The Parthenon Enigma

by Joan Breton Connelly

  7. Austin, “De nouveaux fragments de l’Érechthée,” 12–13n3.

  8. Austin, “De nouveaux fragments de l’Érechthée.”

  9. Austin, Nova fragmenta Euripidea, 22–40.

  10. Martínez Díez, Euripides, Erecteo; Carrara, Euripide: Eretteo.

  11. M. J. Cropp, “Euripides, Erechtheus,” in Collard, Cropp, and Lee, Euripides: Selected Fragmentary Plays, 148–94; Collard and Cropp, Euripides VII: Fragments, 362–401.

  12. Connelly, “Parthenon Frieze and the Sacrifice”; Connelly, “Parthenon and Parthenoi.”

  13. Stobaeus was a late antique compiler of Greek extracts who lived in Stobi, a city within the Roman province of Macedonia. For citations of the Erechtheus in other sources, see Kannicht 390–94. Kannicht’s edition of the Erechtheus text, 2004, will be used throughout The Parthenon Enigma unless otherwise noted.

  14. Personal communication with Colin Austin.

  15. For Erechtheion building accounts see Paton et al., Erechtheum, 277–422, 648–50; IG I3 474–79; Dinsmoor, “The Burning of the Opisthodomos,” among others.

  16. For an overview of the dating of the Erechtheion, see M. Vickers, “The Caryatids on the Erechtheum at Athens: Questions of chronology and symbolism” (in press), 6–16; W. Dörpfeld, “Der ursprünglichen Plan des Erechtheion,” AM 29 (1904): 101–7, put the start of construction at 435 B.C.; Lesk, “Erechtheion and Its Reception,” 68, puts it at 427/426. Those who date the start of work on the Erechtheion to 422/421 include A. M. Michaelis, “Die Zeit des Neubas des Poliastempels in Athen,” AM 14 (1889): 349, and P. Spagnesi, “L’Eretteo, snodo di trasformazioni sull’Acropoli di Atene,” Quaderni dell’Istituto di Storia dell’Architettura 9 (2002): 109–14. The discovery of the Erechtheus fragments in the 1960s led to the association of the building of the temple with the first performance of the play, perhaps at the City Dionysia of 422/421, see Calder, “Date of Euripides’ Erechtheus.” See also Clairmont, “Euripides’ Erechtheus and the Erechtheum”; and Calder, “Prof. Calder’s Reply.” In Erechtheus F 90–91 Kannicht, Athena does seem to allude to the construction of the Erechtheion.

  17. West, Hesiodic Catalogue of Women, 106.

  18. Homer, Iliad 2.546–51. Xenophon, Memorabilia 3.5.10, says that Erechtheus was nursed by Athena.

  19. Homer, Odyssey 7.80–81.

  20. Herodotos, Histories 5.82. For important discussion of Erechtheus and Athena Polias, see D. Frame, Hippota Nestor (Washington, D.C.: Center for Hellenic Studies, 2009), 348–49, 408–13. For joint worship of Erechtheus and Athena, see Mikalson, “Erechtheus and the Panathenaia”; Kearns, Heroes of Attica, 210–11; Kron, Die zehn attischen Phylenheroen; M. Christopoulos, “Poseidon Erechtheus and ΕΡΕΧΘΗΙΣΘΑΛΑΣΣΑ,” in Ancient Greek Cult Practice from the Archaeological Evidence, ed. R. Hägg (Stockholm: Svenska Institutet i Athen, 1998), 123–30; Parker, Athenian Religion, 19–20; Sourvinou-Inwood, Athenian Myths and Festivals, 52.

  21. Herodotos, Histories 8.44, 8.51, 8.55.

  22. Sourvinou-Inwood, Athenian Myths and Festivals, 51–89; Kearns, Heroes of Attica, 110–15, 160–61; Mikalson, “Erechtheus and the Panathenaia,” 141n1; Parker, “Myths of Early Athens,” 200–1; Shear, “Polis and Panathenaia,” 55–60.

  23. Homer, Iliad 2.546–51, and Herodotos, Histories 8.55, have Erechtheus as born of Earth, as does Sophokles, Ajax 201–2. Those who identify Erichthonios as the son of Earth include Pindar, frag. 253; Euripides, Ion 20–24, 999–1000; Isokrates, Panathenaikos 126; Eratosthenes, Constellations 13; Apollodoros, Library 3.14.6; and Pausanias, Description of Greece 1.2.6, 1.14.6.

  24. According to Euripides’s Erechtheus (F 370.63 Kannicht), Erechtheus is married to Praxithea, daughter of the Kephisos. Lykourgos, Against Leokrates 98, and Apollodoros, Library 3.15.1, also have Praxithea as the wife of Erechtheus but in Apollodoros, Library 3.14.6–7, we hear that Erichthonios is married to Praxithea.

  25. The scholia on Aelius Aristides’s Panathenaic Oration 43 (Lenz and Behr) = Dindorf 3:62 = Jebb 107, 5–6; 1.3.50 (Lenz and Behr) = Dindorf 3.317 = Jebb 187, 2, describe Erechtheus as the inventor of the chariot. The Parian Marble A 10 (IG XII, 5 444 = FGrH 239, A, lines 1–3; inscribed 264/263 B.C.) tells us that Erichthonios was the first to yoke horses and to institute the Panathenaic Games. See also Eratosthenes, Constellations 13; Apollodoros, Library 3.14.6. For Erichthonios as the first to celebrate the Panathenaic festival, see Harpokration Π 14 Keaney, s.v. Παναθήναια, which cites Hellanikos, FGrH 323a F 2; and Androtion, FGrH 324 F 2. See also the scholia on Plato, Parmenides 127a. Photios, Lexicon, s.v. Παναθήναια; and Suda, s.v. Παναθήναια.

  26. Apollodoros, Library 3.14.6. For Hephaistos, see J. N. Bremmer, “Hephaistos Sweats; or, How to Construct an Ambivalent God,” in The Gods of Ancient Greece, ed. J. N. Bremmer and A. Erskine (Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 2010), 193–208. I am indebted to Jan Bremmer for sharing bibliographical references and for helpful discussions of this material.

  27. See Hyginus, Fabulae 166; scholiast on Iliad B 5475; Etymologicum magnum, s.v. Ερεχθεύς. See also Deacy, Athena, 53; Powell, Athenian Mythology, 1–3. Guy Smoot offers an alternative etymology for the name Erechtheus, “Very Earthly” (Eri = “very” as an intensive prefix + chthonios).

  28. Sourvinou-Inwood, Athenian Myths and Festivals, 88, is among those who see Erechtheus and Erichthonios as one and the same individual. See also Vian, La guerre des géants, 254–55; Kearns, Heroes of Attica, 110–15; Mikalson, “Erechtheus and the Panathenaia”; Kron, Die zehn attischen Phylenheroen, 37–39; Parker, “Myths of Early Athens,” 200–1; P. Brulé, “La cité en ses composantes: Remarques sur les sacrifices et la procession des Panathénées,” Kernos 9 (1996): 44–46.

  29. Sourvinou-Inwood, Athenian Myths and Festivals, 51–89.

  30. RE (1907), s.v. “Erechtheus”; Mikalson, “Erechtheus and the Panathenaia,” 141–42; Kearns, Heroes of Attica, 133; Parker, Athenian Religion, 19–20; Sourvinou-Inwood, Athenian Myths and Festivals, 51–89, 96.

  31. British Museum, 1864, 1007.125, pelike. H. B. Walters, E. J. Forsdyke, and C. H. Smith, Catalogue of Vases in the British Museum, 4 vols. (London: British Museum Publications, 1893).

  32. LIMC 4, s.v. “Erechtheus.”

  33. Staatliche Museen, Berlin F 2537, cup by the Kodros Painter from Tarquinia, ca. 440–430 B.C. ARV2 1268.2; Para. 471; Addenda2 177; LIMC 4, s.v. “Erechtheus,” no. 7; Kron, Die zehn attischen Phylenheroen, 250, no. E 5, plates 4.2, 5.2; A. Avrimidou, The Codrus Painter: Iconography and Reception of Athenian Vases in the Age of Pericles (Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 2011), 33–35.

  34. Shear, “Polis and Panathenaia,” 55–60.

  35. Sourvinou-Inwood, Athenian Myths and Festivals; J. P. Small, The Parallel Worlds of Classical Art and Text (Cambridge, U.K.: Cambridge University Press, 2008).

  36. Herodotos, Histories 8.44.2, says the people of Athens were first called Athenians during the reign of Erechtheus. Pindar, Isthmian Ode 2.19, and Sophokles, Ajax 202, both use the term “Erechtheidai” to mean all Athenians. See Sourvinou-Inwood, Athenian Myths and Festivals, 96; Kearns, Heroes of Attica, 133; Parker, Athenian Religion, 19–20.

  37. Herodotos, Histories 8.48.

  38. For Kekrops: LIMC 6, s.v. “Kekrops,” nos. 1–11; for Erechtheus, see LIMC 4, s.v. “Erechtheus,” nos. 1–31.

  39. Sourvinou-Inwood, Athenian Myths and Festivals, 95: Powell, Athenian Mythology, 17.

  40. Isokrates, Panathenaikos 193; Hyginus, Fabulae 46.

  41. Thucydides, Peloponnesian War 2.15.1.

  42. For collected sources, see Austin, “De nouveaux fragments de l’Érechthée,” 54–55, and Kearns, Heroes of Attica, 201–2.

  43. Phanodemos, FGrH 325 F 4 = Photios; Suda, s.v. Παρθένοι. At the end of his entry, Photios cites Phanodemos, though it is not clear whether Phanodemos is responsible for all of the information given or just the final bit. Phanodemos may be regarded as a fairly reliable source and is thought to have been
a collaborator of Lykourgos.

  44. Apollodoros, Library 3.15.

  45. Hyginus, Fabulae 46, 238. Demaratus, FGrH 42 F 4, says that the eldest daughter was sacrificed to Persephone.

  46. Hyginus, Fabulae 253. Philochoros, FGrH 328 F 105.

  47. See Kearns, Heroes of Attica, 201.

  48. A scholiast to Aristides, Panathenaic Oration 85–87 (Lenz and Behr) = Dindorf 3:110, line 9, and 3:112, lines 10–15, identifies Aglauros, Herse, and Pandrosos as the daughters of Erechtheus, rather than as the daughters of Kekrops.

  49. The text of fragment 370.36–42 is very problematic and editors treat it differently. See Collard and Cropp, Euripides VII: Fragments, 393, for discussion and translation. We get a sense that Praxithea is looking upon the corpses of her two older daughters, who have, perhaps, leaped from the Acropolis. While it is by no means certain, we may have references to a “funeral rite” (line 38) and “limbs” (line 39).

  50. Apollodoros, Library 3.15.4.

  51. Ibid., 3.14.6.

  52. According to Pausanias, Description of Greece 1.18.2; Hyginus, Poetic Astronomy 2.13; Hyginus, Fabulae 166.

  53. Euripides, Ion 277–78.

  54. I thank Angelos Chaniotis for drawing this to my attention. For leges sacrae, see E. Lupu, Greek Sacred Law: A Collection of New Documents (NGSL) (Leiden: Brill, 2005); R. Parker, “What Are Sacred Laws?,” in The Law and the Courts in Ancient Greece, ed. E. M. Harris and L. Rubinstein (London: Duckworth, 2004), 57–70.

  55. I thank Angelos Chaniotis for this suggestion.

  56. As first argued by D. M. Lewis, “Who Was Lysistrata? Notes on Attic Inscriptions (II),” BSA 50 (1955): 1–36. See also Connelly, Portrait of a Priestess, 11–12, 60, 62–64, 66, 128, 130–31, 278; S. Georgoudi, “Lisimaca, la sacerdotessa,” in Grecia al femminile, ed. N. Loraux (Rome: Laterza, 1993), 157–96.

  57. On the reconciliation, see Parker, “Myths of Early Athens,” 201–4.

  58. Translation is my own. I am deeply grateful to James Diggle and Anton Bierle for their kindness in helpful discussions of the text.

  59. Plutarch, Lives of the Ten Orators: Lykourgos 843a–c; N. C. Conomis, “Lycurgus Against Leocrates 81,” Praktika tes Akademias Athenon 33 (1958): 111–27; Connelly, Portrait of a Priestess, 12, 59–64, 117, 129–33, 143, 217.

  60. Translation: Burtt, Minor Attic Orators, II, 151, 153.

  61. See Sonnino, Euripidis Erechthei, 36–42, 113–19; M. Lacore, “Euripide et le culte de Poseidon-Erechthée,” RÉA 85 (1983): 215–34; J. François, “Dieux et héros d’Athènes dans l’Érechthée d’Euripide,” in IXe congrès international de Delphes sur le drame grec ancien (Delphes, 14–19 juillet 1998) (Athens, 2004), 57–69.

  62. Plato, Menexenus 239b; see Pappas, “Autochthony in Plato’s Menexenus”; Isokrates, Panegyrikos 68–70; Isokrates, Panathenaikos 193.

  63. Demosthenes, Funeral Speech 27–29, also says that the daughters of Pandion inspired the Pandionidai and the daughters of Leos (sacrificed during time of plague) inspired the Leontidai. The Athenian statesman and general Phokion invokes the Hyakinthidai (daughters of Erechtheus) and the daughters of Leos in a speech to the assembly after the destruction of Thebes in 335 B.C.; see Diodoros Siculus, Library 17.15.2.

  64. Demades, frag. 110.

  65. Bremmer, Strange World of Human Sacrifice; J. N. Bremmer, “Myth and Ritual in Greek Human Sacrifice: Lykaon, Polyxena, and the Case of the Rhodian Criminal,” in Bremmer, Strange World of Human Sacrifice, 55–79; T. Fontaine, “Blutrituale und Apollinische Schönheit: Grausame vorgeschichtliche Opferpraktiken in der Mythenwelt der Griechen und Etrusker,” in Morituri: Menschenopfer, Todgeweihte, Strafgerichte, ed. H.-P. Kuhnen (Trier: Rheinisches Landesmuseum, 2000), 49–70; Enzyklopädie des Märchens (1999), s.v. “Menschenopfer”; S. Georgoudi, “À propos du sacrifice humain en Grèce ancienne,” Archiv für Religionsgeschichte 1 (1999): 61–82; Der Neue Pauly (1999), s.v. “Menschenopfer III”; P. Bonnechère, “La notion ‘d’acte collectif’ dans le sacrifice humain grec,” Phoenix 52 (1998): 191–215; P. Bonnechère, Le sacrifice humain en Grèce ancienne (Athens: Centre International d’Étude de la Religion Grecque Antique, 1994); Hughes, Human Sacrifice in Ancient Greece; Wilkins, “The State and the Individual,” 178–80; O’Connor-Visser, Aspects of Human Sacrifice, 211–32; Henrichs, “Human Sacrifice in Greek Religion”; H. S. Versnel, “Self-Sacrifice: Conception and the Anonymous Gods,” in Le sacrifice dans l’antiquité, ed. J. Rudhardt and O. Reverdin (Geneva: Entretiens Hardt, 1981), 135–94; R. Girard, Violence and the Sacred, trans. P. Gregory (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1977); F. Schwenn, Die Menschenopfer bei den Griechen und Römern (Giessen: A. Töpelmann, 1915); J. Beckers, “De hostiis humanis apud Graecos” (Ph.D. diss., University of Münster, 1867); R. Suchier, “De victimis humanis apud Graecos” (Ph.D. diss., University of Marburg, 1848).

  66. Herodotos, Histories 2.119.2–3.

  67. Plutarch, Life of Themistokles 13.2–5 = Phainias, frag. 25 Wehrli.

  68. Henrichs, “Human Sacrifice in Greek Religion,” 213–17.

  69. Hughes, Human Sacrifice in Ancient Greece, 112.

  70. For the sacrifice as sphagion, see Euripides, Ion 277–78.

  71. Homer, Iliad 9.410–16. Translation: Nagy in http://athome.harvard.edu/programs/nagy/threads/concept_of_hero.html. On the contrast in genre of kleos and nostos, see G. Nagy, Comparative Studies in Greek and Indic Meter (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1974), 11–13. For the meaning of kleos, see Nagy, Greek Hero, 26–31 and 50–54.

  72. Nagy, Best of the Achaeans, esp. 9–10, 102, 114–16, 184–85.

  73. Ibid., 35–41.

  74. When it comes to animal sacrifice, the purity of the victim is paramount in pleasing the gods. The younger and more unsullied, the better; therefore, lambs are preferable to ewes and calves to cows. So, too, an untainted virgin is the most pleasing victim, and we do not hear of married, nonvirgin women being sacrificed. We do, however, hear of boys, like Menoikeus, son of King Kreon, who threw himself from the walls of Thebes to save the city from the seven warriors, in fulfillment of a prophecy made by Teiresias; see Euripides, Phoenician Women 997–1014. Untainted boys, like their female counterparts, were desirable in that they were still pure. See Larson, Greek Heroine Cults, 107–8.

  75. Kearns, “Saving the City.”

  76. Pausanias, Description of Greece 9.17.1.

  77. Ovid, Metamorphoses 13.681–84; Antoninus Liberalis, Metamorphoses 25.

  78. Demosthenes, Funeral Speech 1398; Diodoros Siculus, Library 15.17; Plutarch, Life of Theseus 13; Pausanias, Description of Greece 1.5.2; Aelian, Historical Miscellany 12.28; scholiast on Thucydides, Peloponnesian War 6.57.

  79. J. N. Bremmer, “Human Sacrifice in Euripides’ Iphigeneia in Tauris: Greek and Barbarian,” in Sacrifices humains/Human Sacrifices, ed. P. Bonnechère and R. Gagné (Liège: Centre International d’Étude de la Religion Grecque Antique, 2013), 87–100; J. N. Bremmer, “Sacrificing a Child in Ancient Greece: The Case of Iphigeneia,” in The Sacrifice of Isaac, ed. E. Noort and E. J. C. Tigchelaar (Leiden: Brill, 2001), 21–43; H. Lloyd-Jones, “Artemis and Iphigeneia,” JHS 103 (1983): 87–102 = Academic Papers: Greek Comedy, Hellenistic Literature, Greek Religion and Miscellanea 11 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1990), 306–30. I thank Jan Bremmer for helpful discussions of this material.

  80. Euripides, Iphigeneia at Aulis 1368–401. As Wilkins, “The State and the Individual,” 180, so effectively puts it: “The contribution of each sex is clear: sacrifice is required of all children of suitable age (and a corresponding sacrifice from parents): eligible boys must stand in the battle-line; eligible girls may be called upon for human sacrifice to promote victory.”

  81. O’Connor-Visser, Aspects of Human Sacrifice in the Tragedies of Euripides; N. Loraux, Tragic Ways of Killing a Woman (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1987).

  82. Wilkins has pointed out how both plays focus on city goddess, festival, and virgin sacrifice; see Wilkins, “
The State and the Individual”; Wilkins, “Young of Athens,” 333; Wilkins, Euripides: Heraclidae, 151–52.

  83. Zenobios 2.61.

  84. Pausanias, Description of Greece 1.32.6.

  85. Translation: D. Kovacs, Euripides, Children of Heracles, Loeb Classical Library (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1995), 57, 59.

  86. Thucydides, Peloponnesian War 2.51.5.

  87. For dating of Euripides’s Erechtheus, see note 6.

  88. Estimated to have had a seating capacity of five thousand to six thousand during the fifth-century phase of the theater; see Meineck, “Embodied Space,” 4. Also, H. R. Goette, “Archaeological Appendix,” in The Greek Theatre and Festivals: Documentary Studies, ed. P. Wilson (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2007), 116–21.

  89. Sourvinou-Inwood, Tragedy and Athenian Religion, 71–72.

  90. D. Allen, Talking to Strangers: Anxieties of Citizenship Since Brown v. Board of Education (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2004), 47.

  91. Allen, Why Plato Wrote, 93.

  92. Humphreys, Strangeness of Gods, 104–5; C. G. Starr, “Religion and Patriotism in Fifth-Century Athens,” in Panathenaia: Studies in Athenian Life and Thought in the Classical Age, ed. T. E. Gregory and A. J. Podlecki (Lawrence, Kans.: Coronado Press, 1979), 11–25.

  93. Allen, Why Plato Wrote, 137. See Steinbock, “A Lesson in Patriotism,” for a full discussion of Lycourgos and the ephebeia.

  94. Plutarch, Life of Perikles 8.6. See A. Chaniotis, “Emotional Community Through Ritual in the Greek World,” in Chaniotis, Ritual Dynamics in the Ancient Mediterranean, 269, 275, 280, for discussion of the personal experience of the worshipper in communicating with the gods as the foundation for belief, expressed and strengthened through ritual. When beliefs are made public through ritual, they are given permanence and monumentality, enabling humans to permanently experience divine presence.