Olympian and Chthonian · Logik des Rituals," and Walter Burkert holds much the same to be true of...

SCOTT SCULLION

Olympian and Chthonian

To THE OLYMPIAN sky gods-so tradition has it-the Greeks sacrificed animals in sunlight, at a high altar, pointing the victim's throat skyward when

slaughtering it; they burned the bones, thigh, and fat for the god, and ate the meat themselves, all to the accompaniment of music and, at least at the banquet

stage, in a mood of general jollification.1 Libations to the Olympians were

I am indebted for helpful suggestions and correction to Albert Henrichs and to two anonymous referees for this journal.

1. The following works are referred to in abbreviated form: Walter Burkert, Homo Necans

(Berkeley and Los Angeles, 1983) = HN; Walter Burkert, Griechische Religion der archaischen und klassischen Epoche (Stuttgart, 1977) = GR; Georges Daux, "La grande demarchie: Un nouveau calendrier sacrificiel d'Attique (Erchia)," BCH 87 (1963) 603-34; Georges Daux, "Sacrifices a

Thorikos," GMusJ 12 (1984) 145-52; A. Fairbanks, "The Chthonic Gods of Greek Religion," AJP 21 (1900) 241-59; Michael S. Goldstein, "The Setting of the Ritual Meal in Greek Sanctuaries: 600 300 B.C." (diss. Berkeley, 1978); Fritz Graf, "Milch, Honig und Wein," in Perennitas: Studi in onore di Angelo Brelich (Rome, 1980) 209-21; Albert Henrichs, "Namenlosigkeit und Euphemismus: Zur Ambivalenz der chthonischen Machte im attischen Drama," in Annette Harder and Heinz Hofmann, eds., Fragmenta Dramatica (Gottingen, 1990) 161-201; Albert Henrichs, "The Eumenides and

Wineless Libations in the Derveni Papyrus," in Atti del XVII congresso internazionale di papirologia (Naples, 1984) 255-68; Albert Henrichs, "The 'Sobriety' of Oedipus: Sophocles OC 100 Misunder stood," HSCP 87 (1983) 87-100; Michael Jameson, "Notes on the Sacrificial Calendar from Erchia," BCH 89 (1965) 154-72; Michael H. Jameson, "Sacrifice before Battle," in Victor Davis Hanson, ed., Hoplites: The Classical Greek Battle Experience (New York, 1991) 197-227; LGS = H. von Prott and L. Ziehen, eds., Leges Graecorum Sacrae, vols. 1 and 2 (Leipzig, 1896-1906); LS = F. Sokolowski, Lois sacrees des cites grecques (Paris, 1969); LSAM = F. Sokolowski, Lois sacrees de l'Asie mineure

(Paris, 1955); LSS = F. Sokolowski, Lois sacrees des cites grecques: Supplement (Paris, 1962); Martin P. Nilsson, Griechische Feste von religioser Bedeutung mit Ausschluj3 der attischen (Leipzig, 1906) =

GF; Martin P. Nilsson, Geschichte der griechischen Religion 13 (Munich, 1967) = GGR; A. D. Nock, "The Cult of Heroes," (HThR 37 [1944] 141-74 =) Essays on Religion and the Ancient World

? 1994 BY THE REGENTS OF THE UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA

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76 CLASSICAL ANTIQUITY Volume 13/No. 1/April 1994

similarly "participatory": a minimal portion of the liquid was poured out for the

god, the rest reserved for the worshiper. A wholly different atmosphere pre vailed in cult offered to the chthonian powers-the gods of the underworld, heroes, and the dead. Black victims were sacrificed by night over a low hearth or

pit, into which the flow of blood was directed; they were wholly consumed by the

flames, so that in these grim and silent rites the worshiper tasted nothing. Nor did one participate in liquid offerings to the chthonians, which were poured in their entirety into the earth. The sharp distinction between Olympian and

chthonian, applicable both to divinities and to ritual, not only was familiar to the ancients themselves but found clear expression, down to particulars, in the sacral

terminology of the Greek language, OUeLV, p3cot6, ojovbai, and so forth on the

Olympian side corresponding to evayt;elv, eoXaQa, P6OQog, Xoal on the chthonian.

The validity of this distinction and its fundamental importance have gener ally been taken for granted by modern students of Greek religion;2 indeed in the flux of scholarly fashion Olympian and chthonian have been seen as coinciding

with a rich variety of cosmic opposites: rich/poor, aristocratic/democratic, Indo

European/indigenous, masculine/feminine, patriarchal/matriarchal, advanced/

primitive, rational/mystical, and so on. No aspect of Greek religion has seemed more central or more basic, and none has a greater appeal: it has attracted the

attention of the most universalizing theorists in a number of disciplines, as of the most antiquarian of classical philologists.

The nature and limits of the applicability of the Olympian/chthonian distinc tion to the phenomena of Greek religion have, however, been searchingly reas sessed by some of the most respected twentieth-century authorities. The recent

tendency to consider ritual, as "fact," the primary element in Greek cult, and the

gods, as "fluid," secondary and variable3-a tendency that can skew our percep tion of Greek religion-has found expression in the claim that the character of

the divine recipient does not determine the type of ritual offered. Fritz Graf, for

example, in a study of libations, reaches the conclusion that "nicht die Gottheit oder die Toten, denen die Spende gilt, bestimmen ihre Form, sondern die innere

Logik des Rituals," and Walter Burkert holds much the same to be true of

(Oxford, 1972) 575-602; Renate Schlesier, "Olympian versus Chthonian Religion," SCI 11 (1991/92) 38-51; Paul Stengel, Opferbrauche der Griechen (Leipzig, 1910). The sacrificial calendar from Thorikos (= Thorikos) is cited according to the edition (with translation and commentary) of

Georges Daux, "Le Calendrier de Thorikos au Musde J. Paul Getty," AC 52 (1983) 150-74, which

supersedes the edition with commentary of Jules Labarbe, Thorikos: Les testimonia, Fouilles de Thorikos / Opgravingen van Thorikos 1 (Ghent, 1977) 56-64.

2. See above all Erwin Rohde, Psyche: Seelencult und Unsterblichkeitsglaube der Griechen2

(Freiburg i. B., 1898) 1.146-279; for a basic account and bibliography, Burkert, GR 306-12 with 306 n. 1, 307 n. 8; K. O. Muller, Aeschylos, Eumeniden (Gottingen, 1833) 165-78, should not be

forgotten. For fuller treatment of the scholarly tradition, see now Schlesier. 3. I allude to Burkert, HN xv. For criticism of this trend in the modern study of Greek religion,

see Albert Henrichs, Die Gotter Griechenlands: Ihr Bild im Wandel der Religionswissenschaft, Thyssen-Vortrage: Auseinandersetzungen mit der Antike 5 (Bamberg, 1987), esp. section X.

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SCULLION: Olympian and Chthonian 77

animal sacrifice.4 This stands as a quite radical rejection of the traditional view that recipients of cult are either Olympian or chthonian in character and are

exclusively offered as a consequence the corresponding form of worship. Accep tance of the new approach would have far-reaching consequences for our general view of Greek religion; careful reexamination is therefore indicated, and must of course be based on the minutiae of the cultic record, however notoriously com

plex and refractory. What follows is intended as a contribution to debate; it defends the view that the character of the recipient is a constitutive element of

ritual, and resumes the modern attempt to replace earlier, extreme formulations of the Olympian/chthonian distinction with a more open and accurate approach.

THE TRADITIONAL DISTINCTION QUESTIONED

Arthur Fairbanks commenced the modem debate in 1900, complaining that his contemporaries tended "to include the worship of the dead, of chthonic gods proper, and of heroes, together with all propitiatory and purificatory rites, under one heading, and to apply the term 'chthonic' to this whole group of divinities and to this entire type of worship." In Paul Stengel's work, for example, this

approach has "the result that Apollo, Artemis, and indeed most of the Olympic divinities, come to be classed as at times chthonic gods."5

Fairbanks claims that the term "chthonic" should strictly be applied only to divinities who rule over or are closely associated with the souls of the dead:

Hades and Persephone, Ge, the Erinyes, Hekate; and to Zeus, Demeter, and

Hermes, Olympian gods who often receive the epithet "chthonian" in associa tion with the same realm. Our knowledge of these gods is mostly obtained from

poetry, and Fairbanks therefore describes "chthonic" in this sense as "a poetic term to denote a god associated with souls" (247). When used as an epithet for

gods from whom prosperity of crops is sought, "chthonian" is "a cultus term to denote a god of agriculture" (247), and this class of agricultural gods is not to be identified with the rulers of souls (248). There are two further classes of divine

beings connected with the earth: heroes and the souls of the dead; none of these four classes is to be confused with any of the others (248-49).

Fairbanks maintains that the character of the chthonic gods as a class differs

from that of the Olympians; this character is not, however, exclusive to the chthonic gods, but theirs by virtue of their membership in a larger group. "If we make a distinction between gods of national worship and gods who were the source both of special blessings and of special evils, the chthonic gods, as well as

heroes and agricultural gods, will belong to the latter class" (250). The ambiva lent character of this group, which involves also the trait of being easily roused to

4. Graf 220; see also id., Nordionische Kulte, Bibliotheca Helvetica Romana 21 (Rome, 1985) 26-30; Burkert, HN 9 n. 41: "We are dealing with an antithesis within the ritual, not with two

fundamentally different and separate things"; GR 307 with the cross-references in n. 8. 5. Fairbanks 241f.

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anger, determines the type of cult they are offered. "They are approached with fear and receive sacrifices that are intended to propitiate their anger," as for

example holocaust sacrifices or wineless libations, or in a different context purifi catory rites with their focus on blood (253-58). "At the same time, they are not so clearly differentiated from the other gods as not to receive the ordinary types of sacrifice" (258), and Fairbanks lists examples of sacrifices to gods of this class

involving participation. On Fairbanks's view, then, "the conclusion is unavoidable that we are not

justified in describing any one type of worship as distinctly chthonian" (259). The type of worship the chthonic gods normally receive is not peculiar to them, but shared with the wider class of easily angered divinities; and even at that the

many exceptions forbid an inflexible typology. What is true of the worship is also true of the character of the recipients, for neither are the chthonic gods unique in their propensity to anger. It is as part of the larger class that they normally receive propitiatory rites, for-and the point is of special interest for us-"the forms of worship correspond with the character of the gods" (259).

In his famous article "The Cult of Heroes," A. D. Nock took a further step beyond the nineteenth-century view by questioning the validity of this principle of the correspondence of worship with divine character. Nock first notes that the distinction between banquet sacrifice for the Olympians and sacrifice without

participation for the underworld gods and the heroes was "a matter of well established practice, familiar to intelligent Greeks" (578). He then collects a number of exceptions, all from the realm of hero cult, which lead him to the conclusion that "when the sacrifice is a holocaust, the victims dark, not light, and the time night rather than day, then the cult in question is usually directed to heroes or to deities of the earth or underworld, but we cannot make even this

proposition universal. Certainly we cannot reverse it, and say that, where such rites were not employed, the objects of cult were gods or goddesses of the

Olympian type" (582). Nock suggests two basic reasons for the performance of holocaust sacrifice:

"First, there are offerings to persons who have lived and died and who are

supposed to need real sustenance and nourishment.... Secondly, there are

offerings which may best be called heilige Handlungen, ceremonies wherein an animal was consumed (not always by fire) in a proceeding intended to exercise direct and efficacious influence upon divine powers or upon forces of nature"

(590). The first category includes rites for heroes and for the dead; the second,

fertility rites, "sphagia in general, oath-sacrifices . .. , offerings of victims in a

crisis, cathartic sacrifices . . . and various ceremonies to avert evil" (ibid.). In all such rites the victim is completely destroyed, whether the gods in question are

Olympian or from the earth or underworld. Nock adds the case of human sacri

fice as "a classic instance. They are powerful forms of action" (591): thus, as he

remarks in a note, there is a similarity between the sacrifice of Polyxena to

Achilleus and that of Iphigeneia to Artemis, though the first recipient is a hero,

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the second an Olympian. "For this second category," Nock concludes, "would it not be true to say that non-participation followed upon the purpose and atmo

sphere of the ritual and upon the disposition or aspect imputed to the deities rather than upon their identity or supposed habitat?" (591). He points out that it is common for Greek divinities to have more than one aspect, and adds that "most forms of supernatural activity are common to Olympians and chthonioi"

(591f.). Nock, then, considers the mode of worship to be determined not, as for

Fairbanks, by "the character of the gods," but by a combination of the intention of the ritual and the "aspect imputed to," as opposed to the "identity of," the

deity.

CURRENT APPROACHES

The traditional, hard-and-fast distinction of Olympian and chthonian sacrifi cial modes is challenged especially by several attested cases of single ritual se

quences involving both sorts of offering. Two of these have in recent years been discussed against the theoretical background and provide excellent case studies in current thinking. In 1963 Georges Daux published a long and well-preserved sacral calendar of the deme Erchia, which substantially increased our fund of attested sacrifices in classical Attika. Under the festival Diasia in the month Anthesterion it specifies the victim for Zeus Meilichios: oig, vtlpdaLog gLXQL oankayX[v]wv.6 No wine is to be used until the victim's offal has been burned.7 M. H. Jameson, in his commentary on this sacrifice, explains the restriction with reference to Nock's category of heilige Handlungen.8 It seems clear that the victim was eaten and that to this extent we have to do with a "normal sacrifice," but the restriction on wine represents a "divergence . . . from normal practice in the direction of 'powerful actions' " (164). Jameson compares the elaborate ritual for Zeus Polieus on Kos (LS 151 A), where sacrifice of an ox with participa tion is preceded by holocaust of a piglet accompanied by wineless libations. "What they have in common is that the first part of each ceremony is in the

direction of a powerful action . . . followed by normal procedures" (165). It is especially interesting for our purposes that Jameson prefaces his discus

sion with the statement that "the sacrifices for Zeus Meilichios reflect his mixed character" (162). The god's uncanny and dangerous nature, his close connections

6. Daux, "Erchia" = LS 18, at A.37ff. 7. So Daux, "Erchia" 629 n. 2; and Henrichs, "Sobriety" 91 n. 19; Jameson, "Erchia" 164,

assumes that the use of wine begins during the burning of the offal. 8. Jameson, "Erchia" 159-72, esp. 162-65. Nock's term, presumably adopted from an article

by one of his heroes, Hermann Usener ("Heilige Handlung," ARW 7 [1904] 281-339 = Kleine

Schriften 4 [Leipzig, 1913] 422-67), who uses it quite differently, is not an especially happy one, but has achieved a certain currency (see Jameson, "Battle" 201: "may be freely rendered as 'powerful actions' ") and might as well be retained.

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with the underworld, and his snake form are well known;9 Jameson cites other evidence for "mixed" rites in his honor, and it is presumably this consistent

pattern that suggests to him that the various rites reflect the character of the god. Though Jameson does not confront the question directly, the evidence he gath ers would appear to justify his supposition that in this case we may speak of the

god's character as the determining factor. In Nock's terms, the two "aspects" reflected in the mixed character of the ritual occur together so consistently that it seems reasonable to regard them as constituting the "identity" of the god: he and the worship offered him are not "normal" here and now and "abnormal" there and then, but always and everywhere both.

If Jameson reverts to an old-fashioned focus on the character of the recipi ent, Graf goes farther than Nock in questioning the validity of this approach. It

happens that Graf illustrates his thesis that the form of worship is determined

solely by "die innere Logik des Rituals" with the rites for Zeus Polieus on Kos, Jameson's comparandum for the Erchian rite. Focusing on the several libations

specified in the Koan inscription (LS 151 A), Graf poses the question, "Lassen sich diese Riten verstehen als rituelle Zeichen, 'ritual symbols' der ethnologi schen Terminologie, die im Ablauf des Gesamtrituals Aussagen machen?"

(211). He returns a positive answer. The data are as follows. The holocaust of the piglet with libations of

?eXFixQatov over its oanXayXva and, following the placing of its EvTega in the fire, over them, is followed by the herald's announcement of the festival of Zeus Polieus. Someone, perhaps the priest of Zeus Polieus, then throws or pours onto the ivTeQa in the fire incense, cakes, libations of unmixed and of mixed wine, and a garland. The participants then proceed to a nocturnal entertainment dur

ing which those who will wield the knife at the sacrifice next day of Zeus Polieus's bull are chosen, and sexual abstinence during the same night is imposed upon them.

Noting that wineless libations and those of unmixed wine are equally depar tures from the norm of mixed wine, Graf concludes about the rite that "bis zur

Verkiindigung des Festes von Zeus Polieus ist es durch eine Reihe von Signalen als ausserordentlich gekennzeichnet" (218). Holocaust sacrifice, [teXExQartov liba

tions, and the time, "gegen Abend ... im Gegensatz zum olympischen Nor

malopfer," are the signals. "So wird das Voropfer als kontrastierender Durch

gang zum Fest des Polieus ausgespielt: den Ubergang vollzieht, nach der

Verkiindigung des Zeusfestes, nun eben der Priester des Zeus: in markantem

Schritt von der Spende mit reinem zu derjenigen mit gemischtem Wein, von

Aussergewohnlichkeit zum Normalen" (218f.). Finally, "so eignet den Fliissigkei

9. See Burkert, GR 308f.; Graf, Kulte (supra, n. 4) 24 with further bibliography n. 24; id., "Zum Opferkalender des Nikomachos," ZPE 14 (1974) 139-44; Jameson, "Erchia" 159-65. New evidence in "an early lex sacra from Selinous" in the Getty Museum, to be published by M. H.

Jameson, R. D. Kotansky, and D. R. Jordan: see D. R. Jordan, "A Meilichios Stone from Selinous," ZPE 86 (1991) 279-82.

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ten der Libation Zeichenfunktion, bezeichnen sie Marginalitat oder Normalitat im Ablauf und Vollzug des Rituals" (219).10 Hence the restriction to "die innere

Logik des Rituals."

THE TEST CASE OF ZEUS POLIEUS

Critical assessment of these approaches will involve a close look at the Koan ritual, which not only has been interpreted in detail by Graf but figures very prominently in Burkert's brief discussions as illustration of his view that the difference between holocaust and participatory sacrifice has to do with "an antithesis in the ritual," and does not coincide with the Olympian/chthonian distinction. 1

It may be noted first that the "ritual symbol" interpretation works best

when, as here, we are faced with a ritual sequence involving phases of obviously different character; the first component of a new phase manifests the change and

may easily be regarded as having a signalizing function, but it is not self-evident that this must be its only significance. What are we to make of simpler se

quences, where there are no contrasts of normality and marginality to be symbol ized? In the Erchian cult calendar (LS 18) eight sacrifices are specified as

vrlq(parog, which can only mean that no wine was used at all. Four of these

involve participation, which is generally regarded as "normal"; granted that the information provided by the calendars is very spare, it seems difficult to under stand the restriction on wine as finding its meaning "im Ablauf des Gesamtritu als." The natural conclusion is that the restriction has an independent meaning.

This appears even more clearly from the fact that altars could be "wineless." The priest of Asklepios at Peiraieus set up a stele specifying the sort and number of cakes that were to be used in preliminary sacrifices to various divinities in the circle of Asklepios and marking the vTlqpdaXLOL Teig PCOROL where these were to be offered.12 Wineless offerings, generally of cakes, to heroes and lesser or subordi nate gods are frequently attested as preliminaries to sacrifice to gods (here presum ably Asklepios).13 In this sense they form part of a sequence, but it is significant here that particular provisions are made for particular divinities and that the

offerings are made on a separate altar.14 The worshiper performs one sort of

worship for certain divinities at a certain place, and then proceeds to another altar, another sort of offering, and another god. The two stages clearly stand in a

10. Graf 211 n. 5 acknowledges a methodological debt to the social anthropologist Victor Turner.

11. HN 9 n. 41, GR 112 with n. 83, cf. 307 n. 8. Burkert had earlier stated a similar view on the basis of the frequent cases of preliminary holocaust for a hero followed by banquet sacrifice to a god: see "Greek Tragedy and Sacrificial Ritual," GRBS 7 (1966) 87-121 at 104 n. 36.

12. LS 21; this and most of the other examples of wineless altars are collected by Henrichs, "Sobriety" 92 n. 21 and 100 n. 62.

13. See Henrichs, "Eumenides" 258, with further references in n. 9. 14. The particular recipients mentioned in LS 21 are considered below.

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significant relationship, but they are also separate acts of worship whose distinc tive character is closely associated with distinct recipients and altars.

This conclusion suits the fact that several wineless altars are associated with a single cult and offerings that do not form part of a sequence. Thus Hesychius s.v. vriqcpdlol (v 545) mentions v0iRtax xati potoi e:p' (bv oivog ori o0ev6xEal, and Phylarchos (FGrHist 81 F 25) says that the Greeks do not bring wine to the altars of Helios, but pour libations of honey. We have also the evidence of

plaques and stelai set up on or beside altars. From Paros, sixth or fifth century: Bo)log Ai6g 'E[cFXaotE]o TCiv &at6 M[av]6Qo0eutLog. S[tkxt oTev6eEtaC (LSS 62); from Chios, fourth century: Otvov yn njQO0owEQe[v]. MOLQcov xai Zavog

MoTrlyETeoe (LSS 79); from Thasos, second quarter of the fifth century: NZVLTqToLv x' 'A6nokkXov NvppqyEY?Tqi 0Qkuv xai & aoevy i oI 36rTi toogQ6ev, oiL

oi 09:LLg oV6e Xol@ov* oi 3tacCLWvieTeal (LS 114). Pausanias attests similar pro scriptions in the cult of Zeus Hypatos at the Athenian Erechtheion (1.26.5) and of Zeus Sosipolis at Olympia (6.20.2-3); wineless libations are of course normal in the cult of the Semnai/Eumenides at Athens and elsewhere.15 Such detailed restrictions in the cult of a given deity are common. The inscription from Thasos

proscribes piglets and paians, and other victims or the presence of women or of various objects such as weapons are forbidden elsewhere.16

The conclusion seems inescapable that in these cases it is not "the inner logic of the ritual" but precisely the divinities to whom it is offered that determine this

aspect of its form. Not only is the restriction absolute at a given altar for a given god; it may be attested for the same god at different places, as in the case of the

Eumenides and, as we shall see, of some of the others mentioned above. It might be argued that such cults are simply extreme cases of ritual marginality, the gods recipients of a quite general ritual pattern stereotyped by the absence of "normal

ity," and that this is not specific to any individual god. If we can discover

examples of rituals that involve a very distinctive atmosphere and combination of

components and that occur regularly in the cult of one god or obviously similar

gods and not in that of others, we will have shown that ritual was at least

sometimes suited to the individual god. Here we may turn to the Koan rite for Zeus Polieus. We notice first that

Graf's interpretation of the ritual involves certain artificialities. The ox for Zeus

Polieus is taken in procession to the sanctuary of Hestia Hetaireia, where incense is burned(?) and where the priest of Zeus Polieus garlands the animal and pours a libation of mixed wine in front of it. All this seems "normal"; a procession to

the sanctuary of Zeus Polieus follows,17 and this is the quite literal "transition" to

15. Aisch. Eum. 107; Soph. OK 100,469-81; 2 Aischines 1.188; Kall. fr. 681 Pf.; Philon, Prob.

140; Paus. 2.11.4; these passages are cited by Henrichs, "Eumenides" 259 n. 14, as parallels for the new attestation in col. ii of the Derveni Papyrus (ZPE 47 [1982] after p. 300).

16. E.g., Ziehen, LGS 2 nos. 79, 96, 105-6; LSS 57-60, 63, 73-74, 88; see further Ziehen, LGS 2.285-87; E. Norden, Aus altromischen Priesterbuchern (Lund, 1939) 263.

17. Graf 210 says that the preliminary holocaust, etc., are for Hestia Hetaireia. This cannot be

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the "marginal" holocaust sacrifices and libations of honey mix. There follows what Graf speaks of as a "markanter Schritt von der Spende mit reinem zu

derjenigen mit gemischtem Wein, von Aussergewohnlichkeit zum Normalen"

(219), but both libations, preceded by incense and cakes and followed by a

garland, are added to the holocaust of the EvTespa. The "normal" component thus forms part of a "marginal" offering, and is not even the last item in it.18 It rather looks as though this whole phase of the rite is "exceptional," and that the

mixed wine would be better regarded as a warning against excessively rigid typologizing.

The piglet holocaust and its attendant offerings thus constitute a single ritual of fundamentally consistent character. This is linked, partly by the unusual pres ence of the ox, with other rituals and events. The first part of the inscription describes the elaborate procedure for selecting the ox from among many that are

paraded in the agora. At the gathering that follows the holocaust, the priest chooses the official who will kill the animal next day; the heralds likewise choose the killer of the ox they will offer, and both are required to abstain from sex. The

entry concerning the sacrifice of the ox on the following day includes elaborate

specifications for the distribution of portions, which end with the proviso Ta.UTa

j6rav[] | [ovi] a.CPq . q.T. 5 x!T . $ T[6XLog (LS 151 A.54f.). Athena Polias receives on the same day, and doubtless as part of the same occasion, a pregnant sheep (A.55f.).

There are several unusual features here. The ox is specially selected, attends the piglet holocaust, and then passes a peaceful night while his executioner is

right: the ox is taken to her sanctuary, and the priest there pours the libation after a sacrifice, perhaps of incense (cf. Sokolowski ad loc.), to Hestia (LS 151 A.27-29); but there clearly follows a proces sion elsewhere, presumably to the sanctuary of Zeus Polieus (29-31), and it is here that the prelimi nary sacrifice is offered. See Prott, LGS 1.22; Nilsson, GF 19. That the sacrifice is for Zeus is confirmed by the provisions for Zeus Machaneus in B. 12f., which refer back to the Zeus Polieus rite. "Hetaireia" is Herzog's reading of the stone; Hicks read "Tamias" (cf. LS 169.A.9): Susan M. Sherwin-White, Ancient Cos, Hypomnemata 51 (Gottingen, 1978) 323 n. 303, says the stone is now too worn to allow a decision.

18. The author of the text, at least, saw no very marked distinction between the two libations, and brackets them: tolSg vtQotig tOvie[two] I [O]vrn xal Qo5g qp06tag xai onaov6&g [&xQarxoly xal

xexQatalevaz xal t orE[]- | .a (LS 151 A.36-38). Thus we have syntactically four items, with the third subdivided; Graf's "markanter Schritt" coincides with the subdivision. The garland is not a markedly "normal" component; there is evidence that they were offered to and burned for the dead: see

Donna C. Kurtz and John Boardman, Greek Burial Customs (London, 1971) 207 and plates 39, 84 85; and the olive garland in particular is associated with funerals by Kall. fr. 194.40-56 Pf. and Plut.

Lyk. 27. XTEtiLa ought strictly to refer to a garland of wool, which was associated with supplication and purificatory rites: see J. Pley, De lanae in antiquorum ritibus usu, RGW 11.2 (Giessen, 1911);

M. Blech, Studien zum Kranz bei den Griechen (Berlin, 1982) 30, 289, 297. Note especially that the wineless xoat to be poured by Oidipous for the Semnai at OK 469ff. are garlanded with wool (472 75). Wilamowitz ad HF 677 stresses the distinction between orgttua and ortqpavo;.

Graf also assumes that the proceedings pass over from the kerykes, "gewohnlich untergeord nete Diener," to the priest of Zeus Polieus (218). Both enter the text by conjecture (A.32, 36); the

kerykes are very probable-see further below-but the priest is only a guess where the single keryx who has made the proclamation is just as likely. In any case, such a shift could not make the single mixed-wine libation any more "normal."

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being selected, and is obliged to abstain from sex, at a strange nocturnal gather ing.19 The animal seems, moreover, to be self-selected. The priest and sacred officials sit round a TdQ3tea (A.8f.) while representatives from the three Dorian tribes drive in oxen by threes, up to a maximum of thirty-six, until the victim is chosen. Hicks, the first editor of the inscription, assumed that oxen were gradu ally added to the group because the process continued until one of them eventu

ally paid some attention to sacred cakes or grain on the TQdantea and thus

selected itself as victim.20 This conclusion was suggested by the closely analogous procedure at the

Athenian Dipolieia, the eponymous festival of Zeus Polieus. Porphyrios, in our fullest account of Dipolieia, attests self-selection from among oxen driven round a

TQa&teca by the tasting of cakes or barley on it.21 By the time of Pausanias, our

other principal source, an ox was apparently preselected and "held in readiness," but still tasted of grain on the altar (1.24.4). Fifth- and fourth-century epigraphical evidence coheres with Porphyrios's account: he used the verb n3tEQeXaUveLv, and traces of this verb or the related noun are found on two inscriptions, of which one

certainly and the other probably have to do with Dipolieia (LS 17 Ab.2, 179.9). This will then be closely parallel to the contemporary rite at Kos.

19. It may be that all the participants in the nocturnal gathering are to practice sexual absten tion, as assumed, e.g., by Nilsson, GF 20, but lines 43-44 suggest that the proclamation was directed to the chosen slayer alone.

20. E. L. Hicks, JHS 9 (1888) 327ff.; see Nilsson, GF 18f. One of the journal's referees regards the application of the example of Dipolieia to the Koan selection process as problematic, and

suggests that it would be natural to suppose that on Kos the priest and sacred officials themselves do the choosing (so also, naming the priest in particular, Prott, LGS 1.21). This is undoubtedly a reasonable conclusion: the Koan inscription mentions no grain on the table, nor specifies in any way the principle of selection-an ox is simply "to be chosen" (XQLoi L). If none is chosen from among the first twenty-seven available (three rounds of three per tribe), a further nine are driven in and made to

mix with the others, and it is then clearly the officials who eu0/i x[i(v]Qvtl (LS 151 A.17-18). It is, however, precisely the very elaborate process of introducing the animals that led Nilsson and others to suppose that something other than a simple choice by the officials was in question. What, after all, can they have been waiting for? Surely not an especially handsome animal, since the first round is to consist of Toi]g xaWiXqoug (10) from each tribe, and subsequent rounds therefore of the progres sively less attractive. This certainly suggests that something about the choice is beyond the officials' control, as indeed does the fact that they are only spoken of as "making a choice" in the active voice in connection with what is clearly a distinct, "extraordinary," final round of oxen-they "go ahead and choose," that is, only if all else fails. The immediately succeeding passage of the inscription provides for the choice of a second ox by the same procedure (xata Ta'ct6, 19): Overai 6 at RAiy xa

vzJoxv4eL Tlt 'IorCaL (19). Given the explicit parallel, Nilsson finds it natural to suppose that the choice of the victim for Zeus Polieus likewise awaited the "bending down" of one of the oxen (if the

"bending" is in fact the criterion of selection rather than a separate requirement). If this line of

interpretation is reasonable, then the centrality of the "table" and Zeus Polieus as recipient make the collation with Dipolieia almost irresistible. In any event, it is the elaboration of the process of selection through general participation by groups that is important for our purposes, not an exact

parallel in detail. 21. Porph. Abs. 2.29-30, esp. 30.4, probably from Theophrastos. On Dipolieia, see Nilsson,

GF 14-16; Ludwig Deubner, Attische Feste (Berlin, 1932) 158-74; Burkert, HN 136-43, with full citation of sources and bibliography: add now Jean-Louis Durand, Sacrifice et labour en Grece ancienne (Paris, 1986) 43ff.

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There is a further parallel in the special, uncanny role of the slayer. Accord

ing to Pausanias one of the priests at Dipolieia is called the Iovp6vog; when he has killed the ox, he throws away the ax and flees; the ax is subsequently tried and acquitted of the crime of killing the ox (1.28.10). Porphyrios speaks of 6

LLoqpCag; after the sacrifice the ox's hide is "filled out" so as to resemble the

live animal, and the knife, aXtXaLQa, is cast into the sea. Again, Porphyrios may be closer to classical practice: the taxaaQa recurs in one of the inscriptions (LS 179.10). The opayevg chosen from among the sacred officials at Kos is similarly prominent in an uncanny atmosphere, though flight and the special role of the

weapon are apparently restricted to Athens. There seems to be another quite specific link between the two festivals that

has gone unrecognized. In the fifth-century Athenian inscription (LS 17 Ab) there are mentioned in connection with Dipolieia-after the apparent reference to the JeQLEXaotg-piglets, wood, and kerykes. This seems unlikely to be mere

coincidence, and we should conclude that, as at Kos, the rites for Zeus Polieus included a holocaust on a wood fire of piglets, performed by the guild of her alds.22 The latter are certainly prominent at the Koan holocaust, and there seems no alternative to restoring them in the inscription as officiants (LS 151 A.32).23

The aitiological legend of Dipolieia recounted by Porphyrios (2.29) tells of

Sopatros, a foreigner farming in Attika, who, in the days before animal sacrifice, had placed a pelanos cake and other offerings on a table. One of his oxen tasted

them, and Sopatros killed it in anger; realizing what a heinous thing he had done, he buried the animal and fled to Crete. Drought and fruitlessness, &xaQcia, ensued, and the Delphic Oracle ordained that all would be well if the ox were set

on its feet at the festival at which it was killed, and if everyone tasted of it

without reserve. The Athenians find Sopatros; he supposed that he could escape his blood guilt if everyone in the city would participate in a common slaying and

consumption of an ox, and offered to slay it himself on the conditions that the Athenians grant him citizenship and take part in the slaughter; and so it was.

Two themes are prominent here: the transgression inherent in animal sacri fice and the necessity of sharing responsibility for it; and the contrast of agricul tural life and products with weapons and the destruction and consumption of animals. The latter is presented as a historical sequence, but we will of course

find a conceptual link, which is manifested in the fact that agricultural prosperity is made to depend on the shedding of an animal's blood and the eating of its flesh. These features of the story may be held suspect as occurring in a work

22. The text should now be consulted in the edition of D. M. Lewis, IG 13 241. Sokolowski read Tzv heyVoTv in his Ab.3, which would rule out a holocaust (cf. Ziehen, LGS 2.81), but Lewis comments (ad 241.12) "non recte," reading Tov hiXS Tov. The comparison with the Koan ritual

might favor Kirchhoff's supplement 3Qoxe1[4eiov in the same line, but Lewis prints jtLotEQ[ov] without mentioning any alternative, perhaps for some compelling reason.

23. The other group prominent at Kos are the ieQo3toLoL: they participate in the selection of the ox, and the priest chooses its slayer from among them; they appear in the other Athenian inscription, LS 179.5f.

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about abstinence, but the grain is on the table in Pausanias too, and the concep tual link may be detected in other sources.

Burkert notes that Dipolieia falls in midsummer between harvest and sow

ing, and that "the celebration of the Dipolieia presupposes the end of the har vest. But the predominance of such paradoxical, uncanny features at a 'harvest

festival,' where gratification and joy would ordinarily prevail, cannot be ex

plained as agricultural."24 He therefore prefers to integrate Dipolieia into the

pattern of "dissolution" he finds in the festivals of Skirophorion, the last month of the Athenian year, and to focus on the expression in the rite and its aitiology of what he sees as fundamental contradictions inherent in all animal sacrifice.

Yet the link with agriculture is built into the ritual, as Burkert acknowledges. We are, unfortunately, unable to establish either a relative or an absolute chro

nology for the Koan months,25 so that we cannot even approximately place the Koan rite of 20 Batromios in its chronological context. But here too there are hints of an agricultural significance. The victim for Athena Polias is a pregnant sheep (LS 151 A.55f.), and pregnant victims are otherwise attested only for female divinities connected with the prosperity of the earth, most often Deme ter: "nach einer naheliegenden Analogie wurden den Fruchtbarkeitsgottinnen trachtige Tiere geopfert."26 As we shall see, both Athena Polias and Zeus Polieus have close ties with the earth.

The agricultural connection reappears in several other rites clearly related to

Dipolieia and the Koan Polieus festival. The close connection of Zeus Polieus with Zeus Soter and Zeus Sosipolis was noted by Nilsson;27 it is evident both in their epithets and in their cult, and Porphyrios's Sopatros perhaps provides the link of the oco- root with Zeus Polieus and Dipolieia. The remarkable rites for

Zeus Sosipolis at Magnesia on the Maiandros exhibit clear links with those we have been considering. A bull as beautiful as possible is to be bought at public expense at the annual marketing, and then displayed (consecrated) to Zeus

Sosipolis "at the beginning of the sowing" with prayers "for the s6teria of the city and the land and the citizens and women and children and other sojourners in

24. Burkert, HN 142. For criticism of Burkert's focus on killing and guilt as central features of Greek sacrifice, see especially Henrichs, Gotter (supra, n. 3) 29f.; a valuable recent criticism, largely based on art, is Sarah Peirce, "Death, Revelry and Thysia," CA 12.2 (1993) 219-66. Some readers' comments prompt me to make it clear that when I speak of "shared responsibility," "blame" aut sim. in connection with Dipolieia, I do not mean "guilt" in Burkert's sense, nor do I regard even the

degree of culpability that is a prominent motif of this particular festival as characteristic of Greek sacrifice in general.

25. See Alan E. Samuel, Greek and Roman Chronology (Munich, 1972) llf. 26. Nilsson, GGR 151; see also Stengel 26 with nn. 8-9; id., Die griechischen Kultusaltertiimer3

(Munich, 1920) 155 with n. 7. A third-century-B.c. Koan inscription, in prescribing remedies in the event that an animal sold for sacrificial use as pregnant turns out not to be, refers to "gods or

goddesses to whom pregnant victims [are sacrificed]" (LS 154 B.37ff.). To my knowledge this is the

only text even to allow the possibility of pregnant victims for gods, and it is likely that "gods or

goddesses to whom" is merely a stereotyped legal phrase. 27. GF24; cf. GGR 415.

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the city and country, and for peace and wealth and the fruitfulness of the grain and of all the other fruits of the earth and of the herds."28 The bull, however, is sacrificed some months later, probably at the time of the harvest in May;29 here

perhaps is a link with Kos, where the animal enjoys an overnight stay of execu tion. Provision is made in the Magnesian inscription for the collection of contribu tions toward the maintenance of the bull from "the grain merchants and others

who conduct business in the agora" (59-64). When it is eventually sacrificed, everyone who takes part in the elaborate procession receives a portion of the flesh (54f.).

The Magnesian combination of shared expenses and universal distribution of

portions is an equivalent of the emphasis at Dipolieia on shifting the blame for the

slaying of the ox. It emphasizes the communal importance of the sacrifice through the shared responsibility of members of the community; the prominence of the issue of responsibility in Dipolieia, and its shared evasion, is the opposite way of

expressing the same anxiety. The nocturnal selection of slayers at Kos, representa tives of the sacred officials and the heralds respectively,30 is doubtless another reflection of this anxiety. The fact that in the aition and in classical ritual the ox chooses itself seems a curious feature in a rite focusing on the collective responsibil ity of the sacrificers, yet this too is a reflex of the central theme. The apparent contradiction seems to have been removed: in the Hellenistic inscription from

Magnesia and in Pausanias this feature has disappeared. When the animal no

longer offers itself, the burden of its provision is shared, as at Magnesia. We have now considered evidence for the cult of Zeus Polieus and close

congeners in three different places. Nilsson, who has been over the same ground, adds the self-selected goat sacrificed at Halikarnassos for Zeus Askraios, who was closely connected with agriculture; and the evidence for a self-selected bull offered to Zeus-epithet, if any, unknown-by the Milesians.31 Despite all the variations of time and place, a remarkable, fundamental consistency on both the

conceptual and the ritual plane is clearly exhibited. Nilsson in particular recog nized this, but we have been able to find further detailed links even in the

28. LSAM 32.7, 10-14, 26-31. 29. See Nilsson, GF25f., GGR 154f. 30. Porphyrios's account of Dipolieia involves several groups of specialists: water carriers,

whetters, goaders, ox slayers, and carvers; at the trial for the killing, these groups pass the responsibil ity from one to another until it reaches the knife, which, being voiceless, is convicted. At Kos

representatives of the three tribes drive oxen into the agora by turns, and the Magnesian festival involves a very large number of officials, colleges, and groups. The involvement of such groupings is a further means of "collectivizing" the sacrifice, and is another specific against the association of the

killing with any single individual: all the participants, and the slayer in particular, are turned into

stereotypes. 31. See Nilsson, GF 16f., 27; note that the Milesian bull is described as avei6g in Hesych. s.v.

At6g Coiiv; and compare the delay at Magnesia and at Kos, where the word xbjloavxeg (LS 151

A.31) may mean that the ox is let loose until the morrow. The Koan rite for Zeus Machaneus (LS 151

B) is explicitly modeled on that for Zeus Polieus: see Nilsson, GF21f. All these rites are discussed at GF 14-27.

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evidence available to him. The most remarkable of these is the likelihood that the Athenian Dipolieia involved a piglet holocaust performed by the kerykes, as in the Koan festival.

The sacred calendar of Thorikos provides valuable new information about the cult of Zeus Polieus that fits the pattern very well. In the month Boedro

mion, possibly in connection with the pre-plowing festival, Prerosia, but in any case at that season, we find the following provision: ALL lo^eXl XQLTOV oiLv

Xo@Qov XQLTOV EIAYTOMENAX XoLQov dVTlT6v o6Xxauov xtX.32 However

we understand the problematic letters EIIAYTOMENA--Daux translates "des femmes acclamant le dieu"; Parker, "to Automenai"33-we have here an

other piglet holocaust for Zeus Polieus alongside "normal" offerings, and possi bly with agricultural significance.

The principal observation of Pr(o)erosia was at Eleusis and in honor of

Demeter,34 but we now know that several of the Attic demes held local versions of it at different times, and sometimes with Zeus as honorand.35 We cannot

safely conclude that this was the case in Thorikos, but an agricultural connection is nonetheless likely. Zeus Chthonios is invoked together with Demeter at plow ing time in Hesiod (Erga 465-67), and with Ge Chthonie sniQ xagQniv on

Mykonos (LS 96.24-26).36 More to the point, when the Magnesian bull is conse

crated, at the time of sowing, it is the grain merchants who are singled out among those contributing to its maintenance until it is sacrificed, at harvest time; and a contribution is said to be propitious (LSAM 32.63f.: xal &CIELvov EivYaL To;g b6LbouoLv). As for Dipolieia, Porphyrios (2.30.2) tells us that after the remains of the victim had been restored to the shape of the living animal "they yoked a plow to it as though it were working." This, together with the other agricultural features of the rite, suggests that Athenians saw in the victim the plow ox, the

32. "Thorikos" 13-15. Daux, "Calendrier" 164, notes that if the sacrifice were prescribed as

part of the festival, the convention elsewhere in the calendar would require that the name of the festival be in the dative case rather than the nominative; on the other hand, the calendar is not notable for strict consistency in the arrangement of its entries. Cf. Parker (infra, n. 33) 141 n. 39, 145 ad loc.

33. Daux, "Sacrifices" 148 - "Calendrier" 154, defended at "Calendrier" 171-73; Robert

Parker, "Festivals of the Attic Demes," in Tullia Linders and Gullog Nordquist, eds., Gifts to the Gods, Boreas 15 (Uppsala, 1987) 137-47 at 144 with note on 145; the same sequence of letters shows

up in line 47. Daux's interpretation seems very strained, and Parker's, however odd Automenai may be as a place name, is to be preferred. Parker questions whether the holocaust is for Zeus, and says that the association of Polieus with plowing "would be a little surprising" (141 n. 39). But there can be no doubt that the holocaust is for Zeus Polieus, the last-named deity; there is either a change of venue for the holocaust stage of the rite, or the holocaust at Automenai is really a separate occasion, but still dedicated to Zeus Polieus.

34. See Deubner (supra, n. 21) 68-69. 35. See Parker (supra, n. 33) 141 with n. 39. 36. For self-selection of the victim, a different sort of isolation of the sacrificers, agricultural

significance, and other common features, cf. the festival of Chthonia for Demeter at Hermione

(Paus. 2.35.5-7; Ailianos, NA 11.4 = Aristokles, Suppl. Hell. 206), where the sacrificial implement was a sickle.

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farmer's best friend, not the dangerous prey and food supply of Burkert's guilty hunters.

As in the case of Zeus Meilichios, a specific combination of themes and ritual features seems to emerge from our evidence for Zeus Polieus: mixed rites

against a background of plow oxen and the fruits of the earth, together with an elaborate emphasis on collective responsibility for the sacrifice of the animal in the interest of the prosperity of crops and community. Indeed, it is perhaps precisely the fact that the ox's cooperation is fundamental to the abundance of the crop that makes the killing of it to the same end an especially ungrateful act.37 It is consonant with this general atmosphere that the ritual incorporates both the "normal" festal mood of the common meal and the sense of "marginal ity" expressed in the holocaust of the piglet.

From this perspective, the self-contained holocaust component has more than a signalizing function: the libations, the holocaust itself, and all the other features of the sacrifice together express an independent meaning. The prosper ity of the community is at stake, and the god of the city is approached with caution: a propitiatory offering-but also with cautious optimism: a festal meal in a ritual context that keeps the transgressive aspect of the sacrifice in the forefront of the worshiper's mind. Wherever we have fairly full information about rites for Zeus Polieus, these features are present, and the total package is

very distinctive.38 This suggests that the god is not so readily separable from the

ritual, or secondary to it, as is sometimes supposed.

THE POWERS OF THE EARTH

The evidence we have surveyed for the cult of Zeus Polieus indicates his

close connection with the earth and the products of agriculture; even his bovine victim is sacrificed to him in the role of plow ox. We have seen a Zeus called

Chthonios connected with Demeter in an agricultural context, and Athena Polias received at Kos a pregnant victim, a common feature in the cult of female

powers of the underworld. The god "of the no6XLg" exhibits interests that are

"chthonian" in the most literal sense. Again, it seems most appropriate to speak, in Nock's terms, of chthonian interests as central to the god's "identity" rather than as an "aspect" that is "imputed to" him in association with "the purpose and

atmosphere of the ritual": so far as we can tell, god and ritual are well suited to

37. Cf. Varro, RR 2.5.3: "Hic [viz., taurus/italus] socius hominum in rustico opere et Cereris

minister, ab hoc antiqui manus ita abstineri voluerunt, ut capita sanxerint siquis occidisset. Qua in re testis Attice . . . nam ab hoc pecore Athenis Buzuges nobilitatus."

38. Noel Robertson, "The Dorian Migration and Corinthian Ritual," CP 75 (1980) 1-22 at 18

22, finds in various rituals including Dipolieia a general ritual pattern. Dipolieia and its immediate

congeners are, however, only roughly comparable with the others, and Robertson rather forces it into the pattern. Neither the migration theme nor the clod of earth prominent at Korinthos and

Ainiania figure in Dipolieia, and the statement that "at Athens as in Aeniania the officiants withdraw in haste with the meat" (20) runs counter to the evidence of Porphyrios.

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one another. The aspect is always there as part of the god's identity and is always recognized in the ritual; it is not imputed to him-that is, imposed upon him because a given ritual requires that the god conform to its mood. Where god and ritual are so perfectly matched the attempt to isolate one or the other as primary is about as worthwhile as in the similar case of the chicken and the egg. If, then,

we have a sense of the character of the god, we are well placed to consider whether and how the terms "Olympian" and "chthonian" may be applied to him and to the rituals dedicated to him.

It should be clear that one need not hesitate to associate the term "chtho nian" with Zeus Polieus; but we may doubt whether it is a sufficient definition of him. It is even clearer that in terms of the traditional distinction between Olym pian and chthonian ritual the rites for Zeus Polieus are neither the one nor the

other, but include both. Is this, then, one of the cases that demonstrate the limited usefulness of the distinction?

Difficulty arises only when we regard Olympian and chthonian as mutually exclusive categories. Zeus Polieus is a particularly clear case of consistency of character and worship, and an obvious possibility is that, like Zeus Meilichios,

Asklepios, and others, he crosses the Olympian/chthonian boundary. Athena Polias is closely related to him; they most often appear together in the cultic record. In her case too there are features suggestive of chthonian connections: the pregnant victim at Kos, the mysterious rites of Arrhephoria linked with the

daughters of Kekrops, her close links with Erichthonios and the snake. She too, then, seems to straddle the divide, but here the opposite characteristics are more often addressed separately than together in the worship, as comparison with the

eminently "normal" Panathenaia indicates. For some this last fact will tend to support the conclusion that we have to

deal with an aspect imputed to the goddess rather than her identity. We will remember that Fairbanks speaks of a group of divinities who have both special blessings and special evils in store, and who are easily roused to anger; Nock's

heilige Handlungen involve the imputation of some such aspect to the recipient. Our study of Zeus Polieus allows us to conclude that consistent character was at

least not unknown. If it was in the character of a divinity to be ready both with

good and with evil, and to be easily angered, or if, from a slightly different point of view, the divinity was closely associated with notably precarious activities such as agriculture, it is readily comprehensible that the ritual should display more than one aspect, either at the same time or serially.

Two famous examples of mixed rites may be cited in this connection. Her

odotos (2.44) and Pausanias (2.10.1) tell us that Herakles received both participa tory sacrifice "as to a god" and holocaust sacrifice "as to a hero." Herakles is

perhaps the best-known example of a divinity who is simultaneously Olympian and chthonian: his prominence in myth has made the fact obvious. No one,

surely, would dispute that what Herodotos and Pausanias tell us follows natu

rally upon the identity of the god. It would manifestly get the thing the wrong

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way round to say that a chthonian aspect is imputed to the god as a by-product of a chthonian ritual that happens to be offered to him-in the case of Pausanias's

Sikyonians, the same sheep is partly burned and partly eaten. Here, then, is further evidence of consistent character coinciding with ritual variation.

A clear picture of the way in which the character of the god may lead to the

variations is offered by Pausanias's notorious account of the cult of the Maniai/

ErinyeslEumenides near Megalopolis (8.34), regarded by both Fairbanks and Nock as an exception to the normal distinction.39 Pausanias tells us that Orestes went mad here after killing his mother; near the sanctuary of the goddesses is a mound with a stone finger on top of it, commemorating the spot where Orestes bit off one of his fingers in his madness; near this again is a place called Ake, "Remedies," where he recovered. This is all closely connected with the Eume nides: when they were about to drive Orestes mad, they appeared to him black; when he had bitten off his finger, they appeared white, and he was cured at the

sight. Thus he offered holocaust sacrifice to the black ones to turn away their wrath, but normal sacrifice to the white ones.

"This may or may not," says Nock, "reflect historic duality of ritual; it

certainly shows the significance of the aspect of the deity." He and Fairbanks

compare Pausanias's (1.28.6) report that those acquitted at the Areopagos sacri ficed to the Semnai, since it seems very likely that this offering involved a

banquet. One need go no farther than the Eumenides of Aischylos or Sopho kles's Oidipous at Kolonos for abundant evidence that these divinities are among those specially associated with anger, curses, and blessings,4 and their character accounts for the ritual variations in both the rites attested by Pausanias. Holo

caust offering is appropriate to their wrathful and dark side, but when they bless-and here, unusually, it is the sight of the white Eumenides that cures

Orestes-a celebratory offering is called for; so also in Athens a "normal"

offering suits the circumstances that the worshiper has just been acquitted in the court with which the goddesses were closely associated. It is legitimate here to

speak of the aspect of the divinity, but the aspect cannot be divorced from the

identity. The Erinyes/Eumenides are intimately connected both with the myth of Orestes and with the myth and cult of the Areopagos, and in neither connection is their role uniformly malevolent or benevolent. The ritual does not impute anything to them, ad hoc, as it were, that is not always there; it is simply that a

given act of worship does not necessarily tell the whole story of their character, but may reveal only the aspect to the fore in the given circumstances.

Hard-and-fast schematizations are therefore to be avoided. The old assump tion that gods are either Olympian or chthonian and that they must receive the

one type of sacrifice and not the other cannot survive such cultic facts as we have

been considering. But if we take a less mechanical view of the matter, allowing

39. Fairbanks 258, Nock 591 with n. 65. 40. See Henrichs, "Ambivalenz" passim.

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for ritual variation in special circumstances, the basic typology proves its useful ness. In each case the character of the god will be the central factor, whether this is known to us from myth, ritual, cultic aitia, poetry, or some combination of these. Herakles is partly Olympian, partly chthonian; both varieties of ritual will therefore be normal in everyday worship, but special circumstances may call for one or the other. The Eumenides are chthonian, not Olympian, and will nor

mally be propitiated, as with soothing wineless libations or the appeasing holo

caust; but when they smile on the worshiper, a measure of festivity becomes tolerable to them. By contrast with these, the very distinctive character and interests of Zeus Polieus are reflected in a group of closely related and highly idiosyncratic rites.

What is it that these gods and rituals have in common? Is there a meaningful

way in which the term "chthonian" can be applied to all of them? So far as these

deities are concerned, the link is provided by the most literal sense of the term, by the earth. As a hero, Herakles resides there; the Eumenides are among its most prominent inhabitants, and Aischylos shows us their close connections with the fertility of the earth and other forms of reproduction; Zeus Polieus holds a similar brief. This seems straightforward enough, but the objections of Fairbanks and Nock, and their attempts to establish stricter and more accurate groupings,

must be dealt with. Fairbanks allowed only gods associated with souls to be termed "chthonian,"

and described the term in this sense as "poetic." The use of the same term in

connection with deities of agriculture he termed "cultic," and he refused to iden

tify the two groups. The overlap of these two realms is abundantly attested-we need mention only the Eleusinian Demeter and the Athenian Eumenides-but is dismissed by Fairbanks as "purely local" (247). He goes on to distinguish four classes of divinities connected with the earth, namely, souls of the dead, rulers of the dead (the chthonioi proper), agricultural gods, and heroes. The first two, he

allows, are regarded as "essentially alike," and "in certain localities the second and third classes are also merged into one" (248). The heroes, however, though always associated with some spot in the earth and often conceived as presiding over local agriculture, are nevertheless "sharply separated from the rulers of the dead and from souls generally" (249).

Even on Fairbanks's own showing, these distinctions tend to collapse when faced with the evidence of actual cult, and it will not do to dismiss this as "purely local" or as the situation "in certain localities." We must always remember that

what we call "Greek religion" is the sum of innumerable individual cults with

deep roots in local soil, very few of which were genuinely Panhellenic. It was in

this context that the Greek worshiped his gods, and it is here that the essence and

lifeblood of Greek cult are to be found. To speak as Fairbanks does of "gods of

national worship" is to regard as normative for Greek religion what is at bottom

a drastic simplification of the pantheon convenient for purposes of poetry, in

particular of Homeric poetry, and for manageable modern presentation of

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Greek mythology and religion. "Zeus" is a figure encountered in certain sorts of

literature, hard to pin down; Zeus Meilichios and Zeus Polieus are familiar

figures with particular interests, sharply defined powers to whom, in a given place, one offers cult, and they have more in common with heroes and chthonic

gods than with "Zeus." If carefully drawn academic distinctions are routinely ignored in local cults, they may be hindering rather than aiding our understand

ing of Greek religion. Fairbanks's restriction of the term "chthonic" to poetic rulers of souls is

belied by Zeus Chthonios in Hesiod (Erga 465ff.) and on Mykonos (LS 96.24

26), who is explicitly connected with the prosperity of crops. So also Herodotos

applies the term to Demeter and Kore,41 for whom the souls and agriculture are

inseparable, and Demeter in particular is often elsewhere associated with both realms under the epithet Chthonia.42 Nor can cultic heroes be excluded:

Aischylos refers to them collectively as X06vloL.43 That the term "chthonian" is more commonly used in poetry in connection with souls is doubtless due simply to the fact that dealings with the dead are a prominent theme of Greek poetry, agriculture a very rare one; it is not surprising, therefore, that it is in Hesiod that we find the term attested in connection with agriculture.

What is true of the terminology can be endlessly illustrated on the concep tual level from both literary and cultic evidence. Thus, again on Fairbanks's own

showing, both the Erinyes and heroes are closely connected with a "spot of earth" (249f.), and heroes are often connected with agriculture; Persephone, often under the epithet Soteira, and Demeter and even Hades are commonly associated with "the delivery of a nation from the perils of war": "in these few

instances the chthonic gods perform the distinctive function of heroes" (252f.). When Fairbanks turns to the topic of ritual, he distinguishes from "gods of national worship" those ambivalent local dispensers both of special blessings and of special evils who are prone to anger and therefore receive propitiatory offer

ings. It is no surprise that these should turn out to be "chthonic gods, as well as heroes and agricultural gods" (250). Again the link is the earth, and there is

every reason to follow the Greek sources in applying the term "chthonian" to the

whole group. It is in fact the case that the "rulers of souls" receive cult only if they join

this group, that is, if they offer blessings alongside the evils of punishment or oblivion. Pausanias (6.25.2) describes a weird cult of Hades of Elis, where he was a national savior, but notes that only the Eleans worshiped him. Hades, we

are told elsewhere, had no altar anywhere; he could not be soothed

(atti?tLXog), and therefore nothing was offered him. According to Aischylos

41. 6.134, 7.153; cf. Aristophanes, Thesm. 101. 42. At Hermione, Paus. 2.35.4-9 and other passages quoted by L. R. Farnell, The Cults of the

Greek States (Oxford, 1896-1909) 3.320 n. 37; at Sparta, Paus. 3.14.5; cf. Burkert, GR 308f. 43. Suppl. 25: see Friis Johansen and Whittle ad loc. and Fraenkel ad Ag. 454; cf. Pind. Pyth.

4.159, 5.101.

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"Thanatos, alone of the gods, does not desire gifts": the name "Death" indi cates that nothing good could be expected from this source.44 Under the promis ing name Plouton, or "Wealth," however, the lord of the underworld did receive cult. The same principle is at work in Eumenides: the Erinyes, drinkers of human blood, are shunned by gods and men (69-73), but the Eumenides, who have fertility of all sorts on offer, join the other gods in receiving cult at Athens (see esp. 916-26).

Chthonian recipients of cult, then, can "send up" both good things and bad

things.45 This is true of Demeter in an agricultural context (HH Dem. 333), of the lord of the dead sending up the souls of the dead, of the Eumenides, Plouton, or the dead themselves sending up the good things of the earth in response to

propitiatory offerings, and, as is now securely attested by the new fragment of

Aristophanes' Heroes, of those other denizens of the underworld sending puni tive ailments or blessings:46 they describe themselves indeed as oi TarUat I TaO

xaxov xaL TCOv &ya0wv (3f.). The new Aristophanic fragment and an older one from Tagenistai (F 504

KA) are strong evidence against a false dichotomy in Nock's discussion of holo caust sacrifice. We remember that he distinguished two categories of these, on the one hand heilige Handlungen, on the other "offerings to persons who have lived and died and who are supposed to need real sustenance and nourishment."

Aristophanes' Heroes advise men to be on their guard and reverence the heroes "since we are the stewards of good things and evil things." In Tagenistai a fan of

the underworld, who seems to have burial rites in view, describes the reciprocal process by which the living give victims and libations wholly over to the dead "as

though to gods" and "beg them to send the good things up here." In a tragic context Elektra and Orestes bring offerings to the grave of Agamemnon, and seek his assistance. These are clearly transactions "intended to exercise direct and efficacious influence"-Nock's characterization of heilige Handlungen rather than simply to provide sustenance.47 This sort of attempt to draw firm functional distinctions among the chthonioi must also therefore be counted a failure.

In terms above all of their origins, no one will deny that chthonian gods, lesser divinities, heroes, and the dead are distinguishable from one another and from the gods whose connection with the chthonian realm is partial or fugitive.

But so far we have found no good reason to dispense with the term "chthonian"

as a general designation of the powers of the earth, who are linked by a series of

44. I/. 9.158, HH Dem. 259, 2 AbT I/. 9.158, Aisch. Niobe F 161 R; cf. Soph. F 770 R, Eur. Alk. 424.

45. See Henrichs, "Ambivalenz" 189-90 with n. 61 and 199-200 with n. 83. 46. F 322 KA; the ailments sent by the heroes in this comic context are comparable to those

that the Erinyes of his father threaten to inflict on Orestes if he fails to kill his mother (Ch. 278ff.). 47. Though "sustenance for the dead" was of course a familiar way of viewing these rites; cf.

Aisch. Ch. 483-85; Loukianos, Peri penthous 9.

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common and fundamental characteristics and interests, and worshiped with simi lar intentions and in similar modes.

HEILIGE HANDLUNGEN

Among the varieties of what might be called renunciatory sacrifice holocaust and other forms of total destruction of the victim-included by Nock under the rubric heilige Handlungen are fertility rites like Thesmophoria, "sphagia . .. , oath-sacrifices, . . . offerings of victims in a crisis, cathartic sacri

fices ... and various ceremonies to avert evil." In the same category he includes human sacrifices. Thesmophoria is an annual festival offered to Demeter in which her usual connections with the earth and agriculture are prominent; the destruction of piglets by women who throw them into a chasm is a special offering in a sharply defined context.48 It is notable that all the other rites listed

by Nock fall outside the ordinary routine of worship; they are resorted to in accordance with the needs of men: in crises of various sorts, when oaths are

required, when steps need to be taken against some immediately threatening danger. In such cases a stereotyped ritual is employed, which takes its character from the situation rather than being suited to that of any divinity with whom it

may be associated. Thus the oath taker very commonly must handle the bloody innards of the victim while calling down (and up) dire consequences on himself if he fails to fulfill his pledge.49 Most often a plurality of gods are invoked as witnesses to the oath; these will include gods both of the sky and of the earth, so that the oath taker is completely hedged round with divine wrath in the event of

perjury. In the case of treaties and the like, each side may swear by its mightiest gods. The innards are also prominent in sacrifice before battle, sphagia; auspices for the battle are taken from them, and when the results are favorable, battle is

joined.50 It is almost always the case that no divine recipient is mentioned in connection with sphagia.51 The consciousness of danger that is normal in ordi

nary worship of the chthonians is present in most of Nock's heilige Handlungen not because of the character of the gods but because of the particular social

situation. Here the gods are clearly secondary, and are seldom mentioned by name; the danger that threatens is more palpable, but it is of course the sense of

immediate danger that accounts for the similarity of ritual, the feeling that this is not the occasion for a festal meal, perhaps a sense that in this situation one must

give something up to have any hope of survival.

48. See Burkert, GR 365-70, with further bibliography. 49. See, in general, Rudolf Hirzel, Der Eid (Leipzig, 1902); Stengel, Kultusaltertumer (supra,

n. 26) 136-38; Nilsson, GGR 139-42; Burkert, GR 377-82. 50. See esp. Jameson, "Battle." 51. See Albert Henrichs, "Human Sacrifice in Greek Religion: Three Case Studies," in Le

sacrifice dans l'antiquite, Entretiens sur l'Antiquit6 Classique 27 (Geneva, 1981) 195-235 at 213 with n. 3, 219f.; Jameson, "Battle" 209-12.

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Such extraordinary, occasional rites, then, express the anxiety of the partici pants or, in the case of oaths, deliberately court the direst evils. They are centered on the act itself rather than on any divine "recipient," and tend to be addressed "to whom it may concern," only occasionally with various likely candi dates or even a specific divinity named. They are grim rites, guaranteed to focus the attention of the participants, and thus appear also the form of ritual action

most likely to awaken divine response. In this sense they involve no imputations about individual gods, but are calculated to attract the notice or aid of any of them. The character of the god is not necessarily at issue here, and when a given god is mentioned in connection with such rites, that fact in itself may tell us

nothing about his character: the only reliable index to this are the rituals and aitia of his regular worship.

Human sacrifice, as an essentially mythical and literary phenomenon,52 is yet further removed from ordinary cult, the heiligste of heilige Handlungen. In many cases human sacrifice is designed to avert catastrophe in war, and is thus compa rable to sphagia. The only attested recipient of sphagia is Artemis Agrotera, to

whom the Spartans regularly sacrificed before battle. Recipients of human sacri fice are much more commonly named, and Albert Henrichs has pointed out that

they often share with Artemis Agrotera a strong association with wildness and

savagery: Dionysos Omestes as recipient of the pseudohistorical sacrifice of Persian prisoners at Salamis is a notable case in point. Similar, but unconnected with battle, are Zeus Lykaios and Zeus Laphystios.53 So also the Greeks tended to attribute the practice of human sacrifice to barbarians like the Taurians, and their barbaric Artemis. Historical and literary fictions can be illuminating from our point of view. In the story of Iphigeneia the human sacrifice as such is less

interesting than the conceptual context, associated with Artemis, in which it finds its place.54 The goddess is said to demand the sacrifice of a maiden on the

basis of an omen, the sacrifice of a pregnant hare, yet she is not only the

protectress of human and animal birth, but a patroness in cult of maidens, in close association with Iphigeneia herself. The festival involved, the Arkteia, is

aitiologically a recompense for the slaughter of an animal sacred to Artemis;

among the Taurians, Iphigeneia, having been saved from human sacrifice, offici ates in a cult of Artemis that culminates in it. In the Aischylean treatment, there

seems to be a sense in which the eagles' sacrifice of the hare and its young is an

equivalent, and not merely the "motivation," of the sacrifice of Iphigeneia in the interest of the Greek army. This gives some sense of the richness of implication that the tragic poets in particular found in the figures of Artemis and Iphigeneia.

Here then-what is seldom the case in the other varieties of heilige Handlungen, those actually practiced-a divinity may be prominently associated with the rite,

52. See Henrichs (supra, n. 51). 53. Ibid. 219-21. 54. Aisch. Ag. 104-59; cf. Eur. IT.

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and the particular sphere or conceptual associations of the divinity are fundamen tal to the exceptional rite demanded.

But human sacrifice remains sui generis. It is often described in the terms of

Olympian sacrifice,55 though the "unmarked" Ov- terminology may be employed only because certain associations of such "marked" terms as EvayCieLv-the body burned or left to rot, normally at a low altar or pit56-were felt to be

inappropriate, and there existed no technical term for human sacrifice.57 In any case, its grimness, the context of danger, and the lack of participation mark it as different. The closest analogue in actual cult is the sphagia, and indeed it is clear that the case of Iphigeneia must have been understood against this background. In Iphigeneia at Aulis Euripides has Klytaimnestra refer to the sacrifice as a

oGpayLov (1200), and Aischylos speaks of uaQ0evooqpdyoLoLv (Ag. 209), and of

Iphigeneia as held over the altar 6ixav Xtai@ag (Ag. 232), which in its context must bring to mind the XiCtaLQaL offered to Artemis Agrotera as sphagia by the

Spartans and as promised recompense for victory at Marathon by the Athe nians.58 She is also ntQovwonri (234), like Polyxena on the famous vase,59 the

regular posture of the victim in chthonian sacrifice and sphagia.60 The close

55. Henrichs (supra, n. 51) 218f. n. 4. 56. In the special case of human sacrifice, the killing seems commonly to have been done at a high

altar (p3wl6Sg) of the divinity who demanded it: Aisch. Ag. 232, Plut. Them. 13.4. It is interesting that in the latter case the human sacrifice is distinct from, but obviously closely related conceptually to, the

sphagia that Themistokles is performing when the three Persian prisoners are led in; the flaming of the fire for the sphagia is one of the omens requiring their sacrifice. They are then killed at an altar of

Dionysos Omestes; it seems reasonable, here and in the case of Iphigeneia, to suppose that the altar is suited both to the recipient and to the unusual status of the victim, but that we have to do with unusual

sphagia rather than rites on the model of Olympian animal sacrifice. It is worth noting in this regard that the Aischylean Erinyes connect the slaughter of Orestes, dedicated to them as victim (Eum. 304),

with the high altar: xaLi div ,e b6aoCEg, oi6 3tg6g POLw LUo opayeig (305), where the point is that Orestes would be eaten without being slaughtered, not that he would not be slaughtered at a high altar.

57. The term xa0LE0euELv seems, however, to have been used more often of human than of animal victims: see Henrichs (supra, n. 51) 218f. n. 4. On Ov- terms as the more general, and therefore sometimes applied to "chthonian" sacrifices, see Jean Casabona, Recherches sur le vocabulaire des sacrifices en Grec (Aix-en-Provence, 1966) 83-85; further examples in Friedrich

Pfister, Der Reliquienkult im Altertum 2, RGV 5.2 (Giessen, 1912), 478-80. Inferences about the form of worship should never be drawn from Ov- terms alone, which are "unmarked," as Casabona

rightly observes, though without employing the now-familiar linguistic distinction; their application to chthonian rites does not need to be explained as loose, careless, or late usage.

58. Sparta: Xen. Hell. 4.2.20, Lak. Pol. 13.8; Plut. Lyk. 22.4; Athens: Xen. Anab. 3.2.12; Ailianos, VH 2.25; cf. Plut. De Her. Mal. 862A; Ath. Pol. 58.1. It seems unlikely that the five hundred kids offered annually at Athens were not eaten, but the fact that this rite celebrates the

victory rather than belonging to the period of anxiety about the outcome justifies the festal meal: cf. above at n. 39 on the Eumenides.

59. Attic amphora ca. 550 B.C., British Museum 97.7-27.2, Beazley, ABV 97.27; reproduced, e.g., at Jane E. Harrison, Prolegomena to the Study of Greek Religion3 (Cambridge, 1922) 62 fig. 8; Paul Maas, "Aeschylus Agam. 231ff. Illustrated," CQ, n.s., 1 (1951) 94 = Kleine Schriften (Munich, 1973) 42; Marcel Detienne and Jean-Pierre Vernant, La cuisine du sacrifice en pays grec (Paris, 1979) 159 fig. 3.

60. The neck of the Olympian victim is turned upward; the distinction was established by Stengel 103ff., 113ff., id., "Zu den griechischen Sakralaltertiimern," Hermes 59 (1924) 307-21 at

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conceptual connection of the sacrifice of Iphigeneia with that of the pregnant hare lends to the former a chthonian air: pregnant victims, as we have seen, are confined to the cult of female divinities with chthonian associations.

These basic similarities to the chthonian paradigm are readily comprehensi ble in terms of the special anxieties or purposes underlying human sacrifice, sphagia, and the other sorts of heilige Handlung. But because the gods play an

obviously secondary role in them, it makes sense to retain the designation heilige Handlungen for this distinctive class of rituals standing apart from ordinary cultus. It remains interesting for us, however, that there were certain gods whose character made it comprehensible to the Greeks that they should demand

sphagia or human sacrifice.

AN UNRECOGNIZED ASPECT OF CHTHONIAN WORSHIP?

Bearing the heilige Handlungen in mind, we may now revert to the

Olympian/chthonian distinction in regular worship and attempt to develop some

sharper criteria for recognizing a chthonian element in ritual. On this basis, we can then take another look at the lists of exceptions to the traditional typology compiled by various scholars. These discussions will demonstrate the remarkable

consistency with which, in the cultic record, individual gods and the cult offered them correspond to the basic polarity of Olympian and chthonian.

We have found the element common to the chthonian divinities in their

status as powers of the earth: appropriately enough. Characteristic features of chthonian cult are a nocturnal setting, dark victims, total renunciation of the victim or the libation, and soothing sober libations or vegetable offerings. Sev eral of these features are characteristic also of the heilige Handlungen, but the word "cult" marks the basic distinction by indicating ritual repeated regularly for a named recipient.

Few would deny that chthonian cult on this model was, in Nock's words, "a

matter of well-established practice" (578). Yet in current scholarly writing the

apparent exceptions, often in Nock's canonical list, are not seldom regarded as more significant than the rule, and used to justify various interpretative ap proaches to Greek ritual more or less radically opposed to the principle known to Greek writers and almost always respected in Greek cult. We shall try here to

take a closer look at the exceptions from the point of view of the rule; this is

surely a more sensible procedure than simply to conclude that the distinction of

Olympian and chthonian everywhere present in Greek myth, literature, and cult is inadequate or dispensable. The apparent exceptions are in any case not so

numerous as to jeopardize the validity of the rule, but if we sharpen our under

313ff. The matter may, however, be more complicated: Jameson, "Battle" 226f. n. 49, points out that some depictions of what are apparently sphagia show the victim's head pulled upward. Even in these, however, the total posture seems designed to produce a flow of blood directly downward, and Jameson is surely right to conclude that "what matters is where the blood flows."

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standing of the distinction in two respects, they can be reduced to a very negligi ble number indeed. The first of these has already been touched upon: we ought to recognize that among the myriad Greek recipients of cult Herakles and

Asklepios are only the most prominent-correspondingly with their prominence in myth-among those who combine chthonian and Olympian characteristics.

They have many congeners in the often obscure province of local cult. It follows, as we have seen, that the cult offered such recipients will likewise combine chthonian and Olympian, in single ritual sequences or as appropriate on differ ent occasions.

The second way forward is in a sense similar to the first; it involves the

recognition that there is a type of sacrifice that compromises between participa tion and renunciation: participating in the victim, but "on the spot." This require

ment, in such forms as 6bailvo0(v cratoio, o6'x aotpoqad, oi0 pogd, is a not uncommon one; I present here the most complete collection known to me, over

forty cases. Twenty-two of these occur in the sacrificial calendar from Erchia: this remarkable accretion excited some discussion, but as yet little attempt has been made to reconsider the old controversy about the meaning of the require ment in the light of this doubling of our evidence.

A brief survey of earlier opinion is in order. Stengel in 1906 suggested that a

banquet in the cult of Ge Chthonie on Mykonos (LS 96.25f.) was an indication of her "double nature," but noted that such participation is "nicht immer ohne Bedenken und gewisse VorsichtsmaBregeln," pointing to the "on-the-spot" re striction on Mykonos and elsewhere: "Diese Bestimmung findet sich nur bei

Opfern fur Gotter mit chthonischem Charakter."6' Ada Thomsen claimed three

years later that this view "needs no refutation," and maintained that the restric tion was a survival of what had once been the custom at all meal sacrifices: the

victim was "Tabu," so that the flesh must be eaten "auf der heiligen Stelle und wahrend der heiligen Handlung," and all the unconsumed parts of the victim

burned, buried, or otherwise disposed of.62 Friedrich Pfister followed Thomsen in explaining the "on-the-spot" provision as a survival of this original taboo, and

Thomsen's position has recently been defended by Michael Goldstein.63 Ludwig Ziehen also regarded the provision as a survival, but doubted the applicability of the concept of taboo; on his view all meal sacrifices were communion meals of

god and man, and the flesh sacralized in the ritual could not be taken from the

sanctuary and put to "profane" use.64 The taboo and communion explanations ultimately derive from the theories

61. "Opferblut und Opfergerste," Hermes 41 (1906) 239 - Stengel 27 with n. 2, from which I

quote; cf. id., Kultusaltertiumer (supra, n. 26) 116. He had earlier maintained that the restriction had to do with scarcity of meat: Hermes 27 (1892) 167.

62. "Der Trug des Prometheus," ARW 12 (1909) 460-90, esp. 466-78; quotations from 467, 478. Thomsen's article includes a valuable collection of comparative material.

63. RE 11.2 (1922) 2184, s.v. "Kultus (Opfer)"; Goldstein 52-54 with 94-95 n. 182. 64. RE 18.1 (1939) 621-22, s.v. "Opfer (Mahl)."

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of W. Robertson Smith, which have, professedly at least, long been out of vogue among Hellenists.65 More recently, Sterling Dow suggested in his study of the Erchia inscription that the twenty-two "on-the-spot" requirements were "in tended to compel a more equitable distribution of meat."66 Burkert disputed

Dow's conclusion that the provision was "a purely secular matter"67 by collecting many of its occurrences elsewhere, and describing it as among "many other

special provisions in sacrificial ritual, each of which has its own function and

meaning"; Burkert does not, however, take a stand on the meaning of o0

qpoQd.68 Neither the "survival" approach of Thomsen, Pfister, and Ziehen nor the

"secular" of Dow will withstand scrutiny. We remember that the provisions for the sacrifice of the ox for Zeus Polieus at Kos include elaborate specifications for the distribution of portions, which end Ta 68 ak]a xCta .t . o.6k.o taVTL

ajv[Ta] I [ovx] .nQfpTo. X. . . T aS J4[6XLog (LS 151 A.54f.). This is couched in the technical language of the common restriction,69 which is very frequent in the Koan calendar, but here it is the city rather than the sanctuary from which the flesh cannot be removed. It is immediately obvious that this has some concep tual basis; it cannot be designed for the equitable distribution of the flesh, which in any case has already been seen to, nor could this be the intention in the many single, isolated cases known to us from places other than Erchia. The conceptual basis cannot, however, be that put forward by Thomsen and the others; it would be absurd to suppose that the city and the cooking of the flesh at various places in it are some sort of extension of the heilige Stelle and heilige Handlung as they conceive these. Moreover, this unique restriction to the city is surely to be

explained with reference to the particular divine recipient, Zeus Polieus, the god of the city. This is scarcely reconcilable with the notion that such restrictions are isolated survivals of beliefs and practices associated with the very origin of meal sacrifice. It is also damaging to this view that the restriction is attested in a

second-century-B.c. inscription (LSAM 34.7) from the Magnesian cult of Sara

pis, a god whose Greek cults are not attested until the late third century.70 The

Magnesians must have had some reason for imposing the restriction, and it

would be strained to suppose that they arbitrarily adopted a rare procedure whose meaning had long been forgotten.

A final objection is suggested by the same Koan inscription we have been

looking at in connection with Zeus Polieus: provision is three times made there for the sacrifice of a piglet and a kid to Dionysos Skyllites, with the proviso TOj

65. Lectures on the Religion of the Semites2 (London, 1894). 66. Sterling Dow, "The Greater Demarkhia of Erkhia," BCH 89 (1965) 180-213 at 209. 67. Ibid. 210.

68. Burkert, "Greek Tragedy" (supra, n. 11) loc. cit. 69. Cf. the frequent o'ix 4&opqood in the same inscription (see below), and for the form of the

provision ibid. B.10: TOVI6wO oVx pxqpoQ& ?x TOv vaov; LS 69.31f.: TCOV 6e xQe6v Al t eOvaL txqCooQhv E:o) TOv TeJLveog.

70. Thomsen (supra, n. 62) 467 actually mentions this case, but without naming the recipient.

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XoiQov ovx &acocpoQa (LS 151 A.45, 58, 62). In other parts of the same calendar we find that the restriction is applied to a pregnant sheep and other offerings for Rhea (LS 151 B.4: TzotOv ovx urcocoQad), but is explicitly not applied to the

subsequent sacrifice of a young cow for Hera (LS 151 B.8: tazlg a; &roqpod) or to a sheep sacrifice for Apollon Dalios and Leto (LS 151 D.2: TovTOv i aoqpoQa;

D.4: Taztag &roqpoea). These clear distinctions indicate conscious organization rather than random survival, especially in the case of Dionysos, where the two victims of the same ritual occasion are differently treated.

The "survival" interpretation cannot withstand the cumulative weight of this

evidence, all of which suggests that the restriction was applied on the basis of some clear and conscious conceptual discrimination; moreover, the case of Zeus Polieus shows that it could be adapted to suit the character of the individual

recipient, suggesting that it was felt to stand in a significant relationship with that character.

What, then, is the conceptual basis of the restriction? Stengel's answer ap pears to be on the right track, but is limited by the very absolute way in which he often seems to apply the Olympian/chthonian distinction. The restriction is for the most part attested in the cult of chthonian or partly chthonian divinities, but there are a very few cases in which the recipient is not chthonian in any meaning ful sense, but is among the select group of powers most closely associated with

heilige Handlungen. We have already encountered meals in chthonian cult, and accounted for them with reference to the Olympian side of the partly chthonian, or to blessings that have manifestly been conferred by any of them. If these cults

anyway admitted of occasional meals, it would not be surprising if a meal in a

tightly controlled ritual setting-confined to the sanctuary and thus, so to speak, under the eye and at the sufferance of the god-could be felt to effect a satisfac

tory reconciliation of eating with the "abnormal" atmosphere of the standard

renunciatory sacrifice. Certainly the constraint involved here will have presented a more or less gloomy contrast to the relaxation of a festive dinner at home. The

natural inclination to eat good meat will of course have provided the impetus for

the reconciliation. All this is reasonable enough, but it is pure speculation. If, however, we can demonstrate that "on-the-spot" meals are consistently associ ated with recipients of chthonian cult or-again in a few cases only-heilige

Handlungen, then this or similar thinking surely lies behind them. Before proceeding with this end in view to detailed examination of the

attested cases, we may note that support for our thesis is forthcoming from the

ancient sacrificial tradition that stands in the closest relationship to the Greek. In the priestly typology of sacrifice presented in detail in the third book of the

Hebrew bible there are five distinct modes: 'Olah or holocaust (Leviticus 1:3-17; additional instructions for priests 6:8-13 [6:1-6], 7:8); Minchah or cereal offer

ing (2:1-16; add. 6:14-18 [6:7-11], 7:9-10); Zebach Shelamim or "sacrifice of

well-being" (3:1-17; add. 7:11-21, 28-36); Chattat or "purgation sacrifice" (4:1 5:13; add. 6:24-30 [6:17-23]); and 'Asham or "reparation sacrifice" (5:14-6:7

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[5:14-26]; add. 7:1-10).71 'Olah and Minchah, originally the animal and cereal constituents of the daily sacrifice offered by the priests in the temple, are both burned whole, except that the skin of the animal is a perquisite of the officiating priest; when the Minchah is offered by a layman, however, only a portion is

burned, the rest going to the priest. Zebach Shelamim corresponds to Olympian sacrifice: portions, including fat, kidneys, part of the liver, and the tails of sheep are burned, the rest taken away to be eaten by the donor; the breast goes to the

priests in general, the right thigh to the officiant. Chattat and 'Asham are sacri fices designed to deal with impurities or offenses, and the person who provides them does not partake of the meat, which goes as a perquisite to the priest who

officiates, unless the priest is making the offering in his own behalf, in which case it is burned. This last provision, paralleling that for the Minchah, indicates that like it Chattat and 'Asham were in essence renunciatory offerings.

Of special interest for us are certain specific requirements about where

eating is to take place. It is required that the portions of lay Minchah, Chattat, and 'Asham offerings that went to the priests had to be eaten by them within the

sanctuary precincts (Lev. 6:16 [6:9], 6:26 [6:19], 7:6). No such restriction is

placed on Zebach Shelamim offerings either for priests or for donors: indeed the

requirement that they be eaten either the same night (in the case of thanksgiving offerings) or within two days (7:15-18) and the familial, celebratory atmosphere intended (Deut. 27:7) indicate that they were eaten at home. Here too the

parallel of Zebach Shelamim with Olympian sacrifice is clear. The procedure in the other rites constitutes the eating, in a controlled ritual setting, of what is

fundamentally a renunciatory offering, and this is a close parallel for what we are

suggesting here about "on-the-spot" meals among the Greeks. The only differ ence is that the Greek worshipers themselves participate, but then Greek offer

ings are rarely as personalized as Israelite, and the contrast of lay and priestly, even where present, is rarely so marked.

This, so far as I can see, is the only clue in the ancient sacrificial record to the

meaning of the Greek restriction, but it is a remarkably clear one.72 Of course its

value can be tested only by a close look at the Greek material. Let us begin with

some salient features of the Erchian calendar (LS 18).73 It prescribes four holo

71. References to the Hebrew text are given in square brackets. The best guide is now Jacob

Milgrom, Leviticus 1-16, Anchor Bible 3 (New York, 1991). Milgrom discusses the distinction between eaten and burnt Chattat offerings at 261-64; but see also Baruch Levine, In the Presence of the Lord: A Study of Cult and Some Cultic Terms in Ancient Israel, Studies in Judaism in Late

Antiquity 5 (Leiden, 1974) 103-4. The relationship between Greek and Near Eastern religions, Hebrew in particular, has until recently been notoriously neglected by several generations of Helle nists; for general orientation and many particular connections, see esp. Walter Burkert, The Orien

talizing Revolution (Cambridge, Mass., 1992); and Sarah P. Morris, Daidalos and the Origins of Greek Art (Princeton, 1992).

72. Other Hebrew material is gathered by Thomsen (supra, n. 62) 469-71. 73. Dow (supra, n. 66) 189-91 provides a useful chart tabulating the sacrifices of all five

columns by date; note, however, that on pp. 190f. the months are out of their proper order.

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caust sacrifices, each of which is also designated vqqIpdXog, "sober."74 There are four cases of sober sacrifices that are not holocausts: one of these is the partly sober sacrifice for Zeus Meilichios discussed above;75 the others are all o/i

WpoQd.76 In the case of Zeus Meilichios the rite ceases to be chthonian at the

halfway point, and evidently concluded with normal, unrestricted distribution of the meat. On the face of it, the four cases combining sobriety and holocaust must

certainly be chthonian; one or two of the recipients are in fact heilige Handlung recipients rather than chthonians, but we shall turn to them in due course. If we are right that ob cpood sacrifice is a variation on the holocaust of chthonian cult, we have here a clear pattern: sober sacrifices, which are usually or always chthonian, accompanied either by chthonian holocaust or by an oi qpoda offer

ing. Every sober sacrifice in the calendar, apart from the special case of Zeus

Meilichios, is associated with one or other of these restrictions, which suggests that the three components are conceptually related. And one of the recipients of a sober ouir poQg sacrifice is undeniably chthonian: the hero Leukaspis (r.48ff.).

Our next step is to survey the recipients of the roughly forty-five oi qpogda sacrifices I have been able to collect.77 We may begin with Zeus Chthonios and

Ge Chthonie at Mykonos, who receive black victims Vjnt@ xa@Qaov, with the further injunctions VWLoa o 0efLtg- atLvvo60cv axtovI (LS 96.24-26). Here the

accumulation of obviously chthonian components practically compels us to con clude that 6aLvo6o0v cavtxo should be numbered among them. At the end of the

same inscription there is prescribed a sacrifice for an Archegetes, doubtless a hero founder (40). The stone is poorly preserved at this point; Sokolowski omits the remnants of lines 41ff., but Dittenberger (Syll.3 1024) prints line 41 as _] 6atvvo[wv - _. It is clear that we must restore the whole technical phrase already twice used in this inscription (26, 28f.):_ _] 6aLtvo[0cov aTovi_ _;78 thus another case of our restriction in connection with a chthonian recipient.

74. B.15ff., r.19ff., A.19ff., E.lOff. 75. A.38ff.; see above at n. 6.

76. r.48ff., A.41ff., E.59ff. 77. Of previous collections the fullest are those of Thomsen (supra, n. 62; much comparative

material); Ziehen (supra, n. 64); Burkert, "Greek Tragedy" (supra, n. 11) loc. cit.; and-most

nearly complete-Goldstein 322-55. Two or three further examples, including those collected by Headlam on Herodas 4.92, have not been noted by students of Greek religion. For discussion of the

provision in Greek sanctuaries for the cooking and consumption of sacrifices, see Martin P. Nilsson, "Archaic Greek Temples with Fire-Places in Their Interior," in Opuscula Selecta 2 (Lund, 1952) 704

10; Goldstein; recent bibliography in Oswyn Murray, ed., Sympotica (Oxford, 1990) 323-25. In addition to the examples of the restriction noted below in connection with named recipients,

we have a cuitic regulation from Kos that probably-the text is badly damaged-distinguishes between pregnant victims that are and are not &ncocpooA (LS 154 B.37-44). The text mentions "gods or goddesses" as possible recipients (see n. 26 supra), but the actual recipient most likely to be in view is Demeter. The use of a similar phrase (ouvx oayoyd) in connection with sacrifices before the

departure of the theoria to Delos from Kos (R. Herzog, Heilige Gesetze von Kos [Berlin, 1928] 5

B.13-16) is clearly "secular," as Goldstein 349 n. 492 notes. This sort of usage is not uncommon on Kos: see n. 82 infra.

78. Cf. the same restriction for a Heros Archegetes in Paus. 10.4.10, cited below.

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There is one, and probably a second, further example of "on-the-spot" sacrifice in this inscription, in both cases for Dionysos. Dionysos Bakcheus is the certain recipient (27-29); Dionysos has close connections with the un derworld that may or may not be to the fore in any given case: this example is therefore reconcilable with our theory, though not evidence for it. The prob able case would provide positive support: immediately before the entry for Zeus Chthonios and Ge Chthonie a yearling is prescribed for Dionysos Leneus

(24); we are in the month Lenaion and this is clearly the Lenaia of Mykonos. A date precedes the Dionysos entry, but not the Zeus/Ge entry immediately following, so that both sacrifices must take place on the same day. On the three other occasions when there is more than one entry on the same day, however, the phrase tflL avoUiL jiliiQEa precedes the second and subsequent entries, mark

ing them as distinct occasions (8, 11, 34f.). We ought therefore to conclude that the sacrifice for Dionysos Leneus is part of the same ritual as the offerings for

Zeus Chthonios and Ge Chthonie, with the latter specified as imeg xttaQoiv. In that case baLvo0owv a'Xtoi applies to Dionysos's yearling as well. That

Dionysos's chthonian side is in play here is strongly suggested by his pre eminently chthonian companions and by the fact that on the previous day the calendar prescribes a sacrifice for Semele (22-24), and on the day before that, also incQ xctaQov, for the underworld trio Demeter, Kore, and Zeus Bouleus

(15-22). All these together constitute a coherent chthonian and agricultural series.79

Some other chthonian recipients of "on-the-spot" sacrifices may be enumer ated here: Demeter (LS 151 A.60, Kos: male sheep and pregnant sheep),8 Rhea

(LS 151 B.4, Kos: pregnant sheep),81 Sarapis (LSAM 34.7, Magnesia), Theoi Meilichioi (Paus. 10.38.8, Myonia in Lokris), Heros Archegetes (Paus. 10.4.10, Tronis in Phokis); and from the Erchian calendar Ge (LS 18 E.16ff.: pregnant sheep), Hera Thelchinia (A.6ff.: black lamb),82 Kourotrophos (F.2ff., A.2ff.),

79. See Nilsson, GF278f. The Athenian Lenaia festival is also closely associated with the gods of the underworld, and with the Eleusinian priesthood: see Deubner (supra, n. 21) 125f.

80. On pregnant victims for goddesses of fertility, see n. 26 supra; additional examples are adduced below. There is one item of evidence suggesting that the on-the-spot restriction in fact

applied to all offerings to Demeter and Persephone: 2 Ar. Knights 282, o0x ijTv Ta& v6tueva ATqrTLIxeQ xai HInEoEcpVrlIt E^( dlcp& v. This may, however, be a guess of the scholiast's, prompted by the word n6p6oQrla, which Aristophanes uses in the sense "contraband," but which had clear Eleusinian connotations. The notice has not been cited in discussions of the restriction.

81. The victim indicates that Rhea is seen here in her chthonian character, as an equivalent of Demeter or Ge.

82. Both epithet and color of victim indicate a chthonian. The Telchines were threatening and deceitful demons often connected with the underworld (see KI. Pauly s.v.); the spelling here brings out the derivation from 0BXyo, appropriate for a dangerous power (cf. eL.IXLxtO;). At a Koan sacrifice for Hera the meat is removable, but what are obviously priestly perquisites (the iv6oQa and a hemiekton loaf of wheat) are obx Cxqpo@a ix iixo vaoi (LS 151 B.5-10). The phrase is

extremely common in Koan inscriptions, and is here employed as "officialese," without ritual

significance.

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Heroinai (A.17ff., E.2ff.), Leukaspis (r.48ff.),83 Menedeios (A.52ff.),84 Hera kleidai (B.41ff.),85 and Aglauros (B.56ff.).86

A very interesting case noticed by Headlam in the Orphic Lithika (699-747 Abel) has never been discussed in this connection.87 The narrator describes a

magical, mantic rite of strong mystical coloring, addressed to Helios and Ge. In

Orphic contexts Helios is often identified with Zeus, Dionysos, and Hades as the one supreme divinity, an amalgam therefore of Olympian and chthonian.88 The

pairing here with Ge likewise indicates that the combined power of heaven and earth is being invoked. Under their all-embracing authority is "evil-contriving

Megaira," probably an Erinys;89 when the worshipers invoke the gods by their

aiQqTxov oivolta or VotLIXOv binvviov (725-27), they pray for the banishment of Megaira from the spot (728f.). The result of the rite is perfect knowledge of the future through the ability to interpret mantic signs (745-47). The rite itself is

weird: attracted by incense, snakes emerge from beneath the "rock of Hephais tos"; one of them is caught by three young men and cut into nine pieces, three each for all-seeing Helios, fertile and nourishing Gaia, and all-knowing proph ecy. These are then boiled in a tripod kettle with oil, wine, salt, berries, "and other ingredients to taste" (722f.); after the invocations we find the provision 6atlvvveOa TO6' EJuetxa xoQEvwvUoecaL [?eta)xa I auT6o0ev ex x@tJtzoog- xa 6t

ietLava ycyaa xaXvjnTOL (732f.). Over the buried remnants are poured milk,

wine, oil, and honey, and the participants then garland themselves and depart. Until they reach home they must not turn back or speak to anyone they meet,

83. On this little-known hero, see Gunter Dunst, "Leukaspis," BCH 88 (1964) 482-85. 84. Also a hero; Jameson, "Erchia" 158f., suggests that he may belong to the circle of Bendis

he is worshiped on 19 Thargelion, the day of the Athenian Bendideia. 85. Here (B.44) and at B.59 and E.36f. abbreviated forms of o6 (poda have been added

sometime after the first inscription of the stone. Daux notes this in his discussion ("Erchia" 628), but does not print them in his text; Sokolowski neither prints them nor notices them in his apparatus.

86. See supra, n. 85. The sacrifice takes place 3 Skirophorion and is most probably part of the festival Plynteria, now clearly attested early in this month for another Attic deme, Thorikos

("Thorikos" 52ff.); Aglauros was prominent in this festival (Hesychios s.v. nIkvvrixta; Anecd. 1.270 Bekker s.v. K6l3Lov), which involved mystic components and was regarded as a day of ill omen

(Plut. Alk. 34.1): see further Noel Robertson, "The Riddle of the Arrhephoria at Athens," HSCP 87

(1983) 241-88 at 281f., whose case for Plynteria at Erchia is not, however, as open and shut as he makes out, particularly as he systematically underplays the importance of Pandrosos at Arrhephoria.

87. Partly because of an error of Knox, who published Headlam's work after his death; it

appears that on Herondas 4.92 Headlam left a bare reference to Orph. Lith. 731f. in the numeration of the standard edition of Abel, but Knox refers to and actually (mis)quotes the irrelevant lines 731f. of Hermann's numeration. Two further parallels collected by Headlam involve thank offerings of men who have survived the perils of a sea journey; for our purposes they are rather suggestive than relevant: Polycharmos of Naukratis, FGrHist 640 F 1; Euphron F 1 KA.

88. See, e.g., Martin P. Nilsson, Geschichte der griechischen Religion 23 (Munich, 1974) 429 on

Orph. frr. 236, 239 Kern (M. L. West, The Orphic Poems [Oxford, 1983] 36 n. 108, compares Macrob. Sat. 1.18.20). On the chthonian aspect of earlier cult of Helios, see Stengel 20ff., 155ff.; contra, Nilsson, GF 427f. Goldstein 336 includes in his list of examples of the restriction a sacrifice for Helios on Rhodes (LS 142.4-7), but this is based on Sokolowski's very dubious interpretation of the inscription.

89. 728; at Orph. H. 69.2 Quandt she is one of the three Erinyes.

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but keep their eyes on the path in front of them. They then offer at home normal roasted sacrifices for the gods, spilling the blood that was forbidden at the "bloodless altars" (699ff.) of Helios and Ge.

aivvoOat . . . aTo60ev is the technical language of our restriction, and the

whole passage is by far the fullest description of the context of such a meal known to us; late and bizarre, it is also very instructive. The intense and uncanny atmosphere of the meal on the spot contrasts sharply with the normal festive

sacrifice, and inwardness, gloom, and a sense of danger continue during the walk

home, which adds a physical dimension to the marked transition of atmosphere. The motif of "averted eyes," a telling expression of the spirit of chthonian cult, has excellent classical precedent in scenes of supplication of the dead (Aisch. Ch.

98f.) and of the Eumenides (Soph. OK 490). The thorough ritualization of the

disposal of the leftovers is further indication of the anomalous status of this very chthonian meal of snake stew-and it would be bold indeed to find here a

survival of an Ur-Tabu. The chthonian ambience of the rite is striking; we have to do with a heilige Handlung rather than ordinary chthonian cult, but as we have seen the two are closely related in their ritual aspect. The rite presented here is

highly distinctive and very late, but this is the best evidence we have for the

atmosphere and context of "on-the-spot" meals, and it supports, if it does not

confirm, our hypothesis about them.

Reverting to our catalogue of recipients, we may list those whose character is not exclusively chthonian, but who have a well-known chthonian side, such as

Amphiaraos (LS 69.31f., Oropos) and Asklepios at Epidauros (Paus. 2.27.1)90 and, with Hygieia, in Attika (LS 54.10). The "on-the-spot" meal for Athenaia

Machanis at Kos (LS 151 B.24) accompanies an apparently removable sacrifice for Zeus Machaneus. Some difficulty is caused here by the fact that the victims

and the ritual for these two vary according to whether they are in "the year of the

Karneiai," a festival celebrated every second year, or "the other year." In the

year of the Karneiai the main rite, that for Zeus Machaneus, is explicitly based

on, and refers back for details to, the Zeus Polieus ritual treated at length above,

where the flesh was apportioned but could not be removed from the polis, and

where in the secondary rite Athena Polias received an apparently removable

pregnant sheep. The "on-the-spot" meal for Athenaia Machanis occurs in the

non-Karneiai year; the stone breaks off as the procedures for the year of

Karneiai begin to be described. Given the system of cross-references and the

obvious interrelationship of rites for the pair of Zeus and Athena under the same

epithet, it is probable that some of the apparently removable sacrifices were

understood from the context to be nonremovable. It is likely, for example, that

the pregnant sheep for Athena Polias was not removable: the two other pregnant

90. Pausanias tells us that the same restriction applies at Titane, and it is usually assumed that

he refers to the sanctuary of Asklepios there, though he has not mentioned the restriction in his

description of the site (2.11.6-8).

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sheep in this calendar, for Demeter and Rhea, are both designated ouix ajioqpo@a (A.60, B.4).91 In other cases it may be that on-the-spot consumption of one of a number of victims was felt to suffice. In any case, the rites for the

Machan- pair were partly based on those for the Poli- pair, and doubtless be cause of a similarity of character. The clear chthonian affinities independently attested for both Athena Polias and Zeus Polieus therefore justify us in including the little-known Athenaia Machanis among our partly chthonian recipients of

on-the-spot meals. There are two valuable new parallels for the mixed Koan rite for Zeus Polieus: the same god appears twice in the Erchian calendar, and on both occasions his victim is a sheep, oi qpoda (LS 18 r.l4ff., 60ff.). In combina tion with the holocaust at Thorikos, this is all consonant with our thesis, though at Erchia Zeus plays second fiddle to Athena Polias.92

We noted above, in connection with the inscription from Mykonos (LS 96), that its 6atvUooawv aiuto sacrifice for Dionysos Leneus, in connection with Semele among others, supports the chthonian interpretation, and that that for

Dionysos Bakcheus is consonant with it. The god is often elsewhere associated with such rites; we have already mentioned the thrice-prescribed rite at Kos in

which, as Skyllites (< oxvXkiS, "twigs, kindling"), he receives a piglet and a kid, the former oi'x d&oqpo@a (LS 151 A.45, 58, 62). The epithet suggests a deity of

vegetation (as Sokolowski says ad loc., comparing the Koan Dionysos Thyllophoros),93 and we have noted the strongly agrarian character of the other rites in this part of the Koan calendar.94 Here, then, we have specific as well as

general grounds for attributing a chthonian aspect to the god. The first of his

partly on-the-spot sacrifices is on the same day as the preliminary piglet holo caust for Zeus Polieus; the Koans seem to have been fond of mixed rites. The

Erchian calendar now offers a parallel for the Mykonian rite in particular; on 16

Elaphebolion on the same altar Dionysos and Semele receive oi (poQa victims

(A.45ff., A.34ff.). The sacrifice follows the end of the City Dionysia by two

days, but the worshipers here are women; the combination of Dionysos and Semele may well suggest a chthonian significance.95

The case of Hestia is difficult but very interesting. One of the few things we

91. There is a possible parallel for this in the calendar from Erchia: on 12 Metageitnion both Zeus Polieus and Athena Polias receive a sheep e.t jn6OXe v &oTE, of which only the first is designated oi (poed (LS 18 r.l4ff., A.14ff.: specifications can be coordinated across columns, as in the case of the sacrifice for Semele at A.45ff. "on the same altar" as that for Dionysos at A.34ff.; in the latter

case, where there would be room for doubt, both are designated o qpood). 92. The festival is probably Plynteria; cf. n. 86 supra. The sheep for Athena Polias is termed

&v[x]iBo>So (LS 18 A.64f.); it will have been a holocaust, if we can trust the evidence of Hesychios a 5390 Latte, &vt(potLov- ia6OoLov. &vTid o6og xa0ayLat6jevov. XoqpoxXgi MEXkEayQO (F 405 R).

93. We have a financial regulation of this apparently prominent cult, LS 166. 94. The Zeus Polieus rite, and pregnant sheep for Athena Polias, Demeter, and, at the begin

ning of the second column, Rhea. 95. These sacrifices have been discussed by Albert Henrichs, "Between Country and City:

Cultic Dimensions of Dionysus in Athens and Attica," in M. Griffith and D. J. Mastronarde, eds., Cabinet of the Muses, Festschrift Rosenmeyer (Chico, 1990), 257-77 at 263f.

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are told about her cult is that "those sacrificing to her carried away nothing from the sacrifice": oi yag 'Eoriati 0ovveg oV6 o v eqpeQov Tfg 0voia;g.96 Of course

the most common offering to Hestia was a meal cooked on the family hearth; a

rule forbidding the removal of such an offering from the domestic premises seems to provide the material for a joke in comedy. In Aristophanes' Ploutos the

starving Hermes asks Karion to fetch him some meat d)v Oe0' 6?5EI; iv6ov, and

Karion replies &X' ovk exxpoad (1138). The scholion ad loc. preserves virtually the same joke from Theopompos (F 71 KA): etao cbQazWbv aitTxoov. (B.) &dX' oiVx Exqpopa.97 No recipient is mentioned in either case, but the emphasis on

"inside" in both points to Hestia. The language is clearly that of our restriction,98 but the situation is quite different, and the comic passages suggest that Karion and his equivalent are citing a rule more often ignored than observed. Still, in our scanty evidence for the character of the personified Hestia there is at least

one clear sign of chthonian affiliation. The Derveni commentator cites from "the

hymns," namely Orphic hymns of the fifth century B.C. or earlier, the verse

AYtYTxQ ['P]ea FrJ Mil[T]'q 'Eoica Aqrll.99 The last is an Eleusinian cult title of

Demeter, so that we have here a group of earth goddesses; whatever may have been made of the syncretistic project, Hestia must generally have been seen as close in character to the others. The restriction in the cult of Hestia stands

somewhat apart from our other examples of it, but the goddess herself presents no obstacle to our interpretation of them.

The 'YXXowv N1upcat of Thera, whose victims are designated ovix aJoqpoea

(LS 132), are even more obscure than Hestia. Nymphs were female spirits of water and the wild, and were sometimes adopted into chthonian circles. In the Heraion at Olympia they were depicted in company with Plouton, Dionysos, and

Persephone in a scene that Pausanias (5.20.3) tells us had an obvious reference to the underworld; one of them was playing with a ball, so that they probably represented Persephone's companions at the time of her abduction, but, with

Dionysos, had somehow become members of her established circle. Nymphs are also frequent recipients of wineless offerings: in Attika (Suda v 356 = Polemon of Ilion fr. 42 Preller); with Apollon Nymphagetes at Thasos, where piglets and

paians were also forbidden (Ziehen summarizes other reasons for regarding this

cult as chthonian: LGS 2 no. 109); in the Altis at Olympia, where libations of

wine are poured on all the altars except those of the Nymphs, the Despoinai (Demeter and Persephone), and that of all the gods (Paus. 5.15.10). In Sicily, however, they were honored in a drunken pannuchis (Athen. 250a). On Rhodes we find Nymphai Telchiniai closely associated with Hera Telchinia (Diod. 5.55),

96. Diogenianos 2.40; cf. Hesychios s.v. 'Eoriat 0v6otlvaL; Wilamowitz, Der Glaube der Hel lenen (repr. Darmstadt, 1955 [Berlin, 1931-32]) 1.152 n. 1.

97. The scholiast comments that this is said /v EviaLg OvolalS and notes that it is feminine

singular rather than neuter plural. 98. Note that oix ExpoQod in the comic passages corresponds to oV6iv qipEQov in Diogenianos. 99. ZPE 47 (1982) after p. 300, col. xviii.12; cf. West (supra, n. 88) 81.

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and they are often found, at Krete and elsewhere, linked with Hermes. Nymphs must be numbered among those groups of minor Greek divinities who can adapt themselves to any company; the Theran Nymphs and their otvx antooQad meal could very easily have a chthonian character.

In certain cases of our restriction there seem to be distinct signs of the

heilige Handlung. Thus Athena Apotropaia and Zeus Apotropaios are honored at Lindos on Rhodes with an on-the-spot sacrifice from which women are barred (LSS 88 a.3f., b.4f.). The restriction is also applied to sacrifices for Poseidon at Kamiros: the occasion is the festival Hippokathesia, at which horses are cast into the sea for the god (LSS 94.13). There is a strongly apotropaic element in these and similar rites for Poseidon; he is a preeminently dangerous god, and many of his cults are what we might call thalassian equiva lents of chthonian ritual;100 Wilamowitz described Poseidon as "von Hause aus der Herr der Erdtiefe."'10

There remain seven cases where the restriction is clear but a chthonian inter

pretation appears problematic. Five or six of these are, however, explicable on the basis of connections with heilige Handlungen, while one occurs in the neighbor hood of some of the strangest rites in the Greek cultic record. On 21 Hekatombaion Artemis receives at Erchia, in association with the od WpoQg piglet offerings for Kourotrophos, two oi qpoad goats with the further specification (o6) 6?EQta xaTa(L)yi?(ELv) (LS 18 F.8ff., A.8ff.). Daux prefers to take the latter as

referring to a mutilation of the skin by tearing when it is presented to the shrine; most will be inclined to follow Sokolowski, despite the psilosis, in regarding it as

requiring that the skin be burned, for which he points to a parallel on Kos (LS 151

D.16-17).1?2 Sokolowski concludes that the sacrifice was "in effect" a holocaust, and assumes that the recipient is Artemis-Hekate, who receives an Olympian offering elsewhere in the calendar (LS 18 B.1lff.). This is a possibility, but an enormous holocaust of all manner of victims, domestic and wild, was offered to

Artemis under the epithet Laphria at Patrai (Paus. 7.18.8-9), and as Agrotera, as we have seen, she is a frequent recipient of sphagia. Aischylos, as Herodotos

(2.156) tells us, made Artemis the daughter of Demeter. Some such associations

might account for the oi qpogQ rite here, but with no epithet to go on we must leave

it at that: a renunciatory offering for Artemis is in any case hardly surprising. Apollon Lykeios is twice specified in the Erchia calendar: on 12 Meta

geitnion, a day when the Erchians made offerings outside the deme to Demeter at the Eleusinion in Athens (LS 18 B.2ff.: sheep; Olympian rite, as often at

Eleusis) and to Zeus Polieus and Athena Polias on the Akropolis (F.14ff., A.14ff.: sheep; that for Zeus o cqpooa), they also offered Apollon Lykeios an ov

100. See Stengel 155-6. 101. "Ionische Wanderung," SB Berlin 1906, 67 = Kleine Schriften 5.1 (Berlin, 1937) 162, cited

by Stengel 155. Another case for Poseidon at Rhodes, if Prott is right in his interpretation of the word OoLvjxaL: LGS 1 no. 23.5 (= LS 140).

102. Daux, "Erchia" 630; Sokolowski ad loc.

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cpoQd sheep in the city (A.2ff.). On 8 Gamelion he received at Erchia an o6

qpogd sheep, "to be handed over to the Pythaistai" (E.2ff.).0?3 Apollon Lykeios is in Athens connected above all with military life, as patron of the army; in

tragedy the "wolf god" is very frequently invoked for aid against an enemy or to avert ills.104 Here, then, is a god to whom a heilige Handlung for the protection of the city is eminently suitable, though we have no other evidence for Attic sacrifices to him. His epithet might be taken to suggest distant associations with the weird lykanthropy, cannibalism, and human sacrifice of Mount Lykaion in

Arkadia (Paus. 8.38.6-7; cf. 6.8.2).105 A further example of our restriction is in fact attested for the cult of Apollon Parrhasios on that mountain (Paus. 8.38.8): a boar is sacrificed for Apollon Epikourios, conveyed immediately into the

sanctuary of Parrhasios, and there eaten on the spot. The odd victim and the on

the-spot rite are not surprising in this locality, famous for its cultic bizarrerie,

though again we know nothing further about the cult. This leaves us with four recipients of oir poga offerings in the Erchia calen

dar: the Tritopatores (LS 18 A.41ff.), Zeus at Petreus (E.23ff.), Zeus Horios

(E.28ff.), and Zeus Epakrios on Hymettos (E.59ff.). The offerings for the

Tritopatores and Zeus Epakrios are sober as well as o/ (poLd. With these it is convenient to consider two recipients of sober, holocaust sacrifices: Zeus

Epopetes (F.19ff.) and Epops (bis: A.19ff., E.lOff.).106 Zeus Horios is the god of the frontier and of the hermlike boundary stones, 6oot, that marked it,107 and that are invoked as witnesses to the Athenian "Ephebic Oath," in company with various gods and personifications of war and fertility and with various fruits of the earth.108 The oath is valuable as sketching the sorts of associations Zeus

Horios might be expected to elicit; a chthonian coloration is not out of the

question; nor is a connection with heilige Handlungen. 109

Of the other five of this final group, four and almost certainly the fifth fall

into a general category that is seldom given proper recognition: powers of the weather and mountaintop Zeuses, who belong together. The Tritopatores are ancestral spirits who are also winds.10 Zeus at Petreus, Zeus Epakrios on

103. The oi WpoQa was in this case inscribed later: see n. 85 supra. 104. See Michael Jameson, "Apollo Lykeios in Athens," Archaiognosia 1 (1980) 213-35.

Aisch. Ag. 1257, Seven 145f., Suppl. 686f.; Soph. El. 6f., 203-6, 645, 655, 1379-83. 105. See Burkert, HN 84-93. 106. The fourth sober holocaust in the calendar is for Basile (B.15ff.), the chthonian compan

ion of Neleus and Kodros; cf. R. E. Wycherley, The Stones of Athens (Princeton, 1978) 168; David

Whitehead, The Demes of Attica (Princeton, 1986) 204 with n. 171. Unusually, the victim is white: cf. LSAM 41.6.

107. See Nilsson, GGR 205. 108. Text: Georges Daux, "Le serment des 6phebes atheniens," REG 84 (1971) 370-83; also,

e.g., P. Siewert, "The Ephebic Oath in Fifth-Century Athens," JHS 97 (1977) 102-11. See Reinhold

Merkelbach, "Aglauros (Die Religion der Epheben)," ZPE 9 (1972) 277-83 (incl. text), esp. 282f. 109. His offering is on the same occasion as that for Zeus at Petreus, on whom see further below. 110. Winds: Phanodemos, FGrHist 325 F 6 with Jacoby ad loc.; Hesychios T 1448; Orph. fr. 318

Kern; cf. Demon, FGrHist 327 F 2; Philochoros 328 F 182; Anon. Exeg. 352 F 1.

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Hymettos, and Zeus Epopetes "on the Pagos at Erchia" all look like mountain

top gods;11 Epops was assumed by Daux to be the hoopoe, which seems an

unlikely recipient of cult. The fact that Epops receives exactly the same offer

ings as Zeus Epopetes suggests that their names are related and that he is a hero "Overseer."'12 That the names suggest a mountaintop location is likely enough in itself, but there is an excellent Attic parallel in the altar of Apollon Proopsios, likewise on Hymettos. There were altars of Ombrios Zeus both on

Hymettos, where he was paired with Semalios Zeus, and on Parnes, with a

variant epithet Apemios.113 "Overseer," "Rain God," "Sign Giver," "Averter of Ills": the mountaintop god is a powerful presence, and is everywhere associ ated with magical and often weird rites, including human sacrifices in the cases of Zeus Lykaios, Zeus Laphystios, and Zeus Ombrios.l4 Some of these sanctu aries on the heights had ash altars, indicating burnt offerings."5 It is not surpris ing, then, that Zeus Epopetes and the hero Epops should receive wineless

holocausts,1l6 nor Zeus Epakrios and Zeus at Petreus their more modest ver sions of the heilige Handlung. The Tritopatores will fall into the same general category. Wind magic is common; we remember that the sacrifice of Iphigenia to Artemis is ravouaveFog (Aisch. Ag. 214),117 and sphagia and black victims for the winds are known elsewhere.l8 The annual nighttime a6@roTaI into four p6o0oL for the winds at Titane in Sikyon, accompanied by "charms of

Medea" (Paus. 2.12.1), together with other evidence, led scholars such as

Stengel and Farnell to regard the winds as chthonian powers, either as resident in the earth or in connection with ancestral ghosts.19 Further support for this notion might be derived from that treasure house of chthonian concepts, the

111. Zeus Epakrios is certainly one; see Et. M. and Hesychios s.v. 'Ea6dxQLog ZEUg, quoted by Daux, "Erchia" 621; Et. M. actually refers to our cult.

112. Cf. the hero Epopeus at Sikyon, near the Apotropaioi Theoi and a temple he built for Athena destroyed by a thunderbolt, Paus. 2.11.1. On the Epop- name the most useful collection of evidence is in Pfeiffer ad Kall. Ait. 3 fr. 85.14.

113. All attested by Paus. 1.32.2. See the evidence for mountaintop Zeuses collected by Farnell

(supra, n. 42) 1.147-48; and in general M. Langdon, A Sanctuary of Zeus on Mt. Hymettos, Hesperia Suppl. 16 (Princeton, 1976). For a possible sanctuary of a Zeus Exopsios on the Hill of the Nymphs, see Wycherley (supra, n. 106) 188-89.

114. See Nilsson, GGR 393-401, Burkert, HN 85, 114f. Zeus Ombrios: Lykophron 160 with scholia.

115. See Burkert, HN85 with n. 10; Plut. fr. 191 Sandbach. 116. Burkert, GR 112 n. 82, cites these cases as evidence against the traditional distinction; he

does not make the connection with the mountaintop, and appears to regard the name as indicating a

god in the sky, preeminently "Olympian." The connection is, however, made by Ludwig Preller and Carl Robert, Griechische Mythologie 14 (Berlin, 1894) 117 n. 2, q.v., to which Burkert refers.

117. Cf. Henrichs (supra, n. 51) 203 n. 4. 118. Xen. Anab. 4.5.4: Ev0a 6ii TCIv g&dveTEv Tig Elje oqEcayLado(aoea TOL aVpLMoL, xaC

oqapcryLt tat; Aristoph. Frogs 847f.: aQv' 6ava sXkava 3naL6eg ievyxaTE- I tvqxbg yaQ xpat3ivELv naQcaoxEvatcTaL. Cf. in general Farnell (supra, n. 42) 5.416f., 448f.

119. See Stengel 146-53, esp. 150-52; Farnell (supra, n. 42) 5.417; Sam Wide, "Chthonische und himmlische G6tter," ARW 10 (1907) 257-68 at 258. Ar. Clouds 314f. probably indicates that weather powers and heroes are associated with the same conceptual realm.

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Eumenides of Aischylos: when the chorus are promising general fertility for the land and people of Athens, they say among other things that no dreadful winds

will blow-TaZv layv XaQLv Xeyo (939; cf. 905f.). At any rate, the offerings at Erchia to mountaintop gods are readily comprehensible as heilige Handlungen for well-established recipients of such rites.

With the possible exceptions of Apollon Lykeios, Apollon Parrhasios, and

perhaps Zeus Horios, all the attested recipients of on-the-spot sacrifices are at home in a chthonian or partly chthonian ambience, or among the restricted

group of powers who are named in connection with heilige Handlungen. 120 If we are accused of petitio principii for sometimes supporting a chthonian

interpretation on the basis of ritual features that traditionally mark the distinc tion that was supposed itself to be in question, it is perhaps sufficient to reply that we are after all looking for patterns in the evidence, and that few would

deny that the traditional typology is in general valid enough. It is surely no

accident, for example, that with the exception of the eccentric rite for Zeus Meilichios all the wineless sacrifices in the Erchian calendar are also either oi

poLa or holocaust. If we come to the conclusion that a few of our rites and

recipients are rather heilige Handlung-related than chthonian, this is no damn

ing indictment of the distinction but allows it to be applied with greater accuracy; most important, the heilige Handlung recipients make particularly clear the re markable consistency of character to be discovered in the cultic record. Under

standing the on-the-spot provision in the way suggested here, then, we may now take another look at the standard lists of exceptions to the traditional distinction.

THE EXCEPTIONS RECONSIDERED

The three bodies of evidence I propose to consider as an application of our

approach are the examples of participation in sacrifices to chthonian gods col lected by Fairbanks, Thomsen, and Stengel; Nock's catalogue of meals in heroic

cult; and Henrichs's compilation of wineless libations in Attika.121 The last has to

do with a feature of cult that has rarely been seen as common to all the

chthonians, but it was on the basis of a study of libations that Graf came to his

conclusions, and as it happens the list illustrates nicely the fundamental role of the character of the god. Henrichs has also organized his list according to other features of the wineless rites in question, so that it makes a useful study in the

compatibility of ritual components.

120. There is a suggestive Roman parallel, mentioned by Cato, RR 83, in an offering to Mars Silvanus "pro bubus, uti valeant": "ubi res divina facta erit, statim ibidem consumito. Mulier ad eam rem divinam ne adsit neve videat quo modo fiat"; cf. CIL 6.1.576 = Dessau 2.4915: "Extra hoc limen

aliquid de sacro Silvani effere fas non est." Other Roman material is cited by Thomsen (supra, n. 62) 469.

121. Fairbanks 258f.; Thomsen (supra, n. 62) 482f.; Stengel 130-33; Nock 578-81; Henrichs, "Sobriety" 96-97.

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Of the examples collected by Fairbanks, Thomsen, and Stengel, amounting to nine or ten altogether, five have been referred to above: the Erinyes at

Megalopolis and the Semnai at the Areopagos court have been discussed as

examples of ritual varying comprehensibly according to circumstances made clear in the evidence; Zeus Chthonios and Ge Chthonie (and probably Semele) at Mykonos and the Theoi Meilichioi at Myonia as on-the-spot meals; and the rite for Zeus Sosipolis at Magnesia was fitted into the general pattern of rites for the partly chthonian Zeus Polieus.122 In the partly chthonian group ought also to be included Trophonios at his Boiotian oracle; according to Pausanias (9.39.5) those who are to consult the oracle enjoy "plenty of meat from the sacrifices"

during their stay there. The rest of the exceptions gathered under this head have to do with the

worship of Demeter and Persephone on the one hand, and Hades/Plouton/ Eubouleus on the other. None of these involves direct description of sacrificial

modes, but Fairbanks and Stengel note inscriptional evidence for sacrifices to

Demeter, Persephone, Eubouleus, and other Eleusinian figures, including Athena, at Athens and Eleusis; for Plouton's hieron at Eleusis; for priests of Plouton and Kore at Athens and elsewhere; and for an altar of Plouton near the

Areopagos.123 Only the last provides any detail about the worship, specifying xkivTr and TQd'Etea, which are standard equipment in the type of offering called theoxenia.

Demeter herself, despite her clear links with the earth, was numbered

among the twelve Olympians; and Eleusinian sacrifices in particular, though we are not well informed about them, seem generally to have been participa tory, being also on the whole celebratory in atmosphere. In the nature of

things they will have been "on the spot" as well, but it is preferable, given the

paucity of our information, to explain the apparent exceptions in the cult of Demeter on the grounds of her dual status, general beneficence, and intimacy with the Athenians; and what holds for Demeter will hold for her divine circle.124

The worship of Hades in Elis, where he had a temple, is less reasonably listed as an exception: the temple was opened only once a year, and entered then

122. Zeus Sosipolis was regarded by Fairbanks, and has been by others, as chthonian tout

court, but seems to fit more naturally into the particular group of Doppelwesen sketched above. 123. LS 5.36-40, LSS 13.20-24 and elsewhere; IG 22 1231; Preller and Robert (supra, n. 116)

802 n. 1; IG 22 1933-35 (connected with the Semnai; cf. Paus. 1.28.6). 124. The sanctuary at Eleusis is equipped with high altars, at least one /oxtaQa, and several

megara around the porch of the Telesterion: see most recently Kevin Clinton, "Sacrifice at the Eleusinian Mysteries," in R. Hagg, N. Marinatos, and G. C. Nordquist, eds., Early Greek Cult Practice (Stockholm, 1988) 69-80 at 71f. Thus both Olympian and chthonian sacrificial modes must have played a role in the cult; in particular, a banquet was presumably provided from the bulls sacrificed on the day of celebration and departure following the night of initiation in the Telesterion

(Clinton 71 with n. 27). Our information about these and other sacrifices at the Mysteries is, however, too spare to allow firm conclusions. See also n. 80 supra.

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only by a sacred official (Paus. 6.25.2-3, Str. 8.344). The form of worship is not

described, but was presumably correspondingly cautious. In the rite of theoxenia the worshipers prepare a couch and table of vegetar

ian offerings for their divine guests as for themselves, and in some sense offer them hospitality.125 By far the most frequent recipients of such offerings are the

Dioskouroi, other partial chthonians such as Asklepios and Herakles, and he

roes; Nilsson (GF 418) remarks that the famous Delphic theoxenia of Apollon must have been taken over from the cult of the Dioskouroi. The obvious analogy of such rites to the proverbial practice of leaving to the heroes scraps of food that fall from the table has been noted. Plouton, so often depicted in art on a couch, is similar in character to the most frequent recipients of the rite. Regarding such rites as exceptions to the traditional distinction, however, is ultimately a reflex of Robertson Smith's communion theories, since there is little likelihood that any of the worshipers would have eaten the portion appointed for the divine guest. Nock (582-88) demonstrated long ago that there is no support in the evidence for the notion that such banquets involved communion with the god.

Of the fourteen cases gathered by Nock126 of participation in animals offered to heroes, two are dubious (5, 6),127 two involve an explicit on-the-spot provision (8, 11), seven are in fact eaten on the spot (1-4, 9, la, 3a),128 and one more very

probably is (7). In one case the meat of a victim is actually offered as a prize in a

contest (2a); in another we do not know where the meal took place (10). Thus none of Nock's examples is an obstacle to our theory, which could be used to

explain them all; but there is really no need to invoke it. Meals-at least of the

theoxenia type-were fairly well established in the cult of heroes,129 and we have

argued that there are occasions when it is acceptable to celebrate the beneficent side of chthonians with a participatory sacrifice. Several of Nock's examples

would fall very naturally into this category: three are organized by private orgeones or cult associations, which were doubtless constituted for purposes

125. See F. Deneken, "De Theoxeniis" (diss. Berlin, 1881); Nock 585f.; Nilsson, GF 418-21; Meuli as in n. 129 infra.

126. Nock's cases are: (1) hero Echelos, LSS 20; (2) heroes Egretes and Hypodektes, IG 22

2499, 2501; (3) Attic Theseia festival; (4) various sacrifices to heroes by the "Salaminioi," LSS 19; (5) same by the Marathonian tetrapolis, LS 20; (6) a heroine, LGS 2 no. 24; (7) hero Paralos, IG 22

1254; (8) hero Archegetes at Tronis, Paus. 10.4.10; (9) heroes at Phigalea, Ath. 4.149c; (10) Aga memnonidai, Ps.-Arist. Mir. Ausc. 106, 840a; (11) Archegetes at Mykonos, LS 96.40; (la) Muses and heroes, foundation of Epikteta, LS 135; (2a) hero Aleximachos, IG 12.7.515; (3a) Tyche Agathe and Daimon Agathos of Poseidonios and parents, Syll.3 1044.

127. Case 5 is based on the specification of iQc)ovvaa, which are however payments in cash and therefore not decisive; case 6 depends on an uncertain textual supplement.

128. W. S. Ferguson, who published the decrees of the orge6nes that provide three of Nock's

examples, laid stress on the fact that the banquets were cooked and eaten on the spot: see "The Salaminioi of Heptaphylai and Sounion," Hesperia 7 (1938) 1-74 at 33f.; "The Attic Orgeones," HThR 37 (1944) 61-140 at 80f.

129. See, e.g., F. Deneken in Roscher, Lexikon 1.2507-9; Nock 588f.; Karl Meuli, "Griechische

Opferbrauche," in Phyllobolia: Festschrift Peter von der Miihll (Basel, 1946) 185-288 at 194-201 = Gesammelte Schriften (Basel, 1975) 2.916-24.

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rather of good fellowship than of renunciatory piety (1-2, 4); two (3, 9) and

possibly a third (10) are public festivals at which large crowds were entertained at the heroin; two are late private cults of the dead (la, 3a), in the one case (la) provided for in the will of the deceased woman. The fact that banquets took

place at their graves does not make these recipients any less "chthonian"; it is

simply that on these occasions or for these worshipers in particular their benefi cent side is the exclusive focus. Hero feasts are doubtless exceptions to the distinction as traditionally formulated, but they are not arguments against the

importance of the recipient's character, and seem in any case to be relatively uncommon. The value of the distinction is in its general validity, and we must allow for differentiation among the various branches of the chthonian family: the heroes are on the whole more approachable than the chthonian gods.130

Henrichs's catalogue of wineless libations makes a more interesting subject. Here again the heroes, for whom, as for the dead, libations of unmixed wine and other ingredients must have been normal,131 stand slightly apart. The challenge here is to discover why various divine recipients of sober offerings should have received them. Henrichs notes the presence of the various chthonian recipients one would anticipate for wineless libations: the Semnai/Eumenides, Zeus Mei

lichios, the Erechtheids, Leukaspis; he refers as a separate group to the Winds and the Tritopatores-we will see here typical recipients of heilige

Handlungen-and he singles out " 'Olympian' divinities such as Zeus Hypatos, Aphrodite Urania, and even Dionysos." We may discuss these categories in turn. Other apparently chthonian or partly chthonian powers in the catalogue are Zeus Georgos (pankarpia), Basile (Erchia: holocaust), Nephthys and Osiris

(holocaust), the snake of Asklepios.132 We can now recognize in the list a group of heilige Handlung recipients, including not only the Winds and the Tritopa tores but Zeus Epopetes, Epops, and Zeus Epakrios; Zeus Hypatos on the

heights of the Akropolis belongs in this group as well: he is attested as a moun

130. Burkert, GR 299 with n. 47, cites two "heroic banquets" in tragedy, both for Agamem non, which, if interpreted by him correctly, would be damaging to the view argued here. In Aisch. Ch. 483-85, however, the banquets must be customarily provided, not eaten, by mortals, and those

"richly feasted" will be the other dead; see Garvie ad loc. Soph. El. 283f. speaks of a monthly feast instituted by Klytaimnestra, with choruses and sheep sacrifices to "savior gods," to mark the day on

which she murdered her husband; this is certainly not heroic cult, and does not take place at

Agamemnon's tomb (xaxa o=ryag, 282): the festivities are simply named after him, by a typically grisly "subversion." Anxious after her dream, Klytaimnestra later sends Chrysothemis with proper offerings for the dead, which surprises Elektra (405-10; cf. 326-27). Burkert also cites Louk. Merc. Cond. 28, which seems more to the point, but surely refers to the practices of the rich Romans in whose employ Loukianos imagines his Greek addressee.

131. See Henrichs, "Sobriety" 99. The sources of Henrichs's catalogue are Aisch. Eum. 106-9; Soph. OK 469-81; Eur. Erechtheus fr. 65.73-89 Austin; Kall. fr. 681 Pf.; Z Soph. OK 100 =

Philochoros, FGrHist 328 F 12; Suda v 356 = Polemon of Ilium fr. 42 Preller; Paus. 1.26.5; LS 1, 18, 21, 52; LSS 16.

132. The snake seems to be the genuine recipient of the sober offerings of LSS 16; they were doubtless placed on the table (with an image of a snake) on which the text is inscribed. Henrichs attributes this offering to Asklepios and Hygieia.

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taintop god in Boiotia, and an oracle is quoted in Demosthenes advising the Athenians to make sacrifice for him among others as a result of a sign in the

heavens.133 Henrichs's other two "Olympians" are not straightforward either. Now that the new gold leaves from Thessaly have associated Dionysos firmly with the realm of the chthonioi, we are more alert than ever to this aspect of the

god, which on a given occasion could put his connection with wine in the shade.134 Aphrodite Ourania does not owe her epithet to impeccably Olympian credentials; she is in fact the Greek form of the Mesopotamian goddess Ishtar/

Astarte, as the Greeks recognized.135 Apuleius (Met. 11.2) has Lucius address the moon as regina caeli and suggest four identifications-Ceres, caelestis Venus,

Ephesian Diana/Lucina, Proserpina/Hekate-of the goddess, who turns out to be Isis; this is at least a useful warning that a celestial goddess is not necessarily an "Olympian." Little can profitably be said about most of the others: Poseidon Chamaizelos must be connected with the crops, and Helios and Mnemosyne receive their wineless offerings as members of the circle of Asklepios; Mnemo

syne has a fountain in the underworld, according to the gold leaves; and there are indications elsewhere of "chthonian" cult for Helios,136 but we know too little about them. The same is true of Eos and Selene, and in cult both of the Muses

and of the Nymphs the specific context-about which we know nothing in the case of their wineless rites-is fundamental.

We thus find in respect of the pattern of wineless libations in Attika more or

less what has turned up elsewhere. Recipients of the various ritual features

traditionally assembled under the rubric "chthonian" almost always display a connection with the earth; those who do not will fall into a restricted class of

beings, including weather gods of the heights and recipients of wartime sphagia or mythical human sacrifice, who are in temperament similar to the chthonians. Differences among the chthonians of course exist: heroes and the dead receive libations of wine; the chthonian gods generally do not; likewise the heroes are

133. Paus. 9.9.13, Dem. 43.66. On the cult in general, Jessen RE 9.1 (1916) 250ff.; Graf, Kulte

(supra, n. 4) 202f.: "wo wir Naheres wissen, wurde der Gott in der Hohe verehrt." Cf. Zeus

Hypsistos on the Pnyx: Wycherley (supra, n. 106) 197 n. 48. 134. K. Tsantsanoglou and G. M. Parassoglou, "Two Gold Lamellae from Thessaly," Helle

nika 38 (1987) 3-16; on chthonian connections of Dionysos, see now Henrichs (supra, n. 95) 266-68. 135. See Her. 1.105, 131 with How and Wells ad loc., 4.59; Paus. 1.14.7. The evidence is

collected by Farnell (supra, n. 42) 2.746f. Xenophon's statement (Symp. 8.9) that the sacrifices to her were &yv6dzeqal than those to Aphrodite Pandemos is probably not relevant to our interests. Cf. in

general Burkert, HN 115; id., Die orientalisierende Epoche in der griechischen Religion und Li

teratur, SHAW 1984, 1 (Heidelberg, 1984) 92-95 = Eng. transl. (supra, n. 71) 96-100; Graf, Kulte

(supra, n. 4) 261. Her altar at the NW entrance to the Agora has been excavated: T. Leslie Shear, Jr., "The Athenian Agora: Excavations of 1980-1982," Hesperia 53 (1984) 1-57 at 24-40; for analysis of the faunal remains, David S. Reese, "Faunal Remains from the Altar of Aphrodite Ourania, Ath

ens," Hesperia 58 (1989) 63-70, replaces G. V. Foster, "The Bones from the Altar West of the Painted Stoa," Hesperia 53 (1984) 73-82.

136. Mnemosyne: Giorgio Colli, La sapienza greca 1 (Milan, 1977) 4 [A 62]-[A 64], pp. 172

76, with a text unavailable to Gunther Zuntz, Persephone (Oxford, 1971) B1-2, pp. 358-61. Helios:

Stengel as in n. 88 supra.

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more prone to festivity. It is worthwhile in this regard to point to the case of the Erechtheids. Henrichs describes the two rites prescribed in the aition of Euripi des' play: annual bull sacrifices accompanied by girls' choruses, and wineless sacrifices before battle. Here we find linked with the same recipients the dichot

omy we encountered in the scattered record of the cult of heroes: periodic festivity in contrast with the sense of danger we normally expect to find in the cult of the chthonioi. Both approaches correspond to the character of the hero

ines, which would not be made clear by either in isolation.

CONCLUSIONS

Even in the limited evidence we have dealt with some recipients have consis

tently reappeared in connection with the various ritual features. Patterns have

emerged that not only indicate the fundamental soundness of the distinction between Olympian and chthonian gods and rituals, but remind us that one of the most basic constitutive elements of Greek polytheism is the nature of the individ ual divinity. To the objection that the approach we have outlined can account for

anything but explains nothing, we can at least reply that wb have had no occasion to explain away regular cult of a chthonian type for any such figure as Olympian

Zeus, and that we encountered Delian Apollon only in connection with an

explicitly removable offering. It remains to make a few general points arising from our reassessment of the evidence.

It may be hoped first of all that we are now beyond trying to save the old

hard-and-fast distinction by more or less contrived expedients, such as Stengel's argument that meals only occur in the cult of exclusively agricultural chthonians, or Pfister's claim that banquets occur only for heroes whom Entruckungslegende place in heaven rather than in a grave.'37 It ought also to be recognized that evaluation of the distinction cannot rely on instances of "Olympian" sacrificial terms applied to offerings to chthonians, where the rite itself is not further

described, since this is the "unmarked" terminology.138 Nor are names and epi thets in themselves reliable guides; we have seen, for example, that the first

glance reaction to Zeus Epopetes' epithet is not a sufficient basis for evaluating his case.

In formulating and applying the distinction between Olympians and chthoni ans we ought always to bear in mind the caveat concisely stated by Burkert: "Das

tatsachliche Brauchtum blieb ein Konglomerat mit vielerlei Zwischenstufen."'39 Endless ramification is a reflex of the nQoclxovoa aQtexf of polytheism, and

hybrids are therefore to be expected in divine character and in ritual as well. The

vision of the Greek pantheon offered in Homer, the Hymns, and the handbooks

137. Stengel 131; Pfister (supra, n. 57) 480-89. 138. See n. 57 supra. 139. GR310.

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is not privileged and does not set a standard, or, more accurately, does so only in

literary terms; it should not be allowed to distort our perception of the world of actual cult and cultic legend, which, in religious terms, is a larger and a more

complex and serious world. We must also avoid burdening the Olympian/chthonian distinction with im

plications that the evidence cannot bear. There is, for example, no reason to

suppose that the avoidance of participation in chthonian offerings corresponded to the folk belief, reflected in the myth of Persephone, that to eat the food of the underworld is to be consigned there, nor to accept the notion that sacrificial

banqueting involved "communion" with the recipient. Few would profess such ideas now, but vestiges of them seem to underlie rejection of the basic distinction on the basis of attested participation in offerings to some chthonians. The distinc tive trait of the chthonians is their ambivalence, and the mode of worship spe cially suited to them amounts to holding nothing back in the appeasement of

dangerous and unpredictable powers. Ambivalence is not, however, unrelieved

nastiness, so that forms of worship reflecting assurance or cautious assurance of chthonian good will need not surprise us, let alone lead us to rash shifting of

paradigms. Ambivalence elicits meticulous caution, but there are degrees of

caution, and such a compromise as carefully restrained or controlled participa tion may sometimes be felt to suffice.

If we are right that the temperament of the recipient is fundamental to the mode of worship, the Greek evidence seems to fall into place. There are powers, in no sense chthonian, that are yet of such similar temper and unpredictability that the chthonian mode of worship seems best suited to them. Even for those properly called chthonian the term is not a complete definition. Binary oppositions of the

Olympian/chthonian kind generally need to be kept somewhat fluid, human phe nomena of any significance being by nature complex; this does not invalidate

them, or mean that they have not been of fundamental influence in shaping the

phenomena. The evidence seems to indicate that definite and consistent constella tions of specific character traits and ritual features occur most frequently on the level of the individual divinity. Given the Greeks' astonishing fertility in the

generation of vividly realized mythical personalities, this is not surprising. The more general differentiae, such as the Olympian/chthonian distinction, play their role here, but precisely because they are more general they can never constitute our full analytical equipment. Moreover, even quite basic distinctions may be blurred or disregarded in order to people the pantheon with a variety of discrete, compelling entities, or in other words to allow the imaginative potential of the human mind to get itself fully projected onto the divine plane. Even those of us who agree that gods and other mythical powers come second to ritual historically are free to recognize their primacy for the societies that create them and express in

them their sense of the nature and limits of the human condition. The expressive

power of ritual is after all limited by what one can do; the limits of myth coincide

with those of the imagination, and it can therefore express everything. In this

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sense the facts of ritual are and always were projections into action of what can be

projected in a more complex way, and therefore more completely and directly, through myths and mythical figures. Very few myths are of the sort generated to

explain rituals, and the significance even of these is rarely exhausted by discovery of the rituals behind them. In the study of human culture much of what is most essential and distinctive in any individual or group is directly accessible only in the

products of their imagination, including their gods, who are, like the figures of

dreams, aspects of themselves and of their response to everything that is not or

might not be themselves.140

Union College

140. Renate Schlesier's recent paper carries the tendency I have been opposing here to its

logical conclusion: she argues that the Olympian/chthonian distinction is essentially a modern con struct, and denies that it can be applied to ritual. The latter view she bases mainly on the earlier studies dealt with here. The most important parts of her paper are an illuminating treatment of the

nineteenth-century background of the modern formulation, and a radically skeptical examination of some of the few explicit ancient references to the distinction. Given the haphazard nature of these references-no genuinely systematic exposition has come down to us-Schlesier's brief, serial, and somewhat dismissive treatment of them seems to me insufficient to establish her conclusion, and the

mass of texts generally seen as making implicit use of the distinction are not discussed. The reassess ment of the relationship between divine figures and rituals undertaken in the present paper, so far as it may be valid, involves clear consequences for assessment of the basic distinction, and to that extent constitutes a first response to Schlesier's paper.

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Olympian and Chthonian · Logik des Rituals," and Walter Burkert holds much the same to be true of...

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