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Leto and Niobe were truly dear companions.
--Sappho (fr. 142 Lobel-Page = Campbell)
[¶4.] When we turn our attention to relations between heroines and female divinities, we find reciprocity and exchange at the center once more. Whereas the interaction between Dionysos and his heroines involved the exchange of those very characteristics that most defined their differences--differences of gender and existential status--the interaction between heroines and goddesses emphasizes not differences but similarities. At the same time, while the relations of Dionysos with female figures are characterized by a relative absence of hostility and violence, the relations between heroines and goddesses are frequently marked by antagonism. In what follows, I suggest that these ambivalent relations are played out in myths and metaphors of doubling and exchange, as heroine and goddess compete with, and ultimately replicate, one another.
[¶5.] The focus of this discussion will be the goddess-heroine pair Artemis and Iphigeneia. Much has been written recently about this body of myth and its relation to Greek rituals of female initiation.1 I have covered some of the same territory here, but my goal is rather different. As with the Dionysiac heroines, I will have something to say about the importance of Iphigeneia to worshipers, but my main purpose is to elucidate the nature of heroines and their place in religious ideology. In tracing the resonances of heroine/goddess interactions in myth and cult, I hope to add to the picture that has taken shape in previous chapters.
[¶6.] Starting with Iphigeneia and Artemis, I will have recourse as well to the enigmatic figure of Helen, who seems to circle about these two, a restless third term, between goddess and heroine but with ties to both. For Helen, although most often associated with Aphrodite, at times dances in the chorus of Artemis and at others plays the double, the foil, even the mother of Iphigeneia. Before coming to grips with this material, however, it may be helpful to consider another myth that introduces in smaller compass many of the themes that we find repeated in the far more complex example of Iphigeneia and Artemis to which most of this chapter is devoted.
[¶8.] The myth of Niobe, as it is most often remembered, is a simple case of hybris. Incautious enough to boast of having more children than the goddess Leto, Niobe suffers immediate retribution. Leto's children, Apollo and Artemis, make short work of the children of Niobe, who becomes the emblem of inconsolable grief. What then are we to make of the Sappho fragment (142 L-P) telling us that Leto and Niobe were the best of friends? The mythic tradition surrounding Leto does little to clarify her relations with heroines, since it deals almost exclusively with the solitary vicissitudes of childbirth (most notably in the Homeric Hymn to Apollo). The myth of her struggles to bear Apollo and Artemis accords with her cultic significance for mortal women, as well as her genealogical connection with Artemis, another goddess associated with childbirth.2 There are, however, no direct parallels for Leto's rivalry with Niobe. As a relatively minor goddess, she is not explicitly associated with other heroines.
[¶9.] We might begin by considering the stress laid by the myth on the abundance of Niobe's children.3 This fecundity is a characteristic we might expect to find in a childbirth goddess. Instead we find that Leto's myth emphasizes the small number of her children and the difficulty with which she bears them, while Artemis has no children at all. We have discussed above the tendency in Greek myth to de-emphasize or even deny the maternity of goddesses.4 This may be accomplished by displacement (as in the birth of Athena or Erichthonios) or by splitting, as I400,1 propose to be the case with Niobe. The functions associated with a goddess of childbirth have been split off, so that they are no longer found in a single figure. Leto has the travails, while Niobe has the profusion of offspring.
[¶10.] Since Niobe in some sense usurps the function of Leto (speaking not historically, but synchronically), it makes sense that their relationship will be seen as a hostile one. At the same time, there is an affinity, if not an identity, and it is in this way that the fragment of Sappho might be read. As in so many other narratives of mortal/immortal interaction, destruction visited on the heroic figure by a divinity is frequently preceded by some kind of closeness, whether erotic or purely companionable. Now, we can reconstruct a hypothetical narrative in which Niobe is Leto's beloved companion who falls from grace because of hybris. Such a narrative could be compared to that of Orion, once the hunting companion of Artemis, who is destoyed by hybris. The poignancy of her fall would thus be heightened by contrast with the privileged position of closeness to the goddess that she once enjoyed.
[¶11.] The death of Niobe's children is not the end of the story, however. Pausanias reports, however sceptically, a Corinthian tradition that two of the children, Amyklas and Meliboia, survived by praying to Leto and afterward built her a temple.5 (Meliboia was so struck with fright that she never regained her normal color and was thenceforth known as Chloris, "the pale one.") In this temple, next to the cult-image of Leto, there is a statue of a maiden said to be Chloris. If we take this local tradition into account, we see that more is involved than simply mortal hybris and divine retribution. The conflict, which has been displaced onto the second generation, is there resolved. The children of Leto avenge the slight, while Niobe's children make restitution and in so doing, regain divine favor. The resolution, as is customary, takes the form of cult. Meliboia-Chloris, together with her brother, founds a temple of Leto and is herself honored there. The name Chloris, which can stand by itself as the name of a divinity, is suggestive. Could this be the trace of another myth of apotheosis accompanied by name change? The sources do not allow us to go further, as they will in the case of Iphigeneia, to whom we now turn in order to delve deeper into these contradictions of antagonism and identity.
[¶13.] When we turn to the relationship between Iphigeneia and Artemis, we find once again antagonism between mortals and gods, retribution visited on the second generation, and ultimately a resolution by means of cult. Here again, the emphasis is not so much on the exchange of characteristics as on the creation and reproduction of immortality and divinity.6
[¶14.] Artemis' interactions with heroines are hard to classify. Often at her side there is a mortal hunting companion who emulates the goddess in maintaining her chastity, until some fatal event, perhaps rape or seduction by a god, puts her at odds with her protector. These heroines suffer death, sometimes preceded by metamorphosis. For example, when her companion Kallisto is seduced by Zeus, Artemis transforms her into a bear, later to be shot by her own son. In this chapter, however, our focus is on Artemis' relations with Iphigeneia, a heroine who does not fit into this pattern. Although heroines associated with Artemis usually come to grief through inappropriate crossing of the boundary of virginity, this is not the story of Iphigeneia, who is portrayed as virginal and blameless in her fate. Iphigeneia, instead, remains blocked at the moment of transition, and instead of undergoing the changes by which women's lives are usually marked, becomes a stand-in for the goddess herself.
[¶15.] Iphigeneia presents a particularly rich opportunity for investigation, since she combines in herself many of the characteristic heroine roles. She is, as we have noted, a figure in epic, an illustrious dead person, the daughter of a hero, and a recipient of cultic honors. She is also a sacrificed bride, the object of a miraculous rescue with overtones of transformation, a priestess, and a cult-founder. In some versions of her story, she is also grandchild of Zeus (as daughter of Helen), the wife of a hero (Achilles), and ultimately one of those rare figures who transcend the mortal/immortal distinction: she is transformed into the goddess Hekate.
[¶16.] What special claim does Iphigeneia have on our attention? For the Greeks themselves she, or her predicament, was particularly interesting, as we see from the rich literary tradition about her from cyclic epic to the tragedians. As a prominent figure in one of the central cycles of Greek myth, the story of the house of Atreus, and by extention, the fall of Troy, she is the focal point of two surviving tragedies, and the ramifications of her fate resonate through many others. These powerful works cast their shadow over any attempt to study the myth of Iphigeneia. It is impossible to escape their influence, nor would one necessarily want to do so. It is, however, important to recognize their status as secondary elaborations of much older traditions that may, paradoxically, be more accessible to us through the much later reports of local lore and ritual practice.7 For this reason, as in the rest of this project, the reader will find greater reliance on Pausanias than on Euripides, who must nonetheless be given his due as one of the most brilliant interpreters this myth has ever known.8
[¶17.] In Chapter 3, we outlined the possibilities for relations between goddesses and heroines, noting that although these could be roughly arranged under the headings protégée, antagonist, or double, they were often sufficiently ambivalent and overlapping as to defy categorization. No other heroine illustrates this more clearly than Iphigeneia. Quite apart from historical questions about the "original" nature of the relationship between the two figures, which attempt to recover an "original" identity, the extant body of conflicting variants allows us to see Iphigeneia as ritual antagonist or victim of Artemis, as her priestess or as her double.
[¶18.] Throughout this discussion the relationship of Artemis to Iphigeneia will at all times be our touchstone. It is difficult, however, to discuss Iphigeneia without taking into consideration another figure of equally ambiguous status, the divinized heroine Helen. These two figures, superficially so different, are in fact tied by a network of interconnections, both thematic and genealogical. As Iphigeneia is the protégée of Artemis, so Helen is the protégée of Aphrodite.9 In each case, it is clear that this divine protection is double-edged, bringing with it enormous risks for the mortal partner. For a woman, the moment of crisis lies in the successful transition from virginity to marriage (and ultimately to childbearing). This transition, represented ritually as a passage from the realm of Artemis to that of Hera, is not successfully managed by either of these two figures.10 Iphigeneia, the parthenos, remains caught at this point in life, achieving marriage only in death. Helen, on the other hand, fails in marrying too often.11 The faithful wife, under the sign of Hera, makes the transition only once, instead of circulating repeatedly, like Helen.
[¶20.] By the time of Aeschylus, Iphigeneia is known as the daughter of Agamemnon and Klytemnestra, sacrificed to appease Artemis so that the Greek fleet could sail to Troy. While we might consider this version the "vulgate," competing versions challenge the most basic elements of this myth, making Iphigeneia the daughter not of Klytemnestra but of her sister Helen, and claiming that she was not really sacrificed, but rescued and made immortal by Artemis. Some have argued that Iphigeneia is really the conflation of two separate figures, a Brauronian birth-goddess, and the daughter of Agamemnon.12 Even her name, as we shall see, is not stable.
[¶21.] In the Iliad Agamemnon has three daughters, none of whom is called Iphigeneia. They are listed by name--Chrysothemis, Laodike, and Iphianassa (9.145 = 287)--as they are offered to Achilles, who will angrily refuse them. The A scholiast comments that "he [sc., Homer] doesn't know of the sacrifice of Iphigeneia told by the later poets." The earliest reference to an (attempted) sacrifice of Agamemnon's daughter is in the Hesiodic Catalogue of Women (23a 17ff. M-W), where she is called Iphimede. The Kypria gives Agamemnon four daughters, including both Iphigeneia and Iphianassa, who appear side-by-side.13 Later, for example in Sophocles' Elektra, Laodike drops out, to be replaced by Elektra.14 Iphigeneia is already dead and there is no mention of Iphianassa.
[¶22.] Is the Homeric Iphianassa equivalent to our Iphigeneia? Such variations in names of female figures, in which only one element of the compound changes, are not uncommon, as was noted in Chapter 2. Here the important first element Iphi- (strength) is preserved, and the two names are also metrically equivalent, although this is not enough to establish identity. Their equally aristocratic meanings carry a somewhat different emphasis, since the later form replaces "ruling" with "birth." Eustathius, in his commentary on Iliad 9.145, etymologizes the names of the three daughters, stressing their appropriateness to Agamemnon. The name Iphianassa has to do with kingly power, that is, ruling with strength (iphi anassein).15 Interestingly, the name Iphimede(ia) is synonomous with Iphianassa16 and in its longer form, it is also metrically equivalent to the other two. Since Iphimede and Iphigeneia are almost certainly the same person, it is tempting to argue for the equivalence of all three.
[¶23.] Turning to the form Iphigeneia, we find no agreement about either her name or her origin. The linguistic argument hinges on whether compounds ending in -genes can be transitive, or only intransitive, as Chantraine maintains.17 If one accepts his reasoning, the name cannot have the active meaning "she who brings forth children in strength," but only the passive "she who is born with force." Building on Chantraine, Calame argues that the name is in any case applicable to a childbirth goddess, since "the goddess who is born `with force' is also she who brings about robust births."18 Although using essentially the same etymology, Wilamowitz bases his derivation of the name, which he translates as "die Gewaltgeborene" (she who is born by/with force), on an alternative tradition in which Iphigeneia is ostensibly the offspring of the rape of Helen by Theseus.19 In this he follows an ancient tradition. Euphorion, writing in the third century B.C.E., also defines the name with reference to the force with which Theseus impregnated Helen.20
[¶24.] In this tradition, which we find in Pausanias (2.22.7) among others, Iphigeneia is actually the product of an early illicit union between Theseus and Helen. This is the outcome in some versions of Theseus' and Peirithoös' attempt to carry off Helen as a wife for Theseus. Although unsuccessful--they are stopped by the Dioskouroi--the attempt is not as disastrous as their other endeavor, to get Persephone as a wife for the hapless Peirithoös. In most accounts Helen, who is still quite small, is rescued before anything untoward can happen. In Plutarch, for example, the emphasis on the heroine's immaturity acts as a guarantee that she returns inviolate to her father's house, to be given in lawful marriage when she is older.21
[¶25.] As we shall see below, with the marriage of Iphigeneia and Achilles, it is enough in myth to state that something did not happen, for an alternate version to arise in which it did. Thus the chastity of Penelope gives rise to another version in which she is the lover of all the suitors (hence the birth of the god Pan). In the same way, the child Helen is raped and becomes the mother of Iphigeneia, who is then adopted by Klytemnestra, already a married woman. Pausanias (2.22.6-7) cites Euphorion of Chalcis, Alexandros of Pleuron, and Stesichorus of Himera as authorities for this parentage of Iphigeneia. Keeping in mind the sometime divinity of Helen, this double parentage would give Iphigeneia both a mortal and a divine mother. This would provide a rare parallel to the pattern of double paternity common for heroes, according to which the divine parent withdraws, leaving the child to be raised by the mortal counterpart.22
[¶26.] The tradition of the sacrifice first appears in a fragment of Hesiod (23a 24-26 M-W), in which Agamemnon's daughter, here called Iphimede, is to be sacrificed on the altar of Artemis.23 But no sacrifice actually occurs, and instead Iphimede is rescued by the goddess who has demanded her death:
Iphimede was sacrificed by the well-greaved Achaians
on the altar of hunt-crying Artemis of the golden bow,
on the day when they sailed their ships to Troy
to avenge the theft of beautiful-ankled Argive Helen,
But it was a phantom, for the arrow-pouring deer-slayer
easily rescued her, anointing her with lovely ambrosia
from head to foot, so that her flesh would not perish,
and made her immortal and unaging for all time.
Now the tribes of men on the earth call her
Artemis Einodia, servant of the glorious arrow-pourer.
(Catalogue of Women 23a 17-26 M-W)24
[¶29.] Here we confront the curious fact that the earliest surviving account of the sacrifice is also the earliest account of its not actually having taken place.25 In other words our earliest testimony is apparently a revisionist account. We must consider the possibility that the version in which the sacrifice does not take place is the original version, the arguments of Solmsen notwithstanding.26 By this account the theme of virgin sacrifice becomes the theme of sacrifice averted.
[¶30.] The tradition of the sacrifice of Iphigeneia or Iphimede is echoed by later authors. Pausanias, as we might expect, gives credit to Hesiod: "I know that Hesiod wrote in the Catalogue of Women that Iphigeneia did not die, but by the will of Artemis, was Hekate."27 He is no doubt quoting from memory the lines cited above. For him, the identifications of Iphimede with Iphigeneia and Einodia with Hekate are self-evident. The same is true for Philodemus (Peri Euseb. 24g), who states that "Stesichorus in his Oresteia, following Hesiod, said that Iphigeneia the daughter of Agamemnon was now called Hekate. . . ." This is very like unanimity, although we cannot know whether the transitions from Iphimede to Iphigeneia and from Einodia to Hekate were made first by Stesichorus or not.
[¶31.] None of this allows us to decide whether Iphigeneia and Iphianassa represent the same figure, but even if they do, neither real sacrifice nor the sacrifice of an eidolon or animal substitute can be easily harmonized with the Homeric tradition. Not only does the sacrifice not appear in the Iliad, there is no hint of it in the Odyssey, where it might have found a place in one of the many retellings of the death of Agamemnon.28 It is of course possible that the sacrifice of Iphigeneia was known to the poet of the Iliad, but excluded, along with many other details felt to be out of keeping with the heroic conception of the poem.29
[¶32.] This survey of the traditions surrounding the figure of Iphigeneia does not allow a resolution of the contradictions of her myths, but neither does it present a more fragmented picture than those of the other heroic figures we have discussed previously. In what follows we assume the essential unity of the mythic figure, while examining the variations in her myth, and their implications for the cults of Artemis. We discuss in particular the myths of rescue and ritual substitution, Iphigeneia's chthonic aspect, and her role as cult-founder.
[¶34.] The many versions of the sacrifice and rescue of Iphigeneia introduce a multitude of themes, some of them mutually exclusive. The rescue itself, which is somewhat overdetermined, has three main elements, not all of which appear in every account. Artemis saves Iphigeneia by 1) replacing her with an eidolon, 2) replacing her with an animal, and 3) transporting her out of harm's way, to the very edge of the known world. The multiplicity of versions is captured in a fourth-century vase-painting in which the young girl being led to the altar has the head of a deer superimposed on her own (figure 7).30 Moreover, Iphigeneia's new life includes, in different versions, priesthood, death, burial in Artemis' sanctuary, posthumous marriage, apotheosis, the assumption of Artemis' role in childbirth, and some connection with the Underworld.
[¶37.] These mythic sequels to Iphigeneia's rescue connect her, directly or indirectly, with three of the most important transitions in the lives of women--marriage, childbirth, and death. Meanwhile, the rescue itself has affinities with Attic initiation rituals and can be shown to share elements with the structure of rites of passage, as mapped out by van Gennep.31 Here Iphigeneia seconds the role of Artemis, the goddess who helps women through transitions by which she is herself untouched.32 As we shall see, Iphigeneia's myth and cult associate her with each of these transitions in a different way, and with all of them in ways that differ from both the directness of mortal human experience and the remote involvement of the goddess.
[¶38.] Most versions of the rescue by Artemis include substitution by an animal, a more appropriate sacrificial victim according to normal Greek protocol. The exact species of the animal seems to depend on local tradition. In what we have called the vulgate, the animal is a deer: "But Artemis snatched her up and took her to the Taurians and made her immortal, placing a deer on the altar instead of the girl."33 According to the Etymologicum Magnum (s.v. Tauropolon), "They say that when the Greeks wanted to sacrifice Iphigeneia at Aulis, Artemis substituted a deer, but Phanodemos says a bear, and Nicander a bull." As we shall see, these variants are not fortuitous but are directly connected with local variations in the Attic cults of Artemis.
[¶39.] The bull (tauros) mentioned by Nicander is associated with the Tauric Artemis, to whom Iphigeneia, after her rescue, sacrificed shipwrecked strangers.34 At Halai Araphenides, where Orestes founded a cult of Artemis Tauropolis, the "bloodthirsty" goddess preserves at least a symbolic need for human blood. Here the custom is that a sword is run lightly over a man's neck until a drop of blood falls, in commemoration of the human sacrifice once carried out by Iphigeneia (Euripides I.T. 1456-61).35
[¶40.] At Brauron, where Iphigeneia established a cult of Artemis, the goddess is milder, presiding over the arkteia, an initiation ritual for young Attic girls. Here, a version of the sacrifice is told in which Iphigeneia is substituted by a bear (arktos). According to the Brauronian foundation myth, the arkteia, "playing the bear," is in itself a kind of ritual substitution, in this case of young girl for animal, in expiation of the death of a favorite bear.36 This initiatory service to the goddess is mentioned in the Lysistrata and commemorated in vase-paintings of girls engaged in races, and sculptures of children holding small animals.37 These artifacts themselves point to a softer side of the goddess's demeanor. Meanwhile, to Iphigeneia's lot falls the clothing of women who died in childbirth (Eur. I.T. 1464-67).38
[¶41.] Iphigeneia's connection to these traditions is somewhat oblique.39 It is true that she and her brother are consistently associated with the foundations of these cults. Both Brauron and Halai figure in the later part of the rescue myth, which we might call the "sacral" part. Moreover, the foundation myths for both Brauron and Halai insist on the derivation of the Attic cults from the Tauric one, tracing their origin to Iphigeneia and her brother returning to Greece with the image of the Tauric Artemis. Orestes establishes a cult at Halai, and she, one at Brauron, where she serves as priestess. There she is buried and receives cultic honors at her heroön.40 Nonetheless, as much as she might be an appropriate emblem of failure to leave behind the status of parthenos, she is nowhere explicitly connected with the arkteia. What we know of the role of the heroine at Brauron connects her with childbirth, but not with the presumably prepubescent bears.
[¶42.] What unites these myths is the theme of ritual substitution, although while the Iphigeneia myths emphasize that an animal is substituted for the girl, the foundation myths of Brauron and its cognate cult at Mounichia threaten to make the girl stand in for the animal. At Brauron the killing of an animal sacred to Artemis (bear) is followed by a plague or famine. The expiation demanded is the sacrifice of a young girl (sister of the killers), which is then replaced by the arkteia. At Mounichia, where things do not fit as nicely, the foundation myth tells again of the death of a bear, ensuing calamity, and the demand for the sacrifice of a daughter. The expiation, however, takes the form of a sham sacrifice, in which a man called Embaros slaughters a goat dressed to resemble his daughter. This disguised sacrifice is accepted, he is given a hereditary priesthood, and an institution similar to the arkteia is established.41
[¶43.] In each case an animal sacred to Artemis is killed and a human sacrifice is demanded, only to be ultimately replaced by the killing of another animal. This seems to be an inversion of the myth of the sacrifice at Aulis where, at least in some versions, the maiden is sacrificed as if she were an animal. The myth of the sacrifice at Aulis can, however, be made to fit the paradigm of local Attic versions. For this we must go back to a different version of Agamemnon's hybris. We may recall that in the "vulgate" he boasts, as he kills a deer, of being a better hunter than Artemis.42 The pattern emerges more clearly if we consider the version in which Agamemnon compounds his offense by killing a deer in a grove sacred to Artemis (Soph. El. 566ff.).43 The punishment is aploia, the inability of the fleet to sail to Troy, whether because of a storm or a calm. The expiation demanded is the sacrifice of a daughter. Agamemnon, unlike Embaros (who becomes a byword for cleverness), takes this literally, actually putting his daughter on the altar. The goddess, however, no more literal-minded than at Brauron or Mounichia, herself places the deer on the altar and takes Iphigeneia as her priestess. This version of the sacrifice at Aulis brings it closely into line with both the Brauronian and the Mounichian traditions.44 Paul Clement has even suggested a parallel ritual that would correspond to the Aulis version of the myth, citing evidence for a similar kind of service to Artemis Pagasitis in Thessaly, known as the nebreia, or "playing the deer."45 If we compare the rescue myth of Iphigeneia with the narratives of Brauron and Mounichia, it becomes clear, as Brelich has emphasized, that the relevant motif is not virgin sacrifice, but virgin sacrifice averted.46
[¶44.] Nonetheless, ritual, if not actual, death is characteristic of the rites of passage as elucidated by van Gennep. Just as Iphigeneia's death is equivocal--in most versions she does not actually die--so death may here be interpreted as a metaphor for the abandonment of a social category, to be followed by symbolic rebirth into a new one. Van Gennep notes, describing the pattern of initiation, that in some cases the initiate is considered dead and later resurrected. We may note that two other elements of Iphigeneia's myth correspond to the schema. The rescue is accompanied by transportation to a remote place at the edge of the known world, the land of the Taurians, where Iphigeneia serves the goddess in a remote temple.47 As van Gennep remarks, frequently "the passage from one social position to another is identified with a territorial passage." Iphigeneia, unable to make the life-transitions of an ordinary mortal woman, nevertheless makes extraordinary transitions of space and time, being carried to the edges of the known world, and back again. The initiates in van Gennep's examples frequently mark their passage to adulthood by a separation and a period of segregation, during which they are considered dead, followed by acquisition of a new name under which they will be incorporated into adult society.48 As we have observed, in many versions of the myth, Iphigeneia is given a new name--Einodia, Hekate, or Orsilochia.
[¶45.] At this point we must take notice of a difficulty. While various features of Iphigeneia's mythic and cultic role encourage us to see her as being of marriageable age, such as the fictitious betrothal with Achilles and the association with childbirth, the bears of Brauron most probably are not. Their actual age is set by the Aristophanes passage (Lys. 643-45) as between seven and ten, although this is called into question by the scholiast, who speaks of the ritual as one required for all Attic girls before marriage.49 The discussion has also been hindered by a certain vagueness about rites of puberty versus rites preceding marriage.50 Compounding the difficulty is the fact the Iphigeneia seems to have been assimilated to the (apparently prepubescent) Attic girls who performed the arkteia.
[¶46.] Without becoming embroiled in these ultimately insoluble difficulties, I would point out that Iphigeneia is not the only figure whose age and social status are indeterminate. Calame notes that Helen is attended by a similar ambiguity, alternating between adolescence and adulthood.51 Helen, in her earlier adventures, is especially desirable as she is poised at the moment when she is already attractive but not yet old enough to be marriageable. In social terms Helen's ambiguity stems from her repeated unions, and therefore her repeated crossing of the boundary that is meant to be crossed only once. Iphigeneia the parthenos, on the other hand, remains eternally about to cross this boundary. I say more about Iphigeneia and marriage in the next section.
[¶48.] Some have wanted to see Iphigeneia as the personification of Artemis' cruel side. The suggestion has been made, for example, that while the heroine at Brauron received offerings of clothing of the dead, Artemis received those of the living.52 Indeed, the heroine's chthonic connections might suggest this, but the myths also present her as the bridge between bloody Tauric practice and the more acceptable Attic rituals. The truth is that Iphigeneia herself is ambiguous. As a young victim of sacrifice, she falls into the chthonic category of the angry dead.53 But as a rescued victim, she stands for the mitigation of human sacrifice and becomes just the figure needed to negotiate the transition from actual to symbolic sacrifice. The fearsome, chthonic side of Iphigeneia is not, however, so easily elided. We have yet to take account of the transformation of the heroine into the goddess Hekate, or one of her hypostases. In order to get the fullest picture of Iphigeneia's chthonic side, we must take what might seem at first an unlikely detour through the traditions of the marriage of Iphigeneia.
[¶49.] Most versions of the sacrifice of Iphigeneia include the detail that she is brought to Aulis on the pretext of marriage with Achilles. If this version was in circulation at the time of the composition of the Iliad, then it serves to heighten the tactlessness and brutality of Agamemnon's offer to marry one of his daughters to Achilles.54 There is no way to determine the antiquity of this detail, which already occurs in Stesichorus, but it could also be seen as a later ironic touch, especially given Achilles' words to the embassy in Iliad 9. The categorical refusal given by the hero would, over time, become the source of the persistent tradition of a marriage between the two in some sort of afterlife. As we have seen above with Theseus' abduction of Helen and the supposedly compromised chastity of Penelope, the mythic tradition tends over time to turn denials into affirmations.
[¶50.] The dead Achilles is a great consumer of brides, of whom Polyxene is only the best-known example.55 Iphigeneia's chthonic connections, discussed below, as well as the echo of an old ruse, make the union logical. On the other hand, a case can be made for the opposite view, that Agamemnon's lie is actually the rationalization of an old tradition of marriage between Iphigeneia and Achilles, which has also left its traces in Iliad 9.145ff.56 Furthermore, one could argue for an intrinsic connection of Iphigeneia with marriage, or rather with the failure to achieve it. For Iphigeneia remains at the threshold of a transition that is frequently equated symbolically with death.57 Euripides makes this equation explicit at line 369 of Iphigeneia among the Taurians, where he has Iphigeneia refer to her sacrifice as a marriage not to Achilles but to Hades. Interestingly enough, the poet puts the two names together in the line, in a way that seems calculated to be ambiguous: Haïdes Achilleus.58
[¶51.] Another piece of evidence comes to us from Antoninus Liberalis, in whose version the young girl is substituted by a tauros and whisked off to the land of the Taurians, where she becomes the priestess of Artemis Tauropolis. "At the appropriate time, she [Artemis] brought her to the White Isles, beside Achilles, and made her immortal, giving her the name Orsilochia."59 He then reports that she became Achilles' wife. It is important to note that when Iphigeneia is finally married to Achilles, it is a posthumous marriage. To be the bride of Achilles in the Isles of the Blessed is perhaps not so different from being the bride of Hades, a connection already made in the Euripides passage discussed above. Moreover, she may be compared to another posthumous bride of Achilles, Polyxene, whom further investigation reveals to be enmeshed in a network of chthonic connections.60
[¶52.] We know from Ammianus Marcellinus that Orsiloche is an epithet of "Diana" in the Tauric Chersonese. "For these peoples offer human victims to the gods and sacrifice strangers to Diana, whom they call Orsiloche, and affix the skulls of the slain to the walls of her temple, as a lasting memorial of their valorous deeds."61 Interestingly enough, Ammianus goes on to locate (apparently without much accuracy) the island of Leuke, "dedicated to Achilles," in the land of the Taurians (22.8.35). Despite the bloodthirsty aspect of this goddess brought out by Ammianus, her name suggests a connection with childbirth.
[¶53.] The Brauronian material discussed above has already established that in Attic cult, at least, Iphigeneia shares some of Artemis' power over childbirth. The text of Antoninus Liberalis adds to this picture in two ways. For one thing, it brings together, however loosely, the motifs of marriage and childbirth in the myth of Iphigeneia.62 As we have suggested, these two critical moments in women's lives, moments over which Artemis has some kind of jurisdiction, are significant for the myth and cult of Iphigeneia. Generally, she is a figure associated with the difficulties of making these transitions, neither of which she experiences personally in the "vulgate" tradition. Second, the account of Antoninus suggests that this role is in some way intrinsic to the Tauric Chersonnese. These accounts of a childbirth-goddess who demands human sacrifice may reflect an actual cult, however distorted the Greek view of it may have been.63 Whatever they knew or thought they knew about the Tauric goddess encouraged them to equate her with Artemis or her heroic double, Iphigeneia.
[¶54.] A similar story is told of Molpadia, to whose shrine at Kastabos on the Carian Chersonnese people come for incubation cures and help in pregnancy (Diod. 5.63.2).64 Molpadia, together with the other daughters of Staphylos and Chrysothemis, flees from the wrath of her father and throws herself over a cliff. Apollo, the lover of one of the sisters, rescues them, and Molpadia, on her arrival in Kastabos, is given the name Hemithea, half-goddess, and honored by the local inhabitants.65 The myth of Hemithea, which we know only from rather late texts, may have been contaminated in some way by that of Tauric Iphigeneia.66
[¶55.] The various accounts about Iphigeneia lead nevertheless to very much the same conclusion: whether she becomes Einodia or Hekate or Orsilochia, Iphigeneia becomes an aspect of Artemis.67 In this way the goddess replicates herself. The connection with childbirth is also part of Iphigeneia's function at Brauron, where the offerings she receives clearly show her in full possession of this role. That Artemis, although herself a virgin goddess, has jurisdiction over childbirth is easily explained by her role as the potnia theron, the mistress of the animals. Her concern is for the young of all species. At the same time she has power over women undergoing childbirth, and it is power not only to help, but to harm.
[¶56.] Here the work of Helen King may help to conceptualize the role played by Artemis, and the way in which this role is recreated by Iphigeneia. She writes that "she [Artemis] is the goddess of transition, and assists other women to cross the boundaries which she rejects. Thus, as Lochia and Eileithyia, she assists in childbirth, although she has not given birth; as Lysizonos she `releases the girdle' both in defloration and in labour."68 Clearly Iphigeneia, herself having been prevented from crossing these twin boundaries, permanently arrested at the threshold of the first, takes on the role of Artemis.
[¶57.] Not only does Iphigeneia take on the role of Artemis, but in some sense she becomes Artemis. A consistent feature of the rescue of Iphigeneia is her apotheosis. As early as the Hesiod fragment (23a 24-26 M-W), we are told that she is made immortal (athanaton kai ageraon emata panta) and takes on the name of Artemis Einodia.69 Later authors, as we have seen, call her Hekate or Orsilochia. I have argued above, in my discussion of Dionysiac heroines in Chapter 4, for the importance of the change of name as a feature of apotheosis, and it seems at least as strongly marked in the Iphigeneia material. To it we may compare the transformation of Semele into Thyone and of Ino into Leukothea. What is unusual is that Iphigeneia's divine name is not standardized but appears in so much variation, and that despite the differences, each name shows her to be an aspect of the goddess with whom she is so closely allied. For now, I wish to concentrate on the transformation to Hekate, since this connection can be traced as far back as the alternate tradition of Iphigeneia's birth to Helen.
[¶58.] According to Pausanias, Helen dedicated a temple to Eileithyia, on the spot where Iphigeneia was born. He follows this with the tantalizing information that beyond or next to the temple of Eileithyia was the temple of Hekate (2.22.7). Without placing too much weight on their proximity alone, one could postulate some symbolic connection between the two temples. Wilamowitz went so far as to speculate that the second temple was actually dedicated to Iphigeneia-Hekate.70 In support of this, we must consider that temples of Hekate are rather rare, particularly on the Greek mainland.71 This is the only one mentioned in Pausanias, who lists in addition only one altar and one statue dedicated to this goddess. Iphigeneia's association in her Black Sea exile with not only Hekate or Einodia, but also with Orsilochia encourages us to look for further ties between Hekate and Eileithyia. Artemis herself is at times known as "Locheia" or "Eulocheia." Although we cannot assume identity of these three figures, they are closely related, at times sharing epithets.72
[¶59.] Let us digress for a moment to explore other implications of the Hekate connection, which will ultimately bring us back to Polyxene and to Iphigeneia's posthumous marriage. A fragment of Callimachus tells of the Ephesian woman who, because she refused hospitality (xenia) to the goddess Artemis, was transformed into a dog. Although she was turned back into human form, she hanged herself in shame. The goddess once more took pity on her and, placing her own adornment around the woman, called her Hekate.73 This strange story does call to mind the rescue of Iphigeneia by Artemis, with its accompanying change of name. In that case, as we have seen, the earliest text gives the name as Einodia, which all later sources equate with Hekate.
[¶60.] The dog was sacred to Hekate, and various ancient testimonia point to the custom of sacrificing a black puppy to the underworld goddess.74 Euripides' Hekabe ends with a prophecy by Polymnestor, on whom the protagonist has just taken revenge for the murder of her son, that she will be transformed into a dog (1265). This transformation will be recorded for future generations in the name given her tomb, the Kynos Sema, or "Tomb of the Dog" (1273). That Hekabe and Hekate were sometimes associated with one another in antiquity may be in part due to the similarity of the names.75 The myth of the Ephesian woman, however, suggests another connection. Hekabe's transformation came about as a result of the revenge she exacted for a serious violation of xenia, the murder of her son Polydoros, who had been sent to apparent safety at the house of Polymnestor.76
[¶61.] Finally, we should take into consideration another figure of similar name, Hekale, the woman who provides hospitality to Theseus, and whom he honors with heroic cult after her death, naming a deme of Athens and a cult of Zeus after her. Hekale is honored for her philoxenia, and once again the chthonic overtones are heightened by a reference in the same text to Persephone, wife of Hades, euphemistically called "the wife of hospitable (polyxeinoio) Klymenos."77 Among the honors paid her was the institution of Deipna Hekaleia, Hekale's suppers. This is suspiciously reminiscent of the deipna for Hekate mentioned in Aristophanes--suppers set up at the crossroads for the goddess.78
[¶62.] What is the common thread to tie these disparate figures together? If we recall that Iphigeneia among the Taurians must sacrifice any xenoi (here meaning "foreigners") who come her way, and that she is equated with Einodia or Hekate, a pattern emerges.79 Clearly, Hekate, Hekabe, and Hekale are in some way connected, as figures associated with201,1 the enforcement of xenia, the correct behavior of hosts and guests. How do we account for the apparently "negative" xenia practiced by Iphigeneia (Hekate)? It may help in this connection to consider that Hekate as a chthonic goddess is also a "welcomer" of the dead, like Hades, who is known as the "All-receiver" or "Welcomer."80 When we take into account the names of Hekabe's children, Polyxene (Many-guests) and Polydoros (Many-gifts), one of whom is sacrificed to be the bride of Achilles and the other of whom has been murdered, provoking Hekabe's gruesome revenge, her chthonic connection seems even stronger. Neither of these names would be out of place as an epithet for an underworld goddess like Hekate. "Polyxene" would point to her welcoming of the dead, while "Polydora" would suggest the gifts of prosperity that chthonic deities provide to the living.
[¶63.] In this complex of associations, Iphigeneia is important not only as an aspect of Hekate, but as an analogue to Polyxene. The mirrored fates of these two figures serve as brackets to the Trojan War, in that the sacrifice of Iphigeneia allows the hostilities to go forward, while the sacrifice of Polyxene appeases the spirit of Achilles and allows the hostilities to end.81 The similarity goes even further, since Polyxene is, like Iphigeneia, a posthumous wife of Achilles. In the myth of Polyxene, the equation "marriage to Achilles = sacrifice," which was only implicit in the myth of Iphigeneia, is made explicit.
[¶64.] As Hekate or Einodia, Iphigeneia is the infernal double of Artemis, while as the bride of Achilles--or Hades--she becomes the double of the daughter of the Hekabe-Hekate figure. So far, we may be working with a series of folk etymologies that create connections based primarily on sound associations. There are, however, several other elements that may be pieces of the same puzzle. A passage in Pausanias (3.19.9-10) recounts Helen's death by hanging, at the hands of her supposed friend Polyxo, and in the section that follows, Helen's marriage to Achilles on the White Island (Leuke), which was sacred to him, and her anger against Stesichorus.82 This Polyxo has a similarly chthonic name, which also reminds us of another bride of Achilles. No explicit connection is made, but the proximity of the two passages calls to mind the myth of Polyxene.83
[¶65.] What does it mean for a mortal heroine to assume the identity of a presumably preexisting goddess? Pausanias (1.43.1) uses the word einai, "to be," instead of a verb of becoming, as we might expect. These confusions cannot be resolved in myth. Here we are in the synchronic world of cult, in which such identifications are not required to fit into any linear narrative, and the identity of two divinities may easily overlap.
[¶66.] This identity, or at least a certain amount of confusion, is reflected in Pausanias' musings about the relationship between Artemis and Iphigeneia. At Hermione the goddess herself is known as Artemis Iphigeneia (2.35.1). But at Aigeira in Achaia, Pausanias suggests that Iphigeneia was the original goddess: "There is a temple of Artemis, with an image in the modern style of workmanship. The priestess is a maiden, who holds the office until she reaches the age to marry. There stands here too an ancient image, which the folk of Aigeira say is Iphigeneia the daughter of Agamemnon. If they are correct, it is plain that the temple must have been built originally for Iphigeneia."84 The maiden priestess is also an interesting detail with many resonances in the Iphigeneia material.
[¶67.] We have seen how thoroughly Iphigeneia is enmeshed in a network of chthonic associations. Given this, what do we make of the myths of her marriage? And what is the connection with childbirth? For it should be obvious that the generally self-evident connection between the two is problematized in the myths of Iphigeneia. Marriage in Greek society, as in most others, is assumed to include the bearing of children. (Hence the word for "bride," numphe, is traditionally extended to a woman who has not yet born a son.) Nonetheless, they are not the same, and Iphigeneia's myth emphasizes that fact. Just as the sacrifice at Aulis threatens real death rather than ritual death for the young girl or woman on the threshold of this transition, the cults of the Chersonnese, with their bloodily ambiguous goddess, as well as the cleaned-up Attic version, serve to remind us that natural events like childbirth are dangerous, and that one needs the aid of a powerful and not necessarily gentle deity to help one along. In making these remarks, I do not mean to suggest that Iphigeneia alone stands for these darker outcomes, in counterdistinction to Artemis, but that she, as a heroine, and therefore closer to death and to human events, has a special role to play in the cults of Artemis.
[¶68.] Artemis' connection with transitions in women's lives has been discussed above. Here I would suggest that Iphigeneia functions as a kind of halfway figure, much as the Dionysiac heroines discussed in Chapter 4. She experiences marriage only posthumously (and only in some versions), and childbirth she does not experience at all. Death, that most remote of experiences for a divinity, is hers only in the versions that do not allow her rescue and apotheosis, but virtually all these versions associate her with death for mortals. (It is perhaps because of its potential for bringing death to woman that she is associated with childbirth at all.) Nonetheless, she comes much closer to all of these intrinsically human experiences of marriage, childbirth, and death than a virgin goddess ever could. Artemis is the far-shooter, whose arrows bring death to women, but from a distance.85 Unlike Dionysos, she has no hint of mortality about her. While his transcendence of mortality forms an important part of his myth, Artemis is never subject to death but is only a dealer of death to others. That aspect is instead split off and projected onto her double Iphigeneia, who attracts to herself all the chthonic elements also associated with Artemis' other alter ego, Hekate. At the same time Iphigeneia herself transcends death in apotheosized form, whatever name she assumes. Dionysos and his heroines are of different sexes, but their myths do everything possible to mitigate this as well as the other major difference between them. Artemis and her heroine are of the same sex, which serves to throw into higher relief the difference in their relations to mortality.
[¶70.] The rescue of Iphigeneia, whether or not it represents the "original" form of the myth, requires a certain suspension, if not of belief, then at least of the narrative. It depends for its dramatic value on the audience's holding a set of "false beliefs" which can then be corrected. These beliefs are as follows: 1) Agamemnon sacrificed his daughter, 2) Iphigeneia was sacrificed to Artemis, and 3) Iphigeneia died on the altar at Aulis. To each of these beliefs, the myth provides an answer: 1) ritual substitution, 2) the eidolon, and 3) apotheosis. It might perhaps seem to us, having read the Oresteia, not to mention the Poetics, that these "prior" beliefs make a better story. From a ritual standpoint, however, the "revisions" are infinitely more satisfying, because of what they tell us about the contract between mortals and immortals. We have already discussed the first of these, ritual substitution, above in Chapter 3. In this section, we turn to the eidolon and to apotheosis. As we shall see, these two elements bring together Iphigeneia with that other deeply ambiguous figure, Helen.
[¶71.] The eidolon of Iphigeneia's rescue (Hes. frg. 23a M-W) seems to be the signpost of revisionist mythmaking, and a highly self-conscious one at that.86 Let us consider several similar occurrences of the word in archaic poetry. In Odyssey 11, Odysseus sees Herakles in the Underworld, but it is really only his eidolon, because the actual Herakles had gone to Olympos:
And after him I saw the powerful Herakles,
or rather, his phantom; he himself among the immortal gods
enjoys the feast and has as his wife lovely-ankled Hebe,
child of great Zeus and golden-sandled Hera.
(Odyssey 11.601-4)
[¶74.] Critics have long pointed to the clumsiness with which this "crude" interpolation attempts to reconcile two conflicting versions of Herakles' fate, one mortal-heroic, and the other divine.87 No matter how transparent the attempt, there is something significant in the choice of manoeuvre.
[¶75.] No discussion of the eidolon as a narrative device in myth is complete without a consideration of Helen's eidolon and the Palinode of Stesichorus.88 Here we are in the unusual situation of having not only a fragment of the poem, but also a legend about how it came to be composed. Stesichorus' poem about the Trojan War aroused the anger of Helen, who blinded him for telling lies about her behavior. As Pausanias (3.19.13) tells us, Leonymos of Kroton sailed to the island of Leuke, and there he saw heroes of the Trojan War, as well as Helen, who ordered him to sail to Himera and tell Stesichorus that his blindness was caused by her anger. Consequently he wrote the palinode and regained his sight. The three lines we have make no mention of an eidolon, but they do make the point, with anaphora, that Helen never went to Troy:
It is not true, that story--
you did not go in the well-benched ships
you did not reach the towers of Troy . . .
(192 PMG = Plato Phaedrus 243a)
[¶78.] We know about the eidolon from Plato, who refers in the Republic (9.586c) to "the phantom of Helen which Stesichorus says was fought over by those in Troy, in ignorance of the truth."89 Here, there is no question about the revisionist nature of the poet's enterprise, and the whole apparatus of surrounding lore shows that this is how the poem was read in antiquity. (It is not necessary to believe in the literal truth of the poet's blindness to acknowledge the point.) Stesichorus is in a tight spot and needs a way to reconcile two irreconcilable versions of Helen's myth. Here again the eidolon comes in handy, to pretty up an otherwise nasty story.90 As Gregory Nagy has pointed out, Stesichorus, in telling his version of the story of Helen, offers a challenge to Homeric poetics.91
[¶79.] The myth of the woman with a phantom double is ancient and has Vedic parallels.92 At the same time, scholars have noticed Vedic parallels for the figure of Helen.93 The only one to connect the eidolon with Vedic precedents is Skutsch, who is unfortunately led to conclude thereby that there were two Helens.94 Here it seems more fruitful, rather than looking for a one-to-one correspondence between the various figures, to see their traits as recurring in different combinations in the Greek material. Thus the eidolon, even if not specifically associated with a Vedic "equivalent" of Helen, was apparently circulating in the same mythic milieu. If the eidolon were inherited along with the figure of Helen, then the motif should have been known in some form before Stesichorus wrote his Palinode. It, like the sacrifice of Iphigeneia, may well have had pre-Homeric currency without being incorporated into the epic.95 Perhaps the Homeric poems or poets knew a great deal more than they were willing to tell.96
[¶80.] Another fragment of Stesichorus (193 PMG = Campbell) refers to two palinodes, in one of which, "he blames Homer for saying that Helen went to Troy, instead of her eidolon, and in the other, he blames Hesiod." Given this, it comes as something of a surprise to read ancient testimony to the effect that "Hesiod was the first to tell of Helen's phantom."97 The editors of the Hesiodic corpus treat this fragment with suspicion and remark that it would make more sense to attribute the distinction to Stesichorus. Whereas Solmsen sees the occurrence of the eidolon motif in the Iphigeneia fragment and in the Nekyia as bolstering the claim of this "dubious" fragment, I submit that the emphasis of doubt should fall not on the word Hesiodos or eidolon but on Helenes.98 In other words, "Hesiod was the first to tell of Iphigeneia's phantom." For if Hesiod was first with an eidolon story, it is far more likely to be the one we have about the sacrifice of Iphigeneia at Aulis (23 M-W). He may well have been the first to tell of an eidolon in the rescue of Iphigeneia (though perhaps not the first to tell of the rescue altogether), while the testimony about Stesichorus would make no sense if Hesiod had already told of Helen's eidolon. Moreover, the confusion could have been enhanced by the fact that Stesichorus in his Oresteia seems to have told of Iphigeneia's rescue.99 It seems that the two stories produced their own confusion even in antiquity.100
[¶81.] So Helen never went to Troy, Herakles is not really dead, but immortal, and Iphigeneia was not really sacrificed by her father. A common thread to all these myths, and one that has not received sufficient attention, is the theme of apotheosis.101 It is explicit in the Herakles passage in the Odyssey, as it is in the Iphimede passage from the Catalogue of Women, where immortality is part of the rescue effected by the goddess. The divinity of Helen is not made explicit in connection with her eidolon but recurs in many versions of the myth and lurks beneath the surface of the surrounding myth of Stesichorus' composition of the palinode.102
[¶82.] At this point it may be helpful to summarize the common elements and points of contact between the myths of these two figures. To begin with, Helen may be the mother of Iphigeneia. (This could be a way of spelling out the necessary logical relation given their importance in starting and continuing the Trojan War.) Iphigeneia the virgin is made to die for Helen the adulterous wife. If Helen is the casus belli, without Iphigeneia the Trojan War could not have taken place.103 There is also a tradition that Helen was to be sacrificed in Sparta to avert a plague, but at the last minute an eagle picked up the knife and dropped it on a heifer, thus putting an end to maiden sacrifices.104 For both Iphigeneia and Helen, there is an apparent revision of the well-known version of the myth in which an eidolon is used to resolve a contradiction. They are each rescued by being transported east, far beyond the boundaries of the Greek world, and they are again rescued in the other direction. These similarities were not lost on Euripides, and indeed he seems to have emphasized them. It is impossible to say how much was his own invention, but it is likely that when writing the Iphigeneia among the Taurians, presumably soon after the success of the Helen, he imitated the rescue plot of the earlier play, making each heroine carry away a cult image in her flight.105 Then, each of them is said to be the bride of Achilles in the afterlife. Finally, both Helen and Iphigeneia belong to that small category of heroines who become goddesses.
[¶84.] As we have seen, the eidolon in the myths of Helen and Iphigeneia can be seen as the sign of apotheosis, a mark of special favor conferred on a mortal by a god. As I have argued throughout, however, the relationship of mortal and immortal is not one-sided, but reciprocal. Reciprocity of a mortal to a god may take the form of cult-foundation. It is the sign of this reciprocity, the agalma (pl. agalmata), that I now wish to examine.106 In its narrow sense, the agalma is the image of the goddess with which a cult may be founded. It is in this sense that the concept has direct relevance to Iphigeneia. Taken in its broader sense, however, it has wide-ranging implications for the mythic role of women and brings us back to Helen.
[¶85.] Women may themselves be agalmata. In Aeschylus' Agamemnon Iphigeneia is the agalma of the house.107 The language of the Agamemnon also connects Helen very clearly to the world of agalmata as well as eidola.108 Agalmata may be gifts exchanged among mortals, but the word can also refer to gifts given to the gods, dedications. Women may themselves be the givers of these gifts to the gods. The word is doubly ambiguous, because it may mean any object dedicated to a god, but since dedications often take the form of a statue of the divinity being honored, agalma comes to mean "image" or "statue."109
[¶86.] In his essay "The Mythical Idea of Value in Greece," Louis Gernet discusses agalmata as the embodiment of "value," as precious objects that attract a kind of religious awe.110 He mentions in passing the importance of the role of woman as agent of transmission of a talisman or precious object."111 His comment about women as agents of transmission needs to be supplemented by anthropological accounts of the role of women as themselves objects of exchange.112 We have only to look briefly at the Iliad to see how pervasive this is.113 Lévi-Strauss's model of marriage based on an exchange of women among groups of men describes the system functioning smoothly. As long as marriage works, women are merely the objects of exchange. What is striking about Gernet's examples is how often they point to situations in which the ordinary relations of marriage have failed. He discusses the seduction of Atreus' wife by Thyestes and the bribing of Eriphyle, but most telling for us is a story about the tripod of the Seven Sages. This tripod, made by Hephaistos, was among the ktemata (goods, property) stolen by Paris from the house of Menelaus when he abducted Helen. She, according to Diogenes Laertius (I.32), threw it into the sea, for she said it would be a cause of strife (perimachetos). Although later the tripod would circulate peacefully from one sage to another until it had come full-circle, Helen sees in it a cause of strife. Like the tripod, she herself will be fought over, as her abduction will soon provoke the Trojan War, and like the tripod she herself will come full-circle, passed from hand to hand until she is returned to Menelaos. In the normal course of things, women do not circulate ad infinitum, but are exchanged once and remain fixed.114 It is only by circulating outside the marriage arrangement that they become agents of transmission of these highly charged objects. Not only in Diogenes Laertius' account, but also in the Iliad, Helen is equated with movable agalmata. Paris is repeatedly called upon to end the war by returning to Menelaos both Helen and the goods (ktemata) stolen along with her.115
[¶87.] Unlike Helen, the unfaithful wife who circulates repeatedly, Iphigeneia participates in a different dynamic of exchange. The sacrifice at Aulis, whether completed or not, becomes an exchange in which she is given up to get Helen back. For her the agalma is an object of worship transported to honor the gods, in a way that mirrors her own transportation away from and then back to Greece, where she will serve Artemis as priestess and cult-founder. As we have already noted, it is customary for female deities to be served by priestesses. For this there is historical as well as mythic evidence.116 Heroines are frequently named as the founders of cult. We have touched already on the mythic significance of the first person to complete a specific action, and the frequency with which these first actions are connected with heroic figures. Although women are severely limited in their public roles, we have some historical evidence for women as founders of cults. In myth, meanwhile, examples are plentiful. Transport of Artemis' agalma is hardly without precedent and needs to be placed in the larger context of cult-founding by heroines in general (see the Appendix to this chapter).117
[¶88.] The transport of a cult-image (xoanon, bretas, or agalma) occurs frequently to indicate the founding of a cult-site. A specific image may be associated with a heroine. In his Life of Theseus, Plutarch tells of several dedications made by the hero, of objects closely associated with Ariadne. After her death in childbirth on Cyprus, Theseus dedicates two statuettes in her honor (Thes. 20.6), and in the temple of Apollo at Delos, an image of Aphrodite that he had received from her (21.1). The abduction of a woman may be compensated with an image, as in the story told by Pausanias (3.16.3), in which the Dioskouroi take away a young girl, leaving pictures of themselves behind. In one version of the eidolon story of Helen, Paris is either tricked or bought off with a picture of her (schol. Aristid. Or. 1.128 = Stesich. 192 PMG).
[¶89.] The movement of a goddess from one place to another is frequently depicted as illicit or violent. The Palladion, perhaps the most famous example of a "kidnapped" goddess, was tied to the fate of Troy.118 Its theft by Odysseus and Diomedes is told in the Kypria, but Plutarch tells of efforts to obtain it by magic.119 These efforts may be equated with rape and seduction, but the equation is made even more explicit by the tradition of the rape of Kassandra at the altar of the Palladion. In this version the homology of stealing the cult-image and abducting the priestess becomes clear. This theme was apparently a popular one, since Pausanias lists no less than four depictions of it in his descriptions of works of art, and many surviving vases show the scene as well (see figure 8).120 The very origin of this image in a rivalry between a goddess and a heroine makes the myth even more appropriate to our purposes: Athena accidentally kills Pallas during play and in remorse makes the Palladion, an image of the dead heroine. This suggests an identity between the goddess and the heroine, of a kind that is by now familiar to us. Elsewhere, the image is directly assimilated to Athena, as we see from the tradition that the virgin image raises its eyes to avoid seeing the rape.121
[¶92.] The Samian festival called the Tonaea is said to originate in an attempted abduction of an image of Hera. The rape of the image is carried out in retaliation for the flight of Hera's priestess Admete and suggests an equation between carrying off the priestess and carrying off the goddess.122 Pausanias reports two episodes of divine images carried off, both of which are presented as seduction or rape of the priestess. The priestess Kleo is captured with an image (xoanon) of Thetis, for whom a cult is established by Leandris the wife of Anaxandros. Pausanias also relates sceptically the story that a Cretan priestess of Artemis was persuaded to run away with a Lakonian called Knageus, after whom the goddess was henceforth known.123 In this way the natural waywardness of women becomes associated with female divinities as well. The goddess becomes a movable piece of goods, and therefore somewhat unreliable.124 There is a great similarity between a young woman who can be transported by a goddess or carried off by a young man, and the goddess, who can for all intents and purposes be picked up and abducted. Even a virgin goddess like the one represented by the Palladion may be abducted. These myths point to a certain anxiety about the permanence of the goddess's stay among mortals, or her loyalty to a particular city. If the young woman who is carried off is a priestess with her agalma, then a double abduction is accomplished.
[¶93.] Let us now turn to the tradition that makes of Iphigeneia not the immortal double of Artemis but her mortal servant, her priestess and cult-founder. That a heroine may be the priestess of a goddess is sometimes used as a rationalizing explanation of burial in a temple.125 While Iphigeneia is said to be buried at Brauron, this seems far too limited an explanation of this dynamic interaction. Nonetheless, although the myths insist on the identity of Iphigeneia and Artemis, they also insist on Iphigeneia's role as a mortal servant of Artemis.
[¶94.] The role of Iphigeneia as cult-founder is marked by her transportation of an image of the goddess Artemis from the Black Sea to Attica, where its symbolic importance can be seen from the fact that several cult-sites claim to have this original cult-image. Pausanias devotes a great deal of space to evaluating the various claims, citing first (1.33.1ff.) the Brauronian claim to have the original Tauric image but then coyly remarking, "There is indeed an old wooden image of Artemis here, but who in my opinion have the one taken from the foreigners I will set forth in another place" (trans. Jones). That place turns out to be his discussion of the Limnaion in Sparta (3.16.7ff.), where he lists his reasons for supporting the Spartan over the Athenian claim.
[¶95.] This agalma traces a journey that is the reverse of Iphigeneia's rescue, accompanied by Iphigeneia herself, the agalma of Agamemnon's house. In the version of the Iphigeneia material known to us from Euripides' Iphigeneia among the Taurians, what is particularly striking is the double movement of the myth, as first Artemis transports Iphigeneia to the Taurians, and then Iphigeneia carries the goddess back to Greece. As Burnett has perceptively remarked, "Someone saw that the solution here was to rescue the goddess as well as her priestess."126 In her discussion of the myth, Burnett suggests that the arrival of Orestes, the rescue and return of Iphigeneia, and the capture of the statue of Artemis are all the invention of Euripides. This possibility is denied by Brelich, who argues that the number of cult-sites all over Attica that claim to have the original image shows instead that the myth is very old. For mythographers there would be no incentive to multiply the claims, but rather to simplify them.127
[¶96.] Iphigeneia, having returned from her Tauric exile, brings Artemis out of exile as well, and leaving behind the "barbaric" practice of human sacrifice, makes her "Greek" again. In the process she becomes identified with the goddess herself and acquires her own cult at Brauron, while in a sense also "creating" the goddess Artemis in her new home, the cult site at Brauron. In effect the goddess and the heroine "reproduce" one another through reciprocal actions of apotheosis and cult-founding. The eidolon and the agalma are the outward forms of these reciprocal actions. Among the many ways of resolving the ambiguity of the divine-mortal relation, or of imaging that relationship, this one might be called reflexive: the mortal-heroic figure is made immortal, while simultaneously recreating and reduplicating the divine figure by the establishment of a cult. For while Artemis is in some sense always Artemis, Artemis Tauropolis is not exactly the same as Artemis Brauronia.128
[¶97.] Perhaps the myths betray on some level the knowledge that the gods are indebted to their worshipers for their form and even their very existence. After all, that the gods are dependent on the honor and sacrifices of mortals, and that their raison d';afetre, if not their actual survival, depends on the continued existence of the human race, is implicit in the Homeric Hymn to Demeter:
She would have destroyed the whole mortal race
by cruel famine and stolen the glorious honor of gifts
and sacrifices from those having homes on Olympos,
if Zeus had not seen and pondered their plight in his heart.
(2.310-13129 )
[¶100.] What has often been interpreted as a usurpation of the cult of an older divinity by a newer one may in fact be instead a recognition of the existential fragility of the gods. Only the gods can confer immortality on mortals, but it is equally true that only mortals can confer cult on the gods. Apotheosis and cult-foundation break down the barriers between mortals and immortals, as goddesses turn heroines into goddesses, and heroines provide the worship without which divinity is worthless.
[¶102.] ABIA nurse of Herakles' son Glenos, sets up temple to Herakles (Paus. 4.30.1).
[¶103.] ADMETE (daughter of Eurystheus) has role in foundation of the Tonaia (Athen. 15.672).
[¶104.] AITHRA founds temple of Athena Apaturia and establishes tradition of dedication of girdles by young girls before marriage (Paus. 2.33.1).
[¶105.] AMAZONS dedicate an agalma of Ephesian Artemis (Paus. 4.31.8); found sanctuary of Ephesian Artemis (Paus. 7.2.7 citing Pindar).
[¶106.] ARIADNE gives "Daedalic" image of Aphrodite to Theseus, which he dedicates to Delian Apollo (Paus. 9.40.3; Plut. Thes. 21).
[¶107.] CHLORIS (with Amyklas) founds temple to Leto, according to the Argives (Paus. 2.21.10).
[¶108.] DANAIDS dedicate stone image of Aphrodite at Lerna (Paus. 2.37.2); bring the Thesmophoria with them to Egypt and teach it to the Pelasgian women (Hdt. 2.171); dedicate a temple to Athena on Rhodes (Hdt. 2.182).
[¶109.] DIOMEDE dedicates statue of Athena Anemotis (of the winds) (Paus. 4.35.8).
[¶110.] Two EGYPTIAN women captives found the mysteries in Libya and Greece (Hdt. 2.54).
[¶111.] ELEKTRA (daughter of Agamemnon) brings scepter of Zeus to Phocis (Paus. 9.40.12).
[¶112.] Women of ELIS found sanctuary of Athena Meter (Mother) (Paus. 5.3.2).
[¶113.] EURYDIKE (wife of Akrisios) founds temple of Argive Hera (Paus. 3.13.8).
[¶114.] HARMONIA dedicates three images (xoana) of Aphrodite under the aspects of Ourania, Pandemos, and Apostrophia (Paus. 9.16.3).
[¶115.] HELEN founds temple of Eileithyia (Paus. 2.22.6).
[¶116.] HIPPODAMEIA institutes the Heraea at Olympia (Paus. 5.16.4).
[¶117.] HYPERBOREAN MAIDENS found cults and have cults associated with them (Hdt. 4.33; 4.35.1).
[¶118.] HYPERMNESTRA dedicates a xoanon of Aphrodite Nikephoros at Argive Heraion (Paus. 2.19.6); founds temple of Artemis Peitho (Persuasion) (Paus. 2.21.1).
[¶119.] IPHIGENEIA brings xoanon of Tauric Artemis to Brauron (Paus. 1.33.1).
[¶120.] Priestess of KNAGIAN ARTEMIS brings image of the goddess from Crete, named for Knagios with whom the priestess ran away (Paus. 3.18.4).
[¶121.] LAODIKE dedicates robe to Athena Alea (Paus. 8.5.3); temple of Aphrodite called Paphian (Paus. 8.53.7).
[¶122.] LEANDRIS sets up a temple of Thetis in response to a vision, when Kleo, priestess of Thetis, is captured with image of the goddess (Paus. 3.14.4).
[¶123.] MEDEA dedicates a temple to Aphrodite in Corinth in thanks for curing her of her love for Jason, or for curing him of his love for her rival Thetis (Plut. De Herodot. malig. 871b).
[¶124.] MESSENE establishes Eleusinian mysteries at Andania (Paus. 4.1.5, 8-9), founds precinct of Zeus at Ithome with her husband (Paus. 4.3.9).
[¶125.] METANEIRA, together with her daughters, has a role in founding the cult of Demeter at Eleusis (Hom. Hymn to Demeter).
[¶126.] NIKAGORA (historical figure) founds cult of Asklepios in Sikyon (Paus. 2.10.3).
[¶127.] PELARGE revives rites of the Kabeiroi (Paus. 9.25.7-8).
[¶128.] PHAIDRA brings two Cretan xoana of Eileithyia to Athens (Paus. 1.18.5), temple of Aphrodite Kataskopia named for her spying on Hippolytos there (Paus. 2.32.3).
[¶129.] PHYSKOA first to honor Dionysos in Elis, receives chorus in her honor (Paus. 5.16.6-7).
[¶130.] PROKNE dedicates image of Athena at Daulis brought from Athens (Paus. 10.4.9-10).
FOOTNOTES:
1 Most notably P. Brulé, La Fille d'Athènes (Paris, 1987) and K. Dowden, Death and the Maiden (London, 1989). See my remarks in the Introduction. It will be clear that Dowden's more historical approach with its insistence on origins is very different from my take on the material. A. Brelich's Paides e Parthenoi (Rome, 1969) continues to be a valuable and provocative treatment of this material.
2 For the notion of Leto as hypostasis of Artemis, see Wernicke, "Artemis," RE 2.1 (1896) 1358-59. As W. Burkert, Greek Religion (Cambridge, Mass., 1985) 261 has observed, Leto also has a role in initiation. See for example Antoninus Liberalis 17, which provides an aition for the Cretan festival of the Ekdysia. For cults of Leto, see Wehrli, RE Suppl. 5 (1931) 555-65. An interesting possible echo of the Sappho fragment is found in Callimachus' Hymn 3.185, "which heroines have you taken as your companions?" (poias êrôidas eskhes etairas;).
3 The exact number varies. See Niobe in the Appendix.
4 See F. Zeitlin, "The Dynamics of Misogyny: Myth and Mythmaking in the Oresteia," in Women in the Ancient World, ed. Peradotto and Sullivan (Albany, 1984), discussed in Chapter 3.
5 Pausanias (2.21.10) denies that any of Niobe's children survived, quoting the verse of Homer (Iliad 24.609): tô d' ara kai doiô per eont apo pantas olessan, "Though they were only two, yet they destroyed them all."
6 Much of the massive bibliography on Iphigeneia deals with the myth as background to a treatment of one of the dramas, extant or not, dealing with this theme. Here I cite some of the most useful works: L. Séchan, "Le Sacrifice d'Iphigénie," REG 44 (1931) 368-426 reconstructs the plot of Sophocles' Iphigeneia and analyzes the character of the protagonist of Euripides' Iphigeneia at Aulis in light of Aristotle's remarks in the Poetics (1454a32); H. P. Foley, Ritual Irony: Poetry and Sacrifice in Euripides (Ithaca, 1985) offers a rich analysis of the plays, giving particular attention to the ritual elements of sacrifice. On Euripides' Iphigeneia among the Taurians, A. Burnett, Catastrophe Survived: Euripides' Plays of Mixed Reversal (Oxford, 1971) is provocative; H. Lloyd-Jones, "Artemis and Iphigeneia," JHS 103 (1983) 87-102 is extremely thorough in his examination of the myth, with the goal of interpreting Aeschylus' Agamemnon.
7 See Chapter 1 for a more extended discussion of this problem and its methodological implications.
8 For the long afterlife of the Iphigeneia myth, see J.-M. Gliksohn, Iphigénie: De la Grèce antique à l'Europe des lumières (Paris, 1985).
9 Although C. Calame, Les Choeurs de jeunes filles en Grèce archaïque (Rome, 1977) 334-39 points out that Helen herself has connections with Artemis and with choruses of young girls.
10 See Calame (1977) 43, passim.
11 Stesichorus (frg. 46 PMG = 223 Campbell) says that the fecklessness of Helen and her sisters is due to Tyndareos' slight of Aphrodite, who in revenge made his daughters "twice-marriers and thrice-marriers and leavers of husbands" (digamous te kai trigamous . . . kai lipesanoras).
12 L. R. Farnell, Greek Hero Cults and Ideas of Immortality (Oxford, 1921) 58, holds to this view, as does more recently M. Hollinshead, "Against Iphigeneia's Adyton in Three Mainland Temples" AJA 89 (1985). As I have indicated above, Chapter 2, n. 45, I reject these kinds of arguments.
13 Schol. Eur. El. 157 = Kypria p. 27 Kinkel.
14 Aelian (Varia Historia 4.26) quotes the (early sixth c.?) poet Xanthos' attempt to reconcile conflicting traditions by resorting to a false etymology. Laodike, because she did not marry, was later known as Elektra, from a-lektron, "without the marriage-bed" (See D. A. Campbell, Greek Lyric III (Cambridge, 1991) 27.
15 ê de Iphianassa tês basilikês iskhuos, êtoi tou iphi anassein. Eustath. in Iliad 9.145.
16 R. Arena, "Sul nome Iphigeneia," in Studi in onore di Ferrante Rittatore Vonwiller, II (Como, 1980) 24.
17 Pierre Chantraine, Dictionnaire etymologique de la langue greeque (Paris, 1968) s.v. gignomai.
18 "La déesse qui est née `avec force' est aussi celle qui favorise les naissances vigoreuses." Calame (1977) 292n.234.
19 U. v. Wilamowitz, "Die beide Elektren," Hermes 18 (1883) 258-63.
20 Frg. 94 von Groningen, cf. Etym. Mag. s.v. "Iphigeneia," cited by Séchan (1931) 372. This interpretation is made less plausible by the fact that "speaking names," when applied to mortals, more often refer to a characteristic of the parent, not the child. (For example, Telemachos' name refers to his father's "far-off battle" at Troy.) For a different view, see C. Higbie, Heroes' Names, Homeric Identities (New York, 1995) 189. The name Iphigeneia could in fact be interpreted as referring to the birth of Helen from the rape of Leda.
21 ou kath' ôran (untimely); eti nêpian ousan (still being a child), Plut. Thes. 31.1. Discussed by Calame (1977) 282-83.
22 Cf. Paus. 10.6.1 discussed in Chapter 2. Helen herself, as well as at least one of her brothers, fits into the more common pattern of double paternity, as children of both Zeus and of Tyndareos, but this is also rare for a heroine.
23 That this may be a very ancient form of the name is suggested by the appearance of the form i-pe-me-de-ja on a tablet from Pylos (Py Tn 316 v.). See Pietro Scarpi, "Un teonimo miceneo e le sue implicazioni per la mitologia greca," Bolletino dell'Istituto di Filologia greca dell'Università di Padova 2 (1975) 230-51. He traces an elaborate chain of connections that would place Iphimedeia in the chthonic realm as a double of Hekate. His observations on the cult title Anassa may also have importance for the name Iphianassa, but he does not address this point.
24 I print here the text of R. Merkelbach and M. L. West, Fragmenta Hesiodea (Oxford, 1967), with their conjectures in brackets. My translation includes a few phrases added for clarification.
25 Emily Vermeule and Suzanne Chapman, "A Protoattic Human Sacrifice?" AJA 75 (1971) 285-93 tentatively propose a nearly contemporary piece of visual evidence for the sacrifice of Iphigeneia.
26 F. Solmsen, "The Sacrifice of Agamemnon's daughter in Hesiod's `EHOEAE," AJP (1981) 353-58 maintains that the "real" sacrifice was the original version and was known to the epic poets. He sees the appearance of Herakles' eidolon in the Nekyia and Iphigeneia's here as support for the authenticity of the Hesiodic fragment 358 M-W (placed among the testimonia dubia). I find this argument unconvincing, for it seems more likely that the other eidola could have inspired a creative borrowing. See below, p. 160.
27 Paus. 1.43.1 = Hes. frg. 23b M-W: oida de Hsiodon poiêsanta en katalogô gunaikôn Iphigeneian ouk apothanein, gnômê de Artemidos Ekatên einai (trans. Jones). For Hekate's connection with Einodia, see T. Kraus, Hekate (Heidelberg, 1960) 78-83; 87, although he has nothing to say about Iphigeneia. On Hekate as a goddess of transitions, see S. I. Johnston, Hekate Soteira (Atlanta, 1990).
28 Some have seen a veiled reference in Agamemnon's address to Kalchas as "prophet of evils" (manti kakon, Iliad 1.106 with Eustathius' commentary). See Paul Clement, "New Evidence for the Origin of the Iphigeneia Legend," AC 3 (1934) 394n.2 and Wolfgang Kullmann, "Die Töchter Agamemnons in der Ilias," Gymnasium 72 (1965) 201.
29 This is the opinion of Séchan (1931) 379n.9, who remarks that the reference to Iphianassa does not prove Homer's ignorance of the sacrifice of Iphigeneia.
30 See discussion in LIMC s.v. "Iphigeneia" 11.
31 A. Van Gennep, The Rites of Passage, trans. Vizedom and Caffee (Chicago, 1964). For an extensive discussion of these myths in terms of the initiation of young girls, together with sources, see Brelich (1969), 229-311, "Le Fanciulle Ateniesi." See also C. Sourvinou-Inwood, Studies in Girls' Transitions (Athens, 1988) as well as Brulé (1987) esp. 177-283 and Dowden (1989).
32 For this articulation of Artemis' role, I am indebted to H. King, "Bound to Bleed: Artemis and Greek Women," in Images of Women in Antiquity, ed. Cameron and Kuhrt (1983) 109-27, discussed further below.
33 Kypria in Proclus p. 19 Kinkel.
34 Ant. Lib. 27 after Nicander; cf. Hdt. 4.103.
35 For evidence for the cult at Aulis, see A. Schachter, Cults of Boiotia. BICS suppl. 38.1 (1981) 94-98.
36 See W. Sale, "The Temple Legends of the Arkteia," RM 118 (1975) 265-84; T.C.W. Stinton, "Iphigeneia and the Bears of Brauron," CQ 26 (1976) 11-13; C. Montepaone, "L'arkteia a Brauron," Studi storico-religiosi III (Rome, 1979) 343-64; and S. G. Cole, "The Social Function of Rituals of Maturation: The Koureion and the Arkteia," ZPE 55 (1984) 233-44.
37 On the Aristophanes passage, see C. Sourvinou, "Aristophanes, Lysistrata 641-647," CQ 21 (1971) 339-42, and M. Walbank, "Artemis Bear-Leader," CQ 31(2) (1981) 276-81. Walbank dismisses the possibility that the arkteia was dedicated to Athena (281). For the vase-paintings, see L. Kahil, "Quelques vases du sanctuaire d'Artémis à Brauron," Neue Ausgrabungen in Griechenland (AK suppl. 1) (Olten, 1963) 5-29, and "Autour de l'Artémis attique," AK 8 (1965) 20-33. The statues are to be seen in the Brauron museum.
38 For the suggestion by Christian Wolff that in fact it was the clothing of those who survived childbirth that was dedicated, see Chapter 2, n. 27.
39 Brelich (1969) 275. Clement (1934) 401 discusses some ancient attributions of the arkteia to Iphigeneia.
40 Other cities also laid claim to her tomb. For the pretentions of Megara, sceptically recorded, see Paus. 1.43.1.
41 Sources for Brauron: Suda s.v. Arktos ê Braurôniois, schol. Aristoph. Lys. 645, Anecd. Bekk. 1.444. For Mounichia: Suda s.v. Embaros eimi; Paus. in Eust. Iliad 2.732. Apostol. 7.10 and Append. prov. 2.54, both s.v. Embaros eimi. These and other sources are reproduced and discussed in Brelich (1969) 248-49. See also Montepaone (1979) for a dissenting view of the relationship between the Brauronian and Mounichian rites, as well as her "Il mito di fondatori del rituale munichio in onore di Artemis," Recherches sur les cultes grecs et l'occident 1 (1970) 65-76.
42 Kypria in Proclus p. 19 Kinkel; Callim. Hymn to Artemis 263; Apollod. Ep. 3.21; schol. to Eur. Or. 658.
43 This version is discussed by Séchan (1931) 376, who cites Hyg. Fab. 98 and schol. A. Iliad 1.108 as corroboration. Interestingly enough, the scholiast gives the animal as a goat. This may have relevance for the Mounichian version.
44 Brulé (1987) 183-86 lays out schematically the points of similarity of the three local cults. See also Dowden (1989) 15, who remarks that "Iphigeneia must die because a deer was killed."
45 Clement (1934) 401-9. The parallel is fascinating, but it is a leap to suggest as he does that "the legend of the sacrifice of Agamemnon's daughter grew out of the ritual of the nebreia in the cult of Artemis at Aulis," (408) since we have no evidence for this ritual outside of Thessaly.
46 Brelich (1969) 257. See also Brulé (1987) 182-86, 195-97.
47 Van Gennep (1964); Brelich (1969) 262 has connected Iphigeneia's segregation in the land of the Taurians with the segregation of bears at Brauron.
48 Van Gennep (1964); on ritual death, see 75; on territorial passage, 192; for examples of name change, see 83, 105, 112.
49 Brelich (1969) 263ff. Dowden (1989) 26-31 addresses the questions, "Who were the Bears?" and "How old were the Bears?" He concludes that they were the daughters of the elite and ranged in age from about seven to eleven.
50 See van Gennep (1964) 65 on this problem, and on the difference between physiological puberty and "social puberty."
51 Calame (1977) 333. He also relates this in cultic terms to the alternation between Artemis and Aphrodite, 334. See also 344n.336.
52 Dissenting from this view are Brelich (1969) 275, and Lloyd-Jones (1983) 96, who criticizes the idea that Artemis is "altogether kindly" while Iphigeneia is "responsible for the sinister elements," remarking that these two functions cannot be so easily separated.
53 On the aoroi, the "untimely dead," see S. I. Johnston, "Penelope and the Erinyes: Odyssey 20:61-82," Helios 21 (1994) 138-40.
54 For Kullmann (1965) 201, the offer at Iliad 9.145ff. does in fact reflect the Aulis tradition.
55 Other posthumous brides of Achilles are Medea and Helen. There are traditions of marriage to Deidameia on Skyros and an actual marriage to Iphigeneia at Aulis (see under individual names in Appendix). See also H. Hommel, Der Gott Achilleus (Heidelberg, 1980) 27ff. On posthumous unions see J. Larson, Greek Heroine Cults (Madison, 1995) 78-79.
56 Hommel (1980) 34.
57 R. Seaford, "The Tragic Wedding," JHS 107 (1987) 108, notes that the myth of Iphigeneia combines "two kinds of substitute death," of the mythical maiden and the sacrificial animal.
58 Aidês Akhilleus. On the equation of death with marriage to Hades, see S. Mizera, Unions Holy and Unholy: Fundamental Structures of Myths of Marriage in Early Greek Poetry and Tragedy. Ph.D. dissertation, Princeton University (1984) 32, 147.
59 epoiêsen auên agêrôn kai athanaton daimona kai ônomasen anti [tês] Iphigeneias Orsilokhian (She made her an unaging and immortal goddess and called her, instead of Iphigeneia, Orsilochia). (Ant. Lib. 27, after Nicander).
60 Some connection between Achilles and Hades may lurk behind the words of Agamemnon (Iliad 9.158), suggesting that Achilles' failure to be moved by the offer of gifts might make him hated as Hades is hated for being ameilichos, "implacable." For Achilles as "Gott der Toten," see Hommel (1980) passim.
61 "Deos enim hostibus litantes humanis et immolantes advenas Dianae, quae apud eos dicitur Orsiloche, caesorum capita fani parietibus praefigebant, velut fortium perpetua monumenta facinorum" (22.8.34), trans. John C. Rolfe, Loeb Classical Library (Cambridge, Mass., 1956).
62 See below for the way in which this connection is disrupted in the Iphigeneia material.
63 Fritz Graf, "Das Götterbild aus dem Taurerland," AW 10 (1979) 34.
64 See J. M. Cook and W. H. Plommer, The Sanctuary of Hemithea at Kastabos (Cambridge, 1966) for material remains of the cult, which may go back to the late sixth century. For an inscription dedicating a temple to Hemithea, see also W. BlÜmel, Die Inschriften der rhodischen Peraia (Bonn, 1991) no. 451.
65 (Diod. 5.62). I have already commented in Chapter 4 on Molpadia's position in the spheres of both Apollo and Dionysos. It is also surprising to find a goddess of childbirth in the sphere not of Artemis, but of Apollo.
66 Could these two quite different Chersonneses (peninsulas) have promoted conflation of the two stories? While the Tauric Chersonnese is in the vicinity of the Black Sea, Kastabos is located in an area known as the Rhodian peraia, i.e., the coast opposite Rhodes.
67 Séchan (1931) 369, 371 comments on the connection between Orsilochia and the epithets of Artemis.
68 King (1983) 122.
69 Interestingly, something similar had happened to her aunt Phylonoe, sister of Klytemnestra, according to the Hesiodic Catalogue of Women (23a10-12 M-W). See N. Austin, Helen of Troy and Her Shameless Phantom (Ithaca, 1994) 109.
70 Wilamowitz (1883) 257.
71 Cults of Hekate with elaborate temple complexes become important in Asia Minor in the Imperial period. See Alfred Laumonier, Les Cultes indigènes en Carie (Paris, 1958).
72 See S. Pingiatoglou, Eileithyia (WÜrzburg, 1981) 93, 111; Séchan (1931). Dowden (1989) 208n.18 discounts any etymological connection of the name Orsiloche(ia) with childbirth, but it was interpreted this way in antiquity.
73 Callim. frg. 461 Pfeiffer. See L. R. Farnell, The Cults of the Greek States (Oxford, 1896) vol. 2:506
74 Euripides frg. 968 Nauck on the dog as the agalma of Hekate. For dog sacrifices to her, see Paus. 3.14.9.
75 The scholion to Lykophron's Alexandra, 1176 sceptically relates a tradition that Hekabe, a follower of Hekate, was turned into a dog and also mentions that Hekate is followed by black dogs. A. P. Burnett, "Hekabe the Dog," Arethusa 27 (1994) 151-64 suggests that "for Euripides there was a close connection between the Trojan queen and the goddess who was separated from her only by a consonant."
76 R. Meridor, "Hecuba's Revenge: Some Observations on Euripides' Hecuba," AJP 99 (1978) 28-35, stresses the equation Hecuba = kuên (dog), without insisting on other connections.
77 Philoxenia: Callim. Hek. frg. 231 Pfeiffer = 2 Hollis; polyxeinoio: frg. 285 Pfeiffer = 100 Hollis; Plut. Thes. 14.2. See Callimachus' Hecale, edited with commentary by A. S. Hollis (Oxford, 1990).
78 For the deipna of Hekale, see Callim. frg. 264 Pfeiffer = 83 Hollis; for those of Hekate: Aristoph. Plut. 594 with schol.; Plut. Quaest. conviv. 7.6, 708f-709a; Athen. 3.110c quoting Sophron; Soph. fr. 668 Nauck. See Karl Meuli, "Griechische Opfergebräuche," in Phyllobolia, Festscrift Von der MÜhll (Basel, 1946) 189-200; Kraus (1960) 88-91.
79 The word xenos or xeinos brings together concepts that might seem unrelated--"stranger," "foreigner," "guest," and "friend." The institution of xenia (guest-friendship) turns strangers or foreigners into friends through the practice of hospitality. The sacrifice of xenoi suggests the otherness of the Taurians.
80 Hades is called polydegmon (Hom. Hymn 2 [Demeter] 17), polydektes (Hom. Hymn 2.9), polyxenotaton (Aesch. Suppl. 157), klymenos (Paus. 2.35.9), etc. See Hommel (1980) 31-32, on epithets of Hades and their implications for Polyxene.
81 Burkert, Homo Necans (Berkeley, 1983) 67.
82 On hanging in connection with Artemis, see Brelich (1969) 443-44n.2, King (1983) 118ff.
83 The implications of these connections are explored by M. Suzuki, Metamorphoses of Helen (Ithaca, 1989) 6ff.: "The substitution of sacrificial victims motivates the metamorphoses of Helen into other female figures."
84 dêlos estin ex arkhês Iphigeneia poiêtheis o naos (7.26.5), trans. Jones. Scholars such as Farnell have debated whether such cases are the result of back formations from split-off divine epithets, or manifestations of faded gods. For a discussion of the theoretical problems involved, see Chapter 2. Either way, the system read synchronically shows us an exchange of identity and name between the two figures. We shall probably never unravel the origin, divine or human, of Iphigeneia, nor am I willing to subscribe to Farnell's two-Iphigeneia theory (1921) 58, which is no more satisfying than the two-Ariadne theory of the Naxians.
85 See Chapter 3, n. 105 and following. The Artemis of Euripides' Hippolytos (1437-38), however, displays a marked unwillingness to witness death.
86 For the "eidolon-technique" as a way for the poet to introduce an alternate version, see Mark Griffith, "Contest and Contradiction in Early Greek Poetry," in Cabinet of the Muses, ed. M. Griffith and D. J. Mastronarde (Atlanta: 1990) 197-99.
87 See the comments by Alfred Heubeck, ed., Omero. Odissea ([Milan], 1983) on this passage and also the discussion in Chapter 1.
88 See Thaddeus Zielinski, "De Helenae Simulacro," Eos 30 (1927) 54-58, Vittore Pisani, "Elena e l'EIDWLON," Revista di Filologia e di Istruzione classica (n.s. 6) 56 (1928) 476-99; C. M. Bowra, "The Two Palinodes of Stesichorus," Classical Review 77 (1963) 245-52; J. A. Davison, "De Helena Stesichori," QUCC 2 (1966) 80-90. More recently, the similarities between the two eidolon myths have been discussed by Solmsen (1981) 353-58; M. L.West, Hesiodic Catalogue of Women (Oxford, 1985) 134-35; and Griffith (1990) 198-99. See now N. Austin, Helen of Troy and her Shameless Phantom (Ithaca, 1994).
89 to tês Elenês eidôlon upo tên en Troia Stêsikhoros phêsi genesthai perimakhêton agnoia tou alêthous (Republic 586c). See also Aristid. Or. 2.234; Tzetzes ad Lycoph. 113.
90 As Davison (1966) 86, points out, the manoeuvre also serves Stesichorus' purpose in showing himself "poetam esse meliorem Hesiodo, Homero feliciorem"--"a better poet than Hesiod, a luckier one than Homer."
91 For Stesichorus' version as a poetic alternative to the Homeric poetics of Helen, see Gregory Nagy, Pindar's Homer (Baltimore, 1990), esp. 419-23.
92 Occurrences of the motif in Indic and other literatures have been studied by Wendy Doniger in an unpublished paper that she has kindly allowed me to see. In her examples the phantom is usually a way to avoid a sexual encounter, as with Helen, or Hera and Ixion. For Helen and Ixion, see also F. I. Zeitlin, "Travesties of Gender and Genre in Aristophanes' Thesmophoriazousae," in Foley (1981) 201ff.
93 For Helen's Vedic antecedents, see G. Nagy, "Sappho's Phaon and the White Rock of Leukas" HSCP 77 (1973) 165; D. Boedeker, Aphrodite's Entry into Greek Epic (Leiden, 1974) 61-63; L. Clader, Helen (1976) 52-54; and Ann Sutor, "Aphrodite/ Paris/ Helen: A Vedic Myth in the Iliad." TAPA 117 (1987) 51-58. Most recently S. W. Jamison, "Draupadi on the Walls of Troy: Iliad 3 from an Indic Perspective," CA 13 (1994) 5-16 argues for traces of Indo-European marriage law in the Teichoskopia.
94 O. Skutsch, "Helen, Her Name and Nature," JHS 107 (1987) 189. He speculates that Saranyu, the mother of the Asvins, is in fact cognate with Helen, which suggests to him the existence of two Helens.
95 Séchan (1931) 379-80 n. 9.
96 Stesichorus' priority with the myth of Helen's eidolon is thrown into crisis by the idea of an Indo-European precedent. Nonetheless, there is no good evidence for the story in any earlier Greek author. He may well have been the first to challenge the prevalent Homeric version. The motif could have been preserved before Stesichorus by extra-literary means, such as vase-painting, but this is pure speculation.
97 prôtos Hsiodos peri tês Elenês to eidôlon parêgage (Paraphrasis Lycoph. 822). Merkelbach and West assign this to the Fragmenta Dubia (358).
98 Austin (1994) 109-10 has reached a similar conclusion.
99 Philod. Peri Euseb. 24g.
100 Here, for example, is Trimalchio's account of the Trojan War: "You see, there were these two brothers, Ganymede and Diomedes. Now, they had this sister called Helen, see. Well, Agamemnon eloped with her and Diana left a deer as a fill-in for Helen. Now this poet called Homer describes the battle between the Trojans and the people of a place called Paros, which is where Paris came from. Well, as you'd expect, Agamemnon won and gave his daughter Iphigeneia to Achilles in marriage. And that's why Ajax went mad. . . ." Petronius, Satyricon 59, trans. W. Arrowsmith.
101 Of course, not all appearances of an eidolon have to do with apotheosis. When Apollo uses an eidolon to deceive the Achaeans while rescuing Aineias (Iliad 5.449), it is only a temporary diversion. It does save him, but he will have to wait nearly a millenium for his apotheosis in Vergil's Aeneid. In fact, the Homeric Hymn to Aphrodite explicitly refuses him immortality. See Chapter 3.
102 Zeitlin (1981) 201 remarks that "the case of Stesichorus has been referred to the violation of the cultic norms of Sparta where Helen was indeed worshiped in a cult role as a goddess. The palinode, in its creation of the eidolon, therefore unequivocally confirmed her divine status." See Clader (1976) for the evidence for Helen's divinity. Cf. Isoc. Praise of Helen 217d. Usually Helen does not require an explicit apotheosis, but one is furnished in Eur. Or. 1684-90.
103 In the same way, Iphigeneia and Polyxene balance each other as virgins sacrificed at the beginning and the end of the Trojan War. Not only that, but in each case, the sacrifice is equated with marriage to Achilles.
104 Ps.-Plut. Hist. Parall. 314c.
105 See Mizera (1984) 132ff. for the resonances of these two myths as used by Euripides. Already in Herodotus, we find both Helen's sojourn in Egypt (2.113-17) and Iphigeneia's Tauric episode (4.103). Both passages contain the theme of killing strangers, although in the Egyptian episode, Proteus stresses his unwillingness to kill a stranger, even one so impious as Paris.
106 Mizera (1984) 135-36, has remarked on the symmetry of the eidolon and the agalma, which she places in relation to the image of Hera in the aetiology of the Tonaia.
107 Ag. 208; See J.-P. Vernant, "Le Mariage en Grèce antique," PP 28 (1973) 56 for women as agalmata. Also J. Redfield, "Notes on the Greek Wedding," Arethusa 15 (1982) 186.
108 See J.-P. Vernant, "Figuration de l'invisible et catégorie psychologique du double: Le Colossos," in Mythe et Pensée chez les Grecs (Paris, 1981 [1965]) 2:70-71.
109 See A. A. Donohue, Xoana and the Origins of Greek Sculpture (Atlanta, 1988) and S.R.F. Price, Rituals and Power, the Roman Imperial Cult in Asia Minor (Cambridge, 1984) 176-78.
110 In The Anthropology of Ancient Greece, trans. J. Hamilton and B. Nagy (Baltimore, 1981) 73-111.
111 Gernet (1981) 109n.91.
112 See Claude Lévi-Strauss, Elementary Structures of Kinship (Boston, 1969 [1949]). For a feminist critique of the supposed universality of his model, see Gayle Rubin, "The Traffic in Women," in R. Reiter, Toward an Anthropology of Women (New York and London, 1975) 157-210.
113 The first few books of the Iliad could be read as a textbook on the value of women in an elaborate economy based on tangibles (like cattle) and intangibles (like kleos). I plan to return to this topic as part of another project on the economics of gender in ancient Greece.
114 See Redfield (1982) 192.
115 Iliad 3.70: Elenê kai ktêmasi pasi; also lines 72, 91, 282, 285, 458, etc.
116 For discussion and bibliography, see Chapter 4.
117 While Pausanias is the richest source for heroines as cult-founders, as even a glance at the Appendix to this chapter will show, he is not the only author to attribute this role to them. See C. Dewald, "Women and Culture in Herodotus' Histories," in Foley (1981) 110-12, 122 on female cult-founders in Herodotus.
118 Dion. Hal. 1.68; Vergil Aen. 2.165f; Ovid Met. 13.380f.
119 Ilias Parva p. 43 Kinkel; Plut. Quaest. R. 61, 278f. C. A. Faraone, Talismans and Trojan Horses (Oxford, 1992) 136-40 argues that evocatio is not, in fact, a Greek practice.
120 Paus. 1.15.2: Stoa Poikile; 5.11.6: throne of Zeus; 5.19.5: Kypselos chest; 10.26.3 and 31.2: Polygnotos' Nekyia. For other vases, see LIMC s.v. "Aias" II 16-111.
121 Lycoph. 361f.; Callim. frg. 35 Pfeiffer. Herodotus assumes that Palladion = image of Pallas, i.e., Athena (4.189). See the article by L. Ziehen and G. Lippold, "Palladium," RE 18.2 (1949) 171-201.
122 The account is in Menodotos (FGrH 541 F 1 = Athen. 15.671e-73b). See Mizera (1984) 17-20.
123 Paus. 3.14.4; 3.18.4. This second passage has been discussed above in the context of a discussion of gods who bear the names of heroes; see Chapter 3.
124 On the mobility of both bretas and xoanon, see Vernant (1981), vol. 2:66. One of his examples, Hera Lygodesma (Athen. 15.672ff.), emphasizes the possibility of seduction, as does Pausanias 3.18.4. Faraone (1992) 136-39 has interesting comments on the practice of binding statues.
125 Farnell (1921) chap. 2 and passim; F. Pfister, Reliquienkult (Geissen, 1909-12). See Chap. 3 above.
126 Burnett (1971) 75.
127 Brelich (1969) 243-45. In this connection, he quotes the remark of Aelius Lampridius (Hist. Aug. Elagabalus 7.6): Orestem. . .non unum simulacrum Dianae nec uno in loco posuisse, sed multa in multis (Orestes did not put one image of Diana in one place, but many images in many places.)
128 See J. Rudhardt, Notions fondamentales de la pensée religieuse (Geneva, 1958) 85-106, on the limits to polytheism and the anthropomorphic conception of the gods.
129 Trans. H. Foley, The Homeric Hymn to Demeter (Princeton, 1994).