated but not ful-
ly adult youth who are still living outside civilised society, find a natural place,
even though their role in the original myth remains obscure.57
53
Axionicus F 9; Schol. Il. 9.547–48.
54
P. Vidal-Naquet, Le Chasseur noir (Paris, 19832) 169–73.
55 Cf. J. N. Bremmer, Greek Religion and Culture, the Bible and the Ancient Near East
(Leiden, 2008) 269 f.

56 For the initiatory significance of the voyage of the Argo, see F. Graf, ‘Orpheus: a poet
among men’, in Bremmer, Interpretations, 80–106 at 95–99; see also Sergent, Homosexualité,
249–56; this volume, Preface. Jason’s uncle: Apoll. Rhod. 1.45.
57 Crete: Ephoros FGrH 70 F 149, cf. this volume, Chapter 11.1. Kouretes: this volume,

Even Meleager’s death through Apollo’s agency, which has been explained as
a typically epic death, could (not ‘must’) fit into this initiatory context, if it sig-
nified an initiatory death at the hands of the god who more than any other was
connected in Greece with the process of male initiation. The death of Achilles
would also suit this pattern perfectly, since his myth abounds in initiatory fea-
tures, and his cult is usually connected with ephebes and the gymnasium. All
the available evidence, then, points in the direction of an initiatory background
of the myth of the Calydonian Hunt or is compatible with such a background.58
However, it is also clear that the myth of Meleager is not a straightforward
reflection of initiatory practices. It was simply not customary in early Greece
that during puberty rites novices killed their maternal uncles and incurred their
mother’s wrath. Unfortunately, we can no longer observe the original Aetolian
Sitz im Leben of the Meleager myth, but some suggestions may be made. In an
analysis of matricide in Greek myth, Marie Delcourt has argued that the hostil-
ity of the son symbolises the young man’s struggle to free himself from child-
hood, which is associated with the mother and the women’s sphere. Even though
Delcourt’s general interpretation is too restricted, her views fit the Meleager
myth: the antagonism with the mother in the initiatory context of the Calydo-
nian Hunt looks like the dramatisation of the separation from the mother; sim-
ilar interpretations have been proposed for Orestes’ murder of Clytemnestra
and for the scenes on Athenian vases on which Theseus attacks his stepmother
Medea. The struggle with the maternal uncle(s) ending in the hero’s death can be
read as a warning to other initiands not to separate themselves too far from their
family and superiors.59
In the end, lack of further information prevents us from being completely
certain about the connection of the holocaust for Artemis Laphria, as described
by Pausanias, and Kalydon. But it is clear that the initiatory motifs of the myth
of Meleager fit in well with the initiatory background of the fire rituals, as ana-
lysed by Burkert and Graf. As time went by, ritual and myth went their own,
separate ways. The holocaust survived into Roman times, even though it had
Chapter 1.5. For comparable Indo-European groups of initiated, but not fully adult warriors
at the margin of civilisation, see J. N. Bremmer and N. M. Horsfall, Roman Myth and Mythog
raphy (London, 1987) 38–43; K. McCone, ‘Hund, Wolf und Krieger bei den Indogermanen’,
in W. Meid (ed.), Studien zum indogermanischen Wortschatz (Innsbruck, 1987) 101–54; this
volume, Chapters 5.2 and 15.
58 Epic death: Graf, Greek Mythology, 68. Apollo and initiation: Graf, Nordionische Kulte,
220–26 and Apollo (London and New York, 2009) 103–29; H. S. Versnel, Transition and Re
versal in Myth and Ritual (Leiden, 1993) 290–334. Achilles: Graf, Nordionische Kulte, 351;
this volume, Chapter 1.1.
59 Cf. M. Delcourt, Oreste et Alcméon. Étude sur la projection légendaire du matricide en
Grèce (Paris, 1959), to be read with the critique by C. Sourvinou-Inwood, Theseus as Son and
Stepson (London, 1979) 11 f. Clytemnestra: F. Zeitlin, ‘The Dynamics of Misogyny: Myth and
Mythmaking in the Oresteia’, Arethusa 11 (1978) 149–84. Theseus: C. Sourvinou-Inwood,
‘Reading’ Greek Culture (Oxford, 1991) 51.

78 Section I: Myths
long lost its original function. The myth was more flexible and could be adapted
to the changing requirements of successive periods of history. We can observe
this process also in the later ‘memories’ of the Calydonian Hunt, such as the
connection between the boar and the Aetolians,60 and the preserving of the
tusks and the hide of the boar in Tegea, the town of Meleager’s beloved Atalanta
who had received them as trophies of the hunt, as we hear from later authors.61
From here, the tusks were even taken away by Augustus in order to adorn his
Forum, although the hide stayed in Tegea. 62
3. Exemplum and oral culture
Finally, let us look once again at the Homeric version of the Meleager myth.
There still remains a question which does not seem to have been posed until
now. Why, we may ask, did Homer’s audience never jump up and shout when-
ever Homer introduced an innovation: ‘No, it did not happen like this!’ And
how could that audience accept that Phoenix’ account ended with Meleager
missing his presents when it must have been well-known that he would fall in
the ensuing battle?63 In order to answer these questions, we would like to end
this chapter with some observations on the conditions which enabled the Ho-
meric audience to suspend its critical faculties.
Until now, we have analysed the Meleager myth as a series of motifs that con-
stitute its sequence of action. This approach is justified, because basically it was
only these motifs that were handed down from one poetical generation to the
next in addition to the technique of spinning out the tale to please the audience.
It was up to the poets to transform these summaries of the myths into a poem
which to a certain degree would be different at each successive performance.
The myths of the non-literate peoples which we can read in our Western collec-
tions are to a large extent such summaries; the process can still be observed in
the Mahabharata, the classic Indian epic. 64
60 Adesp. F 354 KA (Aetolian compared to the boar); A. Jördens and G. Becht-Jördens,
‘Ein Eberunterkiefer als “Staatssymbol” des Aitolischen Bundes (IG XII 2, 15). Politische
Identitätssuche im Mythos nach dem Ende der spartanischen Hegemonie’, Klio 76 (1994) 172–
84.
61 Eur. Phoen. 1107–09; Call. H. Artemis.215–20; Ovid, Met. 8.380–444; Hyginus, Fab. 174;
A. Hartmann, Zwischen Relikt und Reliquie: objektbezogene Erinnerungspraktiken in antiken

Gesellschaften (Berlin, 2010) 123 f.
62 Paus. 8.47.2; Luc. Ind. 14.
63 For other examples, see W. Rösler, ‘Ein Gedicht und sein Publikum: Überlegungen zu
Sappho Fr. 44 LP’, Hermes 103 (1975) 275–85; M. Davies, ‘Alcaeus, Thetis and Helen’, Hermes
116 (1986) 257–62 at 259 f.
64 J. A. B. van Buitenen, The Mahabharata I (Chicago and London, 1973) xxiv.

In early Greek society, the recitation of myth took place in a face-to-face re-
lationship with the audience. Music, gestures, the continuous flow of the text,
and the skill of the poet would keep the audience in ‘trance’ and would limit a
critical meditation on individual details, as would also be the case during per-
formances of tragedies. 65 Modern readers of myth, on the other hand, can al-
ways stop reading and reflect on the text which they even can call into doubt
and criticise. It is this typical situation of the oral performance, I suggest, which
explains the acceptance by the Homeric audience of changes and omissions in
the ‘original’ myth. The temporary hold over his audience enabled the poet to
manipulate the traditional stories to a degree, the extent of which must have
depended on the skill of his performance. In a purely oral culture these inciden-
tal manipulations would not necessarily have a further impact on successive
performances of the same myths by other poets. It is only in a culture that start-
ed to be literate, such as was the case with ancient Greece, that these manipula-
tions could be accepted by later poets. The Homeric version of Meleager, then,
is still a representative example of the poetic manipulation of traditional materi-
al in an oral culture, but the acceptance of the Homeric changes by later poets
seems already typical of a literate society. The study of the narrative structure
of myth will always have to take into account the essential difference between
these various stages of Greek culture. 66
65 A. Konstantinou, ‘Tradition and Innovation in Greek Tragedy’s Mythological Exemp-
la’, CQ 65 (2015) 476–88.

66 The earlier version of this chapter had profited from information and observations by
Claude Calame, Malcolm Davies, Fritz Graf, Albert Henrichs (1942–2017), André Lardinois,
Robert Parker and Kees Ruijgh (1930–2004). Richard Buxton kindly and skilfully corrected
the final version.

Chapter 5
Orpheus: from Guru to Gay
When modern authors think of Orpheus, they invariably speak of his love
story. Contemporary female poets even make Eurydice the protagonist of the
myth.1 It was not like that in ancient Greece. The early Greeks primarily con-
sidered Orpheus to be a musician and a poet, but the background of his myth
has to be looked for in rituals of men’s associations, as Fritz Graf showed in an
innovative study.2 It is my intention to add further support to his thesis by dis-
cussing Orpheus’ age and wanderings (§ 2), but also to question one of Graf’s
arguments, that relating to Orpheus’ homosexuality (§ 3), and, finally, to study
the why and when of Orpheus’ development from a singer into a guru of an
alternative life style (§ 4). Let us start, however, with the problem of the name of
Orpheus’ wife.
1. The name Eurydice
Given the popularity of the myth of Orpheus, it is highly surprising that the
name of his wife, Eurydice, appears in Greek mythology only at a relatively late
date. The first reference to her occurs in Euripides’ Alcestis (357–362), in which
Admetus expresses his love by saying that if he had the ‘words and music’ of
Orpheus, he would go down to Hades in order to beg its rulers to give him back
his wife, and neither Cerberus nor Charon could keep him back ‘before I would
bring you back alive to light’. The passage clearly presupposes Orpheus’ descent
on behalf of his wife, but the name of Eurydice is not mentioned. In the fourth
century, Plato (Symp. 179de) and Isocrates (Bus. 8) also leave Orpheus’ wife
unnamed, and Eratosthenes (Cat. 24), Diodorus Siculus (4.25) and Plutarch
(Mor. 566c) are apparently still indebted to this tradition, as they also limit
themselves to saying ‘the wife’ in their descriptions of Orpheus’ descent. The
fact that only late antique mythographers, such as Servius (Verg. G. 4.460) and
1C. Segal, Orpheus: the myth of the poet (Baltimore and London, 1988) 118–54, 171–98.
2F. Graf, ‘Orpheus: a poet among men’, in J. N. Bremmer (ed.), Interpretations of Greek
Mythology (London, 19882) 80–106, abbreviated but updated in F. Graf and S. I. Johnston,
Ritual Texts for the Afterlife (London and New York, 20132) 167–76. For the early history of
Orpheus, see also A. Bernabé, ‘Orpheus in Apollodorus’, in J. Pàmias (ed.), Apollodoriana:
ancient myths, new crossroads (Berlin and Boston, 2017) 113–25.

82 Section I: Myths
the Mythographus Vaticanus (1.76), know anything about Eurydice’s origin

confirms, indeed, her early anonymity.3
There could be two exceptions to this rule. In the late fifth century, the altar
of the Twelve Gods in the Athenian Agora was decorated with four reliefs. The
originals are lost, but the Roman copy of one of these reliefs carries the captions
Hermes, Orpheus and Eurydice. It is true that the particular spelling of Hermes,
ΗΡΜΗΣ, does occur on a contemporaneous vase by Polion (ARV2 1171, no. 2),
but the captions are lacking on the other copies, as they are on those of the o
ther
reliefs. Moreover, there is nothing typical of the fifth century about the letters,
and the curious mixture of normal and retrograde writing hardly inspires con-
fidence in the authenticity of the inscription.4
Until rather recently, it was also thought that the name of Orpheus’ wife
could be found on a fragment of an Apulian volute krater of the third quarter of
the fourth century, where ‘Eurydice’ is written over the head of a woman, who
is turned to the left, and where, to her left, the name ‘Aion’ appears to the right
of the head of a male; on another fragment, now lost but traditionally ascribed
to the same krater, we find ‘…pheus’ (= Orpheus) under a woman and an aedic-
ula with ‘Pher…’ (= Phersephone). If the two fragments belonged together –
which cannot be determined on the basis of the drawing of the second one – the
figures of the first fragment would be looking to the edge of the picture, a direc-
tion against the conventions of Greek vase painting. Consequently, the two
fragments do not belong together, and the Eurydice of the first fragment is the
wife of Creon, as in Sophocles’ Antigone (1183 ff), and Aion must be an error for
Creon’s son Haimon;5 the more so, we may add, as the occurrence of the visual-
ised Aion would antedate all other testimonies by about three centuries. 6
The anonymity of Orpheus’ wife hurts our sensibility but is less surprising in
Archaic and Classical Greece. Whereas the name of the male protagonist in a
myth was usually fixed, the names of females were not. In the myth of Oedipus,
his foster mother is variously called Merope, Periboia, Medusa or Antiochis and
3 In the fourth century, Orpheus and Eurydice, both uncaptioned, perhaps appear on a
terracotta relief from Olbia, cf. N. A. Lejpunskaja, ‘Terrakotovij reljef iz Olvii’, Vestnik
drevnej istorii 1982.1, 81–90, which was overlooked by G. Schwartz, ‘Eurydice’, in LIMC IV.1
(1988) 98–100 (although the identification was doubted by Margot Schmidt, letter 13–2-1991),
and on an Apulian volute krater, cf. A. Trendall and A. Cambitoglou, The Red-Figured Vases
of Apulia II (Oxford, 1982) 533, no. 284.
4 For the Orpheus relief, see Graf, ‘Orpheus’, 102 note 5; add Schwartz, ‘Eurydice’, no. 5.
Spelling of ‘Hermes’: L. Threatte, The Grammar of Attic Inscriptions I (Berlin and New York,
1980) 40 and 46 cites some examples of ΗΡΜΕΣ; I am most grateful to David Lewis (1928–
1994) for advice on this point (letter 30 March 1989).
5 I. Krauskopf, ‘Antigone’, in LIMC I.1 (1984) 818–28, no. 16.
6 M. Le Glay, ‘Aion’, in LIMC I.1 (1984) 400–02. For these fragments, see G. Zuntz, ‘Aion
in Karlsruhe?’, Antike Kunst 33 (1990) 93–106; M. Schmidt, ‘Bemerkungen zu Orpheus in

Unterwelts- und Thrakerdarstellungen’, in Ph. Borgeaud (ed.), Orphisme et Orphée en l’hon
neur de Jean Rudhardt (Geneva, 1991) 31–50 at 33 note 5.

Chapter 5: Orpheus: from Guru to Gay 83
even the name of his biological mother, who is so important to us, alternates
between Epikaste and Iokaste.7 Although the anonymity is surprising, there is
no reason, then, to assume that Orpheus’ wife had a fixed name in the tradition;
particularly since the protagonist in the archaic version of the myth was evi-
dently Orpheus himself and not his wife.
Eurydice is finally mentioned by the poet Hermesianax (about 300 BC), who
calls her Agriope. Admittedly, in his enumeration of love affairs, he mixes the
playful (Homerus and Penelope) with the historical (Aristippus and Lais), but
there always is some existing relationship between his lovers and there seems to
be no reason to reject his testimony. 8 Unlike Apollonius of Rhodes, other Hel-
lenistic poets, like Callimachus and Theocritus, do not mention Orpheus at all,
and it is only in the anonymous Epitaph for the poet Bion (124), probably at the
end of the second century,9 that for the very first time the name Eurydice is
found in a literary text. The fact that Apollodorus (1.3.2) also mentions her
name seems to suggest that it here, like in the Epitaph, goes back to a Hellenistic
idyllion.10 Subsequently, Vergil’s and Ovid’s accounts canonised Eurydice’s
name forever in Western tradition.
If the name Eurydice, then, seems to have become popular only in later Hel-
lenistic times, where could it have come from? Of course, there are quite a few
Eurydices in Greek mythology, such as the wives of Nestor (Od. 3.452), Aeneas
(Cypria F 28 West = 31 Bernabé; Ilias Parva F 19 West = 22 Bernabé), and Creon
(above). We cannot, therefore, exclude the possibility that a Hellenistic poet
chose her name from the great mythological name-pool. But there is also anoth-
er possibility.
In Hellenistic times, Eurydice was a name prominent in one and only one
area in Greece: Macedonia. The earliest historical Eurydice we know of was the
mother of Philip II, a princess from the Lynkestid royal family and born about
410.11 Philip’s first wife was also called Eurydice,12 as was his last wife,13 and
8 Hermesianax F 3, rejected by K. Ziegler, ‘Orpheus’, in RE 18.1 (1942) 1200–1316 at 1277.
The name Agriope is nearly identical with Argiope, the name of the mother of the Thracian
singer Thamyris (Apollod. 1.3.3; Paus. 4.33.3), but this is no reason to doubt Hermesianax
or to change his text into Argiope, contra J. Heurgon, ‘Orphée et Eurydice avant Virgile’,
MEFRA 49 (1932) 6–60 at 13–15.
9 M. Fantuzzi, Bionis Smyrnaei Adonidis Epitaphium (Liverpool, 1985) 139–46.
10 A. Söder, Quellenuntersuchung zum 1. Buch der Apollodorschen Bibliothek (Diss.
Würzburg, 1939) 21–25.

11 J. Kaerst, ‘Eurydike (nos. 1–15)’, in RE 6 (1909) 1322–6 at 1326 no. 14; add SEG 33.556;
Ch. Saatsoglou-Paliadeli, ‘Queenly Appearances at Vergina-Aegae: old and new epigraphic

and literary evidence’, Arch. Anz. 2000, 392–403.
12 Kaerst, ‘Eurydike’, 1326, no. 15; O. Palagia, ‘Philip’s Eurydice in the Philippeum at
Olympia’, in E. Carney and D. Ogden (eds), Philip II and Alexander the Great (Oxford 2010)
33–41.
13 W. Heckel, ‘Cleopatra or Eurydice’, Phoenix 32 (1978) 155–8; A. Prestianni Giallombardo,
‘Eurydike-Kleopatra. Nota ad Arr. Anab. 3.6.5’, ASNP III 11 (1981) 295–306.

84 Section I: Myths
Adea, a granddaughter from his first marriage, who received this name after her
wedding.14 Demetrius Poliorcetes married an Athenian Eurydice who probably
received this name only after her wedding, considering the other Macedonian
examples and the rather late attestation of the name Eurydice in Athens.15 Final-
ly, we have the daughter of Antipater who became the wife of Ptolemaeus I,16
the daughter of Lysimachos after whom Smyrna temporarily was renamed
Eurydikeia,17 and the wife of the Illyrian king Genthius, the last royal Eury-
dice.18 And whereas the name Eurydice is virtually absent from the indices of
the non-Macedonian volumes of IG and the corpus of Inschriften griechischer
Städte aus Kleinasien, quite a few examples can be found in Macedonia.19
In the mythological tradition, Orpheus is a Thracian, but in the historical
period his real place of origin, Leibethra on the foothills of Mt Olympus, was
part of Macedonia.20 This reality comes to the fore in the accounts of two con-
temporaries of Augustus. Conon (FGrH 26 F1.45) depicts Orpheus as ruling
over ‘Macedonians and Odrysians’, and Hyginus (Astr. 2.7), in a similar attempt
at harmonising myth and history, locates Mt Olympus on the border between
Macedonia and Thrace. But even if we did not have these testimonies, every
Hellenistic poet would know that the so-called Thracian ‘homeland’ of Or-
pheus was dominated by the Macedonians. If he had to choose a new name for
Orpheus’ bride or to choose between existing names, might he not have pre-
ferred a name that was highly typical of Macedonian princesses?21
A more remote possibility, but perhaps not completely to be excluded, is that
a poet wanted to honour one of these Eurydices (Ptolemy’s wife?) by connect-
ing her with a great singer. Similarly, Callimachus seems to have ranged Arsinoe
14 W. Heckel, ‘Adea-Eurydike’, Glotta 61 (1983) 40–42; E. Carney, ‘The Career of
Adea-Eurydike’, Historia 36 (1987) 496–502.

15 Plut. Dem. 14.53 (not in RE); late Athenian examples, Fouilles de Delphes III.2.29;
IG III.2.2500.
16 H. Willrich, ‘Eurydike (no. 16–9)’, in RE 6 (1909) 1326–27 at 1327.
17 Willrich, ibidem; C. J. Cadoux, Ancient Smyrna (Oxford, 1938) 103–04; L. Robert,
Études de numismatique grecque (Paris, 1951) 204 (Eurydikeia).

18 (8): Livy 44.30.2 (not in RE). In general: E. Badian, ‘Eurydice’, in W. L. Adams and E. N.
Borza (eds), Philip II, Alexander the Great and the Macedonian Heritage (New York and
London, 1982) 99–110.
19 See P. M. Fraser and E. Matthews, A Lexicon of Greek Personal Names IV (Oxford, 2005)
s.v.
20 For these geographical locations, see T. Mojsik, ‘The “Double Orpheus”: between Myth
and Cult’, Mythos 14 (2020) = https://journals.openedition.org/mythos/1674, accessed 16–1-

2021.
21 Considering that Conon was a contemporary of Augustus, he perhaps more likely de-
rived the Macedonians from his source than from his own historical knowledge; for the ‘po-
litical’ Orpheus see also Max. Tyr. 37.6. Sources of Conon: A. Henrichs, ‘Three Approaches
to Greek Mythography’, in Bremmer, Interpretations, 244–77 at 269 note 17; see also Nikome-
des of Akanthos (c.4?), who wrote both a Macedonica and an On Orpheus (FGrH 772 F1, 3).

among the Muses. His text was apparently not totally clear, but Pausanias saw a
statue of Arsinoe on the Helikon, the mountain of the Muses.22
2. Orpheus as initiator
Orpheus’ love for Eurydice, then, belongs to a relatively late stage of the myth.
Originally, as Graf has shown, Orpheus was connected with rituals of ini
tiation.23 We can, I think, add two more arguments for this interpretation by
focusing on Orpheus’ age and the wandering of his followers. Until now, no
scholar seems to have been puzzled by the problem of Orpheus’ age. Yet the
earliest certain representation of Orpheus, a metope from the Sicyonian treas-
ure house at Delphi, on which the names are added, already seems to represent
him as a beardless singer next to a bearded one. We cannot be so sure about this
ascription, though, as earlier generations of scholars were, since Pierre de la
Coste-Messelière (1894–1975) has suggested that Orpheus is the bearded singer.
It is true that the name ‘Orphas’ is actually written rather to the left of the
beardless singer, but this hardly seems decisive. For the spectators, the caption
would have been crystal clear from the position of the caption of the third per-
son, which is unfortunately lost. In any case, Orpheus always appears as an
adolescent on Attic and Apulian vases.24
Is such a young poet and singer credible, as we would hardly expect young-
sters to be great and famous poets and singers before the arrival of pop music?
I do not know of any historical Greek cases, but mythology supplies at least
some examples of young poets and seers, categories which, although not identi-
cal, are sometimes related; after all, Orpheus, too, was reputed to be an oracle
giver and seer. As regards poets, we have the example of Amphion who built the
walls of Thebes and became king afterwards, at least in Euripides’ Antiope. As
regards seers, the best known example is Melampus, who as a young man al-
ready knew the language of the animals and later became king in Argos; for our
purpose it is important to note that in Sicyon he was the leader of the adoles-
cents who pursued the daughters of Proitos.25
22 Call. Aetia F 2a with Harder ad loc.; Paus. 9.31.1. Call. Ep. 51 calls Berenice ‘the fourth
Charis’.
23 See also Fowler, EGM 2.211 f.
24 Metope of Sicyon: Fouilles de Delphes IV.1 (Paris, 1909) 27–30 (description) and IV
(1926) plate 4 (Orpheus as Argonaut), but see P. de la Coste-Messelière, Au Musée de Delphes

(Paris, 1936) 193–97, who is followed by M. Vojatzi, Frühe Argonautenbilder (Würzburg,
1982) 40–45. Vases: M.-X. Garezou, ‘Orpheus’, in LIMC VII.1 (1994) 81–105 and ‘Orpheus’,
in LIMC, Suppl. 1 (2009) 399–405.
25 Poets and seers: N. K. Chadwick, Poetry and Prophecy (Cambridge, 1942) overstates the
identity, cf. R. Finnegan, Oral Poetry (Cambridge, 1977) 207–10. Amphion: F. Heger, ‘Am-
phion’, in LIMC I.1 (1984) 718–23; Melampus: Od. 11. 287–297, 15.225–242; Apollod. 2.2.2, cf.

86 Section I: Myths
Unfortunately, these data does not get us much further. They also do not ex-
plain why Orpheus was reputed to roam the countryside with the Thracian
males (Paus. 9.30.5). For that reason, we will have to go outside Greek culture to
look for parallels. Can we find, preferably within Indo-European cultures, a
young poet, who is the leader of a group of (young) males who are roaming the
countryside? In fact, we do. In ancient Ireland, there is a whole body of tradi-
tions commonly referred to as the Fenian cycle, the stories about Finn and his
roving band, the fian. As the title of the most important piece of Fenian litera-
ture, the twelfth-century ‘The Boyhood deeds of Finn’ (Macgnimartha Finn),
shows, Finn is primarily a youth (gilla). As such he becomes the chief (rigfen
nid) of a band of youths (fian), which spends its time in the Irish countryside
wandering and hunting. We can see a glimpse of their existence in the wilder-
ness in a ninth-century charm: ‘wolves and deer and mountain wandering and
young warriors of the fian’. But an early eighth-century law tract also includes
in its description of the layout of the king’s house the statement ‘on the other
side, in the fian-champion’s seat, a man at arms to guard the door’. Evidently, the
fian sometimes became ‘the retinue of the king … they were called fiana because
they were the fennidi (members of the fian) and the warriors of the king’; in this
way, they could become a powerful political factor. Moreover, Finn is a poet,
but not the normal eulogising one in the service of the rich and famous. His
poetry deals with nature and otherworldly persons or places or, just as in the
case of Orpheus, consists of obscure mantic verse.
Albeit dimly, through the short references and allusions in archaic Irish liter-
ature we can see an age set of the young that had to wander around, living from
hunting and brigandage, until it acquired full membership of the tuath (the
married landowners), usually at the death of the father or other next of kin.
If, however, the father did not obligingly pass away at a decent age, the youth
would have to continue to live in the fian. Consequently, the membership of
these bands could comprise a mixture of youths and adults. In Finn and the fian,
then, we have, I propose, a suggestive parallel to the original social circumstanc-
es creating the myth of Orpheus’ leadership.26 This is the more likely since Or-
W. Burkert, Homo necans (Berkeley, Los Angeles, London, 1983) 172 (ephebes and kingship);
K. Dowden, Death of the Maiden (London, 1989) 99–115; J. N. Bremmer, Greek Religion and
Culture, the Bible and the Ancient Near East (Leiden, 2008) 144–51 (young age).
26 On Finn and the fian, see A. and B. Rees, Celtic Heritage (London, 1973) 62–69;
J. F. Nagy, The Wisdom of the Outlaw (Berkeley, Los Angeles, London, 1985) 17–40 (‘Finn,
poet and outsider’) and 41–79 (‘Fennid, Fian, Rigfennid’); K. McCone, ‘Werewolves, Cyclo-
pes, Diberga, and Fianna: juvenile delinquency in Early Ireland’, Cambridge Medieval Celtic
Studies 12 (1986) 1–22; M. West, ‘Aspects of díberg in the tale Togail Bruidne Da Derga’, Zs. f.
celtische Philol. 49–50 (1997) 950–64; K. Mckone, ‘The Celtic and Indo-European Origins of
the fian’, in S. J. Arbuthnot and G. Parsons (eds), The Gaelic Finn tradition (Dublin, 2012)
14–30.

pheus is also connected with youths on Apulian vases – a connection that may
well be based on a tradition independent from the Attic vases.27
We find similar bands of wandering youths in the Iranian tradition, where
they too must have been accepted in the king’s retinue, as the designation of the
Persian vassals still reflects the name for youths (marika). We may perhaps here
also think of the Homeric word for ‘ally’, epikouros, a word traditionally con-
nected with Latin curro, but perhaps to be associated with kouros.28 And in the
Germania, Tacitus mentions that the noble youths, after their initiation, wan-
dered from chief to chief and married relatively late (c. 20: sera iuvenum venus).
We need not assume that these groups have existed ever since the Indo-Europe-
an Urzeit. It is perhaps preferable to see in them a possibility of the initiatory
structure that could be actualised whenever society did not offer sufficient pos-
sibilities to its youths to start a new household; a nice example would be the
Roman ver sacrum.29 In more recent times, we have the phenomenon of the
iuvenes, the young twelfth-century knights who had to wander around in
search of a wealthy bride and whose wanderings are reflected in the legends of
the knights errant. We may perhaps also compare the peregrinatio academica
of the noble students and the obligatory wandering of the journeymen of the
guilds, both phenomena going back to our earliest records of universities and
guilds, respectively.30
In its various Macedonian and Greek traditions, then, the myth of Orpheus
preserved the memories of an archaic social organisation, in which the youths,
but probably also less fortunate adults, roamed the countryside of Pieria under
the supervision of a poet-singer. Similar Indo-European groups always seem to
belong to the layers of the free-born, if not the elite. The roaming, therefore,
also seems to point to groups of youths like the fian; established aristocrats
would surely have used horses to move around.
Now linguists have shown that the Indo-European term for these warrior
groups of youths on the brink of adulthood was *koryos, which survived in
Greek koiranos. For our purpose it may be important to observe that onomastic
testimonies for this term were especially frequent in Thessaly and Macedonia.
On the other hand, a Thracian origin for Orpheus’ association can, perhaps, not
27 Schmidt, ‘Bemerkungen zu Orpheus’,

28 Iranians: G. Widengren: ‘Harlekintracht und Mönchskutte, Clownhut und Derwisch
mütze’, Orientalia Suecana 2 (1953) 41–111 at 59–62; Der Feudalismus im alten Iran (Cologne
and Opladen, 1969) 86–92 and ‘Synkretismus in der syrischen Christenheit’, in A. Dietrich
(ed), Synkretismus im Syrisch-Persischen (Göttingen, 1975) 38–64 at 61–62; for a possible In-
dian parallel, see W. Bollée, ‘The Indo-European Sodalities in Ancient India’, Zs. Deutschen
Morgenl. Ges. 131 (1981) 172–91. Epikouros: M. Negri, ‘Epikouros’, Rend. Ist. Lomb. 111
(1977) 228–36, but also see R. Beekes, Etymological Dictionary of Greek, 2 vols (Leiden, 2010)
1.442.
29 Cf. H. S. Versnel, Transition & Reversal in Myth & Ritual (Leiden, 1993) 304–09.
30 For these categories, see this volume, Chapters 1.7 and 15 (with more on the wandering).

88 Section I: Myths
be totally excluded, as tradition told of an earlier Thracian population of Pieria.31

If so, it is interesting to observe that the Thracian singer Thamyris was reputed
to have been king of the Chalcidice or the Scythians (Thracians?).32
Let us conclude this section by mentioning that recent analyses of the ety-
mology of the name Orpheus seem to concur in seeing a connection with a root
meaning ‘wandering’ or ‘being isolated’ (which eventually led to our ‘orphan’).
It is always tricky to explain names, and we have no idea to what extent these
connotations were still felt in historical times, but they should at least be noted
here, as they would fit the wandering Orpheus.33
3. A gay Orpheus?
Having shown the initiatory background of the Orpheus myth, Graf goes on to
argue that also the tradition of ‘Orpheus introducing homosexuality to Thrace
might preserve older traditions than we had thought’.34 At first sight his sugges-
tion is very attractive, as pederasty was a standard feature of ancient Greek ini-
tiation (below, Chapter 11). Yet, at closer inspection, doubts arise. The oldest
authority for Orpheus’ homosexual activities is Phanocles, an author of whom
we know virtually nothing but who did not live before the third century. From
his poem Erotes ê kaloi, a fragment has survived that tells how Orpheus was
murdered by the Thracian women, who resented the fact that he shunned them
but loved Kalais, the son of Boreas;35 from then on, as a punishment, the Thra-
cian males tattooed their women.36 Other, even later authors, such as Ovid
(Met. 10.83–85), Hyginus (Astr. 2.7) and Philargyrius (Georg. 4.520), call Or-
pheus the inventor of pederasty. But they do not mention Kalais, whose peder-
31 Graf, ‘Orpheus’, 87.

32 *koryos: É. Benveniste, Le Vocabulaire des institutions indo-européennes, 2 vols (Paris,
1969) 1.111–15; A. Heubeck, ‘Koiranos, korragos und Verwandtes’, WJA 4 (1978) 91–98;
E. Kaczyńska, ‘Greek (Hesychian) kóros “Great Number of Men” and Related Words’,
Emerita 75 (2007) 273–78; McKone, ‘The Celtic and Indo-European Origins of the fian’, 21 f.
Thamyris: Strabo 7. fr.15 Radt; Conon FGrH 26 F1.7.
33 É. Dieu, ‘’Oρφεύς’, RPh 91 (2017) 164–65; L. Massetti, ‘Gr. ’Oρφεύς, ved. R̥ bhú und heth.
ḫarp(p)- mi’, in I. Hajnal et al. (eds), Miscellanea indogermanica (Innsbruck, 2017) 457–70;
N. Oettinger, ‘Zum griechischen Orpheus’, in H. Bichlmeier et al. (eds), Etymologus. Fest
schrift for Václav Blažek (Hamburg, 2020) 309–12; but see also M. L. West, Hellenica I (Ox-
ford, 2011) 122 f.
34 Graf, ‘Orpheus’, 92.
35 Phanocles, fr. 1 Powell = N. Hopkinson, A Hellenistic Anthology (Cambridge, 20202)
lines 1133–60; C. Santini, ‘La morte di Orfeo da Fanocle a Ovidio’, Giornale Italiano di
Filologia 44 (1992) 173–81; C. Marcaccini, ‘Considerazioni sulla morte di Orfeo in Tracia’,
Prometheus 21 (1995) 241–52.
36 K. Zimmermann, ‘Tatöwierte Thrakerinnen auf griechische Vasenbildern’, JDAI 95
(1980) 163–96; D. Tsiafakis, ‘Thracian Tattoos’, in D. Boschung et al. (eds), Bodies in Transi
tion (Paderborn, 2015) 89–118.

astic role was probably invented by Phanocles himself since no other account
mentions him. Kalais, a well-known fellow Argonaut,37 came from Thrace, and
his name recalls the kaloi of the title of the poem.
On the other hand, all these accounts clearly connect Orpheus’ homosexual
practices with his shunning of women. Such a contrast is post-Classical, as
Classical pederastic males were usually married, but we may compare the state-
ment of Aristotle (Pol. 2.7.5) that the Cretan lawgiver instituted pederasty in
order to prevent women from having many children. Such a negative valuation
of pederasty only starts to appear in the course of the fourth century BC.38
Orpheus’ homosexuality/pederasty, therefore, does not belong to the original
myth. Hardly surprisingly, the parallel tradition of Thamyris being the inven-
tor of pederasty is equally late.39
This conclusion is supported by a scrutiny of the myths related in those plac-
es which claimed to have Orpheus’ grave. The central site was Leibethra on the
foothills of Mt Olympus, where women were forbidden to enter the sanctuary
of Orpheus. Here, as the natives related, Orpheus used to assemble the warriors
of Macedonia and Thrace, although they had to leave their weapons outside.
The women resented their exclusion and one day they collected these weapons,
forced their way into the building and tore Orpheus to pieces. No homosexual-
ity here, but Conon (FGrH 26 F1.45), the source of the story, adds that some say
that the women may well have resented the fact that Orpheus was not interested
in their love, thus demonstrating that this version was not told in Leibethra it-
self but had become important in Augustus’ time.
In Dion, a neigbouring town that also claimed to have Orpheus’ grave, the
women were not even mentioned at first. When the traveller Strabo arrived here
in the time of Augustus, he was told that political opponents had killed Or-
pheus. It is curious to note that in this account Orpheus is depicted as a typical
Orpheotelest, the itinerant initiation priest: ‘a wizard (ἄνδρα γόητα) who at first
collected money (ἀγυρτεύοντα) through his music, prophecies and initiatory
rites’; this tradition was hardly well-disposed towards Orpheus.40 When, two
centuries later, Pausanias (9.30.4–12) arrived in the same town, the natives had
37 Acusilaus FGrH 2 F30–31 = 30–31 Fowler; Herodorus FGrH 31 F46 = 46 Fowler.

38 A. Cameron, Callimachus and His Critics (Princeton, 1995) 497.
39 Thamyris and pederasty: Apollod. 1.3.3; Eustath. on Il. 2.596; in general, C. Robert, Die
griechische Heldensage I (Berlin, 1920) 413–16; J. Marcade, ‘Une représentation précoce de

Thamyras et les Muses dans la céramique attique à figures rouges’, Rev. Arch. 1982, 223–29;
add the society of Boeotian Thamyriddontes (SEG 32.503) and the appearance of Thamyris
with Musaeus on an Attic red-figured pyxis of ca. 430 (SEG 37.59). As regards our conclusion,
note also Robert, ibid., 404: ‘Als die ältesten (viz. causes of his death) werden die zu gelten
haben, die von der Eurydikesage unabhängig sind’.
40 Strabo 7, fr. 10a Radt, cf. Strabo 10.3.23 who explicitly connects τὸ ἀγυρτικὸν καὶ γοητεία
with Dionysiac and Orphic crafts. Orpheotelests: Bremmer, The World, 140.

90 Section I: Myths
apparently thought it wiser to adapt their story to the more popular version, and
they could point him to the exact spot where the women had killed Orpheus.
It seems clear, as Graf has argued, that the myth of the murdering women
finds its origin in the exclusion of women from this sanctuary – in other words,
it is an aetiological myth. Comparable myths existed in Clazomenae, where the
exclusion of women from the sanctuary of Hermotimos was explained by the
treason of his wife, which had led to his murder and, most likely, in Tarentum,
where women were excluded from the sanctuary of the Agamemnonids – an
exclusion hardly to be separated from Clytaemnestra’s murder. In a number
of cults, such as those of Hermotimos, Achilles and Heracles, the exclusion of
the women points to ancient men’s associations with their rituals of initiation.
In some way, as we have seen (§ 2), Orpheus is also to be connected with such
rituals.41
Both in Leibethra and Dion, then, the women were supposed to have objected
to Orpheus taking away their males from them, not against his being a misogy-
nist or a pederast. It is this tradition that we also find on some of our earliest
sources, the Attic red-figure vases, which from the 480s onwards display Or-
pheus surrounded by males only. A misogynistic and, consequently, pederastic
Orpheus only becomes historically credible in the fourth century and after,
when the man-wife relationship became more bourgeois. The changing emphasis
on Orpheus’ love life is an interesting example of how the Hellenistic period kept
myths alive by shifting the accents of the narration away from its religious and
social aspects towards a more psychological approach towards its protagonists.
4. Orpheus as guru
After Graf’s investigation, the problem of Orpheus has become even more com-
plicated. For how can we explain the fact that an initiator ended up as a poet of
abstruse speculations as well as a kind of guru for Greeks dedicated to an alter-
native life-style? The question is perhaps insoluble, but there is certainly room
for a few observations. Let us therefore once again look at the earliest testimonia
of Orpheus. The oldest certain reference occurs on the metope of the Sicyonian
treasure-house at Delphi, which dates from before 550 BC and where Orpheus
is pictured as an Argonaut (§ 1); the reference of Ibycus (F 306) to the ‘famous
Orpheus’ may also come from an Argonautic epos as Karl Meuli has persuasive-
ly suggested.42 Various sources agree that his major feat on board was to have
out sung the Sirens. We cannot be sure that an Attic black-figured lekythos in
Heidelberg (580–570 BC), depicting a singer between two Sirens, represents
41 F. Graf, Nordionische Kulte (Rome, 1985) 391 f.

42 K. Meuli, Gesammelte Schriften, 2 vols (Basel, 1975) 2.657.

Orpheus,43 but around 400 B.C. Herodorus of Heraclea (FGrH 31 F43a = 43a
Fowler) mentioned that Cheiron had advised Jason to take Orpheus along with
him as protection against the Sirens, a tradition also recorded by Apollonius of
Rhodes (1. 32–5). In addition, around 320/310 a near life-size terracotta group of
Orpheus and two Sirens was made and buried in an underground Tarentine
chamber tomb.44 His quality as a master-singer, then, is well attested as the
oldest stratum of his Greek tradition. Orpheus’ skill in singing is also stressed
in Conon’s account and it seems perfectly acceptable that the Archaic Greeks
selected the singing as the most striking quality of the activities of this Macedo-
nian cult figure. So the question remains why and when Orpheus was trans-
formed from a singer into the poet of ‘Orphic’ poetry?
Regarding Orphic poetry there are at least three traditions that seem to go
back into the early Classical, if not Archaic Age: Orphic theogonic poetry, Py-
thagorean Orphica and Eleusinian eschatological poetry. Would not a closer
look at these traditions perhaps help us to find the answer? Let us start with the
Orphic theogonies. Martin West has shown that the oldest theogony claiming
to have been written by Orpheus can hardly be older than 500 BC and may even
be later than Parmenides whose work it seems to echo at various places. Having
persuasively established a connection of the theogony with Parmenides and
Empedocles, West in the end prefers Ionia above Sicily or Southern Italy on the
basis that the theogony is connected with the Sabazian cult myth.45 However,
his main argument – the connection of Sabazius with Meter Hipta – overlooked
the fact that Meter Hipta is only connected with Sabazius in a highly limited
area of Lydia, where her cult is not attested before imperial times. Moreover,
Hipta appears only for the very first time in an Orphic context in the Orphic
Hymns (48–49 = OF 199), poems which were the product of a Dionysiac society
in imperial times.46 It is surely in this syncretistic period that we would expect
Sabazian influence, the more so as no other Sabazian elements have been demon-
strated for the Orphic theogonies. With Hipta out of the way, there seems no
reason not to accept that the oldest Orphic theogony originated in Sicily or
Southern Italy, exactly the area where we would have expected the birth of such
speculations.
Regarding Pythagorean Orphica, there is one passage which has been thought
to connect Pythagoras with Orpheus. According to Heraclitus (B 129), ‘Py-
thagoras, son of Mnesarchus, practised inquiry most of all men, and having
made a selection (viz. a personal canon so to speak) he claimed as his own a
43 H. Gropengiesser, ‘Sänger und Sirenen’, Arch. Anz. 1977, 582–610, doubted by Vojatzi,
Frühe Argonautenbilder, 43 f.
44 A. Bottini and P. Giovanni Guzzo, ‘Orfeo e le Sirene al Getty Museum’, Ostraka 2
(1993) 43–52.
45 M. L. West, The Orphic Poems (Oxford, 1983) 110.
46 Bremmer, The World, 286.

92 Section I: Myths
wisdom, that is but polymathy, knavery’. According to Burkert, Heraclitus may

have meant Orphica with ‘these writings’, but the explanation presupposes the
existence of Orphic writings within Pythagoras’ time, which is still to be
demonstrated. All we can deduce from this passage is that Heraclitus presented
Pythagoras, who never wrote a book, as a writer that failed.47 Given the close
resemblance of Orphism to Pythagoreanism one might even wonder whether
Orphism did not originate in the same area as a split off from Pythagoreanism
sometime between Parmenides and Empedocles; it should be remembered that
it cannot be proved that a Pythagorean philosophy or science existed before
Parmenides.48
Early Orphic writings, then, are not attested before the beginning of the fifth
century, although they were already current before Pindar’s Second Olympian
of 468 BC,49 but they do not help us in our quest for Orpheus the poet. Yet there
may be one exception. The most popular – after all, Pythagoras was also reputed
to have descended into Hades – early Pythagorean-Orphic writing seems to
have been one or possibly various books entitled Descent into Hades, which was
variously ascribed to Bro(n)tinus, Zopyrus or Orpheus Camarinus of Camari-
na (OT 222, OF 293–96), none of which goes back with any certainty into the
sixth century. One of these Descents, presumably the most authoritative one, is
generally agreed to have been written in an autobiographical form, just as the
later Orphic Argonautica, which seems to refer to it (41–42). It seems not impos-
sible that we find here the link between Orpheus the singer and Orpheus the
poet/guru. The autobiographical form of this poem must have established Or-
pheus as a poet, and his visit to the underworld must have transformed him into
an expert on the afterlife,50 an issue of importance to the Orphics; an extension
of the knowledge of ‘Orpheus’ into other areas would then be only a matter of
time. Does not the authentication of these successive writings with the name of
‘Orpheus’ also point to a date in the early Classical rather than the Archaic Age?
In any case, given that Orpheus was already associated with the Argonautic
expedition he must have pre-dated Homer, and that is exactly what we find.
Rather surprisingly, according to a number of fifth-century historians, Homer
descended from Orpheus as did Hesiod.51 And when Plato enumerates the great
47 Heraclitus: J. Mansfeld, Studies in the Historiography of Greek Philosophy (Assen, 1990)
443–48. Pythagoras and Orphism: Burkert, Lore and Science in Ancient Pythagoreanism
(Cambridge MA, 1972) 125–32; J. N. Bremmer, ‘Rationalization and Disenchantment in An-
cient Greece: Max Weber among the Pythagoreans and Orphics?’, in R. Buxton (ed.), From
Myth to Reason? Studies in the Development of Greek Thought (Oxford, 1999) 71–83.
48 Burkert, Lore and Science, 283, 289.
49 See the survey of early Orphic writings in J. N. Bremmer, Initiation into the Mysteries of
the Ancient World (Berlin and Boston, 2014) 59–65.

50 For the Descents and the autobiographical form, see Bremmer, Initiation into the Mys
teries, 59–61.
51 Pherecydes FGrH 3 F167 = 167 Fowler = OF 871; Hellanicus FGrH 4 F5 = OF 871

poets of the past, he puts Orpheus first.52 The fact that Orpheus was known as
a singer but had no established poems to his name, must have made it easier for
the Orphics to claim his reputation for them.
We have started with Orpheus and Eurydice, we will also end with them. In
a fascinating section of his study of Orpheus, Graf has drawn attention to the
mainly Native American ‘Orpheus Tradition’, in which a man (rarely a woman)
goes to the world of the dead to fetch back a near relative, such as a wife. Graf is
inclined to accept that the Greek story eventually derives from this tradition.53
This seems doubtful, however, as the absence of a number of related stories in
the area between Greece and Pacific Asia is a strong argument against a diffu-
sionist explanation. Moreover, Orpheus’ demonstration of his musical power in
the underworld is only a logical extension of his power over humans, animals
and nature; the inclusion of his wife is one possible motivation amongst many
others. It also seems improbable that the sixth century already knew of a de-
scent of a man for his wife; such an attempt hardly fits into the general spirit of
the Archaic period. It is even harder to accept that the motif originated among
the Orphics themselves, as they seem to have felt rather hostile towards sexual-
ity. On the other hand, the Pythagoreans promoted marriage and strict monog-
amy.54 Is it not possible that they invented the motif of Eurydice, perhaps im-
proving upon an earlier version? Such a suggestion is of course pure speculation,
but would the Pythagoreans or Orphics have disapproved of that?55
(Homer and Hesiod); Damastes FGrH 5 F11 = 11b Fowler = OF 871; Charax FGrH 103 F62 =
OF 872.
52 Pl. Apol. 41a = OF 1076, Ion 536b = OF 973; note also Alexis F 140 = OF 1018; Hecataeus
FGrH 264 F25 = OF 55.

53 Graf, ‘Orpheus’, 82–84; see also A. Monnier, ‘L’Orphée des ethnologues’, in Borgeaud,
Orphée et Orphisme, 65–76.

54 Orphics and sexuality: Eur. Hipp. 952–54; M. Detienne, ‘Les chemins de la deviance:
Orphisme, Dionysisme et Pythagorisme’, in Orfismo in Magna Grecia (Naples, 1975) 49–79

at 70–79; R. Parker, Miasma (Oxford, 1983) 301. Pythagoreans and marriage: Burkert, Lore
and Science, 178, note 94; C. Macris, ‘Théano (de Crotone ou de Métaponte?)’, in R. Goulet
(ed.), Dictionnaire des philosophes antiques VI (Paris, 2016) 820–39 + 1275 at 829 f.
55 I am indebted to Rob Beekes (1937–2017), Richard Buxton, Fritz Graf, Annette Harder,
David Lewis (1928–1994), Jan van Ophuijsen and Margot Schmidt (1932–2004) for various
information and advice. Holly Maggiore kindly corrected the English of the final version.

Chapter 6
Theseus’ and Peirithoos’ Descent into the Underworld
Ηumankind has long been interested in knowing the Beyond, which has often
been conceptualised as an area below the earth or as a land at the edge of the
known world. The border between this world and the Beyond constituted a
challenge that in myth and legend proved to be irresistible to many a hero. In
Greek mythology, the most famous descents are those by Odysseus, Heracles
and Orpheus, but in this chapter I intend to look in detail at a less familiar one,
that by Theseus and Peirithoos. First, however, I will briefly discuss the earliest
known literary descent, that by Enkidu (§ 1), which almost certainly influenced
the poet of the Odyssey in his depiction of Odysseus’ descent. Then I will take
a brief look at some descents in the Archaic Age, in particular the earliest tradi-
tions of Theseus and Peirithoos (§ 2). Subsequently, I will analyse the actual
descent of these heroes (§ 3) and I will conclude with some observations on the
drama Peirithoos, which was written by either Critias or Euripides (§ 4).
1. Gilgamesh and Enkidu
In literature, we probably find the Beyond first thematised in the Sumerian

poem Bilgames (the Sumerian form of Gilgamesh)1 and the Netherworld, one of
a series of Sumerian narrative poems about Gilgamesh. It was known in ancient
times as In those days, in those far-off days.2 This vague title is symbolic of our
knowledge about its precise time of composition, but its last part probably dates
from the beginning of the second millennium BC.3 In this poem, which was
highly popular in the Mesopotamian school tradition (it has survived in more
than 60 manuscripts), it is told in the last Tablet (below) that Gilgamesh had
been playing a kind of croquet in the streets of Uruk. When his ball and mallet
fell down through a hole deep into the Underworld, his servant Enkidu offered
1 For the name, see G. Rubio, ‘Reading Sumerian Names, II: Gilgameš’, J. Cuneiform Stud.
64 (2012) 3–16; J. Keetman, ‘Der altsumerische Name /pa-gbilga-mes/ = Gilgameš’, Bibliotheca

Orientalis 71 (2014) 30–40.
2 For the circumstances of composition, see the splendid edition of the Gilgamesh epic by
A. R. George, The Babylonian Gilgamesh Epic, 2 vols (Oxford, 2003) 1.12–14 (summary of the
text), 2.743–77 (text and translation of 172-End). All quotations are from this edition.
3 W. Sallaberger, Das Gilgamesch-Epos (Munich, 2008) 69.

96 Section I: Myths
to fetch them. Gilgamesh instructed him not to draw attention from the shades,
but ‘Enkidu paid no attention to (the word) of his master’ (206), and the Under-
world seized him (221). Fortunately, the Sun God Utu brought Enkidu back.
Gigamesh hugged and kissed him, and asked him what he had seen: ‘Did you see
the man with one son?’, to which Enkidu answers with ‘I saw him’. Gilgamesh
then asks: ‘How does he fare?’ (255), and Enkidu answers: ‘For the peg set in his
wall bitterly he laments’ (256). Gilgamesh then poses a series of similar ques-
tions until we have reached the man with seven sons, and from the answers it is
clear that the more sons a man has, the less thirsty he will be in the underworld.
It is likely that the Sumerian text of Bilgames and the Netherworld was inde-
pendently handed down in Babylon for many centuries before its latter part
became appended to the Gilgamesh epic as Tablet XII in an Akkadian prose
translation. At the end of the eighth century, shortly after the death of Sargon in
Iran in 705 BC, during a battle against the Cimmerians, the Assyrian scholar
Nabû-zuqup-kenu wrote in the colophon that he had copied his translation
from an older master-copy, which was probably made in Babylon sometime in
the second millennium.4 The reason for its addition to the Gilgamesh epic is not
certain. But the moment of its appendage might suggest that the death of Sargon
and many of his soldiers inspired Nabû-zuqup-kenu to look for a suitable text
to end the epic, as death in battle is mentioned as one of the forms of death enu-
merated by the Sumerian poem (268o1), and rituals of commemoration were
very important both for the original Sumerian poem and its Akkadian transla-
tion.5 However, this has to remain speculative: we simply do not know.
As the summary shows, we have in these two versions a proper descent into
the underworld, which also is interested in the fate of the deceased. Interesting-
ly, though, it is not the hero himself, Gilgamesh, who goes down, but Enkidu,
‘his servant’ (177), whose inferior status is also stressed later: the Sumerian ver-
sion explicitly states that he paid no attention to the words of ‘his master’ (206).
Moreover, Enkidu does not have to travel large distances to arrive at the under-
world: the Beyond is, so to speak, just around the corner, and there is no dan-
gerous journey necessary to reach it. In Mesopotamia, then, unlike ancient
Greece (§ 2), it was not the great hero himself who braved the underworld. We
should also note that Enkidu reports his findings in the first person singular.
After a question by Gilgamesh, he stresses each time: ‘I saw him’ (102, 104, 106,
108, etc.), and then gives further details. The information about the underworld
is clearly authenticated as deriving from an eyewitness report.
4 That is all we can say about the time of its composition, cf. George, Babylonian Gilga
mesh Epic, 1.49.

5 E. Frahm, ‘Nabû-zuqup-kenu, das Gilgamesch-Epos und der Tod Sargons II’, J. Cunei
form Stud. 51 (1999) 73–90; George, The Babylonian Gilgamesh Epic, 1.49–54.

Chapter 6 : Theseus’ and Peirithoos’ Descent into the Underworld 97
2. Archaic Greek descents
Few scholars will now deny that the Gilgamesh epic had some kind of influence
on Homer, however we imagine the process of transmission to have occurred. 6
A plausible influence from the Gilgamesh epic, for example, is the repeated use
of ‘I saw’ by Odysseus in his report of his own descent (Od. 11.281, 298, 576,
582, 593), which parallels the way of authentication by Enkidu (§ 1). Yet an im-
portant difference is that the oldest Greek descents into the underworld can be
characterised as heroic feats that demonstrated the power, cunning or arrogance
of those heroes who managed to descend into the underworld and to come up
again. The descent of Theseus and Peirithoos is among these.
We first hear about such descents in Homer, but the allusive character of some
of the passages strongly suggests that the idea already pre-existed Homer, even
if we cannot say for how long.7 This is especially apparent from the end of the
Nekyia, which describes the visit of Odysseus to the underworld. The last per-
son he meets is Heracles. Evidently, the encounter is the climax of Odysseus’
own visit: even Heracles, the mightiest hero of the Greeks, had to die and re-
main in the underworld, as he bitterly complains. Yet he also tells Odysseus
about the Athenian king Eurystheus: ‘and once he sent me here to fetch the dog,
since he could not think of any more difficult labour for me. I carried him off
and led him out of Hades, and Hermes and owl-eyed Athena escorted me’
(Odyssey. 11. 621–26; see also Iliad 8.362–69). In other words, the descent into
the underworld was the culmination of Heracles’ labours, and the, clearly indis-
pensable, help of the gods shows the difficulty of descending into the under-
world.8 Although the dog is still nameless in the Odyssey, from Hesiod onwards
it was almost unanimously agreed that it had been Cerberus, the watchdog of
the underworld.9 A Corinthian cup from the early sixth century BC and Athe-
nian vases from the middle of that century onwards already portray Heracles’
visit to the underworld and his capture of Cerberus: striking testimonies to the
early date of this labour of Heracles and its popularity.10
6 Most recently, J. Haubold, Greece and Mesopotamia (Cambridge, 2013) 18–72; B. Currie,
Homer’s Allusive Art (Oxford, 2016); J. M. Kozlowski, ‘Gilgamesh’s Quest for Immortality
(Gilg. IX–XI) as a Narratological Pattern for Odysseus’s Nostos (Od. V,1-XIII,187)’, Eirene 54
(2018) 11–31; with important methodological considerations, A. Lardinois, ‘Eastern Myths
for Western Lies: allusions to Near Eastern mythology in Homer’s Iliad’, Mnemosyne IV 78
(2018) 895–919.
7 For another early descent, that of Dionysos, see M. A. Santamaria, ‘El descenso de
Dioniso al Hades en busca de su madre’, in J. Redondo and R. Torné Teixidó (eds), Apocalipsi,
mil.lenarisme i viatges a l’inframón: d’Odisseu a Bernat Metge (Amsterdam, 2014) 217–40.
8 For Heracles’ descent, see S. Dova, Greek Heroes in and out of Hades (Lanham, 2012)
71–84.
9 But note Critias TrGF 43 F1: Ἅιδου κύνα.
10 V. Smallwood, ‘Herakles M’, in LIMC V.1 (Zürich, 1990) 85–100; see also A. Verbanck-

98 Section I: Myths
Given the popularity of Heracles’ descent, we need not be surprised that

Odysseus also mentioned a descent by the Athenian hero Theseus with the
Thessalian Peirithoos (Od. 11.631), although the line may be a somewhat later
insertion used to boost the fame of Theseus. This, at least, is what the historian
Hereas of Megara (ca. 300 BC: FGrH 486 F1) argued, suggesting that the line
was inserted by Pisistratus. Yet given the lively competition between Athens
and Megara precisely in the area of mythology,11 we need not believe this.12 In
any case, there can be no doubt that the descent goes back to, at least, the late
Archaic Age, as we can see the duo with Heracles, all three identified by their
names, in Hades on an Argive shield-band dating to about 575–550 BC, which
was found in Olympia.13 This is about the same time that we hear of Theseus
participating in the battle of the Lapiths against the Centaurs in the Hesiodic
Shield (182: Chapter 3.3) and see the duo on the famous François Vase.14 The
descent received its canonical form in Apollodorus, who tells us:
Having made an agreement with Peirithoos that they would marry daughters of Zeus,
Theseus, with the help of Peirithoos, abducted Helen from Sparta for himself, when she
was twelve years old. In an attempt to win Persephone as a bride for Peirithoos he went
down to Hades … But when Theseus arrived with Peirithoos in Hades, he was duped;
for, on the pretence that they were about to partake of his hospitality, Hades bade them
first be seated in the Chair of Forgetfulness. But they stuck to it and were held fast by
coils of serpents. Peirithoos, therefore, remained bound for ever in Hades, but Heracles
brought Theseus up and sent him to Athens (Ep. 1.24).
The role of Heracles is somewhat elaborated earlier by Apollodorus in his ac-

count of Heracles’ Labours:
And having come near to the gates of Hades, he saw Theseus and Peirithoos, who tried
to win Persephone’s hand in marriage and for that reason were in bonds. When they
caught sight of Heracles, they stretched their hands as if they could rise up through his
might. And he took Theseus by the hands and raised him, but although he also wanted
to raise Peirithoos he let go when the earth shook (2.5.12).15
Yet these accounts are not the earliest surviving ones. Pausanias (9.31.5) men-
tions a Hesiodic poem on Theseus’ and Peirithoos’ descent into the underworld
Piérard, ‘Round Trip to Hades: Herakles’ advice and directions’, in G. Ekroth and I. Nilsson
(eds), Round Trip to Hades in the Eastern Mediterranean Tradition (Leiden, 2018) 163–93.
11 See J. N. Bremmer, Initiation into the Mysteries of the Ancient World (Berlin and Bos-
ton, 2014) 166–79.

12 Cf. U. von Wilamowitz-Moellendorff, Kleine Schriften V.2 (Berlin, 1971) 116: ‘unzweifel
haft echt’.
13 P. Siewert and H. Taeuber, Neue Inschriften von Olympia (Vienna, 2013) 155 (with the
most recent bibliography).

14 For the vase, see H. A. Shapiro et al. (eds), The François Vase: new perspectives, 2 vols
(Kilchberg, 2013).
15 I follow the text of the new edition by M. Papathomopoulos, Apollodōrou Vivliothēkē =
Apollodori Bibliotheca: post Richardum Wagnerum recognita (Athens, 2010); see also F. J.
Cuartero I Iborra, Pseudo-Apollodor, Biblioteca II (Barcelona, 2012).

as well as a version of that descent in the Minyas (10.28.2), to which the well-
known fragment F 280 of Hesiod, relating a dialogue between Theseus and Me-
leager in the presence of Peirithoos, has sometimes been assigned. The virtual
absence of papyri from the Epic Cycle makes that less probable, and there is no
reason why Archaic Greece would not know of more than one version of the
descent of Theseus and Peirithoos.16 Yet Ockhams’ razor favours one epic scene,
and there are various arguments to support its belonging to the Minyas (§ 4).
However that may be, there can be no doubt that the myth of their descent into
the underworld goes back to the late seventh or early sixth century. But who are
these two heroes, why were they cooperating in the descent, and how did their
descent end? Those are the questions I would like to discuss before coming to
the poems themselves.
3. Theseus and Peirithoos
Theseus is a well known mythological figure, who does not need much elucida-
tion, but I should stress that, in contrast to what many previous analyses have
stated, he was not a hero who came to the fore only in the late sixth century.
It is clear that various episodes of his life were well known in the Epic Cycle of
the late seventh century, such as the capture of his mother Aithra by the
Dioskouroi, her enslavement to Helen and her rescue by Theseus’ grandsons
during the fall of Troy. It fits this dating that Sappho (F 206) knew his Cretan
episode, as did, perhaps, Alcaeus (F 356). This acquaintance with parts of the
myth suggests that the figure of Theseus was already part of Ionian epic in the
later seventh century,17 if not much older, although not in the tradition re
presented by the Iliad.18 As Martin West has argued that we have to think of
Western Ionic epic in particular when talking of Ionian epic,19 the occurrence of
episodes of the Athenian Theseus myth in the Iliad may be less surprising than
is often thought.
Following older scholars, West has also defended the thesis that the Ionian
phase was preceded by an Aeolic epic phase,20 which did leave its traces in Les-
bos.21 The observation may help us to solve the first problem: why did the Athe-
16 As is persuasively argued by E. Cingano, ‘The Hesiodic Corpus’, in F. Montanari et al.
(eds), Brill’s Companion to Hesiod (Leiden, 2009) 91–130 at 126–28.

17 Il. 3.144 (almost certainly interpolated); Cypria F 13 Bernabé; Ilias Parva F 17 West = 20
Bernabé; Iliupersis Arg. 4b, F 6 West = 6 Bernabé, cf. M. L. West, The Epic Cycle (Oxford,
2013) 235; Alcman F 21; Fowler, EGM 2.468–71.
18 E. Cingano, ‘Teseo e i Teseidi tra Troia e Atene’, in P. Angeli Bernardini (ed.), L’epos
minore, le tradizioni locali e la poesia arcaica (Pisa and Rome, 2007) 91–102.
19 M. L. West, Hellenica I (Oxford, 2011) 61–66.
20 West, Hellenica I, 55–60, 78–79, 402.
21 West, Hellenica I, 392–407.

100 Section I: Myths
nian Theseus cooperate with the Thessalian Peirithoos? There can indeed be no
doubt that Peirithoos derives from Thessaly. This is already the case in the Iliad,
where he is well known and firmly connected with the Thessalian Lapiths, just
as he is in the Odyssey.22 His birth from Zeus’ having sex with his mother in the
shape of a stallion suggests an older layer of Greek mythology,23 and his birth
from Ixion looks fairly old too.24 Theseus and Peirithoos thus look like some-
what strange bedfellows. The explanation for their cooperation must lie in the
composition of a poet who wanted to combine Thessalian and Ionic epic tradi-
tions. The place where that might have taken place could well have been Lesbos.
The Ilias Parva, which was ascribed to Lesches from Pyrrha (Lesbos: F 20
Bernabé) mentioned the retrieval of Aithra by Theseus’ grandsons Akamas and
Demophon, and we find a rationalised version of the descent into the under-
world in Hellanicus of Lesbos (FGrH 4 F168 = 323a F18 = 168 Fowler), who
relates that the two friends went to Epirus where there was a king Aidoneus
with his wife Persephone and daughter Kore. Whoever wanted to marry her,
had to fight with his dog Cerberus.25 But a rationalised version presupposes a
traditional version, and it may well be that such a version had been created in
Lesbos as the island where Aeolic and Ionic epic once did meet.
Now that the descent of Theseus and Peirithoos has been shown to be fairly
old, we may inquire into the motif of two heroes or friends wandering around
and performing heroic exploits. What was the model for the poet who first com-
posed the epic scene about the descent? Let us first stay within the Greek tradi-
tion. In a recent study of the Epic Cycle, Ettore Cingano has noted that the
kidnappings of girls in the epic tradition are usually the work of a couple of
young men, not the deed of an individual kidnapper. The obvious parallel to
start with is, of course, the kidnapping of Helen by Theseus and Peirithoos,
which undoubtedly was equally fairly old and is implied by events in the Epic
Cycle.26 In addition, Pindar (F 175) mentions a kidnapping by Theseus and
Peirithoos of Antiope, the Amazon who had fallen in love with Theseus accord-
ing to another Archaic version.27 The descent presupposes these kidnappings
and can be seen as an attempt at surpassing the earlier ones. However, Plutarch
(Thes. 31.1) mentions that according to various authors Helen had been abduct-
ed first by Idas and Lynceus, the sons of the Messenian Aphareus and the great
enemies of the Dioskouroi, who in turn kidnapped the Leucippids, the nieces of
22 Il. 1.263; Od. 21.296, 298; Hes. Sc. 179. Thessalian: Ephoros FGrH 70 F23; this volume,
Chapter 9.
23 Nonnos, D. 7.125; schol. Il. 1.263. For the antiquity of these couplings, see Bremmer,
Greek Religion (Cambridge, 20212) 23 f.

24 Il. 14.318; Aesch. F *89; Critias TrGF 43 F5.9.
25 See also Philochoros FGrH 328 F18a; Favorinus F 96.16 Barigazzi; Paus. 1.17; Ael. VH
4.5; Cyrill. Alex. Contra Jul. 1.12; Suda κ 2078.

26 Fowler, EGM 2.488 f.
27 Paus. 1.2.1, cf. West, The Epic Cycle, 276 f.

Aphareus. But these were not the only pair of kidnappers. Paris usually gets the
blame for abducting Helen to Troy, but he was accompanied by Aeneas accord-
ing to the Cypria (Arg. 1d West) and the iconographical tradition,28 and al-
though their behaviour was non-violent, I would also compare here the brothers
Agamemnon and Menelaos (Hes. F 197.1–5). In all these cases, we seem to have
varying transformations of the Indo-European motif of the abduction of the
Sun Maiden who is rescued by her brothers, as studied again by West in his
splendid book on Indo-European myth and poetry.29
Yet the motif of the two abductors is only one side of the coin. The other one
is the fact that in all the cases we just mentioned the abductors are males on the
brink of adulthood. We may wonder why Theseus and Peirithoos are continu-
ously on the go, as was of course Heracles. Now the motif of young men who
roam at the margin of civilisation – and the underworld surely is the extreme
edge of the civilised world, if not beyond – is well known from ancient Greece
itself. In Athens itself, but also in Euboea, Illyria and Acarnania, ephebes in
historical times had to patrol the frontiers, from which activity they were called
peripoloi, ‘they who move around’, but also kryptoi, ‘the hidden ones’.30 John
Ma, who has devoted an important study to the phenomenon, stresses the fact
that in the historical period these marginal youths were fully integrated into the
civil society and were often neoi rather than ephebes, as integration and social-
isation took place over a longer period of time than just the Athenian ephebic
two years.31
Moreover, sometimes these youths functioned as crack troops, a bit like the
English SAS or American Seals, and were able to use the weapons of hoplites.
The problem is of course, although not spelled out as such by Ma, that in histor-
ical time cities and communities developed their archaic institutions in different
ways. Usually, we are not informed about the original situation and, conse-
quently, all reconstructions are speculative. However, we can at least note that
the motif of wandering around during initiation must be old, as it is also well
attested among the Iranian youths and the Irish fian, and the motif survived in
the legends of the Arthurian knights-errant.32 A similar development occurred
in Central-Asia where the youths of the Turkmens, Uzbeks and Kirghisians
were charged with the task of guarding the frontiers.33
28 E. Cingano, ‘Aporie, parallelismi, riprese e convergenze: la costruzione del ciclo epico’,
in A. Aloni and M. Ornaghi (eds), Tra panellenismo e tradizioni locali. Nuovi contributi
(Messina, 2011) 3–26 at 18–20.
29 M. L. West, Indo-European Poetry and Myth (Oxford, 2007) 230, 232, 237.
30 For bibliography, see this volume, Chapter 1, note 135.
31 See this volume, Preface; J. Ma, ‘The Return of the Black Hunter’, CCJ 54 (2008) 188–
208.
32 Iran and fiana; this volume, Preface and Chapters 1.7, 5.2 and 15.2.
33 R. Bleichsteiner, ‘Perchtengestalten im Mittelasien’, Arch. f. Völkerkunde 8 (1953) 58–75
at 73.

The wandering was also part of the ancient Germanic education, since it was
customary in the early Middle Ages that the iuvenes, the sons of nobility, were
roaming through the countryside; in fact, they showed all the characteristics of
an age group in the liminal period between youth and adulthood.34 Now my-
thology is not a direct reflection of historical rituals but refracts and dramatises
the historical, ritual reality. And precisely in early Germanic epics, songs and
fairy tales we have stories of pairs of youths and mentors, such as Isung and
Vildiver, Ise and Orendel, Eisenhans and Bärenhäuter, Gigas and Hythinus,
who all seem to point to motifs of initiation, even though refracted through
different lenses.35
In the case of Peirithoos and Theseus, we should note that in the early icono-
graphical tradition Peirithoos usually is bearded, but Theseus not.36 This sup-
ports a conclusion that Perithoos was older than Theseus, a feature further sup-
ported by the mention of the former’s son in the Iliad; the fragment of Hesiod
or Pseudo-Hesiod that recalls his deceased wife Hippodameia also suggests
that, traditionally, Peirithoos was older than Theseus.37 One may wonder if this
combination of an older mentor wandering around with his young pupil is not
also reflected in the pairing of Silenos and Dionysos. The myth appears on
Greek vases as early as the second quarter of the sixth century,38 and Herodotus
(8.138) and Xenophon (Anab. 1.2.13) refer to it before we get a fuller report by
Ovid (Met. 11.89–105). The initiatory motifs in the myths of Dionysos are well
known, such as his education at a marginal island of Attic mainland and his
transvestism.39 And it is not surprising that a connection between Silenos and
initiation was already noted by Henri Jeanmaire, who also noted the initiatory
character of Dionysos’ transvestism in his classic Couroi et Courètes.40
Having looked at the protagonists, let us now turn to their actual descent.
Our tradition has not much to tell about the failure of their attempt to woo
Persephone. It is clear that they were trapped by Hades and kept in the under-
world until Heracles liberated (one of) them. This is the picture not only in the
Odyssey, but also in the already mentioned late-Archaic Minyas (Paus. 10.28.2,
cf. Hes. F 280 = Minyas F dub. 7 Bernabé); in Panyassis (F 9 Davies = F 14 Bern-
abé), where they are stuck to a rock; and on Polygnotos’ painting in the Cnidian
leschê (Paus. 10.29.9), albeit in a less undignified posture. This clearly is the
older situation, which is still referred to in the hypothesis of ?Critias’ Peirithoos.
The stress by Vergil on Theseus’ eternal imprisonment (Aen. 6.617: sedet aeter
34
See this volume, Chapter 1.7.
35
O. Höfler, Kleine Schriften (Hamburg, 1992) 29–41.
36 E. Manakidou, ‘Peirithoos’, in LIMC VII.1 (1994) 232–42 at 240 notes ‘einen gewissen
Altersunterschied’; Himerius, Or. 54.

37 Polypoites: Il. 2.740, 12.129, 182. Hippodameia: Il. 2.741–42, Hes. F 280.28.
38 M. Miller, ‘Midas’, in LIMC VIII. 1 (1996) 846–51.
39 This volume, Chapter 8 .
40 H. Jeanmaire, Couroi et Courètes (Lille, 1939) 354, 371.

numque sedebit, with Horsfall ad loc.) in the underworld shows that he was
acquainted with this tradition and disputed the tradition that Theseus was lib-
erated by Heracles who, at least in some sources, left Peirithoos where he was;41
in fact, the early iconographical tradition unanimously suggests only the liber-
ation of Theseus.42
According to several later sources, but at least since the early second-century
AD lexicographer Pausanias (λ 20 Erbse), the liberation cost Theseus and Peirit-
hoos a part of their behinds.43 The motif probably derives from ancient tradi-
tions that one cannot escape the underworld without paying a small price. It is
well attested in folktales where the hero escapes the falling door of the under-
world but loses a piece of his heel.44 The motif is also familiar from the Rigveda
and the passage of the Argo through the Clashing Rocks, losing only a piece of
its stern ornament, just like the dove that preceded the Argo lost only its tail
feather.45
In conclusion, it seems that the Archaic poet who first wrote a poem on the
descent of Theseus and Peirithoos or a poem in which this katabasis appeared,
took his inspiration from various traditional poetic motifs. His bricolage sur-
vived the Archaic Age, albeit only fragmentarily, as we have seen. Let me con-
clude with a few observations on our two oldest longer texts containing this
tradition. The oldest one, be it from (pseudo-)Hesiod or the Minyas, is still rath-
er close to the Odyssey in motifs and language as has recently been shown.46
West has demonstrated that the descent in the Nostoi is also very close to the one
in the Odyssey and has attractively suggested that it contained a visit by Mene-
laos to the underworld, where he saw Agamemnon, the sinner Tantalos and
various women.47 The observation is important, as it shows that towards the end
of the seventh century there was an interest in descent poetry, which concen-
trated on meetings with famous heroes, sinners and noble women, although the
presence of the latter feature is not easy to understand.
Unfortunately, the scene that is left does not enable us to see the context of
their descent, but it seems clear that the heroic duo will be contained in the un-
derworld and as such do not see sinners but are themselves sinners. Moreover,
41 Hypothesis of Critias’ Pirithous, cf. Critias TrGF 43 F6; Philochoros FGrH 328 F18;
Diod. Sic. 4.26.1, 63.4; Hor. C. 3.4.80; Hyginus, Fab. 79; Apollod. 2.5.12, Ep. 1.23–24.
42 Manakidou, ‘Peirithoos’, 241. For the early iconographical tradition, see also Verbanck-
Piérard, ‘Round Trip to Hades’, 180–82.

43 For all sources, see Theodoridis on Photius λ 348.
44 K. Spiess, ‘Ferse, Abschlagen der’, in L. Mackensen (ed.), Handwörterbuch des deutschen
Märchens II (Berlin 1939–40) 92–104.

45 Asclepiades FGrH 12 F2, 31; Apoll. Rhod. 2.571–3, 601; West, Indo-European Poetry
and Myth, 158–59, with further Indian parallels.

46 M. A. Santamaría Álvarez, ‘Theseus’ and Pirithous’ Catabasis in P. Ibscher col. I (Hes.
fr. 280 M.-W. = Minyas fr. 7 Bernabé)’, in T. Derda et al. (eds), Proceedings of the 27th Interna
tional Congress of Papyrology I (Warsaw, 2016) 37–51.
47 West, The Epic Cycle, 271–82.

Meleager’s apparent ignorance of the fate of Peirithoos’ wife Hippodameia does

not really fit the way women are mentioned in the descents in the Odyssey and
the Nostoi. These differences suggest a somewhat later development and, despite
the parallels with the Odyssey, fit the Minyas better than a proximity to Hesiod.
Still, the fragmentary nature of the scene prevents us from being certain.
4. The drama Peirithoos
We are somewhat better informed about the drama Peirithoos, which must date
to the later fifth century, although we cannot really decide whether it was writ-
ten by Euripides or Critias.48 Despite the fact that the authoritative edition by
Bruno Snell and Richard Kannicht (TrGF 43, 19862) opts for Critias,49 Euripides
still seems a good candidate.50 This uncertainty means that we also cannot be
certain regarding its date, although a performance in the last decades of the fifth
century seems probable. The date would also fit Critias’ philosophical frag-
ments (F 3–4), which make a somewhat Orphic impression. Actually, this ele-
ment may also point to Euripides, as he became increasingly interested in
Orphism in the course of his career.51 In any case, we are clearly beyond the
Archaic Age, as the Chorus probably consists of Eleusinian initiates (F 2 S/K)
in the underworld. Now Hugh Lloyd-Jones (1922–2009) has reconstructed an
epic katabasis of Heracles, in which he was initiated by Eumolpos in Eleusis
before starting his descent at Laconian Taenarum.52 Lloyd-Jones dated this
poem to the middle of the sixth century, and the date is supported by a shard in
the manner of Exekias of about 540 BC that shows Heracles amidst Eleusinian
gods and heroes.53 This epic poem influenced in turn the poem of Orpheus’
48 For an important stage in the discussion about the authenticity, see G. Alvoni, ‘Ist Cri-
tias fr. 1 Sn.-K. Teil des “Peirithoos-Prologs ? Zu Wilamowitzens Memorandum über die
“Peirithoosfrage”’, Hermes 139 (2011) 120–30.
49 I use the new introduction, text, translation and commentary by M. J. Cropp, Minor
Greek Tragedians I (Liverpool, 2019) 186–207, 219–24, who keeps the numbers of Snell and
Kannicht.
50 Cf. the sensible evaluation of the century-old discussions in C. Collard and M. Cropp,
Euripides Fragments II (Cambridge MA and London, 2008) 630–35; M. Cropp, ‘Euripides or

Critias, or Neither? Reflections on an Unresolved Question’, in A. A. Lamari et al. (eds), Frag
mentation in Ancient Greek Drama (Berlin and Boston, 2020) 235–56. For a possible connec-
tion with Euripides’ Heracles, see H. J. Mette, Kleine Schriften (Frankfurt, 1988) 333–39.
51 F. Egli, Euripides im Kontext zeitgenössischer intellektueller Strömungen (Leipzig, 2003)
49–53; R. Scodel, ‘Euripides, the Derveni Papyrus, and the Smoke of Many Writings’, in
A. Lardinois et al. (eds), Sacred Words: Orality, Literacy and Religion (Leiden, 2011) 79–98;
A. Melero, ‘Critias, Piritoo fgs. 2. 1–4–5 Snell’, in A. Melero et al. (eds), Textos fragmentarios
del teatro griego antiguo: problemas, estudios y nuevas perspectivas (Lecce, 2012) 119–40.
52 H. Lloyd-Jones, Greek Epic, Lyric, and Tragedy (Oxford, 1990) 167–87; see also R. Parker,
Athenian Religion (Oxford, 1996) 98–100.

53 J. Boardman et al., ‘Herakles’, in LIMC IV.1 (1988) 728–838 at 805–08.

descent to the underworld,54 and one may wonder if our playwright drew on
this poem as well.
From the fragments of the Peirithoos we do not learn very much about The-
seus and Peirithoos’ descent, but the Hypothesis presents what must be a good
summary of the play.55 It mentions that Peirithoos is guarded by snakes. This
reminds us of the description of the sinners in Apollodorus as ‘but they stuck to
it and were held fast by coils of serpents’. Directly or indirectly, the words may
derive from the tragedy: a serpent is also mentioned in a very fragmentary papy-
rus (F 4a), but that is all we can say. The liberation by Heracles is mentioned, and
the Prologue does indeed introduce Heracles (F 1). We do not see sinners,56 but
instead Peirithoos tells in some detail about the deed of Ixion, who tried to rape
Hera, and of his punishment on a wheel (F 5). In that respect the tragedy is still
the heir to the Archaic descent tradition. But the focus of the tragedy is rather
on the friendship displayed by Theseus to Peirithoos in the underworld, as is
clear from the Hypothesis. It is not surprising, then, that Peirithoos mentions
that Theseus is joined to him ‘by the fetters of shame, not forged from bronze’
(F 6, tr. Cropp), whereas he himself is clearly tied down with forged fetters.
Apparently, in the tragedy Theseus has stayed in the Underworld voluntarily
through loyalty to Peirithoos and will not leave without him, so that Heracles
proceeds to rescue both of them (cf. the Hypothesis and F 7). Friendship is a
favourite theme of Euripides (witness Medea and Aegeus in the Medea, Theseus
and Heracles in HF, and Orestes and Pylades in IT). In fact, several later au-
thors compare Theseus and Peirithoos to prototypical pairs of friends, such as
Orestes and Pylades or Achilles and Patroclus.57 But that is all we can say about
the descent of Theseus and Peirithoos in the Archaic and Classical Age. In the
end, the fragmentary nature of our tradition prevents us from shedding more
light in the darkness of their underworld.58
54 For these poems, see also Bremmer, Initiation into the Mysteries, 190–93.
55 For the text of the Hypothesis (F 1), see also G. Alvoni, ‘Nur Theseus oder auch Peirit-
hoos? Zur Hypothesis des Pseudo-Euripideischen “Peirithoos”’, Hermes 134 (2006) 290–300.
56 G. Alvoni, ‘Eracle ed Eaco alle porte dell’Ade (Critias fr. 1 Sn.-K.)’, Philologus 152 (2008)
40–48.
57 Xen. Symp. 8 .31 (O. and P.); Dio Chrys. 74.28 (O. and P.); Luc. Tox. 10 (A. and P.); see
also Alvoni, ‘Nur Theseus oder auch Peirithoos?’, 294 note 23 with many references to their
proverbial friendship.
58 I am most grateful to Martin Cropp for comments and to Suzanne Lye for her meticu-
lous correction of my English.

Chapter 7
Initiating Heracles
The relation between myth and ritual has long been a bone of contention among
classicists, but the main historiographical lines are now clear.1 As the most re-
cent studies of Greek religion, those by Robert Parker, Julia Kindt and Jennifer
Larson¸ pay virtually no attention to the subject, and as Walter Burkert did not
engage with more recent discussions of the relationship between myth and ritu-
al in the second edition of his great handbook,2 I will come back to that relation-
ship before I discuss a specific case. Let me summarise my own ideas, based on
several recent contributions, in the following points:
1. The terms ‘myth’ and ‘ritual’ are indispensable despite Claude Calame’s crit-
icisms.3 At the same time we have to realise that we are dealing with phenom-
ena that are related to one another as Wittgensteinian family resemblances
rather than being examples of identical categories.4
2. The claim by Burkert and Versnel that myth and ritual arose at the same time,
pari passu, does not withstand critical analysis.5
3. We rarely are properly informed about the performance of the myth during
the ritual. This should make us wary of seeing the interaction of myth and
ritual as the key to a better understanding of their relationship,6 even if it is
1 Cf. H. S. Versnel, Transition & Reversal in Myth & Ritual (Leiden, 1993) 15–88; B. Ko
walzig, Singing for the Gods (Oxford, 2007) 13–23; W. Burkert, Kleine Schriften V (Göttingen,
2011) 231–51; Bremmer, The World, 435–44.
2 R. Parker, On Greek Religion (Ithaca and London, 2011) 23, 213; W. Burkert, Griechische
Religion der archaischen und klassischen Epoche (Stuttgart, 20112) 13–14; J. Kindt, Rethinking
Greek Religion (Cambridge, 2012); J. Larson, Understanding Greek Religion (London and
New York, 2016).
3 C. Calame, ‘“Mythe” et “rite” en Grèce: des catégories indigènes?’, Kernos 4 (1991) 179–
204, reprinted in Calame, Sentiers transversaux (Grenoble, 2008) 43–62.

4 For the term, see C. Ginzburg, ‘Family Resemblances and Family Trees: two cognitive
metaphors’, Critical Inquiry 30 (2004) 537–56.

les, London, 1979) 56–58, who is followed by Versnel, Transition & Reversal, 74–88. Neither
Burkert’s sociobiological explanation of the close relation between myth and ritual nor his
interest in the theories of Vladimir Propp (ibid., 14–18) have proved to be persuasive, cf.
Kowalzig, Singing for the Gods, 19–21; J. N. Bremmer, ‘Walter Burkert on Ancient Myth and
Ritual: some personal observations’, in A. Bierl and W. Braungart (eds), Gewalt und Opfer. Im
Dialog mit Walter Burkert (Berlin and New York, 2010) 71–86 and The World, 440–44 (myth
and ritual); J. Lightfoot, Parthenius of Nicaea (Oxford, 1999) 237–40 (Propp).
6 Contra Kowalzig, Singing for the Gods.

true that every new performance can introduce new accents and innovations
both to the myth and, even if to a lesser degree, to the ritual.
4. The structure and mood of a myth often resembles that of its corresponding
ritual. Yet in general a myth does not wholly reflect the plot of its ritual. Myth
rather concentrates on striking details and might be considered an ‘emic’ or
insider’s commentary on the ritual.
5. Myth can exaggerate and picture as permanent what is only symbolic and
temporary in ritual.
6. The relation between myth and ritual can often be of an aetiological nature.7
Yet sometimes we cannot relate a myth to a specific ritual, but to a more gen-
eral existing ritual scenario. As far as I can see, current discussions have not
yet succeeded in formulating satisfying answers to problems arising from
that relationship. That is why I will come back to that problem by focusing on
the initiation of Heracles, 8 however surprising the term ‘initiation’ might be
in connection with the great Greek hero.
1. Heracles’ youth and his name
As my point of departure I will take the story about Heracles’ education in

Apollodorus:
Heracles was taught charioteering by Amphitryon, but wrestling by Autolykos, archery
by Eurytos, armed battle by Castor, and lyre-playing by Linos. This Linos was a broth-
er of Orpheus. Having arrived in Thebes and become a Theban citizen, he died having
been struck with the lyre by Heracles. For when he (Linos) had struck him, Heracles
killed him in a fit of rage. When some people brought a charge of murder against him, he
cited a law of Rhadamanthys saying that if a person defends himself against another who
has initiated the violence, he is innocent, and thus he was acquitted. But Amphitryon,
fearing that he might do something similar again, sent him off to the cattle farm. And
there he was raised surpassing all others in size and strength. The mere sight of him was
enough to show that he was a son of Zeus, for his body measured four cubits, and a fiery
gleam shone from his eyes. He never missed his mark with his arrows or javelins. While
he was still with the herds, at the age of eighteen, he killed the lion of Kithairon. It came
7 This is stressed by C. Calame: ‘Greek Myth and Greek Religion’, in R. D. Woodard (ed.),
The Cambridge Companion to Greek Mythology (Cambridge, 2007) 259–85; ‘Untimely

Death for the Young Girl: etiological foundations and initiation practices in Classical Athens’,
in J. Dijkstra et al. (eds), Myths, Martyrs, and Modernity. Studies in the History of Religions in
Honour of Jan N. Bremmer (Leiden, 2010) 59–74, and Thésée et l’imaginaire athénien. Légen
de et culte en Grèce antique (Paris, 20183).
8 For Heracles, with bibliographies, see, most recently, E. Stafford, Herakles (London and
New York, 2012); S. Bär, Herakles im griechischen Epos (Stuttgart, 2018); R. Belli Pasqua and
R. Sassu, ‘Eracle fra mito e politica. Considerazioni sull’impiego dell’immagine dell’Alcide
come strumento di legittimazione del potere nel mondo classico’, Mediterraneo antico 22
(2019) 423–52. For his youth, note also the observations by C. Brillante, ‘Crescita e apprendi-
mento: l’educazione del giovane eroe’, QUCC NS 37 (1991) 7–28.

Chapter 7: Initiating Heracles 109
from Kithairon and used to destroy the cattle of Amphitryon and Thespios. The latter
was the king of the Thespians, and Heracles went to him when he wanted to kill the lion.
And he (Thespios) entertained him for fifty days, and each night, as Heracles went out
for the hunt, Thespios arranged that one of his daughters should go to bed with him (for
he had fifty of them, borne to him by Megamede, daughter of Arneos), and he was keen
to have them all a child by Heracles. And Heracles, thinking that he was always sleeping
with the same woman, had sex with all of them. And having vanquished the lion, he
dressed in its skin, and used its gaping mouth as a helmet.9
Before making some comments on the way that the story is told and on its
sources, let us first take a look at the myth itself. The first detail that strikes us
by its absence is any information about the name of Heracles. It is often typical
of male initiation that boys get a new name in the course of time, and we have a
number of examples of that practice in Greek mythology: Theseus received his
name after having been acknowledged as a son by his father Aegeus; Achilles
was called Ligyron before Cheiron gave him the name Achilles, Bellerophon
used to be called Leophontes or Hipponoos, and Paris’ name was Alexandros
before he became a shepherd.10
Apollodorus does not mention Heracles’ earlier name here, but a bit later he
tells us that Heracles used to be called Alcides; other authors hand down the
name Alcaeus, clearly a variant, and Neilos, the meaning of which remains un-
explained.11 The change of name might be old, as Pindar (F 291) already says
that Heracles used to be called Alcides and he calls him Alkaidas in one of his
paeans (20.4 Maehler = S1 Rutherford), a name that is reflected in that of his
descendants, who are called Alkaidai by the mythographer Menekrates (F dub.
5A Fowler). It is therefore hardly surprising that we find the names Alkidas and
Alkeidas in Thessaly, as the leading Thessalian families considered themselves
to be descendants of Heracles.12 Given that the Spartan kings also considered
themselves descendants of Heracles, it is equally unsurprising to find the names
Alkeidas/Alkidas and Antalkidas also in Sparta.13
9 Apollod. 2.4.9–10, cf. the new editions by M. Papathomopoulos, Apollodōrou Vivliothēkē
= Apollodori Bibliotheca: post Richardum Wagnerum recognita (Athens, 2010); F. J. Cuartero

I Iborra, Pseudo-Apollodor, Biblioteca II (Barcelona, 2012). For a similar, mostly overlapping,
description of Heracles’ youth, see Theocritus 24.103–31.
10 For all these name changes, see this volume, Chapter 1.2.
11 Alcides: Call. H. Artemis 145; Hor. C. 1.12.25; Apollod. 2.4.12; Orion s.v. Ἡρακλείδης;
Suda α 1276; schol. Pind. O. 6.115c. Alcaeus: Diod. Sic. 1.24.4 and 4.10.1; Ael. VH 2.32; Sext
Emp. M. 9.36; Eustathius and schol. on Il. 14.324; U. von Wilamowitz-Moellendorff, Euripides,
Herakles (Berlin, 18952) 49. Neilos: schol. Lycophron 1350. For the names, see also C. Brillante,
‘La paideia di Eracle’, in C. Bonnet and C. Jourdain-Annequin (eds), Héraclès. D’une rive à
l’autre de la Méditerranée (Brussels and Rome, 1992) 199–222 at 212.
12 B. Helly, L’État thessalien (Lyon, 1995) 106–07; P. M. Fraser and E. Matthews, A Lexi
con of Greek Personal Names III.B (Oxford, 2000) s.v. Alkeidas, Alkidas.
13 R. Catling, ‘Sparta’s Friends at Ephesos. The Onomastic Evidence’, in id. and F. March-
and (eds), Onomatologos. Studies in Greek Personal Names Presented to Elaine Matthews
(Oxford, 2010) 195–237 at 198–200.

2. Heracles’ educators
If Apollodorus might fail us at this point, he confronts us with a plurality of

educators, the list of which very much looks like a compilation from different
sources of different periods of time concerning different stages of Heracles’ ed-
ucation. For example, the Greek term used for training for armed battle, hoplo
machein, is not attested before the fourth century BC. Consequently, this part
of Heracles’ education is clearly not very old, and indeed, we would not expect
heavy arms to have played a role in his education.
Another rather puzzling feature is his driving the chariot, which he learned
from his father Amphitryon:14 it can hardly have been part of the initial edu
cation, given that young boys lack the necessary strength to steer horses. How-
ever, if we take Claude Calame’s exposition regarding the literal meaning of the
agôgê as ‘leading a horse by the hand’ as our point of departure, we might say
that charioteering was the reverse of being treated as a young foal or colt, like
the Spartan boys in the agela. To be able to drive a chariot demonstrated that
one had outgrown the age of boys who still had to be domesticated. In this re-
spect, we may perhaps compare Hippolytos, who did not manage to control his
horses, and Pelops, who won his bride Hippodameia via a chariot race.15
Other parts of Heracles’ education look like belonging to an earlier, but not
too early stage of his training. Wrestling may not sound familiar,16 but in back-
ward Arcadia it must have been part of the older boys’ training. We know from
fourth-century inscriptions recording the winners of boys’ games during the
Lykaia, the Arcadian national festival (IG V.2.549–50), that the victors came
from all over Greece, but that Arcadian boys triumphed in running, wrestling
and boxing. A second interesting but rarely noticed parallel we find in, of all
places, Diogenes Laertius’ account of the slavery of Diogenes the Cynic. His
owner, the Corinthian Xeniades, charged him with the education of his sons.
The philosopher took his new occupation very seriously:
After their other studies he taught them to ride, to shoot with the bow, to sling stones
and to hurl javelins. Later, when they reached the wrestling-school, he would not permit
the master to give them full athletic training, but only so much as to heighten their col-
our and keep them in good condition.
14 See also Theocritus 24.121–24. For Heracles’ connection with horses, see Paus. 2.4.9;
Hsch. ι 823; A. Inglese, ‘Eracle, Melission e il carro: un’iscrizione dal santuario dell’eroe a
Tebe’, Gaia 21 (2018) = https://journals.openedition.org/gaia/371, accessed 7–12–2020.
15 C. Calame, Choruses of Young Women in Ancient Greece (Lanham, 1997) 238–44 =
C. Calame, Les Choeurs de jeunes filles en Grèce ancienne (Paris, 20193) 407–15, where Hera-
cles has to be added.
16 But note its mention also in Theocritus 24.111–12, in combination with boxing, 112–13.

And:
The boys used to get by heart many passages from poets, historians, and the writings of
Diogenes himself; and he would practise them in every short cut to a good memory. In
the house too he taught them to wait upon themselves, and to be content with plain fare
and water to drink. He used to make them crop their hair close and to wear it unadorned,
(6.27, 30–31, tr. R. D. Hicks, Loeb).
Diogenes clearly modeled his education on that of the Spartan system, although
not in every respect. On the contrary, he indulged his disgust of athletes, and he
had adapted the cultural content of his education to the urbane city that Corinth
was in his time. But his pupils must have looked remarkably like Spartan boys,
who were subjected to the same kind of restrictions.17 The resemblance was
hardly chance, as Diogenes, when asked where in Greece he saw good men,
answered: ‘good men nowhere, but good boys in Sparta’ (6.27).
In fact, the training in wrestling should not surprise us. An important part of
the hoplite battle existed in hand-to-hand fighting where the opponent was so
near that Alexander the Great ordered all Macedonians to be clean-shaven in
order that the enemy might not seize their beards. In such a position, the small-
est change in position through a feint could be decisive, and in order to master
those feints wrestling was of the greatest use. Epaminondas kept urging the
Theban youths to train at wrestling and, according to some Greeks, in the battle
of Leuctra the Spartans were crushed by the Thebans because of their lack of
practice in wrestling.18
Archery must also have been part of a later stage of the education given that it
needs muscle to be an effective archer. In addition to Eurytos,19 Apollodorus
mentions elsewhere that Heracles had learned archery from Rhadamanthys, 20
whom we will meet shortly as one of his educators, but we also hear of the
Scythian Teutaros, one of Amphitryon’s herdsmen;21 the detail may well derive
from Athenian comedy and can hardly be separated from the Scythian archers
17 For the Spartan initiation, see the differing points of view of M. Pettersson, Cults of
Apollo at Sparta. The Hyakinthia, the Gymnopaidiai and the Karneia (Stockholm, 1992);
N. M. Kennell, The Gymnasium of Virtue: Education and Culture in Ancient Sparta (Chapel
Hill, 1995); J. Ducat, Spartan Education (Cardiff, 2006).
18 Wrestling and fighting: W. K. Pritchett, The Greek State at War IV (Berkeley, 1985) 64 f.
Alexander: Plut. Thes. 5; Polyaenus 4.3.2; E. Rohde, Kleine Schriften, 2 vols (Tübingen and
Leipzig, 1901) 1.347–52. Epaminondas: Plut. Mor. 639f-640a, Pel. 7, cf. G. L. Cawkwell, ‘The
Decline of Sparta’, CQ 77 (1983) 385–400 at 398 f.
19 He is also mentioned by schol. Lycophron 50.
20 Apollod. 2.4.11, where Frazer emends the reading autou (that is, Rhadamantys) into
Eurytou, but autou is kept in the recent editions of P. Scarpi and M. G. Ciani, Apollodoro:
I miti Greci (Milano, 1996); Papathamopoulos and Cuartero I Iborra.
21 Lycophron 56 (with Hornblower ad loc.), 458; Fowler, EGM 2.267–68 on Herodoros
FGrH 31 F18 = **18 Fowler; Call. F 692, with Pfeiffer ad loc.; D. Braund, ‘Teutaros, the
Scythian Teacher of Herakles’, in Catling and Marchand, Onomatologos, 381–89.

who were employed as police by Athens.22 Shooting with bow and arrows was
typical of pre-hoplite training of the Greek boys, as we just saw in the training
by Diogenes. Hoplites looked down on the bow as a weapon suited only for
cowards, a feeling of contempt time and again repeated in our texts. We encoun-
ter the same feeling in the Middle Ages, when the knights looked down on the
archers and continued to do so even after the battle of Agincourt (AD 1415) had
shown them the effectiveness of this weapon. Moreover, some of the best medi-
eval archers came from wild and forested regions, such as Wales and Scotland.
This will also be the reason why the bow remained important in Crete also after
the initiation: the mountainous character of the land – and Crete consists for
ninety-five percent of mountains – made the use of heavy armour highly im-
practical, although not totally impossible.23 Ecology is always a factor to be
taken into account.
Two mythographers, who are our oldest sources of Heracles’ education, pro-
vide further important details. The mid-fourth-century Aristophanes the Boe-
otian, who must have been well informed about the traditions regarding Hera-
cles, given that the latter was a Theban by birth,24 relates that Heracles had been
educated by Rhadamanthys.25 This may come as a surprise, as in the Iliad
(14.321–2) he is the brother of Minos, the well-known king of Crete, and in the
Odyssey (7.323) he is said to have visited the ends of the earth to have a good
look at the criminal Tityos. Stephanie West even suggests that ‘Rhadamanthys
is closely associated with Crete’, 26 but there is a much stronger connection of
him with Boeotia: in Hesiod, he is the son of Theban Europe who had to swim
to Crete to give birth to Minos, Rhadamanthys and Sarpedon.27 The combina-
22 V. J. Hunter, Policing Athens. Social Control in the Attic Lawsuits, 420–320 B. C.
(Princeton, 1995); Ar. Eccl. 923 with Austin and Olson ad loc.
23 Contempt of bow: Homer Il. 11.385; Aesch. Pers. 86, 147, 239, 926; Hdt. 9.72; Soph. Ajax
1120; Eur. HF 161 and Bond ad loc.; Plut. Mor. 234e, 405b; Anth. Pal. 7.258 (= ‘Simonides’ xlvi
Page); Procop. Pers. 1.1; M. Moggi, ‘L’oplita e l’arciere: ideologia e realtà tra guerra antica e
guerra moderna’, Ktèma 27 (2002) 195–206. Medieval archers: J. Bradbury, The Medieval
Archer (Woodbridge, 1985) 84 (regions), 116–38 (Agincourt); P. Galloni, ‘Immagini e rituali
della regalità. La caccia con l’arco di Teodorico II re dei Visigothi’, Quaderni medievali 31–32
(1991) 107–19. Mountainous Crete: P. Brulé, La piraterie Crétoise hellénistique (Paris, 1978)
143–48.
24 For Heracles’ Theban origin, see A. Schachter, Cults of Boiotia 2 (London, 1986) 1–37;
S. Ritter, Bildkontakte. Götter und Heroen in der Bildsprache griechischer Münzen des
4. Jahrhunderts v. Chr. (Berlin, 2002) 102–20; add the new evidence in E. Mackil, ‘A Boiotian
Proxeny Decree and Relief in the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston and Boiotian-Lakonian Rela-
tions in the 360s’, Chiron 38 (2008) 157–94 at 166 note 25; V. L. Aravantinos, ‘The Inscriptions
from the Sanctuary of Herakles at Thebes: an overview’, in N. Papazarkadas (ed.), The Epig
raphy and History of Boeotia: new finds, new prospects (Leiden, 2014) 149–210.
25 Aristophanes FGrH 379 F8 = 8 Fowler.
26 St. West on Od. 4.563 ff.
27 Hesiod F 140–41; Eur. F 752g.21–26; Hyginus, Fab. 178; Plin. NH 25.21; Apollod. 3.1.1;
schol. Il. 12.292.

tion points to a later mythographical construction, as Sarpedon had nothing to

do with Crete or Boeotia, but belonged to Lycia.28 Apollodorus also mentions
the story about Rhadamanthys being the son of Europe, but lets him return
from Crete to Boeotia, where he married Alcmene after the death of Amphitry-
on, and where his tomb was shown.29 What we know, then, points more to his
Boeotian origin rather than a Cretan one, which is not mentioned again before
400 BC.30
Yet Rhadamanthys was not the only known educator of Heracles. A scholiast
on Theocritus mentions that ‘some say that he was educated by Cheiron and
Thestios’.31 Thestios must be the king of Thespiai, whose daughters Heracles
deflowered (see below), although it remains somewhat odd that his name is not
Thespios; there seems to be a genuine and frequent confusion of the two names
in our manuscripts.32
Concerning Cheiron, Homer already says of Achilles, ‘whom Cheiron taught’
(Il. 11.832).33 The reference is so allusive that we must accept that his audience
was supposed to know the story which, indeed, was already represented on late
seventh-century vase paintings.34 Hesiod tells that Cheiron had also educated
Jason, just as he had educated his son Medeios.35 The fact that in later times a
whole list could be given of heroes and, even, heroines who, in addition to Her-
acles, had been pupils of Cheiron, such as Actaeon, Asclepius, Aristaeus and
Cyrene, shows that Cheiron is a later addition, who was inserted into the Her-
acles’ myth on the basis of his educational reputation.36 Yet although our liter-
ary evidence is late, the thought did already occur early to a vase painter, as an
Attic neck amphora of about 510 BC shows Hermes with baby Heracles on one
28 Janko on Il. 16.419–683. The passage is used by Aeschylus F 99.
29 Plut. Mor. 577, Lys. 28.9; Apollod. 3.1.2; Anth. Pal. 3.13; schol. Lycophron 50; note also
Pherecydes FGrH 3 F84 = 84 Fowler, where Rhadamanthys is associated with Alcmene;
A. Schachter, Cults of Boiotia 3 (London, 1994) 25.
30 Epimenides FGrH 457 F19 (78 ff) = **3 Fowler; Ephoros FGrH 70 F23.
31 Schol. Theocr. Id. 13.7–9b = Herodoros FGrH 31 F17 = **17 Fowler.
32 See Frazer on Apollod. 2.4.9; Schachter, Cults of Boiotia 2.33; D. Ruiz López, ‘Testio o
Tespio en Ath. XIII 556 f?’, in J. F. González Castro et al. (eds), Actas del XI congreso español
de estudios clásicos 2 (Madrid, 2005) 515–19, Cuartero on Apollod. 2.4.9–10, but the name
Thestios as king of Thespiae is clearly early attested: Hellanicus FGrH 4 F3 = *3 Fowler;
Herodoros FGrH 31 F20 = 20 Fowler; Fowler, EGM 2.307.
33 See also Hesiod F 204. For a very full account of Achilles’ education, which almost cer-
tainly goes back to old sources, see Statius, Ach. 2.96–167, to be read with P. J. Heslin, The
Transvestite Achilles: gender and genre in Statius’ Achilleid (Cambridge, 2005).
34 A. Schäfer, Achill und Cheiron. Ein mythologisches Paradigma zur Unterweisung der
männlichen Jugend Athens (Berlin, 2006).

35 For the vase paintings, Jason, Medeios and Cheiron as educator, seee this volume, Chap-
ter 3.3.
36 Actaeon: Acusilaus FGrH 2 F33 = 33 Fowler; Apollod. 3.4.4. List: Xen. Cyn. 1. Aristaeus:
Apoll. Rhod. 2.506–10; Asclepius: Pherecydes FGrH 3 F3 = 3 Fowler; Apollod. 3.10.2;

Brillante, ‘La paideia di Eracle’, 208–09, 215–18; S. Mathé, ‘Les enfances chez Chiron’, in
D. Auger (ed.), Enfants et enfances dans les mythologies (Paris, 1995) 45–62.

side and Cheiron on the other.37 At the same time, this single vase points to a
striking difference from the youth of Achilles. Many vases display the handing
over of the latter to Cheiron by Peleus and, albeit later in time, Thetis.38 Yet the
separation from his parents does not seem to have been thematised in the case of
Heracles. Apparently, his labours became so important in the course of time
that Heracles’ youth was no longer of interest to later mythographers. 39
The mention of Cheiron should also direct our attention to what seems to
have been an institutional detail: just like Heracles, Achilles was educated by a
single older man until he was moved to the court of Lycomedes. We may add
here the examples of Theseus and Peirithoos, Orestes and Pylades as well as of
Dionysos and Silenos, whose wanderings probably all go back to that liminal
period between youth and adulthood when a Greek noble youth seems to have
moved outside his own home territory in the company of a somewhat older man
in preparation for adulthood; there are suggestive examples of such wandering
couples also in ancient Germanic tales.40
Our second mythographical source is Herodoros from Heraclea, whose acme
will have been in the later fifth century BC. Given his origin from Heraclea, it
is not surprising that he wrote an epic on Heracles in 17 books, and he must be
counted as one of our oldest known experts on the life of the hero. According to
him, Heracles was raised by the herdsmen of Amphitryon. As the case of Chei-
ron illustrates, it seems that we have two different stages of Heracles’ education.
On the one hand, there is his early youth during which he was raised by a single
educator, who will have been Rhadamanthys, and on the other, there is the
period when he was older and raised by herdsmen of Amphitryon.
The period with Rhadamanthys came to an end after Heracles had killed his
music teacher Linos. The latter was probably the personification of the (Orien-
tal?) ritual cry ailinon, the refrain of the so-called linos song.41 As already men-
tioned by Hesiod, Linos was the son of Apollo and a Muse (Urania, Calliope,
Terpsichore or Euterpe);42 the connection with the Muses reflected itself in a
cult on Mt Helikon (Paus. 9.29.5–6) and in Epidaurus (SEG 33.303, 44.332A).
However, his siblingship with Orpheus is surely fairly late and cannot antedate
Orphism. At some time, and probably in Athens, Linos was made into the mu-
sic teacher of Heracles. It is the only part of Heracles’ education that stimulated
the imagination of the vase painters, albeit it for a rather brief period of time,
37 Plut. Mor. 387d; schol. Theocr. 13.7–9; J. Boardman, ‘Herakles’, in LIMC IV.1 (1988)
728–838 at no. 1665; cf. M. Stark, Göttliche Kinder (Stuttgart, 2012) 146 f.

38 Stark, Göttliche Kinder, 149–55.
39 For the earlier youth of Heracles, see Brillante, ‘La paideia di Eracle’, 202–06.
40 O. Höfler, Kleine Schriften (Hamburg, 1992) 29–41; this volume, Chapters 1.7, 5.2, 6.3.
41 Il. 18.569–70; Hes. F 305–06; Pind. F 128c.6.
42 A. Henrichs, ‘Philodems “De Pietate” als mythographische Quelle’ , Cron. Erc. 5 (1975)
5–38 at 14, and ‘Ein neues Likymniosfragment bei Philodem’, ZPE 57 (1984) 53–57 at 55;
Linos T 25–33 Bernabé.

namely from 490–460 BC. Most of these vases have been found in Etruria,
which suggests that there was something in the theme that appealed to the
Etruscans, but this shows at the same time the limits of our knowledge.43 Sub-
sequently, the scene became the subject of a satyr play (Achaeus TGrF 20 F26)
and various Athenian comedies (Alexis F 140; Anaxandrides F 16). In later
times, though, Thebes claimed Linos back by postulating that he was buried
there, which is understandable given the Theban claims on Heracles.44
In itself, it is not surprising that Heracles received music lessons. From the
fact that Achilles was able to play the lyre in the Iliad, later generations conclud-
ed, not implausibly, that Cheiron had also taught music to Achilles, and a num-
ber of later vases do indeed display music-making Centaurs.45 The ability of
playing the lyre was also the mark of the accomplished Athenian gentleman, as
the following anecdote illustrates. When the poet Ion of Chios was still a boy
(about 465 BC), he was taken to dinner by the conservative politician Cimon,
who proved to be a skillful singer. He was apparently far superior to Themisto-
cles who, as Athenians present told Ion, used to say: ‘I may not know how to
sing and play the lyre or kithara but I know how to make a city great and rich’.46
The difference is that in the early fifth century the education had become differ-
entiated and professionalised. The vase paintings show that the painters im-
agined music teaching not just as a private affair between teacher and pupil, but
as the business of a proper school with fellow pupils; writing tablets on the wall
suggest that music was not the only subject, but that Heracles had to learn to
write and read as well. On the vase paintings we can also see that Heracles was
still an adolescent when he killed Linos, the only bearded person on the vases.
But Heracles is always represented as the superior victor and Linos as an inferi-
or victim. There clearly was no guilt on his part in the eyes of the vase painters.47
And indeed, in the subsequent court case, Heracles cited a law of Rhadaman-
thys saying that if a person defends himself against another who has initiated
the violence, he is innocent. The mention of Rhadamanthys obliquely refers to
him also as his educator, but the argument reflects the legal practice of the fifth
43 Boardman, ‘Herakles’, no 1666–1673; M. Schmidt, ‘Linos, Eracle ed altri ragazzi. Prob-
lemi di lettura’, in Modi e funzioni del racconto mitico nella ceramica greca, italiota ed etrusca
dal vi al iv secolo A. C. (Salerno, 1995) 13–25; Stark, Göttliche Kinder, 138–46.
44 Linos T 69 Bernabé; Schachter, Cults of Boeotia 2, 123.
45 Il. 9.186 (lyre); schol. Il. 4.219 (Cheiron); A. Kossatz-Deissmann, ‘Achilleus’, in LIMC
I.1 (1981) 37–200 at no’s 51–63; M. Leventopoulou, et al., ‘Kentauroi et Kentaurides’, in LIMC
VIII.1 (1997) 671–721at no’s 316–25, probably starting in the late sixth century BC.
46 Boys (adolescents) singing and playing the lyre: Eupolis F 148; Ar. F 235, Eq. 989–90,
1107, Nub. 1356 ff, Vesp. 959, 989, Pax 1265–1304, Eccl. 678; Xen. Symp. 3.1; Plato Euthyd.
272c, Rep. 3.399c; Antiphanes F 85; F. Beck, Album of Greek Education (Sydney, 1975) 23–8;
G. Koch-Harnack, Knabenliebe und Tiergeschenke (Berlin, 1983) 166–69 (vases). Themisto-
cles: Ion of Chios FGrH 392 F13, cf. F. Frost, Plutarch’s Themistocles (Princeton, 1980) 66–67;
47 Stark, Göttliche Kinder, 145.

century, and his acquittal follows contemporary Athenian rules.48 Margot

Schmidt has attractively argued that the court must have been the Delphinion,
which occupied an important place in the myth and maturation of Theseus.
Consequently, this scene from Heracles’ life may well have been invented in the
early fifth century in analogy to the myth of Theseus.49 Unfortunately, we have
no sources to elucidate us on this point, but the murder does fit the unruly na-
ture of our hero: with his lack of self-control and fury he reacts in the manner
that will characterise him for the rest of his life.50
3. Heracles among the shepherds
In order to prevent a second murder, his father Amphitryon sent him to the
cowherds. As the case of Cheiron also illustrates, it seems that we have two
different stages of Heracles’ education. On the one hand, there is his youth,
during which he was raised by a single educator, who will have been Rhadaman-
thys, and on the other, there is the period when he was older and raised by
herdsmen of Amphitryon; similarly, Achilles was educated by a single older
man until he was moved to the court of Lycomedes where he was living as a girl
when ‘unmasked’ by Odysseus (Chapters 1.1 and 7). There clearly were differ-
ent traditions about Greek initiation, and we do not need to harmonise them,
given that local developments must have taken place in the course of time.
Heracles’ education at the cattle farm, as noted by Apollodorus, first occurs in
the already mentioned Herodoros of Heraclea.51 His account suggests that this
part of Heracles’ education goes back to old sources; and indeed, Carl Robert al-
ready observed that this particular detail ‘scheint ein alter Zug der thebanischen
Heldensage zu sein’.52 In fact, it is a most interesting confirmation of an ancient
initiatory custom that we can find not only among the Greeks but also among the
Romans and ancient Persians. In Rome, we have the case of Romulus and Remus
who grew up under the guardianship of Faustulus and other shepherds, and the
first king of Alba, Silvius, was ‘born in the house of the shepherd Tyrrhus’.53 As
regards the Persians, Herodotus (1.110–14) relates how Cyrus grew up among
shepherds until his tenth year. Artashes II, successor to the Orontid dynasty and
48 D. M. MacDowell, The Law in Classical Athens (London, 1978) 109–22; S. C. Todd, The
Shape of Athenian Law (Oxford, 1993) 274; S. Acerbo, Le tradizioni mitiche nella Biblioteca
dello ps. Apollodoro: percorsi nella mitografia di età imperiale (Amsterdam, 2019) 48–68.
49 Schmidt, ‘Linos, Eracle ed altri ragazzi’, 19. Theseus and Delphinion: F. Graf, ‘Apollon
Delphinios’, MH 26 (1979) 2–22.

50 Stark, Göttliche Kinder, 195.
51 Herodoros FGrH 31 F17 = **17 Fowler.
52 C. Robert, Die griechische Heldensage II (Berlin, 1921) 623.
53 Faustulus: J.-C. Richard on Origo Gentis Romanae, p. 172 with all texts. Shepherds: Liv.
1.4.8; Plut. Rom. 6; Just. 43.2.6.8; Florus, Epit. 1.1.5. Silvius: Ogilvie on Liv. 1.3.4–6.

focus of many Armenian legends, was brought up in the cottages of shepherds

and herdsmen. Artashir, the founder of the Sassanian dynasty, was reputedly the
son of a shepherd and suckled by a goat. And finally, according to the Iranian
national epic Shahname, the legendary king Kai Khusro was brought up among
shepherds and, like Cyrus, showed his qualities at the age of ten.54
In Greece, we have a series of myths regarding the education of heroes by
different types of shepherds. Pelias and Neleus were raised by a horse keeper,
hippophorbos (Apollod. 1.9.8) and the Theban Amphion and Zethos were reared
by a cowherd, boukolos (Apollod. 3.5.5). These myths clearly reflect ancient
practices, if not that precisely, as they speak about a general education by shep-
herds instead of a limited period. The latter we find in the Iliad. Here, Apollo
already had to herd for Admetos in order to expiate for the murder of the Cy-
clopes,55 here Achilles confronted Aeneas when shepherding (20.91), and here he
killed the brothers of Andromache when they were herding cattle (6.423–24).
Naturally, while shepherding in the mountains, these youths offered excellent
occasions for nymphs and goddesses to take advantage of them, as we can also
see in the Iliad, where the nymph Abarbarêe had sex with Laomedon’s son Bou-
kolion, ‘Little shepherd’ (6.21–25), just as Enops with a water nymph (14.444–
45). In the Homeric Hymn to Aphrodite, the goddess lusted after Anchises when
the latter was shepherding on Mt Ida (53–56) and, in the Odyssey, Athena trans-
forms herself into a royal shepherd boy (13.323). Particularly interesting is the
education of Paris, as he is said to have finished his education among shepherds
at the age of twenty, that is, at the same age that Jason embarked on his Argonau-
tic expedition, and Oedipus left his foster parents in search of his real father, not
to forget Telemachos whose expedition abroad in order to search for Odysseus
also took place when he was about twenty.56 In all these cases, the stay among the
shepherds can be interpreted as a liminal stage before returning to the civilised
world for the final acceptance in the world of the adults. At the same time, it is a
kind of status diminishing for a royal youth to act as a herdsman.
4. Heracles’ maturation: sex, hunting and weapons
At the end of his stay among the cowherds – Apollodorus specifies that he is
then eighteen – Heracles had grown to his full length, four cubits, which may
54 For full documentation, see J. N. Bremmer and N. M. Horsfall, Roman Myth and My
thography (London, 1987) 33. For the Persian education, see P. Briant, From Cyrus to Alexander:
a history of the Persian Empire (Winona Lake, 2006) 327–30, 924–25, who overlooked Theo-
pompos F 105 K/A in the case of the kardakes (groups of young Persians: this volume, Chap-
ter 15.2).
55 Il. 2.766, 21.448–9; Hes. F. 54b; Eur. Alc. 8; TrGF Ad. F 721.
56 Paris: Eur. Alex. Hypoth. 12–15. Jason: Pind. P. 4.104. Oedipus: schol. Od. 11.271.

well be the abridgement of Herodoros’ four cubits and a foot. In any case, he
was clearly represented by some in antiquity as very tall, whereas others repre-
sented him as a Dactyl: such an exceptional hero had to be different from nor-
mal people.57 He also had turned into an excellent warrior, as he never missed
the mark in shooting with the bow or hurling the javelin, both arms being part
of Diogenes’ training of the sons of Xeniades (above). Yet these weapons were
also characteristic of pre-hoplite training and not suitable for the normal fight-
ing of adult Greeks. The detail of his fiery gleaming eyes is therefore rather odd
in this account and looks like, if surely indirectly, deriving from an ancient epic.
From Homer we know that such eyes betray the anger of heroes or their battle
fury.58 Given the context, the detail may well derive from a description of his
fight against the lion of Kithairon.
It is during his hunt for the lion that Heracles beds the 50 daughters of Thes-
tios. The canonical version, as represented by Ephoros, Statius and Pausanias,
lets it happen during a single night, and this version was promoted by the Chris-
tian Fathers, who called it the ‘thirteenth Labour’, a notion one can sympathise
with as one gets older. However, Herodoros, in his more rationalising manner,
gave Heracles seven nights, and Apollodorus fifty consecutive nights, which are
hardly beyond the powers of a robust male youth.59 Naturally, the one night
stand shows Heracles off as the superman he is, but there is more to it. The feat
happens, as Apollodorus notes, when he is on the brink of adulthood: at the age
of 18. 60 Diodorus (4.29.3) also calls him still a youth (ephêbos): his sexual pre-
cocity is clearly connected with his coming of age. We should remember that in
Crete all the boys married after leaving the agela, and the collective marriage of
the Danaids as well as the orgy of the Lemnian women with the Argonauts
shows that the custom is undoubtedly old. 61 In the case of the Danaids, these
girls constituted a chorus according to Pindar, and fifty is a number of a girls’
57 Herodorus FGrH 31 F19 = 19 Fowler, cf. A. Brelich, Gli eroi greci (Rome, 1958) 232–48;
C. Grottanelli, ‘Eracle Dattilo dell’Ida: aspetti “orientali”’, Oriens antiquus 11 (1972) 201–08;
Th. Hubbard, ‘Pindar, Heracles the Idaean Dactyl, and the Foundation of the Olympic
Games’, in G. Schaus (ed.), Onward to the Olympics: historical perspectives on the Olympic
Games (Waterloo, 2007) 27–45; Fowler, EGM 2.268; E. Cruccas, ‘L’altro Eracle. Apporti ori-
entali e convergenze sincretiche nella figura dell’Eracle Dattilo’, Gaia 21 (2018) = https://
journals.openedition.org/ gaia/379, accessed 7–12–2020.
58 Anger: Il. 1.104, 200; 19.16–17, with Coray ad loc. Battle fury: Il. 12.466.
59 Herodoros FGrH 31 F20 = 20 Fowler; Ephoros FGrH 70 F13; Stat. Silv. 3.1.42; Paus.
9.27.6; O. Höfer, ‘Thespios‘, in W. H. Roscher (ed.), Ausführliches Lexikon der griechischen

und römischen Mythologie V (Leipzig, 1916–24) 770–75 at 771 (Christian Fathers); F. Létou-
blon, ‘Héraclès et les Thespiades’, in C. Jourdain-Annequin and C. Bonnet (eds), Héraclès, les
femmes et le feminine (Brussels and Rome, 1996) 77–87; Fowler, EGM 2.307–09.
60 Similarly, Tzetzes, Chiliades 2.215 f.
61 Danaids: T. Gantz, Early Greek Myth (Baltimore, 1993) 203–08. Lemnian women:
Aeschylus’ Hypsipyle; Pind. P. 4.254; Herodoros FGrH 31 F6 = 6 Fowler. Crete: Ephoros

FGrH 70 F149. For collective marriages in archaic Greece, see the suggestive observations by
L. Gernet, Anthropologie de la Grèce antique (Paris, 1968) 39–45.

chorus also in the case of the pre-Homeric Nereids;62 the same will have been
true for the daughters of Thestios. Heracles even had a cult in Thespiai, and the
athletic contest connected to it suggests an initiatory background to his cult. 63
Moreover, it was said that seven of his sons stayed in Thespiai where they and
their descendants seemed to have formed a kind of oligarchy, whereas only two
or three went to Thebes and the rest to, of all places, Sardinia.64 Undoubtedly,
there are Thespian claims and practices behind this part of Heracles’ myth, but
we can see them only dimly.
Now Ammianus Marcellinus tells us that among the Taifali, a tribe connect-
ed with the Goths, the boys lived in a state of paederasty until they had killed a
boar or a bear. The killing of a boar was a typical heroic ordeal, which had also
initiatory value in ancient Macedonia, where a man could recline at dinner, i. e.,
could have the status of an adult, only when he had speared a boar without a
hunting-net. The rule was still retained in Alexander’s time, since Cassander
had to sit at the table at the age of thirty-five, because he had not yet speared his
boar. 65 The killing of the lion of Kithairon looks like a variant of this initiatory
feature, as Heracles dressed in the lion’s skin, and used its gaping mouth as a
helmet. In other words, the killing of the terrible lion is closely connected with
his adoption of a military suit, even if it is a somewhat unusual one. 66
Heracles’ coming of age is also symbolised in a somewhat different manner.
Apollodorus (2.4.11) proceeds in his account of Heracles by telling that on his
return from the hunt he met the heralds send by Erginos, king of the Minyans,
to collect the yearly tribute from Thebes. Having mutilated them by cutting off
their ears, noses and hands, and tying these around their necks, he returned
them to Erginos – a type of mutilation that strongly suggests Assyrian or Per-
sian influence. 67 Subsequently, he received weapons from Athena and defeated
Erginos, receiving Creon’s eldest daughter Megara as the prize for his victory. 68
Once again we can see the combination of the first weapons and sex, even if it is
in this case a more respectable relationship, in addition to a completely barbaric
treatment of the inviolate heralds, which continues his treatment of Linos. 69
62 Pind. P. 9.113; R. Wachter, ‘Nereiden und Neoanalyse: ein Blick hinter die Ilias’, WJA
NF 16 (1990) 19–31; Calame, Choruses of Young Women, 22–23 = Les Choeurs, 67–68 (myth-
ological choruses of 50 girls).
63 Paus. 9.27.6; SEG 15.324; Schachter, Cults of Boiotia 2, 32.
64 Diod. Sic. 4.29.4–5; Apollod. 2.7.6.
65 Amm. Marc. 31.9.5 (Taifali); Hegesandros apud Athen. 1.18a (Cassander); this volume,
Chapter 12.2.
66 Compare Perseus’ killing of a monstre, Meleager’s hunting of a boar, etc.: this volume,
Preface.
67 See this volume, Chapter 3 note 79 (bibliography),
68 For the war, see O. Olivieri, Miti e culti tebani nella poesia di Pindaro (Pisa, 2011) 92 f.
69 Apollod. 2.4.11; see also Diod. Sic. 4.10.3–6.

Immediately afterwards, Apollodorus also mentions that Heracles ‘received a

sword from Hermes, a bow and arrows from Apollo, a golden breastplate from
Hephaistos,70 and a robe from Athena, but the club he cut himself at Nemea’.
Diodorus Siculus (4.14.3) mentions the same gifts in connection with Heracles’
wars, but it seems more appropriate that he received his arms at the beginning
of his career. We may compare that a Cretan young aristocrat received his mili-
tary suit from his lover after his stay with the latter in the mountains and clear-
ly at the moment that his initial training had come to an end; similarly, in Thebes
the lover presented his beloved with a panoply when he registered as a man.
Moreover, the Cretan youth received a special piece of clothing to mark the end
of his initiation, which seems to be comparable to Athena’s gift of a peplos.71 Yet
the motley of arms (bow, sword and club), just like the robe, suggests different
stages of the initiation and its completion. Apollodorus clearly combines here
different traditions, as he did at the beginning, whereby the sword and the robe
seem to be the reflection of the normal end of initiation in an aristocratic socie-
ty but not fitting for a hero with club and lion’s skin.72
5. Conclusion
With these gifts we have come to the end of our analysis of Apollodorus’ ac-
count of Heracles’ initiation. What can we conclude in the light of the theme of
our book? I would like to draw the following conclusions:
1. Aristotle complains about the episodic nature and the weakness of the narra-
tive trajectory in the epic accounts of Heracles’ life.73 That justified observa-
tion makes Apollodorus’ description of Heracles’ education an even more
valuable account of the hero’s earlier years. Yet, as has become increasingly
clear, Apollodorus made use of several, highly valuable ancient sources, but
always at various stages removed from the originals.74 Apollodorus account
of Heracles’ life drew on ancient sources, such as perhaps Herodoros, who
70 Note also Hephaistos’ gift of armour to Heracles at Hes. Sc. 131.

71 Ephoros FGrH 70 F 149 (Crete); Plut. Mor. 761b (Thebes); this volume, Chapter 11.1.
72 For the lion’s skin, see A. Schnapp-Gourbeillon, ‘Les lions d’Héraclès’, in C. Bonnet et
al. (eds), Le bestiaire d’Héraclès (Liège, 1998) 109–26; B. Cohen, ‘The Nemean Lion Skin in
Athenian Art’, ibid., 127–39; C. Parisi Presicce, ‘Eracle e il leone: paradeigma andreias’, ibid.,
141–50.
73 Arist. Poet. 8 (1451a16–22), cf. J. Haubold, ‘Heracles in the Hesiodic Catalogue of Wom-
en’, in R. Hunter (ed.), The Hesiodic Catalogue of Women: constructions and reconstructions
(Cambridge, 2005) 85–98 at 87 f.
74 This has been amply demonstrated by A. Cameron, Greek Mythography in the Roman
World (New York, 2004) 93–104; see also U. Kenens, ‘The Sources of Ps-Apollodorus’s Li-
brary: a case-study’, QUCC 97 (2011) 129–46; Acerbo, Le tradizioni mitiche nella Biblioteca
dello ps. Apollodoro.

themselves may have drawn on even older sources. This is the simplest expla-
nation for his valuable account of Heracles’ life.
2. Although we do not know his sources, it seems reasonable to suppose that
Apollodorus ‘interpolated’ certain scenes taken from one source in that of his
main source(s).75 This is the most obvious explanation for his insertion of the
scenes with both Linos and Erginos’ heralds, which clearly do not belong to
the oldest layer of Heracles’ life. The scene with Linos can hardly have arisen
before the rise of the Athenian school system at the end of the sixth century,
which is also the time when wrestling starts to appear on the vases, for exam-
ple in representations of the myth of Achilles,76 and the mutilation of the
heralds suggests acquaintance with the Persian and/or Assyrian penal sys-
tems, which were infinitely more cruel than the Greek ones.
3. The initiation of Heracles closely corresponds to what we know about the
oldest layers of Greek initiation: the single educator, the stress on bow and
arrows, the stay with shepherds, the hunting of a threatening animal, the sex-
ual experience and the gift of arms all follow a pattern that we can observe,
albeit in various transformations, in several places in Greece.77
4. Naturally, the mythical imagination has exaggerated certain parts, such as the
dangerous lion and the sexual experience. It has also translated the equestrian
metaphor, which was so typical of ancient Greek initiation, into a proper
equestrian activity: driving the chariot.
5. Lack of sources prevents us from connecting this passage too closely to par-
ticular initiatory institutions in Thebes and Thespiai, even if some connec-
tion seems a reasonable supposition. Yet Heracles’ initiatory association in
Attica is evident as Athenian adolescents, at least from the end of the fifth
century onwards, shaved off their tuft of hair at a ceremony called oinistêria
just before entering their military service, the ephêbeia. During this ceremo-
ny, which took place in a kind of country pavilion, the boys feasted their
companions and brought Heracles a measure of wine;78 in fact, in Attica his
connection with male youth was so close that some vases even portray him as
an adolescent.79 In Thebes there was a statue of Heracles as the daphnêphoros,
75 Cameron, Greek Mythography, 100.

76 Stark, Göttliche Kinder, 195 f.
77 See the Preface to this volume.
78 Oinistêria: F. T. van Straten, ‘The Lebes of Heracles’, BABesch 54 (1979) 189–91;
R. Parker, Polytheism and Society at Athens (Oxford, 2005) 437–38 (archaeological evidence).
Heracles as ephebic role model in Attica: I. Scheibler, ‘Bild und Gefass. Zum chronographis-
chen und funktionalen Bedeutung der attischen Bildfeldamphoren’, JDAI 102 (1987) 57–118
at 95–97; E. Kearns, The Heroes of Attica (London, 1989) 35–35; in general, C. Jourdain-
Annequin, ‘Héraclès Parastatès’, in Les grandes figures religieuses (Paris, 1986) 283–332. Hair:
this volume, Chapter 1.6–7.
79 C. Bérard, ‘Héros de tout poil. D’Héraklès imberbe à Tarzan barbu’, in F. Lissarrague
and F. Thelamon (eds), Image et céramique grecque (Rouen, 1983) 111–18.

another institution with initiation in the background,80 at the Herakleia in

Thasos war orphans received their weapons out of the hands of the pole-
marchs, and all over Greece Heracles was the patron of the gymnasion.81
6. Unfortunately, we cannot use the various traditions to reconstruct the histor-
ical development of the Heracles myth and ritual, which, for all we know,
may have developed in interaction with one another. If we allow important
Near Eastern influence on its genesis, 82 it seems evident that this material was
gradually reshaped in connection with Greek initiation rituals. On the other
hand, the growing popularity of the myth must have made it attractive to at-
tach it to initiatory rituals and perhaps to adapt these in the light of the myth.
In the end, our imperfect knowledge of Archaic Greece will always lead to
imperfect knowledge about the precise relationship of its myths and rituals.
7. It may justifiably be wondered whether ‘initiation’ is still too elastically used,
to cover disparate phenomena in our material. It certainly is true that older
and younger elements sit somewhat uneasily together in Apollodorus’ ac-
count. The education by Linos, in particular, already belongs to a post-initia-
tion phase of Heracles’ biography. Future research might perhaps be able to
shed some light on the period in Archaic Athens when the traditional rites of
initiation went into decline and were gradually replaced by new educational
practices. Yet whatever the shortcomings of Pierre Vidal-Naquet’s suggestive
study of the black hunter,83 the fact of an initiatory phase in Archaic Athens
can no longer be doubted. This means that we need not locate the early histo-
ry of Heracles only in, say, Dorian areas, but may assume that all parts of
Greece can have contributed to that biography. Such a pan-Hellenic myth
must have been acceptable and recognisable everywhere in Greece, which ex-
cludes the reduction of Heracles’ myth to one local ritual. Consequently, we
will never advance beyond a structural resemblance of the Heracles myth
with a general initiatory scenario. There is no short cut possible from pan-
Hellenic myth to local ritual.
8. Finally, having looked at the myth and its, possibly, corresponding ritual, we
will conclude our analysis by answering the question as to what influence the
handbook of Apollodorus had on the shape of the account of Heracles’ initi-
ation. We owe the handbook to the interest in mythology in the early Roman
80 Pausanias 9.10.4, cf. H. Jeanmaire, Couroi et Courètes (Lille, 1939) 387–407; A. Brelich,
Paides e parthenoi (Rome, 1969) 409–28; H. Beck, Localism and the Ancient Greek City-State
(Chicago and London, 2020) 144–47.
81 Thasos: F. Sokolowski, Lois sacrées des cités grecques. Supplément (Paris, 1962)
no. 6 4.16–21; elsewhere, Parker, Polytheism and Society, 437 note 80. Gymnasion: W. Burkert,
Greek Religion (Oxford, 1985) 211; F. Graf, Nordionische Kulte (Rome, 1985) 98–99.
82 W. Burkert, Kleine Schriften II (Göttingen, 2003) 52–86.
83 P. Vidal-Naquet, Le Chasseur noir (Paris, 19832) and ‘The Black Hunter revisited’,
PCPhS NS 32 (1986) 126–44; this volume, Preface.

Empire when mythological knowledge was part of people’s cultural capital. 84

It is this need of knowledge, I suggest, that explains the detailed information
about the various educators and the gifts of weapons. Most likely, this infor-
mation served to answer questions during symposia, such as ‘Who was the
archery instructor of Heracles?’ or ‘Who gave Heracles his robe?’ In other
words, to satisfy his readers’ curiosity Apollodorus paid special attention to
the various educators and initiators as well as to those who contributed to
Heracles’ outfit. In this way, his account is not so much witness to a specific
‘système de croyance’ as to a reshaping of a traditional heroic biography in
order to make the outcome useful for a particular class of readers. Even a
mythological handbook does not stand outside time and history. 85
84
Cameron, Greek Mythography, 220–24; Bremmer, The World, 512–14.
85
I would like to thank Fabian Horn for information, Claude Calame and Bob Fowler for
comments, and Richard Buxton for discussion and skilful correction of my English.

Chapter 8
Transvestite Dionysos
When in Euripides’ Bacchae the Theban king Pentheus wants to track down the
cause of the female rebellion, he issues orders to catch ‘the effeminate
(θηλύμορφον) stranger’ (353). If the audience is intrigued by this qualification of
the foreigner, its curiosity must await the god’s capture, the occasion, indeed,
for a much more detailed description:
Well stranger, you are not unshapely in your body, so far as women are concerned – and
it is for this that you are here in Thebes. Your locks are long, through keeping clear of
wrestling, and flow right down by your cheeks, full of desire; and you keep your com-
plexion fair by careful contrivance – not in the sun’s rays, but under the shade hunting
the pleasures of Aphrodite with your beauty. (453–59)1
The effeminate, youthful appearance of the god has naturally drawn the attrac-
tion of students and commentators of the play, and they have supplied various
explanations for this remarkable feature of the god. According to E. R. Dodds
(1893–1979: on 453–59), ‘the womanish god may have deeper roots in eastern
and northern religious ideas’, although he, wisely, did not elaborate this view.
Charles Segal (1936–2002) suggests that ‘within the Bacchae, Dionysos is an
adolescent, closely attached to women, concerned with his own rite de passage
by proving his identity as the son of Zeus, free of responsibilities’.2 On the oth-
er hand, Albert Henrichs (1942–2017) considers the effeminate nature of the
god to be part of a number of opposites, such as young/old, war/peace, life/
death, which according to him are typical of Dionysos.3 Similarly, Jean-Pierre
Vernant (1914–2007) sees the feminine nature of Dionysos as part of a whole
series of reversals of our fixed categories, a vision largely followed by Henk
Versnel in his analysis of the (proto-)Hellenistic character of the god in the
play.4 Taking a more ritual point of view, Richard Seaford sees the effeminacy as
1 All translations are from G. S. Kirk, The Bacchae (Englewood Cliffs, 1970).
2 E. R. Dodds, Euripides Bacchae (Oxford, 19602) 134; C. Segal, Dionysiac Poetics and Eu
ripides Bacchae (Princeton, 19972) 158–214 at 160.
3 A. Henrichs, ‘Changing Dionysiac Identities’, in B. F. Meyer and E. P. Sanders (eds),
Jewish and Christian Self-Definition III (London, 1982) 137–60, 213–36 and Greek Myth and
Religion (Berlin and Boston, 2019) 383–92.
4 J.-P. Vernant and P. Vidal-Naquet, Mythe et tragédie en grèce ancienne II (Paris, 1986)
237–70 at 255–56; J.-P. Vernant, Mythe et religion en Grèce ancienne (Paris, 1990) 99; H. S.
Versnel, Ter unus (Leiden, 1990) 96–205 at 159.

deriving at least in part from the transvestism of Dionysos’ worshippers, where-

as Renate Schlesier connects the effeminacy with the dominance of women in
the representations of Dionysos.5 For Richard Buxton, Dionysos’ femininity ‘is
a theme moulded by and responsive to the needs of the drama’, Michael Jameson
(1924–2004) sees it as a sign of the god being ‘a mediating figure between male
and female’, and Alexander Heinemann interprets the mention of the god’s fem-
inine appearance as a way of slandering him. 6
This sample from the more recent work on the play or the god clearly illus-
trates that no consensus has yet been reached regarding the nature of the trans-
vestite Dionysos. It is the aim of my contribution to present the full evidence for
the god’s youthful, effeminate features (§ 1), to look at the parallels (§ 2) and,
finally, to sketch its relevance for a better understanding of the role of the god in
Euripides’ Bacchae (§ 3).
1. The effeminate nature of Dionysos
Euripides was not the first dramatist to put a young Dionysos on the stage. Ac-
cording to Plutarch’s Life of Nicias (3), a beardless Dionysos performed in a
chorus of Nicias, a production that thus preceded the Athenian expedition to
Sicily in 415 BC. Much earlier, Dionysos appears as an adolescent in Homeric
Hymn 7.3–4, a poem that Richard Janko has dated to the seventh, but Martin
West ascribed to the sixth century.7 Here, he is characterised as prothêbês, the
same adjective used by Bacchylides for Theseus at the age of around sixteen.8
His adolescent appearance in the Hymn well pre-dates the artistic representa-
tions, in which a beardless Dionysos emerges only in the second half of the fifth
century.9 The mythical tradition remained alive into the Roman period. In the
third century BC, the god appeared as ‘still a youth’ (ἔτι κοῦρος), to the Del
5 R. Seaford, Euripides: Bacchae (Warminster, 1996) 180; R. Schlesier, ‘Dionysos’, in Der
neue Pauly 3 (Stuttgart and Weimar, 1997) 651–64 at 653.

6 R. Buxton, Myths & Tragedies in their Ancient Greek Contexts (Oxford, 2013) 232; M. H.
Jameson, Cults and Rites in Ancient Greece (Cambridge, 2014) 62–80 (‘The Asexuality of
Dionysus’); A. Heinemann, Der Gott des Gelages (Berlin and Boston, 2016) 99–101.
7 R. Janko, Homer, Hesiod and the Hymns (Cambridge, 1982) 184; M. L. West, Homeric
Hymns, Homeric Apocrypha, Lives of Homer (Cambridge, MA and London, 2003) 16 f.

8 Hymn: A. Henrichs, ‘Myth Visualized: Dionysos and his circle in sixth-century Attic
vase-painting’, in Papers on the Amasis Painter and His World (Malibu, 1987) 92–124 at 109–
11, 115. Theseus: Bacch. 17.57, cf. C. Calame, Thésée et l’imaginaire athénien (Paris, 20183)
186 f.
9 E. Pochmarski, Das Bild des Dionysos in der Rundplastik der klassischen Zeit Griechen
lands (Diss. Graz, 1974) 66–94; F. Brommer, Die Parthenon-Skulpturen (Mainz, 19822) pl. 133;
Th. Carpenter, Dionysian Imagery in Fifth-Century Athens (Oxford, 1997) 85–103; Heine-
mann, Gott des Gelages, 100.

Chapter 8: Transvestite Dionysos 127
phian oracle after the inhabitants of Magnesia had asked for its advice;10 in
Longus’ Daphnis and Chloe, Daphnis compares himself to the beardless Dio-
nysos (1.16.4), and Macrobius, one of the last great pagans, mentions statues of a
young Dionysus and, interestingly, Hêbôn, ‘Young’, as a Napolitan epithet for
Dionysos.11
These passages clearly demonstrate that it was quite normal for Dionysos to
appear as an adolescent. This is also the case in the Bacchae since, as Jeanne
Roux has argued in her commentary, the god is twice called οἰνωπός, ‘with a
ruddy face’ (236, 438), a physical quality associated with women or beardless
youths such as Pollux and Parthenopaios (§ 2).12 The oldest source for this com-
bination of being young and in womanish attire probably is Aeschylus, in whose
Edonoi (F 61) another king, Lycurgus, asks for the identity of Dionysos with the
words `Who is that effeminate (γύννις) fellow?’ Moreover, in the source of this
fragment (Ar. Thesm. 134 ff) the question is directed to Agathon who is ad-
dressed as a youngster (νεανίσκος); presumably, in the Edonoi Dionysos was
also represented as an effeminate youth. This conclusion is reinforced by the
fact that, before becoming popular on vase paintings in the last quarter of the
fifth century, a young Dionysos only appears on two vases around 470 BC in a
setting that strongly suggests a theatrical origin.13 Aeschylus’ Lycurgan plays
were used by the Roman poet Naevius, to whose Lycurgus probably belongs a
Naevian verse which mentions a man with a flowery dress and women’s shoes
on his feet, whom the great Scaliger (1540–1609) persuasively identified as Dio-
nysos.14 The word γύννις also occurs in a satyr drama of Aeschylus, the Theoroi
(F 78a.67–68), in which an unknown person, probably Dionysos, contrasts be-
ing γύννις and ‘without strength’ with an association with ‘iron….’. Unfortu-
nately the papyrus breaks off at this very point, but the contrast seems clear.
Nearly contemporaneous is another, hitherto unnoticed, example of the ‘fe-
male’ Dionysos. When in the parodos of Sophocles’ Oedipus Rex the chorus
invokes the help of the gods against Ares they conclude their request by invok-
10 I. Magnesia 215, cf. A. Henrichs, ‘Greek Maenadism from Olympias to Messalina’,
HSCP 82 (1978) 121–60 at 123–37; J. Fontenrose, The Delphic Oracle (Berkeley, Los Angeles,
London, 1978) 409 f.
11 Macrobius, Sat. 1.18.9. It is a bit puzzling that in inscriptions the god is called only
Hêbôn, cf. IG XIV.716–17 = E. Miranda, Iscrizione greche d’Italia I: Napoli, 2 vols (Rome,
1990–1995) 1, nos. 3–4 (with thanks to Robert Parker). Did Macrobius have more information
or is the connection with Dionysos his own personal guess? Statues of young Dionysos are
also mentioned by the third-century historian Herodian (5.3.7).
12 J. Roux, Euripide, Les Bacchantes, 2 vols (Paris, 1972) 2.326–27; for a linguistic analysis,
see R. Beekes, ‘Aithiopes’, Glotta 73 (1995–96) 12–34 at 22–24; note also Nonnos, D. 27.34.
13 Th. Carpenter, ‘The Beardless Dionysus’, in id. and C. Farone (eds), Masks of Dionysus
(Ithaca and London, 1993) 185–206.

14 Naevius F 43 Schauer: diabathra in pedibus habebat, erat amictus epicroco, cf. K. Len-
nartz, ‘Zur “Wortabbildung” in der archaischen römischen Tragödie’, Glotta 73 (1995–96)

168–207 at 185 f.

ing Apollo Lykeios, Artemis with her torches, and Dionysos. The latter god is
called οἰνώψ (211, see also 438), which characterises him as young as we have
seen, but he also wears ‘the golden mitra’ (209), the first mention of this particu-
lar headgear of Dionysos, which was also worn by Pentheus and Dionysos’ fol-
lowers, the maenads.15 Now the mitra was the typical headpiece of young girls
on the brink of marriage, as its wearing by Achilles among the daughters of
Lycomedes also shows.16 Consequently, in this passage Dionysos is most likely
invoked in the shape of a girl.
Dionysos also appeared ‘like a maiden’ to the daughters of Minyas who were
failing to worship him. Our source, Antoninus Liberalis (10.1), derives his
knowledge from the early Hellenistic Nicander and the Boeotian Corinna:
clearly, the detail is not a late invention.17 This combination of a feminine aspect
and the presence of girls recurs in a Macedonian legend that has not yet received
the attention it deserves. The second-century Macedonian (!) rhetorician Poly-
aenus (4.1) relates the following: When Macedonia once was invaded by the Il-
lyrians with a numerically superior force, Argaeus, one of the earliest Macedo-
nian kings, ordered the Macedonian girls to run down from the mountains,
branding their thyrsoi instead of spears and hiding their faces with wreaths.
This ruse turned the tables and in memory of his victory Argaeus founded a
temple in honour of Dionysos Pseudanor (‘Fake-man’) and ordered to call the
girls no longer Klodônes (‘Spinsters’) but Mimallones (‘Imitators’), since they
had imitated the males. The change of name seems to reflect the sequence of
Macedonian female initiation. Until now the girls had to train themselves in
spinning,18 but in the last stage of their initiation they had to behave as ‘males’
before becoming real females.
This highly interesting story clearly reflects Dionysiac ritual in the details of
the thyrsoi, the presence of girls and their stay in the mountains. All three as-
pects recur in the Bacchae,19 where, moreover, the maenads also show them-
15 Ch. Picard, ‘Dionysos Mitrephoros’, in Mélanges Gustave Glotz, 2 vols (Paris, 1932)
2.709–21; H. Brandenburg, Studien zur Mitra (Münster, 1966) 133–48; K.Töchterle, Lucius
Annaeus Seneca, Oedipus (Heidelberg, 1994) 373 (with also Roman parallels); Finglass on
Soph. OR. 209–11.
16 C. Calame, Les Choeurs de jeunes filles en Grèce ancienne (Paris, 20193) 532–34. Achil-
les: Bio 2.20; Anth. Lat. 198.21; Brandenburg, Studien zur Mitra, 92–94.
17 On the Minyads, see K. Dowden, Death and the Maiden (London, 1989) 82–84; Brem-
mer, The World, 267 f.

18 The Macedonian story illuminates the Brauronian findings of spinning equipment and
other references to spinning girls, cf. S. G. Cole, ‘The Social Function of Rituals of Matura-
tion: the Koureion and the Arkteia’, ZPE 55 (1984) 233–44 at 239–40; P. Brulé, La fille
d’Athènes (Paris, 1987) 228–31; M. Hatzopoulos, Cultes et rites de passages en Macédoine
(Athens, 1994) 79 f.
19 Thyrsoi: Dodds on Eur. Bacc. 113. Girls: Bacc. 694 (note also Eur. Phoen. 655). Moun-
tain: Bacc. 116, 165, 986 etc, cf. R. Buxton, Imaginary Greece (Cambridge, 1994) 94–95; S. des
Bouvrie, ‘Euripides’ Bakkhai and Maenadism’, C&M 48 (1997) 75–114 at 88; Bremmer, The
World, 260–61, 273–75.

selves in a military light when they raid the Theban villages (748–68). On the
basis of a similar behaviour in Naevius’ Lycurgus, Dodds had persuasively ar-
gued that such a raid probably also occurred in Aeschylus’ Lycurgan plays, and
he concluded that such a female military performance must have been tradition-
al in Dionysiac myth.20 In fact, the connection of this story with Dionysos will
have been crystal-clear in antiquity, since a number of passages explain the
Macedonian Mimallones as ‘Bacchants’ or ‘maenads’ or connect them with Di-
onysiac myth.21
The plot of this Macedonian story has several parallels that deserve a brief
look.22 An early Tegean legend relates that when the Spartans attacked Tegea the
women led by Marpessa took the field and defeated the Spartans. They pre-
served the chains of the enslaved Spartans and the weapons of Marpessa in the
temple of Athena Alea, where they were still seen by Pausanias in the second
century.23 The traveller specifies that Marpessa had been a maiden priestess at
the time. As such priestesses were associated with rites of initiation (§ 2) and are
out of place as ‘generals’ of adult women, perhaps in the earliest version of the
legend the women had been maidens, just as in the Macedonian legend. When in
the course of time the traditional rites of initiation disintegrated, oral tradition
transformed the maidens into adult women.
A background in initiation may also be suspected for an Argive legend. When
the Spartan king Cleomenes attacked the Argives at the river Sepeia and de-
stroyed their army, the city was saved by the Argive women who manned the
walls under the command of the poetess Telesilla.24 One can only speculate why
the Argive tradition made Telesilla command the women, but when we look at
her poetry, we cannot fail to note that, as far as we can distinguish her subjects
in the few surviving fragments, she is mainly concerned with poems about girls
and weddings (PMG 717, 720, 726). Would it go too far to suspect that she some-
where mentioned the (a?) battle or warring girls? How else would she have been
connected with this legend?25 Whatever the value of these parallels may be,
there can be no doubt that in the Macedonian legend the female cross-dressing
took place in an initiatory context.
20 Dodds on Eur. Bacch. 748–64; similarly, Seaford on 754–9.

21 See Pfeiffer on Call. F 503; add Euphorion F 418.37 Lloyd-Jones/Parsons = 19A Light-
foot.
22 For these legends, see P. Vidal-Naquet, Le Chasseur noir (Paris, 19832) 274–75; especial-
ly, F. Graf, ‘Women, War, and Warlike Divinities’, ZPE 55 (1984) 245–54.
23 For the varying versions of this legend, see Hdt. 1.66; Deinias FGrH 306 F4 with Jaco-
by’s commentary ad loc.; Paus. 8.47.2 and 48.4–5; Polyaenus 1.8.

24 For the varying versions, see Hdt. 6.75–84; Socrates FGrH 310 F6 with Jacoby ad loc.;
Plut. Mor. 4.245c; Paus. 2.20–8–10; Polyaenus 8.33.

25 For Telesilla as poetess for girls, see J. M. Snyder, The Woman and the Lyre (Carbondale,
1989) 59–62; C. Auffarth, Hera und ihre Stadt Argos (unpublished Habilitationsschrift,
Tübingen, 1994) 191–217.

It is also clear that in Macedonia this ritual was connected with Dionysos
‘Fake-man’. Whereas an illuminating discussion of the story in 1985 could still
say that ‘nothing more of Dionysos Pseudanor is known’, a series of later pub-
lished inscriptions has demonstrated that this particular Dionysos was indeed
worshipped in Macedonia well into the Roman period.26 The parallel examples
of his cross-dressing all point to his adolescence and this interpretation is sup-
ported by the fact that in the Macedonian inscriptions the same Dionysos is also
regularly called (Eri)Kryptos (‘Hidden’). The term can be a reference to Dionys-
os’ own secret stay in Euboea (below), but also calls to mind the Spartan krypteia
or the Athenian young kryptoi.27 In other words, the ephebic status of Dionysos
Pseudanor can hardly be doubted.28
Finally, there are a few later references to this feminine aspect of Dionysos.
He is called θηλύμορφος (‘woman-shaped’) by the first-century philosopher
Cornutus (30: a quote from Bacchae 353?) and γύνις in a list of divine epithets,
the so-called Anecdota Graeca (ed. Studemund: a quote from Aeschylus’ Edo
noi?). In Late Antiquity there occurs an interesting example in the biography of
Severus, a monophysite patriarch of Antioch (AD 512–518), by his contempo-
rary Zachariah of Gaza. After a Christian raid on the Isis temple at Menouthis,
the party returned to Alexandria with twenty camels carrying the booty. When
they threw the pagan idols onto the pyre, the people cried out the names of the
Greek gods, amongst them, ‘Dionysos the hermaphrodite god’.29 As Dionysos
is also called ἀρσενόθηλυς, (‘of both sexes’) in the somewhat later John the Lyd-
ian (Mens. 160), the once effeminate god seems gradually to have turned into a
kind of Hermaphroditos.
Although the ‘female’ aspect of the god was duly noted by the commentators
on the Bacchae, none of them properly takes into account that we certainly
know of a myth that locates transvestism of Dionysos in a particular period of
his life. Boeotian tradition tells us that after his birth Dionysos was handed over
to his mother’s sisters, Ino and Athamas, who hid him in Euboea dressed up as
a girl,30 whereas on Attic vase paintings baby Dionysos is handed over to
26 Graf, ‘Women, War’, 251; Hatzopoulos, Cultes, 63–72 (inscriptions).

27 For the much-discussed krypteia, see Vidal-Naquet, Le Chasseur noir, 161–3, 201–4;
P. Cartledge, Agesilaos (London, 1987) 30–2; E. Lévy, ‘La kryptie et ses contradictions’,
Ktema 13 (1988 [1992]) 245–52. For the kryptoi, see D. Knoepfler, ‘Les kryptoi du stratège
Epicharès à Rhamnonte et le début de la guerre Chrémonidès’, BCH 118 (1993) 327–41; add
SEG 40.145. In general, the enlightening discussion by J. Ma, ‘The Return of the Black Hunter’,
CCJ 54 (2008) 188–208
28 I therefore doubt that Graf, ‘Women, War’, 251 note 43 is right in saying that ‘the epicle-
sis (i. e. Pseudanor) would suggest a female statue in male garments and/or sexual attributes’.
29 Zachariah, Vita Severi 8, cf. Patrologia Orientalis 2 (1907) 7–115 at 35 f.
30 Seneca, Oed. 418 ff; Apollod. 3.4.3; Nonnos, D. 14. 143–67, 20.229–30. Ino: full literary
evidence in Henrichs, ‘Changing Dionysiac Identities’, 141 note 62; add TGrF Adespota
646ab (Dionysos’ education in a cave); SEG 35.1044; Bremmer, ‘Ino-Leucothea’, in OCD 4,

Nymphs.31 Fritz Graf has rightly observed that this looks like an initiatory
motif, and the observation is strengthened by his demonstration that Ino/
Leukothea was connected with boys’ puberty rituals.32 The hiding in Euboea,
an island away from the Boeotian mainland, well fits in with the customary re-
moval of the novices from their normal area of habitation.33
Dionysos was highly popular in Late Antiquity, not least in Egypt as Non-
nos’ epic Dionysiaka illustrates.34 We will therefore close this section with his
description of Dionysos’ transvestism, which combines the traditions of the
transvestite baby and the girlish god:
Oft he would mimic a newborn kid…Oft he would show himself like a young girl in
saffron robes and take on the feigned shape of a woman; to mislead the mind of spiteful
Hera, he moulded his lips to speak in a girlish voice, tied a scented veil on his hair. He put
on all a woman’s manycoloured garments: fastened a maiden’s vest about his chest and
the firm circle of his bosom, and fitted a purple girdle (mitra) over his hips like a band of
maidenhood (14.154–67, tr. W. H. D. Rouse, Loeb).
In Nonnos’ epic, it is as such a young god that Dionysos leads the expedition
against India, just as he already did in Lucian’s short treatise Dionysos (2), where
the god is depicted leading the expedition against the Indians as completely
‘without a beard’ and his head ‘tied with a mitra’.
But if Dionysos’ transvestism seems to be explained best from initiatory
practices, what can we say about some other examples of male cross-dressing or
sex-changes, ritual and mythical?
737 f. For depictions of this part of Dionysos’ life, see A. Nercessian, ‘Ino’, in LIMC V.1 (1990)
no. 2–8, 10–12; Carpenter, Dionysian Imagery, 53–59.
31 Heinemann, Gott des Gelages, 278–79, noting the initiatory background, but not the
literary evidence.
32 F. Graf, Nordionische Kulte (Rome, 1985) 405–06, overlooked by J. Larson, Greek
Heroine Cults (Madison, 1995) 123–25 and D. Lyons, Gender and Immortality. heroines in
ancient Greek myth and cult (Princeton, 1997) 122–24; see also M. Adak and P. Thonemann,
‘Teos und Abdera in hellenistischer Zeit: Der Jahreskalender, Kulte und neue Inschriften’,
Philia 6 (2020) 1–34 at 3–5.
33 Compare Hera’s hiding on Euboea to make Zeus jealous (Plutarch F 157), and Theseus
hiding his sons there before sailing to his final place of destiny, Skyros (Plut. Thes. 35.5).
34 See G. Bowersock, Hellenism in Late Antiquity (Ann Arbor, 1990) 41–53; S. H. Allen,
‘Dionysiac Imagery in Coptic Textiles and Later Medieval Art’, in A. S. Bernardo and S. Levin
(eds), The Classics in the Middle Ages (Binghamton, 1990) 11–24; D. Parrish, ‘A Mythological
Theme in the Decoration of Late Roman Dining Rooms: Dionysos and his circle’, Rev. Arch.
1995, 307–22; M. van Lohuizen-Mulder, ‘Frescoes in the Muslim Residence and Bathhouse
Qusayr ‘Amra. Representations, Some of the Dionysiac Cycle, Made by Christian Painters
from Egypt’, BABESCH 73 (1998) 125–37; J. Engemann, ‘Ein Tischfuss mit Dionysos-Satyr-
Darstellung aus Abu Mina/Ägypten’, JAC 41 (1998) 169–77.

2. Transvestites or sex-changes
In various Cretan cities, the technical term for leaving the agela, the group of
novices, was ‘to undress’; consequently, the adolescents in the final stage of the
initiation were called ‘nude ones’ or ‘the very nude ones’. The significance of this
change of dress is illuminated by the aetiological myth of the Ekdysia (‘Un-
dressing’) festival for Leto Phytia in Cretan Phaistos. A girl who was brought
up as a boy, called Leukippos, miraculously changed into a real boy the moment
she had become an adolescent. This story probably reflects the initiatory change
of the novice who now leaves his youth behind him, since Leukippos is a name
typical of adolescents in Greek mythology; Leto also has connections with ini-
tiation outside Crete, connections which probably made her the mother of the
initiatory gods Artemis and Apollo.35
In a study of metamorphosis in Greek myth, Forbes Irving has argued that
the myth cannot be used to prove the one-time existence of ritual transvestism
in Phaistos.36 Admittedly, some scholars have perhaps been too keen to find
ritual antecedents behind mythical motifs. However, a healthy skepsis should
not conceal the fact that initiatory transvestism is attested in ancient Greece.
When in 530 B.C. Siris in Southern Italy was destroyed, the attackers killed
fifty youths together with the priest, a male adolescent dressed as a girl, in the
sanctuary of Athena Ilias.37 This goddess was connected with an often dis-
cussed female initiatory cult in Ilion and Locrian Physkos, where even sacral
prostitution played a role.38 In other words, Athena Ilias, too, was associated
with initiation and this makes it highly likely that the transvestism of the priest
also characterised a particular stage of his initiation. This interpretation gains
support by the presence of the group of fifty youths and the age of the priest.
Fifty was a characteristic number of adolescent choruses, as is illustrated by
Euripides’ Iphigeneia at Aulis (1054 ff) and Iphigeneia at Tauris (425–26) or Pin-
35 Ekdysia and Leukippos: Nicander apud Ant.Lib. 17, cf. D. Leitao, ‘The Perils of Leukip-
pos: initiatory transvestism and male gender ideology in the Ekdusia at Phaistos’, CA 14
(1995) 130–63; Bremmer, The World, 436–39; this volume, Chapter 9. Leto and initiation:
Graf, Nordionische Kulte, 105, 208; J. N. Bremmer, Greek Religion (Cambridge, 20212) 13.
36 P. M. C. Forbes Irving, Metamorphosis in Greek Myths (Oxford, 1990) 152–55.
37 Lycophron 984–92, with scholion and Hornblower ad loc.; Iustinus 20.2.3; M. Guarduc-
ci, ‘Siris’, Rendiconti dell’Accademia dei Lincei 33 (1978) 273–88.

38 See M. Mari, `Tributo a Ilio e prostituzione sacra: storia e reflessi sociali di due riti
femminili Locrese‘, Riv. Cult. Class. Med.. 39 (1997) 132–77; exemplary, F. Graf, ‘The Locrian
Maidens’, in R. Buxton (ed.), Oxford Readings in Greek Religion (Oxford, 2000) 250–70. The
Locrian example has not been taken into account in the interesting, but perhaps too sceptical,
study by M. Beard and J. Henderson, ‘With This Body I Thee Worship: Sacred Prostitution in
Antiquity’, Gender & History 9 (1997) 480–503. Add also the case of Temesa, cf. W. Burkert,
Homo Necans (Berkeley, Los Angeles, London, 1983) 63; J. N. Bremmer, ‘Rituele ontmaag-
ding in Simon Vestdijks De held van Temesa’, in G. Jensma and Y. Kuiper (eds), De god van
Nederland is de beste (Kampen, 1997) 80–98.

dar’s Pythian Odes (9.111 f). The number fifty fits in perfectly with an observa-
tion of Geo Widengren that Indo-European youths were normally grouped in
gangs of fifty, since similar groups are also attested in Persian,39 Celtic,40 Italic
(below, Chapter 15.2) and Slavonic traditions. The Swedish Orientalist bril-
liantly deduced the latter number from a passage in the ancient Slavonic transla-
tion of Flavius Josephus De bello Judaico, where Jesus is said to have had 150 (3
x 50) servants around him.41 However, we need not follow Widengren in assum-
ing Iranian influence at this point, since the translation originated in Kiev, a city
where Iranian influence is hardly probable.42 Similar groups of 50 youths we
find in the ancient tradition of Tydeus’ expedition against Thebes.43 The antiq-
uity of the tradition is supported by the fact that the royal pages in Macedonia
(Chapter 14.3) were also organised in groups of 50.44 Now Calame has shown
that names for Greek choruses often include the semantic features of ‘female’,
‘collective’ and ‘family association’. This is surely the reason why in Greek my-
thology these choruses are often conceptualised as groups of fifty youths, such
as the fifty Danaids who killed their cousins: a myth that seems to reflect two
rivalling choruses.45 Similarly, the fifty youths of Siris will have constituted a
chorus in honour of Athena Ilias.
A young priest may seem strange to us, but in several cults in the more con-
servative Greek areas, such as the Peloponnese and Central Greece, youths
could indeed function as priests. The evidence of these cults virtually always
points to a background in initiation, since the priesthood usually ended with
the priest’s beard growth, maturity or marriage. Such a background is particu-
larly clear for those cults, which scholars have established to be of an initiatory
nature, such as those of the Leucippids in Sparta and of Poseidon in Kalauria.46
A likely example is also the cult of Zeus in Aegion, where the priest was elected
39 Strabo 15.3.18; G. Widengren, ‘Harlekintracht und Mönchskutte, Clownhut und Der-
wischmütze’, Orientalia Suecana 2 (1953) 41–111 at 62 and Der Feudalismus im alten Iran
(Cologne and Opladen, 1969) 88–89, 99.
40 Táin Bó Cúailnge 366–415, 1829–38; W. Stokes, ‘The Training of Cuchulain’, Revue
Celtique 29 (1908) 109–52 at 119 c.17; K. McKone, ‘The Good, the Bad and the Lovely: the
transmission of kingship in Esnada Tige Buchet and the Odyssey, and medieval Irish reflexes
of Proto-Indo-European sovereignty myths’, Zs .f. celtische Philol. 67 (2020) 65–173 at 145 f.
41 De bello Judaico 2.9.3 N. A. Mescerskij, Istorija Iudeskoj vojny losifa Flavija v
drevnerusskom perevode (Moscow and Leningrad, 1958) 259 = (in Italian translation) N. Ra-
dovich and G. Vitucei, Flavio Giuseppe: La guerra Giudaica (Milano, 1974) 11, 659.
42 Cf. A. Höcherl, Zur Übersetzungstechnik des altrussischen “Jüdischen Krieges” des Jose
phus Flavius (München 1970) 117–44.

43 Il. 4.393, cf. A. Hoekstra, Epic Verse before Homer (Amsterdam, 1981) 58, who thinks
that the story goes back to Mycenaean times.

44 Diod. Sic. 17.65.1; 19.27.3, 28.3 and 29.5; Curt. Ruf. 5.1.42.
45 C. Calame, Choruses of Young Women in Ancient Greece (Lanham, 1997) 30–33 =
Calame, Les Choeurs, 80–84. Danaids: G. Piccaluga, Lykaon (Rome, 1968) 117–44; Dowden,
Death and the Maiden, 157 f.
46 Leucippids: Paus. 3.16.1, cf. M. Prange, ‘Der Raub der Leukippiden auf einer Vase des

via a beauty contest – a way of selection otherwise always reserved for girls.47
He had to keep an image of Zeus and Herakles in his house, both represented as
beardless;48 it is therefore understandable that the priest had to abdicate at the
first signs of a beard growth. The theme of initiation seems the more apparent,
since a local legend related that Zeus had been nursed in this very place.49
Given her importance as initiatory goddess, it is not surprising that Artemis’
cult supplies the majority of adolescent priestesses.50 This is the case not only in
the repeatedly analysed initiatory cult of Artemis Triklaria of Patrae,51 but also
in the Artemisian cult of Aegeira where the priesthood ended with marriage
(Paus. 7.26.3). A virgin priest may also be deduced from the aetiological myth of
Artemis Knagia in Sparta, which relates that the Spartan Knageus had brought
the statue of Artemis from Crete by robbing it from her Cretan sanctuary and
taking Artemis’ virgin priest with him (Paus. 3.18.4). As was already seen in the
nineteenth century,52 the myth with the portable statue of Artemis resembles
the myths concerning Iphigeneia, Orestes and Artemis’ xoanon, themselves
bristling with initiatory themes.53 Artemis Knagia, therefore, may have been
connected with the final stage of female initiation.54 Less informative is an epi-
gram in the Anthologia Palatina which mentions a dedication by a priestess of a
statue of Artemis in an unknown sanctuary reserved for girls; the fact that the
priestess is named after her father, not her husband, strongly suggests a virgin
Achilleusmalers’, Antike Kunst 35 (1992) 3–17; Calame, Choruses, 185–91 = Les Choeurs,
320–29. Poseidon: Paus. 2.33.1, cf. W. Burkert, Greek Religion (Oxford, 1985) 98.
47 Graf, Nordionische Kulte, 275; Calame, Choruses, 122–23 = Les Choeurs, 224–25;
F. Gherchanoc, Concours de beauté et beautés du corps en Grèce ancienne (Bordeaux, 2016).

48 Paus. 7.24.4, cf. H. Schwabl, RE Suppl. 15 (1978) 1097–98 with all references.
49 G. Binder, Die Aussetzung des Königskindes Kyros und Romulus (Meisenheim, 1964)
125–26; add Aratus 163; Nicander F 114; Strabo 8.7.5.

50 S. G. Cole, Landscapes, Gender, and Ritual Space (Berkeley, Los Angeles, London,
2004) 132; J. N. Bremmer, ‘Cult Personnel of the Ephesian Artemision’, in B. Dignas and
K. Trampedach (eds), Practitioners of the Divine in Ancient Greece (Cambridge, MA, 2008)
37–53 at 42–47; I. Leventis, ‘Godlike Images: priestesses in Greek sculpture’, in R. Morais et
al. (eds), Greek Art in Motion (Oxford, 2019) 69–77 at 72–74.
51 J.-P. Vernant, Figures, idoles, masques (Paris, 1990) 189–94; Calame, Choruses, 137 = Les
Choeurs, 247; G. Baudy, ‘Ackerbau und Initiation. Der Kult der Artemis Triklaria und des
Dionysos Aisymnetes in Patrai’, in F. Graf (ed.), Ansichten griechischer Rituale. Geburtstags-
Symposium für Walter Burkert (Stuttgart and Leipzig, 1998) 143–67.
52 W. H. Roscher (ed.), Ausführliches Lexikon der griechischen und römischen Mythologie
II (Leipzig, 1890–97) 1249–50; S. Wide, Lakonische Kulte (Leipzig, 1893) 120.

53 A. Brelich, Paides e parthenoi (Rome, 1969) 242 ff; F. Graf, ‘Das Götterbildnis aus dem
Taurerland’, Antike Welt 10 (1979) 33–41; J. N. Bremmer, ‘James George Frazer en The Golden
Bough’, Hermeneus 68 (1996) 212–21 (Artemis’ statue in Aricia).
54 The cult was evidently related to that of Artemis Knakeatis near Tegea, who was repre-
sented in running position on the front of her temple, cf. Paus. 8.53.11; K. A. Romaios, `Tege
atikòn hieròn Artémidos Knakeátidos’, Ephem. Arch. 1952, 1–31 (the excavations have pro-
duced a number of dedications of Archaic korai). Running was connected with the final
transition of girls from adolescence into marriage, cf. Calame, Choruses, 236 = Les Choeurs,
403.

priest.55 Finally, we have a lacunose epigram from Patmos, which relates that
Artemis herself made ‘Kydonia, the daughter of Glaukies, priestess and hydro
phoros … to bring minor sacrifices’. Hydrophoroi are well attested in Didyma
and Miletus and it seems clear ‘both from consistent lack of reference to hus-
bands, and from the fact that frequently the hydrophoros’ father held the proph-
ecy (at Didyma) at the same time, that normally the hydrophoros was a young,
unmarried girl’.56
Unlike Apollo and Artemis, Athena was not an initiatory deity par excel
lence, but her position of city goddess or of goddess of gentilician groups made
that in a several places her function overlapped with that of Artemis.57 So her
priest in Phocian Elateia was a boy, who was chosen five years before he reached
puberty.58 Like most initiatory sanctuaries, Athena’s sanctuary was situated
outside the city, and the epithet of the goddess, Kranaia, points to a moist envi-
ronment, as was typical for places connected with initiation: the growth of the
youths reflected itself in the growth of nature.59 Our last example is the already
discussed cult of Athena in Tegea, where Pausanias explicitly states that Marp-
essa’s priesthood was only before her maturity (§ 1). 60
Now the examples of adolescent priests which we have quoted all derive from
relatively late sources, when the traditional rites of initiation had long disap-
peared. In Siris, we apparently meet the local rite of initiation still in its full
glory, and the combination of transvestism and the murder of fifty youths will
have caused its survival in the oral tradition of Southern Italy. Interestingly,
though, not all adolescents were dressed up as girls: it was only the leader whose
transition was particularly marked. A similar special position is also found in
Cretan initiatory ritual, as described by Strabo, where only the noble boy has a
homosexual relationship, whereas his friends who are of a lesser status so to
speak participate in his experience. 61 Regarding the Athenian Oschophoria, we
55 Anth. Pal. 6.269, cf. Graf, Nordionische Kulte, 237 f.
56 R. Merkelbach and J. Stauber, Steinepigramme aus dem griechischen Osten I (Stuttgart
and Leipzig, 1998) 169–70, cf. R. van Bremen, The Limits of Participation (Amsterdam, 1996)
90 note 31.
57 Cf. Graf, Nordionische Kulte, 101; Calame, Choruses, 128–34 = Les Choeurs, 234–43.
58 Paus. 10.34.4 with Frazer ad loc.; IG IX 1.139 (dedication by the parents of a priest).
59 Sanctuary: P. Paris, Elatée: la ville, le temple d’Athéna Cranaia (Paris, 1892) 86–87;
K. Sporn, ‘Extraurban oder urban? Zu den phokischen Nationalheiligtümern von Abai und
Hyampolis und dem Heiligtum von Kalapodi’, in H. Bumke (ed.), Kulte im Kult: Sakrale
Strukturen extraurbaner Heiligtümer (Rahden, 2020) 119–42 at 120–21. Moist environment:
Calame, Choruses, 143 = Les Choeurs, 255 f.
60 For other possible examples, see Graf, Nordionische Kulte, 153 note 31 (a boy priest in
the cult of the Dioskouroi in Erythrae); Hatzopoulos, Cultes, 44–45 (a girl priestess for Dem-
eter in Macedonia); I. Beroea 23.2, where the lack of reference to a husband seems to indicate
an adolescent; similarly, A. Alexandru et al., ‘Deux tables sacrées de Callatis’, Horos 13 (1999)
225–32 at 225–27.
61 Strabo 10.4.21 = Ephoros FGrH 70 F149.21, cf. this volume, Chapter 11.2; Calame, Cho
ruses, 245–46 = Les Choeurs, 417 f.

seem to have a similar case. It is only the two leaders who are dressed as girls,
the other adolescents share, so to speak, in their change of sexual status. The
connection with initiation has been contested by Calame, who wants to inter-
pret the rite as one example, amongst others, of Dionysos’ ‘bouleversement des
categories sociales’. His main argument is that initiatory transvestism normally
takes place during ‘la periode de marge en un lieu sauvage’.62 However, as young,
unmarried males also carried grapes during the Spartan Karneia, the conclusion
of the Spartan initiatory cycle,63 it seems likely that at one time the Oschophoria
and Pyanopsia concluded an initiatory cycle in Athens – as Calame himself once
argued. 64 The double leadership of the procession suggests a considerable antiq-
uity of the ritual, since the phenomenon of two leaders is well attested for groups
of warriors and youths in the Iliad. 65
When we now return to the myth of Leukippos after this long excursus, it
seems safe to conclude that a ritual antecedent behind Leukippos sex-change is
not improbable. Regarding the meaning of the myth, Forbes Irving argues that
the girlish element helps to highlight or define masculinity. This is indeed true
in various mythological tales. When Theseus was about sixteen, the age at which
the Athenian youth was received into the phratry, he left his grandfather who
had educated him and returned to Athens. On arrival, he happened to pass the
Delphinion which was then under construction, and the labourers, referring to
his girlish outfit, mockingly asked why a marriageable girl (!) was wandering
about all on her own. To belie their suggestion, Theseus threw the oxen of a cart,
which happened to stand nearby over the roof of the sanctuary. The location of
the episode is highly significant, as Apollo Delphinios is often connected with
the ephebic age and its rituals. In this case, then, the effeminate appearance
preceded the show of masculinity. The same order of events is found in the
myth of Achilles, who was hidden in a girl’s dress and brought up among the
girls in the palace of king Lycomedes of Skyros, like Euboea an island off the
Greek coast, 66 until he revealed himself to be a male and became the Greeks’
biggest hero during the Trojan War.67
62 Calame, Thésée, 128–9, 143–8, 324–37.

63 Hatzopoulos, Cultes, 59–60; Calame, Choruses, 202–04 = Les Choeurs, 347 f.
64 Calame, Choruses, 125–28 = Les Choeurs, 229–33; somewhat differently, R. Parker,
Polytheism and Society at Athens (Oxford, 2005) 208–10, who does not take into account the
double leadership; S. C. Humphreys, Kinship in Ancient Athens, 2 vols (Oxford, 2018) 2.583–
85 (good discussion of the probable reorganisation of the festival).
65 See this volume, Preface, note 65.
66 Cf. W. Burkert, Structure and History in Greek Mythology and Ritual (Berkeley, Los
Angeles, London, 1979) 30: ‘Scyrus, on the other hand, the faraway island, is a convenient
background for crystallization, be it in a heroic or a burlesque vein’.
67 Theseus and Apollo Delphinios: Paus. 1.19.1, cf. F. Graf, ‘Apollon Delphinios’, MH 36
(1979) 2–21; Calame, Thésée, 229–30, 319–22. Achilles: this volume, Chapter 1.1.

A more complicated example is Kaineus. The Thessalian princess Kainis

agreed to make love to Poseidon on the condition that he gave her whatever she
would ask for. After his consent, she requested to be changed into an invulner-
able man. 68 Now known as Kaineus, he became king of the Lapiths who fought
in the war against the Centaurs. However, he drew the wrath of Zeus upon him
because he ordered his people to worship his spear. In the end, the Centaurs
managed to bury him in the earth. The myth, which was highly popular in po-
etry and art, probably goes back to times when ecstatic warriors, whose insen-
sitivity to wounds was represented in myth as invulnerability, were still operat-
ing in Greece. In this type of tale, the ‘girlishness’ precedes invulnerability, as in
the case of Achilles. The strange death of Kaineus is one way of coping with the
lack of immortality of invulnerable men, Achilles’ heel would be another. 69
There is one last, more complicated but still related example left. In the Seven
against Thebes, Aeschylus pictures Parthenopaios as a valiant warrior who
swears by his spear (529: just like Kaineus!), but we are also told that he still has
down on his cheeks (534–35); moreover, he is called ἀνδρόπαις (533), a technical
term for an adolescent on the brink of adulthood.70 Aeschylus also plays with
his ‘girlish’ name by saying that he has no ‘girlish thought’ (παρθένων ἐπώνυμον
φρόνημα: 536–37). In this case, then, the poet has been led by mythological par-
allels, such as Achilles and Kaineus, and the Greek preference for etymologising
to picture Parthenopaios as a ‘girlish’ but valiant warrior.71
It would spring the bounds of this contribution if we pursued the theme of
male ritual cross-dressing into Greek pseudo-history. May it suffice here to ob-
serve that in various legendary ruses young males dress up as females to surprise
the local enemy or to kill a tyrant. Typical examples are the murder by the Mes-
senians of Spartan youths ‘in drag’ in the temple of Artemis Limnatis, or the
68 Such changes are also mentioned in an only fragmentarily surviving papyrus which is
discussed by W. Luppe, ‘Der mythologische Text P.Mich. Koenen 762’, Arch. f. Papyrusforsch.
43 (1997) 233–37, who thinks that the text contains a reference to Kaineus.
69 J. Burgess, ‘Achilles’ Heel: the death of Achilles in ancient myth’, CA 14 (1995) 219–43;
Buxton, Myths & Tragedies, 73–97 (‘The Myth of Talos’). For a full analysis of Kaineus, see
the next chapter.
70 G. Hutchinson (on Aesch. Sept. 526–67) on ἀνδρόπαις ἀνήρ and the translation ‘homme-
enfant-homme’ in Vernant and Vidal-Naquet, Mythe et tragédie II, 140 are less satisfactory.
The expression ἀνδρόπαις ἀνήρ is analogous to νεανίας ἀνήρ, ‘youthful man’, cf. Bond on Eur.
HF 1095; A. Harder, Euripides’ Kresphontes and Archelaos (Leiden, 1985) 220; W. J. Verdenius,
Mnemosyne IV 40 (1987) 2 (on nouns defining other nouns); ἀνδρόπαις as technical term:
Kassel and Austin on Aristophanes F 773.
71 For the myth of Parthenopaios, see C. Robert, Die griechische Heldensage III.1 (Berlin,
1921) 914–15; J. G. Beazley, ‘Some Inscriptions on Vases: V’, AJA 54 (1950) 310–22 at 311–15
(name); M. Tiverios, ‘Sieben gegen Theben’, Athen. Mitt. 96 (1981) 145–61 at 156–8 (bearded
and beardless P. on vases); Hutchinson on Aesch. Sept. 526–67; K. Zimmermann, ‘Partheno-
paeus’, in LIMC VIII.1 (1997) 942–44 (with full bibliography); B. Perriello, ‘Parthénopée,
étrange éphèbe’, in V. Zachari et al. (eds), La cité des regards. Autour de François Lissarrague
(Rennes, 2019) 97–104.

murder of an unnamed tyrant by young Astagytes in order to revenge the rape

of his sister Aspalis. These cases have repeatedly been studied and their initiato-
ry background generally recognised, the more so since these cases regularly
serve as aition for a ritual connected with youths.72
Finally, we cannot fail to note that the order boy-‘female’-male which charac-
terised early Greek male initiation, must once have had a counterpart in the
order girl-‘male’-woman, as exemplified by the legend of the Macedonian
Mimallones (§ 1). The legends about girls/women in arms thus reflect real prac-
tices, which, however, must have disappeared in the course of the Archaic peri-
od. Yet the ‘military’ tradition is still visible in the traditions of Athenian mae-
nadism, as the raiding women of the Bacchae illustrate, and thus one more
argument for the initiatory origin of maenadism.73 In our tradition these stories
of girls/women in arms are typical of Macedonia and the Peloponnese, whereas
in east central Greece and Ionia we find a different species of military women:
the Amazons, the military virgins par excellence. The division seems to suggest
that the tales about Amazons derived from the Aeolian and Ionian tribes,
whereas the stories about girls/women in arms found their origin in Dorian and
north west Greek groups, although the Athenian maenadic tradition perhaps
shows that this was not a hard-cut division. In an imaginative study, Ken Dow-
den has argued that the Amazons are a mythical reflection of rites of female
initiation.74 This seems to me basically correct, but just as initiation was more
elaborate in the Dorian than in the Ionian areas, so the myth of the Amazons
has developed further away from its ritual background than the stories about
girls/women in arms.
The ‘male’ aspect of Greek girls in the transitory period between girlhood
and adulthood need not have been signified only by military arms, though.
Greek myth consistently pictures the initiatory goddess Artemis as a huntress,
who roams the woods with her nymphs, the ritual reflection of girls on the
brink of adulthood.75 As an Elean story illustrates,76 Greek tradition even
knows of ‘real’ hunting girls. A certain Leukippos fell in love with Daphne, a
girl who stayed away from civilisation. So Leukippos plaited his hair as a girl,
donned women’s clothes and joined Daphne and her friends during their hunt-
ing trips. One day the girls wanted to go for a swim and stripped Leukippos
against his will. When they discovered that he was a male, they killed him ‘with
their spears and daggers’ (Pausanias). The story is one more illustration of male
72Cf. Brelich, Paides e parthenoi, 164; Calame, Choruses, 143–46 = Les Choeurs, 256–61.
73For other arguments, see Bremmer, The World, 266–69.
74 K. Dowden, ‘The Amazons: development and functions’, RhM 140 (1997) 97–128. Of
course, this background in initiation does not prevent the myth of exploring all kinds of
themes, cf. J. H. Blok, The Early Amazons (Leiden, 1995).
75 Il. 5.51; Od. 6.102–09; Hom. H. Artemis 16–17; PSI 10.1173, fr. 3, re-edited by Van Rossum-
Steenbeek, Greek Readers’ Digests?, 304. Nymphs: Dowden, Death and the Maiden, 104 f.
76 Phylarchus FGrH 81 F32; Parthenius 15; Paus. 8.20.2–3.

ritual transvestism, the more so, since Pausanias tells us that Leukippos was
growing his hair for the river Alpheios. Dedicating hair to a river on entering
the majority was a widely spread custom in Greece,77 which means that Leukip-
pos was already on the brink of adulthood. Now hunting was a typically male
activity.78 This surely makes the hunting by Artemis, her nymphs and the Elean
virgins one more example of the girl-‘male’-woman sequence during the transi-
tion into adulthood of the early Greek girls. The analysis of the ‘military’ aspect
of Greek girls’ initiation thus confirms the interpretation of male cross-dress-
ing. In both cases the transition into adulthood gains relief by the gender oppo-
sition with the adult role.
3. Dionysos in the Bacchae
Let us now return to the Bacchae. Before we end with Dionysos himself, we
must first note that his ‘female’ status is reflected in a remarkable way in the play
itself. It is one of the peculiarities of Greek myths that a hero(ine) is sometimes
killed by a god, while at the same time being closely identified with that particu-
lar god. The best known examples are perhaps Apollo and Achilleus, and Arte-
mis and Iphigeneia; in the latter case the identification was even so strong that
in Hermione an Artemis Iphigeneia was worshipped.79 It has repeatedly been
seen that Pentheus also belongs in this category. His death is the same as that of
Dionysos who was torn apart by the Titans, and in Corinth there was an image
of Dionysos made of the very tree Pentheus had used for spying on the mae-
nads.80 The identity becomes even more striking when we look at the way the
Theban king is depicted in the Bacchae. When Dionysos leads Pentheus forth to
the mountains he says (973–76):
Stretch out your arms, Agave, and you her sisters,
daughters of Cadmus; I am leading the youth
to his great contest – and the winner shall be I
and Bromios! The rest, the event itself will show.
77 Burkert, Greek Religion, 70 (with full evidence); Graf, Nordionische Kulte, 219–20;
Dowden, Death and the Maiden, 123–24; add P.Oxy. 61.4096, fr. 10, re-edited by Van Rossum-
Steenbeek, Greek Readers’ Digests?, 290; Th. Gärtner, ‘Eine Verbesserung zum Text des
D Scholions zu Hom. Il. Y 142’, ZPE 122 (1998) 6; J. N. Bremmer, ‘Rivers and River Gods in
Ancient Greek Religion and Culture’, in T. S. Scheer (ed.), Nature – Myth – Religion in Ancient
Greece (Stuttgart, 2019) 89–112 at 92.
78 A. Schnapp, Le Chasseur et la cité. Chasse et érotique dans la Grèce ancienne (Paris, 1997).
79 Apollo/Achilles: W. Burkert, Kleine Schriften VI (Göttingen, 2011) 3–20 (with addenda);
R. J. Rabel, ‘Apollo as a Model for Achilles’, AJPh 111 (1990) 429–40. Artemis/Iphigeneia:
Burkert, Greek Religion, 152. In general: G. Nagy, The Best of the Achaeans (Baltimore and
London, 1979) 289–97.
80 See the full discussion by G. Casadio, ‘Antropologia Orfica-Dionisiaca nel culto di
Tebe, Corinto e Sicione’, in Sangue e Antropologia. Riti e culto (Rome, 1987) 191–260.

The idea of Pentheus as a youth recurs in the dialogue between Agave and the
Chorus.81 When Agave returns with Pentheus’ head in her hands, she invites the
Chorus to partake of the feats. And when the Chorus asks ‘What, partake, poor
wretch?’, Agave answers (1185–87):
The heifer is a young one –
beneath the crest of soft hair, his jaw
sprouts with fresh down
In Agave’s mind, imagination and reality are gruesomely mixed up: the heifer’s
head is lightly bearded, just like that of Parthenopaios (§ 2). It has been argued
at length that Pentheus is nearer thirty than eighteen. 82 The proposition is refut-
ed both by this passage and by Kadmos’ addressing of Pentheus as ô pai (330),
since ‘all the addressees seem to be under 20 years of age’, when addressed in this
way by relatives other than parents. 83 On the other hand, the fact that he is
already king does suggest that in the play he is slightly older than Dionysos,
although the latter is only regularly depicted without a beard from about 420
BC onwards.84
Pentheus is not only young, but he is also persuaded to dress in female attire.
When Dionysos suggests that he would perhaps like to see the maenads sitting
closely together in the hills, Pentheus is most interested, and in the end he
consents to go dressed up as a female in order to escape recognition (821 ff).
However, in the oldest sources of the killing of Pentheus, the Boston psykter by
Euphronios (520–510 BC) and a red-figure Berlin hydria (ca. 500 BC), the king
is still bearded.85 It is not impossible, then, that Pentheus’ transvestism is an
invention of Euripides (or Aeschylus?) in order to effect the traditional identity
of god and victim.
Taking all these cross-dressings into account, it is easy to see that those stu-
dents of Dionysos who see the god’s effeminacy as only one of his many oppo-
sites have failed to take into account the god’s adolescence and the analogous
cases of mythical and ritual transvestism. On the other hand, Segal, with his
idea of Dionysos being an adolescent, comes in the right direction, but then, as
more often, treats him from the debatable viewpoint of a modern psychologist.
The mythical parallels suggest a different solution. In the cases of Theseus,
Achilles and Kaineus, ‘girlishness’ precedes manhood and/or heroic feats. Giv-
en the historical parallels (Siris, Oschophoria), there is no reason not to accept a
81 For young Pentheus, see also R. Seaford, ‘Dionysiac Drama and the Dionysiac Myster-
ies’, CQ 31 (1981) 252–75 at 268 note 152 with further references.

82 V. Leinieks, The City of Dionysos (Berlin and New York, 1996) 198–210.
83 E. Dickey, Greek Forms of Address (Oxford, 1996) 68.
84 Heinemann, Der Gott des Gelages, 72 f.
85 A. Pasquier and M. Denoyelle (eds), Euphronios, peintre à Athènes au VIe siècle avant
J.-C (Paris, 1990) 160–63; A. Greifenhagen, ‘Der Tod des Pentheus’, Berliner Museen 16 (1966)
2–6; J. Bažant and G. Berger-Doer, ‘Pentheus’, in LIMC VII.1 (1994) 306–17, nos. 39–40.

ritual background for these ‘transvestisms’. Evidently, the same structure can be
observed in the myths of Dionysos, although we should note a kind of gliding
scale in his adolescent representations. He can be a youth, a youth dressed as girl
or a ‘real’ girl: clearly, myth can move closer to or further away from its ritual
background. At the moment that the god appears as a girl or like a girl, he is
establishing himself as a god who is about to demonstrate his power, who will
act as an ‘adult’ god so to speak. Consequently, when Dionysos appears as a
girlish adolescent in the Bacchae, the audience knows from its mythical exper-
tise that the god is going to perform an impressive feat – as indeed he will do so
in a most terrible manner.86
Finally, let me end by stressing that this analysis of the transvestite Dionysos
does not claim that it is enough to realise the ritual background of the effemi-
nate Dionysos in order to understand the whole of its meaning in the Bacchae.
A dramatic work is not a mere summary of a myth. Playwrights can manipulate
the effeminacy or explore its aspects, as is illustrated by the case of Pentheus,
whose cross-dressing is not the prelude to a victory but to a defeat. Yet, given
that Greek drama draws so heavily on myth, an analysis that neglects myth and
its possible ritual background can equally never do full justice to the richness of
that drama.87
86 For a different approach, see Buxton, Myths & Tragedies, 229–40.

87 The original English version expanded and updated my ‘Dionysos travesti’, in A. Moreau
(ed.), L’initiation, 2 vols (Montpellier, 1992) 1.189–98. I thank André Lardinois for his com-
ments and Mark Padilla for the correction of the English.

Chapter 9
Kaineus the Invulnerable
When searching for bodies in transition in Archaic Greece, there can hardly be
a better example than Kaineus, who both underwent a sex-change and became
invulnerable.1 A fortunate papyrus find has given us a fairly complete version of
the myth in late Archaic Greece, as reported by the Argive mythographer
Acusilaus, who lived around 500 BC, and excerpted by Theophrastus (F 600):
Poseidon had intercourse with Kaine, the daughter of Elatos. Subsequently, as divine law
did not permit her to bear children either from him or from anyone else, Poseidon made
him into an invulnerable man with the greatest strength of all people then living. And
whoever tried to hit him with iron or bronze was absolutely sure to lose. And he became
king of the Lapiths and made war against the Centaurs. Subsequently, he set up his spear
(in the agora and ordered sacrifice to be made to it. But the gods did not allow that) 2 and
when Zeus saw him doing this he threatened him and incited the Centaurs against him.
And they beat him straight down under the ground and put a rock on top of him as a
grave monument, and he died.
With other scattered references we can build up a more detailed version of the
myth, which clearly started with the seduction by Poseidon of Kaine, the
1 Acusilaus FGrH 2 F22 = 22 Fowler, whose text I follow; Pindar F 128 f; Palaephatus 10;
Apoll. Rhod. 1.57–64; Agatharchides, De mari Erythraeo 7; Hyginus, Fab. 14.4; Apollod.
Ep. 1.22 with Frazer ad loc.; P.Oxy. 3.418, re-edited by M. van Rossum-Steenbeek, Greek
Readers’ Digests? (Leiden, 1997) 279–80; W. Luppe, ‘Der mythologische Text P.Mich. Koenen
762’, Arch. f. Papyrusforschung 43 (1997) 233–37 (who thinks that the mythological text con-
tains a reference to Kaineus); most recently, P. M. C. Forbes-Irving, Metamorphosis in Greek
Myths (Oxford, 1990) 155–62; E. Laufer, ‘Kaineus’, in LIMC V.1 (1990) 884–91 (with older
bibliography); J.-C. Decourt, ‘Caïnis-Caïneus et l’occupation humaine de la plaine orientale
de la Thessalie’, REG 111 (1998) 1–42 (with useful Forschungsgeschichte and list of all Greek
and Roman sources, with translations); K. Waldner, Geburt und Hochzeit des Kriegers (Berlin
and New York, 2000) 51–81; Th. Gärtner, ‘Die Geschlechtsmetamorphose der ovidischen
Caenis und ihr hellenistischer Hintergrund’, Latomus 66 (2007) 891–99; S. Muth, Gewalt im
Bild (Berlin and New York, 2008) 427–57; A. d’Angour, The Greeks and the New (Cambridge,
2011) 64–84 (whose derivation of the name Kaineus from Semitic qāyin, ‘spear’, is unpersua-
sive); P. Emberger, ‘Iuvenis quondam, nunc femina. Zur Kainis-Erzählung im augusteischen
Epos (Ov. Met. 8,305; 12, 169–209. 459–535; Verg.Aen. 6, 448–449)’, Grazer Beiträge 28 (2011)
44–96; L. De Martino, ‘Il mito di Ceneo in Virgilio e Ovidio’, Invigilata Lucernis 33 (2011)
63–72; J. Pàmias, ‘Auis nunc unica, Caeneu! El mito de Ceneo de Acusilao a Ovidio’, in M. C.
Álvarez and R. Iglesias (eds), Y el mito de hizo poesía (Madrid, 2012) 49–68; Fowler, EGM
2.159–63.
2 The papyrus has a lacuna here, but the sense of the passage is fairly certain, as parallel
passages show.

daughter of Elatos, king of the Lapiths,3 a Thessalian tribe. Elatos’ name means
‘Pine Man’ and may well have been a more popular archaic name, because one
of the Centaurs wounded by Heracles is also called Elatos (Apollod. 2.5.4) and
another one Elatios.4 The older tradition does not mention Elatos’ territory in
any detail, which fits the fact that the Lapiths are a somewhat obscure tribe who
were not given a place in any of the great early genealogies.5 However, later my-
thography placed Kaineus alternatively in Thessalian Gyrton or Atrax,6 and the
latter town was clearly proud of its famous, even notorious, son, as we know of
several Atragians who were named after him (below).7
Elatos’ daughter was Kaine, a highly unusual name for a girl.8 Waldner has
suggested that she was connected to a temple or sanctuary.9 In fact, this sugges-
tion can be supported and elaborated if we look more closely at maidens in sanc-
tuaries. It is striking that our text stresses that divine law did not permit her
(Greek: οὐχ ἱερόν) to produce children, not even from the god. This prohibition
points not so much to the general one against giving birth in sanctuaries,10 but to
a clear rule to preserve her virginity. We can connect this rule with other kings’
daughters who worked in a sanctuary, of whom mythology knows several. When
Aleus, king of Tegea, heard that his daughter’s son was destined to kill his mater-
nal uncles, he appointed his daughter Auge as priestess of Athena.11 According to
one strand of the tradition, Io was the daughter of Iasos,12 a leader (king?) of Ar-
3 Hes. F 87; Ovid, Met. 12.189, 497; Hyginus, Fab. 14.4, 173, 242; Lucian, Gallus 19; Orph.
Arg. 170; Servius on Verg. Aen. 6.448; schol. Il. 1.264.

4 See R. Wachter, Non-Attic Greek Vase Inscriptions (Oxford, 2001) 188, 290 note 1024,
where the suggested translation ‘charioteer’ is not persuasive. Note also Thessalians called
Elatos in Sophocles F 380 and Socrates FGrH 310 F*18 as well as the town Elateia on the
slopes of Ossa, of which the location, like that of Gyrton, has now been established by
R. Bouchon and B. Helly, ‘Du nouveau sur Élateia-Élétieiai-Iletiae et la localisation de Gyr-
ton’, in Studi Ellenistici 30 (2016) 103–38.
5 M. L. West, The Hesiodic Catalogue of Women (Oxford, 1985) 85 f.
6 Gyrton: Il. 2.746; Apoll. Rhod. 1.57 with schol. ad loc.; Hyginus, Fab. 14.4. Atrax: Ovid,
Met. 12.209; Ant. Lib. 17.4 (Atrax father of Kainis); schol. Plato, Leg. 12.944d.
7 N. Sekunda, ‘Kaineus’, in R. Catling and F. Marchand (eds), Onomatologos. Studies in
Greek Personal Names Presented to Elaine Matthews (Oxford, 2010) 344–54; A. Tziafalias et
al., Corpus des inscriptions d’Atrax en Pélasgiotide (Thessalie) (Paris, 2016) nos. 8, 76, 460.
8 For this reason, P. Maas, Kleine Schriften (Munich, 1973) 65 unpersuasively wanted to
emend Kaine into Kaineus because her female name Kainis is not attested before Ovid,
Met. 12.189. He even suggested that the Greek authors who mention Kainis – Phlegon and
Antoninus Liberalis – depended on Ovid, but this is less likely, as Kainis as a woman’s name
can also be found in Lydia: SEG 35.1267.
9 Waldner, Geburt und Hochzeit, 64.
10 Contra Waldner, Geburt und Hochzeit, 64 f.
11 C. Robert, Griechische Mythologie II (Berlin, 1920) 1139–44; L. Koenen, ‘Eine Hypoth-
esis zur Auge des Euripides und tegeatische Plynterien’, ZPE 4 (1969) 7–188; C. Bauch-
hens-Thüriedl, ‘Auge’, in LIMC III.1 (1986) 44–51; T. Gantz, Early Greek Myth (Baltimore
and London, 1993) 428–31; J. Boardman, ‘Auge’, in LIMC, Suppl. 1 (2009) 125; Fowler, EGM
2.309–11; this volume, Chapter 13.
12 Propertius 1.1.10; Val. Flacc. 4.5.3; Apollod. 2.1.3.

Chapter 9: Kaineus the Invulnerable 145
gos; in fact, Iason was another name of Argos, and its inhabitants were also called
Iasians.13 Io was a priestess of Hera in Argos until Zeus seduced her, as is told
already by Acusilaus.14 Similarly, Ilia was a priestess of Vesta in Rome until Mars
raped her.15 This seclusion of the girls in a sanctuary connects them with other
myths in which maidens are locked up or separated from home before being raped
or seduced; in all these cases, ‘the maiden’s tragedy’, as Burkert has called these
myths, results in the birth of an important figure in the local history.16
We need not think only of myth. In historical times there was a maiden
priestess of Poseidon in Calauria, and other maiden priestesses are also well at-
tested. In cases where we have more information, it is also clear that the office
was connected with maturation rituals: after completing the maiden priesthood,
the girl would normally get married.17 A similar scenario may also be assumed
in the case of Kaine, who was likewise a daughter of a king. For reasons no
longer clear, she was locked up in a sanctuary, where Poseidon approached her.
It is not difficult to see the reason for Kaine’s isolation from a narrative point of
view. Normally, girls were not easily available for seduction, but their residence
in a sanctuary gave free opportunities to divine lust. Yet at this very point the
myth takes a surprising turn. According to a version perhaps authored by Hes-
iod, instead of becoming a mother, Kaine asked a favour from Poseidon after
they had made love.18
Giving herself was evidently a favour that had to be returned in some way.
That is why we hear of Poseidon giving winged horses to Pelops after the latter
gave his love to the god.19 That is also why we regularly hear in Greek mythol-
ogy of gifts from the male to the female at their wedding. During his stay in
Sparta, Helen gives Telemachos a garment to present to his bride at their wed-
ding (Od. 15.123–27); Zeus gives a robe to Chthonie in Pherekydes’ Theogony
(F 68 Schibli), but also gives Thebes and Sicily to Persephone,20 and Kadmos
gives Harmonia a garment and a necklace made by Hephaistos, which, appar-
ently, had earlier been given by Zeus to Europa.21 On a ritual level, we know
13 Steph. Byz. α 400, ι 16; see also Verg. Aen. 3.168 (perhaps); Statius, Theb. 1.541, 2.219.
14 Acusilaus FGrH 2 F26 = 26 Fowler; W. Burkert, Homo necans (Berkeley, Los Angeles,
London, 1983) 164–67; K. Dowden, Death and the Maiden (London and New York, 1989)
117–46; N. Yalouris, ‘Io I’, in LIMC V.1 (1990) 661–76.
15 Fabius Pictor F 5 Peter = 4 Cornell; SEG 26.1123; M. Hauer-Prost, ‘Rea Silvia’, in LIMC
VII.1 (1994) 615–20; M. L. Neira Jiménez, ‘Rea Silvia’, in LIMC, Suppl. 1 (2009) 445.
16 For the type of myth see W. Burkert, Structure and History in Greek Mythology and
Ritual (Berkeley, 1979) 6–7; J. N. Bremmer and N. M. Horsfall, Roman Myth and Mythogra
phy (London, 1987) 27–30 (by Bremmer).
17 Paus. 2.33.2; Dowden, Death and the Maiden, 129–33; this volume, Chapter 8 .2.
18 Hes. F 87; Apollod. Ep. 1.22.
19 Theopompus FGrH 115 F350; Tzetzes on Lycophron 157.
20 Euphorion F 53; Plut. Tim. 8; Apollod. 3.4.2; schol. Pind. O. 2.15c; schol. Pind. N. 1.17.
21 Hellanicus FGrH 4 F51b = **51b Fowler; Pherecydes FGrH 3 F 89 = 89 Fowler; Apol-
lod. 3.4.2.

that the groom gave the bride presents after she had unveiled herself for him.
The element of looking was so important that the ceremony and its gifts were
not only called ‘gifts of the unveiling’ but also ‘gifts of the seeing’, and even ‘gifts
of first calling one another by name’. These designations are important remind-
ers of the fact that bride and groom were still virtually strangers to one another.
In ancient Germanic societies too, the men gave presents to their wives on the
morning after the wedding (the Morgengabe), which suggests that the custom
went back to very ancient times.22
Whereas normally Kaine should have become pregnant and ended up, one
way or another, as a mother, the myth now takes a surprising turn. As men-
tioned by Apollodorus (Ep. 1.22), whose account may ultimately go back to
Hesiod and Acusilaus,23 Kaine asked to become a man and to be invulnerable.
The reversal could not have been more striking: from a highly vulnerable maid-
en she was turned into a totally invulnerable man! It is hardly surprising that
such a change was considered attractive material by several Athenian comic
authors. Unfortunately, their comedies have disappeared almost completely, but
in their meagre fragments we still find references to someone who looks like a
girl and is the daughter (of the king) as well as to the spear (see below).24
An intriguing parallel for such a request is the myth of Mestra, already told
by Hesiod (F 43b,c), but also mentioned in Hellenistic times by Palaephatus (23)
and Nicander (apud Ant. Lib. 17.5) before being elaborated by Ovid (Met.
8.739–879). According to the myth, Mestra asked Poseidon to help her because
he once took away her virginity. In return, the god turned her into a man and
gave her the power of shape-shifting. In this case, though, the sex-change ena-
bled Mestra to help her father Erysichthon, who was struck by insatiable hun-
ger.25 It seems that an early poet made use of the connection of Poseidon with
sex-change, but this part of the myth itself does not seem to be connected to any
ritual background.
22 Unveiling and presents: Aesch. Ag. 1178–79; Soph. Trach. 1078–9, cf. R. Seaford, ‘Wed-
ding Ritual and Textual Criticism in Sophocles’ “Women of Trachis”,’ Hermes 114 (1986) 50–
59 at 56–57; Lysias F 14a Carey; Evangelus F 1; Timaeus FGrH 566 F122, ?F164 (~ Diod. Sic.
5.2.3); Harpocr. α 115; Pollux 2.59, 3.36; Moeris s.v. ὀπτήρια; Hsch. α 1621 (= ?Sappho fr. 169A),
4345; Suda α 1888; Photius α 1502; Anecdota Graeca, 201.6 = 390.26 Bekker. Morgengabe:
J. Grimm, Deutsche Rechtsaltertümer (Leipzig, 18994) 610–12; Courtney on Juv. Sat. 6.203;
Waldner, Geburt und Hochzeit, 60–64; L. Llewellyn-Jones, Aphrodite’s Tortoise: the veiled
woman of ancient Greece (Swansea, 2003) 215–58.
23 In his commentary on the passage, Frazer suggests that Apollodorus probably derived
his material about Kaineus from Acusilaus, but Al. Cameron, Greek Mythography in the Ro
man World (New York, 2004) 93–104 has shown that Apollodorus mainly used excerpts, if
not excerpts of excerpts, but rarely the original texts.
24 Araros F 4 (girl), F 5 (daughter); Antiphanes F 110 (spear).
25 Gantz, Early Greek Myth, 68–69; W. Luppe, ‘Poseidons Verwandlungsgabe für Mestra
Pherc. 1609 II, Hes. Fr. 43c Merkelbach/West’, Cron. Erc. 26 (1996) 127–30; Waldner, Geburt
und Hochzeit, 65–66; Fowler, EGM 2.158.

It is different in the case of Kaineus, where we clearly see the sequence of

girl 26 –young man 27 –warrior. This sequence can also be found elsewhere in
Greek myth. A striking parallel is the myth of Leukippos as told by Nicander, 28
which thus goes back at least to early Hellenistic times and probably reflects
earlier Cretan institutions, which were remarkably conservative.29 In the city of
Phaistos, Lampros ordered his pregnant wife, Galateia, to expose her child if it
was a daughter. However, when she gave birth to a daughter, she pitied the baby,
raised him as a boy and called him Leukippos. When the ‘boy’ matured, his
mother feared discovery of her deceit and went to the temple of Leto, where she
begged the goddess to transform the girl into a real boy. The goddess gave in
and, as our source concludes, the people of Phaistos still ‘sacrifice to Leto Phy-
tia, who caused male genitals to sprout on the girl. And they call the festival
Ekdysia (literally “Undressing”), as “the girl” put off the peplos. And it is cus-
tomary at the wedding to lie next to the statue of Leukippos’.30
There can be little doubt that the myth reflects an initiatory theme. In Crete,
Leto was strongly connected with the community as a whole, and she had even
given her name to an island, a city, a quarter of Gortyn and a phyle.31 Her epi-
thet Phytia, which closely resembles that of Poseidon Phytalmios, who was
connected to boys’ maturation, suggests that she was connected with youths’
growing-up.32 Moreover, the myth is connected with a festival, namely the Ek-
dysia. When and why did this festival take place? As it happens, we are quite
well informed about Cretan education. At the age of seventeen (Hsch. α 5702),
boys left their parental home to join an agela, after which they could wear only
one garment, in summer and winter alike (Aristotle F 374.14). Apparently, they
took this garment off in the last year of their initiation, because in Dreros and
26 Agatharchides, De mari Erythraeo 7 also locates the sex-change at the moment that
Kaineus ἡβήσαντα, ‘had attained puberty’.

27 Verg. Aen. 6.448: iuvenis quondam nunc femina Caeneus.
28 I freely use here the discussion of Leukippos in Bremmer, The World, 436–39; see also

29 S. Link, ‘Aristoteles, Ephoros und die “Kretische Verfassung”,’ Gymnasium 115 (2008)
469–79.
30 Nicander F 45 (from Ant. Lib. 17); see also Ovid, Met. 9.666–797, cf. Dowden, Death
and the Maiden, 62–68; D. Leitao, ‘The Penis of Leukippos. Initiatory Transvestism and Male
Gender Ideology in the Ekdusia of Phaistos’, CA 14 (1995) 130–63; K. Waldner, ‘Zwischen
Kreta und Rom: Ovids Bearbeitung eines aitiologischen Mythos aus Nikanders Heteroiou-
mena (Ant. Lib. 17) in den Metamorphosen (9,666–797)’, in J. Rüpke and A. Bendlin (eds),
Genese und Funktion religiöser Diskurse in der lateinischen Literatur des 1. Jahrhunderts v.
Chr. (Stuttgart, 2008) 169–84. For Nicander’s date, see A. Cameron, Callimachus and His
Critics (Princeton, 1995) 300; M. Fantuzzi, ‘Nikandros [4]’, in Der neue Pauly 8 (2000) 898–
900.
31 K. Sporn, Heiligtümer und Kulte Kretas (Heidelberg, 2002) 330 f.
32 For the connection of Poseidon Phytalmios and Leto to initiation, see F. Graf, Nordio
nische Kulte (Rome, 1985) 105, 208.

other cities boys were called ekdyomenoi before they were declared adult.33 As
ekdyô is often associated with stripping off clothes, and the ‘graduation’ festival
in Lyttus was called Periblêmaia or ‘feast of putting on clothes’,34 the Ekdysia
must have referred to the festival where the novices stripped off their single
garment before entering into their final stage of initiation. As the boys collec-
tively married after leaving the agela,35 the wedding ritual naturally followed
upon the transition into male adulthood. Although our reports do not mention
this, we may assume that the same happened in the case of Kaineus after his sex-
change, as in the Iliad we already hear of a son of his, Koronos.36
As happens often in myth, the story does not reflect Crete’s historical initia-
tion in every detail. It focuses on Leukippos but neglects the fellow members of
his agela. Moreover, the ‘girl’ was already raised as a boy and thus cannot have
taken off a peplos, a woman’s piece of cloth. In fact, not a single Cretan source
mentions initiatory transvestism, although this occurs in the myth of Leukip-
pos and Daphne and is attested as part of Greek male initiation.37 Apparently
Nicander was already presenting a version of the myth that was quite far re-
moved from Cretan initiatory ritual and was probably influenced by Greek
myths about other Leukippoi. Without further information, it is impossible to
reconstruct the associated festival in a more satisfactory manner, but there can
be no doubt that the myth was connected to a ritual that was part of the final
stage of Cretan initiation.
This case illustrates that fact that myth presented as realistic what in ritual
can only have been symbolic. Closer to ritual is the story of Achilles on Skyros,
where we find the same order of events. The myth must be old, as it was already
found in poets of the Epic Cycle, was translated into a painting by Polygnotus
and put on the stage by Euripides (Chapter 1.1). In Roman times, the myth en-
joyed enormous popularity and was often represented in all kinds of media:
bowls, poems, reliefs, sarcophagi and mythological handbooks.38 In essence,
33 IC I.ix (Dreros).1.11–12, 99–100; I.xix (Malla).1.17–8; II.v (Axos).24.7, 9; IV (Gortyn).
I.9.16, I.18.9B, I.19.1, III.5.24, IV.16, cf. A. Chaniotis, Die Verträge zwischen kretischen Poleis
in der hellenistischen Zeit (Stuttgart, 1996) 132, 199.
34 IC I.xix (Lyttus).19.1; for Cretan ‘graduation’ festivals see A. Brelich, Paides e parthenoi
(Rome, 1969) 199–201; Chaniotis, Verträge, 124–26; G. Seelentag, ‘Der Abschluss der Ephebie
im archaischen Kreta. Bemerkungen zu einer Gesetzesinschrift aus Dreros’, ZPE 168 (2009)
149–60 and Das archaische Kreta (Berlin and Boston, 2015) 495–500.
35 Ephoros FGrH 70 F149 (= Strabo 10.4.20). For collective weddings, see this volume,
Preface.
36 Il. 2.746 with Eustathius ad loc.; Hdt. 5.92 (Êetiôn, a descendant of Kaineus); Apoll.
Rhod. 1.57–58; Diod. Sic. 4.37.3; Hyginus, Fab. 14.3; Orph. Arg. 170.
37 Paus. 8.20.2–4; Parthenius 15 (with Lightfoot ad loc.); Dowden, Death and the Maiden,
66; this volume, Chapter 8.2. For other Leukippoi, see V. Lamprinoudakis et al., ‘Leukippos
I–III’, in LIMC VIII.1 (1997) 775–77.
38 Ovid, Met. 13.162; Hyginus, Fab. 96; Pliny, NH 10.78; Statius, Ach. 1.198–282; Suet. Tib.
70; Apollod. 3.13.8; Philostr. Imag. 1a; P. Berol. inv. 13930, re-edited by M. van Rossum-Steen-
beek, Greek Readers’ Digests? (Leiden, 1997) 299; M. Silveira Cyrino, ‘Heroes in D(u)ress:

the myth related that Achilles was disguised in a girl’s dress and brought up
among the girls in the palace of king Lycomedes of Skyros, an island off the
Greek coast, until he showed his manliness and became the Greeks’ greatest
hero during the Trojan War. An even weaker version of transvestism is found in
the case of Theseus. When he was about sixteen, the age at which an Athenian
youth was received into the phratry, he left his grandfather in Troezen and re-
turned to Athens. On arrival, he happened to pass the Delphinion, which was
then under construction, and the labourers mocked his girlish outfit. To give the
lie to their suggestion of effeminacy, Theseus threw the oxen of a cart over the
roof of the sanctuary. The location of the episode is highly significant, as Apol-
lo Delphinios is often connected with the ephebic age and its rituals.39
In all these cases, if in different variations and refractions, we can see the same
message. Before becoming a real man, the warrior is just like a girl.40 By dressing
up as a woman, the distance between his present and future state is dramatised.
Myth can imagine this transition in a ‘soft’ manner by representing the future
warrior in a girlish or effeminate outfit (Theseus, Achilles), but it can also rep-
resent the symbolic as real, by changing the boy into a real girl (Kaineus, Leu-
kippos). Evidently, myth had various narrative possibilities, whereas in ritual
itself the only possibility was plain transvestism.41 At the same time, we have to
note that there is a difference between the way Kaine grows up compared to the
other girls we have mentioned. Io, Ilia and their contemporaries were destined
to become mothers and first suffered for giving up their virginity. Kaine, on the
other hand, was not going to be a woman and, in that respect, (s)he was closer to
Leukippos than the girls who had to undergo ‘the maiden’s tragedy’.
Kaineus’ being a ‘girl’ and not a real man is also translated into narrative in
another manner: the Hellenistic mythographer Heraclitus tells us that Kaineus
was the erômenos of Poseidon. As is well known, pederasty was an important
phase in the education of Greek upper-class boys in which they had to act the
transvestism and power in the myths of Herakles and Achilles’, Arethusa 31 (1998) 207–41;
P. J. Heslin, The Transvestite Achilles: gender and genre in Statius’ Achilleid (Oxford, 2005)
228–31; Al. Cameron, ‘Young Achilles in the Roman World’, in S. M. Trzaskoma and R. R.
Smith (eds), Writing Myth (Leuven, 2013) 253–88; C. Chrétien, ‘Achilles’ Discovery on Sky-
ros: status and representation of the monosandalos in Roman art’, in S. Pickup and S. Waite
(eds), Shoes, Slippers, and Sandals: feet and footwear in Classical Antiquity (Abingdon and
New York, 2018) 247–60.
39 Paus. 1.19.1, cf. F. Graf, ‘Apollon Delphinios’, MH 36 (1979) 2–22; R. Parker, Polytheism
and Society at Athens (Oxford, 2005) 436; F. Graf, Apollo (London and New York, 2009)
109–10; C. Calame, Thésée et l’imaginaire athénien (Paris, 20183) 229–30, 319–22.
40 This was already seen by M. Delcourt, ‘La légende de Kaineus’, RHR 144 (1953) 129–50
at 136 f.
41 For the ritual examples, this volume, Chapter 8 .2; see also F. Gherchanoc, ‘Les atours
féminins des hommes: quelques représentations du masculin-féminin dans le monde grec an-
tique. Entre initiation, ruse, séduction et grotesque, surpuissance et déchéance’, Revue His
torique 127 (2003) 739–90.

passive, ‘feminine’ role. In this case, the ‘original’ version of the myth has clear-
ly been adapted to a more rationalist, believable version that reflects the histor-
ical practice, which had an initiatory function in Crete and Sparta.42
In the myth of Kaineus, the sex-change was effected by Poseidon, whereas oth-
er myths feature Leto (Leukippos), Apollo (Theseus) or no god at all (Achilles).
Kaineus’ presence in the Iliad (1.264) suggests that his myth is comparatively old.
The role of Poseidon fits this archaic character, as many epithets, such as Genesios,
Genethlios, Patêr, Patrigeneios and Phratrios connect him with male associations
as an ancestor. Moreover, in Attica, for example, he had sired many important
offspring.43 As Poseidon was connected with the origin of important social
groups, this may also explain his connection with reproduction and maturation
within those groups. His relationship with a king, like Kaineus, fits this picture.
In addition, his connection with the power of horses, earthquakes and the brute
force of the sea suggest that Kaineus’ invulnerability and corresponding arro-
gance (see below) can hardly be separated from Poseidon’s own character.44
As Acusilaus states, Kaineus used his physical power to make war against the
Centaurs. These wars are already mentioned in the first book of the Iliad, which
lists a number of Lapiths and adds that ‘they used to fight with the strongest, the
mountain-inhabiting animals’ (1.267–68 with Latacz ad loc.; Od. 21.295), that
is, the Centaurs. Representations of their fights with the Lapiths on vases, the
so-called Centauromachy, are already found in the later seventh century (see
below). On one of the oldest certain representations, the famous François Vase
of about 570 BC, the Lapiths are depicted as hoplites, that is, normal soldiers of
that time, but the Centaurs battle with branches of trees and, from the sixth
century, with rocks;45 the same opposition is found in the more or less contem-
porary Shield (178–90). The opposition of the warriors with civilised weapons
(spears and swords) against those with uncivilised ones (trees, rocks) reflects the
fact that the Lapiths are fully human, whereas the Centaurs are half equine.
In Homer, the Lapiths are already called ‘spear wielding’ (Il. 12.128; Hes. Sc.
178), just as Archilochus (F 3) mentions the ‘spear-famed lords of Euboea’, and
so it will have been Kaineus’ spear that initially gave him the upper hand against
the Centaurs. From archaeological finds we know that in the Dark Ages warri-
ors usually used a pair of throwing spears, but the last quarter of the eighth
century started to witness the birth of the hoplite, with a concentration on the
thrusting spear, which over the course of the next century became the main hop-
42Heraclitus, Incr. 3; schol. Plato, Leg. 12.944d; this volume, Chapters 11 and 12.3.
43Graf, Nordionische Kulte, 417–8 (epithets); Parker, Polytheism, 417 (Attica).
44 R. Parker, On Greek Religion (Ithaca and London, 2011) 90; Bremmer, The World, 21–27;
N. Oettinger, ‘Poseidon’, MSS 73 (2020) 97–108.

45 More recently, M. Leventopoulou et al., ‘Kentauroi et Kentaurides’, in LIMC VIII.1
(1997) 671–721, no. 154–69 at 154 (François Vase); D. Tomei, ‘I kantharoi greci a figure nere e
rosse’, Ostraka 17 (2008) 111–80 at 122–23; Muth, Gewalt im Bild, 437–518.

lite weapon, along with the sword.46 The importance of spears in the early Ar-
chaic Age is illustrated by the fact that Cheiron presented a proper ash-wood
spear to Peleus, Achilles’ father, on the occasion of his wedding, of which Hom-
er tells us that it was so heavy that only Achilles could throw it. It was clearly
highly valuable, as it had a gold ring to bind the socket to the shaft, and the fact
that Hephaistos had assembled it implies that it was equipped with a heavy iron
point. Is this the kind of spear that we should imagine in the hands of Kaineus?47
Clearly considering himself to be outside human bounds, Kaineus’ hybris
made him set up his spear in the agora and to order sacrifice to be made to it, a
motif adopted by Vergil and Flavian poets with their own divum contemptores.48
His overvaluation of the spear was apparently not unique in the Archaic Age as
Aeschylus (Seven 529–31) lets Parthenopaios swear by his spear, which he trusts
and reveres more than a god;49 his example is followed by Idas in Apollonius
Rhodius (1.466–70) who considers his spear, and not Zeus, to be the source of his
glory. In fact, in a fully historical period, the fourth-century tyrant Alexander of
Pherae sacrificed to the spear with which he had murdered his uncle Polyphron
and named it Tychon.50 One perhaps does not need to be a Freudian to see here
also an unambiguous assertion by real alpha males in these cases.
The ‘spear of Kaineus’ was evidently well known and even became proverbial
in the course of time (schol. Apoll. Rhod. 1.57–64a). But the gods naturally dis-
approved of this rival, and when Zeus saw him doing this he incited the Cen-
taurs against him. In his treatise On Kingship, Theophrastus (F 600 Forten-
baugh) contrasts rule by the spear with rule by the sceptre and then quotes
Acusilaus to elucidate this point. Theophrastus interprets the case in a secular,
contemporary key and does not mention the gods in this connection, but it is
different with Acusilaus.
The hybris of a king is a recurring motif in the Archaic Age, and Hesiod men-
tions the hybristês kings Salmoneus (F 30.12–19) and Pelias (Th. 996). Salmo-
neus is destroyed by Zeus, as it is Zeus who is responsible for restraining the
hybris not only of kings and men but even of animals (Archilochus F 177).51 Yet
46 H. van Wees, ‘The Development of the Hoplite Phalanx: iconography and reality in the
seventh century’, in id. (ed.), War and Violence in Ancient Greece (London, 2000) 125–66;
H.-G. Buchholz, Kriegswesen, Teil 3 = Archaeologica Homerica I.E.3 (Göttingen, 2010) 113–22.
47 Cypria F 4 West = 3 Bernabé (a present); Ilias Parva F 5 West = 5 Bernabé (gold ring);
Janko on Il. 16.130–54, 141–44 (heavy, Hephaistos). For the struggles over, and circulation of,
arms, see also F. Lissarrague, ‘Corps et armes: figures grecques du guerrier’, in V. Dasen and
J. Wilgaux (eds), Langages et métaphores du corps dans le monde antique (Rennes, 2008) 15–27.
48 Verg. Aen. 10.773, 12.95–100; Statius, Theb. 3.615, 9.549.
49 For interesting parallels, see West, Indo-European Poetry and Myth, 463 f. Note that
Parthenopaios also has ‘girlish’ features: this volume, Chapter 8.2.

50 Plut. Pel. 29. If Polyphron was his maternal uncle, the crime would be even more hei-
nous, see this volume, Chapter 13.

51 E. Simon, ‘Salmoneus’, in LIMC VII.1 (1994) 653–55; N. Fisher, Hybris (Warminster,
1992) index s.v. gods, kings; K. Dowden, Zeus (London and New York, 2006) 72–76.

in this particular case, the challenge to Zeus is even more pronounced, as the
agora is the area par excellence of Zeus Agoraios, the protector of justice.52 The
myth, then, is not only about a hybrid body: it must also have carried a clear
warning against hybris for the Archaic audience.
How to overcome invulnerability was a problem that was solved in different
ways in Archaic myths, as Kaineus was not unique in this respect. In fact, there
are several stories of other invulnerable heroes in the Archaic Age. Let us look
at the most important ones to see to what extent they shed light on Kaineus.
Aristotle (Rhet. 2.22.12) mentions that the Greek army was prevented from
landing in Troy because of Kyknos’ invulnerability. We know a little more
about this Trojan from Sophocles’ tragedy Shepherds (F 501) where he is depict-
ed as an arrogant character, the more so as one line of the play says: ‘neither
bronze nor iron takes hold of the skin’ (F 500), words that are remarkably sim-
ilar to those said of Kaineus by Acusilaus (above)! Not surprisingly, Kyknos
was a son of Poseidon and a spearman.53 There was also something feminine
about him, as Hesiod (F 237, cf. Sen. Tro. 183) noted the white hair of his head
and Hellanicus (FGrH 4 F148 = 148 Fowler) his white skin, which was a typical
feature of women; naturally, later mythographers related that he had been aban-
doned on a beach where swans gathered around him or even that swans had
raised him.54 Did he perhaps resemble a girl in his youth? In any case, unable to
wound him, Achilles finally throttled Kyknos with his helmet strap,55 although
Achilles was also said to have killed him by throwing a stone at Kyknos’ head.56
Our second example is the Cretan Talos, about whose invulnerability Apol-
lodorus (1.9.26) records several variations. According to one, Talos was a ‘bronze
man’, who had a single vein running from neck to ankle, secured at the bottom
by a bronze nail, whereas Apollonius Rhodius recounted that, although Talos’
body was of unbreakable bronze, ‘below the tendon in his ankle there was a vein
of blood, and the thin membrane covering it held the boundary of his life and
death’ (4.1646–48, tr. Buxton). In either case, there was a weakness near his foot:
whether it was cultural or natural made no difference in this case. Given the
connection of Kaineus with pederasty, it is perhaps relevant that Talos was re-
puted to have been the lover of Rhadamanthys and had even gained the reputa-
tion of having invented pederasty.57 Like his ankle, Talos’ death was also debat-
ed: according to Apollonius (4.1679–80), Medea caused him to graze his ankle
52Graf, Nordionische Kulte, 297–99.

53Poseidon: Ovid, Met. 12.72; Hyginus, Fab. 157, 273; Libanius, Prog. 8.3.10; schol. The-
ocr. 16.49. Spearman: Palaephatus 10.
54 Schol. Lycophron 237b; Hegesianax FGrH 45 F1. Regarding the white hair, is there a
connection with the ephebic Leukokomas (Chapter 11.1)?

55 Pind. O. 2.82, I. 5.39; Ovid, Met. 12.140–43.
56 Palaephatus 11; Apollod. Ep. 3.31; Fowler, EGM 2, 534 f.
57 Ibycus F 309; Suda θ 41.

on a rock so that all his ichôr gushed out, whereas according to another version
he was shot dead in the ankle (Apollod. 1.9.26).58
The ankle also figures prominently in stories about Achilles. We have already
seen his transvestism at the court of Lycomedes of Skyros, but his maturation
apparently also involved invulnerability. Admittedly, Homer likes to suppress
such magical features, but the Aethiopis may well have mentioned Apollo’s fatal
shot to his vulnerable heel. If this was indeed the case, we should probably think
of impenetrable armour rather than an impenetrable skin. We know that his
father Peleus had such armour, and the struggles over Achilles’ armour after
Patroklos’ death are also easiest to understand against such a background.59
From, probably, Stesichorus in the sixth century to the late second-century
mythological handbook of Apollodorus and later, it is Achilles’ ankle that is
consistently mentioned in connection with his death;60 in fact, he is already
shown dead with an arrow in his heel on a lost mid-sixth-century Chalcidian
amphora,61 and a famous mid-fifth-century pelike from Bochum shows the ar-
row flying to his ankle while Paris and Apollo are standing close to him;62 some
Hellenistic gems even depict Ajax carrying the body of Achilles with an arrow
stuck in his heel, ankle or foot.63 Unfortunately, we do not hear of Achilles’
‘mortal tendon’ before Hyginus (Fab. 107), although the passage still suggests a
Hellenistic source, but the way Paris shoots Diomedes in his heel (Il. 11.369 ff)
already seems to presuppose the later famous legend.64
We come closer to Kaineus with our last example. Ajax, one of the greatest
Homeric heroes, was invulnerable except for one weak spot: he could be pierced
in his ribs, neck, armpit or shoulder blade – the fact of the invulnerability was
clearly more important than its exact location. And, indeed, in the Iliad Ajax is
never wounded, even though he is not called invulnerable. His special status
was the result of a prayer by Heracles that young Ajax might be just as invulner-
58 For Talos, see E. Federico, ‘Talos: funzione e rifunzionalizzazioni di un mito eteo-
cretese’, AION (archeol.) 11 (1989) 95–120; J. K. Papadopoulos, ‘Talos I’, in LIMC VII.1 (1994)
834–37; E. Simon, ‘Talos I’, in LIMC, Suppl. 1 (2009) 466; especially, R. Buxton, Myths &
Tragedies in their Ancient Greek Contexts (Oxford, 2013) 73–97.
59 Peleus: Il. 17.194, 202. Achilles: R. Janko, The Iliad: A Commentary IV (Cambridge,
1992) 310–11, 334.

60 Stesichorus: R. Garner, ‘Achilles in Locri’, ZPE 96 (1993) 153–65 at 159 (but see Finglass
on F 226); Apollod. Ep. 5.3 with Frazer ad loc.; Quint. Smyrn. 3.62; Janko on Il. 16.777–867,
who unpersuasively adduces ‘Hes.’ F 300; J. S. Burgess, The Death and Afterlife of Achilles
(Baltimore, 2009) 9–15.
61 A. Kossatz-Deissmann, ‘Achilleus’, in LIMC I.1 (1981) 37–200 at no. 850; Wachter, Non-
Attic Greek Vase Inscriptions, 177 f.

62 N. Kunisch, Erläuterungen zur Griechischen Vasenmalerei (Cologne, 1996) 180–84.
63 Kossatz-Deissmann, ‘Achilleus’, no. 891a*; G. Camporeale, ‘Achle’, in LIMC I.1 (1981)
200–14 at nos. 128–33; L. Balensiefen, ‘Achills verwundbare Ferse. Zum Wandel der Gestalt
des Achill in nacharchaischer Zeit’, JDAI 111 (1996) 75–103.
64 For wounds in the leg, see also this volume, Chapter 1.3.

able as the skin of the Nemean lion. 65 In the end the Trojans had to bury him in
mud to get rid of him. 66
When we now look at these different parallels, which have not exhausted the
theme of invulnerability,67 we can see that myth exploits the theme in different
ways. It can represent it as natural (an invulnerable real skin) or cultural (impen-
etrable armour, bronze body), but the effect remains the same. In the cases of
Kaineus, Achilles and, probably, Talos, we also note a connection with initia-
tion. Evidently, the invulnerability was closely connected with a stage of life
that followed upon or was part of maturation rituals. As we argued above
(Chapter 8.2), ‘the myth … probably goes back to times when ecstatic warriors,
whose insensitivity to wounds was represented in myth as invulnerability, were
still operating in Greece’. There is plenty of comparative Indo-European evi-
dence for the battle fury of young warriors, perhaps best exemplified in the
Nordic berserkir, who went ‘berserk’. 68 In Greece, this fury was called lyssa, a
word connected with Greek lykos, ‘wolf’, and the rage of warriors is often de-
scribed in Homer.69 Both werwolfism and lycanthropy survived in Greece into
historical times, even though in the first case only in Arcadian myth.70 Another
animal to be taken into account here would certainly be the boar: the boar’s
tusk helmet (Il. 10.260–65), which is already attested in the early centuries of
the second millennium BC,71 cannot be separated from the rage of the attacking
65 Hes. F 250; Pind. I. 6.47; Aesch. F 83 with Radt ad loc.; Plato, Symp. 219e; Lycophron
455–56, with Hornblower and schol ad loc.; schol. Il. 23.821; Eustathius on Il. 1.264.
66 Hypoth. Soph. Ajax, where this particular death is mentioned as an alternative to the
version in Sophocles, which features the suicide and no mud; Sophron F 31; schol. Il. 14.405b
with Erbse ad loc.; S. M. Bocksberger, Telamonian Ajax (Oxford, 2021) 35–47.
67 Another interesting case has come to light only in recent decades. In a local Coan epic,
Athena kills the invulnerable Giant Asteros and flays him: Meropis Bernabé. In general, see
O. Berthold, Die Unverwundbarkeit in Sage und Aberglauben der Griechen (Giessen, 1911);
W. F. Hansen, ‘Unverwundbarkeit’, in Enzyklopädie des Märchens 13 (Berlin, 2010) 1239–48.
68 West, Indo-European Poetry and Myth, 449–51 with the most recent bibliography; add
A. Liberman, ‘Berserks in History and Legend’, Russian History 32 (2005) 401–11; V. Samson,
Die Berserker: Die Tierkrieger des Nordens von der Vendel- bis zur Wikingerzeit (Berlin and
Boston, 2020).
69 Il. 5.185, 6.101, 8.111, 299 and 355, 9.238–9 and 305, 12.462–6, 13.53, 15.605–9, 16.245, 21.5
and 542; most recently, B. Lincoln, ‘Homeric lussa: Wolfish Rage’, Indogerm. Forsch. 80 (1975)
98–105; P. Sauzeau, ‘Des “berserkir” en Grèce ancienne?’, in D. Accorinti and P. Chuvin (eds),
Des Géants à Dionysos (Alessandria, 2003) 95–108; R. B. Cebrián, ‘Some Greek Evidence for
Indo-European Youth Contingents of Shape Shifters’, JIES 38 (2010) 343–57. For the reflec-
tion of this type of fighting on eighth-century Athenian vases, see E. Kistler, ‘Kriegsbilder,
Aristie und Überlegenheitsideologie im spätgeometrischen Athen’, Göttinger Forum für Al
tertumswissenschaft 4 (2001) 159–85.
70 R. Gordon, ‘Good to think: The Wolf and Wolf-men in the Graeco-Roman World’, in
W. de Blécourt (ed.), Werewolf Histories (Basingstoke, 2015) 25–60; Bremmer, The World,
360–70; D. Ogden, The Werewolf in the Ancient World (Oxford, 2021).
71 Most recently, Buchholz, Kriegswesen, Teil 3, 192–209; M. Modlinger, ‘From Greek
Boar’s-Tusk Helmets to the First European Metal Helmets: new approaches on development
and chronology’, Oxford J. Arch. 32 (2013) 391–412.

boar to which the Homeric warrior can be compared.72 This fury presupposes a
manner of war in which there was plenty of space for individual performance.
With the arrival of the phalanx in the course of the seventh and sixth century,
there was no longer room for such behaviour. Invulnerability now became a
theme of myth rather than a living reality.
Yet life must have taught the Archaic warriors that real invulnerability does
not exist. That may well have been the reason that myths arose about their lo-
calised vulnerability, be it the ankle, arm-pit or a soft place on the back, as in the
case of Siegfried in the Nibelungenlied (899, 905, 980–2). However, the problem
of apparent invulnerability was not limited to ancient Greece as this Germanic
example demonstrates. Its occurrence in a wide array of Indo-European tradi-
tions suggests that it was an ancient motif that the Greek poets had adapted to
their own stories and contexts.73
Of all the invulnerable heroes we have briefly discussed, Kaineus’ death ap-
pealed to the artists of the Archaic Age the most. There is no interest whatsoever
on their part in the sex-change: all known early representations focus on his final
moments. In our surviving evidence, Kaineus first appears on a hammered
bronze relief of the third quarter of the seventh century at Olympia, where he is
represented as an armoured hoplite between two centaurs who batter him with
trees. He has already sunk into the earth to mid-calf, just as he will appear in
many later representations.74 Next, Kaineus is the centrepiece of the François
Vase mentioned above, where he has sunk into the earth to the bottom of his
cuirass, but still fights on against three Centaurs, of whom one wields a tree and
the other two are at the point of throwing rocks at him.75 We see a brave warrior
who never gives up, just as we would imagine Kaineus. At the end of the sixth
century, though, the images seem to concentrate much more on the process of
Kaineus’ dying (rather than the fact of his death). These changing perceptions
demonstrate that we should not try to fix the meaning of his eventual demise.
Different periods could stress different aspects: the iconographic representations
are in this respect more nuanced and interesting than the often rather skeletal
literary descriptions, even though they focus on only one aspect of the myth.76
Whereas vases and reliefs focused on Kaineus’ last moments as a warrior, the
texts are much more concise in this respect. Acusilaus tells us that he was beaten
straight down under the ground with a rock on top of him. Unable to kill him
72 Janko on Il. 13.417–75, 15.605–09.

73 West, Indo-European Poetry and Myth, 444–46.
74 N. Shamugia, ‘A Bronze Relief with Caeneus and Centaurs from Olympia’, HSCP 109
(2017) 31–61.
75 I closely follow the descriptions by J. M. Padgett, ‘Horse Men: Centaurs and Satyrs in
early Greek art’, in id. (ed.), The Centaur’s Smile (New Haven and London, 2003) 1–46 at
15–16 (= Laufer, ‘Kaineus’, nos. 61 and 67, respectively), the first overlooked by Muth, Gewalt
im Bild, 429, who states that ‘Die Bilder vom Tod des Kaineus beginnen im 6. Jh.’.
76 For the iconographic representations, see Muth, Gewalt im Bild, 427–57.

in a real fight, the Centaurs used their own natural, not cultural, weapons of
trees and rocks to finish off this hybrid warrior. Yet Kaineus never gave in, and
our texts agree that he went straight into the earth, ‘unbroken and unbending’.77
Whereas warriors killed in a normal way were carried to their grave in a hori-
zontal position, as many Geometric and Archaic vases illustrate, Kaineus went
into the ground alive, in a vertical position. Only after he was driven into the
ground and covered with a rock would he give up the ghost.
Kaineus’ definitive resting place was marked by a rock as a grave marker
(sêma), as Acusilaus concludes his story. In Homer, sêma is a term for a tomb of
an important person like Ilos (Il. 10.414–15). In epic, it functions as a poetical
commemoration by the living and is represented by the burial mound.78 There
is a closely similar description of such a tomb in Homer (Il. 23.327–32), and we
may even wonder if this style of tomb did not contribute to the myth about
Kaineus’ death by trees and stones. The graves in Homer already look forward
to the hero-cult, but that cult itself was not fully developed until the end of the
sixth century.79 Perhaps Kaineus’ grave was the location of a later hero cult, as
the fact that Atragians regularly called their sons ‘Kaineus’ (above) suggests a
living memory of the great hero, the more so as names ending in – eus were fair-
ly rare in ancient Greece, as were names derived from individual heroes.80 Yet
we must be honest about the fact that we simply do not know. 81 In the end, the
myth of Kaineus, that Archaic macho, still poses many questions.
Finally, the conference where this chapter was first presented was designed to
explore the notion of ‘embodied knowledge’ from the perspective of the classical
Greco-Roman world by looking at examples of the crossing or dissolution of
boundaries of human embodied knowledge caused by deformation, hybridity
and the like. The case of Kaineus raises the interesting question of what enables
and limits deviations from the norm. Undoubtedly, in this respect the Wissens
ordnung of Archaic Greece departed from the form of the normative body of
everyday life: the Archaic Greeks surely did not normally meet or expect to
meet people with divinely effected sex-changes or invulnerable bodies. Yet due
to certain social practices, their embodied knowledge was not always destabi-
lised or transformed, but sometimes even expanded.
77 Acusilaus FGrH 2 F22 = 22 Fowler; Pind. F 128 f; Apoll. Rhod. 1.63 (quotation), with
schol. ad loc.; Ovid, Met. 12.523; Agatharchides, De mari Erythraeo 7; Orph. Arg. 173; Eus-
tathius on Il. 1.264.
78 A. Henrichs, ‘The Tomb of Aias and the Prospect of Hero Cult in Sophokles’, CA 12
(1993) 165–80.
79 Bremmer, The World, 85–93, not refuted by Parker, On Greek Religion, 287–92.
80 A. Morpurgo Davies, ‘Greek Personal Names and Linguistic Continuity’, in S. Horn-
blower and E. Matthews (eds), Greek Personal Names: their value as evidence (Oxford, 2000)
15–39 at 35 and R. Parker, ‘Theophoric Names and the History of Greek Religion’, ibid., 53–
79 at 56, respectively.
81 Contra Waldner, Geburt und Hochzeit, 78–81.

As we have seen, the – admittedly scarcely attested – ritual cross-dressing

must have made it possible to conceptualise a real sex-change. Yet that was only
one of the possibilities. A ‘softer’ version of the sex-change, such as a feminine
outfit, remained another narrative option. Similarly, the manner of enraged
fighting like an animal, be it a boar or a bear, must have produced the narrative
option of invulnerability, even though normative knowledge prevented the
‘production’ of stories of invulnerability leading to immortality. Yet when the
social practices changed, some people must have become skeptical of the tradi-
tional myths and tried to transform them. That is why the mythographer Her-
aclitus dropped the sex-change and substituted for it the paederastic relation-
ship, which in his time still had an educational aspect. Similarly, relatively late
sources were not satisfied with Kaineus’ mere death and invented his rebirth as
a sandy-haired bird (Ov. Met. 12.524–26), which turns it into a story with a
different point.
We thus see that the original account of Kaineus’ life regularly generated new
versions. Cognitive psychologists stress that counter-intuitive elements make
stories interesting and facilitate their transmission. That is perhaps why the
myth of Kaineus ‘survived’ after the demise of the social practices that had pro-
duced it. Whereas we have tried to ‘mine’ the myth of Kaineus for the social
practices in its background, later Greek generations may just have listened to it
for its entertainment value. In one way, then, Greek myth is an ‘archive’ of
various Wissensordnungen, which we can only decode in a process of trial and
error.82
82 I am grateful to Richard Buxton and Bob Fowler for comments. Orla Mulholland kind-
ly and skillfully corrected my English.

Chapter 10
Oedipus and the Greek Oedipus Complex
Oedipus is one of the few figures of Greek mythology whose name is still a
household word. His fate has inspired playwrights, librettists, movie directors,1
and attracted the attention of Sigmund Freud (1856–1939) and Claude Lévi-
Strauss (1908–2009), the founding fathers of psychoanalysis and structuralist
anthropology respectively (§ 2–3). In spite of this enormous interest, a satisfac-
tory interpretation of the myth has still not been arrived at.2 The following in-
quiry does not pretend to present the last word about Oedipus, but it hopes to
show that historical, sociological and structuralist approaches can all cast light
on one and the same myth – and sometimes have to be employed simultaneous-
ly. Only an eclectic analysis makes the best use of the riches of the mythological
tradition.
The Oedipus myth has been discussed in various ways. Older scholars tried
above all to recover the myth’s earliest stages. They compared the different ver-
sions in epic, tragedy and later Greek mythography, and in this way they were
able to demonstrate that in the course of time important changes had occurred.
For example, originally Delphi was absent from the story, and Oedipus remarried
after his wife’s death. Only in Classical times did the poets’ interest shift from the
family to the individual; in Archaic Greece an Antigone was unthinkable.3
The structuralist approach has proceeded regardless of these chronological
considerations. In a famous analysis, Lévi-Strauss compared the relationship
between Kadmos and his sister Europa to Antigone’s attitude to Polynices’
corpse, and concluded that these incidents have as a common feature the over-
rating of blood relations. In addition, he drew far-reaching conclusions from the
physical defects that are suggested, according to him, by the names of Oedipus,
1 Cf. L. Edmunds, Oedipus. The Ancient Legend and the Later Analogues (Baltimore and
London, 1985) 3–6 (with earlier bibliography), which is informative regarding the later ana-
logues but less satisfactory in its treatment of the Greek myth: see my review in JHS 106 (1986)
233; I. Krauskopf, ‘Oidipous’, in LIMC VII.1 (1994) 1–15 and ‘Oidipous’, in LIMC, Suppl. 1
(2009) 393–94; M. Bettini and G. Guidorizzi, Il mito di Edipo: immagini e racconti dalla Gre
cia a oggi (Turin, 2004); E. Iakovou, Ödipus auf der griechischen und römischen Bühne (Berlin
and Boston, 2020).
2 A. Moreau, ‘Oedipe ou la prolifération explicative’, AC 71 (2002) 27–50.
3 For a good introduction, see R. Lauriola, ‘Oedipus the King’, in ead. and K. N. Demetriou
(eds), Brill’s Companion to the Reception of Sophocles (Leiden, 2017) 249–325; see also the
brief survey of A. Henrichs, Greek Myth and Religion (Berlin and Boson, 2019) 411–15.

‘Swollen Foot’, his father Laios, ‘Left-sided’, and his grandfather Labdacus,
‘Lame’. However, he overlooked that Antigonc is only a post-Homeric arrival
in the Oedipus myth, and the name Laios (Λάιος) does not derive from the
Greek word λαιός, ‘left’: historical and linguistic knowledge remains indispen-
sable, even in a structuralist approach. Lévi-Strauss’s procedure is perfectly un-
derstandable from his experience with the indigenous peoples of Latin America,
where it usually is impossible to distinguish between historical layers in his own
chosen area. In Greek mythology, on the contrary, such a distinction is often
possible, and a chronological determination of the various motifs must there-
fore always be attempted.4
Although I shall incorporate the chronological perspectives of the older
scholars and shall make use of structuralist methods, I shall be more indebted to
scholars who followed a rather different approach, namely the Russian folklor-
ist Vladimir Propp (1895–1970) and the Belgian classicist Marie Delcourt.5 Both
scholars analysed the myth by studying the meaning of all its individual motifs.
They thought that they could detect an initiatory pattern in the myth, but failed
to integrate Oedipus’ incest convincingly into this solution. Yet in principle
their approach seems sound – only by studying all the individual motifs against
the background of a unifying pattern can a myth as a whole be properly evalu-
ated. However, the popularity of the Oedipus theme means that the scope of the
inquiry has to be delimited. Following Lévi-Strauss’s methodological guideline
that a myth should be studied with reference to its own ethnographical contex-
t,6 I shall analyse the Oedipus myth as much as possible within the context of
the Archaic and Classical Age. In practice, this means that the sources will be
limited to the early versions until and including the mythographers and trage-
dians of the fifth century.7 Versions that became rationalised or adapted to the
more bourgeois climate of Hellenistic times need not be taken into considera-
tion. 8 This chapter, then, will concentrate on two aspects of the myth. First,
successive episodes of Oedipus’ life will be looked at, with attention to the ini-
tiatory motifs, and secondly, an attempt will be made to locate the Greek Oed-
ipus complex in a specific historical setting.
4 C. Lévi-Strauss, Structural Anthropology I (Harmondsworih, 1972) 213–18 (19551). Contra:
E. Leach, Lévi-Strauss (London, 1970) 62 ff; M. Detienne, Dionysos mis à mort (Paris, 1977) 19 f.
5 M. Delcourt, Oedipe ou la légende du conquérant (Paris, 1944, 19812); V. J. Propp, ‘Oed-
ipus in the Light of Folklore’ (19441), in L. Edmunds and A. Dundes (eds), Oedipus: a folklore
casebook (Madison, 19952) 76–121. For Delcourt (1891–1979), see the Preface by V. Pirenne-
Delforge to M. Delcourt, Oedipus; or, The Legend of a Conqueror (Ann Arbor, 2020) vii–xi.
6 C. Lévi-Strauss, Anthropalogie structurale II (Paris, 1973) 175–233.
7 For the early tradition, see especially D. Mastronarde, Euripides: Phoenissae (Cambridge,
1994) 17–38; Fowler, EGM 2.402–08.

8 I follow here C. Sourvinou-Inwood, Theseus as Son and Stepson (London, 1979) 65 n 68,
who has introduced the notion of the ‘original pattern’ of the myth, that is to say ‘all versions
formed while the mentality which operated on the creation of the myth was still alive and
operative, so that the myth was understood and reshaped in its own terms’.

Chapter 10: Oedipus and the Greek Oedipus Comple 161
1. Youth
How did it all begin? In the fifth century, various versions of the myth’s early
history were current. In Aeschylus’ Seven against Thebes, the Delphic oracle
warns the Theban king Laios that he will only save the city if he dies childless.
In Sophocles’ Oedlpus Rex, the oracle proclaims that the newborn son will kill
his father, but in Euripides’ Phoenissae the oracle takes place before Oedipus’
birth. This variation can hardly be due to chance. The very beginning of the
myth was an area where the poets could freely exercise their ingenuity without
altering the traditional plot of the myth. Both oracle and prophecy will not have
been introduced into the myth before the eighth century, since that was when
Delphi first rose to fame and the Greek polis came into existence. The oracle
probably replaced a seer: a poet could hardly get Oedipus away from Thebes
and ignorant of his true parentage without a prophecy (however given). Even if
there is an answer to this problem for the pre-history of the myth, for the Clas-
sical period the presence of the oracle is most important because it introduces
such motifs as human vs. divine intelligence, vain attempts to escape from ora-
cles, limitations of human understanding and fate – motifs which evidently fas-
cinated the classical audience.9
In order to forestall the outcome of the oracle, King Laios had Oedipus ex-
posed. The myth indicates two locations of the exposure which are not as dif-
ferent as they might appear at first sight. According to the first version, Oedipus
was exposed on Mt Kithairon and found by a shepherd from Sicyon.10 The tra-
dition of Oedipus’ discovery near Thebes by a Sicyonian shepherd is an inter-
esting glimpse into the sparsely documented activities of Greek herdsmen. Un-
doubtedly, his presence is a nice example of transhumance – the system by
which herds graze in the mountains in the summer, but in the valleys during the
winter. A detailed exposition of the myth may well have elaborated the difficul-
ties experienced by the shepherds in bringing the foundling home!11 According
to the second version, Oedipus was put in a chest and thrown into the sea. For-
tunately, he was rescued by the queen of Corinth (or Sicyon) who was doing her
laundry at the seashore. Washing clothes may not seem a very royal activity, but
in the Odyssey Nausicaa too departs on a washing expedition; the motif will
9 Cf. J. Fontenrose, The Delphic Oracle (Berkeley and Los Angeles, 1978); J. Kindt, Re
visiting Delphi: religion and storytelling in Ancient Greece (Cambridge, 2016).

10 For similar rescues by shepherds, see Bowie on Longus 1.2.3.
11 Exposure on Kithairon: Soph. OR; Eur. Phoe. 25; Sen. Phoen. 3–33; Nic. Dam. FGrH 90
F8; Apollod. 3.5.7; J. Rudhardt, ‘Oedipe et les chevaux’, MH 40 (1983) 131–39. Shepherds:
C. Segal, Tragedy and Cwilisation. An Interpretation of Sophocles (Cambridge, MA, 1981) 31;
M. C. Amouretti, ‘L’lconographie du berger’, in Iconographie et histoire des mentalités (Paris,
1979) 155–67. Transhumance: St. Georgoudi, ‘Problèmes de transhumance dans la Grèce an-
cienne’, REG 87 (1974) 155–85 at 167–69 (Sophocles); M. Cruz Cardete, ‘Long and Short-dis-
tance Transhumance in Ancient Greece: the case of Arkadia’, Oxford J. Arch. 38 (2019) 105–21.

predate the Classical Age when the enclosure of elite women had probably be-
come too strict to allow such activities.12
Both versions employ common mythological motifs. Paris was exposed on
Mt Ida and rescued by a shepherd, and Perseus was exposed at sea in a chest.
Whereas older scholars felt the need to determine the priority of one of the two
versions, the structuralist will observe that sea and mountains are both in oppo-
sition to the fertile land around the polis. Evil beings and polluted objects were
carried to the mountains or cast into the sea, and a Greek curse tersely says:
‘into the mountains or into the sea’. Both areas, then, contain the same message:
the child was exposed on a spot from which no escape was possible.13
Oedipus was not the only foundling to survive. We need only think of other
famous persons such as Sargon, Cyrus, Perseus, Romulus and Remus, and Pope
Gregory in order to realise that this motif is very widespread.14 All these found-
lings have in common that they grow up to become important secular or
spiritual leaders. Various scholars have suggested that the exposure reflects a
ritual theme such as the rites of initiation, or, as in the case of Oedipus, the pun-
ishment for parricide (i. e. to be drowned in a bag).15 None of these explanations
is really convincing. It is more natural to see in the exposure a narrative ploy: the
important position of the hero in later life within the community is thrown into
greater relief by his earlier removal from that community.16 Given its knowledge
of the exposure motif in the case of Perseus and other heroes, a Greek audience
unfamiliar with the myth probably will have interpreted Oedipus’ exposure in
an analogous way until it would dawn upon them that in this particular case the
exposure prepared the way for terrible things to come.
When Oedipus was exposed, his feet were mutilated. Propp (above, note 5)
has pointed out that in many legends the foundling is symbolically killed. This
could also be the explanation for Oedipus’ mutilation: the wounded feet meant
a de facto death. On the other hand, there is something odd about this motif.
After all, Oedipus was a baby: how could anyone have expected that he would
run away? The role of the mutilation is actually secondary in the myth. It does
not occur in those versions where Oedipus is exposed at sea, nor does Sophocles
12 Washing queen: Corp. Vas. Ant. France 23: Louvre 15, p1. 10; Hyginus, Fab. 66. Nausi-
caa: Od. 6.90–95. Other washing women: Od. 15.406; Eur. Hipp. 121 ff; Nonnos, D. 3.90–93.
13 Paris: Hypothesis Eur. Alexandros 4–6 with Katamanou ad loc., Phoen. 25; P.Oxy.
51.3630. Perseus: this volume, Preface, note 46 (bibliography). Polluted objects: R. Parker,
Miasma (Oxford, 1983) 210. Curse: H. S. Versnel, ‘Polycrates and His Ring: two neglected
aspects’, Studi Storico-Religiosi 1 (1977) 17–46 at 41 f.
14 Cf. G. Binder, Die Aussetzung des Königskindes Kyros und Romulus (Meisenheim, 1964)
and ‘Aussetzung’, in Enzyklopädie des Märchens I (Berlin and New York, 1977) 1048–66;
B. Lewis, The Sargon Legend (Cambridge, MA, 1980); M. Huys, The Tale of the Hero Who
Was Exposed at Birth (Leuven, 1995).
15 See especially Delcourt, Oedipe, 1–65.
16 Cf. J. N. Bremmer and N. M. Horsfall, Roman Myth and Mythography (London, 1987)
27–30 (by Bremmer).

let his hero limp in the Oedipus Rex.17 And yet, this subsidiary motif has exer-
cised an enormous influence on modern interpretations. According to their var-
ious orientations, scholars have explained it as a sign of autochthony, a defect of
communication, the reverse of good kingship or the overcoming of fear of cas-
tration.18 All these explanations misjudge the typical Greek way of playing with
names. Popular etymologies always confirm the values already ascribed to the
bearer of a name; they do not produce these values. In other words, the etymo-
logical interpretation is always secondary, and cannot be used as the main key
in decoding the myth.19
After the shepherds had found Oedipus, they brought him to the court of
King Polybus. The king’s name is fixed in all versions of the tradition, but the
name of his wife varies; she is called Merope (Soph. OR 775, 990), Periboia
(Hyginus, Fab 66.2; Apollod. 3.5.7), Medusa or Antiochis (Pherecydes FGrH 3
F93 = 93 Fowler). Evidently, changing women’s names was one of the poetic
means of giving a story a new look.20 Even though the royal couple pretended
that Oedipus was their own son, his education at another court can hardly be
separated from fosterage, the initiatory custom according to which Greek and
other Indo-European aristocratic children were raised at a court or family dif-
ferent from their own.21
The exposure myths could easily incorporate initiatory motifs, since boys
usually had to spend some time away from home during their rites of puberty;
Cyrus’ and Romulus and Remus’ growing up among their contemporaries also
reflects Persian and Roman rites of initiation. It was normal for the young aris-
tocrat to return home when he had grown up in order to pass through the final
puberty rites. Similarly, Oedipus left the court when he had reached adult-
hood.22
17 Mutilation of feet: Soph. 0R 1026; Eur. Phoen. 28–31; Androtion FGrH 324 F62; Peisan-
dros FGrH 16 F10; Apollod. 3.5.7. Marginal role: P. G. Maxwell-Stuart, ‘Interpretations of

the Name Oedipus’, Maia 27 (1975) 37–43. Sophocles: O. Taplin, Entr. Hardt 29 (1982) 153 f.
18 Cf. Lévi-Strauss, Anthropalogie structurale II; J.-P. Vernant, ‘From Oedipus to Perian-
der’, Arethusa 15 (1982) 19–38; D. Anzieu et al., Psychoanalyse et culture grecque (Paris, 1980)
9–52; note also the critique of Lévi-Strauss and Vernant by H. Lloyd-Jones, Greek in a Cold
Climate (London, 1991) 182–87.
19 Cf. E. Risch, Kleine Schriften (Berlin and New York, 1981) 294–313; C. Calame, ‘Le
nom d’Oedipe’, in B. Gentili and R. Pretagostini (eds), Edipo: il teatro greco e la cultura euro
pea (Rome, 1986) 395–407 and Le récit en Grèce ancienne (Paris, 1986) 153–56, 215–17.
20 There are many examples of changing names of females in Pherecydes FGrH 3; note also
the various names of Orpheus’ wife (this volume, Chapter 5.1) and of Oedipus’ mother and his
second wife (§ 2).
21 See this volume, Chapter 14.
22 Cyrus: G. Widengren, Der Feudalismus im altem Iran (Cologne, 1969) 64–95. Romulus
and Remus: Bremner and Horsfall, Roman Myth, 30–33; this volume, Chapter 7.3. Return
home: schol. Od. 11.271.

2. Becoming king, marriage and death
We need not analyse the reasons why Oedipus left his foster parents, or why
Laios left Thebes in order to consult the Delphic oracle. Motivations were typ-
ically a territory where poets could use their imagination. It is far more interest-
ing to inquire why Oedipus killed his father at a triple crossroads. Carl Robert
(1850–1922) spent much effort on localising the scene of the crime, and even
published photographs of it, 23 but it seems more important to observe that the
Greeks considered a triple crossroads an ominous spot. It was the place where
ghostly Hecate was worshipped, where Plato wants corpses of parricides to be
stoned, and where in Late Antiquity the poet Nonnos still has women commit
murders.24 Evidently, mythopoeic imagination did not choose its scenery at ran-
dom but deliberately.
After the murder of his father, Oedipus continued his journey to Thebes
where he solved the Sphinx’s riddle. A full text of the riddle only emerges in the
fourth century:
There walks on land a creature of two feet, of four feet, and of three; it has one voice, but
sole among animals that grow on land or in the sea, it can change its nature; nay, when it
walks propped on most feet, then is the speed of its limbs less than it has ever been before.
Versions of the riddle have been collected in many parts of the world, but the
Greek version, unlike that of other peoples, never mentions the various stages of
life as morning, afternoon and evening.25 The earliest sources locate the monster
in the mountains where it usually kills Theban youths; later sources dramatise
the situation by mentioning the ecclesia or acropolis of Thebes.26 Monstres nat-
urally belong in the wild (Chapter 3), but it may seem curious that in literature
and iconography the Sphinx is virtually always represented as a girl, although a
vase with an onanising Sphinx does exist. The monster’s female sex fits in well
with the Greek tendency to represent monsters as female, in particular as girls
and/or old women, as is illustrated by the cases of the Medusa, Gorgo, Chimae-
ra, Lamia, the Sirens, Erinyes, Scylla and Charybdis. Whereas modern fiction
23 Killing: Soph. OR 806–13; Eur. Phoen. 44; Nic. Dam. FGrH 90 F8; Apollod. 3.3.7; cf.
C. Robert, Oedipus, 2 vols (Berlin, 1915) 1.86 f.

24 Hecate: Sophocles F 335.4; Ar. Plut. 594–97; Apollod. FGrH 244 F110a; Chariclides F 1
with Kassel and Austin ad loc.; Plato, Leg. 873c; Nonnos, D 9.40, 47, 484; Parker, Miasma, 30;
S. I. Johnston, ‘Crossroads’, ZPE 88 (1991) 217–24; Fowler, EGM 2.403.
25 Text of riddle: Asclepiades FGrH 12 F7a, tr. Edmunds; cf. A. Lesky, Gesammelte Schrif
ten (Munich, 1966) 318–26; H. Lloyd-Jones, ‘Ten Notes on Aeschylus, Agamemnon’, in

R. Dawe et al. (eds), Dionysiaca (Cambridqe, 1978) 45–61 at 60 f. Other versions: Frazer on
Apollod. 3.5.8.
26 Sphinx: A. Lesky, ‘Sphinx’, in RE II 3 (1929) 1703–26; J.-M. Moret, Oedipe, la Sphinx et
les Thébains, 2 vols (Rome, 1984); A.-B. Renger, Oedipus and the Sphinx (Chicago and Lon-
don, 2013). Location Sphinx: Moret, Oedipe, 1.69–73. Ecclesia: Asclepiades FGrH 12 F7b.
Acropolis: Apollod. 3.5.8.

likes to represent the ultimate danger as coming from outer space, male Greek
imagination always thought of the opposite sex.27
It has been argued that the episode with the Sphinx is a later addition to the
Oedipus story, since there is no unanimity regarding the sender – Hera, Ares
and Dionysos are mentioned; moreover, the episode is absent from similar folk-
tales. This argument is hard to accept. First, Hesiod (Th. 326) knows of the
Sphinx as a threat to the Thebans, and parts of the riddle’s text already appear
on a sixth-century vase; allusions to it are to be found in early fifth-century
literature. This chronological evidence would in itself dispose of the claim that
the Sphinx is a later addition. Secondly, motivation is variable in poetic tradi-
tion, as we saw before. Thirdly, the comparison with other folktales forces the
Sphinx episode into the shackles of a primeval version which is non-existent in
the historical tradition but has to be reconstructed from much later versions.
There is no reason, then, to exclude the Sphinx episode from the original myth.28
By freeing the Thebans from the Sphinx, Oedipus acquired the throne and
the hand of the Queen. The Odyssey version of the Oedipus myth, the oldest
version that exists, stresses the role of Epikaste (Iokaste) in this marriage: ‘she
who had married her son’ (11.273). Similarly, the suitors of Penelope were wait-
ing to see whom she would choose to marry. These myths presuppose a matri-
monial system in which gaining the hand of the queen-widow implies occupa-
tion of the throne. The same system could be found elsewhere. Herodotus
relates the gripping story of Gyges and the wife of the Lydian king Candaules;
another Lydian king was also succeeded by a subordinate who married the
adulterous queen. In Persia, the Magus Smerdis married Cambyses’ widow
Atossa, who was incorporated into Darius’ harem after Smerdis’ death, and – a
very late example – in the eleventh century the Scandinavian Knut married the
widow of Ethelred, the defeated English king.29
If Oedipus’ wedding had been the end of the myth, the result of the analysis
would have been obvious. In the 1930s, Louis Gernet already compared Oedi-
pus’ confrontation with the Sphinx with ordeals of other heroes such as The-
seus, lamos and Pelops, and interpreted these tests as an ‘initiation royale’. The
pioneer of the study of Greek initiatory rites, Jeanmaire, also recognised in this
part of the myth ‘le thème d’avènement’, but at the same time he wondered about
27 Sphinx a girl: Pindar F 177d; Soph. OR 1199; Eur. Phoen. 48, 806, 1042; Moret, Oedipe,
1.311 (who stresses the Sphinx’s resemblance to the Pythia). Onanising Spinx: Moret, Oedipe,
1.144–46. Monstres female: Bremmer, The World, 244, 250.
28 Contra: L. Edmunds, The Sphinx in the Oedipus Legend (Königstein, 1981); note also
the critiques by C. Callanan, Fabula 23 (1982) 316–18; R. Parker, CR 34 (1984) 336. Vase:
Moret, Oedipe, 1.39 f. Allusions: West on Hes. Op. 533.
29 Lydia: Hdt. 1.713; Nic. Dam. FGrH 90 F44. Atossa: Hdt. 3.68, 88. Knut: D. Whitelock
et al. (eds), The Anglo-Saxon Chronicle (London, 19652) C 1017; for this and other examples,
see R. H. Bremmer, ‘Widows in Anglo-Saxon England’, in J. N. Bremmer and L. P. van den
Bosch (eds), Between Poverty and the Pyre (London and New York, 1995) 58–88 at 62–64.

the link with incest and parricide. Could these latter two motifs really be con-
nected with the theme of initiation?30
There can be no doubt, in fact, that parricide can be brought into the orbit of
puberty rites, as is illustrated by the myth of Theseus. Scholars have long recog-
nised that the Attic version of the myth reflects an initiatory scenario: the prince
who is educated away from home defeats the monstrous Minotaur and returns
home to become king. In the case of Theseus, the king is not straightforwardly
murdered, but his suicide is caused by Theseus forgetting to change the sails. In
other words, in this particular case myth has mitigated parricide. In its undiluted
form, the crime occurs in a Bororo myth. A boy named Geriguiguiatugo raped
his mother and was therefore abandoned by his father. After the performance of
a series of hunting feats, he returned, provided his tribe with fire and killed his
father. The rape of his mother symbolises the separation from the world of wom-
en. The killing of his father expresses a ‘social principle of universal validity: “for
society to go on, sons must destroy (replace) their fathers”’. Walter Burkert has
wisely pointed to the initiatory pattern of the Bororo myth. Lévi-Strauss, on the
other hand, mentions the connection of the myth with initiation but fails to note
its importance for the interpretation of the very myth that constitutes the start-
ing point of his analysis of South American mythology.31
We can systematise these myths as follows:
Oedipus Theseus Geriguiguiatugu

fosterage fosterage
parricide conquest of monster hunting feats
conquest of monster ‘parricide’ parricide
king king culture hero
Up to this point, these myths display a comparable structure: a young man per-
forms an impressive feat, defeats a monster, kills his father (or is the cause of his
death) and becomes king or culture hero). The order of motifs 2 and 3 is differ-
ent in the case of Oedipus and Theseus, but this difference does not seem to be
of any particular interest. Propp attached great value to the fixed order of motifs
in a given folktale, but his point of view is hardly supported by Greek myths
and their plots.32 Yet, however comparable these myths are up till this point, the
30 L. Gernet and A. Boulanger, Le Génie grec dans la religion (Paris, 19702) 77–78; H. Jean
maire, RPh 21 (1947) 163–67 (review of Delcourt, Oedipe) at 167; Delcourt, Oedipe, and
Propp, ‘Oedipus’, also suggested a connection with initiation.
31 Theseus and initiation: this volume, Preface. Interpretation of parricide: Sourvinou-ln-
wood, Theseus, 15, quoting Leach, Lévi-Strauss, 80. Bororo myth: W. Burkert, Structure and
History in Greek Mythology and Ritual (Berkeley, Los Angeles, London, 1979) 14; C. Lévi-
Strauss, The Raw and the Cooked (London, 1970) 35–48.
32 For a critique of Propp’s original Russian version at this point, see A. Taylor, ‘The Bio-
graphical Pattern in Traditional Narrative’, J. Folklore Inst. 1 (1964) 114–29.

problem remains of how Oedipus’ incest can be fitted into this scheme. Is an
interpretation that takes ritual as the starting point of the myth perhaps more
satisfactory?
Around the beginning of last century, an explanation of the myth was looked
for in Oedipus’ connection with Demeter at the level of cult. It was typical of
historians of Greek religion that they tried to regain firm ground by concentrat-
ing on ritual instead of myth after the excesses of Max Müller and Hermann
Usener.33 And indeed, a local historian Lysimachos mentions a cult of Oedipus
and his grave in the sanctuary of Demeter in Boeotian Eteonos. Carl Robert,
followed by Burkert, saw in this cult the origin of Oedipus’ marriage, since
Demeter was the Greek mother par excellence. However, the burial in Deme-
ter’s sanctuary does not make Oedipus a son of the goddess. Moreover, the as-
sumption implies that at a very early stage the Boeotians of Eteonos already
worshipped an unknown hero who had nothing to do with Oedipus, and who,
for unknown reasons, was transferred to Thebes by an unknown poet; in addi-
tion, this solution leaves the link with parricide totally unexplained. It seems
less complicated to assume that the cult at Eteonos originated in epic tradition
like so many other heroic cults.34
Eventually, solutions via initiation or via ritual have proven to be unsatisfac-
tory: an investigation into the striking combination of parricide and incest may
perhaps be more rewarding. We start with a closer look at parricide. Modern
Western society has become differentiated to such a degree that few people are
dependent on their fathers for their future; neither are most fathers dependent
on their children any more for care in their old age. Consequently, parricide
does not play a major role in the modern imagination. It is therefore well to re-
member that in ancient Greece sons were totally dependent on their fathers for
their later status, and that parents looked to their children as a kind of pension.
The stress Greeks laid on honouring parents is a clear indication of a situation
in which an underlying tension between fathers and sons must always have ex-
isted.35 An ever-present possibility, parricide was considered to be one of the
33 For Müller and Usener, see Bremmer, The World, 429–30, 522–24, respectively.
34 Eteonos: Lysimachos FGrH 352 F2, cf. Robert, Oedipus, 1.44; W. Burkert, Kleine
Schriften IV (Göttingen, 2011) 15–16. L. Farnell, Greek Hero Cults and Ideas of Immortality
(Oxford, 1921) 314 had already noted: ‘His (Oedipus’) cult is extraneous and cannot be dated
to a very early period’. L. Edmund, ‘The Cults and the Legend of Oedipus’, HSCP 85 (1981)
22I-38, is unconvincing.
35 Honouring parents: K. J. Dover, Greek Popular Morality in the Time of Plato and Aris
totle (Oxford, 1974) 273–75. Father/son relationship: S. Bertman (ed.), The Conflict of Gener
ations in Ancient Greece and Rome (Amsterdam, 1976); Golden, Children and Childhood,
82–114; A. Maffi, ‘Padri e figli fra diritto positivo e diritto imaginario nella Grecia classica’, in
E. Pellizer and N. Zorzetti (eds), La paura dei padri nella società antica e medievale (Rome
and Bari, 1983) 3–27; B. Strauss, Fathers and Sons in Athens (London and New York, 1993);
C. A. Cox, Household Interests: property, marriage strategies, and family dynamics in ancient
Athens (Princeton, 1998) 78–88.

most appalling of crimes. One of the signs of the rule of Hate, as envisaged by
Empedocles, is the murder of the father, followed by the consumption of his
flesh. Imputation of parricide was one of the ‘unspeakable things’, which could
well result in legal action; even the word ‘parricide’ was only mentioned with
reluctance, if at al.36
Incest was equally appalling, even though the Greeks did not have a specific
word to denote the practice; nor did they condemn sexual relationships between
relatives to the same degree as has been usual in the modern Western world.
Marriages between uncle/aunt and niece/nephew were relatively current in both
the Archaic and Classical period. Marriages of first cousins and those between
half-brothers and half-sisters were also not uncommon.37 Those between full
brothers and sisters seem to have been just beyond the limits of the admissible,
although Carians, Egyptians and the Ptolemies permitted them.38 The Odyssey
can still describe the marriage of Aeolus’ children without comment, even
though it is located on an island outside normal civilisation. In Hesiod’s Theog
ony, brother/sister marriages among the gods are evidently not considered to be
a problem, but such marriages occur in most mythologies of the world without
any apparent condemnation. In the classical period, imputation of incest with a
sister belongs to the normal vocabulary of legal and political abuse, but these
accusations never seem to have led to a formal trial. In the early Hellenstic peri-
od, Philetas still mentions a marriage of Aeolus’ children without any penalty
or punishment. In the same period, Hermesianax relates the story of Leukippos
falling in love with his sister. Although his mother condoned the affair, it had
terrible consequences. When the sister’s fiancé denounced the couple to their
father, the old man tried to catch the couple in flagrante delicto. In the turmoil
that followed the daughter was inadvertently killed by the father, who in turn
was killed by the son, also inadvertently. Even in this Greek soap opera, love
between brother and sister is condoned by the mother, although the parricide
indicates rejection by the poet.39 The same disapproval appears in Euripides
36 Parricide: Parker, Miasma, 124. Hate: Empedocles B 137. Unspeakable: D. Clay, ‘Un-
speakable Words in Greek Tragedy’, AJPh 103 (1962) 277–98.

37 Uncle/aunt and niece/nephew: this volume, Chapter 13.1. First cousins: W. Thompson,
‘The Marriage of First Cousins in Athenian Society’, Phoenix 21 (1967) 273–82. Half-broth-
ers/sisters: A. R. W. Harrison, The Law of Athens, 2 vols (Oxford, 1968) 1.22–23. In general:
S. C. Humphreys, Kinship in Ancient Athens, 2 vols (Oxford, 2018) 1.107–34; D. Tosheva,
‘Close-kin Marriages in Menander’, Societas Classica 10 (2019) 85–96.
38 Carians: S. Hornblower, Mausolus (Oxford, 1982) 358–63. Ptolemies and Egyptians:
S. Huebner, ‘“Brother-Sister” Marriage in Roman Egypt: a curiosity of humankind or a wide-

spread family strategy?’, JRS 97 (2007) 21–49; S. Remijsen and W. Clarysse, ‘Incest or Adop-
tion? Brother-Sister Marriage in Roman Egypt Revisited’, JRS 98 (2008) 53–61.
39 Aeolus: Od. 10.5–12, cf. P. Vidal- Naquet, Le Chasseur noir (Paris, 19832) 53. Imputa-
tions: Kerameikos O 6874 (ostracon mentioning Cimon), cf. Parker, Miasma, 98; Lys. 14.28
(Alcibiades). Philetas: Parthenius 2. Leukippos: Parthenius 5, cf. E. Pellizer, Favole d’tden
tità – Favole di paura (Rome, 1982) 66–69. For the mythological stories, see J. Rudhardt, ‘De

who lets Aeolus put his incestuous daughter to death. Ovid even pictures her
fate in the cruellest of terms – it was apparently a relationship which only grad-
ually became totally inadmissible.40
Not so sex between parents and children. In Orphic mythology, Zeus’ rape of
his mother Rhea/Demeter results in the birth of a daughter, Persephone, with
two faces, four eyes and horns: the mother is so shocked that she leaves her baby.
The same poetry has Zeus mating with Persephone in the shape of a snake.
However, the background of these idiosyncratic beliefs is still very much un-
der-researched; it seems therefore too early to draw conclusions from them. The
imputation of sex between father and daughter or mother and son was part of
normal political and legal abuse. We can hardly he surprised, though, that dis-
cussions of real cases are lacking – even today these matters are usually clouded
in a veil of secrecy. At the imaginative level, however, various examples of such
relationships can be found. Having tasted his own children, Thyestes later inad-
vertently slept with his daughter and in this way begat Aigisthos, the murderer
of Agamemnon. In a probably Hellenistic tale, the chief of the Pelasgians, Pias-
os raped his daughter Larissa, who in retribution managed to drown her father
in a barrel of wine. In another tale, Harpalyke of Argos was raped by her father
Klymenos. Subsequently, she killed her youngest brother (or her son) and served
him up to her father during a public banquet. The gods changed her into a bird
and her father committed suicide.41
In these stories, incest leads to parricide or cannibalism, whereas parricide
can lead to incest (Oedipus) or cannibalism (rule of Hate). This cannot be
chance. For the Greeks, incest, parricide and cannibalism were the great taboos
which marked off the civilised from the rest of the world. Transgressions in
these particular areas were the crimes ascribed to the tyrannos, the one person
who had placed himself outside normal society. These were also the transgres-
sions propagated by the Cynics in their opposition to the ruling norms of the
polis. Cannibalism, incest and killing old people were also the crimes which the
Greeks ascribed to surrounding peoples in order to stress the superiority of
their own civilisation. They were not unique in this attitude.42 Cannibalism and
1’inceste dans la mythologie grecque’, Revue française de psychoanalyse 46 (1982) 731–63 at

733–39, to whom I am indebted.
40 Aeolus: Kannicht on Euripides, Aeolus, cf. Ar. Nub.1371–72, Ran.108l; Plato, Leg. 838c;
Ovid, Her. 11.3–130.

41 Orphic mythology: M. L. West, The Orphic Poems (Oxford, 1983) 93 ff. Abuse: Hip
ponax F 20 Degani = 12 West; Lysias F 30; lsaeus 3.39. Pelopeia: Radt on Sophocles, Thyestes.
Larissa: Parthenius 28; Nic. Dam. FGrH 90 F19; Strabo 13.3.4; schol. Apoll. Rhod. 1.1063;
Harpalyke: Euphorion F 24; Hyginus, Fab. 206, 242, 246, 253; Parthenius 13; Nonnos,
D 12.70–75; schol. Il. 14.291; E. Rohde, Der griechische Roman und seine Vorläufer (Leipzig,
19143) 448.
42 Cannibalism, incest and parricide as the great crimes: Detienne, Dionysos, 134; A. Moreau,
‘A propos d’Oedipe: la liaison entre trois crimes – parricide, inceste et cannibalisme’, in S. Saïd
et al., Études de littérature ancienne (Paris, 1979) 97–127; Parker, Miasma, 326. Tyrannos:

incest were also standard accusations levelled by Europeans against inhabitants

of countries discovered in the early modern age; indeed, these imputations seem
to occur all over the world.43
We can now see that there is a strong moralistic flavour about these stories,
since the monstrosity of the transgression is commented upon by letting the
protagonist commit a further monstrosity. Whoever commits incest is prone to
become a parricide or cannibal as well. Or, whoever commits parricide will
become incestuous and consume human flesh. The corollary must be that Oed-
ipus’ incest is not a pre-Freudian reflection on his relationship with his mother
but a comment on his parricide. The lack of any profound interest in his mother
is confirmed by the variety of her names: epic poetry calls her Epikaste, tragedy
Iokaste, and mythography Eurygane/Euryganeia and Astymedousa.44
There are two more aspects to be considered. First, those who break the great
taboos sometimes experience an abnormal end, as two further examples may
illustrate. A late Archaic poet related how Odysseus’ son by Circe, Telegonus,
unknowingly killed his father. Subsequently, he married Penelope, whereas his
brother Telemachus, in a way his double, married Circe. Both sons, then, mar-
ried the wife of their father who was not their own mother – a `soft’ version, so
to speak, of the myths we have been discussing. After the wedding, all the pro-
tagonists were immediately removed to the Isles of the Blessed. The ‘heroisa-
tion’ shows that people who commit crimes like parricide or incest acquire a
status beyond normal humans, although they can also become infra-human.
The Hellenistic poet Boios told a story about Aegypus, a Thessalian boy who
inadvertently slept with his mother, Boulis. In this case the ‘culprits’ were
changed into birds. One last example: the death of Oedipus in Kolonos as relat-
ed by Sophocles is a typical Athenian Lokallegende, which arose in the fifth
century when a number of heroes, such as Admetus, Adrastus and Orestes,
were annexed by Athens. However, as the previous examples show, the Atheni-
an heroisation of Oedipus was the actualisation of a possibility inherent in the
myth, although the tradition of his tomb and his heroic status could conceivably
antedate fifth-century Athenian tradition, albeit hardly very much. The mon-
Detienne, Dionysos, 144; Vernant, ‘From Oedipus’, 33 f. Cynics: Vidal-Naquet, Chasseur, 368;
Parker, loc. cit. Stock accusations: J. N. Bremmer, The Early Greek Conccpt of the Soul
(Princeton, 1983) 103–04 (killing old people); B. H. Stricker, Camephis (Amsterdam, 1975:
exhaustive, if uncritical, collection of references to incest in the ancient world); Henrichs,
Greek Myth and Religion, 62–64 (cannibalism).
43 Cf. W. Arens, The Man-Eating Myth (New York, 1979) who wrongly denies the exist-
ence of cannibalism altogether, cf. P. Vidal-Naquet, Les Juifs, la mémoire et le présent (Paris,
1981) 197 ff; A. Pagden, The Fall of Natural Man (Cambridge, 1982) 80–90.
44 Epikaste: Od.11.271; Apollod. 3.5.7. Iokaste: Soph. OR 632, 9ö0; Eur. Phoen. 12, 289,
etc. Eurygane: Peisandros FGrH 16 F10. Euryganeia: Epimenides FGrH 457 F13 = 16 Fowler;
Pherecydes FGrH 3 F95 = 95 Fowler (also Astymedousa); Paus. 9.5.11; schol. Il. 4.376; Fowler,
EGM 2.403–08.

strosity of the acts is further illustrated by the fact that poets cannot really im-
agine that any person would deliberately kill his father or sleep with his mother.
In most cases, the deeds are committed inadvertently or as the punishment of a
god.45
After the incest was discovered, Iokaste hanged herself: permanent incestuous
relationships were unthinkable. This way of death was typical for female sui-
cides. Weapons were the realm of men, and women seem to have respected their
monopoly. Oedipus remarried, and again the names of his wife vary. It is hard
for us to understand that a poet could let Oedipus remarry, but the wedding may
well have been a poet’s solution to the question ‘What happened next?’ In a way,
the myth was finished after the discovery of the incest, but an audience always
wants more. So what can a poet do other than continue with what always hap-
pens? The earliest stages of the Indo-European languages did not have a word for
‘widower’. This absence undoubtedly reflected a social reality: to be a widower
was not a permanent male status. So Oedipus had to remarry. Similarly, Jason
gave funeral games after his murder of Pelias, and Orestes provided a funeral
banquet after killing the murderer of his father. Although we are told that Oed-
ipus suffered greatly, he remained king, most likely died in battle and received a
normal funeral; his blindness is probably mentioned first in the Oedipodeia, an
epic poem of the seventh (?) century. Does this mean that the Homeric Age rated
parricide a very serious crime, but still less serious than later centuries? Or are
the strife and death of his sons also part of the terrible consequences of Oedipus’
parricide? There is something unsatisfactory about his end.46
Having looked at the successive periods of Oedipus’ life, we can finally con-
sider the problem of the myth’s origin. Where was the myth told first? As Burk-
ert observes,47 its place of origin is highly uncertain. The family of Oedipus is
not well established at Thebes at all, since there are no indissoluble ties with
local institutions and cults. The composition of the myth illustrates this lack of
dependence on a specific local ritual. The Oedipus myth clearly is a bricolage
from various mythical motifs: the exposure, the coming of age of a prince, and
the combination of parricide and incest. As we have seen, these, partially initia-
45 Telegonus: Telegony, Arg. 4b, F 6 West = Arg. F 5 Bernabé; Hyginus, Fab 127; Apollod.
Epit. 7.37 with Frazer ad loc. Boios: Anton. Lib. 5. Athens: A. Brelich, Gli eroi greci (Rome,
1958) 40. Athenian cult of Oedipus: A. Henrichs, ‘The “Sobriety” of Oedipus: Sophocles OC
100 Misunderstood’, HSCP 87 (1983) 87–100; J.-P. Vernant and P. Vidal-Naquet, Mythe et
tragédie en Grèce ancienne II (Paris, 1986) 199–200 (by Vidal-Naquet).
46 Hanging Iokaste: Od. 11.277–78; Soph. OR 1263–64, Ant. 53–54, cf. N. Loraux, ‘Le
corps étranglé’, in Y. Thomas (ed.), Du châtiment dans la cité (Rome, 1984) 195–218 and
Façons tragiques de tuer une femme (Paris, 1985). Widower: P. Koschaker, Zs. f. ausl. und in
tern. Privatrecht, Sonderheft zu Bd. 11 (1937) 118. Death and funeral: Il. 23.679; Hes. F 192;
Soph. Ant. 53 f. Blindness: W. Burkert, Kleine Schriften I (Göttingen, 2001) 151 (Oidipodeia);
R. Buxton, Myths & Tragedies in their Ancient Greek Contexts (Oxford, 2013) 173–200.
47 Burkert, Kleine Schriften I, 158.

tory, motifs can occur separately in a variety of myths, but they have been com-
bined to particularly startling effect in the Oedipus myth, which an early poet
located in Thebes for reasons unknown to us.
Despite the uncertainty about the myth’s origin we would like to close this
study with a suggestion regarding its meaning and place of recitation in the
early Archaic Age. In the Classical period, Oedipus’ life had become part of the
tragic chain of events of Labdacus’ doomed house, but his life is still considered
in its own right in the oldest version of his myth (Od. 11.271–80). Oedipus’
father was the king of Thebes, and Oedipus himself, as the Odyssey notes, ‘con-
tinued to rule’ after his mother’s suicide — thus sovereignty is singled out as his
most important quality. Like many other Archaic myths, the myth of Oedipus
is, originally at least, concerned with the succession to the throne.48
In this case, however, the myth relates the story of a perverted succession –
the incest being the narrative expression of society’s disapproval of parricide:
Oedipus is a model of how not to succeed to the throne. In the Classical period,
the aspect of succession no longer appealed to the poets, but in the early Archa-
ic Age this aspect must have been highly relevant. Considering the importance
attached to sovereignty, it is not impossible that at one time the myth was told
to princes during their puberty rites. By growing up, princes form a threat to
their fathers whose throne they will one day have to occupy. In a way, the Oed-
ipus myth can be read as a warning to the younger generation: ‘You have grown
up but you must continue to respect your fathers’. There is something Freudian
about this myth.
3. A Greek Oedipus Complex?
Freud proposed a different solution. Having observed that neurotic children

may be in love with their mother and want to kill their father, he stated that the
same feelings, although less clear and less intense, can be found in normal chil-
dren; the Oedipus myth supported this observation. The thesis has rightly been
combated by Jean-Pierre Vernant (1914–2007), who pointed out that his foster
mother would have had to be the focus of Oedipus’ feelings, not Iokaste.49 It is
nevertheless striking that we do find a kind of Oedipus complex in Classical
Greece. In the Oedipus Rex (981–82) Iokaste says to Oedipus: ‘Many mortals
have slept with their mother in their dreams’. Plato mentions similar dreams,
48Cf. Gernet and Boulanger, Le Génie grec, 76–77 (by Gernet).

49S. Freud, Die Traumdeutung (Vienna, 1900) l80 ff (= Standard Edition IV, 258, 261–64).
Contra: J.-P. Vernant, ‘Oedipe sans complexe’, in id. and P. Vidal-Naquet, Mythe et tragédie
en Grèce ancienne (Paris, 1972) 75–98. It seems, though, that Vernant does not always do
Freud full justice, cf. F. Schuh, ‘Bemerkungen zur Tragödienforschung: Aus Anlass der Lek-
türe Vernants “Mythe et tragédie”’, Hephaistos 5–6 (1983–84) 237–78 at 265–67.

and in a chapter of his Dreambook, that reads like a Greek Kinsey report, Arte-
midorus gives a detailed exposition of them.50 Is it purely by chance that we first
start to hear about these dreams in the fifth century? Perhaps not. In the early
Archaic Age, upper-class mothers – the only ones about whom we have any in-
formation – will have had limited contact with their sons, since at an early age
these were removed from home for fosterage or other types of initiatory educa-
tion. Moreover, women had a relatively varied social life in which up to a certain
extent they could freely mix with males. In the course of that Age, drastic
changes took place. Except in certain Dorian communities, the customary rites
of initiation gradually disappeared, and husbands started to separate their
women from the presence of other men; a not so splendid isolation became the
rule.51
These changes must have had a considerable impact on the mother-son rela-
tionship. We may compare developments in modern Greek villages. Since the
tractors have removed working women from the fields, women are leading a
much more restricted life at home. The pampering of their sons has now become
one of the foci of their life. The same development will have taken place in Clas-
sical Greece. The women of the upper classes had to stay at home, and they were
not even allowed to dine with their husbands when other men were present.
Raising the children now became one of their main activities. In Plato’s Laws,
the Athenian stranger mentions that the children are under the care of their
nurses and mothers until they come into the hands of teacher and paidagôgoi.
The Obsequious Man of Theophrastus even has to ask his host to let the host’s
children join them for dinner. The consequent close contact between sisters and
brothers enables Electra to say to Orestes: ‘nor did the household raise you:
I was your nurse’. We do not know exactly how long a boy remained under his
mothers wings, but during the events leading up to the liberation of Thebes
from the Spartan domination in 379, a Theban brought his fifteen-year old son
along to a banquet organised by one of the pro-Spartan collaborators. The boy
came from the women’s quarters.52
50 Plato, Resp. 571c; Artemidorus 1.79, with Pack (Teubner edition) ad loc.; E. R. Dodds,
The Greeks and the Irrational (Berkeley and Los Angeles, 1951) 47, 61–62; S. Price, ‘The Fu-
ture of Dreams: from Freud to Artemidorus’, Past & Present 113 (1986) 3–37; G. Guidorizzi,
‘On Dreaming of One’s Mother: Oedipal dreams between Sophocles and Artemidorus’, in G.
Weber (ed.), Artemidor von Daldis und die antike Traumdeutung (Berlin and Boston, 2015)
219–32; P. Thonemann, An Ancient Dream Manual (Oxford, 2020) 116–17.
51 Women: G. Wickert-Micknat, Die Frau = Archaeologica Homerica III R (Göttingen,
1982). Fosterage: Brelich, Gli eroi greci, 124–28; this volume, Chapter 14.
52 Modern Greece: M.-E. Handman, La violence et la ruse. Hommes et femmes dans un
village grec (Aix-en-Provence, 1983) 121–22, 141–44. Raising children: Soph. El. 1143–48; Plato,
Leg. 7.808e; Theophr. Char. 5.5, with Diggle ad loc.; Plut, Pel. 9.5, Mor. 595b; M. Golden,
Children and Childhood in Classical Athens (Baltimore and London, 1990).

It was these changes in women’s lives, I suggest, which gave rise to dreams of
sleeping with the mother. Similarly, we cannot fail to note that Freud’s observa-
tions took place after drastic changes in most women’s lives, since in the course
of the nineteenth century the social contacts open to women once again became
restricted in the upper classes. It seems likely that this development, coupled
with the rise of the nuclear family as we know it today, generated the social en-
vironment which produced the feelings observed by Freud.53 Even the Oedipus
complex has a history.54
53 L. Stone , The Past and the Present (London and New York, 1987) 353–54: ‘Classical
Freudianism, with its stress on penis envy, early incestuous experiences (real or imagined),
and the Oedipus complex, looks increasingly like the product of a Victorian, central Europe-
an, middle-class, male chauvinist society. Some of its major hypotheses may well not apply to
other times and other places’.
54 For information, comments and correction of my English, I am grateful to Richard
Buxton, Claude Calame, Albert Henrichs (1942–2017), Theo Korteweg (1949–2019), André
Lardinois, Alastair MacDonald and Robert Parker. Generously and timely, Jean-Marc Moret
presented me with his splendid Oedipe.

Section II
Rituals

Chapter 11
Initiation and Greek Pederasty
In 1978, Kenneth Dover published his trail-blazing Greek Homosexuality.1 The

title clearly derives from an older, if still very recent period of time, in which the
term ‘gay’ was not yet universally accepted, and homosexuality was hardly dif-
ferentiated from pederasty.2 In Classical Greece, however, romantic couples of
two adult men were not to be found so easily. Previous generations of scholars
overlooked this feature of Greek culture and preferred to explain homosexual
practices as a consequence of the militaristic way of Greek life, drawing paral-
lels with cases of homosexual activities amongst soldiers during the Second
World War.3 But although it is true that homosexual practices are well attested
among Greek soldiers and that elite Greek women often were tightly guarded,
there were plenty of women, both slave and free, available to serve the Greek
males’ sexual needs.4 Moreover, the ‘militaristic’ solution also failed to explain
why, as a rule, the participants in the sexual relationship were not two adult
men. In hindsight, the great merit of Dover’s book is his attention to the vase
paintings, which had never been exploited to that extent before him.
Around the same time, albeit slightly later, there appeared a series of studies
that connected pederasty with initiation,5 a connection rejected by Dover in
1 K. J. Dover, Greek Homosexuality (London and New York, 1978, 19892); much material
also in F. Buffière, Eros adolescent. La Pédérastie dans la Grèce antique (Paris, 1980) and
K. Hoheisel, ‘Homosexualität’, in RAC 16 (1994) 289–364. For Dover, see D. A. Russell and
F. S. Halliwell, ‘Kenneth James Dover 1920–2010’, in Biographical Memoirs of Fellows of the
British Academy XI (2012) 153–75.
2 I use ‘homosexuality’ specifically in regards to sexual activities and relations between
two adult males, whilst I use ‘pederasty’ to describe the cultural system that stresses the edu-
cational benefits of a short-term romantic relationship between a (somewhat) older male with
a youth in an initiatory frame where each partner maintains a (more or less) strict differentia-
tion in status.
3 For example, W. den Boer, Laconian Studies (Amsterdam, 1954) 245; H.-I. Marrou, His
toire de l’éducation dans l’antiquité (Paris, 19656) 63. The argument was already rejected in
the too little known study by W. Kroll, Freundschaft und Knabenliebe (Munich, 1924).
4 Prostitution: H. Herter, ‘Die Soziologie der antiken Prostitution im Lichte des heidnis-
chen und christlichen Schrifttums’, JAC 3 (1960) 70–111; K. Kapparis, Prostitution in the An
cient Greek World (Berlin and Boston, 2018). War: D. Ogden, ‘Homosexuality and Warfare in
Classical Greece’, in A. B. Lloyd (ed.), Battle in Antiquity (London, 1996) 107–68; D. Leitao,
‘Sexuality in Greek and Roman Military Contexts’, in Th.K. Hubbard (ed.), A Companion to
Greek and Roman Sexualities (Oxford and Malden, 2014) 230–43.
5 J. N. Bremmer ‘An Enigmatic Indo-European Rite: pederasty’, Arethusa 13 (1980) 279–

178 Section II: Rituals
later books. 6 However, scholarly interests regularly shift, and recent studies of
Greek homosexual and pederastic practices have focused upon the vase paint-
ings without making use of the concept of initiation.7 That is why I want to re-
turn to the subject, the more so as several chapters of this book touch upon the
subject.8 Obviously, it is impossible to do justice to all aspects of ancient peder-
asty, and I will firmly focus here on its place in ancient initiatory rituals and
limit my analysis to recent studies. Naturally, I have also learned from the dis-
cussions of the last four decades and have changed my mind in several respects,
such as abandoning the explanation for its practising from an Indo-European
Urzeit, but the connection of pederasty with initiation still seems plausible, as
this chapter hopes to show.
Thus I will first look at the ethnographical evidence and Dorian practices
(§ 1), then offer a preliminary explanation of our findings (§ 2), proceed with the
Athenian situation (§ 3), and end with a few concluding observations (§ 4).
1. Pederastic Papuans, Dorians, Taifali and Albanians
Short pederastic affairs between adults and boys occurred among native tribes
in New Guinea, Australia, and Melanesia. Examining evidence from these areas
may enhance understanding of the Greek practices – even if the approach is
somewhat unusual. We will start with New Guinea. Between 1926 and 1932, the
English social anthropologist F. E. Williams visited the Australian Papuans of
the Trans-Fly a number of times.9 This is his account of homosexual practices
during the Papuan rites of initiation:
98; H. Patzer, Die griechische Knabenliebe (Wiesbaden, 1982); B. Sergent, L’Homosexualité

initiatique dans l’Europe ancienne (Paris, 1986).
6 K. J. Dover, The Greeks and their Legacy (Oxford, 1988) 115–34; Greek Homosexuality 2 ,
204–06 and Marginal Comment (London, 19952) 116.

7 M. F. Kilmer, ‘Painters and Pederasts: ancient art, sexuality, and social history’, in
M. Golden and P. Toohey (eds), Inventing Ancient Culture (London and New York, 1997) 36–
50; A. Lear and E. Cantarella, Images of Ancient Greek Pederasty: boys were their gods (Lon-
don and New York, 2008); H. Parker, ‘Vaseworld: depiction and description of sex at Athens’,
in R. Blondell and K. Ormand (eds), Ancient Sex: new essays (Columbus, OH, 2015) 23–142;
R. Osborne, The Transformation of Athens (Princeton and Oxford, 2018) 122–50 and ‘Imag-
inary Intercourse: an illustrated history of Greek pederasty’, in D. Allen et al. (eds), How To
Do Things with History: new approaches to Ancient Greece (Oxford, 2018) 313–38. For good
historical surveys, see N. Fisher, Aeschines, Against Timarchos (Oxford, 2001) 25–36; A. Lear,
‘Ancient Pederasty: an introduction’, in Hubbard, Companion to Greek and Roman Sexuali
ties, 102–27. For a good historiographical survey of the previous studies, see M. Lambert and
H. Szesnat, ‘Greek “Homosexuality”: wither the debate?’, Akroterion 39 (1994) 46–63.
8 This volume, Chapters 3.3, 5.3 and 12.3.
9 On Williams (1893–1943), see A. P. Elkin, ‘F. E. Williams – Government Anthropologist’,
Oceania 14 (1943) 91–103; E. Schwimmer, ‘F. E. Williams as Ancestor and Rainmaker’, in F. E.

Williams, ‘The Vailala Madness’ and Other Essays (London, 1976) 11–47.

Chapter 11: Initiation and Greek Pederasty 179
It was frequently maintained that setivira, or bachelors, remained truly celibate until
they entered upon sexual relations with their own wives. Without giving too much cre-
dence to this statement, we may note that the hospitable exchange above noted was nom-
inally restricted to married adults. Some informants maintained that setivira could se-
cure the favours of married women at feast times, but it seems evident that this was not
definitely sanctioned.
The bachelors had recourse to sodomy, a practice which was not reprobated but was
actually a custom of the country – and a custom in the true sense, i. e., fully sanctioned
by male society and universally practised.10 For a long time the existence of sodomy was
successfully concealed from me, but latterly, once I had won the confidence of a few in-
formants in the matter, it was admitted on every hand. It is actually regarded as essential
to the growing boy to be sodomized. More than one informant being asked if he had ever
been subjected to unnatural practice, answered, ‘Why, yes! Otherwise how should I
have grown?’ The ceremonial initiation to sodomy and the mythological antecedents to
it will be spoken of elsewhere (pp. 194, 308). In the meantime it is enough to note that
every male adult in the Morehead district has in his time constantly played both parts in
this perversion. The boy is initiated to it at the bull-roarer ceremony and not earlier, for
he could not then be trusted to keep the secret from his mother. When he becomes ado-
lescent his part is reversed and he may then sodomize his juniors, the new initiates to the
bull-roarer. I am told that some boys are more attractive and consequently receive more
attention of this kind than do others; but all must pass through it, since it is regarded as
essential to their bodily growth. There is indeed no question as to the universality of the
practice.
It is commonly asserted that the early practice of sodomy does nothing to inhibit
man’s natural desires when later on he marries; and it is a fact that while older men are
not debarred from indulging, and actually do so at the bull-roarer ceremony, sodomy is
virtually restricted as a habit to the setivira.11
This description is confirmed by more recent anthropological studies,12 even

though these pederastic practices seem to be rapidly disappearing in recent dec-
ades.13 Despite the differences with Greek practices,14 the following points
should be noted as important features: (1) we have here a case of pederasty,
which should not be confused with modern homosexuality, as both initiators
and novices normally marry afterwards; (2) the active pederasts are the novices
of the previous initiation, and it may be of importance to note that it is these
novices who usually play a prominent role in upholding discipline during the
10 Note also F. E. Williams, Papuans of the Trans-Fly (Oxford, 19692) 309 on the mytholog-
ical first occasion: ‘Gambadi informants describe the initial occasion more vividly. The father
bids his son stoop to drink and as he does so catches him at a disadvantage’.
11 Williams, Papuans of the Trans-Fly, 158 f.
12 See especially the many studies of G. Herdt: (ed.), Rituals of Manhood. Male Initiation
in Papua New Guinea (Berkeley, Los Angeles, London, 1982); (ed.), Ritualized Homosexual
ity in Melanesia (Berkeley, Los Angeles, London, 1984); Guardians of the Flutes: idioms of
masculinity (New York, 19942); D. Kulick, ‘Homosexual Behavior, Culture and Gender in
Papua New Guinea’, Ethnos 50 (1985) 15–39.
13 B. M. Knauft, ‘What Ever Happened to Ritualized Homosexuality? Modern Sexual
Subjects in Melanesia and Elsewhere’, Annual Review of Sex Research 14 (2003) 137–59.
14 J. Davidson, The Greeks & Greek Love (London, 2007) 503–08.

initiation; finally, (3) copulation, in which the novice is always the passive part-
ner, takes place anally.
Among the Greeks, pederastic practices also occurred during rites of initia-
tion. We will therefore employ the description of the Papuan ceremony as a
means of ‘opening our eyes’ for an analysis of the Greek rites. The most detailed
description of a pederastic affair occurs in a report of a Cretan initiation ritual
by the fourth-century historian Ephoros:
They [i. e., the Cretans] have a peculiar custom regarding love affairs, for they win the
objects of their love, not by persuasion, but by capture; the lover tells the friends of the
boy three or more days beforehand that he is going to make the capture; but for the
friends to conceal the boy, or not to let him go forth by the appointed road, is indeed a
most disgraceful thing, a confession, as it were, that the boy is unworthy of having such a
lover. They accompany him, and, if the abductor is the boy’s equal or superior in rank and
other respects, they pursue him and lay hold of him, though only in a very gentle way,
thus satisfying the custom (to nomimon); afterwards they cheerfully turn the boy over to
him and allow him to lead him away. If, however, the abductor is unworthy, they take the
boy away from him. And the pursuit does not end until the boy is taken to the men’s
house (andreion) of his abductor. They regard as a worthy object of love not the boy who
is exceptionally handsome, but the boy who is exceptionally manly and decorous.
After having greeted and also having given presents to the boy, the abductor takes him
away to any place in the country he wishes; and those who are present at the capture
follow behind them, and after feasting and hunting with them for two months (for it is
not permitted to detain the boy for a longer time), they return to the city. The boy is re-
leased after receiving as presents a military habit, an ox, and a drinking cup (these are the
gifts required by law, nomon), and other things so numerous and costly that the friends,
on account of the number of expenses, make contributions thereto. Now the boy sacri-
fices the ox to Zeus and gives a feast for those who returned with him. Then he makes
known the facts about his intimacy with his lover, whether, perchance, it has pleased him
or not, the law (nomou) allowing him this privilege in order that, if any force was applied
to him at the time of his capture, he might be able at this feast to avenge himself and be
rid of the lover.
It is extremely disgraceful for those who are handsome in appearance and have illus-
trious ancestors to fail to obtain lovers, the presumption being that their character is
responsible for such a fate. But parastathentes (for thus they call those who have been
abducted) receive honours; for in both the dances and the races they have the positions
of the highest honour,15 and are allowed to dress different from the rest, that is, in the
habit given them by their lovers; and not only then, but even after they have grown to
manhood, they wear a distinctive dress, which is intended to make know the fact that
each wearer has become kleinos, ‘famous’, for they call the loved one kleinos and the
lover philêtôr.16 These are their customs (nomima) regarding love affairs.17
15 The combination of ‘chorus’ and ‘race’ also occurs in IC III 1 B 68–72 (χορὸς δὲ καὶ
δρόμος), an inscription from Itanos of the early third century BC.

16 For philêtôr, see Harder on Call. F 23.4. For kleinos, note also Hsch. κ 2902: κλεινοί· οἱ
εἰς τὰ παιδικὰ ἐπὶ κάλλει ἁρπαζόμενοι παῖδες.

17 Ephoros FGrH 70 F149 apud Strabo 10.4.21 (ed. Radt, tr. Jones, Loeb, slightly modified:
summarised by Athen. 11.782c). For detailed discussions of this Cretan ritual, see Bremmer,

Ephoros does not tell us to which city we should assign this ritual, and it looks
more like a common denominator of Cretan rituals than belonging to one par-
ticular city. Still, it seems representative of the average coming-of-age Cretan
ritual, as far as we can see. Before we look at pederasty in particular, let us first
note a few details characteristically found in initiatory rituals. A short stay in
the ‘bush’ and hunting are typical of initiation among most tribal societies; in-
deed, these practices can be recognised even in modern fairy-tales that include
an initiatory scenario, such as Grimm’s ‘The twelve brothers’ (KHM 9). The gift
of a suit of armour signified adulthood, as only adults fought in full armour. In
the city of Thebes, a boy also received armour from his male lover when he was
registered as an adult, and several Athenian vases show adult males offering
their beloved a helmet or some other piece of armour.18 But what about the
drinking cup?
The drinking of wine played an important part in the existence of Greek
men – witness the central place of the symposium in Greek society. This impor-
tance is reflected even in the way in which Greeks looked at neighbouring peo-
ples: whereas the Greeks themselves drank mixed wine, they ascribed the
drinking of unmixed wine, milk, or water to others. In fact, wine was so impor-
tant to the adult male Greeks that some cities forbade wine to women and boys
altogether.19 In order to demonstrate this difference, boys were often employed
at the symposium as wine-pourers (Chapter 12). By letting them pour the wine
but not drink it, the adult males stressed the adolescents’ inferior position. The
mythical counterpart of these boys is Ganymede, son of a Trojan king, who was
kidnapped by Zeus to become his wine-pourer and, according to later versions
of the myth, his beloved.20 The possession of a drinking cup, then, was a sign of
adulthood.
It is also important to note that the Cretan community sanctioned the peder-
astic ritual. The pursuit of the boy ended in the andreion, the men’s house,
which, as with many tribal societies, was the centre of political activity.21 The
various references in the report to customs and laws also show that the Cretan
‘An Enigmatic Indo-European Rite’, 283–87; Patzer, Die griechische Knabenliebe, 71–87 Ser-
gent, L‘Homosexualité initiatique, 52–95; Davidson, The Greeks, 304–15; S. Link, Das grie
chische Kreta (Stuttgart, 1994) 126–31; G. Seelentag, Das archaische Kreta (Berlin and Boston,
2015) 459–95 (unpersuasive).
18 Thebes: Plut. Mor. 761b. Athens: G. Kock-Harnack, Knabenliebe und Tiergeschenke
(Berlin, 1983) 156; this volume, Chapter 7.4.

19 S. Roncati, ‘Donne e vino nell’antichità: una storia di divieti?’, RIDA III 65 (2018) 195–
210.
20 B. Sergent, L‘Homosexualité dans la mythologie grecque (Paris, 1984) 237–47, although
he insufficiently notes the often late intrusion of pederastic motives into existing myths;
H. Sichterman, ‘Ganymedes’ and ‘Catmite’, in LIMC IV.1 (1988) 154–69, 169–70, respectively.
21 Seelentag, Das archaische Kreta, 374–443; J. Whitley, ‘Citizenship and Commensality in
Archaic Crete: searching for the andreion’, in A. Duplouy and R. Brock (eds), Defining Citi
zenship in Archaic Greece (Oxford, 2018) 227–48.

community supervised the ritual. Evidently, pederastic kidnapping was a ‘must’

for every elite boy.22 What about the nature of pederastic copulation? Unfortu-
nately, we have no direct information, but it is clear that the lover had to take
account of the boy’s feelings. It may be noteworthy that a poem glorifying the
derrière of a boy, ‘which does not let even old men doze’, is written by the
third-century BC Cretan poet Rhianos (Anth. Pal. 12.38 = 1 Gow-Page).23 We
cannot be certain, but this seems to suggest anal copulation.
The antiquity of the ritual seems to be confirmed by the finds of ninety-five
bronze plaques of the Archaic and early Classical Age in the sanctuary of
Hermes Kedrites and Aphrodite at Kato Symi on the southern side of Mt
Dikte.24 These plaques often represent naked young men as hunters of wild
goats. One of these shows a bearded adult hunter face-to-face with a youth and
clutching his arm. Apparently, we have here another example of a pederastic
relationship in a coming-of-age ritual.25 These finds fit the fact that the technical
Spartan term for a group of adolescent boys, agela, is already found in an archa-
ic Cretan inscription. Evidently, as in Sparta, Crete also had an early system of
age sets.26
Ephoros does not inform us about the first stages of the relationship between
a pederastic lover and his beloved youth. Fortunately, we have a relatively early
anecdote in this respect, which was already known to Aristototle (Ethic. Eud.
3.1), but of which Strabo gives us more details: ‘From Leben came Leukokomas
and his lover Euxynthetos, whose story Theophrastus (F 560) tells in the work
On Love. Among the many tasks which Leukokomas set for Euxynthetus one,
as he says, was this: to bring back for him the dog that was in Praisos’ (Strabo
10.4.12, ed. Radt). The Augustan mythographer Conon calls the lover Proma-
chos, as does Plutarch, and he mentions that despite performing many hazard-
22 Cf. Servius on Verg. Aen. 10.325: de Cretensibus accipimus quod in amores puerorum
intemperantes fuerunt: quod postea in Laconas et in totam Graeciam translatum est, adeo ut
Cicero dicat in libris de Re Publica (4.2b) obprobrio fuisse adulescentibus si amatorem non
haberent.
23 P. Murgatroyd, ‘The Amatory Epigrams of Rhianos’, Échos du monde classique 33
(1989) 301–13; M. F. Kilmer, Greek Erotica (London, 1993) 81–82; M. Spanakis, ‘Ἔρως, οἷς σὺ
γένοιο βαρύς: desire for love, desire for beauty in Rhianus’ homoerotic epigrams. An unful-
filled pathos?’, in Z. Kalamara et al. (eds), Forms and Tropes of Desire in Ancient Greek and
Latin Scholarship (2019) 240–53 = https://mail.google.com/mail/u/0/#inbox/KtbxLxGnPWs
JPJZdhmJjpzsWLcGrKlrCbq?projector=1& messagePartId=0.1, accessed 31–10–2020.
24 For the sanctuary, see K. Sporn, Heiligtümer und Kulte Kretas in klassischer und hellen
istischer Zeit (Heidelberg, 2002) 85–89; M. Prent, Cretan Sanctuaries and Cults: continuity
and change from Late Minoan IIIC to the Archaic Period (Leiden, 2005) 572–91.
25 See the illustrations in N. Marinatos, ‘Striding across Boundaries: Hermes and Aphro-
dite as gods of initiation’, in D. Dodd and Ch. Faraone (eds), Initiation in Ancient Greek
Rituals and Narratives (London and New York, 2003) 130–51; R. Parker, On Greek Religion
(Ithaca and London, 2011) 234–35; see this volume, Preface.
26 M. Bile, ‘L’initiation dans les inscriptions crétoises’, in A. Moreau (ed.), L’initiation,
2 vols (Montpellier, 1992) 1.11–17.

ous tasks he was rejected by the adolescent. When Promachos, on the rebound,
courted another youth, Leukokomas committed suicide. The story must have
been well known and widespread, given that the sources differ in the name of
the lover and their exact Cretan place of origin. Still, as Albert Henrichs noted,
the names of the two males ‘are significant of their respective status: adulthood
versus adolescence’;27 indeed, the name Promachos, which is not found other-
wise on Crete, suggests a fighter in the front ranks, whereas Leukokomas sug-
gests the long hair blond hair of the adolescent, just as Apollo could appear as
the prototypical ephebe with long hair.28 The story also shows clearly that the
lover had to woo the adolescent, and in this respect it seems that the Cretan
situation was not that different from Athens (below).
Last but not least, there is also another aspect to these rituals, which we have
encountered before, but which has not been taken into account so far. When we
think of the lover and beloved withdrawing into the Cretan bush for two
months, one is reminded of other comparable couples that were staying outside
their home town, such as Orestes and Pylades or Theseus and Peirithoos. Ob-
viously, the political situation was completely different in Classsical Crete com-
pared to the Archaic Age, if not earlier, in which we have to situate the myth of
Theseus and Peirithoos (Chapter 6). In the case of Crete with its many cities,
there were no longer extensive areas through which one could wander freely.
But in both cases we see an initiator and initiand withdrawing from the civilised
world for a period of time. From Ephoros, we get a glimpse of friends accompa-
nying the couple, but myth can focus on the protagonists alone and leave out
possible companions.29
Let us now turn to Sparta, of which the pederastic practices must have been
familiar enough to Xenophon to say in his Laconian Institutions: ‘I think I
ought to say something also about intimacy with boys, since this matter also has
a bearing on education’ (paideian: 2.12, tr. Marchant, Loeb). The institutional-
ised role of pederasty appears from the fact that the highest Spartan authorities,
the ephors, fined those who, although qualifying, had not chosen a boy to be
27 Conon FGrH 26 F16; Plut. Mor. 766d; A. Henrichs, ‘Three Approaches to Greek My-
thography’, in J. N. Bremmer (ed.), Interpretations of Greek Mythology (London, 19882) 242–

77 at 247, who overlooked its occurrence in P.Oxy. 15.1800 fr. 8 II.34–35, re-edited by M. de
Kreij and C. Meccariello as FGrH/BNJ 1139; A. Chaniotis, ‘Memories of Early Crete’, in
W.-D. Niemeier et al. (eds), Kreta in der geometrischen und archaischen Zeit (Berlin, 2013)
1–18 at 5 f.
28 Il. 20.39; Hom H. Apollo 134; Hes. F 60.3, 171.8; Pind. P. 3.14, I. 1.7, etc., cf. F. Graf,
Apollo (Abingdon and New York, 2009) 104–05; in general, D. Leitao, ‘Adolescent Hair-grow-
ing and Hair-cutting Rituals in Ancient Greece: a sociological approach’, in Dodds and
Faraone, Initiation, 109–29; Bernsdorff on Anacreon PMG 347. It is striking, though, that
white hair usually is a sign of old age, cf. Bernsdorff on Anacreaon PMG 395.1–2. Is there
perhaps a connection with the white hair of Kyknos (Chapter 9)?
29 See the illuminating observations of R. Buxton, Imaginary Greece (Cambridge, 1994)
87–88, on the ways Greek myth selects, refracts and exaggerates.

their beloved (Aelian, VH 3.10, 12). Xenophon, who had lived for a while in
fourth-century Sparta, stated that the homosexual relationships in Sparta re-
mained platonic but honestly added that he did not expect people to believe him
(2.13).30 His suggestion, is indeed hardly convincing, as explicit pederastic graf-
fiti already occur in the early Spartan colony Thera, the present Santorini.31 It is
therefore difficult to believe that practising pederasts were absent in the mother
city, Sparta.
At this point, we need not survey again the evidence for Spartan pederasty.
This has been done several times, and all the evidence has recently been satis
factorily collected and presented by scholars, such as Claude Calame, Paul
Cartledge and Stefan Link. Calame, especially, has stressed that our texts men-
tion that pederasty was integrated into the Spartan educational system, the
agôgê, as it was the case in Crete.32
The Athenians were so fully convinced of pederastic practices in Sparta that
a comedian even coined the word kusolakôn, ‘anus-Spartan’, a term that leaves
little to the imagination.33 From a methodological point, it is of course dubious
to accept without reflection the Athenian allegations, for the comedians were
more concerned with good jokes than with faithfully reporting other peoples’
customs. Nevertheless, the expression is valuable in a different way, as it seems
to be characteristic of peoples who themselves practise pederasty to impute the
act to others. Thus the Athenians called pederasty ‘doing it the Spartan way’, or
‘doing it the Chalcidian way’ as the inhabitants of Chalcis also had the (de-
served) reputation of being pederasts.34 In the Middle Ages, the practice was
ascribed to Arabian influence, the early modern French considered the Italians
to be the bougres par excellence, and modern Albanians vilified the gypsies as
30 For Xenophon’s moderate views on homosexuality, see C. Hindley: ‘EROS and Mili-
tary Command in Xenophon’, CQ 44 (1994) 347–66 and ‘Xenophon on Male Love’, CQ 49

(1999) 74–99.
31 Santorini: IG XII 3, 536–601, 1410–93; for similar graffiti in Thasos and Nemea see SEG
31.763–72, 32.847, cf. Y. Garlan and O. Masson, ‘Les acclamations pédérastiques de Kalami’,
BCH 106 (1982) 3–22; U. Huttner, ‘Griechische Graffiticluster’, in U. Ehmig (ed.), Vergesell
schaftete Schriften (Wiesbaden, 2019) 47–68 at 52–54.
32 Most recently, P. Cartledge, ‘The Politics of Spartan Pederasty’, PCPS 1981, 17–36, re-
printed with addenda in his Spartan Reflections (Berkeley, 2001) 91–105; S. Link, ‘Education
and Pederasty in Spartan and Cretan Society’, in S. Hodkinson (ed.), Sparta. Comparative
Approaches (Swansea, 2009) 89–111, who, unconvincingly, denies the institutionalised role of
Spartan pederasty; C. Calame, Les Choeurs de jeunes filles en Grèce ancienne (Paris, 20193)
416–24, with most recent bibliography.
33 Dover, Greek Homosexuality, 187; see also Kassel and Austin on Aristophanes F 358;
Eupolis F 385 and Adesp. 511.

34 Aristophon F 3 with Kassel and Austin ad loc.; Hsch. χ 85 with Hansen and Cunning-
ham ad loc.; Suda χ 42; Karystius apud Athen. 13.603b; Plut. Mor. 761; the Chalcidians even
claimed that the rape of Ganymede had taken place in their territory at a place called Harpa-
gion (‘kidnapping’: Athen. 13.60If), and, indeed, there has been found a statue of Ganymede
in their area: P. G. Themelis, Athenian Annals Arch. 2 (1969) 163–65.

pederasts (below).35 These imputations seem to point to a culture’s subconscious

discontent with its own pederastic practices, evident by ascribing the origin of
the custom to other, often marginalised peoples.
The Greeks were not the only ones who practised pederasty during initiation.
The historian Ammianus Marcellinus (31.9.5) relates that among the Taifali, a
tribe connected with the Goths, the boys lived in a state of pederasty until they
had killed a boar or a bear. The killing of a boar was a typical heroic ordeal, and
also had initiatory value in Macedonia, where a man could recline at dinner, i. e.
have the status of an adult, only when he had speared a boar without a hunt-
ing-net.36 As the pederastic relationship continued only till the boy reached
adulthood, this case is similar to the Greek customs, although the method of
copulation remains obscure.
Pederastic relations were reported even in nineteenth-century Albania, at
that time and long afterwards one of Europe’s most isolated areas. Unfortunate-
ly, we are not told whether the practice had supposed educational goals, but the
relationship was sanctioned by society: the young lovers (16 and 12 years old,
respectively) together took the Eucharist, if Christian, but the custom also oc-
curred among Muslims. The nature of copulation in this case can be pinpointed,
perhaps, with the help of a list of dirty Albanian words, published in 1911 in
Anthropophyteia, a scholarly journal specialising in scatology. From this list I
take the following: ‘büthar = pederast [literally: ‘Arschman’]’; the word speaks
for itself. Yet not all Albanians were charmed with their pederastic practices, as
one might judge from the fact that the same list contains the words madzüp
(‘gypsy’), madzüpi (‘pederasty’), and madzüpoj (‘to practise pederasty’). Where-
as the Albanians themselves were practising pederasts, they denounced the gyp-
sies, a regularly stigmatised group. This ambivalent attitude is also apparent in
the 1854 report of the Austrian diplomat Johann Georg von Hahn (1811–1869),
the oldest source for Albanian pederasty. His informant, a young Albanian,
assured him that the relationships were purely platonic – a fact denied by better-
informed sources.37
Among certain Greeks, Germans and Albanians, then, pederastic acts were a
fixed feature of a boy’s road to adulthood. Until now, however, our informants
35 Middle Ages: J. Boswell, Christianity, Social Tolerance, and Homosexuality (Chicago
and London, 1980) 52. Boswell’s erudite book is too often inclined to explain away passages
that are unfavourable to homosexuality, cf. D. F. Wright, ‘Homosexuals or Prostitutes?’,
VigChris 38 (1984) 125–53; R. MacMullen, Changes in the Roman Empire (Princeton and
Oxford, 1990) 177–89. French: N. Z. Davis, Fiction in the Archives (Stanford, 1987) 201 note 57.
36 See this volume, Chapters 1.4, 4.2 and 12.2.
37 J. G. von Hahn, Albanesische Studien (Jena, 1854) 166–8; H. Gelzer, Vom Heiligen Berge
und aus Makedonien (Leipzig, 1904) 222–23; E. Bethe, ‘Die dorische Knabenliebe’, RhM NF 42
(1907) 438–75 at 475; P. Nacke, ‘Ober Homosexualität in Albanien’, Jahrb. f. sexuelle Zwi
schenstufen 9 (1908) 327–37 = ‘On Homosexuality in Albania’, Intern. J. of Greek Love 1 (1965)
39–47; ‘Erotisch-skatologisches Glossar der Albanesen’, Anthropophyteia 8 (1911) 35–39.

have reported about the ‘outside’ of the rituals. It usually remained completely
obscure what the participants themselves thought about the practices. Did they
like it or loathe it? Or did it leave them indifferent? The coercion that Spartan
authorities sometimes had to apply to force elite youths to participate in peder-
astic rituals suggests that not everyone liked what he had to do. That is all we
can say about Sparta, but we are somewhat better informed about Athens, the
cultural centre of the classical Greek world. However, before we turn to Athens,
we will first draw a preliminary conclusion of our discussion up to this point.
2. A preliminary explanation
It seems clear that among various peoples – Papuans, but also Greeks and Ger-
manic tribes – boys had to pass through a pederastic stage in order to become
fully accepted adults. The reason for this sexual inversion remains insufficiently
analysed, and the ancient participants themselves have not handed down any
explanation for the practice. The Spartans called the male lover eispnêlas,
‘in-blower’, but the precise meaning of this term is not illuminated by our scarce
sources.38 In an epoch-making article at the beginning of last century, the Ger-
man classical scholar Erich Bethe (1863–1940) attempted to demonstrate that
the word indicated the practice of anal copulation, because the transfer of the
male force through sperm is stressed by the Aborigines and neighbouring peo-
ples. However, Bethe could not produce any parallels to prove his point; we
must look therefore in a different direction.39
Among the Greeks, and among many other peoples, taking the passive posi-
tion in a homosexual relationship strongly suggested submission. This has been
fiercely denied by James Davidson, who has even contested the standard politi-
cal interpretation of the famous Eurymedon vase, on which a Greek, captioned
as saying ‘I am Eurymedon’, strides towards a Persian or Scythian, who is cap-
tioned ‘I stand bent over’, with his (half)-erect penis.40 Yet all recent interpreta-
tions agree that the vase clearly represents a humiliation of the Oriental, and
there are enough texts to show that many Greeks saw anal rape as a means of
asserting power or displaying dominance.41 Can this depreciation perhaps be
the key to a better understanding of pederasty in initiation rituals?
38 Harder on Call. F 68.1; K. J. Dover, ‘Homosexualität in Griechenland und die “Inspira-
tion”’, in H. P. Duerr (ed.), Die Wilde Seele. Zur Ethnopsychoanalyse von Georges Devereux
(Frankfurt, 1987) 47–63 and The Greeks and their Legacy, 123 f.
39 Bethe, ‘Die dorische Knabenliebe’, 60–64.
40 J. Davidson, Courtesans and Fishcakes (London, 1997) 170–71 and ‘Dover, Foucault and
Greek Homosexuality: penetration and the truth of sex’, Past & Present 170 (2001) 3–51 at 48
note 75.
41 Fisher, Aeschines, Against Timarchos, 47; K. W. Arafat, ‘State of the Art or Art of the State:

Ethologists have indeed noted that many mammals practise a peculiar mode
of Rangdemonstration: the males mount their fellows in order to show them
their superiority. Modern society usually connects rape with the man-woman
relationship, but among many peoples homosexual subjection serves to demon-
strate a superior position; in Western society, this phenomenon usually is re-
stricted to subcultures such as prisons, students’ associations and sports clubs.
In the Greek world, too, the passive anal role in a homosexual relationship was,
as a rule, considered to be unacceptable for an adult.42
Now, demonstration of status and rank is exactly what we would expect to
find in rites of initiation. These rites must socialise the adolescent and show him
his (low!) position in the world of the adults. As a historian of sexuality rightly
observes, ‘the confirmation of the older generation’s domination of the whole
existence of the novices provides the basis for total (re)socialization within the
relevant male community. This serves the cohesion of the male group’.43 It is not
improbable that precisely this aspect of Rangdemonstration constitutes the
background for the occurrence of pederasty in rites of initiation. Needless to
say that this differentiation in rank is only one aspect of this social phenome-
non, but it may well be the one that lies at the roots of ancient institutionalised
pederasty.
3. Between pederasty and homosexuality: Athens
Yet such an approach and explanation hardly helps to explain the situation in
Athens, the city with the most literary and iconographical sources about peder-
astic practices, as Athens did not have age groups like Crete and Sparta. Evi-
dently, its coming-of-age process was much less formalised than in the Dorian
communities until it instituted the ephebeia in the late fourth century BC.44 Yet
the myths surrounding Theseus and the transvestism of the Oschophoria festi-
val plausibly suggest the existence of earlier initiatory rituals, although not or-
ganised via the city as a whole, as in Crete and Sparta, but via a genos, like the
Salaminioi.45 Unlike Crete and Sparta, though, Athens has a rich amount of
visual material but, as I will come back to Athenian pederasty in the next chap-
ter, I will limit myself here to a few observations.
sexual violence and politics in late Archaic and early Classical vase-painting’, in S. Deacy and
K. F. Pierce (eds), Rape in Antiquity (London, 1997) 97–123 at 135–38.
42 See the full collection of material in D. Fehling, Ethologische Bemerkungen auf dem
Gebiet der Altertumskunde (Munich, 1974) 18–27; Dover, Greek Homosexuality, 100–09.
43 G. Hekma, ‘Man of geen man. Een historiografie van de homoseksualiteit’, Sociologisch
Tijdschrift 14 (1988) 620–44 at 624 f.

44 J. L. Friend, The Athenian Ephebeia in the Fourth Century BCE (Leiden, 2019).
45 As is persuasively argued by S. C. Humphreys, Kinship in Ancient Athens, 2 vols (Athens,
2018) 2.584–85; see also Fowler, EGM 2.471.

Given the wealth of sources, it is much easier to see a certain chronological

development in this area, to start with the second quarter of the sixth century
BC, when pederastic scenes became popular on Athenian black-figure vases.
On these vases, which circulated in the elite symposia, we see adult men offering
a boy a present with one hand and freely reaching for the boy’s penis with the
other – clearly suggesting a quid pro quo. The presents indicate the qualities that
were expected from the boys and include a cockerel: warlike behaviour, a hare:
hunting and running,46 and a lyre: musical qualities.47 As we already saw (§ 1),
adults also offered pieces of armour – surely a sign of the completion of the boy’s
education and a strong indication that Athenian pederasty too eventually de-
rived from the initiatory tradition.
The close connection between pederasty and the entrance into adulthood is
also attested by the fact that, at least ideologically, Athenian males quitted play-
ing the passive role in a homosexual relationship when their beards appeared.48
We know of only few exceptions to this rule in classical times. Greek comedy
often mocks the tragedian Agathon, who having become an adult still contin-
ued to play the role of boy in his relationship with Pausanias (who is mentioned
in Plato’s Symposium) by shaving off his beard. This is the best known rela
tionship in Classical Greece for closely resembling modern homosexuality, al-
though even these lovers apparently could not appear in public as ‘two consent-
ing adults’.49
Athenian black- and red-figure vases show that only adults were considered
to derive satisfaction from pederastic intercourse; the boy usually looks as if he
is solving some academic problem.50 The apparent one-sidedness of the affair
accords with its probable origin in initiation rites, which also aimed at teaching
the youngsters to respect their elders: shared pleasure would only confuse the
hierarchy of adults and novices; the dominance of anal copulation on black-
figure pottery may well support this suggestion.51 However, the difference in
status between adults and adolescents became less stressed over time, as the
red-figure vases never show explicit anal intercourse but often portray the lov-
ers in the intercrural position,52 although anal sex still is regularly presupposed
46See A. Schnapp, Le Chasseur et la cité (Paris, 1997) 247–57.
47For the musical education, see this volume, Chapter 7.2.
48 Dover, Greek Homosexuality, 65, 86–87, 144; E. Olshausen, ‘Eros mit dem Barbier
messer’, Arch. Anz. 94 (1979) 17–24; Buffière, Eros adolescent, 318–21; S. L. Taran, ‘Eisi triches:
an erotic motif in the Greek Anthology’, JHS 105 (1985) 90–107.
49 For this and other examples, see Hubbard, ‘Peer Homosexuality’, in id., Companion to
Greek and Roman Sexualities, 132–53.

50 Thus M. Golden, ‘Slavery and Homosexuality at Athens’, Phoenix 38 (1984) 308–24, who
at 314 note 26 lists some exceptions; see also Fisher, Aeschines, Against Timarchos, 33 note 106.
51 Cf. R. F. Sutton, ‘Lovemaking on Attic Black-figure Pottery: corpus with some conclu-
sions’, in S Schmidt and J. H. Oakley (eds), Hermeneutik der Bilder: Beiträge zur Ikonogra
phie und Interpretation griechischer Vasenmalerei (Munich, 2009) 77–91.
52 Intercrural copulation: the prominence of the thigh as a sexual stimulus suggests that

by the literary texts.53 On many pederastic representations, though, we find the

presence of an oil jar, and Kilmer has persuasively argued that it must have
served for lubrication in the homosexual act.54 Consequently, the gap between
literature and visual representations may have been less big than often is sug-
gested.
At the same time, it is well known that the more explicit sexual scenes began
to disappear from vase paintings in the decade after ca. 460 BC – one more sign
of the fact that Athenian aristocrats now started to develop a more refined style
of life, which expressed itself also in greater self-control.55 There may have been
another underlying feeling for this attitude as well. Greek communities were, in
general, so small that they considered it necessary for all members or their soci-
ety to take on the duty of procreation. Marriage was a ‘must’ and bachelors were
held in low esteem. In Sparta, bachelors had even to parade annually through
the market, where they were mocked and abused by the rest or the population.
And although Athens was a big city in Classical times, this common Greek at-
titude nonetheless may have played a role in the depreciation of over-enthusias-
tic lovers.56
There is one last feature of Athenian pederasty that I would like to mention.
Unlike other Greek cities, at least as far as we know, only Athens had issued a
number of laws stipulating the rules for correct pederastic behaviour, some of
these almost certainly going back to Solon. These rules show that the rise of the
number of enslaved made the upper-classes worried about their mingling with
the free at a relatively early period. Once again, this anxiety is best understand-
able when we accept that pederastic sex was predominantly a feature of society
that originally was part of the coming-of-age of the elite citizen.57
such copulations occurred perhaps more often than is suggested by Osborne, ‘Imaginary In-
tercourse’, cf. Dover, Greek Homosexuality, 70; add Bernsdorff on Anacreon PMG 407.2;
Kassel andAustin on Eubulus F 127; Strato, Anth. Pal. 12.208.
53 Dover, Greek Homosexuality, 140–47; note also that the names of well-known citizens
were regularly used by comedians to denote the behind, cf. Kassel-Austin on Aristophanes
F 242; Photius a 3224.
54 Kilmer, Greek Erotica, 88 f.
55 For this development, see Osborne, The Transformation of Athens.
56 On the obligation to marry, see F. Graf, Eleusis und die orphische Dichtung Athens in
vorhellenistischer Zeit (Berlin and New York, 1974) 114.

57 For these laws see J. M. Rainer, ‘Zum Problem der Atimie als Verlust der bürgerlichen
Rechte insbesondere bei männlichen homosexuellen Prostituierten’, RIDA III 33 (1986) 89–114;
D. M. MacDowell, ‘Athenian Laws about Homosexuality’, ibidem 47 (2001) 13–27; Fisher,
Aeschines, Against Timarchos, 36–53.

4. Conclusion
Pederasty already appears in poetry from ca. 600 BC on, in such geographically
different authors like Alcaeus, Anacreon, Solon and Theognis, just as early ped-
erastic scenes on vase paintings have turned up in widely different areas. Com-
bined with the Cretan evidence of Kato Symi (§ 2), it is certain that pederasty
was widespread in Greek culture in the early Archaic Age. About its ultimate
origin we cannot say anything, as we simply have no evidence from earlier peri-
ods. Yet, given its institutional character in Crete and Sparta and its educational
connotations in Athens, it is reasonable to conclude with Nick Fisher that ‘it
seems implausible to suppose that there was no connection at all between the
very marked privileging in the Archaic and Classical periods of the asymmetri-
cal and educational aspects of one form of homosexual relations above others,
and the hints of earlier initiatory practices’. With Fisher, we may also admit that
the evidence is not as solid as one would wish,58 but the widespread occurrence
of initiatory myths and rituals, as we see them in this book, still makes this
connection the most plausible explanation of ancient pederasty.59
58 Fisher, Aeschines, Against Timarchos, 30–31; similarly, C. Calame, The Poetics of Eros
(Princeton, 1999) 101–09; Osborne, ‘Imaginary Intercourse’, 319 (vases).

59 The first version greatly profited from critical and stylistic comments by Sarah John-
ston, Kenneth Dover, Albert Henrichs (1942–2017) and Sytze Wiersma (1942–2018). The final
version was improved by Suzanne Lye. I am grateful to them all.

Chapter 12
Adolescents, Symposion and Pederasty
In the second half of the nineteenth century, anthropologists and ancient histo-
rians developed a great interest in the family as the basic unit of society.1 In an-
thropology, this interest led to a series of theories focusing on the ‘lineage’ or
‘descent’ model of political organisations, while in ancient history Numa Denis
Fustel de Coulanges (1830–1889) catapulted the genos and gens into prominence
as the minimal unit of, respectively, Greek and Roman society.2 But already in
the last decade of the same century, Eduard Meyer (1855–1930) and Gaetano de
Sanctis (1870–1957) moved in a different direction. They not only rejected Fus-
tel’s Indo-European framework by treating the genos as a problem different
from the gens, but they also redirected attention from the genos to groups which,
in their opinion, cut across kinship relationships, such as the ethnos and the
tribes.3
Their approach coincided with a shift in anthropological research. In 1902,
Heinrich Schurtz published his Altersklassen und Männerbünde, demonstrat-
ing in detail the great importance of the men’s associations for ‘primitive’ socie-
ties. These groups of men, frequently divided according to age, often dominated
political life,4 regularly dined together in a so-called men’s house,5 and normal-
ly supervised the initiation of their tribe’s adolescents. Although Schurtz noted
the importance of his insights for the study of Sparta, he had overlooked the
1 The history of this interest has still to be written, but see S. Pembroke, ‘The Early Hu-
man Family: some views, 1770–1870’, in R. R. Bolgar (ed.), Classical Influences on Western
Thought, A.D. 1650–1870 (Cambridge, 1979) 275–91; Ch. Stocking, After Tylor (Madison,
1995) passim; E. Varto, ‘From Kinship to State: the family and the ancient city in nineteenth-
century ethnology’, in A.M. Kemezis (ed.), Urban Dreams and Realities in Antiquity: remains
and representations of the ancient city (Leiden, 2015) 500–23.
2 For the ‘lineage’ theory, see A. Kuper, ‘Lineage Theory: a critical retrospect’, Annual
Review of Anthropology 11 (1982) 71–95. For the genos, see most recently S. C. Humphreys,
Kinship in Ancient Athens, 2 vols (Oxford, 2018) 2.627–719. For Fustel, see A. Momigliano,
Essays in Ancient and Modern Historiography (Oxford, 1977) 325–43 and Settimo contributo
alla storia degli studi classici e del mondo antico (Rome, 1984) 171–86; S. C. Humphreys, ‘Fus-
tel de Coulanges and the Greek “genos”’, Sociologia del diritto 9 (1982) 35–44.
3 E. Meyer, Geschichte des Alterthums II (Berlin, 1893) 81–9, 310–14 and Geschichte des
Alterthums2 I.2 (Berlin, 1913) 861; G. De Sanctis, Atthis (Rome, 1898) 38–41, 53–61.
4 This important aspect of the Männerbünde was overlooked by Schurtz, cf. G. Bleibtreu-
Ehrenberg, Mannbarkeitsriten (Frankfurt, 1980) 43.

5 For the Greek appropriation of this institution, the leschê, see J. N. Bremmer, Greek Re
ligion and Culture, the Bible and the Ancient Near East (Leiden, 2008) 154–67.

contributions of Meyer and De Sanctis, and he himself was generally neglected

by classical scholars after the end of the First World War; the collapse of com-
parative mythology had discredited the use of Indo-European and ethnological
material. 6
It was only in France, where Émile Durkheim (1858–1917), who had been
much influenced by Fustel de Coulanges,7 had legitimated a sociological ap-
proach to ancient societies that the study of men’s associations and their activi-
ties in the Greek world continued to receive attention, albeit from scholars who
were situated at the periphery of the French classical world. Durkheim’s faithful
pupil Louis Gernet remained interested in initiation and the role of confréries in
Greece during the whole of his long and productive life, despite a highly critical
review of Schurtz’s book by his maître; his friend and contemporary Henri
Jeanmaire, a Hellenist at the fringe of the Durkheimian movement, shared his
interest. 8
In the 1960s, the study of the men’s associations and their activities took off
once again – a revival undoubtedly supported by the growing interest in a more
sociological approach to the ancient world. This renewed attention, however,
was almost exclusively centred on the initiatory activities of the associations;9
other aspects of the Männerbünde, such as the common meals and the political
activities, virtually went unnoticed. This state of affairs was changed by Oswyn
Murray, who in a brilliant and persuasive article argued that the symposion can
in fact be easily understood as a classic example of the type of activity engaged
in by the warrior men’s associations. This warrior group, according to Murray,
‘was transformed into a leisure group under the impact of the changed position
of the aristocracy, in a world where their military function had been taken over
by the hoplite army of the polis’. With one bold stroke, Murray thus restored the
ancient warrior clubs to a central position in classical Greek society, when up till
now the men’s clubs and their institutions were considered to be either exclu-
sively Doric curiosities or otherwise negligible survivals of institutions which
had long lost their importance.10
6For Schurtz and the collapse, see this volume, Preface, notes 6 and 15.
7Ch. Prendergast, ‘The Impact of Fustel de Coulanges’ La Cité Antique on Durkheim’s
Theories of Social Morphology and Social Solidarity’, Humboldt Journal of Social Relations
11 (1983/84) 53–73.
8 For Gernet, see this volume, Preface, note 23. Review of Schurtz: É. Durkheim, L’Année
sociologique 6 (1901–02) 317–23. Jeanmaire (this volume, Preface, note 12) reviewed for the
Année sociologique in the 1920s, and his work was appreciated by Marcel Mauss, cf. his
Oeuvres III (Paris, 1969) 15, 445; S. C. Humphreys, Anthropology and the Greeks (London,
1978) 284 note 19.
9 See, especially, A. Brelich, Paides e parthenoi (Rome, 1969); P. Vidal-Naquet, Le Chas
seur noir (Paris, 19832) 151–74, 177–207; this volume, Preface.

10 O. Murray, ‘The Greek Symposion in History’, in E. Gabba (ed.), Tria Corda (Como,
1983) 257–72, reprinted, together with his other studies on the symposion, in O. Murray, The
Symposion: drinking Greek style (Oxford, 2018).

Chapter 12: Adolescents, Symposion and Pederasty 193
Viewed from this perspective, the symposion proper is the successor of the
common meal of the archaic warrior clubs. We can still observe these meals as a
living institution in Doric Sparta and Crete; in addition Homer gives some in-
sight into the organisation of meals of warriors in action. Now literary and ar-
chaeological evidence testifies to the presence of boys, young but also of adoles-
cent age, at the symposion. The role and place of these boys has never been
analysed in detail. It will be the aim of this chapter to fill the lacuna by studying
their position in the light of the place of boys at the common meals in Homer
and the Doric communities. In many places in Archaic Greece, the hetaireiai
that organised the symposion were no longer active warrior clubs, nor did they
supervise extensive puberty rites. Yet if the hetaireia really was the successor to
the old warrior clubs, we may expect that in some way it was also concerned
with the education of the young. We shall look therefore not so much for a strict
ritual as for an attitude, a habitus, towards the young at the symposion that can
be best explained as having developed from older, stricter customs.
Common meals existed at a number of places in the ancient Greek world. Our
sources mention, besides Sparta and Crete, Doric Megara and Lipara, Aeolian
Boeotia, and Ionian Miletus; they even existed in Panhellenic Thurii.11 Unfor-
tunately, we only have detailed information about the common meals in Crete
and Sparta. In Crete, an island generally recognised as having preserved a num-
ber of archaic customs, young boys were present at the common meals in the
men’s house (andreion). The scantily clad young boys had to eat sitting on the
ground near their fathers, and they had to serve both themselves and the adult
men who were sitting on chairs. Each of the adult men had his own drinking
cup, but the boys had to drink together from one krater; only after their initia-
tion would they receive their own cup. At the end of the common meals, the
adult males discussed all kinds of issues, and they exhorted the younger amongst
them to be brave.12
Custom in Sparta was not dissimilar. Here, too, the boys were allowed, even
encouraged, to visit the public messes. There, the adults reclined, and each had
a boy as wine pourer next to him who filled up his cup as he emptied it. The
boys had to listen to the political deliberations and the reports of citizens’ hero-
ic exploits; they were even permitted to ask questions which had to be answered.
11 Megara: Theognis 309. Lipara: Diod. Sic. 5. 9. 4. Boeotia: Plato, Leg. 636b; Polyaenus
2.3.11; Et. Magnum s.v. λέσχη. Miletus: Hdt. 1. 146; Plato, Leg. 636b. Thurii: Plato, Leg. 636b.
12 Crete: Ephoros FGrH 70 F149; Pyrgion FGrH 467 F1; Dosiadas FGrH 458 F2. For the
Cretan hetaireia as Speisegemeinschaft, see F. Graf, ‘Apollon Delphinios’, MH 36 (1979) 2–22

at 10–12; G. Seelentag, Das archaische Kreta (Berlin and Boston, 2015) 374–443; J. Whitley,
‘Citizenship and Commensality in Archaic Crete: searching for the andreion’, in A. Duplouy
and R. Brock (eds), Defining Citizenship in Archaic Greece (Oxford, 2018) 227–48. The im-
portance of the common meals was noted first by Bachofen, cf. K. Meuli, in Johann Jakob
Bachofens gesammelte Werke III.2 (Basel, 1948) 1113.

In this way, according to Lycurgus, they would add to their education.13 There
was obviously no place for young boys in the Greek army before Troy, but at the
meals of the nobles with their hetairoi wine was poured by the kouroi, surely in
this case the youngest among the participants of the expedition, and in the
Odyssey Menelaos’ son acted as wine-pourer during his father’s meal.14 This
discussion suggests two questions. First, was the symposion, like the common
meal in Sparta and Crete, a place for instruction of boys and adolescents?
Second, was there a status differentiation between adults and adolescents at the
symposion? This last question will lead us to the problem of pederasty, and,
finally, to the disintegration of the Archaic symposion.15
1. Educational aspects
Regarding the educational aspects of the symposion, we will start with the ob-
servation that a number of fragments of Archaic poetry are addressed to boys.
For example, a fragment of the seventh-century poet Semonides of Amorgos is
concerned with the relationship between men and the gods, and it is directed to
a boy. Since many fragments of Semonides contain symposiac themes, it seems
plausible that this fragment was also performed at a symposion. In the same
century, Alcaeus exhorted a boy with the words: ‘Wine, beloved boy, and
truth…’. Here the fragment breaks off, but the symposiac context is clear. Fur-
thermore the collection of Archaic and early Classical poetry that has been
transmitted to us as the second book of Theognis contains a number of passages
regarding right behaviour. These, it is true, are restricted to the area of pederas-
tic love, but Theognis’ observations on political life in Megara are directed to
the boy Kyrnos in their totality.16 The examples we have are not great in num-
ber, but the inference seems reasonable that in Archaic Greece the symposion
was also the stage for didactic poetry addressed to boys.17
13 Critias B 33 (wine-pourers); Xen. Resp. Lac. 3.5, 5.5; Plut. Lyc. 12; P. von der Mühll,
Ausgewählte kleine Schriften (Basel, 1975) 255–60.

14 Il. 1.470, 9.175, 20.234. Od: 1.148 (with S. West ad loc.), 3.339, 15.141 (Menelaos’ son),
21.271; H. Jeanmaire, Couroi et Courètes (Lille, 1939) 30 f.

15 For recent studies of the symposium and discussion of the thesis of Murray, see S. Cor-
ner, ‘Symposium’, in J. Wilkins and R. Nadeau (eds), A Companion to Food in the Ancient
World (Chichester, 2015) 234–42; W. Filser, Die Elite Athens auf der attischen Luxuskeramik
(Berlin and Boston, 2017) 127–31; A. Duplouy, Construire la cité. Essai de sociologie histori
que sur les communautés de l’archaïsme grec (Paris, 2019) 264–66.
16 For these observations, see H. Patzer, Gesammelte Schriften (Wiesbaden, 1985) 388–417
(with good remarks on the relationship of Theognidean poetry to the symposion).

17 Semonides F 1; Alcaeus F 311; Theognis 1295, 1307, 1379; W. Rösler, Dichter und Gruppe
(Munich, 1980) 37 note 31 (on Semonides F I as belonging to the symposion), 244 (on the
‘Lehrhaften Charakter’ of the poetry addressed to boys at the symposion). We may perhaps
also compare the Chalcidian song on pederasty that is addressed to boys (paides): Plut. Mor.

Instruction at the symposion took place in a different manner as well. On a

red-figure kylix of about 490 BC, we see an adolescent boy playing the lyre at a
symposion; on another early red-figured pelike an adult man offers a lyre to an
adolescent.18 The vases do not inform us about the type of songs the boys were
supposed to perform, but texts from the fifth and fourth century can still give
us an idea of the sort of song that was expected.
In the Clouds, performed in 423, Strepsiades tells the chorus-leader: ‘When
we were feasting, as you know, first of all I asked him to take his lyre and sing a
song by Simonides, “How Sir Ram was shorn” [about the defeat of a famous
wrestler]; but he at once said that that was antiquated, playing the lyre and sing-
ing at a drinking-party, like a woman grinding hulled barley’. And a character
in Antiphanes (F 85), undoubtedley a boy, says: ‘Don’t string out any of those
old-fashioned songs, the “Telamon” or the “Paeion” or “Harmodios”’. Evident-
ly, at the Athenian symposion, boys had to glorify the heroic deeds of mythical
and historical heroes, examples they should look up to in their own life.19 Such
a use of poetry for educational purposes was widespread, both in Greece and
among other peoples. Persian novices rehearsed in their songs the deeds of the
bravest men, Roman boys sang Heldenlieder at the convivia, and Anglo-Saxon
boys probably had to learn Saxonica poemata during their education.20 In
Greece, Arcadian boys practised songs in which their national heroes were cel-
ebrated (Pol. 4.20.8), Cretan boys had to learn certain songs ‘prescribed by the
laws’ (Ephoros FGrH 70 F 149), and Pindar (P. 1.97) observes that boys will
glorify the deeds of great men at the symposion.
Athenian boys entered their ephebeia during the festival of the Apaturia
where they had to participate in a song contest. Critias, in Plato’s Timaeus, tells
that ‘many of us sang the poems of Solon, which at the time had not gone out of
fashion’. In fact, to be able to sing and accompany oneself on the lyre was the
mark of the accomplished Athenian gentleman, as an anecdote told by Ion of
Chios illustrates. The poet relates that when he was still a boy (about 465 BC),
he was taken to dinner by Cimon, who proved to be a skilful singer. He was
761b (= PMG 873), cf. G. Tedeschi, ‘La strofe per gli ἐρώμενοι calcidesi (carm. pop. 27/873 P.)’,
in R. Pretagostini (ed.), Tradizione e innovazione nella cultura greca da Omero all’età ellenis
tica, 2 vols (Rome, 1993) 1. 179–87.
18 Kylix: ARV2 175 (= G. Koch-Harnack, Knabenliebe und Tiergeschenke [Berlin, 1983] fig.
86). Pelike: CVA Copenhagen Nat. Mus. 3, pl. 132 (= Koch-Harnack, figs. 84–85); note also
ARV2 63.88, 1104.11.
19 For boys singing and playing the lyre, see Eupolis F 148; Ar. F 235, Nub. 1356 ff,
Eq. 1107, Pax 1265–1304; Eccl. 678; this volume, Chapter 7.2.

20 Persia: Strabo 13.3.18. Rome: Varro apud Nonius p. 107 Lindsay, cf. A. Momigliano,
Secondo contributo alla storia degli studi classici (Rome, 1960) 80 and Terzo contributo, 2 vols
(Rome, 1966) 2.548. Anglo-Saxon boys: Asser, Life of King Alfred, 22–23; Saint Guthlac re-
members the valida pristinorum heroum facta when he has become an adolescent, cf. Felix,
Life of Saint Guthlac, 16, ed. B. Colgrave: probably, he had learned of these heroic deeds
through songs.

clearly far superior to Themistocles, who, as Athenians present told Ion, used to
say that he did not know how to sing and play the lyre or kithara but how
to make a city great and rich.21 It is clear that the jeunesse dorée of Athens had
to sing educating songs at the symposion, although the practice was evidently
going out of fashion at the end of the fifth century.22
2. Status differentiation
Youths who still have to be educated hardly have the same status as adults. This
difference in rank was demonstrated to the boys by the way that they were seat-
ed at the banquet. In Homer, adults sat at the table, and this custom was retained
in isolated Crete; in Athens the custom maintained itself at the festival of the
Anthesteria. However, Cretan boys had to sit on the ground during the com-
mon meals (see above), and on the earliest Corinthian vases boys are also absent
from the couches.23 The shift towards reclining at meals opened up the possibil-
ity for boys of leaving their place on the ground, or perhaps standing, and as-
suming a sitting position. This possibility is indeed realised on a Cypriot cup
where we see a boy sitting, while on the same couch the adult reclines. We also
note that in Athens Xenophon let the boy Autolykos take a seat next to his re-
clining father. A similar arrangement can be seen on two representations of Per-
sians at banquet: the adult reclines but the boy is sitting. At the Roman convivia,
children had to sit at the couches’ arms.24 In Macedonia, adult males were only
21 Apaturia: Plato, Tim. 21b, cf. R. Parker, Polytheism and Society at Athens (Oxford, 2005)
458. Themistocles: Ion of Chios FGrH 392 F13; this volume, Chapter 7.2.
22 There is at least one more text which deserves mentioning. According to Aelian F 187
(=Stobaeus iii. 638 Hense), Solon heard his ἀδελφιδοῦς – perhaps his brother’s son but more
likely his sister’s son (this volume, Chapter 13) – reciting a song of Sappho at a symposion. The
testimony presupposes boys singing at a symposion, but we have no means to decide whether
the anecdote is historical or, if not, when it originated. Simonides (F 510) mentions a sister’s
son present at a Thessalian symposion.
23 Homer: Il. 9.199 ff., 24.126, 457 ff; Od. 1.130 ff, 3.32, 20.136, etc.; J.-M. Dentzer, Le motif
du banquet couché dans le Proche-Orient et le monde grec du VIIe au IVe siècle avant J.-C.
(Paris, 1982) 429 note 2. Crete: Pyrgion FGrH 467 F1; Heraclides Lembus F 15; Cic. Pro
Murena, 35; Varro apud Servius, Aen. 7. 176. Anthesteria: most recently, S. C. Humphreys,
The Strangeness of Gods (Oxford, 2004) 223–75; Parker, Polytheism and Society, 290–316;
M. Valdés Guía, ‘Antesterias y basileia en Atenas’, Mythos 9 (2015) 125–48; A. Heinemann,
Der Gott des Gelages (Berlin and Boston, 2016) 467–87. Corinth: B. Fehr, Orientalische und
griechische Gelage (Bonn, 1971) 31; Dentzer, Le motif du banquet, 85. Note also the sitting
Thracians (Xen. Anab. 7.3.21) , Illyrians (Theopompos FGrH 115 F39) and Archaic Latins, cf.
Varro apud Servius, Aen. 7.176; Isidorus 20.11.9; A. Rathje, ‘A Banquet Service from the Latin
City of Ficana’, Analecta Romana 12 (1983) 7–29 at 23 f. Dentzer, Le motif du banquet, 431
wrongly states that no one disapproved of the reclining position: Theopompos FGrH 115
F227; Plut. Lyc. 10. 1; Athen. 10.428b.
24 Cyprus: Studi Etruschi 31 (1963) 241–42, pl. 41. Athens: ABV 59.12; Xen. Symp. 1.5.8.
Persia: Dentzer, Le motif, pls. 348 f; P. Donceel-Voûte, ‘Un banquet funéraire perse en

allowed to recline at dinner once they had speared a boar without a hunting-net.
At the age of thirty-five, Cassander still had to sit at the table because he had
been unable to perform this feat. It shows that for the Macedonians the change
from sitting to reclining had an initiatory significance: only adults were allowed
to recline.25 We do not know how frequently this distinction between reclining
and sitting occurred. Vases do not seem to supply that many examples, but in his
Politics (7.15.9) Aristotle still prescribed that boys did not have the right to be
present at comedy ‘before they had reached the age at which they had the right
to recline at table in company and to get drunk’. Reclining and heavy drinking
were evidently signs of adulthood for Aristotle.26
The difference in status was also expressed in a different way. In Homer, as
we saw, the duty of wine-pouring was assigned to kouroi, and, in the commen-
taries, Eustathius and the scholia remark that wine-pouring was the common
duty of elite young men in Greece.27 The observation is confirmed by Archaic
and early Classical art where we can see beardless, sometimes nude, wine-pour-
ers at symposia all over Greece.28 In Archaic literature, Hipponax mentions a
boy wine-pourer who had broken a cup, and Anacreon twice starts a poem by
exhorting such a boy. I would also recognise a boy wine-pourer in the servant
who is addressed in the Archaic skolion preserved in the Aristotelian Athenaiôn
Politeia: `Pour some in for Kedon too, servant [diakone], and don’t forget it, if
it’s for brave men that you have to pour’.29 Sappho repeatedly mentioned the fact
that her brother Larichos poured wine in the prytaneion of Mytilene. Adoles-
cent wine-pourers are also documented for the festival of Poseidon in Ephesos
and for the Athenian cult association of the Dancers, among whom Euripides,
Paphlagonie’, in R. Donceel and R. Lebrun (eds), Archéologie et religions de l’Anatolie anci

enne (Louvain-la-Neuve, 1984) 101–18; Rome: Suet. Claud. 32.
25 Hegesandros apud Athen. 1.18a; Duris FGrH 76 F49 found it noteworthy that Alexan-
der once had his guests both seated and reclining. F. G. Welcker, Alte denkmaler II (Göttin-
gen, 1850) 241 note 8 , perceptively compared Paulus Diaconus, Hist. Long. 1. 23–24, on the
Longobard king Audoin, who refused his son Tischgenossenschaft until he had received his
weapons from a foreign king.
26 This discussion of the difference between sitting and reclining is dependent on Fehr,
Orientalische und griechische Gelage, 55, 193 note 126, but see the reservations of Dentzer, Le
motif, 106.
27 Schol. Il. 4.2, 20.234; Eustathius on Il. 4.3.
28 Fehr, Orientalische und griechische Gelage, 44 (Sparta), 49 (Chalcis); Dentzer Le motif,
89 (Sparta), 98 (Athens), 117 (naked wine-pourer in Athens), 128 (Chalcis), 252–53 (Tegea), 253
(Paros), 254 (Thasos).
29 Hipponax F 21 Degani = 13 West, cf. M. Golden, ‘Pais in Hipp. Fr. 13W’, QUCC 12 (1982)
73–77; Anacreon PMG 356. Skolion: Arist. Ath. Pol. 20 (= Adesp. PMG 906); for the close
connection of wine-pourer and diakonos, see J. Pouilloux, Recherches Thasiennes I (Paris,
1954) 408 f. Nisbet and Hubbard, on Hor. C. 1.38.1–8, interpret these Greek boys as young
slaves, as does K. Topper, The Imagery of the Athenian Symposium (Cambridge, 2012) 53–85,
but these served only at Roman symposia, cf. H. Blümner, Die römischen Privataltertümer
(Munich, 1911) 396.

when still a schoolboy, acted as wine-pourer. Apparently, the same attitude to-
wards boys that was displayed at the symposion also ruled at religious festivals,
as we can note at the festival for Dionysos in Phigaleia, a town on the border
between Arcadia and Messenia, where boys were present but had to sit on the
ground next to their fathers, totally naked. In later times, Alexander the Great,
Pyrrhos and the Ptolemies still used boys as wine-pourers.30
According to the Homeric scholia, slaves were called boys because boys per-
formed the duty of wine-pourers. The boys had indeed not only to pour out the
wine, but they also had the duty of rinsing and washing out the beakers. This
view of wine-pouring as a menial task is confirmed by the description of the
meal of the gods in the first book of the Iliad. It was the marginal, limping god
Hephaistos who had to serve his fellow gods, and who evoked their ‘inextin-
guishable laughter’ by his clumsy behaviour. The Greeks were not unique,
though, in letting youths wait upon elders. The Persians too had adolescents as
wine-pourers at their banquets. In Rome, children had to wait at table, and elite
boys poured wine at religious festivals, and among the Celts as well boys had to
serve at table. In Crete, young boys were not yet given their own drinking-cup
(see above); Aristotle only allowed heavy drinking to the adult men (see above);
and Plato (Leg. 666a) forbade drinking altogether to boys below the age of
eighteen. The fact that the boys had to serve the wine, but most likely were not
yet allowed to drink the same amount as the adult men, helped to stress the
difference in status between them and the adult males.31
What about girls? The question may seem surprising, but in Homer Hebe
pours nectar for the gods, and Eustathius (on Il. 4.3) adds that wine-pouring
was also a duty for young girls. Fehr notes girls in the work on the symposion
only once, but Anacreon mentions a female wine-pourer, and Periander, the
tyrant of Corinth, fell in love with his wife Melissa when he saw her pouring
wine to workmen. It seems that the passion for boys caused girls to be almost
completely replaced by male adolescents in the course of the Archaic Age.32
30 Sappho: F 203. Ephesos: Amerias apud Athen. 10. 425c. Euripides: Theophrastus F 576;
Hieronymus F 28 Wehrli. Phigaleia: Harmodius FGrH 319 F1. Alexander: Diod. Sic. 12.14.5.
Pyrrhos: Plut. Pyrrhus, 5; Valerius Antias F 21 Peter = 25 Cornell. Ptolemies: Al. Cameron,
Callimachus and His Critics (Princeton, 1995) 96. Note also the young wine-pourer of Nero
in Martyrium Pauli 1.
31 Schol. Il. 1. 470, 4.2; Eustathius 438.42. Menial tasks: Pollux 6. 95. Persia: the banquets
cited in note 23 above; Hdt. 3.34. Rome: Varro apud Nonius p. 229 Lindsay; Athen 10.415a.
Celts: Diod. Sic. 5.28.4.
32 Anacreon PMG 383, with Bernsdorff ad loc. Hebe: Il. 4.2–3; note also the nectar-pour-
ing Aphrodite (Sappo F 2, 96) and the wine-pouring Harmonia (Capito apud Athen. 10.425c).
Other girls: Theognis 1002, 1211 ff. (?); Pherecrates F 76; Fehr, Orientalische und griechische
Gelage, no. 409; Pythaenetus FGrH 299 F3 (Periander); the female wine-pourer of Ptolemy
Philadelphus (FGrH 161 F3; Pol. 14.11.2); E. L. Bowie, ‘Early Greek Elegy, Symposium and
Public Festival’, JHS 106 (1986) 13–35 at 21.

With Hebe and Hephaistos we have arrived at the world of Greek mythology,
where we find some other wine-pourers as well. The poet Nicander relates that
Heracles once accidently killed a certain Kyathos when he was acting as
wine-pourer for him. In his honour, Heracles consecrated a temenos in Pros-
chion `which to this day is called the ‘Wine-pourer’s’. The complex of Heraclean
myths and rituals is only slowly being understood, but one of the constitutive
factors of his cult was his association with the young men preparing for adult-
hood. It is attractive to view Heracles’ connection with a cult of the wine-pour-
er, a typical adolescent’s function as we saw, in this light.33
Both Alcaeus and Sappho represented Hermes as a wine-pourer. The choice
is not without interest. About Alcaeus we have no further information, but Sap-
pho represented Hermes as wine-pourer at a divine wedding. It is evident that
Hephaistos would be out of place at such a festive occasion. Moreover, Sappho
would hardly have wanted to equate her own brother, whose wine-pouring she
repeatedly mentions, with a limping smith. These considerations, however, do
not explain why Hermes was chosen and not Apollo, another possible candi-
date. The latter god, although the Greek kouros par excellence, is often connect-
ed with the last part of the initiation, where Hermes is more connected with the
youth still in the process of being educated.34
In his first Olympian Ode, Pindar let Poseidon carry Pelops ‘To the highest
home of widely honoured Zeus, where at a later time Ganymede came as well
for the same service to Zeus’ (1.42–45, tr. Race). The service referred to is of a
homosexual nature, but it seems clear that the poet imagined Pelops acting as a
wine-pourer. Pindar represented Poseidon as falling in love with Pelops when
Klotho lifted him out of the cauldron, but Philostratus describes a painting
showing Poseidon falling in love with Pelops when the boy was serving wine
to the gods in his father’s house. It is important to note that for this painter
(or perhaps Philostratus himself) falling in love more appropriately took place
during the wine-pouring at a banquet. We may compare the story, told by Ion
of Chios, about Sophocles who, when he sailed as a strategos to Lesbos, stayed
with one of Ion’s friends. There, at a symposion, the poet was clearly attracted to
the boy wine-pourer and made obvious advances.35
The archetypal mythological wine-pourer was undoubtedly Ganymede. In
the Iliad Zeus’ love for him was not yet mentioned, but from the sixth century
33 Proschion: Nicander apud Athen. 10.411a. Heracles and ephebes: this volume, Chap-
ter 7.4.
34 Hermes as wine-pourer: Alcaeus F 447; Sappho F 141. Sappho’s brother: Sappho F 203.
Apollo and initiation; H. S. Versnel, Transition & Reversal in Myth & Ritual (Leiden, 1993)
290–334; F. Graf, Apollo (Abingdon and New York, 2009) 103–29; M. H. Jameson, Cults and
Rites in Ancient Greece (Cambridge, 2014) 41–61. Hermes and ephebes: G. Costa, ‘Hermes
dio delle iniziazioni’, Civiltà Classica e Cristiana 3 (1982) 277–95.
35 Falling in love: Philostratus, Imag. 1. 17. Sophocles: Ion of Chios FGrH 392 F6 (= Sopho-
cles T 75 Radt); note also Karystios apud Athen. 13.603b on Alexander the Great.

onwards the god’s pederastic interest in the young wine-pourer became a famil-
iar theme. Various scholars have suggested that Homer already knew the peder-
astic side of the relationship but consciously omitted it. Whether this is a credi-
ble suggestion, we can only decide by a detour, which constitutes the final theme
of our paper: the relationship between the symposion and pederasty.36
3. Symposion and pederasty
A connection between pederasty and the symposion becomes visible at the end
of the seventh century. The Archaic Corinthian vases do not yet display adoles-
cents on the banquet couches, but on the somewhat later Laconian vases boys
recline next to adults in considerable numbers, and on the earliest Athenian
black-figure vases the couches are regularly occupied with an adult reclining
next to an adolescent. In poetry we find this interest expressed in Anacreon and
Ibycus in the second half of the sixth century, although Alcaeus, according to
Cicero, had already composed a poem for a boy Lykos.37
Greek pederasty was for a long time a subject too hot to handle for classical
scholars until Kenneth Dover’s pioneering book. Informative though it is, his
book does not enable his readers to understand completely the development of
Athenian pederasty or its ritual significance in other Greek societies. In both
Crete and Sparta, pederasty was integrated in the coming-of-age ceremonies of
the male adolescents. In Thebes, a male lover presented his beloved with a mili-
tary suit when the latter registered as a man. Moreover, in Crete a philêtôr, or
‘lover’, introduced his beloved boy into his andreion, in Sparta membership of
the syssitia was a precondition for full citizenship, and it is hard to believe that
in Thebes the loving couple did not share the same syssition, considering the
close relationship between erastes and eromenos in the Sacred Band. Allowing
for local variations, in all these cases we can infer a connection between peder-
asty, coming-of-age and membership of the clubs of the adult men.38
It seems clear that, as among the Dorians and in Thebes, pederasty in Athens
was closely associated with those rituals. On many black-figure vases, a bearded
man offers a present to a beardless boy with one hand, while at the same mo-
ment his other hand approaches the boy’s penis; the sexual intention is adver-
tised without any reserve. The gifts usually indicate the qualities expected from
36 For Ganymede, see B. Sergent, L’Homosexualité dans la mythologie grecque (Paris,
1984) 237–47; this volume, Chapter 11.1.

37 Corinth: note 23 above. Sparta: Fehr, Orientalische und griechische Gelage, 44; Dentzer,
Le motif, 88. Athens: Dentzer, ibid., 97. Lyric poetry: M. Vetta, ‘Il “P. Oxy.” 2506 fr. 77 e la
poesia pederotica di Alceo’, QUCC 10 (1982) 7–20; K. J. Dover, Greek Homosexuality (Cam-
bridge, MA, 19892) 195 ff.
38 For the initiatory background to Greek pederasty, see this volume, Chapter 11.

the erômenos. For example, a cockerel symbolizes fighting spirit, a hare hunting
skills, and a lyre musical abilities; especially interesting on early red-figure are
helmets, which remind us of the Theban present of a military suit. Later, but
traditionalist sources, such as Xenophon and Plato, confirm this association of
pederasty with education. Since boys were always present at the banquet, and
the adults practised pederasty, the popularity of pederastic scenes need not in
itself be surprising. The problem at stake is the date of the popularity of the
scenes.39
In Athens, the only Greek city where we can trace the development of the
connection between pederasty and the symposion in detail, pederastic scenes
start to come to the fore in the second quarter of the sixth century. Why the
earlier sixth century? Unfortunately, we are extremely badly informed about
the world of Archaic Athens. Our literary traditions circle round a few names
such as Solon, Peisistratos and the Alcmeonids, but our texts nowhere supply a
precise picture of the city’s social institutions. It is therefore highly important
that French and Swiss archaeologists have studied the imaginaire social as it
appears on Archaic vases. One of these vases may elucidate their methods and
insights. On the base of an Athenian dinos, to be dated to the 560s BC, we see
an ephebic cavalcade and on the median frieze scenes of adult warriors can be
seen. On the upper frieze there are in succession a banquet with solid food still
on the tables, a kômos, a Dionysiac thiasos, and the battle of civilised Lapiths
against wild Centaurs whose madness resembles the fury of Achilles killing
Troilos, the last picture. The order of the scenes signifies a clear message. Drink-
ing is the normal end to a banquet; it brings you into the realm of Dionysos, but
modesty should be the rule, since those who drink too much become trans-
formed into lawless Centaurs. Similar combinations of banquet and warrior
scenes can be noted on other Corinthian and Athenian vases. The inference
seems legitimate that these vases communicate to us that the world of the upper
class is dominated by banquet and war; ephebes have their own world which
nevertheless is part of the larger adult society.40
The rise of the number of pederastic scenes is the first sign, as we shall see in
conclusion, of the disintegration of this world. Historians have pointed to im-
portant changes in the aristocracy’s life style in the later Archaic Age. The com-
ing of hoplite tactics had deprived the warrior élite of its prominent position in
39 Initiation: Graf, ‘Apollon Delphinios’; Vidal-Naquet, Chasseur noir, 125–207; C. Bérard,
‘Héros de tout poil d’Héraklès imberbe à Tarzan barbu’, in F. Lissarrague and F. Thelamon
(eds), Image et céramique grecque (Rouen, 1983) 111–18 at 116 f. Gifts: Koch-Harnack,
Knabenliebe, passim. Helmets: H. Hoffmann, ‘Knotenpunkte’, Hephaistos 2 (1980) 127–54 at
142–43; Koch-Harnack, Knabenliebe, 156. Xenophon and Plato: H. Patzer, Die griechische
Knabenliebe (Wiesbaden, 1982) 106 f.
40 Athenian dinos: V. Dasen, ‘Autour du dinos de Nearchos’, Études de lettres 1983, 55–73.
Banquet and war: P. Schmitt-Pantel and A. Schnapp, ‘Image et société en Grèce ancienne: Les
Représentations de la chasse et du banquet’, Rev. Arch. 1982, 57–74; Dentzer, Le motif, 109.

battle, and their agonistic attitudes subsequently started to centre on sport. This
development accelerated in the early sixth century when in the course of a single
decade three major athletic festivals were founded: the Pythian in 582, the Isth-
mian in 581, and the Nemean in 573. The same period also displayed as a whole
great interest in the beauty of its youth. Snodgrass has computed that the Ar-
chaic Age erected more than 60,000 statues of kouroi.41 This staggering amount
can only be understood in terms of an overriding preoccupation with the beau-
ty of the youthful male nude.
Now on the vases we often see that the favours of the erômenos were not giv-
en for free. The erastês had to win them by offering a present. When we take into
account the virtual simultaneity of the rise of the athletic festivals and that of
the number of pederastic scenes on vases, we can explain the latter, I suggest, by
the interlocking factors of the existence of pederasty, the obligation to win the
erômenos by a present, the restricted number of erômenoi and the agonistic en-
ergies released by withdrawal from the battlefield. Evidently, pederasty became,
next to sport, one of the main areas in which the competitive spirit of the aris-
tocracy could realise itself.42 Consequently, to return to the question we started
our discussion of pederasty with, even if the relationship between Zeus and
Ganymede contained a pederastic component from the beginning, a not impos-
sible but improvable assumption, the prominence of the pederastic aspect in the
relationship during the late Archaic Age should not be retrojected back into the
earlier version of the myth.
The rise of sport most likely went together with a certain refinement of man-
ners in Archaic Greece. The increasing complexity of expanding urban life must
already have forced the aristocracy to lead a much more regulated life than in
the Dark Ages. Moreover, the old battle tactics had obliged the warriors to be
highly aggressive. Homer repeatedly mentioned the warrior’s fury, menos, or
even his wolfish rage, lyssa, whereas the hoplite organisation obliged the warrior
élite to control itself and to co-operate with others to an extent unheard of in
Homeric fighting. This self-control may well have extended into other areas of
the emotional life. After Homer, laughter stops being ‘inextinguishable’, and
the great men of historical Greece do not cry with the same frequency as the
Homeric heroes. The expression of emotions probably became more controlled
in the course of the Archaic Age.43
41 Rise of sport: H. W. Pleket, ‘Zur Soziologie des antiken Sports’, Mededelingen Neder
lands Instituut te Rome NS 1 (1974) 57–87, with a different explanation; O. Murray, Early
Greece (Glasgow, 1980), whom I follow; for modern parallels, see E. Hobsbawm, ‘Mass-Pro-
ducing Tradition: Europe, 1870–1914’, in id. and T. Ranger (eds), The Invention of Tradition
(Cambridge, 1983) 263–307 at 298 ff. Kouroi: A. Snodgrass, ‘Heavy Freight in Archaic Greece’,
in P. Garnsey et al. (eds), Trade in the Ancient Economy (London, 1983) 16–26, 182–83 at 21 f.
42 Rivalry for erômenos: Koch-Harnack, Knabenliebe, 52, 118–20, 148 f.
43 For the whole issue of increases in emotional control, see the epochal study by N. Elias,
Über den Prozess der Zivilisation, 2 vols (Frankfurt (1969); for Athens, see R. Osborne, The

The changes in social and emotional life made Athens, like other Greek cities,
a place where arms gradually disappeared from public life. In the earliest scenes
of the Athenian symposion there are still arms on the walls, although already to
a lesser degree than in Corinth. After 510 BC, arms only reappear in exception-
al cases, and in the fifth century carrying arms has become the mark of the less
civilised regions of Greece. In due time, this change in attitude should have had
an influence on the education of the young of the aristocratic élite, but what
might have been a period of gradual development was suddenly compressed into
a few decades by the foundation of the Peisistratean tyranny in the middle of the
540s. The monopolisation of political power by the Peisistratean family must
have been a powerful stimulus for the aristocracy to move away even further
from politics and war. It will therefore hardly be chance that new figures appear
at the symposion from 530 onwards. Athletes and courtesans now invade the
banquet, and kômos scenes become more frequent. From 510, solid food disap-
pears from the tables.44
Even more dramatic changes were soon to follow. The adult banqueters of old
started to become replaced by young men, the adolescents by younger boys.
When older adults were still depicted, they were often alone and designated as a
god or hero. Poets had already for some time been addressing their favourite
boys by name, as Anacreon does in his poem: ‘I love Kleoboulos, I am mad for
Kleoboulos, I gaze at Kleoboulos’ (PMG 359). The break-up of the collectivity
of boys now became visible on the vases. The traditional scenes with groups of
ephebic hunters became replaced by scenes with only one or two boys. At the
banquets a more animated atmosphere started to prevail; ladies of doubtful
morals took over the positions once occupied by respectable adolescents. Boy
wine-pourers now took over from adolescents, and the martial songs meant to
inspire adolescents on the threshold of adulthood were now sung by young lads,
paidaria.45
In view of the fact that the vases with pederastic courtship scenes circulated
at the symposion, it is no wonder that this change in membership was also re-
flected in the depiction thereon of the erastês and erômenos. The once direct
targeting of a nude adolescent’s genitals by a fully grown adult became replaced
Transformation of Athens (Princeton and Oxford, 2018). Warrior’s fury: J. N. Bremmer, The
Early Greek Concept of the Soul (Princeton, 1983) 58–59; this volume, Chapter 9. Laughter:
Bremmer, ibid., 85–88. Crying: K. Meuli, Gesammelte Schriften, 2 vols (Basel, 1975) 1.385;
H. Monsacré, Les Larmes d’Achille (Paris, 1984) and ‘Weeping Heroes in the Iliad’, History
and Anthropology 1 (1984) 55–75.
44 Arms on wall: Dentzer, Le motif, 96, 109. Carrying arms: Thuc. 1.5. Influence of Pisis-
tratus: S. C. Humphreys, The Family, Women and Death (London, 1983) 56 f. New figures:
Dentzer, Le motif, 108 (solid food), 109. In general: Osborne, Transformation of Athens, 87–
121.
45 Changes at the banquet: Schmitt-Pantel and Schnapp, ‘Image et société’, 69–70; Dentzer,
Le motif, 110. Individualisation in the hunt: Schmitt-Pantel and Schnapp, ibid., 65–68.

by behaviour in line with the more refined atmosphere of the late sixth and ear-
ly fifth centuries. Young men now circumspectly approached fully dressed
boys; the stage of the courtship started to shift to the gymnasion.46 It is concom-
itant with this development that Athenian ideology no longer permitted men to
show an unlimited interest in boys. On the contrary: men who were too keen on
chasing boys ran the risk of being considered agrios, ‘wild’, a word normally
used only for animals. Evidently, only ‘wild men’ indulged their passions with-
out inhibition. Too intensive an interest in the same sex, then, was not permitted
in Athens.47
These wide-ranging changes can only be interpreted as a gradual disintegra-
tion of the life of the old elite, brought about by the strategic, social, and politi-
cal developments of the Archaic Age. When banquet and war still occupied a
central position in the city, adult men were strongly interested in participation
in of the youths in the adult world, albeit on adult terms. Adolescents were al-
lowed to be present at the banquets and, partially via pederasty, adults helped
to prepare them for adult life, war in particular. However, after banquet and war
had lost their significance for the mature adults because of strategic and political
changes, adults in turn lost their interest in the traditional education of the
adolescents.48 Both adults and ephebes were now entering a new era where de-
mocracy was on the rise and the first schools already loomed on the horizon.
The world of the Archaic symposion had irrevocably passed away.49
46 Osborne, Transformation of Athens, 53–86.

47 The restrictions have been insufficiently taken into account in the review of Patzer, Die
griechische Knabenliebe by D. Fehling, Gnomon 57 (1985) 116–20. Agrios: Dover, Greek
Homosexuality, 37–38; J. Taillardat, BCH 107 (1983) 189–90; add Photius a 259.
48 For the changes in the relationship between adults and male youths, see also the exem-
plary study of Cumae by N. Valenza Mele, ‘La Necropoli cumana di VI e V a.C. o la crisi di
una aristocrazia’, in Nouvelle contribution à l’étude de la société et de la colonisation eubéen
nes (Naples, 1981) 97–129.
49 I am grateful to the participants of the symposium in Oxford for stimulating discus-
sions, both formal and informal, and to Rolf Bremmer, Nicholas Horsfall (1945–2019) and
Robert Parker for information and help.

Chapter 13
Maternal Uncles and Grandfathers as Initiators,

Educators and Role Models
It is a striking fact that in many patriarchal and patrilineal societies a special

relationship exists between a mother’s brother (MoBr) and his sister’s son (SiSo),
and between the mother’s father (MoFa) and the daughter’s son (DaSo). Social
anthropologists have been studying this relationship for about a century.1 More
than a good hundred years ago, the Swiss Johann Jakob Bachofen (1815–1887)
drew particular attention to this tie.2 The boldness of Bachofen’s theories, such
as his postulation of ancient matriarchy, condemned his studies to the dusty
shelves of libraries,3 but his analysis of the avunculate and the importance of the
maternal grandfather is still of interest. Bachofen limited himself to a few exam-
ples from Greek mythology, Homer, Pindar, and Thucydides; but the material
is certainly richer, and the period over which we can follow the avunculate can
be extended to early Byzantium. In an early study, I surveyed the Indo-Europe-
an evidence and found that the special position of the maternal (as against pater-
nal) uncle and grandfather, which had been noted among many tribal societies,
also occurred among the Indo-Europeans.4 Subsequent studies of the Roman,
Germanic and Celtic material have corroborated this conclusion.5 This chapter
1 For a very full survey, with the most recent bibliography, see D. Potts, ‘The Epithet
“ Sister’s Son” in Ancient Elam. Aspects of the Avunculate in Cross-cultural Perspective’, in

K. Kleber et al. (eds), Grenzüberschreitungen. Studien zur Kulturgeschichte des Alten Orients:
Festschrift fur Hans Neumann (Münster, 2018) 523–55.
2 J. J. Bachofen, Antiquarische Briefe I, II (Basel, 1880, 1885), reprinted in Johann Jakob
Bachofens Gesammelte Werke VIII, ed. J. Dörmann and W. Strasser (Basel and Stuttgart,
1966) 5–414. This volume contains some further hitherto unpublished ‘antiquarian’ letters on
this subject, but Bachofen’s legacy to the university library of Basel still contains papers
amounting to about ten thousand pages which may never see the light of day.
3 Except by Friedrich Engels, Bachofen was overlooked not only by anthropologists, but
also by É. Benveniste, Le vocabulaire des institutions indo-européennes, 2 vols (Paris, 1969)

I.223–37. For Bachofen and matriarchy, see S. Pembroke, ‘Women in Charge: the function of
alternatives in early Greek tradition and the ancient idea of matriarchy’, J. Warburg and Cour
tauld Inst. 30 (1967) 1–36; H. J. Heinrichs (ed.), Materialien zu Bachofens ‘Mutterrecht’
(Frankfurt, 1975); U. Wesel, Der Mythos von Matriarchat (Frankfurt, 1980); P. Vidal-Naquet,
Le Chasseur noir (Paris, 19832) 267–88; B. Wagner-Hasel, Matriarchatstheorien der Altertums
wissenschaft (Darmstadt, 1992).
4 J. N. Bremmer, ‘Avunculate and Fosterage’, JIES 4 (1976) 65–78.
5 Roman: J. Hallett, Fathers and Daughters (Princeton, 1984); M. Bettini, Kinship, Time,
Images of the Soul (Baltimore and London, 1991) 39–66, 257–64. Germanic: R. H. Bremmer,

will present the Greek evidence. Being the first to do so since Bachofen, it can
hardly lay claim to completeness. We may safely assume that more evidence of
this nature lies hidden in all kinds of Greek texts.
1. The mother’s father
In one of his still inspiring essays, Louis Gernet discussed the phenomenon of
fosterage, the education of boys outside the parental home. 6 It is clear from Ger-
net’s material that in all cases in which a family relationship existed or was spec-
ified, it was the maternal grandfather – never the paternal one7 – who raised the
child. In some cases the MoFa voluntarily undertook to raise the boy; Iphida-
mas reached maturity in the house of his MoFa in Thrace (Il. 11.221–22); Neop-
tolemos grew up on the island of Skyros at the court of Achilles’ father-in-Law
Lycomedes; Theseus was raised by his MoFa Pittheus in Troizen. In other cases,
the stay with the MoFa was occasioned by sheer necessity. Adrastus had to flee
to his MoFa, the king of Sicyon. Similarly, when the Messenian king Kresphon-
tes was murdered, his youngest son Aipytos managed to escape to his MoFa, the
Arcadian king Kypselos, who then took care of his education.8
Usually, fosterage lasted until the beginning of adulthood, when the young
aristocrat returned home for the last puberty rites, sometimes his investiture
rites. In a number of cases, however, the DaSo stayed on at his grandfather’s
court and succeeded to the throne. It seems likely that in many of these exam-
ples the king had no son of his own. Herodotus (7. 61; also see Apollod. 2.4.5)
tells us that Perseus left his son by Antromeda with her father Kepheus, since
the latter had no male off-spring. Similarly, Leukippos, the king of Sicyon, be-
queathed the throne to Peratos, his DaSo, because he only had a daughter (Paus.
2.5.7). In Sicyon, Polybos gave the throne to his DaSo Adrastos, who in turn left
‘The Importance of Kinship: uncle and nephew in “Beowulf”’, Amsterdamer Beiträge z. älte
ren Germanistik 15 (1980) 21–38; I. M. Bajema, ‘The Mother’s Brother: an investigation into
the meaning of Old English Eam’, Neophilologus 78 (1994) 633–43; A. M. Guerrieri, ‘The
Figure of the Maternal uncle in the Old Germanic Tradition’, Studi Germanici 6 (2014) 123–
46. Celtic: G. Guastelola, ‘I Parentalia come testo antropologico: l’avunculato nel mondo celt-
ico e nella famiglia di Ausonio’, MD 4 (1980) 97–124; T. Ó Cathasaigh, ‘The Sister’s Son in
Early Irish Literature’, Prudentia 5 (1986) 128–60.
6 L. Gernet, Droit et société dans la Grèce ancienne (Paris, 1955) 19–28. For Indo-Europe-
an parallels, see this volume, Chapter 14; add Orkneyinga Saga 13; Geoffrey of Monmouth,
Historia Regum Britanniae 2.4; Hálfdanar saga svarta c.3.
7 In the extended family, the paternal grandfather would be in the home. E. Risch, Kleine
Schriften (Berlin and New York, 1981) 651 observes that there is no Indo-European term for
paternal grandfather: he is just the father.
8 Neoptolemus: Il. 19.326–27; Soph. Ph. 239–44; Strabo 9.5.16; Apollod. Ep. 5.11. Theseus:
Plut. Thes. 4; Paus. 1.27.7. Kresphontes: for all sources and bibliography, see C. Collard et al.,
Euripides: selected fragmentyary plays, 2 vols (Warminster, 1995–2004) 1.121–47, 2.366 (by
M. Cropp). Adrastus: schol. Pind. N. 9.30a.

Chapter 13: Maternal Uncles and Grandfathers 207
the throne to his DaSo Diomedes.9 In these cases, the DaSo apparently was be-
lieved to succeed his grandfather at his death, but in Thebes Kadmos gave the
throne to his DaSo Pentheus when still alive (Eur. Bacch. 43, 213), and a similar
situation is presupposed in Euripides’ second Hippolytos, where Theseus evi-
dently received the Trozenian throne during Pittheus’ life.10 Finally, Hippot-
hous, who had been exposed after his mother had been impregnated by Posei-
don, requested the kingdom of his MoFa Kerkyon as his rightful inheritance
from Theseus (Hyginus, Fab. 187).
This right of the DaSo to the throne seems to be reflected also in those leg-
ends in which a king exposes a DaSo who is prophesied to succeed him one day.
The best known Greek case is perhaps Perseus,11 but outside Greece we also
have Cyrus,12 Romulus and Remus, Gilgamesh (Ael. NA 12.21) and Habis.13
This particular type occurs only in classical authors, although exposure legends
are found from China to Southern Africa.14
In the examples mentioned so far, the DaSo succeeded to the throne because
the MoFa did not have a (living) son. In addition, there are two more cases
where the DaSo inherited the throne, although a living, legal son existed. These
instances are highly interesting since apparently later tradition felt compelled to
explain the particular reason why the existing son was passed over, thus show-
ing that it considered this succession an oddity. The local Trozenian author
Herophanes, who probably lived during the early Empire, observed that Her-
mion, the founder of Hermione, could never have been the son of a legitimate
son of Phoroneus. His father had to have been one of Phoroneus’ bastards; oth-
9 Adrastus: Hdt. 5.67; Menaichmos FGrH 131 F10; Paus. 2.6.6; schol. Il. 2.572. Diomedes:
Eustathius on Il. 2.566. Gernet, Droit et société, 24 rightly concluded from Il. 5.412 that Dio-
medes, like Iphidamas (above), had married his maternal aunt. L. Gernet, Anthropologie de la
Grèce antique (Paris, 1968) 344–59 (‘Mariages de tyrans’, 19541) and J.-P. Vernant, Mythe et
société en Grèce ancienne (Paris, 1974) 73–74 (with more examples of the MoSi/SiSo marriage)
consider this early Greek matrimonial strategy as typically aristrocratic. In Classical Greece,
though, elites tended to avoid this type of marriage. P. Bourdieu, Outline of a Theory of Prac
tice (Cambridge 197) 58–71, has shown that in uncertain political and economic situations
families tend to direct their efforts towards the maintenance of the family, not its expansion.
The uncle/aunt and niece/nephew marriages therefore strongly point to the Dark Ages, when
these endogamic strategies may have been shared by elites and peasants alike.
10 Cf. W. S. Barrett, Euripides: Hippolytos (Oxford, 1964) 33, 157. In order to avoid compe-
tition with Phaedra’s children, Theseus sent Hippolytos to Troezen to be raised by his MoFa
and to succeed him to the throne (Paus. 1.22.2). According to Diod. Sic. 4.62, Hippolytos was
educated by Theseus’ MoBr (below § 2).
11 For Perseus, see this volume, Preface, note 46.
12 Hdt. 1.107–22; Just. 1.4–6; G. Widengren, ‘La légende royale de l’Iran antique’, in Hom
mages à G. Dumézil (Brussels, 1960) 225–37; A. Alföldi, Die Struktur des voretruskischen
Römerstaates (Heidelberg, 1974) 137–41.
13 Just. 44.4; J. C. Bermejo Barrera, `La funcion real en la mitologia Tartesica. Gargoris,
Habis y Aristeo’, Habis 9 (1978) 215–32.

14 J. N. Bremmer and N. M. Horsfall, Roman Myth and Mythography (London, 1987) 27–
30 by Bremmer), also on Romulus and Remus, with extensive bibliography.

erwise the Argive throne would never have gone to Argos, the son of Phoro-
neus’ daughter Niobe (Paus. 2.16.1).15
A similar concern appears from a Homeric scholion that relates a William
Tell-like legend to explain why Sarpedon succeeded his MoFa Bellerophon,
whereas Glaukos, the son of Bellerophon’s son, went to Troy (Il. 6.199–200).16
In the last instance, Bachofen naturally saw a survival of the great matriarchal
times, since Herodotus (1.173) relates that the Lycians took their names from
their mother. But Simon Pembroke showed definitively from inscriptions that
the Lycians did no such thing.17 The Greeks, on the other hand, used the metro-
nymic to denote natural children.18 It is most likely, therefore, that Herodotus’
report derives from the Greek tendency to picture their neighbours and their
customs as the opposite of their own.19
Our evidence shows that a maternal grandfather could be greatly interested
in his grandson, but none of the texts used so far relates anything about the
sentiments involved. Regarding the mythological material, we have the cases of
Menelaos, who had to leave Helen behind in Sparta in order to attend the funer-
al of his MoFa in Crete (Apollod. Ep. 3.3), and of Perseus, who supposedly was
very eager to see his MoFa Acrisius (who had exposed him in a chest together
with his mother Danae) ‘to show him kindness in word and deed’ (Paus. 2.16.2).
We may suspect a similar concern in the Salaminian Skiros who, when Theseus
sailed to Crete, provided the pilot because his DaSo was one of the hostages
(Philochoros FGrG 328 F111).
For historical times, our sources are somewhat more informative. And even
though all episodes may have not actually happened as reported, they are still
indicative of what people expected of a MoFa/DaSo relationship. The sage Bias
of Priene died in the lap of his DaSo (Diog. Laert. 1.87). The poet Melanippides
(late sixth century) was the DaSo of a homonymous poet (Suda μ 454). When
Herodotus (3.50) relates the story of Periander’s sons and their reception by
their MoFa, he adds that they were treated very kindly, ‘as was only natural,
15Paus. 2.34.5 = Herophanes FGrH 605 F1.

16Schol. and Eustathius on Il. 12.101. For the comparison with William Tell, see S. Pem-
broke apud H. Erbse, Scholia Graeca in Homeri Iliadem III (Berlin, 1974) 319; add to Pem-
broke’s bibliography: M. Beck, ‘Wilhelm Tell: Sage oder Geschichte’, Deutsches Archiv 36
(1980) 1–24.
17 S. Pembroke, ‘Last of the Matriarchs’, J. Econ. Soc. Hist of the Orient 8 (1965) 217–47.
18 For the Greek use of the metronymic, see O. Masson, `La plus ancienne inscription
crétoise’, in W. Meid et al. (eds.), Studies in Greek, Italic and Indo-European Linguistics of
fered to Leonard R. Palmer (Innsbruck, 1976) 169–72 and BCH 99 (1975) 221 f. For later peri-
ods, see N. P. Andriotis, ‘Die mittel- und neugriechischen Metronymica’, in Atti e Memorie
del VII Congresso Intern. di Scienze Onomastiche III (Florence, 1963) 59–66; K. Kyrri, Kyp
riaka kai Ammochoosteia meletemata kai dokima (Ammochoostos, Cyprus, 1967) 143–61.
19 For this tendency, see Pembroke, ‘Women in Charge’; M. Detienne, Dionysos mis à mort
(Paris, 1977) 133–60; F. Hartog, Le miroir d’Hérodote (Paris, 1980; C. Segal, Tragedy and
Civilisation (Cambridge, MA, 1981) 29 f.

they being the sons of his own daughter’. We find nearly the same expression in
Isaeus’ oration on the estate of Ciron (8.15): the young men who claim to be the
sons of Ciron’s daughter relate the many activities their supposed grandfather
shared with them, ‘as was natural, seeing that we were the sons of his daughter’.
And in Lysias’ Against Diogeiton the speaker reproaches Diogeiton, who was
both paternal uncle and maternal grandfather (!), with the maltreatment of his
daughter’s children whereas he never calls attention to the fact that Diogeiton
was also the paternal uncle (Lys. 30.16, 24, 27); maltreatment by the paternal
uncle apparently was not very shocking (below § 2). Finally, we cannot fail to
observe that Euripides pictures the relation of Kadmos and Pentheus as one of
special closeness, where the MoFa deeply loves his DaSo.20 Similarly, he calls the
ἀγνός Hippolytus the ἁγνοῦ Πιτθέως παιδεύματα, in this way stressing the tie
between the young man and his maternal great-grand-father.21 Since we do not
find a single passage that stresses the relationship of a grandson with his pater-
nal grandfather, we may infer provisionally that a Greek’s relationship with his
daughter’s children was better than with his son’s children.
2. The mother’s brother
We will return below (§ 3) to this problem and close our discussion of the
MoFa with an example that brings us to the MoBr, the maternal uncle. When
Odysseus is recognised by his scar, we hear the story of his youth. Just after
Odysseus’ birth his MoFa visited his house where Eurykleia put the new-born
baby on the grandfather’s knees. Autolykos gave Odysseus his name and asked
his parents to send him to his house when he had reached puberty in order that
Odysseus may receive presents (Od. 19.401, 412). Gernet saw in this episode a
later development in which fosterage proper had already disappeared, but the tie
with the MoFa still remained in force.22 This particular visit, however, occurs at
the moment of reaching puberty, whereas in the case of fosterage the boy always
left his MoFa when he had reached puberty.
Gernet, moreover, overlooked an important aspect of Odysseus’ visit. Twice
during the episode the sojourn is defined more precisely as taking place with
Autolykos and his sons, Odysseus’ maternal uncles (Od. 19.394, 414, 418–19).
Also, it is the uncles who accompany Odysses on the fateful hunt in which he
20 Eur. Bacch. 181, 250–54, 1318 ff; C. Segal, ‘Pentheus on the Couch and on the Grid’,
Classical World 72 (1978) 129–48 and Dionysiac Poetics and Euripides’ Bacchae (Princeton,
1982) 177 ff.
21 Eur. Hipp. 11, cf. C. Segal, ‘Shame and Purity in Euripides’ Hippolytus’, Hermes 98 (1970)
278–99.
22 Gernet, Droit et société, 26.

had received his scar.23 Similarly, as we saw above (Chapter 4.2), during the
Calydonian hunt Meleager was accompanied by the brothers of his mother Al-
thaea. A third hunt is even more interesting since it implies a mistaken MoBr/
SiSo relationship which nevertheless confirms our point. Theano was the foster
mother of Boeotus and Aeolus, the natual sons of Melanippe, who regarded
Theano as their true mother. However, when Theano had children of her own,
she arranged to have her foster children killed by her own brothers. From Euri-
pides’ Melanippe Desmotis a messenger’s description of the actual ambush,
which took place ‘during a hunt’, has been preserved in a Berlin papyrus. When
Aeolus and Boeotus recognised the attackers as their MoBr (as they still errone-
ously thought), they exclaimed: ‘Brothers of <our dear> mother, what are you
doing? You are caught in the act of killing those <you should least kill>. For the
gods’ sake do …’24
In these cases the supervision by the MoBr most likely had an initiatory sig-
nificance, as probably also in other cases where a SiSo accompanied his MoBr
into war. I note two examples: the most important commander of the Myrmido-
nian fleet after Achilles was his SiSo Menesthios (Il. 16. 173–76; Strabo 9.5.9). In
the Delphic gymnasium – the place of education par excellence – Pausanias
(10.10.2) saw the statue of Hippomedon, next to that of his MoBr Adrastus,
among the commanders of the army that marched against Thebes.25 The educa-
tional activity of the MoBr, however, was not restricted only to war. Bachofen
opened his study of the avunculate with Daedalus’ murder of his SiSo Talos.
Apollodorus (3.15.8, tr. Frazer) gives the fullest account: ‘Daedalus had fled
from Athens, because he had thrown down from the acropolis Talos, the son of
his sister Perdix; for Talos was his pupil’.26
We also have some other cases which are indicative of a good relationship
between a MoBr and his SiSo. When Apollo wanted to persuade Hector he ap-
peared in the shape of his MoBr Asiso (Il. 16.717). At the end of the Trojan War,
Priam sent for his SiSo Eurypylos.27 Creon purified his SiSo Amphitryon of the
killing of Electryon, and he helped him in his war against the Teleboans.28
Kypselos’ son Holaios accompanied the Heraclids to Messene where he in-
23 Od. 19.429–431. For the initiatory significance of the wound in the thigh, see this vol-
ume, Chapter 1.3.
24 Eur. F 495, tr. Cropp. For the legend, see Hyginus, Fab. 186.
25 According to some traditions, Tydeus was the son of Periboia, the sister of Kapaneus:
Hyginus, Fab. 70; Apollod. 3.6.3; Paus. 9.8.7, 10.10.3. In the Germanic world, the MoBr was
regularly accompanied by his SiSo in battle, see Bremmer, ‘The Importance of Kinship’, 33
note 55; T. Derks and H. Teitler, ‘Batavi in the Roman Army of the Principate’, Bonner Jahrb.
218 (2018) 53–80 at 57; Hákonar saga góda 29; Magnúss saga blinda 7, 10.
26 Hellanicus FGrH 323a F22a = 169 Fowler, cf. Ov. Met. 8.241 (with Bömer ad loc. for full
bibliography).
27 K. Tümpel, ‘Eurypylos 3’, in RE VI (1907) 1348–49 with all sources.
28 Apollod. 2.4.6; schol. Lycophron 932.

stalled his SiSo Aepytos (Paus. 8.5.7). Finally, when Atreus had killed Chrysip-
pos, he fled to his SiSo Eurystheus in Mycenae (Thuc. 1.9.2). Against all these
examples of a close tie with the MoBr we have only one example of a similar tie
with the paternal uncle: Heracles and Iolaus.29
The educational activity of the MoBr which is attested in mythological times
survived into the historical period. In the famous collapse of a banquet hall,
from which the poet Simonides had miraculously escaped, the Thessalian aris-
tocrat Scopas perished together with his SiSo (Quint. Inst. 11.2.15). Pindar twice
mentions boys who gained important victories in the same contest as their ma-
ternal uncles.30 In the eighth Pythian (35–38), he relates that in the wrestling
matches Aristomenes followed in the steps of his ματραδελφεούς, ‘mother’s
brothers’: Theognetos, who won at Olympia, and Kleitomachos, who was an
Isthmian victor. From the fifth Nemean (41) and sixth Isthmian (57) we learn of
the Aeginetan couple Pytheas and Phylakidas and their MoBr Euthymenos,
who all were victorious in the trial of strength. The connection can hardly be
fortuitous, since we learn from the fourth Nemean (79–81) that Timasarchos
asked Pindar for an ode on his deceased MoBr Callicles; and in the seventh
Isthmian (24) Pindar sings that Strepsiades shares his glory with his homony-
mous uncle.
All these examples become more comprehensible if we assume that the MoBr
had an active hand in his SiSo’s education, and that for the young nephew the
MoBr functioned as the model par excellence for imitation. This relationship
also seems to have been a factor in the lives of some celebrated men: Bacchylides
was the SiSo of Simonides,31 Aeschylus was the MoBr of the tragedian Philokles
(TGrF 24 Philokles T2), Plato mentioned his SiSo Lyco in his testament (Diog.
Laert. 5.70), the orator Demochares was the SiSo of Demosthenes,32 Speusippos
succeeded his MoBr Plato as head of the Academy,33 Callimachus had a homon-
ymous SiSo who was an ἐποποιός (Suda κ 228) and, finally, the famous physician
Erisistratos was the Siso of another physician (Suda ε 2896). We have perhaps
one other example. Besides the great Euripides, we have two other tragedians
with the same name. Regarding the first (TGrF 16 Euripides I), it is said that he
was ‘older than the famous one’. Regarding the second (TGrF 17 Euripides II),
the Suda (ε 3694) tells us that he was τοῦ προτέρου ἀδελφιδοῦς. Snell (ad loc.)
translates ἀδελφιδοῦς as filius fratris eius, but he may well have been a SiSo, as
29 W. H. Roscher (ed.), Ausführliches Lexikon der griechischen und römischen Mythologie
II.1 (Leipzig 1890–97) 285–89, with all sources.

30 D. Roussel, Tribu et cité (Paris, 1976) 52–3 notes the importance of the maternal family
in Pindar, but neglects the importance of the MoBr’s educational activities.

31 For the evidence, see H. Maehler, Die Lieder des Bakchylides I (Leiden, 1982) 6.
32 J. K. Davies, Athenian Propertied Families 600–300 B.C. (Oxford, 1971) 142.
33 Plut. Mor. 10d = M. I. Parente, Speusippo: Frammenti (Naples, 1980) F 6 = L. Tarán,
Speusippus of Athens (Leiden, 1981) T 25a; Plut. Mor. 491 f-492a (F 5 Parente = T 24am Tarán;
Diog. Laert. 3.4 (T 4 Tarán); Suda σ 928 (F 3 Parente = T 3 Tarán).

several poets were related to each other as MoBr and SiSo,34 and sons were
sometimes named after their maternal uncle.35
If it was natural that the MoBr served as the exemple for the boys during their
youth and apparently also had an active hand in their education, it is under-
standable that this role could reflect itself in laws concerning adoption or guard-
ianship. And indeed in the laws of Charondas the administration of the estate
was entrusted to the father’s family (below) but the upbringing of the orphans
to the mother’s family, which in practice must normally have meant the MoBr
or MoFa (Diod. Sic. 12.15). In Syracuse, Dionysius II claimed that he was the
legal guardian of the son of his half-sister Arete (Plat. Ep. 7.345c), and in Gortyn
the maternal uncles were entrusted with the bringing up of an heiress (Gortyn
Code VIII. 51 ff., XII.13 Willets). In fact, we find this activity already attested
in mythological times. The island of Thera was colonised by Procles and Eurys-
thenes together with their guardian MoBr Theras (Paus. 3.1.7, 4.3.4). Creon
functioned as guardian and regent for Eteocles and Polyneices (Soph. OR. 1418).36
In the fourth century, we still find examples of a good relationship between
MoBr and SiSo. When Aeschines (2.78) reminded the jury of his family history,
he mentioned the political behaviour of his father and his MoBr Kleoboulos,
and concluded: ‘The sufferings of the city were therefore a household word with
us, familiar to my ears’. Andocides (3.29) proudly mentions that a permanent
accord was established with the Great King thanks to the diplomacy of his
MoBr Epilycus. In Demosthenes’ Against Olympiodorus, Callistratus did not
risk coming into court and saying ‘unpleasant things of one who is a brother of
my wife and the uncle of my children’ (Dem. 48.8, tr. A. Murray, Loeb). In the
Against Neaera, Theomnestus relates how he was reproached for not seeking
vengeance for the injuries done to his sister’s children (Dem. 59.12). And in
Isaeus’ third oration on the estate of Pyrrhus (3.26, 29–30) the maternal uncles
of Pyrhus all declare that they were summoned as witnesses to his wedding with
the sister of Nicodemus. Finally, an example from Rhodes: the condottiere
Mentor gave important commands to his SiSo (Diod. Sic. 16.52.4).
We even have cases where two men, because they were related and eminent in
an (almost) identical field, were assumed to be MoBr and SiSo, whereas actually
they were related in quite a different way. Regarding Panyassis and Herodotus,
the Suda (π 248) offers two different genealogies. According to one they were
34 Note also the couple Pacuvius (SiSo) and Ennius (MoBr): Plin. NH. 35.19.
35 In addition to the already mentioned examples of Strepsiades and Callimachus, note also
Cimon’s son Peisianax: Dem. 39.32, 63.77; Davies, Athenian Propertied Families, 305. Nam-
ing practices are usually neglected in the studies of the MoBr/SiSo relationship, but among the
American enslaved nephews were regularly named after their maternal uncle, see H. Gutman,
The Black Family in Slavery and Freedom 1750–1925 (Newark, 1976) 200 f. For a Germanic
example, see Bremmer, ‘The Importance of Kinship’, 25.
36 Cf. G. Arrigoni, Atalante e le altre (Bergamo, 2019) 251–92. A Germanic example:
Haralds saga inn hárfagra c. 1.

cousins; according to the other they were maternal uncle and nephew. As Jaco-
by observed, the fact that in the second case the mothers’ name is mentioned is
suspicious, as the only purpose served is determining the exact nature of Hero-
dotus and Panyassis’s relationship.37 Apparently, a later tradition considered the
MoBr and SiSo’s relationship as the more appropriate one for these two eminent
authors. Our second example is Pericles and Alcibiades. Alcibiades’ mother was
Pericles’ cousin, but Diodorus (12.38.1), Valerius Maximus (3.1 ext. 1) and the
Suda (α 1280) all call Pericles the maternal uncle of Alcibiades. The designation
is absolutely wrong, but again, it is important that later traditions expressed the
relationship between the two politicians in this particular way.
The evidence we have does not allow us to follow up this theme in later cen-
turies.38 Yet, when in earlier Christian times the hagiographical biographies
supply us again with detailed information about the saint’s education, the role
of the MoBr immediately appears to be prominent. Sabas, Euthymos, Kyriakos,
Eusebios, Nicholas of Sion – all are educated by their MoBr.39 And we may per-
haps even assume that this good relationship has lasted in some parts of Greece
until the present time, for among the Sarakatsani of Northern Greece the MoBr
is still the favourite uncle.40
Against this evidence, we have not a single passage which stresses the good
relationship of a person with his paternal uncle. In mythology, we hear of Ty
deus murdering the four brothers of his father (Hes. F 10a.55–57). We also not-
ed that in Lysias’ Against Diogeiton the speaker never drew attention to the fact
that Diogeiton was the paternal uncle, and we inferred from this silence that
maltreatment by the paternal uncle was not very shocking. We have two more
historical examples that there was not much love lost between FaBr and BrSo.
Aeschines (1.103) tells us how Timarchos shamefully neglected his paternal un-
cle Arignotus, and Demosthenes mentions the bad treatment of Nicias by his
BrSo Stephanos.41 Plutarch (Mor. 492d) even ends his essay on brotherly love
with the exhortation: ‘It is an uncle’s duty to rejoice and take pride in the fair
deeds and honours and offices of a brother’s sons and to help to give them an
37 F. Jacoby, in RE Suppl. 2 (1913) 217. J. P. Tzschirner, Panyasidis Halicarnassei Heracleid
is Fragmenta (Bratislava, 1842) 14 combined the two traditions by making Dryo the sister of
Panyassis. This is rightly rejected by V. J. Matthews, Panyassis of Halikarnassos (Leiden, 1974)
10, but his main argument that an uncle/niece marriage was unlikely does not hold. Besides
the examples adduced by Gernet and Vernant (note 9), see also Lys. 32.4; Is. 10.5; Dem. 44.10,
59.2, 22.
38 But it is important to note that as soon as we have extensive information about someone,
as is the case with Libanius, the prominent position of the maternal family is striking, cf. Lib.
Or. 1. Libanius was even going to marry his MoBr’s daughter (Or. 1.95), as was Andocides
(1.117–18)
39 Cf. E. Patlagean, Pauvreté économique et pauvreté sociale à Byzance 4 e -7e siècle (Paris,
1977) 122–24. Note also the couple Marcianos/Alypios: Theodoret, Hist. Rel. 3.14, 18.
40 J. K. Campbell, Honour, Family and Patronage (Oxford, 1964) 105.
41 Dem. 45.70, cf. Davies, Athenian Propertied Families, 438.

incentive etc. etc.’ Apparently, it was still not usual in his time that a paternal
uncle was very concerned with his brother’s sons.
How do we explain this preference for the SiSo. From Bachofen to modern
social anthropologists, scholars have consistently and (I believe) rightly main-
tained that the secret of the close relationship lies in the close relationship be-
tween a sister and her brothers.42 Through her marriage a woman leaves her own
family and in a way surrenders herself to the mercy of her in-laws. In this situ-
ation her father and especially her brothers are her only support against the
potential difficulties with her husband and kin. The care extended to the sister
also extended to her children, and thus the sister would return to her brother
when the husband had passed away.
From Lysias’ saucy story about the struggle for the favours of a Plataean boy,
we learn that Simon, when drunk, even dared to enter the women’s rooms where
the speaker’s sister and his nieces lived (Lys. 3.6). Andocides was persuaded to
testify against the Hermecopidae by his father’s SiSo Charmides ‘who had been
brought up with me in our home since boyhood’.43 And in Isaeus’ first oration
(1.15) the speaker relates that after their guardian’s death he and his brother were
taken into the house of their MoBr who educated them, and, he claimed, even
wanted to adopt them on his death-bed. We need not discuss this claim, but the
idea will not have appeared improbable in itself to the jury, for among the 27
examples of adoption that we know of in Athens there are indeed 4 cases of the
adoption of the SiSo and one of the SiDa.44
There is one other factor to be taken into consideration. As Dover has shown,
the relationship with the father and the mother was largely dominated by obe-
dience and respect in Athens.45 We may indeed seriously wonder whether
among the upper classes of Athens and elsewhere in Greece there can have been
much bonding between father and son, since the father was usually out on the
streets and left the education of his children to others.46 The obligatory respect
also extended to the older generation and will have included the father’s father.
However, the MoFa and MoBr were somewhat outside the family and were
therefore able to develop an affectionate relationship with the children of their
42 In addition to the anthropological literature collected by Potts, ‘The Epithet “Sister’s
Son” in Ancient Elam’, 536–40 see, for the Greek brother-sister relationship, Bachofen,
Gesammelte Werke VIII, 15–186; M. Golden, Children and Childhood in Classical Athens
(Baltimore and London, 1990) 121–36; J. N. Bremmer, Greek Religion and Culture, the Bible
and the Ancient Near East (Leiden, 2008) 325–33.
43 And. 1.48, cf. Davies, Athenian Propertied Families, 30.
44 For the full list, see Gernet, Droit et société, 129 f. The possibility is also mentioned in
Is. 1.22; Dem. 40.10. I am indebted for a discussion of these figures to Herman Wallinga
(1926–2018).
45 K. J. Dover, Greek Popular Morality in the Time of Plato and Aristotle (Oxford 1974)
272–274.
46 For the father-son relationship, see this volume, Chapter 10, note 35.

daughter or sister.47 Moreover, as girls married young,48 the maternal uncles

would be much closer in age to a boy than his paternal uncles. The MoFa and
MoBr were probably also the only males who would have access to the women’s
quarters when the children were young. Lysias (3.6) says that his sister and
nieces lived so that they ‘are ashamed to be seen even by their male relatives’.
This must imply that normally the kinsmen, surely her brother(s) and father,
could visit her. And the younger Alcibiades was accused of entering his sister’s
house ‘not as her brother but as her husband’ (Lys. 14.28). It is this difference
in attitude between a father and a MoBr which explains why the sage Thales,
when asked why he adopted his Siso but did not have any children of his own,
answered, ‘because I love children!’49
3. Vocabulary
In Greece, then, a boy often had a close relationship with his MoFa and MoBr.
In a seminal article, Radcliffe-Brown already observed that the MoBr and MoFa
‘are the objects of very similar behaviour patterns’.50 This similarity reflects it-
self also in Greek vocabulary.51 The lexicographer Pollux (3.16, 23) mentions a
‘Lallwort’ nennos for which he gives the meaning ‘mother’s brother and moth-
er’s father’.52 Similar words, such as English nanna, ‘mother’s mother’, Hungar-
ian néne, ‘sister’, Italian nino, ‘baby boy’, occur in many languages all over the
world, and nearly always have an overtone of endearment, as surely νέννος had
in Greece.53 The word is never used in high literature but only occurs in lexicog-
47 The importance of the MoFa and MoBr being outsiders in the paternal family is also
stressed by C. Lévi-Strauss, Structural Anthropology I (Harmondsworth, 1972) 31–54 and

‘Réflexions sur l’atome de parenté’, L’Homme 13 (1973) 5–30.
48 For the age of girls at marriage, see S. Pomeroy, Goddesses, Whores, Wives and Slaves
(New York, 1975) 64.

49 Diog. Laert. 1.26; the adoption is also mentioned by Plut. Solon 7.
50 A. R. Radcliffe-Brown, Structure and Function in Primitive Society (London, 1952)
15–31 at 29–30 (19241).

51 For this reflection on the linguistic level in other Indo-European languages, such as the
Latin couple avus-avunculus, cf. R. S. P. Beekes, ‘Uncle and Nephew’, JIES 4 (1976) 43–63;
O. Szemerényi, ‘Das griechische Verwandtschaftsnamensystem vor der Hintergrund des in-
dogermanischen Systems’, Hermes 105 (1977) 385–405 at 392–93 = Scripta minora III (Inns-
bruck, 1987) 1462–63 and `Studies in the Kinship Terminology of the Indo-European Lan-
guages, with Special References to Indian, Iranian, Greek and Latin’, Acta Iranica 16 (1977)
1–240 at 53 ff.
52 Nέννος also occurs in IG XII.3.1628; IC II.179.5. According to Eustathius (on Il. 14.118),
νέννος means ‘paternal, maternal uncle’, but in his time the difference between the two uncles
had lost its significance in many places, cf. E. Patlagean, Structure sociale, famille, chrétienté
à Byzance (London, 1981) chapter VII, 77–79.
53 For these and many other examples, see L. Ettmüller, Vaulu-Spá (Leipzig, 1830) 144;
W. Oehl, Indogerm. Forsch. 57 (1949) 9–10; J. Goody, Comparative Studies in Kinship (Stan-
ford, 1969) 240–52; Bremmer, ‘Avunculate’, 67 note 4; L. M. Savoia, ASNP III 8 (1978) 698.

raphers and inscriptions. We owe an early occurrence of νέννος to a palmary

emendation of the great Austrian epigrapher Adolf Wilhelm (1864–1950), who
restored νέννον, instead of the transmitted νέον, in the epigram that Chrysippos’
SiSo had inscribed on his uncle’s statue:54
τὸν νέννον Χρύσιππον Ἀριστοκρέων ἀνέθηκε
τῶν Ἀκαδημιακῶν στραγγαλίδων κοπίδα.
Of uncle Chrysippus Aristocreon this likeness erected:
the knots the Academy tied the cleaver, Chrysippus.
A varia lectio in Pollux (3.16 = Adespota F *769 KA) gives the reading νόννος,
which survives in modern Greek as ‘godfather’.55 Still another variant of νέννος
is νάννας which Hesychius (ν 53) explains as ‘maternal and paternal uncle’,56 but
the related νάννη only means ‘maternal aunt’ (ν 53).57 In this case again, the pop-
ularity will have derived from the close association of the mother with her sister;
among the Romans the matertera, ‘maternal aunt’, also was the favourite aunt.58
All the Greek terms mentioned are related to personal names such as Nana,
Nannion, Nanno, Nenaios, Ninas, Nonnos, and the like,59 names that were
54 Plut. Mor. 1033e, tr. H. Cherniss, Loeb, cf. A. Wilhelm, ‘Nέννος’, Hermes 35 (1900) 669–
70, reprinted in his Kleine Schriften II.4 (Vienna, 2002) 377–78, and ‘Ψήφισμα Ἀθηναίων’ and
‘Ἐπίμετρον’, .Eph. Arch. 1901, 49–57, 57–58, respectively, reprinted in his Kleine Schriften II.2
(Leipzig, 1984) 13–17. According to J. and L. Robert, Bull. Ep. 1969, no. 184, ‘la correction …
nous paraît s’imposer de façon évidente’. The statue is discussed by H. Ingholt, ‘Aratos and
Chrysippos on a Lead Medallion from a Beirut Collection’, Berytus 17 (1968) 143–77.
55 The female nóna occurs in a Christian inscription of Cyzicus: H. Grégoire, Recueil des
inscription grecques-chrétiennes d’Asie Mineure I (Paris 1926) no. 16.

56 As does Aristophanes Byz. F 225.
57 Νάννη has been recognised by A. Wilhelm, Griechische Epigramme aus Kreta (Oslo
1950) 32 in a bad Greek poem (now Peek, Griech. Versinschr. 1159) on a boy who had fallen
into a pit (for a similar accident, cf. IG XIV.2067; CIL VI.29195; Theodoretus, Hist. Rel. 2.17);
SEG 12.321; J. and L. Robert, Bull. Ep. 1965, p. 185 also recognised the term on a Egyptian
stele to which attention had been drawn by H. Petersen, CPh 59 (1964) 170 note 53; SEG
48.736. For aunts in Greece, note that Dionysos especially reproaches the ἀδελφαὶ μητρός, ἃς
ἥκιστ’ ἐχρῆν (Eur. Bacch. 26).
58 Hallett, Fathers and Daughters, 183–86, who compares Persius, Sat. 2.31 ff.; Cic. Div.
1.47, 104 and Or. 2.1.2; add Passio Perpetuae 5.3.

59 For these and other examples, see R. Dostálová-Janistová, ‘Der Name Nonnos’, in
Studia antiqua: Antonio Salac septuagenario oblata (Prague, 1955) 102–9; J. M. Hannssens,
‘Nónnos, nónna et nonnus, nonne’, Or. Christ. Per. 26 (1960) 29–41; L. Zgusta, Kleinasiatische
Personennamen (Prague, 1964) § 1013; R. Stefanini, ‘Riflessioni onomastiche su Nannó’,
Rendiconti dell’Istituto Lombardo, Classe di Lettere etc. 104 (1970) 197–201; G. Petzl, Die
Inschriften von Smyrna, 2 vols (Bonn, 1982) I.106 (on Nannion); A. M. Addabbo, ‘Nonnita:
una nota di onomastica’, Arch. Glott. Ital. 76 (1991) 114–20; O. Masson, Onomastica Graeca
Selecta III (Geneva, 2000) 236–38. For the Roman Nanneiani, see A. M. Ward, Marcus Crassus
and the Late Roman Republic (Columbia/London 1977) 227–230. On Nanos as a name for
Odysseus, see N. M. Horsfall, Fifty Years at the Sibyl’s Heels (Oxford, 2020) 88 f. These and
other personal names can now be easily found in the wonderful Lexicon of Greek Personal
Names (https://www.lgpn.ox.ac.uk/).

especially popular in Anatolia, although some of these names may have owed
their existence to the longlasting influence of the Sumero-Akkadian goddess
Nanâ. 60 Finally, there are the kinship terms νίν(ν)η, νείνη, and προνίννος – terms
that are typical for Northern Greece.61 They are normally translated as ‘grand-
mother’, although the last one more likely means ‘great-grandmother’. 62 In this
case, too, however, it would be probably more accurate to translate, ‘maternal
grandmother’, since a mother and her own mother are often mentioned togeth-
er. 63 In England ‘nanna’ also typically means the mother’s mother. 64
The existence of νέννος and the absence of a similar word to denote the pater-
nal uncle and grandfather thus confirm what our evidence indicated: in ancient
Greece, as among many other peoples, a special relationship existed between the
MoFa and MoBr and the DaSo and SiSo. In Western society such relationships
no longer exist, but we may recall that our use of the term ‘uncle’ as a term of
endearment derives from the Latin avunculus, or MoBr, and thus still testifies to
the special tie that once shaped the life of so many a Greek boy.
Appendix: Some Persian Evidence
In addition to the detailed studies of the Roman, Celtic, Germanic (above,

note 5), and Greek evidence, I note here a few passages on the MoBr/SiSo rela-
tionship in Persia, which our classical authors furnish. In his Cyropaedia, Xen-
ophon mentions Cyrus as having great pleasure in gratifying his MoFa Astyag-
es and his MoBr Cyaxares (1.3.11). His uncle also accompanies Cyrus on the
hunt (1.4.7) and is very close to him (2.4.5–6.), even though later Cyrus’ success
makes him jealous (5.5.5 ff.). The Lesbian Phainias (F 25 = Plut. Arist. 9) de-
scribed the three Persian prisoners who Themistocles allegedly sacrificed as the
sons of Sandake, the sister of the Persian king. Many centuries later, Procopius
(Pers. 1.23) noted that Chosroes cruelly suppressed a conspiracy and ‘among
those killed was even Aspebedes, the brother of his mother’; the murder of the
MoBr apparently was the height of cruelty.65
However, these passages cannot be taken as unequivocal information about
Persian kinship relationships, as we cannot be sure whether his description of
the Cyrus/Cyaxares relationship was not influenced by the Greek MoBr/SiSo
60 G. Azarpay, ‘The Sumero-Akkadian Nanâ, the goddess of Transoxania’, Journ. Am. Or.
Soc. 96 (1976) 536–542.

61 Nίννη: IG X 2.1, 510, 617, 624; IGBulg IV.2252; SEG 30.603, 38.581; G. Mihailov, CPh 70
(1975) 56. Nείνη: Bull. Inst. arch. Bulgare 26 (1963) 149. Προνίννος: SEG 37.590.
62 Cf. προμάμμη (LSJ s.v.); Latin proavus.
63 P.Michig. 466.44; P.Oxy. 3.496.5; P.Erlang. 85.10. For these and more examples, see
C. Spicq, ‘“Lois, ta grand “maman” (II Tim., I,5)’, Rev. Biblique 84 (1977) 362–64.
64 Cf. Goody, Comparative Studies.
65 See also Janko on Il. 13.694–97.

relationship. And whatever Phainias and Procopius’ value is for the Persian
evidence, 66 they certainly tried to raise the pathos of their Greek readers and
thus are additional witnesses for the special position of the maternal uncle in
Classical Greece and Early Byzantium. 67
66 Although the name Sandake appears to be Iranian (*SS/Canda-ka-), as Rüdiger Schmitt
(letter 23–7-1982) informs me, the legendary character of Themistocles’ sacrifice has been
conclusively shown by A. Henrichs, Greek Myth and Religion (Berlin and Boston, 2019)
46–56; for the prisoners being the SiSo’s of the Persian king, see Henrichs, 52 note 63; see also
M. González González, ‘Who Should be Sacrificed? Human Sacrifice and Status in Plutarch:
Themistocles 13, Pelopidas 21–22, Philopoemen 21’, Arethusa 52 (2019) 165–79.
67 This chapter is an expanded version of my contribution to a panel on kinship at the 1981
American Philological Association Convention in San Francisco. For information and com-
ments I would like to thank my friends and colleagues Walter Burkert (1931–2015), Richard
Buxton, Fritz Graf, Albert Henrichs (1942–2017), Michael Kerschner, Robert Parker and
Charles Segal (1936–2002). Janet Downie kindly and carefully corrected the final version.

Chapter 14
Fosterage, Kinship and the Circulation of Children
In the second half of the second century AD, Pausanias travelled around Greece
in order to describe local myths and the monuments still present.1 In the small
city of Troezen, not far from Athens, he recorded certain stories about Theseus,
the greatest Athenian hero: ‘when Heracles visited Pittheus at Troezen he laid
down the lion’s skin at dinner, and there came in to him some Troezenian chil-
dren, among whom was Theseus, then just seven years old. They say that when
the rest of the children saw the skin they ran away, but that Theseus, not much
afraid, slipped out, snatched an axe from the servants, and at once came on in
earnest, thinking the skin was a lion’. According to Pausanias, ‘this is the first
story the Troezenians tell of him’. The second is this: ‘Aegeus deposited boots
and a sword under a rock as tokens of the boy’s identity, and then sailed away to
Athens; but when Theseus was sixteen years old, he pushed up the rock and
carried off what Aegeus had deposited there. There is a statue on the Acropolis
illustrative of this story: it is all of bronze except the rock’ (1.27.7–8, tr. Frazer).
In literature, the story of Theseus’ stay in Troezen is first attested in Calli
machus’ Hecale.2 However, the scene of Theseus lifting the rock already occurs
on Athenian and Etruscan vases from the middle of the fifth century, which
proves that the story easily predates the Hellenistic age.3 Apparently, it had re-
mained alive in Troezen because of the presence of a monument – a not uncom-
mon prompt in antiquity for the collective memory.4 But why was a son of the
Athenian king living in Troezen? We find relevant ‘information’ in Plutarch’s
biography, which relates that Pittheus was the father-in-law of Aegeus.5 In oth-
er words, Theseus was being raised by his maternal grandfather, which is a clear
1 On Pausanias, see C. Habicht, Pausanias’ Guide to Ancient Greece (Berkeley, 1985);
K. W. Arafat, Pausanias’ Greece, Ancient Artists and Roman Rulers (Cambridge, 1996);
V. Pirenne-Delforge, Retour à la source: Pausanias et la religion grecque (Liège, 2008). Note
that the Penguin translation by Peter Levi is less reliable than that by James G. Frazer (1898).
2 Call. F. 237, 281, 345, 361 Pfeiffer = Hecale 12–15 Hollis, cf. A. Ambühl, Kinder und
junge Helden. Innovative Aspekte des Umgangs mit der literarischen Tradition bei Kallima
chos (Leuven, 2005) 31–58.
3 C. Weber-Lehman, ‘Theseus’, in LIMC VII.1 (Zürich, 1994) 17–29.
4 R. Thomas, Oral Tradition and Written Record in Classical Athens (Cambridge, 1989);
J. N. Bremmer, Greek Religion (Cambridge, 20212) 33.

5 Plut. Thes. 3–6, cf. C. Calame, Thésée et l’imaginaire Athénien (Paris, 20183) 70 f.

case of fosterage, that is, the education by foster parents instead of the biological
parents.
The Greek verb used for ‘raise’ is τρέφω, which is the usual verb in such cases.
Normally, we translate it ‘feed’, but the passage in Pausanias shows that such a
translation overlooks the educational factor. 6 The connection between ‘feeding’
and ‘educating’ is not only found in ancient Greece. In the Latin texts of the
Celts, the foster-father is called nutricius; the Germanic root of fosterage, *fod-,
lies at the basis of English ‘food’; and Latin alumnus, ‘foster child’, derives from
the verb alo, ‘feed’.7 It seems clear that the Greek vocabulary for fosterage goes
back to ancient times and is, plausibly, even of Indo-European origin.
Plutarch also mentions that Theseus had a private tutor in the shape of
Konnidas. The name of this Athenian mythological hero is derived from κόννος,
one of the various terms in Greece for the hairstyle of male adolescents.8 The
paidagôgos as such did not yet exist in Archaic Greece and is an anachronism
here,9 but the name of the tutor underlines the educational aspect of Theseus’
fosterage.
The education of a boy by his maternal grandfather is not uncommon in the
literature of archaic Greece and is already mentioned in the Iliad. The Trojan
Iphidamas was raised (the Greek uses a form of the verb τρέφω) by Kisseus, his
MoFa (11.221–24), and Neoptolemus was raised on the island of Skyros, where
his father Achilles had left him with his father-in-law Lykomedes (19.326–27).
The motif is still used by Euripides in his tragedy Kresphontes, where after the
murder of his father the homonymous protagonist is raised by his mother’s
father, the Arcadian king Kypselos. We know this from later sources, since a
papyrus fragment of the Kresphontes breaks off virtually after the words ‘his
mother’s father…’.10
The relation between fosterage and the mother’s family is unique, and in our
tradition we do not find any examples of a comparable role for the father’s fam-
ily. Studies of Greek kinship have always stressed the importance of the father’s
6 C. Moussy, Recherches sur trephô et les verbes signifiant nourrir (Paris, 1969); P. Demont,
‘Remarques sur le sens de trephô’, REG 91 (1978) 358–84.

7 F. Kerlouegan, ‘Essai sur la mise en nourriture et l’éducation dans les pays celtiques
d’après le témoignage des textes hagiographiques latins’, Études Celtiques 12 (1968–9) 101–46.
For Celtic fosterage, see also H. Birkhan, Kelten (Vienna, 1997) 876, 1006–09; C. Ireland,
‘The Ambiguous Attitude toward Fosterage in Early Irish Literature’, in D. Disterheft et al.
(eds), Studies in Honor of Jaan Puhvel I (Washington, DC, 1997) 93–96; Th. O’Donnell,
Fosterage in Medieval Ireland (Amsterdam, 2020); J. Boswell, The Kindness of Strangers (Har-
mondsworth, 1989) 356 (Germanic peoples); C. Moussy, ‘Alo, alesco, adolesco’, in Étrennes de
septantaine. Travaux … offerts à Michel Lejeune (Paris, 1978) 167–78.
8 See this volume, Chapter 1.6–7.
9 Paidagôgos: M. Golden, Children and Childhood in Classical Athens (Baltimore, 1990)
147–49.
10 Eur. F 448a.30, cf. C. Collard et al., Euripides: selected fragmentary plays I (Warminster,
1995) 126 (by M. Cropp).

Chapter 14: Fosterage, Kinship and the Circulation of Children 221
family (see below). None of them has paid any attention to the role of the moth-
er’s family in the education. This silence has led me to pose some questions
about Greek kinship relations. First, are there more examples of this unexpected
interest on the part of the mother’s family? Secondly, if this is indeed the case,
what is the best way of characterising Greek kinship relations? Finally, what
was the function of fosterage, and what does this educational practice tell us
about the place of children in ancient society?11
These questions direct us to a theme that has often attracted the attention of
anthropologists, namely kinship relations, and within those relations the place
of children. The theme could probably fill a book, and we have to limit our-
selves. I shall concentrate on Archaic Greece and Athens, the city about which
we are best informed. However, as I shall also touch on the period before the
rise of the polis, my results may well be of comparative interest for investigations
into the kinship systems of the Celtic and Germanic peoples, as well as for stu-
dents of the earlier Middle Ages.
1. The role of the maternal family
In Archaic Greece, children were not only raised by their maternal grandfather,
they could even become his successor: in Greek mythology, there are various
examples where a king lacks a son and is succeeded by his daughter’s son.12
Perseus left his son behind with his wife Andromeda’s father Kepheus, who had
no sons; Leukippos left the throne of Sicyon to his daughter’s son, because he
had no male heir; and Hippothous requested the kingdom of his maternal
grandfather Kerkyon as his rightful inheritance. In two other cases, a grandfa-
ther was succeeded by his daughter’s sons, even though he did have sons of his
own. We might wonder if in this aspect myth closely reflects reality. But one of
those cases, that of Bellerophon, took place in Anatolia, where in the time of the
Hittites succession by a daughter’s son had indeed been the rule,13 and the suc-
cession by a sister’s son is widely documented in the historical and ethnograph-
ic evidence.14
11 These questions are insufficiently answered in the studies of the Greek and/or Athenian
family by S. Pomeroy, Families in Classical and Hellenistic Greece (Oxford, 1997); C. A. Cox,
Household Interests: property, marriage strategies, and family dynamics in ancient Athens
(Princeton, 1998); C. A. Patterson, The Family in Greek History (Cambridge, MA, 1998).
12 I derive all examples for which no source is given from this volume, Chapter 13.
13 Greeks: this volume, Chapter 13.1. Hittites: T. V. Gamkrelidze and V. V. Ivanov, Indo-
European and the Indo-Europeans, 2 vols (Berlin 1995) 1.675.

14 D. Potts, ‘The Epithet “Sister’s Son” in Ancient Elam. Aspects of the Avunculate in
Cross-cultural Perspective’, in K. Kleber et al. (eds), Grenzüberschreitungen. Studien zur

Kulturgeschichte des Alten Orients: Festschrift fur Hans Neumann (Münster, 2018) 523–55.

The potential candidacy of a daughter’s son for the throne may well explain
the attempt by a grandfather to kill his grandson. When, according to the my-
thographer Apollodorus ‘Acrisius inquired of the oracle how he should get male
children, the god said that his daughter would give birth to a son who would kill
him. Fearing that, Acrisius built a brazen chamber underground and there
guarded Danae … When Acrisius afterwards learned that she had got a child,
Perseus, he would not believe that she had been seduced by Zeus, and putting
his daughter with the child in a chest, he cast it into the sea’. When Perseus had
reached adulthood, he returned home, accidentally killed his grandfather and so
became king.15
How can we interpret this myth? It should be clear by now that scholarship
must be extremely careful in using mythology in order to reconstruct ideas and
practices in Archaic Greece. Yet we have learned from mistakes in the past, and
surely some progress has been made. One of the more fertile insights stresses
that myths play a role in making explicit aspects of Greek civilisation that re-
main hidden in daily life, such as collective fears.16 A good illustration is the role
of women in (male-produced) myth, where they are frequently pictured as ag-
gressive and dominant in a way that cannot have been the reflection of daily
experience.17 Many myths, therefore, tell us more about the unconscious Angst
of the Greek male than about real-life relations. It seems that the myth of Perseus
made manifest one of these fears, since some kings must have feared that their
daughters’ sons would not wait for their death or abdication.
The myth probably tells us something too, albeit in an indirect manner, about
the relationship between a grandfather and his daughter’s son, as may be appar-
ent from a comparison with the relationship between fathers and sons.18 The
latter relationship was considered so important (though more along lines of loy-
alty, respect and obedience than affection) that the producers of myth could not
imagine a premeditated parricide. If it ever came about that a son was the cause
of his father’s death, then he could not possibly have known that the victim was
his father: witness Oedipus. Alternatively, he caused his father’s death simply by
mistake, as when Theseus forgot to change the sails after his victory on the
Minotaur (Chapter 10). All later sources stress the affectionate character of the
relationship between a grandfather and his daughter’s son. This is well illustrat-
ed by the words of Orestes about his maternal grandfather Tyndareus in Euri-
15 Apollod. 2.4.1, tr. J. G. Frazer. For Perseus, see this volume, Preface, note 46 (bibliogra-
phy); for the type of myth, see J. N. Bremmer and N. M. Horsfall, Roman Myth and My
thography (Londen 1987) 27–30 (by Bremmer).
16 Cf. K. Dowden, The Uses of Greek Mythology (London, 1992); F. Graf, Greek Mytho
logy (Baltimore, 1993); R. Buxton, Imaginary Greece (Cambridge, 1994) 129 (on ‘making ex-
cplicit’).
17 Cf. Bremmer, The World, 244.
18 Most of our evidence derives from the Athenian relationship between fathers and sons,
see this volume, Chapter 13.2.

pides’ Orestes (462–5): ‘Indeed, he raised me [again a form of the verb τρέφω]
when I was still small and he fully accomplished the signs of friendship regard-
ing me: he carried me, the son of Agamemnon, around, and also Leda [the
grandmother: a very rare mention of the mother’s mother] – honouring me no
less than the Dioskouroi’ [their own children]. The relationship will hardly have
been different in Archaic Greece. The myth of Perseus, then, is also an early
witness to this affectionate relationship, since the myth could not possibly im-
agine a premeditated murder of the maternal grandfather.19
Besides a good relationship with the maternal grandfather, there are a number
of testimonies to a good relationship with the maternal uncle, who was also the
favourite uncle among the Romans, Germanic peoples and Celts, and remained
so in the High Middle Ages: the Dutch word oom (German Oheim, Old English
eme), uncle, derives from the original Germanic word for maternal uncle, which
from the twelfth century onwards, but only gradually, began to acquire the
meaning of paternal uncle.20 However, in the Greek world the difference be-
tween maternal and paternal uncle was less marked than in the Roman world,
where patruus became synonymous with ‘very strict, severe’.21
The maternal uncle has an educational, even initiatory function in the myths
of Odysseus (Chapter 1.4), Meleager (Chapter 4) and the expedition of Jason
with his Argonauts (Preface). Even though the classical period no longer prac-
tised initiation proper, the maternal uncle continued to play an inspirational
role for his nephew, since several nephews choose the same profession as their
maternal uncle, such as Plato’s sister’s son and Callimachus’ homonymous sis-
ter’s son (Chapter 13.2).22 The relationship with the maternal uncle will often
have been better that that with the maternal grandfather, since differences in age
were much smaller, and in many cases the maternal grandfather must already
have passed away. Evidently, the Greeks, like many other Indo-European peo-
ples (I limit myself to those civilisations I have some acquaintance with) had
avoided the difficult combination of affection and discipline within the educa-
tion of the young by dividing it between the father and the maternal uncle. It is,
after all, a combination in which the modern father – and I speak from experi-
ence – is not always successful.
19 Parricide: this volume, Chapter 10.2. Mother’s father and daughter’s son: this volume,
Chapter 13.2; Golden, Children and Childhood, 136–40 (grandfathers and grandchildren).

20 Germanic and Celtic peoples: this volume, Chapter 13, Introduction. Middle Ages:
U. Peters, ‘Von der Sozialgeschichte zur Familienhistorie’, Beiträge z. Geschichte der deut
schen Sprache und Lit. 112 (1990) 404–36 at 413–14 (bibliography); D. Kullmann, Verwandt
schaft in epischer Dichtung (Tübingen, 1992).
21 J. Hallett, Fathers and Daughters in Roman Society (Princeton, 1984) 152–68; M. Bettini,
Anthropology and Roman Culture (Baltimore 1991) 14–66.

22 Note also the case of the Athenian military instructors ca. 200 BC as discussed by
Pomeroy, Families, 158 f.

In Classical Athens, only males had a public identity, and it was not customary
to mention respectable women by name in public during their lifetime: the same
woman could be called ‘the wife of x’, ‘the daughter of y’, or ‘the mother of z’.23
These circumstances make that we are hardly able to say anything about the re-
lationship between a woman and her maternal uncle. It is therefore interesting to
note that in Aristophanes’ Clouds the adolescent Phidippides is strongly under
the influence of his mother’s maternal uncle, whom he himself (46, 124) also calls
‘uncle’. Evidently, despite the isolation to which Greek women were subjected, it
was not uncommon for a woman to receive visits from her maternal uncle. It is
clear, then, that the mother’s family hardly played some negligible role in Greek
life.24 It even seems to have been the case that the role of the mother’s family in
the education was more important than that of the father. This preponderance
may well be explained by the fact that Greek fathers left the education of the
younger children mainly to the mother. It was only later in adolescence that they
stepped in and took the education of the sons into their own hands.25
Are there any other spheres of life where the family of the one side was more
important than that of the other? Unfortunately, we are not in the position of
the modern anthropologist who can settle in a Greek community and make a
close study of local relationships.26 Yet we are not totally deprived of possibili-
ties, since there exist at least four situations in which we can reasonably analyse
the functioning of both families: war, legal proceedings, adoption, and death.
We begin with war in Archaic Greece. In the Iliad, Hector is regularly assist-
ed by his family in the fight against the Greeks. Evidently, such help could be
expected at critical moments. But from whose family did his help come, from
that of his father Priam or that of his mother Hecuba? After Hector with his
Trojan troops has advanced right into the camp of the Greeks, Ajax and his al-
lies kill three full paternal cousins, namely Klytios (15.421–2), Dolops (15.543)
and Melanippos (15.576–8), and a paternal second cousin, Laodamas (15.516–
17), one after the other. And in the somewhat later pseudo-Hesiodic Catalogue
of Women (F 212a), Patroclus is not called the friend of Achilles, as we would
have expected, but his paternal cousin. We may also note that, during his la-
bours, Heracles is always accompanied by his brother’s son Iolaus.27
On the other hand, one could also enter battle with one’s maternal uncle:
Apollo appeared to Hector in the shape of his mother’s brother Asios in order to
exhort him to challenge Patroclus; Achilles’ sister’s son Menesthios was second
23J. N. Bremmer, ‘Plutarch and the Naming of Greek Women’, AJPh 102 (1981) 425 f.
24For the terminology of the family on the mother’s side, see J. Wackernagel, Kleine
Schriften, 2 vols (Göttingen, 1953) 1.477–82, to be added to É. Benveniste, Le vocabulaire des
institutions indo-européennes, 2 vols (Paris, 1969) 1.230 f.
25 For the education by the mothers, see this volume, Chapter 10.3.
26 See, e. g., R. Just, ‘The Limits of Kinship’, in P. Loizos and E. Papataxiarchis (eds), Con
tested Identities: gender and kinship in modern Greece (Princeton, 1991) 114–32.
27 M. Pipili, ‘Iolaus’, in LIMC V.1 (1990) 686–96.

in command of his fleet; and during the famous campaign of the Seven against
Thebes, Adrastos was accompanied by his sister’s son Hippomedon. The Greeks
were not unique in this respect. In the early Germanic world and the medieval
society of the chansons de geste, the maternal uncle is often assisted in battle by
his nephew; here we may also recall that in ancient Israel, David’s army was
commanded by Joab, his sister’s son.28 In Archaic Greece, anyhow, there does
not seem to have been a significant difference between the assistance offered by
the father’s or the mother’s family, at least not in our fictional sources.
Let us now move to historical Athens, where our second example concerns
the presence of kin during court cases. From the many surviving orations of the
fourth century, we are able to gain considerable insight into how far relatives
were called up as positive witnesses and from which side, that of the father or
that of the mother, one could expect the most support. From a detailed investi-
gation, Sally Humphreys concludes that ‘ties traced through women seem to
have been rather more likely to produce support than those traced through
males … and there is perhaps a slight tendency for matrikin to appear as more
supportive than patrikin, although the difference is certainly not statistically
significant’.29 This conclusion seems to me very important, since it is precisely
in this area of court cases that we have much Athenian evidence at our disposal.
We are also not badly informed in our third area, adoption, even though most
of the material derives from the same orations. In classical Athens, marriage, as
it was not in Archaic Greece, was subjected to various legal rules, and parents
had to give the bride a dowry.30 An heiress without brothers, the epiklêros, was
obliged to marry first her paternal uncle.31 If he was unable or unwilling to ful-
fil his duty, he had to procure a dowry in order to enable the heiress to marry.
However, the husband of the heiress did not become the owner of her posses-
sions. On the contrary, only his sons became the new owners and thus in fact
inherited from their mother’s father. This practice too points to the importance
of the mother’s family. It was also possible for a father to keep the inheritance
within the family by adopting the future husband of his daughter, in which case
28 Germanic world: R. H. Bremmer, ‘The Importance of Kinship: uncle and nephew in
“Beowulf”’, Amsterdamer Beiträge z. älteren Germanistik 15 (1980) 21–38 at 33 note 55; this

volume, Chapter 13.2. Chansons: R. Bezzola, ‘Les neveux’, in Mélanges…Jean Frappier, 2 vols
(Geneva, 1970) 1.89–114 (with a useful list of all the cousins); Kullmann, Verwandtschaft,
88–92; T. Nolte, ‘Das Avunkulat in der deutschen Literatur des Mittelalters’, Poetica 27 (1995)
225–53. Joab: 1 Chronicles 2.16; Paul, too, is assisted by his SiSo: Acts 23.16.
29 S. C. Humphreys, ‘Kinship Patterns in the Athenian Courts’, GRBS 27 (1986) 57–91;
note also D. Cohen, Law, Violence and Community in Classical Athens (Cambridge, 1995)
163–80.
30 For Athenian marriage, see A. R. W. Harrison, The Law of Athens, 2 vols (Oxford, 1968)
1.3–9; E. J. Bickerman, Religions and Politics in the Hellenistic and Roman Periods (Como,
1985) 559–88: J. Modrzejeweski, Statut personnel et liens de famille dans les droits de l’Antiq
uité (London, 1993) Ch. 5, with addenda.
31 See the helpful diagram in Patterson, Family in Greek History, 98.

the genealogy of the daughter’s son would lead back to the maternal family.32
This custom, may be a continuation of the Homeric uxorilocal marriages dis-
cussed below.33 From the nearly forty attested cases of adoption only a few con-
cern those of a male agnate by the male line, and even those are mostly only
posthumous; the case of the adoption by the father’s father is even rather com-
plicated because the adoptee himself was through adoption also the paternal
uncle of his own mother! On the other hand, we have at least six cases of adopt-
ing the sister’s son, one case of the grandson of a sister’s son, and one of the
wife’s brother. In this area, the mother’s family seems to have been by far the
more favoured.34
Finally, death. Were Athenians customarily buried in a family grave and, if
so, who was considered to be family? Unfortunately, our information is rather
scanty, since the older graves in particular contain no epitaphs or insufficient
ones. In many later cases we find the nuclear family or parts thereof, for example
a brother or a sister. If there are two generations, the grave usually also contains
the children of brothers or sisters; there is even a burial together with a maternal
uncle. Graves with three generations usually contain father, son and grandson
with the respective wives and (unmarried?) daughters, and we have at least one
grave with relatives on the mother’s side.35 The famous orator Isocrates, who
occupied a very prominent grave, was buried with his parents, his brother, his
adopted son with his two sons, but also with his mother’s sister and her son.36
2. The character of Greek kinship relations
Up to now, studies of Greek kinship relations have mostly limited themselves to

an analysis of the kinship terminology within a comparative Indo-European
framework. Despite variations in detail, virtually all have reached the conclu-
32 The close connection between adoption and the institution of the epiklêros was already
noticed by Louis Gernet in 1920, see his Droit et société dans la Grèce ancienne (Paris, 1955)
121–49 at 129–31.
33 Epiklêros: see more recently: PCG V 27 (comedies entitled Epiklêros); Cox, Household
Interests, 94–99; R. V.Cudjoe, ‘The Purpose of the “Epidikasia” for an “Epikleros” in Classi-
cal Athens’, Dike 8 (2006) 55–88; D. Kamini, ‘The Contribution of the Law of epikleros to the
Comic Effect of Phormio’, in J. Nagyillés et al. (eds), Sapiens Ubique Civis (Budapest, 2015)
67–77; S. C. Humphreys, Kinship in Ancient Athens, 2 vols (Oxford, 2018) 1.109–18.
34 See the survey in L. Rubinstein, Adoption in IV. Century Athens (Copenhagen, 1993)
117–25; C. A. Cox, ‘The Names of Adoptees: some prosopographical afterthoughts’, ZPE 107
(1995) 249–54 and Household Interests, 125–28, 148–51; Humphreys, Kinship in Ancient Ath
ens, 1.66–84.
35 S. C. Humphreys, The Family, Women and Death (London, 1983) 79–130; I. Morris,
Burial and Ancient Society (Cambridge, 1987) 52–54, 90–91; Cox, Household Interests, 38 f.
36 A. Scholl, ‘POLUTALANTA MNEMEIA: Zur Literarischen und monumentalen
Überlieferung aufwendiger Grabmäler im spätklassischen Athen’, JDAI 109 (1994) 239–71 at

240–52; Cox, Household Interests, 39.

sion that the Indo-European kinship system was endogamous, patriarchal, pat-
rilocal and patrilineal.37 Certainly, their investigations have often enriched our
understanding and knowledge, but without exception they also fail in two re-
spects. First, they are still moving within the nineteenth-century tradition,
which looked at the nuclear family from an evolutionistic point of view and was
especially interested in the reconstruction of the primeval situation. This per-
spective has maintained itself almost up to the present day, but is increasingly
open to criticism: recent research stresses the socio-cultural context of the kin-
ship relations instead of the traditional reduction of these relations to a kind of
higher algebra with numerous diagrams.38 Secondly, earlier investigations vir-
tually always involved a direct step from kinship terminology to kinship sys-
tem. Consequently, they hardly took into consideration social variations or
tensions within the system, relationships not covered by the terminology, or
diachronous developments within individual Indo-European traditions.39 In
the light of these objections, we may ask to what extent we can still accept as
valid the qualifications ‘endogamous, patriarchal, patrilocal and patrilineal’?
Let us start with the problem of endogamy, which has drawn the attention of
Indo-Europeanists and classicists only more recently. According to Émile Ben-
veniste (1902–1969), the Greeks and other Indo-European peoples practised
matrilateral cross-cousin marriage: that is, a marriage of ego with a daughter of
the mother’s brother. Benveniste did not produce any specific instances of this
kind of marriage, but deduced its existence from the (near) identity of the words
for mother’s father and mother’s brother, for example Greek mêtrôs or Latin
avus and avunculus.40 However, if ego did not marry his mother’s brother’s
daughter as a rule,41 in the Archaic Age he certainly seemed to have not infre-
quently married his mother’s sister, witness Diomedes (Il. 5.412), Iphidamas
37 See, for example, A. M. Hocart, Imagination and proof (Tucson, 1987) 61–84 (19281);
H. Galton, ‘The Indo-European Kinship Terminology’, Zs. f. Ethnologie 82 (1957) 121–38;

G. Ghurye, Family and Kin in Indo-European Culture (Bombay, 19622); Benveniste, Le vo
cabulaire, 1.203–76; H. P. Gates, The Kinship Terminology of Homeric Greek (Baltimore,
1971); O. Szemerényi, Scripta minora III (Innsbruck, 1987) 1455–75; Gamkrelidze and Iva-
nov, Indo-European and the Indo-Europeans, 1.658–77.
38 M. Godelier, ‘L’Occident, miroir brisé. Une évaluation partielle de l’anthropologie so-
ciale assortie de quelques perspectives’, Annales ESC 48 (1993) 1183–1207; M. G. Peletz, ‘Kin-
ship Studies in Late Twentieth-century Anthropology’, Annual Review of Anthropology 24
(1995) 343–72; J. Faubian, ‘Kinship is Dead. Long Live Kinship’, CSSH 38 (1996) 67–91; J.-H.
Déchaux, ‘Kinship Studies: neoclassicism and new wave. A critical review’, Revue française
de sociologie 47 (2006) 591–620; F. F. Furstenberg, ‘Kinship Reconsidered: research on a ne-
glected topic’, J. Marriage and Family 82 (2020) 364–82.
39 J. Goody, The Oriental, the Ancient and the Primitive (Cambridge, 1990) 23, points out
that these are frequent mistakes in the study of kinship relations.

40 Benveniste, Le vocabulaire, 1.223–37; Gamkrelidze and Ivanov, Indo-European and In
do-Europeans, 1.671.
41 See also I. Morris, `The Gortyn Code and Greek Society’, GRBS 31 (1990) 233–54. For
an exception, note Humphreys, The Family, 109; for modern exceptions, J. Pitt-Rivers, The

(Il. 11.221–22), Aeetes (Hes. Th. 352–56) and Pandion (Apollod. 3.14.8). On the
other hand, there were also marriages with the brother’s daughter, as with Alci-
nous (Od. 7.63–6) or Kretheus and Amythaon (Apollod. 1.9.11); in the case of Al
cinous, Homer even explicitly mentions that he married an heiress, which seems
to point already to the practice of the epiklêros in the Classical period. It would
appear that there is a certain preference for the mother’s family in these cases.
The type of marriage with a member of the older generation hardly seems to
have survived into classical Athens, but we do hear of a marriage with the broth-
er’s daughter (Lysias 32.4 and [Dem.] 43.73), and of an offer of such a marriage,
even though it was declined (Dem. 44.10); the marriage of the orator Lysias with
his sister’s daughter was even more exceptional ([Dem.] 59.22). Lysias was a
metic and his possibilities may thus have been rather limited: from the time of
Pericles, Athenians could marry legally only with children of two Athenian
parents. We have virtually no information about practice outside Athens, but
the Spartan King Leonidas had married Gorgo, the daughter of his brother
Cleomenes (Hdt. 7.239), and Plutarch, in his Life of Dio (6), mentions that Dio-
nysius I (c. 430–367), a tyrant of Syracuse, had married his daughter Arete to his
brother and after his death to the brother of one of his two wives. Presumably,
the tyrant did not want to enter into an alliance with anyone of the prominent
families of Syracuse in order to avoid a jealous reaction on the part of the others.
After the Archaic Age, if they wanted to marry a member of their family, the
Athenians preferred a partner of their own generation, even if the husband was
usually twice the age of his wife.42 It is impossible to establish the frequency of
endogamous marriage in Classical Athens, since we need at least five names in
order to be certain of the exact relationship. Yet though literary sources and
inscriptions tend to be insufficiently informative – and in any case, as we have
seen, the names of respectable women often went unmentioned – we can still
give some indications. From the fifteen or so Athenian marriages of which we
can establish the exact relationship, there are roughly as many matrilateral as
patrilateral parallel-cousin instances – that is, marriages with the daughter of a
mother’s sister or the father’s brother. In the second half of the fourth century,
Menander even wrote one of his comedies around this theme. His play, the As
pis, ends with marriages of a boy with the daughter of his paternal uncle and of
his sister with the stepson of her paternal uncle.43
In passing we may note that, in addition to class endogamy, the Athenians
were familiar with a degree of local endogamy, since a number of marriages were
People of the Sierra (Chicago, 19712) 103–06. Note also a marriage with the mother’s brother’s
daughter’s daughter: Cox, Household Interests, 12.
42 R. Just, Women in Athenian Law and Life (London, 1989) 151 f.
43 W. E. Thompson, ‘The Marriage of First Cousins in Athenian Society’, Phoenix 21
(1967) 273–82; some additions, but no mention of Menander’s Aspis, in id., `Athenian Marriage
Patterns: remarriage’, California Studies in Classical Antiquity 5 (1972) 211–25 at 211 note 2.

clearly concluded within a specific deme. It was even the case that after a mar-
riage with a partner of another deme, the children (so to speak) married back into
the original deme. Once again, our prosopographical data are limited and not
crystal clear, because we do not know whether those epitaphs are local which do
not indicate an origin from a certain deme. In any case, it was very normal to
marry outside one’s own deme: from the 131 marriages about which we have the
necessary data, 89 concern marriages with a partner from a different deme.44
This kind of ‘extra-demal’ marriage is well illustrated by an inscription from
the mid-fourth century, which concerns a dedication to the goddess Athena by
a grandfather, his three sons and three grandsons. Whereas the sons all belong
to the deme Phlya, the three grandsons come from three different demes. The
variance in origin indicates that the youths were his daughter’s sons, who ac-
companied their fathers during important religious activities. Such shared reli-
gious activities were not uncommon. When the plaintiffs, in a fourth-century
oration by Isaeus, wish to demonstrate that they are the children of Ciron’s
daughter, they offer the following proof: ‘for, as was natural, seeing that we
were the sons of his own daughter, Ciron never offered a sacrifice without our
presence’. We find a similar sacrifice in the Spartan version of the myth of
Kresphontes, where the father of Kresphontes’ wife invites his daughter’s sons
to sacrifice with him to Zeus Akraios. These cases are further examples of the
close relationship between a grandfather and his daughter’s sons.45
Endogamy, then, was an established practice, albeit not the ruling one, in
Archaic and Classical times: famous couples, such as Hector and Andromache,
or Odysseus and Penelope, were no family at all and did not come from the same
communities.46
We can be much briefer about patriarchy. Albeit less marked than in Rome,
the strictly patriarchal nature of which has admittedly been qualified in recent
investigations,47 the position of the father was equally unassailable in Greece. In
this respect there is little difference of opinion in recent Greek and Indo-Euro-
pean research.
44 R. Osborne, Demos (Cambridge, 1985) 127–53; C. A. Cox, ‘Sisters, Daughters and the
Deme of Marriage’, JHS 108 (1988) 185–88 and Household Interests, index s.v. local endoga-
my; add the case of Menander’s Samia. But also see Humphreys, Kinship in Ancient Athens,
index, s.v. marriage, in-deme.
45 IG II 2 4327; Isaeus 8.15; Nic. Dam. FGrH 90 F31; J. N. Bremmer, ‘The Family and O ther
Centres of Religious Learning in Antiquity’, in J. W. Drijvers and A. A. MacDonald (eds),

Centres of Learning (Leiden, 1995) 29–38. Note also I. Knidos 627 with, probably, a grave
epigram for Epitadeios by his daughter’s sons.
46 Endogamy frequently occurred also among the ancient Roman elite: Y. Thomas, `Mar-
iages endogamiques à Rome’, Rev. Hist. Droit Franç. Étrang. 58 (1980) 345–82.
47 R. Saller, Patriarchy, Property and Death in the Roman Family (Cambridge, 1994) 102–
32. J. Goody, Comparative Studies in Kinship (Stanford, 1969) 236, stresses that ‘patriarchal
authority’ also occurs among ‘matrilineal descent groups’.

On the other hand, the patrilocal aspect has become more problematic. Al-
though in general we can still maintain that classical Greece was patrilocal, we
do have to be careful. According to the mythological tradition, it was not unu-
sual in the world of archaic Greece that a king with only a daughter selected a
macho son-in-law who subsequently came to live with him and, one may sup-
pose, in due time would succeed him. There are various examples of these filia-
centric marriages in Homer, such as those involving Tydeus (Il. 14.121), Bellero-
phon (who also received half of his father-in-law’s kingdom: Il. 6.191–93), and
Odysseus (who was offered Nausicaa by her father, the Phaeacian king Alci-
nous: Od. 7.311–16); similarly, after Phrixus had given the Golden Fleece to
King Aietes, he received the king’s daughter Chalciope as wife (Apollod. 1.9.1).
This type of marriage can also be observed in the Old Testament: Saul offers his
daughters Merab and Michal to David to keep him in his retinue (1 Samuel 18).
Elsewhere, we hear of Heracles, who received Megara from Kreon and was ap-
pointed to a kind of viceroyship over Thebes. The same type of marriage is still
regularly mentioned in the tragedies of Euripides. Here, the occurrence is prob-
ably a case of mythological continuity rather than a reflection of living practice,
although cases of uxorilocal marriages are actually attested in Athens.48
Although our main evidence is mythological and dating from the Archaic
Age, the Athenian evidence strongly suggests that these cases were not just fic-
tion but did reflect a historical reality. This type of marriage, then, clearly shows
up one of the weaknesses of many analyses that do not differentiate between
social groups or between ideology and practice.49 Evidently, the social élite felt
no difficulty in deviating from the norm of patrilocality. It is therefore not ac-
ceptable when Vernant states that these cases point to a crise in the marriage
structure. He is clearly influenced by Lévi-Strauss’ theories about marriage as
primarily an alliance between two groups, but this view is hardly valid for an-
cient Greece.50
If the principle of patrilocality can only be accepted with some qualifications,
what about patrilinearity? In this matter, modern anthropologists pay much
more attention than their predecessors to the difference between representation
and reality. Sir Edward Evans-Pritchard (1902–73), perhaps the greatest anthro-
pologist of last century, could still write, without batting an eyelid, that only
the underlying model was of importance: ‘actualities are always changing and
passing while the principle endures’. Modern anthropologists try to distinguish
between the ruling ideology of a community and the actual feeling and behav-
48 Heracles: Diod. Sic. 4.10.6. Euripides: A. Harder, Euripides’ Kresphontes and Archelaos
(Leiden, 1985) 171; add Eur. Hyp. Phoen., F 72, 558. Athens: Cox, Household Interests, 142
note 56.
49 The exception is Cox, Household Interests.
50 J.-P. Vernant, Mythe et société en Grèce ancienne (Paris, 1974) 73–4. For Homeric mar-
riage, see E. Scheid-Tissinier, Les usages du don chez Homère (Nancy, 1994) 83–114.

iour of its members. Traditional investigations focused on terminology, but

they did not study actual behaviour, and they were certainly not interested in
ideological aspects of kinship structure.51
When we look at real behaviour by the Greeks, the Athenians in particular,
we do at once notice that the maternal family does not play a subordinate part
at all. The maternal relatives were extremely important, perhaps even more im-
portant than the paternal, not only during the period of education but in every-
day life more generally, as the counsels’ pleas illustrate. The reason for this im-
portance is probably to be found in the relationship between brother and sister,
which was closer than that between brother and brother or sister and sister, as is
also the case in modern Greece. The brother was the protector of the sister and
the only man, except her husband and mother’s brother, who could freely visit
her. And even those visits were not always without their problems, since prom-
inent politicians were regularly accused of incest.52 For example, the flamboyant
Alcibiades was reproached with visiting his sister ‘not as her brother but as her
husband’ (Lysias 14.28). Moreover, the tie between a mother and her children
was closer than that with the father. As a character in Euripides’ Erechtheus
(F 358) says: ‘Nothing is more delightful to children than a mother’.53
Both sides of the family, then, played an important role in Greek kinship
relations. It even seems to have been the case that this practice of bilaterality
influenced terminology, since in the course of the fifth century BC the separate
terms for father’s brother and mother’s brother were replaced by one new term,
theios, just as the new term kêdestai replaced the various terms for the maternal
and paternal relatives. It is not easy to gain an idea of changes in Greek kinship
structures over a long period of time, but another example is the existence of an
old terminology which seems to indicate the one-time domination of the ex-
tended family, although the nuclear family was the norm in historical Greece.54
Does the important role played by both sides of the family suggest that we
should speak of ‘ego-centered bilateral kindred’?55 Such a view probably goes
too far. Athenian citizenship was mainly determined by the membership of the
phratria and the phyle, both of which recruited their members only along patri-
lineal lines.56 Moreover, the ideal inheritance always went via the paternal line
51 A. Kuper, The Invention of Primitive Society (London, 1988) 198 (quotation); Y. Kuiper,
`Genealogie, familiebesef en afstamming. Verkenningen van een cultureel antropoloog’, Jaar

boek Centraal Bureau voor Genealogie 49 (1995) 73–84.
52 Cox, Household Interests, 114–29; J. N. Bremmer, Greek Religion and Culture, the Bible
and the Ancient Near East (Leiden, 2008) 325–33; this volume, Chapter 13.2.
53 See also Golden, Children and Childhood, 100; Cox, Household Interests, 99–104.
54 S. C. Humphreys, Anthropology and the Greeks (London, 1978) 193–208 (part of an at-
tractive sketch of Greek kinship relations).

55 Humphreys, Anthropology, 197 f.
56 See most recently N. F. Jones, `The Athenian Phylai as Associations: disposition, func-
tion, and purpose’, Hesperia 64 (1995) 503–42; R. Parker, Athenian Religion (Oxford, 1996)

(albeit in the case of an only daughter the practice was different). In addition, a
legitimate son always called himself after his father and traced his descent via
the paternal line, whereas names derived from the mother (matronymics) were
used for illegitimate children despite the fact that in archaic genealogical poetry,
like the Hesiodic Catalogue, women still played a prominent role in the family
tree.57 The patrilineal ideology could even become grotesque, as when philoso-
phers like Anaxagoras and poets like Aeschylus and Euripides suggest that the
mother, from a biological point of view, is not really a parent because she mere-
ly provides the place in which the male seed can develop.58
Given the importance of the paternal line in citizenship and inheritance and the
clear patrilineal ideology, but also given the importance of the maternal line in
everyday practice, the qualifications patrilineal or bilateral to characterise Greek
kinship relations seem less appropriate. Rather, I would use the term ‘asymmetri-
cal bilateral’, the characterisation used of the Greek countryside in more recent
times by anthropologists:59 the importance of the paternal family seems to have
been more prominent in public life, certainly at the ideological level.60
3. Fosterage and the circulation of children
Let us now return to the fosterage of Theseus. The custom of not educating
one’s own children, but leaving this task to others, was and is widespread. 61 But
why do people take in children not their own? One reason may well be that
these children carry out all kinds of useful duties. Our Greek material is not
very helpful in this respect, but the Roman evidence shows that children, wher-
ever we have information about them, had to contribute to survival by partici-
104–08; D. Pritchard, ‘Tribal Participation and Solidarity in Fifth-Century Athens: a sum-

mary’, Ancient History 30.2 (2000) 104–18; Humphreys, Kinship in Ancient Athens, 2.569–
625 (phratries).
57 R. Janko, The Iliad: a commentary IV (Cambridge, 1992) 202.
58 See the detailed discussion by A. Sommerstein, Aeschylus: Eumenides (Cambridge,
1989) 206–08; N. Loraux, The Children of Athena (Princeton, 1993) 111–43.

59 J. K. Campbell, ‘The Kindred in a Greek Mountain Community’, in J. Pitt-Rivers (ed.),
Mediterranean Countrymen (Paris, 1963) 72–96 at 80.

60 For similar insights concerning the Roman family, see J. P. Hallett, ‘Agnatio, affinitas
and cognatio in Classical Rome’, in H. D. Jocelyn (ed.), Tria Lustra (Liverpool, 1993) 215–28.
61 See, for example, C. Fonseca, ‘Valeur marchande, amour maternel et survie: aspects de
la circulation des enfants dans un bidonville brésilien’, Annales ESC 40 (1985) 991–1022; A. C.
Zeller, ‘A Role for Women in Hominid Evolution’, Man 22 (1987) 528–57; J. Carsten ‘Children
in Between: fostering and the process of kinship on Pulan Langwahi, Malaysia’, Man 26 (1991)
425–43; G. Á. Gunnlaugsson, ‘“Everyone’s Been Good to Me, Especially the Dogs”: foster-
children and young paupers in nineteenth-century Southern Iceland’, J. Soc. Hist. 27 (1993–
94) 341–58; N. Müller-Scheeßel et al., ‘In der Obhut von Verwandten? Die Zirkulation von
Kindern und Jugendlichen in der Eisenzeit Mitteleuropas’, in R. Karl and J. Leskovar (eds),
Interpretierte Eisenzeiten (Linz, 2015) 1–24.

pation in economic life, be it as maid, farm hand, assistant to an entertainer, or

servant of a smith – as is still the case in many parts of the world today.62 It is
also striking how often words meaning ‘child’ or ‘youth’ have developed into
the meaning ‘slave’ or ‘servant’, such as Greek pais,63 Latin puer, Western-Euro-
pean page, French garçon, valet and bachelier,64 old English cniht, cnapa and
thegn (related to Greek teknon, ‘child’), and Dutch and German knecht / Knecht,
deerne / Dirne and dienstmaagd / Magd. It used to be very normal in Western
Europe to employ youths as servants, and things were not that different in an-
cient Greece. 65
Admittedly, the function of the foster child as helping hand does not explain
the prominent role of the maternal family in fosterage and therefore hardly ex-
plains the origins of the phenomenon. There is no recent study of the matter, but
in 1893 the Dutch ethnologist S. R. Steinmetz (1862–1940) published a detailed
article on the subject, the scope of whose investigations remains unsurpassed. 66
Unlike most modern anthropologists, Steinmetz was strongly interested in
both contemporary ethnology and historical sources, a combination which for
a long time would be very hard to find among anthropologists and historians,
with the notable exception of my famous compatriot Johan Huizinga (1872–
1945). 67 A rapprochement between spokesmen for the two approaches would
only gradually get under way again in the 1960s, with Evans-Pritchard in the
vanguard. 68
Steinmetz collected data from the whole world and was already struck by the
prominence of the maternal family. The quest he began is certainly not over yet,
since his collection of evidence for fosterage by the maternal family among Ger-
62 Golden, Children and Childhood, 32–37 (Greece); K. Bradley, Discovering the Roman
Family (Oxford, 1991) 103–24 (Rome).

63 Cf. M. Golden, ‘Pais, “child” and “slave”’, AC 54 (1985) 91–104.
64 H. Meier, ‘Frz. Bachelier’, in H. Ölberg and G. Schmidt (eds.), Sprachwissenschaftliche
Forschungen. Festschrift für Johann Knobloch (Innsbruck, 1985) 255–8 (an interesting, albeit
hardly convincing, attempt at etymologically connecting these words) and ‘Garçon, valet,
vassal’, in Scritti in onore di Giuliano Bonfante, 2 vols (Brescia, 1976) 1.473–87.
65 M. Mitterauer, ‘Gesindedienst und Jugendphase im europäischen Vergleich’, Geschichte
und Gesellschaft 11 (1985) 177–204.

66 S. R. Steinmetz, Gesammelte kleinere Schriften zur Ethnologie und Soziologie, 2 vols
(Groningen, 1928) I.1–113. On Steinmetz, see the not quite satisfactory studies by P. Kloos, in
F. Bovenkerk (ed.), Toen en thans (Baarn, 1978) 98–103 and by A. F. J. Köbben, in J. C. H. Blom
et al. (eds.), Een brandpunt van geleerdheid in de hoofdstad. De Universiteit van Amsterdam
rond 1900 in vijftien portretten (Hilversum, 1992) 313–40.
67 On Huizinga and anthropology see W. Krul, Historicus tegen de tijd. Opstellen over
leven en werk van J. Huizinga (Groningen, 1990) 201–2; add I. Bulhof, ‘Johan Huizinga.
Ethnographer of the Past’, Clio 4 (1974–5) 201–24; W. Bergsma, Johan Huizinga en de cul
turele antropologie (Groningen, 1981).
68 E. E. Evans-Pritchard, Anthropology and History (Manchester, 1961); one should note
also the work of the Dutch anthropologist H. G. Schulte Nordholt, Culturele antropologie en
geschiedenis (Amsterdam, 1967). For an informative survey, see Y. Kuiper, ‘Antropologie en
geschiedenis’, in P. Vries (ed.), Geschiedenis buiten de perken (Leiden, 1989) 49–61.

manic and Celtic peoples is far from complete. 69 Steinmetz even missed the oc-
currence of fosterage in Germanic mythology, where the Germanic supreme
god Wodan was raised by Bolthorn, the father of his mother Bestla.70
In the spirit of his time, Steinmetz thought he could explain the prominence of
the maternal family as a ‘survival’ of an earlier matriarchy, but this nineteenth-
century construct no longer merits serious attention. Moreover, he failed to dis-
tinguish between primitive egalitarian communities and more developed and
hierarchical societies. This made him overlook the fact that fosterage can sym-
bolise submission, since in the world of the Nordic sagas it was usually an in
ferior who educated the child of a social superior. It was for this reason that the
English king Aethelstan refused to foster the child of the Norse king Harald.71
The Germanic material in particular, but also the Caucasian evidence collect-
ed by Steinmetz, clearly shows that feudal societies used fosterage to bolster ties
between the higher and lower strata of society. Some kings transformed the in-
stitution in such a way that they educated the sons of the elite at court, and thus
killed two birds with one stone by not only creating ties of loyalty between
their own sons and those of the aristocracy, but also by checking possible com-
petitors. This education of elite youths at court is well attested among the Mac-
edonians, and it remained popular among their Hellenistic successors, who se-
lected youths from the sons of the king’s Friends, men of letters and military
advisors. Callimachus and Eratosthenes were most likely raised at the court of
Ptolemy, and the institution was still alive enough in the second-century BC
Near East for the author of the Book of Daniel (1.3–4) to picture the three
youths of the fiery furnace as such pages.72 The probably independent existence
69 Cf. Bremmer and Horsfall, Roman Myth and Mythography, 55; add Geoffry of Mon-
mouth, Historia regum Brittanniae 2.4; Hallfredssaga 2; M. Ní Dhonnchadha, ‘Inailt, foster-

sister, fosterling’, Celtica 18 (1986) 185–91; G. Kreutzer, Kindheit und Jugend in der altnordi
schen Literatur I (Diss. Münster, 1987) 221–34; P. Parks, ‘Celtic Fosterage: adoptive kinship
and clientage in Northwest Europe’, CSSH 48 (2006) 359–95; Th. O’Donnell, Fosterage in
Medieval Ireland (Amsterdam, 2020) 38–45.
70 Bolthorn: Havamal, str. 140. Among the Germanic peoples, fosterage regularly takes
place among giants, which reminds us of Achilles’ education by the Centaur Cheiron (this
volume, Chapter 3.3): H. R. Ellis, ‘Fostering by Giants in Old Norse Saga Literature’, Medium
Aevum 10 (1941) 70–85; R. Kroesen, ‘Ambiguity in the Relationship Between Heroes and
Giants’, Arkiv för nordisk filologi 111 (1996) 57–71 at 67–9; L. Motz, ‘Kingship and the Giants’,
ibid., 73–88 at 80 f.
71 See also W. I. Miller, Bloodmaking and Peacemaking: feud, law, and society in saga Ice
land (Chicago, 1990) 122–23. Aethelstan: Haralds saga 21.

72 Headlam on Herodas 1.29; Nisbet and Hubbard on Hor. C. 1.29.7; Curtius 8.5.6;
N. Hammond, ‘Royal Pages, Personal Pages and Boys Trained in the Macedonian Manner
During the Period of the Temenid Monarchy’, Historia 39 (1990) 261–90; W. Heckel, The
Marshals of Alexander’s Empire (London, 1992) 237–98; M. Hatzopoulos, Cultes et rites de
passage en Macédoine (Athens, 1994) 87–111; Al. Cameron, Callimachus and His Critics
(Princeton, 1995) 3–5; E. Koulakiotis, ‘Domination et résistance dans la cour d’Alexandre: le
cas des basilikoi paides’, in V. Anastasiadis and P. Doukellis (eds), Esclavage antique et dis

of this institution among the Franks, Normans, Anglo-Saxons and English sug-
gests that fosterage provided opportunities whose potential was variously real-
isable according to the period and royal aspirations.73
The element of alliance may well have been the most important function of
fosterage with the maternal family in Archaic Greece. Marriage had created a tie
between two families which would be strengthened by the education of a sister’s
or daughter’s son. This interpretation gains in force, in my opinion, from the
fact that ‘gift-exchange’, in the widest meaning of the word, functioned as the
‘basic organising mechanism’ of archaic society,74 as Moses Finley (1912–1986)
first argued in his famous The World of Odysseus (1954).75 The role of children
as pawns in the game of creating alliances is not uncommon, but is rather differ-
ent from modern Western ideals, as even children of royals are now relatively
free to marry whoever they want.
4. Conclusion
We have seen that fosterage was not uncommon, and that it strengthened the ties
between families and the position of kings. In addition, the practice illustrates
the importance of the maternal family whose role may now be seen to be more
important than is usually thought: it could even play a role in the education of
the sons of the daughters who had married into a different family. It is precisely
in relatively undifferentiated societies, such as ancient Greece, that the analysis
of a single phenomenon can throw light on society as a whole.76
criminations socio-culturelles (Bern, 2005) 167–82; R. Strootman, Courts and Elites in the
Hellenistic Empires (Edinburgh, 2014) 136–44.
73 Franks: P. Riché, Les Écoles et l’enseignement dans l’Occident chrétien de la fin du Ve
siècle au milieu du XIe siècle (Paris, 1979) 287–313. Anglo-Saxons and English: D. A. Bullough,
‘The Educational Tradition in England from Alfred to Aelfric: teaching utriusque linguae’, in
Settimane di studio del Centro italiano di studi sull’alto medievo 19 (1972) 453–94 at 455–60;
N. Orme, From Childhood to Chivalry (London, 1984) 44–80; Peters, ‘Von der Sozialgeschich
te’, 427.
74 On gifts see, especially, Scheid-Tissinier, Les usages du don and S. von Reden, Exchange
in Ancient Greece (London, 1995).

75 Finley had been inspired by Marcel Mauss’ classic Essai sur le don (1925) – a book he
avoided mentioning, as is pointed out in the fascinating study of Finley’s oeuvre by H. Lirb
and M. Wendel, ‘Moses Finley en de sociale wetenschappen’, Tijdschrift voor Oudheidstudies
1 (1989) 26–49 at 47. For Mauss (1872–1950), see the informative but sloppy M. Fournier,
Marcel Mauss (Paris, 1994) 512–26.
76 I am most grateful for information to Wim Jongman, Robin Osborne, Robert Parker
and Leo Tepper, and for observations on the various stages of my text to Rolf Bremmer, Marjo
Buitelaar, Goffe Jensma, André Lardinois and the anonymous referees of Dialogos. Michael
Silk exemplarily corrected my English. An earlier, Dutch version appeared in Tijdschrift voor
Geschiedenis 109 (1996) 343–60.

Chapter 15
The Suodales of Poplios Valesios
On 13 October 1977, a team from the Dutch Institute at Rome discovered a

block that contained an archaic Latin inscription:
IEI STETERAI POPLIOSIO VALESIOSIO
SUODALES MAMARTEI
…(?) have erected of Poplios Valesios
the sodales to Mamars
On the basis of archaeological and epigraphical considerations, the inscription
can be dated to the period around 500 BC and is written in a kind of archaic
Latin.1 The best and most detailed discussion of the historical implications of
the inscription still is the one by Henk Versnel in the original publication.2 In
great detail, he sets out all the evidence we have about the different elements of
the inscription – the town Satricum, the nature of the suodales, the identification
of Poplios Valesios – and presents the various options between which we can
choose, without ever pressing the evidence in any specific direction. His per-
fectly reasonable and convincing conclusion is that Poplios Valesios may (not
‘must’) have been the famous P. Valerius Poplicola, who, according to Livy was
‘universally considered to be the first in the arts of war and peace’.3 However,
his discussion of the suodales is in need of being modified and supplemented.4
1 CIL I 2 2832a. For recent linguistic analyses, see M. Hartmann, Die frühlateinischen
Inschriften und ihre Datierung (Bremen, 2005) 138–42; E. Lucchesi, ‘Old and New (Un)cer-
tainties Regarding the Lapis Satricanus’, J. Latin Linguistiscs 9 (2005) 161–69; G. Rocca and
G. Sarullo, ‘The Lapis Satricanus as Evidence of an Italic Writing Context in the Latium ve
tus?’, in R. Giacomelli and A. Robbiati Bianchi (eds), Le lingue dell’Italia antica oltre il latino
(Milano, 2014) 151–70.
2 H. S. Versnel, ‘Historical Implications’, in C. M. Stibbe et al., Lapis Satricanus (The Hague,
1980) 97–150.
3 Livy 2.16.7: omnium consensus princeps belli pacisque artibus.
4 For Mars, see H. S. Versnel, Transition & Reversal in Myth & Ritual (Leiden, 1993) 289–
334, who shows that, originally, Mars was closely connected to initiation, which perfectly fits
our discussion of the Lapis Satricanus.

1. Suodales
In his analysis of the suodales, Versnel distinguishes between two groups of

sodalitates: religious confraternities, such as the Sodales Titii, and groups of
comrades who function as a kind of retinue (‘Gefolgschaft’). Since religious
sodalitates named after a living person are hard to conceive of, and, moreover,
‘epigraphic examples of religious sodalitates unidentified by a name appear
seldom to never’, the first possibility is persuasively discarded (p. 121); the re-
maining solution, the suodales as a retinue, is supported by an extensive argu-
mentation (112–21).
As his point of departure, Versnel has taken the fatal military expedition of
the Fabii,5 since Livy (2.49.5) uses the word sodales in his description of their
leaving the city: when the Fabii marched against Veii, ‘they were followed by a
crowd, made up partly of their own relatives and comrades’ (sequebatur turba,
propria alia cognatorum sodaliumque). Livy subsequently compares the milita
ry organisation known as coniuratio, since Servius tells us that the Fabii fought
against the inhabitants of Veii, coniurati cum servis et clientibus (Aen. 6.845,
7.614, 8.1). According to Versnel, the Samnite legio linteata, 6 the Etruscans who
took part in the same war as these Samnites (Liv. 9.39.5), and the groups that
appear on Roman coins taking an oath during a sacrifice are similar to the Ro-
man coniuratio organisation.7 Versnel also compares those groups of comrades
who were closely tied to their leader in war and peace, and, who would some-
times refuse to survive their leader in the case of his death, 8 groups such as the
Iberian soldurii,9 Gaulish ambacti and clientes,10 and the Homeric ἔταιροι (see
5 See also C. J. Smith, The Roman Clan: the gens from ancient ideology to modern anthro
pology (Cambridge, 2006) 290–95.

6 E. T. Salmon, Samnium and the Samnites (London, 1967) 103–05, 182–85; M. Sordi, ‘Il
giuramento della “legio linteata” e la guerra sociale’, in M. Sordi (ed.), I canali della propagan
da nel mondo antico (Milano, 1976) 160–68; S. P. Oakley, A Commentary on Livy, Books
VI–X: Volume IV: Book X (Cambridge, 2005) 392–98.
7 M. Crawford, Roman Republican Coinage, 2 vols (London, 1974) nos. 28–9, 234 and
notes; L. Cappelletti, ‘Il giuramento degli Italici sulle monete del 90 A.C.’, ZPE 127 (1999)
85–92.
8 Versnel, ‘Historical Implications’, 124–5; add Proc. Goth. 1.3.6–7; W. Schlesinger, Beit räge
zur deutschen Verfassungsgeschichte des Mittelalters I (Göttingen, 1963) 301–02; R. Woolf,

‘The Ideal of Men Dying with Their Lord in the Germania and in The Battle of Maldon’,
Anglo-Saxon England 5 (1976) 63–81.
9 F. R. Adrados, ‘La ‘fides’ ibérical’, Emerita 14 (1946) 128–209; R. Etienne, Le culte impéri
al dans la péninsule ibérique d’Auguste à Dioclétien (Paris, 1958) 75–9; J. M. Blazquez, Imagen
y mito (Madrid, 1977) 385–405.
10 More recently, A. Daubigney, ‘Reconnaissance des formes de la dépendence gauloise’,
DHA 5 (1979) 145–89; G. Dobesch, Die Kelten in Österreich nach den ältesten Berichten der
Antike (Vienna, 1980) 417–32; A. Testart and L. Baray, ‘Ambactes et soldures: Figures gaulois-
es du compagnonnage guerrier’, in V. Lécrivain (ed.), Clientèle guerrière, clientèle foncière et
clientèle électorale. Histoire et anthropologie (Dijon, 2007) 51–84.

Chapter 15: The Suodales of Poplios Valesios 239
below). His final conclusion: ‘The analogy with other cultures has shown us in
which sphere we may look for this sodalitas (viz. of Poplios Valesios): comrade-
ship (‘Genossenschaft’) in time of peace, feasting and carousing in closed
groups, which, in wartime, functioned as the ‘Gefolgschaft’ of an aristocrat or
prince with whom a coniuratio relationship could exist’ (p. 120).
This comparison with the type of coniuratio organisation and with groups of
comrades fails to make an important distinction. In early Rome, a coniuratio
was organised only in times of crisis, when a commander assembled the people
by the exclamation: ‘Let him who wants to save the res publica follow me’. In
such a case, the soldiers ‘took the oath together’.11 Concerning the Samnites,
however, we have a carefully organised levy of troops, as also seems to have
been the case with the Etruscans: the oath per se is evidently an insufficient cri
terion for establishing a similarity between these various military organisations.12
Moreover, the Roman coniuratio lasted for only one expedition (Liv. 42.2.1),
whereas regarding the Iberian and Celtic retinues the connection with their
leader extended over a much longer period of time. This distinction between a
once-only Heeresgefolgschaft and a more permanent Hausgefolgschaft, which
has been elaborated in various studies of the Gefolgschaft, has not been taken
into account by Versnel.13 Yet this distinction could prove useful for an inter-
pretation of the inscription, since we cannot exclude the possibility that the
suodales were comrades for only one raid, instead of over a longer period of
time.
However, there is a much more serious problem. Did Livy really describe the
sodales as following the Fabii on their brave expedition, as Versnel claims he
did? Let us take a closer took at the passage of Livy (2.49.3–6) in which he de-
picts the departure of the Fabii:
Nunquam exercitus neque minor numero neque clarior fama et admiratione horninum
per urbem incessit. Sex et trecenti milites, omnes patricii, omnes unius gentis, quorum
neminem ducem sperneres, egregius quibuslibet temporibus senatus, ibant, unius familiae
uiribus Veienti populo pestem minitantes. Sequebatur turba propria alia cognatorum
sodaliumque, nihil medium, nec spem nec curam, sed immensa omnia uoluentium animo,
alia publica sollicitudine excitata, fauore et admiratione stupens. Ire fortes, ire felices
11 Serv. Aen. 8.1. For coniuratio, see W. Hoben, Terminologische Studien zu den Sklaven
erhebungen der römischen Republik (Wiesbaden, 1978) 6–17.

12 Versnel, ‘Historical Implications’, 124 note 7 7, even calls the ver sacrum a coniuratio,
although there is no mention of an oath by the participants.

13 See R. Wenskus, Stammesbildung und Verfassung (Cologne and Graz, 1961) 347–52; and
‘Probleme der germanisch-deutschen Verfassungs- und Sozialgeschichte im Lichte der Ethno

soziologie’, in H. Beumann (ed.), Historische Forschungen für Walter Schlesinger (Cologne
and Vienna, 1974) 19–46; Schlesinger, Beiträge, 9–52; S. Deger-Jalkotzy, E-qe-ta. Zur Rolle
des Gefolgschaftswesens in der Sozialstruktur mykenischer Reiche (Vienna, 1978) 118 ff; for the
‘Gefolgschaft’, see also H. G. Beck, Byzantinisches Gefolgschaftswesen, SB München 1965;
F. Crevatin, Ricerche di antichità indeuropee (Trieste, 1979) 51–76.

iubent, inceptis euentus pares reddere; consulatus inde ac triumphos, omnia praemia ab
se, omnes honores sperare.
Never has an army marched through the City smaller in numbers or with a more bril-
liant reputation or more universally admired. Three hundred and six soldiers, all patri-
cians, all members of one house, not a single man of whom the senate even in its palmiest
days would deem unfitted for high command, went forth, threatening ruin to the Veien-
tines through the strength of a single family. They were followed by a crowd; made up
partly of their own relatives and comrades, whose minds were not occupied with ordi-
nary hope and anxiety, but filled with the loftiest anticipations; partly of those who
shared the public anxiety, and could not find words to express their affection and admi-
ration. ‘Go on,’ they cried, ‘you gallant band, go on, and may you be fortunate (ire felices,
ire fortes); bring back results equal to this beginning, then look to us for consulships and
triumphs and every possible reward’ (tr. Foster, Loeb).
In his description of the exit of the Fabii, as various scholars have observed,
Livy transformed the attendants who traditionally followed the Fabii into a
crowd of spectators.14 Their exhortation ire felices, ire fortes shows that the cog
nati and sodales did not join the Fabii on their dangerous military campaign but
were seeing them off – at least, that is how Livy pictures it. Thus, the passage is
no support for Versnel’s interpretation of the sodales as a kind of retinue in war
and peace. In addition, when he (p. 120) observes that ‘the picture of the group
of iuvenes alternates with that of the group of clientes and sodales: Livy 1.5.7
uses in connection with the attack of Numitor and Romulus on Amulius the
term cum globo iuvenum, where Dion. Hal. 1.83.3 says: ἄγων ὡπλισμένους…τῶν
τε ἄλλων πελατῶν καὶ ἑταίρων καὶ θεραπείας πιστῆς χεῖρα οὐκ ὀλίγην’ (‘bringing a
considerable band of his retainers and comrades and trusted servants’), he fails
to note that Livy actually says that the attack happened non cum globo iuvenum
… sed… pastoribus, ‘not with a body of youths … but … with shepherds’.
Instead of taking the Fabii passage as our guiding line, we will therefore pur-
sue a direction that Versnel himself mentioned but declined to follow up. For his
interpretation of sodales as ‘groups of comrades’ Versnel studied the occurrence
of sodales in Livy, whom he rightly considers ‘the author who lends himself best
to a first historical evaluation of the term sodales’ (p. 112). Besides the Fabian
passage, we have the sodales of the young Tarquinii (2.3.2), those of the patrician
K. Quinctius (3.14.3), who belong to a story that was a later fabrication (Ogilvie
ad loc.), and those of Demetrius and Perseus (40.7.1).
Except for the Fabian passage, all these sodales are young men, and, as Versnel
(p. 119–20) stresses, this can hardly be chance. The sodales belong typically,
although not exclusively, to the world of the young. This fits in very well with
14 See, for example, R. M. Ogilvie, A Commentary on Livy, Books 1–5 (Oxford 19702) 363;
J. P. Neraudeau, La jeunesse dans la littérature et les institutions de la Rome républicaine (Paris

1979) 278; P. W. de Neeve, Colonus (Diss. Utrecht, 1981) 261 note 49. For the traditional view,
see Dion. Hal. 9.15.3; Festus 451 Lindsay; Servius, Aen. 6.845.

an observation of Georges Dumézil (1898–1986) that in the RgVeda the Indian

element sva, ‘one’s own’, which is related with sodales, is characteristic of the
god Indra and his followers, the Marut, an autonomous group of young men.15
Another word related to sodalis is ἔταιρος,16 and Versnel did not fail to note that
the ἔταιροι also often were of the same age. But they do not always constitute a
‘consistent (his italics) “Altersklassenverband”’,17 and this is evidently the rea-
son why he declines to follow up the connection of youth and retinue, since the
observation made him ‘refrain from referring to the abundant literature on
secret societies and Mannerbünde, which would exceed the scope of this inves-
tigation’ (p. 126 note 115).
2. Indo-European age sets
Yet we have plenty of evidence that age sets among the Indo-Europeans were
not exclusively composed of youths. Although our tradition about the iuvenes
of early Rome is rather slim, it does seem that Archaic Rome knew age sets that
were not yet fully integrated into society.18 Our earliest Roman example of such
a group of youths is the Jungmannschaft around Romulus and Remus which, as
befitted such a band, was located in the wilderness. Our tradition is unanimous
in having the twins also accept run-away slaves, criminals and murderers among
the iuvenes.19 We find the mixed character of a similar age set also in the initia-
tory traditions of the Italic Lucani, whose sons were separated from their fami-
lies at an early age and sent to the neighbouring Brettians, who raised them in
the bush where they had to live from plundering raids. The boys received into
their body run-away slaves, and we hear only of them because they had become
a nuisance after having founded a community. The organisation of the boys in
groups of fifty perfectly fits in with an Indo-European tradition, which we have
looked at before (Chapter 8.2).20
Among the ancient Germanic tribes, the age set of the young could function
as a once-only retinue under a temporary dux,21 for Caesar tells that ‘robberies
15 G. Dumézil, The Destiny of the Warrior (Chicago, 1969) 61–64. For the Marut as márya
‘young men’, see RgVeda 5.59.3,5; 5.61.4; 7.56.1, 14.

16 Cf. R. Beekes, Etymological Dictionary of Greek, 2 vols (Leiden, 2010) 2.473 f.
17 For the ἔταιροι, see the detailed analysis by Ch. Ulf, Die homerische Gesellschaft
( Munich, 1990) 127–38.

18 A. Alföldi, Die Struktur des voretruskischen Römerstaates (Heidelberg, 1974) 107–50;
Neraudeau, Jeunesse, with the approving review by J.Heurgon, REL 57 (1979) 507–11
19 Fabius Pictor FGrH 809 F4; Liv. 1. 8.5; Luc. 1. 97; Juv. 8.272–275 etc.; J. N. Bremmer and
N. M. Horsfall, Roman Myth and Mythography (London, 1987) 38–43 (by Bremmer).
20 Diod. Sic. 16.15.1–2.; Justin. 23.1.7–12; A. Napoli, ‘I rapporti tre Bruzi e Lucani’, SMSR
37 (1966) 61–83; Alföldi, Struktur, 129–31.

21 For the Germanic Gefolgschaft, see the studies mentioned in note 13; add H. Kuhn,
Kleine Schriften II (Berlin, 1971),420–483; H. Gneuss, Die Battle of Maldon als historisches

that are committed beyond the boundaries of each state bear no infamy, and
they avow that these are committed for the purpose of disciplining their youth
and of preventing sloth’ (BG 6.23.6, tr. McDevitte and Bohn).22 It is important
to note that participation was obligatory, since the stay-at-homes were reckoned
among ‘the number of deserters and traitors’: the raids probably had an initiato-
ry character. The object of these raids very often was cattle, the ‘most esteemed
and only species of wealth’ of the ancient Germans (Tac. Germ. 5). Such a raid
was the foray of the Sygambri who crossed the Rhine to pillage the Eburones
and ‘captured a great amount of cattle, of which barbarians are very covetous’
(Caes. BG 6.35.6); as we will see, cattle-raiding is also found among other In-
do-European peoples as one of the main activities of the youth.
In the time of Tacitus, we find a more permanent retinue. After a boy had
received his weapons in the assembly from one of the nobles, his father or one of
his kindred, 23 he joined a princeps for whom ‘to be perpetually surrounded by a
large train of picked young warriors is a distinction in peace and a protection in
war’ (tr. Townsend).24 The noble youths apparently then moved around to those
places where war was carried on frequently, and Tacitus (Germ. 13–14) stresses
that the princeps had to bestow lavish gifts on his youths to keep them satisfied,
gifts he acquired ‘by war and rapine’. For the initiatory significance of this stay
abroad, we also have a fine example in Paulus Diaconus (Hist. Long. I. 23–4),
who relates that the Longobard king Audoin refused his son Alboin Tischgenos
senschaft until he had received his weapons from a foreign king.25 To that end
Alboin subsequently left the country with a group of forty youths to serve an-
other king, again a typical age group as retinue.26
We do not learn from Tacitus whether criminals or exiles also formed part of
the retinue, but this is most likely, since the prominent Germanist Reinhard
und literarisches Zeugnis, SB München 1976; H. J. Diesner, West-gothische und longobardische

Gefolgschaften, SB Leipzig 1977; W. Kienast, ‘Gefolgswesen und Patrocinium im spanischen
Westgotenreich’, Hist. Zs. 239 (1984) 23–75; Ch. Landolt et al., ‘Gefolgschaft’, in Reallexikon
der Germanischen Altertumskunde 2 10 (Berlin and New York, 1998) 533–54.
22 Caesar, BG. 6.23.6: latrocinia nullam habent infamiam quae extra fines cuiusque civita
tis fiunt, atque ea iuventus exercendae ac desidiae minuendae causa fieri praedicant.
23 This was probably his mother’s brother, with whom the young men often had close ties:
see this volume, Chapter 13 note 5.

24 Tac. Germ. 13: semper electorum iuvenum globo circumdari in pace decus, in bello prae
sidium.
25 See also this volume, Chapter 12, note 25. The element of ‘Tischgenossenschaft’ is well
stressed by Versnel (p. 117). Among the Macedonians, a man could recline only at dinner when
he had speared a boar without a hunting-net: Hegesandros apud Athen. 1. 18a.
26 Cf. H. Fröhlich, Studien zur longobardischen Thronfolge (Diss. Tübingen, 1971 [1980]) 63
who notes the initiatory significance; O. Gschwantler, ‘Versöhnung als Thema einer hero
ischen Sage’, Beiträge z. Geschichte der deutschen Sprache und Literatur 97 (1975) 230–62. For
groups of forty, which seem to have alternated with groups of fifty, see H. G.Wackernagel,
‘Bemerkungen zur älteren Schweizer Geschichte in volkskundlicher Sicht’, SAV 56 (1960)
1–24 at 5 ff.

Wenskus (1916–2002) has presented extensive evidence that Germanic nobles

received outlaws and fugitives into their comitatus, ‘retinue’, or used groups of
robbers and criminals, as their warriors; he even compared the foundation of
Rome with Germanic conditions!27
We also find a retinue of youths among the ancient Celts. During the second
Punic War Hannibal had to act as an arbiter for the Allobroges, whose king had
been expelled by fratre et coetu iuniorum (Liv. 21.31.6–7). In this particular
case, we can still remain sceptical, but our next instance hardly admits of any
doubt. During the siege of Gergovia, a certain Convictolitavis tried to persuade
‘certain young men, the chief of whom were Litaviccus and his brothers, who
were born of a most noble family’.28 When the plot was thwarted, Litaviccus
had to flee cum suis clientibus (Caes. BG 7.40.7). Although social relations in
Gaul are difficult to reconstruct because of the variety of terms used by our
sources – ambacti, amici, clientes, comites, familiares (above, note 10) – the infer-
ence presents itself that these clientes were the same as the aforementioned
‘young men’. We have no further information about the composition of this
particular retinue, but the presence of outlaws in the retinue of prominent Gauls
appears from the following examples: Indutiomarus ‘began to lure to him the
outlaws and convicts’ (exsules damnatosque: BG 5.55.3), and Vercingetorix had
‘in the country a levy of the needy and outcasts’ (in agris habet dilectum egen
tium ac perditorum: BG 7.4.3).
The role of the young is conspicuous in ancient Ireland where the remoteness
of the island did preserve more archaic features of society than continental
Gaul. Many modern folktales still relate the adventures of Finn and his fían, a
band of warriors that roamed through the wilderness.29 The organisation of the
fían seems to have gone out of existence by the thirteenth century, but its narra-
tive tradition belongs to the most archaic part of Irish literature. The fían was
usually a group of pre-adult males who remained outside society until their
wedding; during this period they lived by hunting and plundering and at the
same time acted as a shield for the society. Although the fían was often located
beyond society’s borders, it could function sometimes as the retinue of the king
in ancient Tara, the modern county Meath: ‘Finn mae Cumail was Cormaels
head of the household and the chief of the exiles (!), attendants, and troops be-
sides, so that this rabble was called the fíana of Finn’.30 Here, then, we see once
27 Wenskus, Stammesbildung und Verfassung, 366–73 at 369 (comparison with Rome). For
medieval parallels of retinues consisting of younger and older men, see U. Peters, ‘Von der
Sozialgeschichte zur Familiengeschichte. Georges Dubys Aufsatz über die Jeunes und seine
Bedeutung für ein funktionsgeschichtliches Verständnis der höfischen Literatur’, Beiträge z.
Geschichte d. deutschen Sprache u. Lit. 112 (1990) 404–36.
28 Caesar, BG 7.37.1: quibusdam adulescentibus… quorum erat princeps Litaviccus atque
eius fratres, amplissima familia nati adulescentes.

29 On Finn and the fian, see also this volume, Chapter 5.2 and note 26 (bibliography).
30 L. C. Stern, ‘Flannshruth’, Zs. f. celt. Philol. 1 (1897) 472.

again the youth together with outcasts functioning as a retinue. And it is on an

outpost of Celtic civilisation that we find our latest example of a retinue of the
young. In 1188, Baldwin, Archbishop of Canterbury, undertook a mission to
South and North Wales with Gerald, Archdeacon of Brecon, as his companion.
The latter has left a fascinating description of this journey, and tells us that when
they crossed over to Mona (modern Anglesey), the archbishop addressed the
inhabitants and tried to persuade them to accept the Cross. Among those who
refused were a band of youths that formed part of the household of Rhodri, the
Lord of the island.31
The members of the fían, the fénnid, were repeatedly connected with wolfs
and wild dogs, and this fits in well with the fact that among the Indo-Europeans
strangers and boys who had to live away from civilised society were regularly
called ‘dog’ or ‘wolf’, or even dressed as such; this custom is found among the
Irish, Germanic tribes, Greeks, Lithuanians, Hittites and Indo-Iranians (be-
low); moreover, among these peoples personal names are often composed with
the element ‘wolf’ (Lykomedes, etc.). It is hard to attribute this custom only to
the bearers having been criminals; it rather points to the time when they lived
away from society during their initiation, or when they were performing heroic
feats to prove their manhood.32 Our classical texts make no mention of cat-
tle-raiding Celts on the continent, but insular and isolated Ireland has preserved
vivid memories of the times in which cattle-raids were an honourable activity.
The technical term for such a raid was táin, the most familiar being the famous
Táin bó Cuailnge which recounts the geste of the great hero of Ulster,
CúChúlainn, but we also have the titles of a great number of similar epics, the
contents of which are now irretrievably lost.33 These poems originally treated
the raiding of cattle, but in the final form that we have this subject is already
disappearing into the background; around the year 1000 AD. The word táin had
31 Giraldus Cambrensis, Itinerarium Cambriae 2.7: de familia Rotherici juvenes electi.
32 More recently, F. Graf, Nordionische Kulte (Rome, 1985) 220–26; Y. Ustinova, ‘Lycan-
thropy in Sarmatian Warrior Societies: the Kobyakova torque’, Ancient West & East 1 (2002)
102–23; Bremmer, The World, 358–70. Personal names: E. Campanile, Ricerche di cultura
poetica indoeuropea (Pisa 1977) 80–82. Tribal names: O. N. Trubachev, ‘Sprachgeographie
und etymologische Forschungen’, in R. Schmitt (ed.), Etymologie (Darmstadt, 1977) 247–85 at
262–65. For the less researched role of the dog, note the Longobard Cynocephali, studied by
O. Höfler, Kleine Schriften (Hamburg, 1992) 42–82 (‘Cangrande von Verona und das Hunde-
symbol der Longobarden’, 19401); H. Birkhan, ‘Altgermanische Miszellen “aus fünfzehn
Zettelkästen gezogen”’, in id. (ed.), Festgabe für Otto Höfler (Vienna, 1976) 15–82 at 36–37 (on
the Lithuanian Jungmannschaft, fighting with dog’s heads); L. Kretzenbacher, Kynokephale
Dämonen südosteuropäischer Volksdichtung (Munich, 1968); C. Lecouteux, ‘Les cynocépha
les: études d’une tradition tératologique de l’Antiquité au XIIe siècle’, Cahiers de civilisation
médiévale 24 (1981) 117–29 and ‘Kleine Beiträge zum Herzog Ernst’, Zs. f. deutsches Altertum
110 (1981) 210–21 at 213–17; Ch. Holliger, ‘Ein Bildzeugnis germanischer Maskenkrieger aus
Vindonissa’, Pro Vindonissa 2018, 3–17.
33 Cf. G. Dottin, ‘Les razzias épiques’, Rev. Celt. 40 (1923) 127–34; J. Weisweiler, ‘Vorindo
germanische Schichten der irischen Heldensage’, Zs f. celt. Philol. 24 (1954) 10–55 at 26–28.

virtually disappeared and was replaced by a different one, crech, a word that
contains a pejorative undertone absent in táin.34 In Ireland, as already much
earlier in mainland Gaul, the cattle-raid had gradually given way to different
forms of warrior exploits, forms that were better adapted to a society in which
cattle were no longer the main expression of wealth.
The situation in Homeric Greece was not essentially different from the con-
ditions in other Indo-European societies. One of the striking, if generally ne-
glected, aspects of the Greek army before Troy is the age of its participants. As
Henri Jeanmaire already pointed out, the warriors are often called κοῦροι, or
κούρητες, the typical term for the age set of the young; these warriors are often
not in their extreme youth but already some years into their adolescence;35 this
situation can be compared with the one sketched by Tacitus (Germ. 13), in
which the youths have already received their weapons before they join one of
the principes. In addition to the κοῦροι, the leaders have a kind of inner circle,
the ἔταιροι, a situation paralleled in Germania, where a degree in relationship
also existed: gradus quin etiam ipse comitatus habet (Tac. Germ. 13). The word
ἔταιρος often means ‘member of an age set’, as appears from a number of passag-
es.36 The more general meaning ‘friend, companion’ seems to be a later develop-
ment, since this meaning does not tally so well with the typical element *swe
that indicates the membership of a group of ‘siens propres’, as Benveniste ex-
pressed it.37 Once again, we find outlaws amidst the members of the age-set;
Hector killed Lycophron, who had become a comrade of Ajax after having
committed a murder at Cytheron (II. 15.430–39); another of Hector’s victims
was Epigeus, who was a comrade of Achilles after having murdered his nephew
(II. 16.570–76). Telemachos, whose ἔταιροι were of the same age (Od. 3.363–64),
happily received Theoklymenos, a fugitive who had killed a man (Od. 15.224),
amongst his comrades. Although ἔταιροι often function as a kind of permanent
retinue, we also find them for only one expedition, as in Diomedes’ nightly raid
(Il. 10.234 ff; similarly Od. 14.247).
Raiding was one of the activities of the Greeks before Troy, and we hear
Achilles boasting about his theft of Aeneas’ oxen (Il. 20.188–90). In this case, it
was the act of a fully qualified warrior, but elsewhere cattle-rustling is ascribed
to novices. When the embassy of the Greeks beseeched Achilles to return to the
battle-field, Nestor told a story of his youth. When he was very young, he had
taken part with others – the youth of Pylos? – in a βοηλασία, ‘cattle raid’, against
34 Cf. P. Ó Riain, ‘The “Crech Rig” or “Regal Prey”’, Eigse 15 (1973) 24–30.
35 H. Jeanmaire, Couroi et Courètes (Lille, 1939) 26–43; Ulf, Die homerische Gesellschaft,
58–69; this volume, Ch. 1.10.
36 Il. 5.325–26, 18.251; Od. 3.363–64. For Odysseus, Mentor and other friends, cf. Od. 2.254,
17.68–69. and 22.208; Ulf, Die homerische Gesellschaft, 131 f.

37 É. Benveniste, Le vocabulaire des institutions indo-européennes, 2 vols (Paris 1969)
I.331–32, who also notes the relationship of ἔταιρος and sodalis.

the Eleans. From the sequel we learn that he was not yet entitled to carry heavy
arms according to his father Neleus. As a number of scholars have observed
independently of each other, the whole episode relates Nestor’s coming of age
and has an initiatory background.38
Our last example concerns the Indo-Iranians. We have already seen that the
Veda knows of an autonomous group of young men, the Marut, who functioned
as the retinue of the god Indra. The Marut are called márya ‘young men’,39 and
the related Iranian mairya occurs in the Avesta as the term for the members of
anti-Zoroastrian bands. Although these bands are depicted in the darkest col-
ours and accordingly call for a careful evaluation of the information given by
the Avesta and other Zoroastrian writings, it is consistent with the picture we
have developed so far that these mairya are said to be accompanied by robbers,
that their booty consists of cattle and that they are called ‘two-pawed wolves.40
For a long time, scholars have connected the word márya (mairya) with the term
maryanni, the warrior aristocracy of the Mitanni, and the term mariannu has
now turned up in a letter from Tell Leilān in Northern Syria, dating to 1761 BC,
shortly before the end of the reign of Zimri-Lim, the last king of Mari. The
early occurrence of these Indo-European warriors in the Ancient Near East is a
splendid example of a group of youths who did establish themselves abroad after
one of their raids.41
In ancient Iran we find the related term marika in Darius’ inscription of
Naqsh-i Rustam as a term for ‘vassal’, as Widengren has demonstrated in a de-
tailed discussion. This strongly suggests, as he observes, that the feudal struc-
38 Il. 11.670 ff, cf. P. Walcot, ‘Cattle Raiding, Heroic Tradition and Ritual: the Greek evi-
dence’, History of Religions 18 (1979) 326–51; M. G. Vallebella, ‘Razzia di bestiame e inizia

zione virile nei poemi omerici’, Sandalion 23–25 (2000–2002) 5–38; C. Nobili, ‘Cattle-raid
Myths in Western Peloponnese’, in A. Bierl et al. (eds), Time and Space in Ancient Myth, Re
ligion and Culture (Berlin and Boston, 2017) 197–206; A. Nikolaev, ‘Greek ἅρπαξ “robber;
robbery”’, Indogerm. Forsch. 125 (2020) 33–40.
39 For the Indian márya and Marut, see S. Wikander, Der arische Männerbund (Diss.
Uppsala 1938); L. Renou, Etudes védiques et paninéennes 10 (Paris 1962); B. Lincoln, Priests,
Warriors and Cattle (Berkeley, Los Angeles, London, 1981) 122–32; B. Oguibenine, ‘Le sym-
bolisme de la razzia d’après les hymnes védiques’, Études indo-européennes 5 (1983) 1–17.
40 For the Iranian mairya, see Wikander (previous note); G. Widengren, Hochgottglaube
im alten Iran (Uppsala and Leipzig, 1938) 311–51; Lincoln (previous note); A. Ahmadi, ‘An
Indo-Iranian Initiation-based Masculine Society’, in A. Panaino and V. Sadovski (eds), Indo-
Iranica et Orientalia (Milano, 2015) 7–34; T. Daryaee, ‘The Iranian Männerbund Revisited’,
Iran and the Caucasus 22 (2018) 38–49.
41 For the maryanni, see M. Mayrhofer, Die Arier im Vorderen,Orient – ein Mythos?,
SB Wien 1974 and Kleine Schriften (Wiesbaden, 1996) 304–22; J. De Vos, ‘Naharina et Mitan-
ni au IIe millénaire avant J.-C. À propos des maryannou et de la présence hourrite en Égypte’,
Res Antiquae 8 (2011) 237–74; J. Eidem, ‘The Kingdom of Šamšī-Adad and its Legacies’, in
E. Cancik-K irschbaum et al. (eds), Constituent, Confederate, and Conquered Space: the
emergence of the Mittani state (Boston and Berlin, 2014) 137–46 at 142 (letter).

ture of the Achaemenid Empire evolved from a society of young men, who, we
may add, had apparently broken away from the former tribal structure.42
Less remote in history than these bands of mairya are the bands of Persian
youths noted by Strabo (15.3.18), whose education, which he most likely derived
from Hecataeus’ Periodos, he describes in detail.43 The boys are called kardakes
in the Persian language because they have to live by theft for, according to Stra-
bo ‘karda means “manly” and “warlike”’. The passage used to be deleted by
earlier editions, but inspection of the Strabonian palimpsest has definitively
shown that his suspicion was unfounded.44 Around 400 BC, the kardakes were
already mercenaries, as appears from a neglected fragment of the comedy writer
Theopompos (F 105),45 and later in the fourth century kardakes appear in the
army of Autophrodates (Nepos Dam. 8.2).46 At the battle of Issus, the kardakes
seemed to have constituted the flower of the Persian army (Bosworth on Arrian
2.8.6), and in the early second century BC we still hear of a village of kardakes
(Walbank on Pol. 5.79.11). The term kardakes recurs in a Pahlavi text, Draxt-
i-Asurig, § 18, where it has the meaning ‘wanderer’, a meaning that fits mercen
aries and bands of youths who most likely had to wander around in order to
commit their robberies. Thus it seems that in this case, too, a group of young
men developed into a band of wandering warriors that could be enlisted by
kings or condottieri into their service.47
3. Conclusions
It is time to draw some conclusions.

1. From our survey it appears that among Indo-European peoples, just as among
tribal societies, the pre-adult males often constituted a separate group that
occupied a place at the margin of, or even completely outside, society; this
marginal position attracted other marginals, such as run-away slaves, outlaws
and exiles. This even proved to be the case when the youths functioned as
retainers of a noble or a king – a fact that throws an interesting light on the
particular position in society of the body of retainers.
42 Widengren, Feudalismus, 12–21.
43 F. Lasserre, ‘Protagoras: Le débat sur les constitutions’, MH 33 (1976) 65–84 at 71.
44 F. Lasserre apud A. Alföldi, ‘Konigsweihe und Männerbund bei den Achämeniden’,
SAV 47 (1951) 11–16 at 14–15 and Alföldi, Struktur, 140. This has (understandably) escaped
Walbank on Pol. 5.79.11 and Bosworth on Arr. 2.8.6.
45 For Theopompos, see H. Erbse, Untersuchungen zu den Attizistischen Lexica (Berlin,
1950) 44; add Ammonius, Diff. 275 Nickau: κάρδαξ δέ τις ἐκαλεῖτο στρατιώτης, βάρβαρος δὲ ἡ
λέξις..
46 The number of kardakes by Nepos, centum milia, looks like a misunderstanding of his
source, who probably was Deinon, cf. De(i)non FGrH 690 F18.
47 See also this volume, Chapter 5.2.

2. These bands of youths might develop into separate communities, or establish

themselves as a ruling elite over other places, as happened with the Brettii, the
Achaemenid nobles and the Near Eastern maryanni. In the light of the evi-
dence presented, it also seems plausible that the foundation legend of Rome
has to be taken into consideration as a serious tradition about Rome’s origin:
at Rome’s cradle, there was apparently present a band of Latin youths who
had attracted the dregs of neighbouring peoples. Studies of the continuing
process whereby separate Germanic and Celtic tribes were founded also sug-
gest that the breaking away of the Jungmannschaft was a major factor in the
formation of new tribes.48
3. The separate group of youths could function as a retinue, whether for one raid
only or for a longer period of time; in either case, the main object of raids in
the Archaic period was the cattle of neighbouring peoples. We have seen that
cattle-raids figured in most traditions of the early Indo-European societies,
and especially in stories of the activities of the young. And indeed, Romulus
was pictured by Eutropius as a cattle-stealer, and Albert Schwegler (1819–
1857) already suggested that the traditions in which Romulus helped shep-
herds against the rustlers were later transformations of tales in which the
founder of Rome himself participated in cattle-lifting.49 Also the death of
Tatius was explained as caused by a raid in which his friends had abducted
some herds (Dion. Hal. 2.51.1). Although early war was carried on mainly for
the acquisition of booty,50 the Lapis Satricanus will hardly have been erected
after a single cattle raid and the reason for its erection will probably remain
always unclear.
4. These independent Jungmannschaften showed a tendency to develop into a
proper Männerbund, as we noted in the case of the kardakes; also the fían
regularly appears as just a group of outlaws, and in Greece the ἔταιροι are of-
ten groups of adult men as, for example, in Crete.51 Similarly, the Germanic
retinue gradually lost its character of a group of young men, even though in
the early and later Middle Ages groups of noble young men could be found
attached to the court of a king or a high aristocrat.52 The development that I
48 Cf. Wenskus, Stammesbildung und Verfassung, 295–96, 299, 509 note 533; Dobesch, Die
Kelten, 196 note 57.

49 Eutrop. Brev. 1.1.2; A. Schwegler, Römische Geschichte im Zeitalter der Könige (Tübin-
gen, 1853) 1.431 note 26.

50 A. Alföldi, Early Rome and the Latins (Ann Arbor, 1965), 377 and Entretiens Hardt
XIII (Geneva, 1967) 269–70; W. V. Harris, War and Imperialism in Republican Rome, 327–30
B.C. (Oxford, 1979) 59.
51 More recently, C. P. Longo, ‘Eterie’ e gruppi politici nell’Atene del IV secolo a.C. (Flor-
ence, 1971); O. Aurenche, Les groupes d’Alcibiade, de Léogoras et de Teucros (Paris, 1974);
A. W. Gomme et al., A Historical Commentary on Thucydides V (Oxford, 1981) 128–31, up-
dated by Hornblower on Thuc. 8.54.4.
52 Gregory of Tours, Hist. Franc. 10. 29; F. Menant, ‘Les écuyers (scutiferi), vassaux pay-

have sketched here is not generally taken into account by those scholars – An-
dreas Alföldi (1895–1981), Walter Burkert (1931–2015), Mircea Eliade (1907–
1986), Otto Höfler (1901–1987), Karl Meuli (1891–1968), Geo Widengren
(1907–1996) and Stig Wikander (1908–1983) – who have studied the initiatory
traditions of the Indo-European peoples. Normally, these scholars use the
term Männerbund indiscriminately for associations of pre-adult and adult
males. Yet it becomes clear from our evidence that, originally, it was especial-
ly the youths, who were no longer part of the family but had not yet estab-
lished themselves as an independent family, which occupied a marginal posi-
tion in the tribal societies. During this period, they were not yet fully bound
to the rules of their tribe, and the later men’s societies often continued their
anti-social behaviour.53
5. The analysis of the Lapis Satricanus also suggests that early Latium, if not the
wider Italian region, knew various other examples of the kind of companion-
ship (sodalitas) that we have sketched here. A nice example is Coriolanus, of
whom it is told that ‘he had about him a large retinue of elite youths’ – exact-
ly the composition of the retinue that we would have expected on the basis of
our Indo-European evidence.54 But condottieri and mercenaries, such as the
famous Vibenna brothers, also seem to belong here, and the same period will
have teemed with similar groups.55
6. Having come to the end of our discussion of the various myths and rites of
initiation, we can see that the sodales of Poplios Valesios, if indeed a Jung
mannschaft, must have constituted a group in between youth and adulthood,
precisely like the Greek κοῦροι and κούρητες. However, growing urbanisation
and polis/state formation were not favourable for such wandering groups, and
in later Republican times we do not hear about them any longer, even though
sodalitates continued to exist.56 Regarding the Greek κοῦροι, Arie Hoekstra
(1912–1995) has observed that the noun must have played a more important
sans d’Italie du Nord au XIIe siécle’, in Structures féodales et féodalisme dans l’Occident médi
terranéen [Xe -XIIIe siécles] (Rome, 1980) 285–97 (peasant boys).
53 The literature on the subject is immense, but for our purpose it is enough to refer to
H. Schurtz, Altersklassen und Männerbünde (Berlin, 1902); M. Eliade, Birth and Rebirth
(New York, 1958); A. Brelich, Paides e parthenoi (Rome, 1969) 36 and note 101.
54 Dion. Hal. 7.21.3: ἦν δὲ περὶ αὐτὸν ἑταιρία μεγάλη νέων εὐγενῶν, cf. T. J. Cornell, ‘Corio-
lanus: myth, history and performance’, in D. Braund and Ch. Gill (eds), Myth, History and
Culture in Republican Rome: studies in honour of T. P. Wiseman (Exeter, 2003) 73–97.
55 Cf. Cornell, ‘Coriolanus’, 88–90; D. F. Maras, ‘Ancora su Mastarna, sodalis fidelissimus’,
Annali della fondazione per il museo “Claudio Faina” 17 (2010) 187–200; M. Di Fazio, ‘Mer-
cenari, tiranni, lupi. Mobilità di gruppi nell’Italia antica tra società urbane e non urbanizzate’,
in G. M. Della Fina (ed.), Mobilità geografica e mercenariato nell’Italia preromana (Rome,
2013) 195–212 and ‘Figures of Memory. Aulus Vibenna, Valerius Publicola and Mezentius
between History and Legend’, in K. Sandberg and Ch. Smith (eds), Omnium Annalium Mon
umenta: historical writing and historical evidence in Republican Rome (Leiden, 2018) 322–48.
56 R. Fiori, ‘Sodales. Gefolgschaften e diritto di associazione in Roma arcaica (VIII–V sec.
a.C.)’, in Societas – Ius. Munuscula di allievi a Feliciano Serrao (Naples, 1999) 101–58 and ‘Le

role in pre-Ionic times, for in Ionia κοῦρος tends to be replaced by πάϊς.57 The
implication of this substitution is that in early Ionia the position of the noble
young men was on the whole less prominent than in the time before the com-
position of the Homeric epic. Apparently, the social and political conditions
of the seventh century, the century of the (more or less) definitive text of the
dyssey,58 were not favourable either for these groups of wandering
Iliad and O
youths. In the end, we can only see the archaic rites of initiation through a
mirror darkly. 59
forme di aggregazione sociale basate sulla fides: clientela e sodalitates’, in M. F. Cursi (ed.), XII
tabulae. Testo e commento I (Naples, 2018) 681–702.
57 A. Hoekstra, Epic Verse before Homer (Amsterdam, 1981) 76–81; this volume, Chap-
ter 1.10.
58 W. Burkert, ‘Der Abschluss der Ilias im Zeugnis korinthischer und attischer Vasen (580/
560 v.Chr.)’, MH 69 (2012) 1–11.

59 I would like to thank Rolf Bremmer, Richard Buxton, Theo Korteweg (1949–2019) and
Manfred Mayrhofer (1926–2011) for information and comments regarding the original ver-
sion.

List of First Publications
1. Heroes, Rituals and the Trojan War, Studi Storico-Religiosi 2 (1978) 5–38.
2. Odysseus versus the Cyclops, in S. des Bouvrie (ed.), Myth and Symbol I
(Athens: The Norwegian Institute, 2002) 135–52.
3. Greek Demons of the Wilderness: the case of the Centaurs, in L. Feldt (ed.),
Wilderness Mythologies (Berlin and New York: de Gruyter, 2012) 25–53.
4. La plasticité du mythe: Méléagre dans Homère, in C. Calame (ed.), Méta

morphoses du mythe en Grèce antique (Geneva: Labor et Fides, 1988) 37–55.
5. Orpheus: From Guru to Gay, in Ph. Borgeaud (ed.), Orphisme et Orphée

(Geneva: Droz, 1991) 13–30.
6. Theseus’ and Peirithoos’ Descent into the Underworld, Les Études Clas
siques 83 (2015 [2016]) 35–49.
7. L’initiation d’Héraclès, in C. Calame and P. Ellinger (eds), Du récit au rituel

par la forme esthétique. Poèmes, images et pragmatique cultuelle en Grèce
ancienne, (Paris: Les Belles Lettres, 2017) 271–304.
8. Transvestite Dionysos, The Bucknell Review 43 (1999) 183–200.
9. A Transsexual in Archaic Greece: the case of Kaineus, in D. Boschung,

H. A. Shapiro and F. Waschek (eds), Bodies in Transition (Munich: Fink,
2014) 265–89.
10. Oedipus and the Greek Oedipus Complex, in J. N. Bremmer (ed.), Inter
pretations of Greek Mythology (London: Routledge, 19882) 41–59.
11. Greek Paederasty and Modern Homosexuality, in J. N. Bremmer (ed.), From

Sappho to De Sade (London: Routledge, 1989) 1–14.

252 List of First Publications
12. Adolescents, Symposium and Pederasty, in O. Murray (ed.), Sympotica

(Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1990) 135–48.
13. The Importance of the Maternal Uncle and Grandfather in Archaic and
Classical Greece and Early Byzantium, Zeitschrift für Papyrologie und
Epigraphik 50 (1983) 173–86.
14. Fosterage, Kinship and the Circulation of Children in Ancient Greece,

Dialogos 6 (1999) 1–20.
15. The Suodales of Poplios Valesios, Zeitschrift für Papyrologie und Epigraphik
47 (1982) 133–47.

Index of Names, Subjects and Passages
Achilles F 311 194

– and Cheiron 234 F 356 99
– death 77 F 447 199
– heel 8, 153 Alföldi, A. 249
– initiation 54
Amazons 138
– and mitra 128
– name change 6, 109 Anacreon, fragments, ed. Page/
– runner 10 Bennsdorff, West 2
– and sister’s son 210 PMG 359 203
– in Statius 52 PMG 504 = F. Eleg. 3W2 11
– transvestism 5, 18, 136, 148–49 Anaxilas, fragments, ed. Kassel/Austin
acorn eaters 14 F 37 20
Actaeon 53 Antimachus, fragments, Lloyd-Jones/
Parsons
Acusilaus, fragments, FGrH 2/Fowler
F 77 35
F 22 = 22F 143, 155–56
F 23 = 23F 14 Apollo
F 26 = 26F 145 – Delphinios 149
F 33 = 33F 53 – prototypical ephebe 183
– and initiation XIV, 8, 199
Adrastus 206–07
– and Seleucids 8
Aeneas 28
Apollodorus
Aeschylus, fragments, ed. Radt 1.1.2 34
– Choephoroi 1.2.1 34
602–12 73 1.1.6 IX
– Prometheus Vinctus 1.3.2, 3 83, 89
115 7 1.6.3 9
– Seven against Thebes 1.9.1 230
529–37 137, 151 1.9.8 117
– Fragments 1.9.11 228
F 61 127 1.9.26 152–53
F 78a.67–68 127 1.11.17 7
F 83 154 1.22.2 207
313 17 2.2.1 35
Agathon, fragments, TGrF 39 2.3.4 52
3 17 2.4.5 206
Aithiopis 71 2.4.9–10 108–09, 113
2.4.11 111
Ajax, invulnerability 153–54
2.5.4 8, 60–61, 144
Alcaeus, fragments, ed. Voigt 2.5.12 98, 103

254 Index of Names, Subjects and Passages
2.16.2 208 – Wasps

2.7.7 59 1202 76
3.1.1 112 – Fragments
3.3.7 164 F 773 137
3.4.4 53 F 972 54
3.5.5 117 Aristophanes, fragments, FGrH 379
3.6.8 39 F8 112
3.10.4 34
Artemis
3.12.5 6
– at Aegeira 134
3.13.6 6, 53
– anger 75
3.14.8 228
– Knagia 134
3.15.8 210
– Knakeatis 134
– Epitome
– Laphria 73, 77–78
1.22 145–46
– Limnatis 137–38
1.24 98, 103
– priestesses of 134
3.3 208
– Tauropolos 73
3.31 152
– Triklaria 134
5.11 5, 206
– xoanon 134
Apollonius Rhodius
Athena
1.45 XVII
– in Elateia 135
1.57–64 151
– as huntress 138–39
1.63 156
– Ilias 132
1.195 70
– Kranaia 135
1.201, 318 XVII
– leg wound 8
1.341, 448 XVII
– in Tegea 129, 135
1.466–70 151
2.571–73 103 avunculate XXIII, 209–15
4.1646–48 152 Axionicus, fragments, ed. Kassel/Austin
4.1679–80 152 F9 76
– Scholia
1.609 7 Bacchylides, fragments, ed. Maehler
Archemachos, fragments, FGrH 424 5 73
F9 17 5.95–154 70
5.126 74
archery, contempt of 112
11.77 35
Archilochus, fragments, ed. West 2 – Fragments
F3 150 F 27 52
F 177 151 F 44 56
F 286–88 58 F 56 56
F 304 5 F 64 58
Argo/Argonauts 76, 103, 117, 223 Bachofen, J. J. 205, 210, 213
Aristaeus 53 Bellerophon 6, 109, 208, 230
Aristophanes, fragments, ed. Kassel/ Benveniste, É. 227
Austin
Berserks 154
– Clouds
350 54 Bethe, E. 186
– Thesmophoriazusai boar 154, 197
134ff 127

Index of Names, Subjects and Passages 255
Brelich, A. XIII–XIV Cheiron 51–55

Burkert, W. – and Achilles 234
– on Centaurs 42, 47 – birth of 51
– on Männerbund 249 – and cannibalism 41–42
– on Meleager 77 – cave XX, 52
– on myth and ritual 107 – equine shape 51
– on Odysseus 12, 14 – gift of spear 151
– on Oedipus 166–67 – initiator par excellence XV, XVIII,
– on Polyphemus 38–40 24, 53, 62, 113
– leg wound 8
Buxton, R. 45–46, 62, 126
– married 54–55
– and music/singing 53, 115
Caesar
– and pederasty 42, 54
– De bello Gallico
– and Peleus 53
5.55.3 243
– and Mt Pelion 42
6.23.6 242
– running 53
6.35.6 242
7.4.3 243 coniuratio 238–39
7.37.1 243 Conon, FGrH 26
7.40.7 243 F 1.7 88
Calame, C. VII, 107, 110, 133, 136, 184 F 1.45 84, 89
F 16 182–83
Callimachus, fragments, ed. Pfeiffer/
Harder Corinna, ed. Page
– Hecale 219 – PMG 654 IX
– Hymn to Artemis Coriolanus XXIII, 249
46ff 34 Coste-Messelière, P. de la 85
215–20 78
Cratinus, fragments, ed. Kassel/Austin
– Hymn to Zeus 52–53 IX
F 156 37
– Fragments
F 2a 85 Crete
F 68.1 186 – andreion 181
F 86–89a 25 – dances X
F 191 14 – hetairoi 248
F 194.34–36 25 – initiation 180–83
F 237, 281, 345, 361 219 – pederasty 89, 182
F 692 111 Critias, TrGF 43
Calydonian boar 78 F 1–7 103–05
Catlin, G. 15 Croiset, M. 73
cattle-raids 242, 244–46 crossroads 164
Centaurs XVIII, XX, 24, 45–62 Crow Nation XIX
– and animals 49 Cúchulainn, name 6
– birth of 50–51 Cyclopes XX, 29–44
– death of 59–62 – as builders 35
– hairy 48 – death 33
– vs. Lapiths 55–58, 150 – and Dede Korkut 30–31
– and mountains 47–48 – and Dolopathos 31–32
– and pederasty 54 – parallel stories 29–34

– Polyphemos 3, 36–37, 40 F 149 X, 17, 120,

– as smiths 34 135, 148, 176,
180
Danaids XVII, 118, 133 Eratosthenes, fragments, FGrH 242
Delcourt, M. 5, 76, 160 – Catasterismi
Diez, H.F. von 30 24 81
39 35
Diodorus Siculus
40 42, 54
3.26.2 9
– Fragments
4.10.6 230
F 41 11
4.12.8 61
4.14.3 122 Evans-Pritchard, E.E. 230–31
4.25 81 Euripides, fragments, ed. Kannicht
4.26.1, 63.4 103 – friendship in 105
4.29.3 118 – Alcestis
4.31.1–2 56 8 117
4.36.4–5 59 357–62 81
4.62 207 449 26
4.70 52 – Andromache
5.65, 70 IX 49–55 6
Diogenes, Cynic 110–11 6
– Bacchae
Diomedes 28
– and Pentheus 140
Dionysos 43 206
– (Eri)Kryptos 130 113 128
– hidden in Euboea 130–31 120–25 IX
– feminine 130 181 209
– initiation 102 213 206
– and mitra 128 236 127
– Pseudanor 128, 130 250–54 209
– and Silenos 102, 114 330 140
– transvestism XXI–XXII, 102, 125–41 353 125
Dodds, E. R. 125 438 127
Dolon/Doloneia 26, 27 453–59 125
694 128
Dover, K.J. 177, 200, 214 748–68 129
Dowden, K. 138 973–76 139
Duby, G. 13 1185–87 140
1318ff 209
Dumézil, G. 24, 46, 241
– Cyclops
Durkheim, É. 192 20 34
– Hercules Furens
Eliade, M. 249 15 35
Ennius, fragments, ed. Jocelyn, 364–74 61
Manuwald 969–1001 75
– F 20J = 16M 6 1272–73 61
Ephoros, fragments, FGrH 70 – Hippolytos
F 31b 25 11 209
1391 7

– Iphigeneia in Aulis Finley, M. I. 3, 235

705 52 Finn/fian
1054ff 132 – as Männerbund 248
1499 35 – name change 6
– Iphigeneia in Tauris – wandering 86, 101–02, 243–44
425–26 132
fosterage XVII–XVIII, XXIII, 232–35
– Orestes
462–65 222 Fustel de Coulanges, N. D. 191
1654–57 6
– Phoenissae Ganymede 181, 199–200
Hypothesis 230 Gennep, A. van VII, 4
44 164 genos/gens 191
655 128
1107–09 78 Gernet, L. XII, 18, 165, 191, 206
1156–57 39 Gilgamesh, and Enkidu 95–96
– Rhesus Giovio, P. 13
208–15 26
Glaukos 28
– Fragments
F 72 230 Graf, F. VII, XIV–XV, 74, 77, 81–93
F 358 231 (passim), 131
F 448a.30 220
F 495 76, 210 Harrison, J. IX, X
F 558 230 Hecataeus, fragments, FGrH 1/Fowler
F 752g.21–26 112 F 367 = 367F 36
Eurydice, wives and queens 83–85 Hector 19–22
– hairstyle 20
Fabius Pictor, fragments, Peter/Cornell Hegesandros, apud Athen. 1.18a XVI,
F 5 = 4C 145 12, 76, 119, 197
family, Greek Hellanicus, fragments, FGrH 4/Fowler
– endogamy 227–29 F 47 = 47F 14
– patriarchy 229 F 71 = 71F 11
– patrilineal 230–32 F 88 = 88F 35, 37
– patrilocal 230 F 148 = 148F 152
felt (cap) 12 F 168 = 168F 100
festivals Henrichs, A. 125, 183
– Apaturia 195 Heracles
– Ekdysia 132, 148 – anger 118
– fire 74 – as archer 111–12, 118
– Karneia 26, 136 – in Attica 121
– Lykaia 110 – and Cheiron 113–14
– Oinistêria 121 – children 74–75
– Oschophoria 135–36 – descent underworld 97, 103–05
– Periblêmaia 148 – educators 110–16
– Pyanopsia 136 – and Geryon 39
– Septerion 23, 25 – and gymnasium 122
– Skira 7, 26–27 – initiation XXI, 107–23
– and Iolaus 211

– leg wound 8 F 42 55
– and Linos 114–15, 123 F 43bc 146
– and Lord of the Animals 39 F 54b 117
– name change 6, 109 F 60.3 183
– and Nessos 58–59 F 87 144–45
– and pederasty 54 F 123.3 16
– and Pholos 59–62 F 140–(141) 7, 112
– and sex 118–19 F 171.8 183
– and shepherds 116–17 F 197.1–5 101
– size of 117–18 F 204.87 52
– Theban 112, 121 F 212a 224
– in Theocritus 24 109–10 F 237 152
– and Visvarupa 39 F 250 154
– and weapons 120 F 280.2 71, 99
– and wine pourer 199 Hesychius, ed. Hansen/Cunningham
Heraclides, ed. Pfister α 5702 147
2.8 41, 52 ε 1745 20
Hermes, as wine pourer 199 ι 335 19
ι 823 110
Herodotus
κ 225 54
1.36 76
κ 838 26
1.71.3 165
κ 3533 19
1.173 208
κ 3728 19
2.115.1 23
3.68, 88 165 hetairoi XVIII, 238, 241, 245, 248
5.67 207 Höfler, O. XI–XII, 7, 249
7.239 228 Hoekstra, A. 249
7.61 206
Homer
7.92 13
– Iliad
8.138 102
1.263 50
Hesiod, fragments, ed. Merkelbach/West 1.264 XXII, 150
– Shield 1.267–70 56, 150
131 122 2.43 47
178–90 54, 150 2.511–16 XX
182 98 2.517–26 XX
186 47–48 2.542 17
– Theogony 2.604 65
140, 142, 146 33 2.642 71
341 58 2.676–80 XX
352–56 228 2.714 52
504–05 34 2.719 XVII
996 151 2.742–43 56, 61
1002 51 2.766 117
– Fragments 2.792 10
F 10a.55–57 213 3.144 99
F 25.12–13 71, 74 4.217–19 52
F 25.17–22 58 4.219 XX, 53
F 30.12–19 151 4.274, 393 XX, 133
F 40.2 52

5.290 71 21.418–19 117

5.325–26 XVIII, 245 22.421–22 XVII
5.412 227 22.539 71
5.592–95 XX 23.756 10
5.782 48 schol. 14.296a XVII
6.191–93 230 – Odyssey
6.21–25 117 3.112 10
6.423–24 117 3.363–64 XVIII, 245
7.256 48 4.202 10
8.362(–69) 65, 97 7.63–66 228
9.186 53 7.206 40
9.529–99 16, 65, 74 7.264 14
9.524 68 8.294 11
9.567 68 9, passim 35–37
9.832 51 9.508 5
10.234ff 245 10.203–09 XVII
10.260–65 154 10.5–12 168
10.266–67 65 11.271–80 172
11.221–22 206, 220, 227 11.273 165
11.369ff 153 11.277–78 171
11.479 48 11.621–26 97
11.670ff 246 11.631 XXI, 98
11.832 XX, 52, 55, 12.69–72 65
113 13.323 117
12.128 150 14.162 14
12.196, 330 XX 14.237 XX
12.249 10 14.247 245
12.466 118 15.123–27 145
13.417–25 155 19.307 14
14.121 230 19.390–466 12
14.321–22 112 19.394 76, 209
14.444–45 117 19.401, 412 209
15.421–22 224 19.414, 418–19 76, 209
15.430–39 245 19.429–31 210
15.543 224 19.450 8
15.570 10 21.295–304 56, 150
15.576–78 224 22.208–09 XVIII
15.605–09 155 Homeric Hymns, ed. West
16.157 48 – Aphrodite
16.173–76 210 53–56 117
16.570–76 245 – Apollo
16.717 210 134 183
16.808 10 – Demeter
18.251 XVIII, 245 277–78 7
19.193 16 – Dionysos
19.326–27 5, 206, 220 46 48
20.39 183 – Hermes
20.188–90 245 224 48
20.410 10 231 7

– Hymns – on Crete X, XVIII, XXI, XXII, 10,

7.3–4 126 120, 147–48, 180–83, 193, 195, 200
Huizenga, J. 233 – dances X, XV, 17
hunt – and death VIII, 25
– and agriculture 10 – and defeat monster XVI, XXII,
– and ruse 11 164–65
– and Dorian areas XI
Hyginus, – and dual leadership XX, 136
– Astronomica – and ephebeia XIII, XIX, 188, 195
2.7 84, 88 – and exposure 163
– Fabulae – and the Flood 14–15
14.4 144 – Germanic 102, 114, 155, 210, 224, 242
31.11 56 – girl-young man-warrior 147
33.1–2 56 – groups of fifty XVII–XVIII, 118–19,
49 34 132–33, 241
66.2 163 – hairstyle 17, 19
79 103 – and hunt 76
107 8, 153 – in India 17, 241, 246
125 32 – Indo-European XIV–XV, 21, 77, 133,
139.3 IX 241–47
157 39, 152 – in Iran 17, 21, 28, 86, 101, 116–17, 133,
173 144 195, 198, 217–18, 246–47
176 78 – in Ireland 21, 86, 101, 133, 243–44
178 112 – Jungmannschaft 248–50
186 210 – *koryos 87–88
242 144 – kryptoi 101, 130
273 152 – leg, wound in 7–8
– in Macedonia XIV, XIX, 87, 133,
Ibycus, fragments, ed. Page/Davies 196–97
F 40.4 48 – and marriage XVII, 118
F 290 66 – by maternal family XXIII, 76,
F 309 152 205–18, 222
incest, and parricide 168–69 – and menial tasks 54
initiation of boys – and men’s house IX, 18, 191
– and age sets XV, 182, 241–47 – and men’s societies IX, 191
– and age sixteen 13, 126, 136, 149, 219 – monosandalos XVII
– and age twenty 5, 117 – and music 115
– in Arcadia XIV, XXI, 10, 28, 43, 110, – and name change 6
195 – and nine years 43
– and Argonauts XVII–XVIII, XXIII, – pederasty XV, XXII–XXIII, 149–50,
76 177–90, 200–04
– in Athens XII, XIII, XIX, XXI, 122, – and peripoloi 21, 101
187–89, 197–98, 200 – and poetry 28
– cattle-raids 242, 244–46 – and priests 133–34
– among Celts XII, XX, 6, 16, 86, 133, – of princes/elite boys XVI, XXI,
198, 220, 238–39, 243 135–36
– and common meals 193 – and rebirth VIII
– content XV – in Rome 14, 116, 195, 198, 237–50

– ruse 23 Jacoby, F. 17
– and schools VII–VIII Jason, name 5
– by shepherds XVI, XXI, 116–17
Jeanmaire, H. X, 54, 102, 165, 191, 245
– in Sparta X, XIV, 111, 183–84,
193–94, 200
Kaineus 143–57
– and status reversal XVI
– death 155–56
– structure VII–VIII
– invulnerability 152–55
– in Thebes 200
– and Poseidon 144, 149
– in Thessaly XIV
– sex change 144
– and transvestism XV, XXI, 140–41,
– spear 150–51
148–49
– Thessalian 144
– and wandering XV, XXI, 20–22,
– transvestism XXII, 137
86–87, 101–02, 183
– receiving weapons 181, 188, 200–01 Kakridis, I. 67, 71–72
– and wine pourers 181, 197–99 kardakes 247–48
– wolfs/dogs 244 Kindt, J. 107
– of youth by older man 102, 114, 183
konnos/Konnidas 19, 220
initiation of girls VII
– and Amazons 138 Kouretes 16–18
– groups of fifty 118–19 – and colonisation XV
– and hunt 138–39 – on Crete IX
– in Macedonia 128 – dances X, 16–17
– and ‘maiden’s tragedy’ 145 – ethnic group 16, 20
– and priestesses 133–34, 145 – and fertility 17
– running 134 – and fire festival 74
– as warriors 128–29, 138 – gods 16
– and wine pouring 194, 198–99 – hairstyle 17, 20
– and initiation 76
Ino 130 – megaron 18
inscriptions – and Meleager 68
– IC III ii 2 17 – and mother 77
– IG – and pilos 12
IX 1, 139 135 – transvestism 18
IX 2, 1128 52 kouroi XVIII, XX, 245, 250
XIV.716–17 127 – and Troy 28
– I. Magnesia 215 126
– SEG Kresphontes 206, 220
1.248 52 krypteia X, 130
26.1123 145 Kyknos
30.1254 34 – feminine appearance 152, 183
32.503 89 – invulnerability 152
33.303 114
34.1308 34 Lafitau, J.-F. XI
36.336 75
Lapis Satricanus 237–50
37.59 89
44.332A 114 leschê IX, 18, 102, 191
iuvenes/jeunesse 21, 28, 86, 102, 224 Lemnos 7–11, 118
Leto Phytia 132, 147

Leukippos 132, 136, 138–39 (Elean) Meropis 154

Livy Meuli, K. 249
– Ab urbe condita Meyer, E. 191
1.5.7 240
milk, drinking 57
1.8.5 241
2.3.2 240 Minyas 71, 99, 102–04
2.49.3–6 238–39 Molpoi/Eumolpoi XV–XVI
3.14.3 238 moon, new 14
9.39.5 238
21.31.6–7 243 mountains 45–47, 62–63, 128
42.2.1 239 Murray, G. 23
Locrian Maidens 27, 132 Murray, O. 192
Lord/Lady of the Animals 38–39 myth
lusus Troiae 27 – and exemplum 78
– and folktale 72
lycanthropy 154 – and ritual XVII, 107–08
Lycophron
56 111 Nikophon, fragments, ed. Kassel/Austin
455–56 154 F 6–12 35
458 111 Nilsson, M. P. X, 47
– Scholia
50 59 Nonnos
237b 152 – Dionysiaca
482 14 3.90–93 162
3.204–08 14
lyssa 154, 202 7.125 100
7.215 50
mallos/Mallion/Komallos 19 9.40, 47, 484 164
Mandan Sioux 15 12.70–75 169
Mannhardt, W. 46 14.143–67 130–31
20.229–30 130
Mars 237
27.23 127
maternal family
– and adoption 224–25 Odysseus
– importance 205–18 – and Cyclopes 29–44
– and paternal family 215, 232 – initiation of 12–16
Mauss, M. 235 – leg wound 7–8, 12
Melampus 85 – maternal family 12, 209
– name 12, 209
Meleager XVI, XX–XXI, 65–79
– and pilos 12
– adolescent 70
– and raft 14
– and Althaea’s curse 69–70
– scar 12, 210
– and Atalanta 70
– wandering 16
– death 70–75, 77
– and fire-brand 72–75 Oedipus 159–74
– and gifts 66 – blindness 171
– and maternal family 68–69, 76, 210 – death 171
– myth pre-Homeric 65–67, 75–78 – and Demeter 167
– and wife 69–70 – exposure 161–63
– fosterage XVII

– foster mother 82, 163 12.189 144

– and Freud 172–74 12.209 144
– and Lévi-Strauss 159–60, 166 12.219–536 56
– mother, name of 83, 170 12.497 144
– origin of myth 171–72 12.523 156
– and Sphinx 164–65 13.162 148
Ogygos/ia 14 13.320 3
Old and New Testament
Pan 53–54
– Genesis 49.6 10
– Joshua 11.6 10 Paris
– 1 Samuel 18 230 – exposure 162
– 2 Samuel 2.4 10 – name change 6, 109
– 1 Chonicles 2.26 224 Parker, R. XXII, 107
– Daniel 1.3–4 234 parricide, and incest 167–71
– Acts 23.16 224
Parthenopaios 137, 140, 151
Orestes, as matricide 77
Paulus Diaconus,
Orpheus 81–93 – Historia Longobardorum
– as adolescent 85 1.7 XX
– and Argonauts 91 1.23–24 242
– etymology 88
Pausanias
– and Eurydice 81–85
1.19.1 136
– gay? 88–90
1.27.7 206, 219
– grave 89
2.4.9 110
– as initiator 85–88
2.5.7 206
– Macedonian/Thracian 84
2.6.6 207
– and Orphism 90–93
2.16.1 208
– pre-Homeric XXI, 92–93
2.25.8 35
– as singer 91
2.33.2 145
– wandering XXI, 86
3.18.4 134
– and women 90
4.31.9 74
Ovid 4.33.3 83
– Heroides 6.8.2 10
11.3–130 169 7.18.1 56
– Ibis 7.18.11–13 73
403–04 53 8.2.6 10
– Metamorphoses 8.5.7 211
2.628–30 53 8.47.2 78
8.260–545 70 8.53.9 8
8.298–328 69 9.3.1 20
8.380–444 78 9.29.5–6 114
8.739–79 146 9.30.4–12 89
9.101–65 59 9.30.5 86
9.666–797 147 9.31.1 85
10.83–85 88 10.10.2 210
11.89–105 102 10.26.4 5
12.72 152 10.31.3 70
12.140–43 152 10.34.4 135

pederasty 4.65–67 75
– agrios 204 5.39 152
– in Albania 185 6.47 154
– in Athens 187–89 6.57 211
– copulation 182, 185, 189 7.24 211
– on Crete 180–83 8.42–43 52
– and homosexuality 177 – Nemean Odes
– and Papuans 178–80 3.43.-55 53
– and Rangdemonstration 186–87 4.62ff 75
– in Sparta 183–86 79–81 211
– among the Taifali 185 4.104, 119 5
Peirithoos 5.41 211
– Lapith 60–61 7.40–47, 58, 62 6
– and Theseus 95–105 – Olympian Odes
– Thessalian 100 1.42–45 199
2.82 152
Pelion Mountain 42
– Paeans
Periklymenos 39–40 VI.116–20 6
Perseus 222–23 X 25
– and Andromeda XVII – Pythian Odes
– and Danae 208, 222 1.97 195
– defeats Gorgon XVI 2.33–48 50
– exposure 162 2.45 52
– succession to throne 207 3.1–3 51, 61
Phanocles, ed. Powell/Hopkinson 3.4 52
F 1P = 1133–60H 88 3.5 48
3.5–8 52
Pherecydes, fragments, FGrH 3/Fowler 3.15 183
F 12 = 12F 35 4.102 52
F 14 = 14F 75 4.115 51
F 35 = 35F 34 4.119 51
F 46 = 46F 34 6.22 51
F 50 = 50F 51 8.35.38 211
F 93 = 93F 163 9.30 51, 52
Philochoros, fragments, FGrH 328 111–12 133
F 18 103 – Fragments
F 100 11 F 128f 156
F 111 208 F 166 57
Philoctetes 7–11 F 169a.7 35
F 175 100
Photius, ed. Theodoridis
F 266 34
α 259 54
F 291 109
Phrynichus, TrGF 3 – Scholia
F6 73 N. 9.57a 39
Pindar, fragments, ed. Maehler/ O. 5.42b IX
Rutherford Plato
– Isthmian Odes – Euthydemos
1.7 183 272c 115

– Laws 761b 120, 181, 183,

636b 193 194–95
666a 198 766d 183
666d 28 1032e 216
808e 173 1163a 25
838c 169 Poseidon
873c 164 – and Arion 50
944d 150 – character of 150
– Phaedrus – in Ephesos 197
229d 61 – and Kaineus 137
– Respublica – and male associations 150
359–60b 24 – and Mestra 146
399c 115 – and monsters 61
571c 173 – and Pelops 145, 199
– Symposion – Phytalmios 147
179de 81 – and Polyphemos 39–40
219e 154
Proitids XVII
– Timaeus
21b 196 Propp, V. 41, 160
plokamos 17, 19 pyrrhichê 5
Plutarch Pyrrhos/Neoptolemos 5–6
– Life of Nicias
3 126 Rhadamanthys 112–13
– Life of Pelopidas Robert, C. 164, 167
7 111 Romulus and Remus XX, 116, 162–63,
9.5 173 207, 240–41
– Life of Theseus
4 5, 19, 206 Roscher, W. 46
5 18, 20
6 5 Saintyves, P. 40–41
35.5 131 Sanctis, G. de 191
– Moralia Sappho, fragments, ed. Voigt
10d 211 – on brother 197
234e 112 F 141 199
244ad 74 F 169a 147
245c 129 F 203 199
293c 25 F 206 99
387d 114
Scaliger, J. 127
405b 112
417e–418d 25 Schmidt, M. 116
491f–492a 211 Schurtz, H. IX–XI, 191
492d 213 Segal, Ch. 125
566c 81
Simonides, fragments, ed. Page
577 113
F 510 196
595b 173
F 564 70
639f–640a 111
647a 54 skollus 17, 19

sodales 238–41, 243, 249 9.5.19 52, 61

Sophocles, fragments, ed. Radt 10.3.8 18
– in love 199 10.3.11 IX
– Antigone 10.3.18 28
53–54 171 10.3.23 89
350 48 10.4.12 182
1183ff 82 10.4.16 17
– Hermione 10.4.20 XVII
p. 192 6 10.4.21 135, 180
– Oedipus Rex 15.3.18 247
211, 209, 438 128 16.4.10 9
775, 790 163 symposium
806–13 164 – Athenian boys at XVI
1263–64 171 – and pederasty 200–04
1418 212 – and didactic poetry 194–96
– Philoctetes – pre-history of 192–93
144 11 – sitting at 196–97
239–44 5, 206
– Trachiniae Tacitus
555–58 59 – Germania
565–81 59 5 242
714–15 51 13–14 242, 245
837 48 38 18
1095–96 61 Talos 152–53
– Fragments
Telesilla, poetess 129
F 227 35
F 380 144 Thamyris 88
F 500–501 152 – pederasty 89
Sourvinou-Inwood, C. VII, XIV Theognis
9 7
Steinmetz, S.R. 233
309 193
Stesichorus, fragments, ed. Finglass 1002, 1211ff 198
F 22 60 1295, 1307, 1379 194
F 90 23
Theophrastus, fragments, ed. Forten-
F 91a–j, 180–81 73
baugh
F 183–84 73
F 560 182
F 226 153
F 576 198
F 270, 272, 281 73
F 600 143, 151
Strabo, ed. Radt
Theopompos, fragments, ed. Kassel/
7, fr. 10a 89
Austin
7, fr. 15 88
F 92 54
8.3.7, 10 19
F 105 117, 247
8.3.19 60
8.6.8 35 Theseus XII–XIII
9.4.8 48 – and abductions 100
9.5.9 210 – and age sixteen 13, 126, 136, 149, 219
9.5.12 61 – dedicating hair 139
9.5.16 5, 206 – descent underworld 98–99

– effeminate appearance 136, 149 Weiser, L. XI

– fosterage 219–20 Welcker, F. 66
– hairstyle 18–20
West, M. L. XX, 50, 91, 99, 101, 103,
– and initiation 166–67
126; S. 112
– lifting rock 219
– and Medea 77 Widengren, G. XII, 246, 249
– and Minotaur XIII, XVI, 166 Wikander, S. XII, 249
– name 5 Wilhelm, A. 216
– and parricide 222
– and Peirithoos XXI, 95–105 Williams, F. E. 178
– and pilos Winkler, J. VII
– trip to Crete 25, 99, 208 Wittgenstein, L. 107
– wandering XXI, 101, 114
women
throne, succession to 206–07, 221 – and maternal uncle 224
Thucydides – and war 129
4.34 13
6.2 34 Xenophon
Titanomachy, fragments, ed. Davies/ – Anabasis
Bernabé 33 1.2.13 102
F 6 = 10/11B 55 7.3.21 196
F 9 = 10B 51 – Cyropaedia 217
4.3.17 61
Troy – Lak. Pol.
– and initiation 27–28 2.12 183
– and labyrinth 22–23 2.13 184
– Trojan Horse 22–24, 63 3.5, 5.5 194
– Trojan War XIX–XX, 3–28 – Symposium
Turner, V. W. 4 1.5.8 196
3.1 115
underworld, descents 97–99 8.31 105
Usener, H. 23, 26, 167
youths, as servants 233
ver sacrum XV, 86
Zeus
Vernant, J.-P. 125
– Agoraios 152
Versnel, H.S. 107, 125, 237 – Akraios/Aktaios 42, 52, 54
Vibenna brothers XXIII, 249 – beardless IX, 134
Vidal-Naquet, P. XIII, 122 – and Chthonie 145
– on Crete IX
Webster, H. IX–XI – hymn to IX
– in Aegion 133–34
wedding gifts 145–46
– sinews cut 9

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Becoming a Man in Ancient

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ISBN 978-3-16-159008-5 / eISBN 978-3-16-159009-2

© 2021 Mohr Siebeck Tübingen, Germany. www.mohrsiebeck.com

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Pierre Vidal-Naquet (1930–2006)

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20 Cf. M. Gasche, ‘Die Beziehungen deutscher und skandinavischer Orientalisten im

Schatten des Nationalsozialismus: Von traditionellen Banden, weltanschaulichen Brüchen

connection of Theseus with the life of the Athenian ephebes.

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25 Jeanmaire, Couroi et Courètes, 228–378, whose analysis is refined by C. Calame, Thésée

et l’imaginaire athénien (Paris, 20183) 69–139.

num 12 (2020) 41–86.

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31 C. Sourvinou-Inwood, review of Brelich, Paides e parthenoi, JHS 91 (1971) 172–77. For

Kalaitzi et al. (eds), Βορειοελλαδικά … Essays in honour of Miltiades B. Hatzopoulos (Athens,

forschung’, in M. L. Heyer-Boscardin (ed.), Wider das “finstere Mittelalter”. Festschrift für

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les, London, 1979) 30.

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(2015–2016 [2017]) 145–71; D. Rousset, ‘Considérations sur la loi éphébarchique d’Amphipo-

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63 West, ‘The Calydonian Boar’, 8 note 18.

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and New York, 20132) 167 f.

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Cross-cultural Perspective’, in K. Kleber et al. (eds), Grenzüberschreitungen. Studien zur

tive kinship’, CSSH 45 (2003) 741–82.

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scription’ of an ancient initiatory ritual. Still, I hope that my discussions have

m’ont signalé des erreurs et notamment mon collègue néerlandais J. Bremmer’.

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1. Initiation and the Heroes of the Trojan War . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3

11. Initiation and Greek Pederasty . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 177

List of First Publications . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 251

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ABV J. D. Beazley, Attic Black-figure Vase-Painters

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JIES Journal of Indo-European Studies

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Initiation and the Heroes of the Trojan War

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klassiek antropoloog in de klassieke wereld’, Anthropologische verkenningen 13.4 (1994) 46–

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When Achilles’ son Phyrrhos/Neoptolemos was still a boy,14 he was fetched

Chapters 13 and 14.

‘Neoptolemos’, in LIMC VI.1 (1992) 773–79 at 777.

tichità greco-romana (Pisa, 1998) 187–218.

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Stifter Jahrbuch 2 (1951) 39–53; L. Schmidt, ‘Berchtengestalten im Burgenland’, Burgen

Annales ESC 18 (1963) 1041–70.