6 Odyssey 19.56–63 [LCL 19.53–8].
7 See tablet from Knossos, Sd 401 and Pylos tablet Ta 707. Ventris and Chadwick (1973), 366 and 342 respectively.
8 There is a fine example from the 14th century BC in the Heraklion Museum, Crete.
9 See Rehak (2005), 7.
10 Sakellarakis and Sapouna-Sakellaraki (1997), Vol. 2, 654 ff.
11 See also Chapter 14.
12 The Mycenaean palette was taken straight from the earth – pinks and rich yellows, greens, mauves and rusts ground down from natural clays and oxides. There was one notable exception: ‘Egyptian blue’. This valuable tool in the artist’s box acquired its evocative name because its production involved a chemical technique masterminded by Egyptians during the Old Kingdom (c. 2500–2100 BC). Blocks of this blue pigment were generated by heating frit, a glass-like element, with copper-bearing ore. Manufactured blues were probably a (rich) poor man’s lapis lazuli, a trick to make the palace appear to boast, throughout, the precious lapis stone from Afghanistan or Iraq.
13 See Ventris and Chadwick (1973), 131.
14 Hypoplastic lines in dental enamel, see Arnott (2005a).
15 Todd Whitelaw has estimated the population of the Mycenaean settlement at Pylos at around 3,000 individuals, based on house sizes and densities at more extensively investigated Mycenaean sites, in Voutsaki and Killen (2001). Thanks to Todd Whitelaw for his help in discussing population figures for Aegean Late Bronze Age society.
16 The architecture of Mycenaean settlements at the end of the 13th century BC, too, is designed to deal with military engagement. The citadels grew more fortified – increasingly circled by those monstrous walls of huge, unworked limestone blocks. Across the Isthmus of Corinth a Cyclopean wall has been traced running a full kilometer west of the Saronic Gulf. And at Mycenae, and neighbouring Tiryns, gloomy, secret cisterns, Mycenae’s over 18m deep, have been hacked out of the bedrock to provide water in the event of a siege.
17 See Latacz (2004), 120–40, for analysis of these nominations. The term ‘Mycenaean’ is another 19th-century invention.
CHAPTER SIX
The Rape of ‘Fair Hellen’
1 Hyginus, Fables 79.
2 Apollodorus, Epitome 1.23.
3 Diodorus of Sicily, 4.63.1–4.
4 Hellanikos FrGrH 4, 323a: F19 (168b). Hellanikos (c. 480–395 BC) was a noted mythographer and chronographer but only fragments of his work now survive. Later authors have certainly found this paedophiliac episode exciting. One Elizabethan writer – John Trussel in his First Rape of Fair Hellen (1595) – is insistent that Helen was only eight when she was raped. He describes the wheezing Theseus having to gasp for breath before he renews his advances. Another literary tradition claims that Theseus sodomised Helen to preserve her virginity: see Thornton (1997), 85 and n. 45.
5 Isocrates was an Athenian educationalist and a pamphleteer of a conservative persuasion, who lived from 436 to 338 BC.
6 Isocrates, Encomium of Helen 10.19. Trans. L. van Hook.
7 Site visit May 2001.
8 Trans. W. Barnstone (1962), quoted in Freeman (1999), 142.
9 The word ‘rape’ comes from the Latin rapiere, ‘to seize’. In antiquity it does not necessarily mean a sexual violation but does carry the implication of an abduction by force.
10 Rose (1926), 401.
11 And probably earlier: see Cartledge (2002), 310.
12 Thompson (1908/9), 124 and 127.
13 Flogging to the death was almost certainly a Roman elaboration.
14 Plutarch, Theseus 26.
15 Variant myths say that Helen was pregnant by Theseus at the time and gave birth to a daughter – Iphigeneia, whom she then left with her sister Clytemnestra. Pausanias 2.22.6 summarises the literary tradition claiming that Iphigeneia was the child of Theseus and Helen: for example, Stesichorus (PMGF 191). Iphigeneia grows up to take her own place in legend, as a victim of human sacrifice. (See Chapter 27.) The young girl’s fate was a tale at the heart of three of the most powerful of Greek tragedies: Euripides, Iphigeneia at Aulis; Euripides, Iphigeneia among the Taurians; and Aeschylus, Agamemnon.
16 Hellanikos FrGrH 4, 323a: F20 (134).
17 Plutarch, Theseus 32.3. Trans. B. Perrin. See also fragment 11 of the Cypria (scholiast on Homer, Iliad 3.242) that ‘the Dioscuri, failing to find Theseus [in Aphidna], sacked Athens’. Trans. H.G. Evelyn-White.
18 Diodorus of Sicily gives one account of this story: 4.63.1–4. This is part of his multi-volume Library, a universal history of mythological times up to 60 BC, composed in Egypt and Rome 60–30 BC.
19 In 432 BC the Spartans had declared war on Athens. Their plan was to torch Athenian grainfields and force the Athenians to come out and meet them in fixed battle. For a city-state of professional soldiers the victory, the Spartans imagined, would be swift. But the Athenians were too canny to rise to the bait. Well connected to external food supplies via their port of Piraeus, the Athenians did not rush to meet the Spartans. Instead they waited to mount large-scale defensive military action on their own terms – Spartan success would not come easily. For the next twenty-seven years there would be victories and defeats as each power tested the strengths and weaknesses of the other. It was only when the Spartans took Persian gold and used their new-found wealth to become a sea- as well as a land-power that the pendulum started to swing in their direction. Athens’ allies – with the exception of Samos – smelt defeat and the vulnerability of their overlord, and defected to the Spartan cause one by one. For an ideal overview of Spartan history, see Cartledge (2002).
20 Herodotus 9.73 and Thucydides 7.19.1.
21 Rape cases seem to have been more concerned with affronts to the honour of the city or oikos rather than issues of consensuality. Legendary rapes were often cited as historical and political catalysts; cf. the rape of Lucretia and the rape of the Sabine women. See R. Omitowju (1997) ‘Regulating rape: Soap operas and self-interest in the Athenian courts’, in S. Deacy and K.F. Pierce, eds (1997) Rape in Antiquity (London: Duckworth) and R. Omitowoju (2002) Rape and the Politics of Consent in Classical Athens (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press).
22 Helen’s rape by Paris was cited by military leaders in the classical period. For example, in his funeral oration of 322 BC, the orator Hyperides diagnoses the actions of the Greek general Leosthenes at the end of the first year of the Lamian War as a means of defending all Greek women from the affront of hubris. An affront suffered twice by Helen.
23 Deriving from Sparta’s hinterland, Lakonia.
24 Rare mixed-blood offspring were labelled mothakes.
25 Given that all adult male citizens, ‘Spartiates’, were allowed only one profession – that of the soldier – the Spartans were a force to be reckoned with. Little surprise then that they should sustain a push-me-pull-you tussle with the other most prominent city-state of the period, Athens. Sometimes these two were close allies, and sometimes the bitterest of enemies. Conflict was inevitable as each became entrenched in its own social and political ideals – finally, after a long, bitter, bloody, dissatisfying war, in 404 BC Sparta triumphed, decisively, over Athens and Spartan warriors tore down the walls of the Athenian polis. Athens’ flute-girls (prostitutes who lived outside the city walls) quickly changed sides and, dancing amid the flames, over the bodies of the Athenian dead, celebrated the end of an empire. See Xenophon, Hellenica 2.2.23. Sparta spent the next thirty-five years dominating much of the Greek world.
26 Thucydides 1.10.2.
27 Other than the acropolis, the theatre and the Menelaion almost all the digs in Sparta are now classified as ‘rescue archaeology’ – work can begin only when a building lot in the city is cleared for development or when someone’s extension falls down, revealing, as it collapses, an ancient past in its foundations.
28 Hoplites formed the bulk of the Spartan army. Every male Spartan citizen who had been through the agoge system had to serve as a hoplite.
29 Pausanias 3.15.3.
3
0 Cartledge (2001), 150 and 161; see also L.H. Jefferey (1961) The Local Scripts of Archaic Greece: A study of the origins of the Greek alphabet and its development from the eighth to the fifth centuries BC (Oxford), 200, n. 24; M.N. Tod and A.J.B. Wace (1906) A Catalogue of the Sparta Museum (Oxford: Clarendon Press), 178, no. 447.
31 This ritual headdress is called a polos; it could perhaps have a connection with the polos worn in ritual circumstances by Mycenaean women.
32 For an astrological interpretation of this see Richer (1994).
33 Cults could have been established earlier but our first extant evidence is Hellenistic.
34 It is easy to understand why Helen and her brothers should be worshipped so full-bloodedly at Sparta – after all, Castor and Pollux were considered the protectors of the city, and Helen their emblem of perfect womanhood – but interesting that the popularity of the cult became widespread. Images of Helen and her brothers on coins from Asia Minor almost certainly bear witness to the cult spreading well beyond the Greek mainland. See Larson (1995), passim. And Chapter 36.
35 For fuller discussion see Spawforth (1992), passim.
36 Helen was also known as Argive Helen.
CHAPTER SEVEN
Sparte Kalligynaika
1 Peleus describes the problem of being married to Helen. Euripides, Andromache 595–600 (5th century BC). Trans. P. Vellacott.
2 Odyssey 4.341–2 [LCL 4.304–5].
3 A comprehensive overview of ancient sources shows Helen having a relationship with the following: Theseus, Menelaus, Paris, Enarsphoros the son of Hippocoon, Idas and Lynceus, Corythos, Deiphobus, Achilles and Theoclymenos. See Clader (1976), 71.
4 Excavated at Artemis Orthia and dating from the same century.
5 Carter (1988).
6 See Pomeroy (2002), 106, n. 2.
7 Later commentators even suggest the girls ate cakes in the shape of breasts. See Pomeroy (2002), 106, n. 3.
8 See Griffiths (1972), passim.
9 There is some, slightly questionable, evidence that Alcman started off life in Lydia.
10 Partheneion 3 (P.Oxy. 2387) is in the Papyrology Room at the Sackler Library in Oxford. Partheneion 1 is in the Louvre (P.Louvr. E3320). Many thanks to Nikolaos Gonis for his assistance.
11 Alcman, Partheneion 1 and 3. Trans. S.B. Pomeroy (2002), 6 and 7.
12 A reputation revived in the Roman period; see Plutarch, Lycurgus 18.4. Spartan girls were certainly well used to female company; given that all males from the age of seven to thirty lived on their own together in men-only army camps, the relationships between women must have been very strong.
13 See Larson (1995), 68, and 176, n. 53, citing C.M. Bowra, for a suggestion that Helen appears in Alcman as the dawn goddess Aotis.
14 This may also have been the case in the Late Bronze Age. Linear B tablets show the gods and goddesses of the Mycenaeans (not only their human representatives on earth) owning assets such as flocks of sheep and being listed as landholders. On the House of Potnia at Thebes, see Chadwick (1976), 93, 99; on landholding, see Chad-wick (1976), 77, 114. A new Pylos join has revealed a ‘Hearth of Dionysus’; see J.L. Melena (1996–7) ‘40 Joins and Quasi-Joins of Fragments in Linear B Tablets from Pylos’ and ‘13 Joins and Quasi-Joins of Fragments in the Linear B Tablets from Pylos’, in Minos 31–2: 159–70; on flocks of sheep, see Chadwick (1976), 93, 129.
15 Odyssey 13.469 [LCL 13.412].
16 The oracle at the religious site of Delphi in central Greece handed out judgments on current affairs, prophecies for the future and bon mots concerning state and personal histories. It was the Delphic Oracle that branded Spartan girls ‘kallistai’ in the 7th century BC. Parke and Wormell (1956), Vol. 1, 82.
17 Athenaeus, Deipnosophists 13.566a–b.
18 Xenophon, Constitution of the Lacedaemonians 1.3. One very fragmentary vase found in Sparta shows men and women debauching together – there is no indication that these women are hetairai (prostitutes). It is currently held by the Sparta Museum. Pipili (1992) no. 196.
19 Plato, Laws 806A; cf. Republic 5.452A.
20 See Cavanagh and Laxton (1984), 34–6.
21 Athenaeus, Deipnosophists 13.600f–601a.
22 Clearchus of Soli, fragment 73.
23 See Xenophon, Household Management 7.10. Trans. S.B. Pomeroy (2002), 9.
24 Pollux 4.102.
25 See Pomeroy (2002), 112ff, for an account of Spartan girls’ physical education, with sources.
26 See Bowra (1961), 53 on poloi; also Aristophanes, Lysistrata 1308–15.
27 Helen is herself compared to a ‘Thessalian horse adorning its chariot’ in Theocritus, Idylls 18.31.
28 Sarah Pomeroy has pointed out that while Spartan girls have their long hair cut in preparation for marriage, Pliny in his Natural History links the cropping of a mare’s mane with a reduction in libido. Pliny, Natural History 8.164.
29 The challenges of the sources available for Spartan studies, particularly the lives of women, are succinctly laid out by Pomeroy (2002), 139–70.
30 Augustus was said to have made this visit in 21 BC. See Cartledge and Spawforth (1989 reprinted 1991, 2002), 199, citing Cassius Dio 54.7.2.
31 Scholiast on Juvenal 4.53.
32 Ovid, Heroides 16.149–52.
33 Propertius lived from c. 50 BC to c. 2 BC.
34 Trans. A. Dalby; taken from Dalby (2000), 146.
35 Xenophon, Constitution of the Lacedaemonians 1.4 and see Pomeroy (2002), 25, for further discussion.
36 British Museum GR 1876.5–10.1.
37 For a further description of constructions on the Menelaion, see Tomlinson (1992).
38 Herodotus 6.61.
39 Pausanias 3.19.9.
40 Pausanias 3.7.7.
41 The fact that she was honoured with rituals that involved plants and flowers could suggest that her memory was being conflated with the primal vegetation goddess who gives her name (έλέυη) to reeds or shoots and woven baskets in ancient Greece. Some would go so far as to say that she was nothing other than a nature goddess herself. See Clader (1976), 56–68. See also Appendix 4.
CHAPTER EIGHT
Tender-eyed Girls
1 The Myth of Sisyphus and Other Essays (2000). Trans. J. O’Brien.
2 See Hallager and McGeorge (1992), especially 43.
3 On girls’ maturation rites, such as the arkteia, where young girls, who had not yet reached the age of menarche, served Artemis as ‘bears’ in her sanctuaries at Brauron and Mounichia, see C. Sourvinou-Inwood (1988) Studies in Girls’ Transitions: aspects of the arkteia and age representation in Attic iconography. Athens: Kardamitsa.
4 See, for instance, NMA 3180.
5 See Rehak (2005) for a good summary and for a discussion of the Thera frescoes. I am very grateful to John Younger for allowing me to see an advance copy of this work.
6 The similarity of dress, adornment and ritual between Theran and Mycenaean society allows for close comparison of the two.
7 After investigations in the 1930s and tentative digging in the 1960s led by Spyridon Marinatos.
8 Because a monkey and a griffin are close by, this goddess could be a Mistress of the Animals, a potnia theron. A deity with particular responsibility for nature.
9 See Rehak (2005).
10 The ‘Citadel House mould’ from Mycenae shows that moon-shaped jewellery was also made at Mycenae.
11 For a good summary of all frescoes excavated, see Marinatos (1984).
12 Morgan (1988), 31.
13 For further discussion see Goodison and Morris (1998), 125.
14 Pliny, Natural History 21.17.31–2.
15 Ellen Davis has identified six different hairstyles at Thera, marking six stages of sexual development. See Davis (1986).
16 Here, too, above a doorway there is a religious symbol which can signify fecundity, the ‘horns of consecration’ – bull’s horns which drip with blood. The image almost certainly represents both a sacrifice on an altar and a bleeding woman. Bulls had been
symbols of fertility since the Palaeolithic era. A woman’s womb is an organ that would have become clearly visible during excarnation or any sword-attack: see D.O. Cameron (1981) Symbols of Birth and of Death in the Neolithic Era (London: Kenyon-Deane), 4–5. A womb bears a marked resemblance to a bull’s head – particularly to the head of the breed of bull common in pre-history, the auroch, a massive beast standing up to 2m at the shoulder with long, slim horns measuring about 30 cm and a footprint the size of a man’s head. The bleeding horns speak of female fecundity. The frescoes could well be a pictorial representation of activities which actually took place in the room – rites of passage such as initiation rites.
17 In the area of the ‘lustral basin’ situated below the saffron-gatherers’ fresco.
18 On the ground floor of Xeste 3, Room 3. North Wall.
19 By the archaic and classical period one finds the hair of the statues of particular goddesses decorated with yellow or golden paint. The 6th-century BC towering ‘Berlin Goddess’, for example, in the Pergamon Museum, has her thick curls tinted yellow, and Praxiteles’ famous sculpture of a naked Aphrodite was thought to have gilded locks. Both these goddesses were honoured for their pronounced eroticism. This could be the remnants of a pre-historic association of blondeness with ‘special (sexual) powers’.
20 It is estimated that 250,000 crocus flowers are needed to produce 1 pound (0.45 kg) of saffron: see the Cambridge World History of Food, Vol. 2, eds. K.F. Kiple and K.C. Ornelas (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2000), 1846. There are ideograms representing saffron on the Np series of Linear B tablets from Knossos on Crete: see Ventris and Chadwick (1973), 51.
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