Contesting the Past: Hero Cult, Tomb Cult, and Epic in Early GreeceAuthor(s): Carla M. AntonaccioSource: American Journal of Archaeology, Vol. 98, No. 3 (Jul., 1994), pp. 389-410Published by: Archaeological Institute of AmericaStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/506436 .Accessed: 06/06/2011 17:06

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Contesting the Past: Hero Cult, Tomb Cult, and Epic in Early Greece

CARLA M. ANTONACCIO

Abstract Greek hero cult has been extensively discussed by

both archaeologists and philologists. This paper con- siders two current hypotheses: one links the develop- ment of hero cult in the eighth century B.C. with the circulation of Homeric poetry; the other views hero cult as a transformation of ancestral veneration in the context of the emergent polis. A review of the archae- ological evidence for the Iron Age and Early Archaic period suggests that the earliest hero cult in the ar- chaeological record emerged at Sparta during the eighth century. The small number of early hero cults, and their location and distribution, do not lend sup- port to the theory of Homeric influence. Veneration of ancestors, on the other hand, was practiced widely in the Greek world throughout the Iron Age; it did not disappear with the emergence of the polis and hero cult.

Rather than a single, unified concept, ancestral and hero cult articulated different versions of the past. Conflicting or competing concepts, both ritual and epic, serve to debate the past within and between com- munities. In Greece, as elsewhere, the debate helps to mediate social change within a framework of culturally determined rules.*

Over a century ago, when Erwin Rohde pub- lished Psyche: The Cult of Souls and Belief in Immortal-

ity among the Greeks,' Homer was the chief authority

for early Greek attitudes and practices. Archaeology offered only limited evidence for long-term pat- terns in Greek burial or cult. Since Rohde, most accounts of hero cult have attempted to reconcile

literary pictures of cult in different periods, and,

especially recently, to draw upon archaeology for ritual practice and the history of its development. The past few decades have witnessed a focus of ar-

chaeological research on the Greek Iron Age (or "Dark Age," from the end of the Mycenaean period in the 12th century to the late eighth century B.C.), a crucial, formative period for later Greek society. The place of epic poetry has changed; although epic poetry purports to describe the second millennium B.C., it is necessary to contextualize the poems in the Iron Age, the period in which they attained most of their final form. The pace of this work has inten- sified in the last decade, but even with the develop- ment of new approaches to Greek pre- and

protohistory, virtually all attempts to describe Iron

Age Greek society use epic poetry to explicate ar-

chaeological data and to provide detail for cross-cul- tural comparisons.2 Moreover, archaeologists and

philologists have continued to find it difficult to har- monize the literary views of heroes and hero cult,

* This paper originated in the panel "Immortal Mor- tals," coorganized by Deborah Lyons and myself at the 1990 Annual Meeting of the American Philological Asso- ciation, and from the first and last chapters of my doctoral dissertation, The Archaeology of Early Greek "Hero Cult" (Princeton Univ. 1987). My thanks to the panel partici- pants (Deborah Boedeker, Alan Shapiro, and Rebecca Si- nos) and audience on that occasion, and to Elizabeth Bobrick, Douglas Charles, Joseph Day, Susan Downey, Marilyn Katz, Ian Morris, Gregory Nagy, Susan Sherratt, and an anonymous AJA reviewer.

The following abbreviations are used below: Antonaccio C. Antonaccio, "The Archaeology of

1993 Ancestors," in C. Dougherty and L. Kurke eds., Cultural Poetics in Archaic Greece (Cambridge 1993) 46-70.

Antonaccio C. Antonaccio, An Archaeology of An- 1994 cestors, Tomb and Hero Cult in Early

Greece (Lanham, Md. 1994). Farnell L. Farnell, Greek Hero-Cults and Ideas of

Immortality (Oxford 1921).

Hagg and R. Higg and G.C. Nordquist eds., Nordquist Celebrations of Death and Divinity in the

Bronze Age Argolid (SkrAth 4, 40, Stockholm 1990).

Morris I. Morris, "Tomb Cult and the 'Greek Renaissance': The Past in the Pres- ent in the 8th Century B.C.," An- tiquity 62 (1988) 750-61.

Nagy G. Nagy, The Best of the Achaeans: Concepts of the Hero in Archaic Greek Poetry (Baltimore 1979).

Rohde E. Rohde, Psyche: The Cult of Souls and Belief in Immortality among the Greeks,8 trans. W.B. Hillis (New York 1925).

1 Originally published as Psyche: Seelencult und Unster- blichkeitsglaube der Griechen (Freiburg 1898).

2 Recent examples include I. Morris, "The Use and Abuse of Homer," ClAnt 5 (1986) 82-138; Morris, "Gift and Commodity in Archaic Greece," Man 21 (1986) 1-17; and J. Whitley, "Social Diversity in Dark Age Greece," BSA 86 (1991) 341-65.

389

American Journal of Archaeology 98 (1994) 389-410

390 CARLA M. ANTONACCIO [AJA 98

and the sometimes divergent evidence provided by archaeology.3

While epic praise (Kk•og) is deliberately timeless,4 actual practice operates within a framework of space, time, and action, some of which at least ar- chaeology can detect. Still, if we accept that there is an oral tradition that has roots in the Bronze Age, and that epic poetry is Panhellenic in its sig- nificance, Homer and his critics are the place to begin any discussion of hero cult and a considera- tion of Greek attitudes toward the past. Both Homer and Hesiod already speak of past, more powerful generations of men, of honoring heroes and the importance of their tombs. Of course, Homer's heroes are living men in the poems, PacotXig, the rulers and warriors, divinely descend- ed but not themselves divine nor yet immortal. The references in the poems to the heroes' honor

(TL•tl), which in cult is expressed as ritual action, embrace their prerogatives and possessions (see infra). Aside from epic, the earliest written reference to a cult of heroes ostensibly dates to the later seventh century B.C., when the Athenian lawgiver Drakon pre- scribed that gods and local heroes should be hon- ored together according to ancestral custom. Reference to custom indicates well-established prac- tice, and the specification of local heroes a multiplic- ity of them already, though we do not know how early this was the case.5

As founders (even if mythical) of later Greek fami- lies, and of communities that in turn identified he- roic tombs and venerated heroic relics, heroes are also ancestors. The written sources emphasize the importance of heroic tombs and other relics, and an

essential conservatism and emphasis on continuity generally govern scholarship on Greek religion. Thus, the well-known emphasis on the importance of a hero's tomb and of his bones and other relics was projected into the Bronze Age and the protohis- torical period, and the origins of hero cult have been identified in Bronze Age burial practices. For example, at Mycenae's Grave Circle A Nilsson claimed continuity of worship, or at least of memory, from Late Helladic to the historical period. The concept of the hero as a semidivine or divinized figure was extended to Mycenaean rulers, both for their own time and after.6

Rohde held that hero cult and a belief in an effec- tive afterlife are both absent from Homer, and that this omission stands isolated from the indigenous ancient beliefs of the Greeks originating in the Bronze Age. He thought that the attitude toward the afterlife in Homeric poetry represented the be- liefs of the Ionian Greeks, and not the "popular beliefs" of all the Greeks. For him, this explained the Homeric conception of the dead as "without clear self-consciousness" so that it "neither desires nor wills anything. It has no influence on the upper world, and consequently no longer receives any share of the worship of the living."' For Rohde, the great importance of heroes and hero worship in the historical periods was a revival and amplification of ancient and native ancestor worship, not late inven- tions.8 A hero's power rested in his bones and their burial spot, and worship was maintained after the Mycenaean period "perhaps for a long time only by a few, in those places where there remained a cult attached to a grave. "9 With the rise of the polis, the

3 A. Snodgrass, The Dark Age of Greece (Edinburgh 1971), followed by V. Desborough, The Greek Dark Ages (London 1972) and N. Coldstream, Geometric Greece (Lon- don 1977). American excavations at Nichoria in Messenia produced a major study (W McDonald et al., Nichoria III: Dark Age and Byzantine Occupation (Minneapolis 1983), and a spate of work followed, with R. Hagg et al. eds., The Greek Renaissance of the 8th Century B.C.: Tradition and Innovation (Stockholm 1983); A. Snodgrass, An Archaeology of Greece: The Present State and Future Scope of a Discipline (Sather Clas- sical Lectures 53, Berkeley 1987); I. Morris, Burial and Ancient Society: The Rise of the Greek City-State (Cambridge 1987); R. Hagg et al. eds., Early Greek Cult Practice (Stock- holm 1988); C. Morgan, Athletes and Oracles: The Transfor- mation of Olympia and Delphi in the Eighth Century B.C. (Cambridge 1990); and J. Whitley, Style and Society in Dark Age Greece (Cambridge 1991). New research continues to appear.

4 Nagy 117, 119, passim. 5 Porph. Abst. 4.2: Ooi~g TLtiv aKL LIpwCg it mpLX0)LoVg i~v

Kotvl6 irO'ivotg v6Cgotg iOpaPiotg L 'a Kat& 61'vacLtL, Wv

eJi'tUi~a KL TPXaIg KaPJT•g v TEXkdOVog i~ETeLoVg. Cf. R.

Garland, Introducing New Gods: The Politics of Athenian Re- ligion (Ithaca 1992) 45-46; ur a'd pLt might specify any practice with origins predating the 460s. See Nagy passim for the literary development.

6 MMR2 584-614, GGR3 378-81, contra G. Mylonas, "Homeric and Mycenaean Burial Customs," AJA 52 (1948) 56-81; Mylonas, "The Cult of the Dead in Helladic Times," in G. Mylonas and D. Raymond eds., Studies Pre- sented to David M. Robinson 1 (St. Louis 1951) 64-105; My- lonas, "Burial Customs," in A. Wace et al., A Companion to Homer (London 1962) 478-88; see the papers in Hagg and Nordquist.

7 Rohde 24 and in general ch. 1. 8 Rohde 25: "the cult of Heroes everywhere has the

same features as the cult of ancestors . .. the remains of a true cult of ancestors provided the model and were the real starting-point for the later belief and cult of Heroes."

9 Rohde 121, 123; emphasis in original.

1994] CONTESTING THE PAST 391

ancestral worship of noble families broadened into hero worship. If original ancestral identities had been lost, heroes' names were fabricated, or their cults simply died out.1'

Rohde's reconstruction of hero cult and its origin in ancestor cult depended on the importance of he- roes' bones in literary sources. Although cult is ab- sent, epic attitudes to burial and the stress on the hero's body ultimately culminated in a vigorous commerce in heroic bones and assorted other relics carried on by some Archaic and Classical poleis, as well as hero cults at Panhellenic sanctuaries." With Fustel de Coulanges, Rohde assumed the impor- tance of ancestral graves to the Greeks based on a pastiche of written references and notions of ances- tor cult derived from comparative anthropology. These ideas have been influential in the interpreta- tion or use of excavated evidence as it became avail- able over the past century.12

In 1921, Lewis Farnell criticized Rohde for what he termed "the chief defect" in his work: "he does not distinguish clearly between 'tendance' and cul-

tus."'3 To distinguish ancestral cult, he preferred the term tendance over worship for this behavior. Farnell

agreed with Rohde that ancestors overlap with he- roes, but he identified ancestors as purely local, while heroes could be located in more than one place. The actual worship of the dead, Farnell be- lieved, can be evidenced from the eighth century B.C. onward; therefore, the festivals and observa- tions that reflect "affection" and not awe were traces of a pre-Homeric attitude and mentality. Pointing out that hero cults are often not found in a hero's home territory, he inferred that they were not an- cestral in origin. Although he allowed the possibility that some epic heroes received local cult before they were taken up by epic, his general view was that "much hero cult was directly engendered by the powerful influence of the Homeric and other epics ... one may discern that the old epic poetry not only suggested many a name to forgotten graves, [but] occasionally also imposed laws on the ritual."'4

Farnell's category of heroes encompassed seven groups, covered in individual chapters and an ap- pendix of ancient written sources.'5 The figures ranged from Herakles, both god and hero, to Titus Quinctus Flamininus, at the end of historical Greek autonomy.

Criticism of Rohde continued with R.K. Hack, who took up the influence of epic in hero cult in an article published in 1929. Drawing upon Nilsson's work on Minoan and Mycenaean religion, he af- firmed not only a Mycenaean worship of the dead but its continuation into hero worship in a later pe- riod.16 The only apparent exception to this devel- opment from Mycenaean to historic times, the attitude of Homer, Hack found not to stand outside the mainstream at all. Hack pointed out the various exceptions to Rohde's rule that Homer knew of no worship of the dead or of heroes. He detailed ances- tor and hero cult among the Ionians, the existence of which for him precluded the notion that Homer's background could be responsible for the omission of any references to cult. He found instead internal reasons for the lack of hero worship. Since Homer is recounting the ideal, heroic past, as indicated by his use of various archaisms, hero cult is suppressed, because the heroes are shown as contemporaries and equals, and cult between them would be inap- propriate. Hack concluded that hero cults are not Bronze Age survivals, but part of a continuous tra- dition to which the poems of Homer contributed.

Meanwhile, more evidence for the Iron Age had become available. T.H. Price continued this line of argument, differing with Rohde in identifying evi- dence for cult within Homer: the sacrifice made by Odysseus in the underworld; references to the con- tinued life and honor held by the Dioskouroi under the earth; the treatment of Erechtheus in the Iliad; and the topographical importance of ancient tombs in Homer. Price found fault with the assumption that hero cult is a Mycenaean tradition that some- how continued uninterrupted." She also recog- nized that purportedly earlier hero cults, those of

10 Rohde 121, 123. " E Pfister, Der Reliquienkult im Altertum I-II. Religions-

geschichtliche Versuche und Vorarbeiten 5 (GieBen 1909-1912) is still standard; see also E.T Thompson, The Relics of the Heroes in Ancient Greece (Diss. Univ. of Washington 1985) and Antonaccio 1994; E. Vandiver, Heroes in Herodotus (Leiden 1991) 34-38 with references on Orestes' relics.

12 Cf. Antonaccio 1993. 13 Farnell 2; cf. 343 and 6. Rohde and Farnell were both

especially concerned to refute the prevalent theory of the day, that heroes were faded or decayed gods who had

degraded to the status of elevated humans. Rohde 117 n. 7 and Farnell ch. 11.

14 Farnell 283-84. 15 Farnell 403-26. 16 R.K. Hack, "Homer and the Cult of Heroes," TAPA

60 (1929) 57-74, 59. 17 T.H. Price, "Hero-Cult and Homer," Historia 22

(1973) 129-44: "There is no evidence of continuity, and no such cult was instituted inside a Mycenaean tomb before the 8th century B.C., according to the available archae- ological evidence" (emphasis in original).

392 CARLA M. ANTONACCIO [AJA 98

Fig. 1. Prosymna. Finds from tombs VIII and IX. (Photo courtesy American School of Classical Studies at Athens)

Pelops and Odysseus, for example, are not con- nected with Mycenaean tombs.'8 In her critique, she identified several points of confusion in termi-

nology and concept in previous scholarship: hero cult and the cult of the dead were confounded, and the practice of hero cult not distinguished from a mere belief in heroes. She defined cult of the dead as "the burial rites and ceremonies after it" while hero cult is "a continuously repeated ritual over a

long period of time."'9 Her own criterion for a hero

cult, however, would seem to be compromised in

regarding tomb cult as hero cult.20 The first thorough consideration of archaeologi-

cal evidence for post-Bronze Age cult in Mycenaean tombs was Carl Blegen's 1937 study of Late Helladic tombs at Prosymna, site of the Argive Heraion.2'

Nearly a third of the chamber tombs excavated un-

der his direction contained Late Geometric and Ar- chaic pottery, and bronzes including phialai, bowls, and pins (figs. 1-2). Blegen interpreted this mate- rial as votive offerings to heroic ancestors, possibly by actual descendants of the Mycenaean families who had built the tombs. In support of continuity, which was unattested by an unbroken sequence of burials or of offerings, Blegen had to appeal to Pro-

togeometric finds in Mycenaean tombs at Dendra and Thebes. Blegen's view followed that of Rohde, Farnell, and Nilsson: the Mycenaeans must have been Homer's epic heroes, and therefore Myce- naean graves were centers of heroic power.

John Cook followed Blegen's work in the Argolid with his publication of a shrine founded in the

eighth century at Mycenae, which he assigned to

Agamemnon (fig. 3).22 Prior to this two other hero

18 See Price (supra n. 17) 131 and Cook's work, infra n. 22. The same observation about the citing of hero shrines is made by A. Snodgrass, "Poet and Painter in Eighth-Century Greece," PCPS 204 (1979) 118-30, 123- 24, without reference to Price's article.

19 Price (supra n. 17) 129. 20 Price (supra n. 17) 143. On Erechtheus: II. 2.546-51;

Dioskouroi: Od. 11.298ff., where they live on under the earth, but cf. 11. 2.243, where both are dead and there is no mention of continued life anywhere. Tombs as land- marks, e.g., 11. 2.604 (Aipytos), 2.793 (Aisyetes), 10.414,

11.371, 20.232 (Ilos); but cf. that of Myrine, an Amazon, not a hero. Discussion in Price (supra n. 17) 137-40 and Antonaccio 1994, ch. 3.

21 C. Blegen, "Post-Mycenaean Deposits in Chamber- Tombs," ArchEph 1937, 377-90.

22 J.M. Cook, "The Agamemnoneion," BSA 48 (1953) 30-68; Cook, "The Cult of Agamemnon at Mycenae," in

FUpa Avroviov Kepaqy6sroAAov (Athens 1953) 112-18; A. Foley, The Argolid 800-600 B.C. An Archaeological Survey (SIMA 80, Goteborg 1988) 151-53; and infra n. 51.

1994] CONTESTING THE PAST 393

-r?i?.~'-~' ??: C5:"''''"?: ? "'::'-I- ? ..:..:._ :-~ ili: -i-il~i~iii--li:I-_i~iii -iiii?-- ii:-:- ii::ii?;: ~:i-i-iiiii ii~i~-; ~:-I:-~,:~,~ _%`-~:40 ~ _-~:::ii::::,i?-~:..~., iii, iii::i i~i-- i.i-~_-?.?:Xi~?. :;?;~?, ?,, ii9 12i~:~ai _~::::~

~;f:::-:i_;~i:i`i-i~i;. ::_w??. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .i iiiiiii~- iiiiiiiii ::~ii :_: : -:::- __i : : :: ii(I: gI - 1 ~ :---:--.:i~: 11-1--_:::~:.---- -1;: -:lA" hri:-

ii~iiiiisi?l?-::ii~i::.: b~e:;~ l :~--:i-i: :-ii:-:-?-ii:-::i:i~iii~iR11,- "'E---6i?i''i~i~i~l~~;:l~. ~ i-i~ii-i..-i.i-:::--:?ir:-6-i'ii~~:- :i::_ iii: j::i:__::ij::i__:iliiii i ii iii -:.'i IFi i-i i . . . . . . . ... :l-;:~:_:-:-:i: ?ii- ?E:-iii-iiiii:-ii

U15:~~~-:::~~~ :i-l-iii?i? - i- Il~iiiiiiii:ii??f? 8'4?~ ~ : 1% f%: _

Fig. 2. Prosymna. Finds from tomb IX (nos. 1203-1205) and tomb XLII (nos. 911-12). (Photo courtesy American School of Classical Studies at Athens)

shrines had been archaeologically investigated: one for Odysseus on Ithaca, and another for Menelaos at Sparta (figs. 4-5).23 Two points emerged: the shrine at Mycenae (like the other two) was situated well away from the chamber and tholos tombs, con-

trary to Pausanias's testimony that the graves of

Agamemnon and his followers were shown inside the walls.24 Second, Cook, following Farnell, theo-

rized that this and other hero cults were the direct result of the circulation of the Homeric poems, since the shrine was founded in the eighth century B.C. He did not, therefore, feel obliged to argue continu- ous memory; in fact, the opposite. Homer's descrip- tion of Agamemnon's murder outside the walls

provided an explanation for the location of the shrine. To Cook's mind, the cults were begun "by

Fig. 3. Mycenae. Shrine of Agamemnon. (Photo C. Antonaccio)

23 See infra n. 50. 24 PaUS. 2.16.3-7.

394 CARLA M. ANTONACCIO [AJA 98

Fig. 4. Ithaca. Polis Bay. (Photo C. Antonaccio)

people who preserved no continuity of memory-- and little enough of blood-some centuries after the

occupants had passed into oblivion."'25 Nicolas Coldstream'sJHS article in 1976 also em-

phasized the influence of epic in the development of hero cult as proposed by Farnell in 1921, and combined it with the most comprehensive collection of excavated evidence to date.26 Coldstream col- lected the votives deposited in Mycenaean tombs all

over Greece during what he defined as the "Age of Homer" (750-650 B.C.) (fig. 6).27 For Coldstream, hero cult was being practiced if two conditions ap- plied: a significant hiatus existed between the last use of the tomb and a votive deposit, and deposited objects were not associated with a later structure or

grave.28 Furthermore, in areas where tholoi or chamber tombs remained a tradition after the Bronze Age (as in Thessaly and Crete), Coldstream

Fig. 5. Sparta. Menelaion. (Photo Deutsches Archiologisches Institut, Athens, neg. Sparta 195)

25 Cook, in Frpag (supra n. 22) 115. 26 N. Coldstream, "Hero-cults in the Age of Homer,"

JHS 96 (1976) 8-17. 27 Coldstream (supra n. 26) 10: "it remains true that no

offerings anywhere-to my knowledge-are earlier than the third quarter of the eighth century."

28 Coldstream (supra n. 26) 9.

1994] CONTESTING THE PAST 395

pt

4 e B .4

Fig. 6. Distribution of hero cults, 750-650 B.C., according to N. Coldstream. (After N. Coldstream, JHS 96 [1976] 12,

fig. 1)

found no later votives in the Mycenaean tombs dur-

ing the century under consideration. For the areas where votives do occur in Mycenaean tombs, Cold- stream pointed to the change in burial from multi-

ple-use chamber and tholos tombs to single graves. Only burials that employed unfamiliar practices would prompt any show of respect, but not until Homer had primed interest.29 Coldstream believed the currency of epic would account for the occur- rence of votives in Dorian areas, where an alien,

immigrant population might otherwise be expected to show no particular reverence for Mycenaean predecessors.

While Coldstream believed that tomb cults were honors of private and ordinary Greeks to uniden- tified heroes, he saw in the shrines of Menelaos at

Sparta and Agamemnon at Mycenae early Dorian

attempts to co-opt epic heroes."0 In support of this view he cited "heroic burials" that he believed showed Homer's influence, such as that of Amphi- damas of Chalkis (Hes. Op. 654-59), and the early seventh-century B.C. West Gate burials at Eretria, warrior cremations in bronze urns, accompanied by weapons.31 Finally, he proposed that hero cults that he believed preceded his "Age of Homer," such as those of Erechtheus and Akademos at Athens and

Odysseus on Ithaca, depended on racial continuity. In response to Coldstream, Price broadened her

earlier work, identifying 10 cults that antedate Homer (dating Homer to 750 B.C.).32 Price looked to the Indo-Europeans for the ultimate origin of ancestral veneration, and identified saga and the

29 Coldstream (supra n. 26) 14. 30 Coldstream (supra n. 26) 15-16. 31 On the West Gate burials, C. Berard, Eretria III:

L'Hir6on a' la Porte de l'Ouest (Bern 1970); and Berard, "R6cuperer la mort du prince: heroisation et formation de la cite," in G. Gnoli and J.-P Vernant eds., La mort: les morts dans les socitics anciennes (Cambridge 1982) 89-105; cf.

Price (supra n. 17) 143 concerning "heroic burials": "Most probably certain elements went both ways: from common burial practices to hero-cult and from hero-cult to special important burials." Cf. Antonaccio 1994, ch. 5.

32 TH. Price, "Hero Cult in the 'Age of Homer' and Earlier," in G. Bowersock et al. eds., Arktouros: Hellenic Studies Presented to B. Knox (Berlin 1979) 219-28.

396 CARLA M. ANTONACCIO [AJA 98

LIV

i.4

"CID

Fig. 7. Distribution of tomb cult at Bronze Age tombs, 1050-600 B.C. (C. Antonaccio)

desire to define identity as incentives for hero cult.33 Price criticized Coldstream for using too low a lower limit for his evidence, for conflating hero cult and the tomb cults, and for including propitiation and accidental intrusion into Mycenaean tombs. She ob- served that these cults, ostensibly engendered by epic, did not seem to be directed to epic heroes.34

Bronze Age tombs are locations where hero cults could be expected to develop, given the written evi-

dence, and since Coldstream's summary, it has

widely been accepted that the later material found at them consists of votive offerings to heroes. In the last few years the tomb evidence has been the sub-

ject of continual comment, and the term tomb cult often employed to differentiate it from hero cult at formal shrines. Tomb cult is used of family vis-

its to graves in the Classical period by Humphreys; Farnell called this tendance.35 In general, the later material in and around Mycenaean tombs includes

offerings of pottery and occasionally small bronzes and figurines, evidence of activities that took place at the tombs, including ritual eating and drinking (fig. 7; see infra). Snodgrass, Whitley, and Morris have all discussed this phenomenon in recent years, deemphasizing Homer's influence on these prac- tices and appealing more to regional historical and social factors (infra).36 Yet the objects of tomb cult are still often assumed to be heroes. In fact, the canonical concept of the rise of hero cult during the

eighth century is due to the later material in Myce- naean tombs, rather than the founding of hero shrines per se.

33 Price (supra n. 32) 228: "The exact time of intersec- tion between mythology and actual practice or worship is still to be discovered." Snodgrass also responded to Cold- stream: A. Snodgrass, Archaeology and the Rise of the Greek State (Cambridge 1977) esp. 30-31.

34 Price (supra n. 32) 220. 35 S. Humphreys, "Family Tombs and Tomb Cult in An-

cient Athens: Tradition or Traditionalism?" JHS 100

(1980) 96-126; and R. Garland, The Greek Way of Death (London 1985); see also Antonaccio 1994. Morris uses the term, as does S. Alcock, "Tomb Cult and the Post-Classical Polis," AJA 95 (1991) 447-67.

36 Supra n. 35. Snodgrass (infra n. 40). J. Whitley, "Early States and Hero Cults: A Re-appraisal," JHS 108 (1988) 173-82 does not make a clear distinction between hero cult and tomb cult.

1994] CONTESTING THE PAST 397

Although archaeologists were now focused on the Iron Age and on new data and approaches, epic remained crucial. Both Snodgrass and Morris have drawn on the work of Gregory Nagy, who has ar- gued that hero cult was not a feature of later Greek religion instigated by epic, but "a highly evolved transformation of the worship of ancestors within the social context of the city-state.'"3 This transfor- mation in practice mirrors one in poetry, which moved from stories about ancestors to the epic cele- bration of heroes; while hero cults are local, epic

K•kog is Panhellenic.38 Drawing in turn on the work

of Snodgrass, Nagy emphasized the emergence of epic in the eighth century along with the polis and Panhellenism.39 The apparent absence of explicit hero cult in the Homeric poems remarked upon by Rohde is, then, due to the importance of heroes beyond their home locale, and does not imply that the ideology underlying the cults is also absent. In this model, the local and Panhellenic aspects of he- roes gradually fuse, so that epic heroes, too, eventu- ally receive cult as local figures.40

Nagy suggested that celebration of heroes may be framed in terms of ckXog, the glory or reknown con- ferred by epic poetry, and uTqi, honoring heroes with cult. Epic K~ktog and cultic TLrti are two comple-

mentary aspects of the hero's due. KXkog, not gen- erally used of present time in epic, requires memory (the oral tradition) while TLuLit is the communal ac-

knowledgment of a hero's status.41 The fjltog or

3t6ktg, observer-participants, offers this recognition, and sacrifice and feasting play a key role in this semantic field. In the context of ritual feasting,

t•Lti is expressed by the yipag, an "honorific portion" of the sacrifice.42 At the end of the eighth century, therefore, a simultaneous celebration of heroes in epic and cult emerges, at the time both Homer and archaeologically visible hero cult are now generally placed. This elegant formulation is, however, not exclusive to heroes and hero cult.43 By a wider definition, It[ti within the poems refers to the com- munal recognition offered to individuals ascribed a given level of status, and yicpag refers to the exact measure of this recognition.44

So far, the two main theories on the origins of hero cult and the role of Homer can be summarized as follows: 1) Homer's omission of hero cult and his attitudes toward the dead are anomalous; there is continuity between a native ancestor cult and the hero cult that develops from it over time; 2) Homer inspires hero cult among mainland Greeks (Dori- ans), who have no connection with the Mycenaeans

37 Nagy 115, building on Rohde. 38 See also Rohde, and Nagy 166-67, 284, etc., makes

epic a determining influence on practice. The erroneous notion of a primitive and continuous ancestral cult for the Greeks, on which the transmission of property was based, goes back to N. Fustel de Coulanges, The Ancient City (Bal- timore 1980), originally published in 1865 (see S. Hum- phreys' and A. Momigliano's introduction to the 1980 edition).

39 Nagy 166-67 citing Snodgrass; see also Rohde, ch. 1. On Panhellenism, see below.

40 Referred to in turn by Morris 752-54 and A. Snodgrass, "The Archaeology of the Hero," Aion. Annali del seminario di studi del mondo classico, sezione di archeologia e storia antica 10 (1988) 19-26, esp. 20-21.

41 Nagy 118 ?1 n. 2 and 148-50 in general on Ty!il;

also Nagy, Greek Mythology and Poetics (Ithaca 1990) 132-38. Kkog as recompense for death: Nagy 119; cf. C. Segal, "Kleos and Its Ironies in the Odyssey," AntCl 52 (1983) 24- 47. Odysseus refers, exceptionally, to his own

K:xog: Hom.

Od. 9.19-20; Penelope to hers, 19.127. On Penelope and

K:xog, see now M. Katz, Penelope's Renown, Meaning and

Indeterminacy in the Odyssey (Princeton 1991). K)Xog is used by Pindar of the living athlete: Nagy 1990 (infra n. 53) 150-51, but TLI"i is regularly translated as "honor." See in general 146-98, but cf. L. Kurke, The Traffic in Praise (Ith- aca 1991) 16-19 and passim. The physical counterpart of KXEog, rather than cult, is the oflta: see M. Lynn-George, Epos: Word, Narrative and the Iliad (Atlantic Highlands, N.J. 1988), esp. 153-229, and Nagy, Greek Mythology and Poetics

(supra) 202-22. Heroic stature expands in the Odyssey. A bard like Demodokos is also called a hero; Odysseus, how- ever, promises Nausikaa 0C 6g ~; eXeoC0t41iv and she is not a "heroine" (Od. 8.467). Historically, founders of cities may become heroes, though few are warriors. See Nagy 149, and Greek Mythology and Poetics 133, noticing where heroes get TtLil 1g OE6v when they function as "priest" or "king"; on founders, see I. Malkin, Greek Religion and Colo- nization (Leiden 1987).

42 Nagy 132, though see W. Burkert, Greek Religion (Cambridge, Mass. 1985) 199-203 on chthonic cults.

43 E.g., y'pag also describes Briseis, the prize captive in

II. book 1; cremation is the ypca' pBav6vTwv; to command is for Nestor the yFpcCg yep6vorvy (Il. 4.323), all part of a whole system of heroic prerogatives. See especially on the ypctg OCtv6vTwv R. Garland, "Geras thanonton: An Investi- gation into the Claims of the Homeric Dead," BICS 29 (1982) 69-80; and Nagy 132 on Briseis as a

ygpag. Simi-

larly, TCt•i are varied in nature and kind. As James

McGlew has recently pointed out, TCL[i within epic is the prerogative of the living; he stresses that connected "with material objects of value, its quantity is naturally limited. One man's gain of T[Uil implies another's loss" ("Royal Power and the Achaean Assembly at Iliad 2.84-393," ClAnt 8 [1989] 283-95, esp. 286-87, ns. 7-8).

44 Nagy 1990 (supra n. 41) 137. As Nagy points out to me, however, characters sometimes speak from the audi- ence's viewpoint, which is exemplified by the speech of Sarpedon to Glaukos in Il. 12.310-21.

398 CARLA M. ANTONACCIO [AJA 98

and very different burial practices; this leads to both the tomb cults and hero cult, the latter an attempt to co-opt the heroes of epic. The mutual reliance of

archaeologists and philologists on each other's data, however, whether using Homer to determine hero cult or archaeology to explicate Homer, leads to cir- cularity. A contextual approach to the Iron Age pro- duces two results: first, a diachronic perspective that indicates change, tension, and different patterns in

space and time; and second, a context within which to locate symbols and consider how their meanings change.45 The term cult identifies a pattern of ritual behavior in connection with specific objects, within a framework of spatial and temporal coordinates. Ritual behavior would include (but not necessarily be restricted to) prayer, sacrifice, votive offerings, competitions, processions, and construction of monuments. Some degree both of recurrence in

place and repetition over time of ritual action is nec-

essary for cult to be enacted, to be practiced.46 Such factors distinguish a cult of a god or hero from oc- casional rituals, such as apotropaic gestures. Of course, the location and even specific object of ritual

may vary and yet a cult may be spoken of: multiple cults of the gods in different aspects and locations, and heroes in multiple locations. It is in this sense that cult is used in the term hero cult.47 Ritual action

and cult as so defined are in part at least archae-

ologically visible; the practice of ancestor or hero cult leaves a recoverable trace.48 A complete archaeologi- cal record has not been and cannot be recovered, however, nor do all activities (much less ideologies) leave a recoverable trace.

Archaeology is critical for pre- and protohistory. Arguing backward from the practices of the Classi- cal period leads to unwarranted conclusions about these periods, and the written record is biased and incomplete, even for the period that produced it. When dealing with the written record in particular, we should keep in mind what Morris calls the "Nuer paradox," in which a society says one thing and does another.49 Hero cult is a prime example of a case in which the written evidence and ritual behavior as recovered by archaeology positively collide. First, despite the prominence of heroes in the written rec- ord, securely identified early (eighth century) hero shrines are few in number and peculiar in pattern. Shrines to Helen and Menelaos, and perhaps one to Agamemnon together with Kassandra or Alexan- dra, are both located in Laconia. At Mycenae, the shrine of Agamemnon has already been mentioned; on Ithaca, a shrine for Odysseus has been claimed in the cave at Polis Bay.50 Only Laconia, however, has

epigraphical evidence from the Archaic period as-

45 Archaeological theory has moved beyond New (or Processual) Archaeology and is currently struggling to bring history back into archaeology: for a critique, see T. Patterson, "History and the Post-Processual Archaeolo- gies," Man 24 (1989) 555-66, and recently I. Hodder, "In- terpretive Archaeology and Its Role," AmerAnt 56 (1991) 7-18 with references, for a "contextual" approach, and a similar emphasis on hermeneutics for classical archaeol- ogy by G. Gibbon, "Classical Archaeology and Anthropo- logical Archaeology: A Coming Rapprochement?" in N. Wilkie and W. Coulson eds., Contributions to Aegean Archae- ology (Minneapolis 1985) 283-94.

46 On ritual in burial practices, see the remarks of I. Morris, Death-Ritual and Social Structure in Classical Antiquity (Cambridge 1992) 8-15, and cf. C. Bell, Ritual Theory, Rit- ual Practice (Oxford 1992).

47 See Antonaccio 1993 and cf. Price (supra n. 32) 220: in tomb cults, "many deposits contain vases of one period, therefore how can one talk about instituted continuous cult?"

48 On this see, e.g., C. Renfrew, The Archaeology of Cult: The Sanctuary at Phylakopi (BSA Suppl. 18, London 1985) for the Aegean.

49 Morris (supra n. 46) 7-9, esp. 6: "The social structure we are born into and socialised within is a set of assump- tions about what we should say, do, and even think in given situations, but it does not determine our behaviour. Everything we do is informed by learned social structure, but the structure itself is only transmitted through time and space by real people as they repeat what they them-

selves have learned, or react against it." It should be said that Farnell did admit change over time in the category of the hero.

50 For the Menelaion, shrine of Helen and Menelaios, at Sparta, see Droop et al., "I Laconia: I. Excavations at Sparta, 1909. ?6. The Menelaion," BSA 15 (1908-1909) 108-57; H. Catling, "Excavations at the Menelaion, 1973- 1975," Lakonikai Spoudai 2 (1975) 258-69; "New Excava- tions at the Menelaion, Sparta," in U. Jantzen ed., Neue Forschungen in griechischer Heiligtiimern (Tuibingen 1976) 77-90; "Excavations at the Menelaion 1976-1977," La- konikai Spoudai 3 (1977) 408-15; "Excavations at the Me- nelaion, Sparta, 1973-76," AR 1977, 24-42; "Study at the Menelaion 1982-1983," Lakonikai Spoudai 7 (1983) 23-30; "Sparta: A Mycenaean Palace and a Shrine to Menelaus and Helen," Current Archaeology 130 (1992) 429-31; H. Catling and H. Cavanagh, "Two Inscribed Bronzes from the Menelaion, Sparta," Kadmos 15 (1976) 145-57; W. Cavanagh and R.R. Laxton, "Lead Figurines from the Menelaion and Seriation," BSA 79 (1984) 23-36; R. Catling, "Excavations at the Menelaion: 1985," Lakonikai Spoudai 10 (1986) 205-16; R. Catling, "A Votive Deposit of Seventh-Century Pottery from the Menelaion," and R. Tomlinson, "The Menelaion and Spartan Architecture," in J. Sanders ed., $IAOAAK?2N. Lakonian Studies in Hon- our of Hector Catling (London 1992) 57-75 and 247-56, respectively. For Amyklai, see G. Salapata, "Lakonian Plaques and Their Relation to the Stone Reliefs," in Akten des XIII internazionalen Kongress fiir klassische Archdologie 1988 (Mainz 1990) 525; Salapata, "Pausanias 3.19.6: The

1994] CONTESTING THE PAST 399

signing its shrines to their respective heroes. The dedication of the shrine at Mycenae to Agamemnon during the Iron Age has been strongly challenged: though the offerings begin at the end of the eighth century, the two graffiti naming Agamemnon as the

recipient are at least fourth century in date, and an

early fifth-century destruction of the shrine took

place in between.51 The location of the Ithacan cave and its offerings of bronze tripods and cauldrons fit the epic tradition very well, but this shrine provides no evidence for an Iron Age dedication to Odys- seus.52 Although their foundations date from the Iron Age, then, two of these shrines are not securely connected with heroes from their inception. Nor are they founded by leading poleis, although the

archaeological record for this type of sanctuary is

very lacunar: little is known of arrangements for cults of Erechtheus at Athens, for example.53 Even more important, however, this handful of shrines is not located at Mycenaean tombs, as to be expected from accounts that emphasize the importance of

physical relics in hero cult, especially their bones,

which locate the hero in a particular place or

places.54 The early evidence for hero cult at sanctu- aries of Olympian deities is not at all clear, either,

though Greek athletic contests are said to originate in funeral games for heroes. For example, Alfred Mallwitz has shown that cult at the Pelopeion in

Olympia belongs to the Archaic period, and heroes at other Panhellenic sanctuaries have proven to be

similarly absent in the Iron Age.55 The preceding evaluation is made on a narrow

criterion for hero cult: its identification by inscrip- tion or other written source. Types of offerings alone cannot securely identify any cult, Olympian or other, nor can location; as we have already seen,

early hero shrines are not located at tombs, though our written sources lead us to expect this. It will seem contradictory to downplay the testimony of written sources, and then rely on them for such in- formation, but we will never break out of circularity if we assume that any later activity at a Mycenaean tomb must be hero cult. If a cult was founded in the Iron Age and attracted inscribed dedications in the

Sanctuary of Alexandra at Amyklai," AJA 95 (1991) 331; and the reports in Ergon 1956, 100-104; 1957, 12-13; 1957, 548-51; 1960, 167-73. Mycenae: Cook (supra n. 22) and see infra n. 51. Ithaca: S. Benton, "Excavations in Ithaca, III. The Cave at Polis, I," BSA 35 (1934-1935) 45-73; Benton, "A Votive Offering to Odysseus," Antiquity 10 (1936) 350; Benton, "Excavations in Ithaca, III. The Cave at Polis, II," BSA 39 (1938-1939) 1-51; on the pot- tery, see W. Coulson, "The 'Protogeometric' from Polis Reconsidered," BSA 86 (1991) 42-64.

51 C. Morgan and T Whitelaw, "Pots and Politics: Ce- ramic Evidence for the Rise of the Greek State," AJA 95 (1991) 79-108, esp. 89 challenge the dedication to Agamemnon in the Archaic period as I did in my disserta- tion in 1987 (see also C. Antonaccio, "Tombs, Terraces, and the Early Argive Heraion," Hesperia 61 [1992] 85-105 with references). E de Polignac's doubts in La naissance de la cite grecque (Paris 1984) 130-31, n. 12 are based on the presence of female terracottas among the finds, but these do not provide an identification or contradict one.

52 Hom. Od. book 13 describes the cave where Odysseus hides his Phaiakian treasures, which include 13 tripods, with Athena's help; the entire case rests on a single graffito from the Hellenistic period, whereas there is other earlier epigraphical evidence for Athena, Hera, and the Nymphs; see Antonaccio 1993.

53 Nagy 7, with notes; Nagy 1990 (supra n. 41) 36-82; Nagy, Pindar's Homer (Baltimore 1990) 52-115; see also Antonaccio 1993, 61-62. Panhellenism as evidenced by interregional sanctuaries like Olympia will now have to be considered in light of Morgan (supra n. 3) and Morgan, "The Origins of Pan-Hellenism" in N. Marinatos and R. Higg eds., Greek Sanctuaries, New Approaches (London 1993) 18-44, who challenges the early (i.e., eighth cen- tury) importance of these centers far beyond their regions. On the other hand, her work makes clear that elite inter-

action and competition took place long before the rise of the polis.

54 Snodgrass (supra n. 18) 124 (also that hero cult could proliferate to several locations). See my article, "Marking Time: The Bronze Age in the Cultic Topography of Early Greece," in S. Alcock and R. Osborne eds., Placing the Gods: Greek Sanctuaries in Space (Oxford, forthcoming), though the earlier work ofA. Nock, "The Cult of Heroes," HThR 37 (1944) 141-74 and W. Fergusson, "The Attic Orgeones," HThR 37 (1944) 61-130 indicated that hero cult did not necessarily require a tomb.

55 See Nagy (supra n. 53) 119-29 on Panhellenic games, especially the Olympics. On Pelops see A. Mallwitz, Olympia und seine Bauten (Munich 1972) 133-37; and Mall- witz, "Cult and Competition Locations in Olympia," in W. Raschke ed., The Archaeology of the Olympics (Madison 1988) 79-109, as well as H.-V. Hermann, "Pelops in Olympia," in Zrg&e: T6o! Et Mvlv?)

N. KovroA•ovro; (Athens 1980) 59-74. Recent excavation demonstrating that a prehis- toric tumulus did in fact reside beneath the Classical shrine does not alter this conclusion: see H. Catling, AR 1987-1988, 24; E. French, AR 1989-1990, 30, and AR 1990-1991, 24; and H. Kyrieleis, "Neue Ausgrabungen in Olympia," in H. Kyrieleis and W Coulson eds., Symposium on the Olympic Games (Athens 1992) 19-24. Palaimon/Melik- ertes at Isthmia: E. Gebhard, "The Evolution of a Pan-hel- lenic Sanctuary: From Archaeology to History at Isthmia," in Marinatos and Higg (supra n. 53) 154-77, esp. 170-72; Archemoros at Nemea: S. Miller et al., Nemea. A Guide to the Museum and Site (Berkeley 1990); Neoptolemos/Pyr- rhos at Delphi: J. Pouilloux, FdD II: Topographie et architec- ture. La region nord du sanctuaire (Paris 1960) 49-60; J. Fontenrose, "The Cult and Myth of Pyrrhos at Delphi," CSCA 4 (1960) 191-261; and E Stihler, "Die Lesche der Knidier--ein Heroon des Neoptolemos?" Boreas 12 (1989) 15-16.

400 CARLA M. ANTONACCIO [AJA 98

00

OF

t2tcA

co .0Colo ?~P ?~a ..,: ,, ?c

Fig. 8. Reuse of Bronze Age tombs, 1050-600 B.C. (C. Antonaccio)

Archaic period, as at the Menelaion, then its attribu- tion to a particular hero from the beginning is prob- ably acceptable. Otherwise we overlook the fact that Greek ritual was a dynamic, changing category, which underwent important periods of active gen- eration and which in turn created change.

The recipients of tomb cult are anonymous; if

they were named by participants, whether as ge- neric hero or specific character, there is no record in

any instance. Descriptions of heroic relics and their

recovery are very different (see infra), and so the

practice, interestingly, does not appear in the writ- ten sources on cult. The locations of the few bonafide hero shrines away from tombs, the anonymity of tomb cults, and their lack of continuity and regular- ity indicate a different and separate phenomenon

from hero cult. Another factor in tomb cult is that Bronze Age tombs also receive new burials in the Iron Age and later. Such burials occur throughout the Argolid and at other sites across Greece (fig. 8).56 This is especially significant because it suggests a connection with funerary practice, and calls into

question the interpretation of the votive deposits as

offerings to heroes. Tomb cult is a type of ancestor

cult, which, however, in returning to Bronze Age tombs creates ancestors by the adoption of ancient dead unrelated by linear descent and unacknowl-

edged for centuries.57 Although the Greeks did speak of ancestors using

a variety of terms, there is less written evidence for a cult of ancestors than for hero cult.58 In the histori- cal period, the Greeks practiced what Humphreys

56 See Antonaccio 1993 and 1994, passim for the Ar- golid, Attica, and Laconia. Some of the burials were noted by Snodgrass and Coldstream but their significance was not brought out; cf. Snodgrass 1971 and Coldstream (su- pra n. 3) 14.

57 For archaeological visibility, Morris (supra n. 3) 97- 109; Morris, "The Archaeology of Ancestors: The Saxe/Goldstein Hypothesis Revisited," Cambridge Archae- ological Journal 1 (1991) 147-69; and Antonaccio 1993. I am indebted to Ian Morris for sharing his manuscript

before its appearance in print. I hope to address else- where the issues he raises there.

58 Terms include yovig, jTp6yovot, urpon;d~opEg, upt-

ToMdropEg, GPLTuorTcvpELg; see Antonaccio 1993. A festival called Genesia, an annual celebration of the dead at Ath- ens (and possibly elsewhere), was perhaps connected with the genos: see E Jacoby, "FENEIIA: A Forgotten Festival of the Dead," CQ 36-39 (1944) 65-75; and D. Kurtz and J. Boardman, Greek Burial Customs (London 1971) 147-48 with references.

1994] CONTESTING THE PAST 401

calls "memorialism" rather than ancestor worship; they were motivated (at least when they write down their thoughts on the subject in the Archaic period and after) by a desire to be remembered by family and passersby. The Greeks of historical periods, however, did not routinely immortalize or divinize their family dead. Moreover, for most Greeks gene- alogies did not articulate the generations of the dead or structure the relations of the living.59 Yet, as discussed already, several scholars have proposed that ancestors were local and familial, the founders of a clan, for example, and that their descendants maintained a cult at their graves. Famous figures could receive worship as both ancestors (family) and heroes (community), either in the same or different

places. Ancestor cult was suggested as the original model; when some ancestors became heroes, the

practice became more general, or some originally unheroic ancestors were elevated to heroic status after the cult of heroes had taken hold.60 Heroes, then, could be considered as ancestors, especially when claimed by members of an elite; Nagy, too, observed that heroes could be the completely unhis- torical ancestors of a kinship group, like a genos, and he proposed that hero cult grew from worship of ancestors; hero cult was a "revival of a continuous heritage."61 For Farnell, the earliest clear-cut evi- dence for ancestor cult was only sixth century in date, and he denied that the Greeks generally wor-

shipped the dead.62 Since the early work of Rohde, Farnell, and others, ancestors all but dropped out of the discussion until the last 10 years. For this the extension of hero cult to Mycenaean tombs with the increase of archaeological evidence is largely re- sponsible.

Testing the practice of hero cult and the assump- tion that hero cult is based on ancestor cult depends

on archaeology. The locations, use, and reuse of

graves, and the rituals connected with them provide the archaeologically visible data for the acknowl-

edgment of ancestors. Obviously, archaeology can- not recover oral (and many written) accounts of

kinship or genealogy, nor such practices as prayer, or some types of offerings and sacrifices that leave few or no detectable traces. It can, however, recover burial patterns and the frequency and intensity of some ritual behavior. The Bronze Age Greeks

mostly practiced group burial in chamber and tholos tombs and in tumuli, perhaps based on the extended family. The procedures that were fol- lowed in reopening a tomb for multiple use during the Bronze Age long ago led George Mylonas to conclude that there was no contemporary hero or ancestor cult; he pointed out that the remains of earlier burials were often accorded no respect at all when the tomb was reused, and tombs were regu- larly robbed as well.63 What Mylonas and others saw as disrespect and evidence for looting, however, is at least in part due to the practice of secondary burial, where the remains of earlier interments were col- lected and placed in pits in the floor of the tomb, or

swept aside.64 The Mycenaeans, though, also showed respect for the locations of earlier burials: a familiar example is the incorporation of Grave Cir- cle A within the fortifications of Mycenae, and much earlier tombs were also reused, even by the Myce- naeans. It is becoming clearer that such treatment of monuments in the Bronze Age, too, was an at- tempt to legitimate the present using the past.65

From the Bronze Age onward, engagement with dead kin is limited, in burial custom and memory both, ordinarily not extending back beyond the third generation. In burial practices as known from several areas of the Greek world, this generally

59 S. Humphreys, "Death and Time," in S. Humphreys and H. King eds., Mortality and Immortality: The Anthropol- ogy and Archaeology of Death (London 1981) 261-83, esp. 269-70 referring to M. Friedman's work. See also An- tonaccio 1993, 47-48.

60 Farnell 343-44. 61 See Nagy 115-16, and esp. E Bourriot, Recherches sur

la nature du genos. Etude d'histoire sociale athenienne-periodes archaique et classique (Diss. Universite de Paris 1976) and D. Roussel, Tribu et cite (Annales littiraires de l'Universite de Be- sangon 193, Paris 1976); add now E. Kearns, The Heroes of Attica (BICS Suppl. 57, London 1989).

62 Farnell 355. Although Farnell devoted a chapter to "The Cults of Ancestors," he drew most of his evidence from later Athenian practices and by conflating sources on other Greek communities from all periods. For example, the will of one Epikteta, which specifies sacrifices at a hero6n to the family's "heroic spirits," is called "one of our chief documents concerning the Greek worship of the dead" but it comes from the island of Thera and dates only

to 200 B.C. (Farnell 353). 63 Mylonas (supra n. 6) argued forcefully against either

ancestor or hero cult among the Mycenaeans; see now, on Bronze Age burial practices, Higg and Nordquist. On the familial basis for the use of chamber tombs, see W. Cavanagh, "Cities and Synoecism," in J. Rich and A. Wal- lace-Hadrill eds., City and Country in the Ancient World (Lon- don 1991) 97-118; C. Mee and W Cavanagh, "The Spatial Distribution of Mycenaean Tombs," BSA 85 (1990) 225- 43.

64 B. Wells, "Death at Dendra: On Mortuary Practices in a Mycenaean Community," in HFigg and Nordquist 125-40.

65 Antonaccio 1994, ch. 2; Mee and Cavanagh (supra n. 63) 242; and also E. Protonotariou-Deilaki, "Burial Customs and Funerary Rites in the Prehistoric Argolid," in Higg and Nordquist 69-83; E. French, "'Dynamis' in the Archaeological Record at Mycenae," in M. Mackenzie and C. Roueme eds., Images of Authority (PCPS Suppl. 16, 1989) 122-30.

402 CARLA M. ANTONACCIO [AJA 98

means that a chamber tomb or group of graves is used seriatim for just a few generations. Although a

single cemetery might see centuries of use, graves and tombs are continually covered over or cut

through.66 In memory, too, descent usually does not extend beyond the father's father. This is apparent in the long term as well: there is little if any trace of

regular, long-term veneration at tombs from the Bronze Age to the Classical period.67 This excludes for the moment mythic, epic, or civic ideologies of descent. There were, of course, families (yevfl) in the historical period that did use ancestors as defining points in genealogies, and who claimed descent from heroes. The point is that this is not true of all Greeks, only a few families.68 Yet, all Greeks had ancestors, in the acknowledged ties with past mem- bers of their oikos.

To be fully understood, the tomb cult data should be coordinated with patterns of burial practice. Re-

gional differences should be considered in detail, to

bring out local patterns or distinguish widespread trends. Space prohibits such discussion here; the data are available elsewhere, and some conclusions can be drawn.69 Tomb cult is a sporadic, though re-

curring, feature, and therefore we confront again the terminology of cult. No single grave, or even

single cemetery, is continuously venerated or main- tained from the Bronze Age throughout the Iron

Age. In tomb cult, most often visits are made just once, perhaps twice.70 Such excursions are very dif- ferent from hero cult, which once established con- tinues to be practiced for long periods of time. The few more durable instances may mean that these particular tomb cults qualify for cult in the sense of an established practice, rather than an occasional ritual, or they may be an instance where hero cult is in fact located at a Bronze Age tomb. In view of the permanent anonymity and lack of monumentaliza- tion, it is more likely that duration is a regional char- acteristic in these cases, though exceptions occur. It is important to emphasize that tomb cult is not confined to the later eighth century; it occurs at least as early as the 10th, and continues beyond the emer-

gence of the polis.71 Furthermore, tomb cult in the Iron Age is part of the regional complexes of con-

temporary funerary rituals. This can be illustrated with an example from Mycenae: a chamber tomb built at the edge of Grave Circle B, outside the cita- del, contained a circular structure built of field- stones and used for offerings (and possibly grave- side meals). Very similar structures are also known from chamber tombs at Prosymna and Argos, but

chiefly from Iron Age cemeteries in Naxos and Asine, in the Protogeometric and Late Geometric

periods. Although the platforms known are from the Protogeometric and Late Geometric periods,

66 See Humphreys (supra n. 35). 67 This is a highly simplified summary of the evidence:

see Morris (supra n. 3) 90-91; Bourriot (supra n. 61) 1,178; Roussel (supra n. 61); and Humphreys (supra n. 35); see also W. Cavanagh and C. Mee, "The Location of Mycenaean Chamber Tombs in the Argolid," in Higg and Nordquist 55-64; Cavanagh (supra n. 63) for the Bronze Age. Extensive genealogies do exist in the Greek world for certain gene in the historical record and in epic, but they are exceptional; see Bourriot (supra n. 61) for discussion.

68 This is the crucial result of Bourriot's work (supra n. 61). I cannot agree with Nagy's insistence (supra n. 53) 152-58 on early Greece as a "tribal" society, "detribalized" by the polis. As he puts it, "inherited ideologies and prac- tices concerning ancestors-a key determinant of aristo- cratic individuality-were drastically curtailed. For one, the inherited ideologies about ancestors as encoded in genealogical traditions became differentiated into mytho- logical genealogies of heroes and historical genealogies of immediate ancestors .., with this differentiation of inher- ited ideologies came a parallel differentiation of inherited practices: the institutional worship of ancestors became differentiated into two separate but related practices, the worship of heroes and the cult of immediate ancestors" (153; cf. 144). This assumes a continuity and uniformity in

Greek society, while current work on the Iron Age has brought out the ruptures and instability of the period, see esp. Morris (supra n. 3) and Whitley (supra ns. 2 and 3). The development of ancestor cult and of hero cult are important precisely because the Greeks' traditions con- cerning ancestors are created and recreated throughout their history.

69 See Antonaccio 1994. 70 Only at the Menidhi tholos and tomb 1 at Thorikos

in Attica do cults that begin in the late Iron Age continue over a long period of time. Menidhi: P Wolters, "Vasen aus Menidi II,"JdI 14 (1899) 103-35; and R. Hdigg, "Gifts to the Heroes in Geometric and Archaic Greece," in T. Lin- ders et al. eds., Gifts to the Gods (Boreas 15, Uppsala 1987) 93-99; Thorikos: M. Devillers, An Archaic and Early Classi- cal Deposit from a Mycenaean Tomb at Thorikos (Miscellanea Graeca 8, Ghent 1988). There are other cases of long-term reuse (e.g., Medon in Phokis) but these are not certainly cult. See Antonaccio 1994, ch. 2 for details, as well as An- tonaccio 1993.

71 Morris 750 acknowledges earlier cases of tomb cult, but emphasizes the eighth century. On the other hand, the earlier cults (shown on 759: table 1 and discussed on 753) are not the tomb cults discussed here, but very question- able cases and not at Mycenaean tombs.

1994] CONTESTING THE PAST 403

burials can be found throughout the Iron Age, and even earlier. 72

The veneration of ancestors in the Iron Age and

Early Archaic period, with graveside meals at the circular platforms and offerings of pottery and small terracottas and bronzes, takes place in areas that also see the reuse of tombs, both Bronze Age and contemporary.7" The reuse of Bronze Age tombs for burials and tomb cult both, however, may not be the exclusive preserve of the elite. Placing of both elaborate and simple burials (including those of children) and the very modest types of offerings in most instances do not point to worship of noble ancestors by those of lower status.74 Mycenaean graves, resting places of the ancestors of the people later burying in the same area, may have been

adopted by more than one group within a commu-

nity in competing or complementary strategies in which they sought status by claiming priority and a connection with the past. The distribution of reused tombs and circular platforms is most extensive

among the communities of the Argolid, but such features are also known in Iron Age Messenia, Euboia, and Naxos. By contrast, Attica provides relatively few instances of Iron Age reuse of Bronze

Age tombs, rather more deposits and no circular

platforms.75 The oscillation between reuse and visits from the end of the Bronze Age, the range of offer-

ings and burials, and regional variations all point to

a range of users and practitioners, and contesting claims to the past. Moreover, the distribution of such

practices among early Greek communities, like arti- fact styles and other cultural practices, indicates the use of these rituals in a widespread network of com- munication, though local meanings must not be ig- nored (see infra).

Although a continuous concern with the earlier dead emerges, a continuous tradition, first of ances- tors and then of heroes, or an unbroken veneration of heroic tombs does not, nor does tomb cult come to an end with the establishment of the polis, and the rise of hero cult at separate shrines.76 The modu- lation and small-scale contrast with the cults of epic heroes, from whom Iron Age and Archaic elites claimed descent as part of an ideology confirming social or political realities, are stable and long-term. Distinctly local, hero cult also defines community identity, while at the same time it participates in both ritual and poetry, which come to be Panhellenic.77 The lack of shrines constructed by later Greeks at

Mycenaean tombs is consistent with a familiarity with these monumental relics of the past and a local

meaning apart from hero cult. Such meanings were unstable and variable: Mycenaean tombs were reused as tombs, transformed into furnaces and mills, trash pits, and shelters, and tomb cult is not

necessarily the rule for Bronze Age remains in later

periods. Even as late as the Roman period, a tholos

72 Mycenae: G. Mylonas, O rat4oLKg KKAdog B"' yov

Mvwrv0yv (Athens 1972-1973) 18, pl. 5a-b; I. Papade-

metriou, "AvaoxUa@l Ev M •lK vYLg," Prakt 1955, 218-23

for the circular structure (also illustrated in Antonaccio 1993, fig. 4). The circular structure might have a Bronze Age precedent in the circular "altar" over Grave IV in Grave Circle A, and an apparently similar structure re- ported in a tumulus at Argos: Protonotariou-Deilaki (su- pra n. 65) 82, figs. 29-30.

73 On the Argolid, see, e.g., R. Higg, "Funerary Meals in the Geometric Necropolis at Asine?" in R. Higg et al. 1983 (supra n. 3) 189-94. Instances of contemporary reuse are clear at Lefkandi and Argos, for example. Cf. R. Higg, Die Graber der Argolis 1: Lage und Form der Graber (Boreas 7.1, Uppsala 1974) esp. 157-59. At Lefkandi (Toumba necropolis) and Nichoria (settlement), circular platforms are found in different contexts. For Nichoria, see McDonald et al. (supra n. 3) and recently K. Fager- str6m, "Finds, Function, and Plan: A Contribution to the Interpretation of Iron Age Nichoria in Messenia," OpAth 17 (1988) 33-70 with references; on the PG Lefkandi building, see now M. Popham et al., Lefkandi 11.2: The Bur- ial Building at Toumba (London 1993) with references to the Toumba cemetery, and my article "Homer and Lefkandi,"

in 0. Anderson and M. Dickie eds., Homer's World: Fact, Fiction and Tradition (forthcoming).

74 E.g., a rich MG burial at Berbati: G. Sdiflund, Excava- tions at Berbati 1936-1937 (Uppsala 1965) 35-37, 81-90, figs. 17-18, 55-75; cf. Antonaccio 1993, fig. 2. A seventh- century burial in T 533 at Mycenae: A. Wace, Chamber Tombs at Mycenae (Archaeologia 82, London 1932) 114, 117 figs. 47-49, pl. 56.

75 Naxos: V. Lambrinoudakis, "Veneration of Ancestors in Geometric Naxos," in R. Higg et al. 1988 (supra n. 3) 235-46; see Antonaccio 1993 and supra n. 73.

76 Cf. even Farnell 344: "the facts of modern anthropo- logical study convince us that the question of priority in regard to these two motives of cult [hero and ancestor] is an ideal one; both are found operative simultaneously in early and late periods." On later tomb cult: Alcock (supra n. 35).

77 Explored by S. Sherratt, "'Reading the Texts': Ar- chaeology and the Homeric Question," Antiquity 64 (1990) 807-24. If anything, local cults like that of Helen and Menelaos in Laconia led the way for hero cult at Panhel- lenic sanctuaries, whose origins would have been as re- gional centers of communication and competition.

404 CARLA M. ANTONACCIO [AJA 98

Fig. 9. Tiryns. Roman oil press in Mycenaean tholos tomb. (Photo C. Antonaccio)

tomb might serve as a mill or become a shrine with the addition of an imperial monument (figs. 9-10).78 This cannot be ascribed to the Greeks' ignorance of their ancestors' stories, which is the assumption be- hind the hypothesis of Homeric influence, or unfa-

miliarity with the past, implied by the concept of an

eighth-century "Greek renaissance." Rather, the monuments were not always significant to later Greeks in ways that we would predict from written sources alone.

We may now consider the relationship of tomb cult to written accounts in which the bones or other relics of heroes figure. The bones in particular con- fer a military or political advantage on the polis or

sanctuary that possesses them, and on those who

recover them. The interest in relics does not seem to be the rationale behind tomb cult. I have sug- gested elsewhere that such bodily relics were often

actually fossils. The findspots of relics, when re- corded, do not include actual Bronze Age tombs.79 As seen above, it is difficult to find evidence for the

early identification of Mycenaean graves specifically with any sort of hero, and hero cults are not founded at actual graves of any kind.80 The cult of heroes as depicted in written sources involves only purported graves, which do not seem to be the ones involved in tomb cult. The accounts of tombs from which relics were collected do not describe tholos and chamber tombs; furthermore, Mycenaean tombs visited in tomb cult had frequently collapsed, sealing off Bronze Age levels.

Tomb cult, therefore, did not supply these relics, nor is tomb cult another name for relic cult, al-

though the practice of tomb cult demonstrates that authentic Bronze Age remains clearly were known and available. Similarly, hero cult was not predi- cated on actual tombs, although the practice of tomb cult makes plain that Mycenaean tombs were known in this period. Yet hero cult, the cult of relics, and

genealogies that traced members of the Greek elites to mythical forebears all fabricated links with the

past. While tomb cult used remains of the Bronze

Age, hero cult and the cult of relics compete with tomb cult, or complement it, providing another as-

pect to the uses of the past. The traffic in relics re-

quires the interstate arena to provide a space in which to enact it.81

In addition to the competition for the past re- vealed in the archaeological record for ritual, epic constructions of time suggest additional tensions,

among epic traditions and between ritual and epic. Susan Sherratt suggests that in the wake of the Bronze Age collapse, the early Iron Age saw the most active creation of epic, in which cremation, for

example, became the heroic burial idiom (whereas inhumation had been standard Late Bronze Age

78 See Antonaccio 1994 and supra n. 51, contra Morris 758. A striking instance of continuities with the present: AR 1991-1992, 16 reports that intact chamber tombs south of Mycenae have been recently used as dwellings by migrant fruit pickers, and collapsed tombs as trash pits. For Orchomenos, see A. Schachten, Cults of Boiotia 1: Acheloos to Hera (BICS Suppl. 381, London 1981) 208 with references.

79 On this see esp. Pfister (supra n. 11) 196-211, 425- 28, 507-508; and Antonaccio 1993 for references; and Vandiver (supra n. 11) 36 n. I with reference to G. Hux- ley, "Bones for Orestes," GRBS 20 (1979) 145-48 (and cf. H. Parke, "The Bones of Pelops and the Siege of Troy,"

Hermathena 48 [1933] 153-62). 80 As pointed out by A. Snodgrass, "Les origines du

culte des h6ros dans la Grace antique," in Gnoli and Ver- nant (supra n. 31) 107-19, 115-16. Snodgrass 1987 (supra n. 3) 160-61, however, argues that the institution of "hero cult" at chamber tombs "positively excludes familiarity with Homer-or, at least, identification of the object of the cult with a 'Homeric hero'." See also 164: "'Homeric' cults seem never to be located at genuine graves of the heroic age." See Sherratt (supra n. 77) on cremation in epic as opposed to inhumation in the Bronze Age.

81 See Antonaccio 1993.

1994] CONTESTING THE PAST 405

'IF'.... :7 :

: :) •;

ii2i

.... 7

M77 ....

:~~ ~ 1 k':::? : :::

Fig. 10. Orchomenos (Boiotia). Roman monument base in Mycenaean tholos tomb. (Photo C. Antonaccio)

practice).82 The final phase in the eighth century saw the integration of episodes and the end of composi- tion, giving way to recitation. Sherratt only men- tions Hesiod briefly, though his poetry uses epic language and form. While Hesiod would seem to belong in Sherratt's final phase of consolidation, with the Five Ages in Works and Days (lines 106-201) he is still contributing to the construction of the past, and providing a detailed framework for it unique in the Greek epic tradition.83 This passage has been the subject of numerous interpretations, but none has really accounted for the lack of unity in Greek poetic traditions.

Hesiod says that a Gold generation was the first created by the gods of mortal men (tpEp6oCWv avOpCdCrw). They lived like the gods under Kronos, and disappeared when the earth covered them (KaT& yakLI K•EX1Uv•v),

after which they became bali-

[toveg ;oOe0ol, E'LXO6vLoL, by the will of Zeus. The Silver generation that followed was much worse; they were covered by Zeus who became angry be- cause they ignored the gods. Yet they, too, are <j3- XEKEg OVTIT(]v AvOpd•9nwV, OUOX6OVLOL Jd'EKapeg, second after the Gold generation but still deserving of

ttl."84 Each of these generations appears to fit

into conceptions of divinity that, rather than He- siod's invention, the Greeks may already have had in his time.

Hesiod's violent and dark third generation was of Bronze. Its members went down to Hades anony- mous, and unlike the other races, without a continu-

ing existence and explicitly without TLtil.

This is because they failed, according to Nagy, in their at-

tempts to win KXEog, and so are ignored in epic. We know their names from myth, but they are not cele- brated in epic because their deeds did not merit it.85

82 But cf. Nagy (supra n. 41) 85-87. 83 Vernant constructs a system of ages with complemen-

tary concepts of hubris and dike: J.-P Vernant, Myth and Thought among the Greeks (London 1983). Other recent considerations: C. Querbach, "Hesiod's Myth of the Four Races," CJ 81 (1985) 1-12; J. Rudhardt, "Le mythe hesio- dique des races et celui de Promethde recherche des struc-

tures et des significations," Revue europdenne des sciences sociales 19 (1981) 245-81. M.-C. Leclerc, "Le mythe des races une fiction aux sentiers qui bifurquent," Kernos 6 (1993) 207-24 appeared too late for consideration here.

84 "Second" may refer to temporal place, not hierarchy. 85 Cf. Farnell 157 ?9.4.

406 CARLA M. ANTONACCIO [AJA 98

Immediately after this generation, Zeus created the fourth, which is specified by no particular metal: it falls between the third of Bronze and the fifth of

Iron, which Hesiod specifies as his own. This fourth

generation is the OELov yEvog, the divine or godly generation of heroes, called i~lL0eot, the previous race on the earth, as Hesiod says. He states explicitly that this generation fought at Thebes and Troy, so

they are the figures of epic poetry as well. While

they perished in war, the fate of at least some was to live without cares in the Blessed Isles as fortunate, happy heroes (6XPLtot •poeg).86

As often observed, this fourth generation appears as an intrusion into the metallic sequence, which declines with each step except for the heroic inter- lude. Fontenrose suggested that the Bronze genera- tion did not really end and the Iron generation is

actually a part of it. Although the language is differ- ent for the introduction of the Iron generation, it will not, however, allow the two to be merged. He- siod clearly states that war destroyed the heroes, some at Thebes, some at Troy (lines 161-63). The

language used concerning the fate of those without an afterlife echoes that used of the other genera- tions. The tattered lines between this and the intro- duction of the final Iron generation make certainty about this section impossible, but Hesiod does call the Iron generation the fifth genos (lines 174-75).87 West suggests that "Greek traditions about men of the past were almost wholly concerned with those who fought at Thebes and Troy and with people linked to them by a network of genealogies. They had to be accommodated in any survey of man's

past. The position they occupy in Hesiod follows from the view that they were the people who pre- ceded us ([line] 160), coupled with an unwillingness to identify them with the Bronze race-perhaps be- cause the epics showed them as users of iron." 88He goes on to note that the Bronze, Heroic, and Iron races fairly accurately follow Greek concepts of his-

tory, whereas the Gold and Silver races seem alien to Greek tradition. Although the East provides par- allels, West acknowledges that Hesiod is earlier than

any of the Eastern texts he cites. West concludes that Hesiod's view stands apart from the usual one, which did not isolate the Age of Heroes from the rest of the past, or the present.89

Nagy remarks that generations one and four, the Golden and the Heroic, mirror each other in theme and diction, and points out that the cycle of ages comes full circle through the fifth, the present.90 Hesiod interrupted his narrative to wish that either he had died or not come into being until a later time, rather than live in the fifth age in which a total breakdown of social conventions takes place. This amounts to a desire for a Golden Age, for an end of

cyclical (rather than linear) time.91 For Hesiod's own

generation, the present "incorporates all the oppo- sitions of the past and the hereafter." This is part of

Nagy's larger analysis of the myth, in which he ar-

gues that Hesiod's diction provides evidence that the first and second generations depict the ritual, cultic aspect of heroes, while the third and fourth are the epic aspect.92

Archaeologists have tried to find a place for tomb cult in this structure. It is interesting to note that

86 There is no space here to thrash out all the possible dimensions of the word i]pwg; on the term "hero," see

supra, and Rohde 615 s.v. pipwg;

Farnell 15-16; cf. J. O'Brien, The Transformation of Hera (Lanham, Md. 1993). Nagy (supra n. 41) 15 on West's point that hemitheoi refers to parentage, rather than to divinity; M.L. West, Hesiod's Works and Days (Oxford 1978) 191, on line 160, but see W Verdenius, A Commentary on Hesiod, Works and Days, vv. 1- 382 (Mnemosyne Suppl. 86, Leiden 1985) 99, who points out that heroes in the epic tradition are often not of divine descent: "The original meaning of the word seems to be 'almost gods' (cf. LtOvL#g) . . . apart from the immortality of the gods there was not a sharp dividing-line between gods and men, but only a gradual difference . . . Just as the gods in their actions and feelings may sink to the hu- man level, prominent men may conversely rise to the level of the gods. . . . The anthropomorphism of the gods is complemented by the theomorphism of the heroes."

eetov perhaps refers, in this case, to their being like the gods, in the way that the first race lived like gods.

87 J. Fontenrose, "Work, Justice, and Hesiod's Five Ages," CP 69 (1974) 1-16, esp. 8 against decline; 10 on the Heroic to Iron transition. See also J. Gwyn Griffiths, "Ar-

chaeology and Hesiod's Five Ages,"Journal of the History of Ideas 17 (1956) 109-19, 113 with references.

88 West (supra n. 86) 174; to this he contrasts the Cata- logue of Women, where the Heroic is like the Gold Age. See also Griffiths (supra n. 87) 116 summarizing the East- ern comparanda. He concludes that Hesiod must have had access to folklore traditions of human origins, prob- ably dispersed from Egypt and Mesopotamia.

89 West (supra n. 86) 176. See also J. Gwyn Griffiths, "Did Hesiod Invent the 'Golden Age'?" Journal of the His- tory of Ideas 19 (1958) 92-93.

90 Nagy 169 with note ?30 n. 1. 91 Nagy 169, emphasis his. Cf. Fontenrose (supra n. 87)

10. 92 Nagy 155. Nagy and Vernant (supra n. 83) both

mention the cyclical character of the ages, but Vernant's emphasis is on the four metallic phases with the heroes intervening to complete the conceptualization of hubris and dike as constructed in pairs of metallic ages. Querbach (supra n. 83) pairs Gold and Silver, Heroic and Bronze, with regard to their creation and fate after death. He ad- mits, however, that the Bronze race is nameless.

1994] CONTESTING THE PAST 407

Hesiod's five ages received much attention in the earlier work of archaeologists. Griffiths, for exam-

ple, discusses the archaeological basis of the Hesio- dic scheme: "That the magical and religious associations of gold have played an important part in the idea of the Golden Age is quite clear; but it seems highly probable that the first meaning was a more literal one, and that Hesiod's scheme purports to show the ages of man in relation to the metals discovered by him. The order of his scheme is

chronological. What is more, the sequence gold, sil-

ver, bronze and iron is one which the archaeological record attests in many areas."93 He admits that of the four metals, Hesiod mentions the use of only bronze and iron (lines 150-51), but for Griffiths, if the choice of metals had only symbolized progressive decline, he would not have accurately mentioned the actual use of bronze and iron in the correct his- torical order. He then cites archaeological evidence for the use of gold and silver without knowledge of

smelting and before bronze and iron. Griffiths in- cludes copper, missing from Hesiod but important in the development of metallurgy, under the Greek word Xchic6g. He concludes that Hesiod's sequence blends myth and history, leaving the latter visible.94

Snodgrass has suggested that tomb cult was di- rected to the Silver generation, the 3no;X06vtoL, who are second after the Golden generation, but also

deserving of Z1Lti. This suggestion seems due to their location "under the earth"; similarly, West

thought Hesiod specified the Golden race as nJtL-

X06vtoL because they were concerned with man- kind, and could expect veneration in return. He, too, suggested that the Silver race as a{(OX06vtoL was

identified with specific graves. The failure of He-

siod's system to achieve the same status as Homer's would apparently explain why this view was short- lived and limited.95 Although both Snodgrass and West explain in;TLXOOVLO and ToX6(0vtoL as, respec-

tively, past generations who range the earth and those who are buried and fixed in space,96 elsewhere West cites Rohde's remark that the term jTyLXOoVLot

only serves to distinguish the Golden generation from the njTovpavtoL, or gods themselves; in Homer it designates the generation of men, not some origi- nal race. 'YjToXOovtot are then a further refinement in this scale of distinctions.97

The nonmetallic, fourth generation of epic he- roes in Hesiod's system is situated between the

anonymous and unreachable Gold, Silver, and Bronze generations of the cycle and the fifth, the

present Iron. Each of these had been covered up, and succeeding generations were not descended from them. If located in terms of absolute chronol-

ogy, the heroes lived at the cusp of the historical Iron Age: the Bronze race, Hesiod's anonymous, dark, and violent generation, did not know iron, nor did they eat bread, or have an afterlife, but were destined for Hades without a transformed exis- tence. The absence of ironworking places these

figures in the Late Helladic period, the historical

Mycenaeans. In a diachronic reading of Hesiod's

system, the heroes of epic were separated from this Bronze Age. If so, the Late Helladic period is

anonymous, though it leads into the final phase of war and imminent catastrophe, that which is cele- brated in song.98

3 Griffiths (supra n. 87) 112. 94 Griffiths (supra n. 87) 119. Cf. Griffiths (supra n. 89)

for further discussion.

95 West (supra n. 86) 181; Snodgrass (supra n. 3) 165. See also Griffiths (supra n. 87) 111; burials of the men of the Silver Age who did not worship the gods were re-

garded as the blessed dead, "as though the term origi- nated from the discovery of richly equipped interments not associated with recognizable symbols of religion, nor sites of temples in the Greek fashion, nor any abiding memories."

96 West (supra n. 86) 186; cf. Farnell 12-13; Rohde 67- 79.

97 West (supra n. 86) 182; see also Verdenius (supra n. 86) 86, 92-93; he identifies JoTox66vtot with "local he- roes" who do not go to Hades like the Bronze men but "stay just under the surface of the earth. They are one stage further away from the gods than the golden race, which stays on the surface of the earth ([line] 123) .... Hesiod does not call the silver race ipmweg because he re- serves this term for the fourth race ([line] 159). The latter could not be identified with the silver race because of their

warlike spirit, but the local heroes could, because many of them were anonymous. . . . The fact that Hesiod leaves their function undefined shows that he simply included the local heroes in his scheme [line 141]." As Querbach states (supra n. 83) 3, the Silver race is honored but not divine, but he also says they do not have any continuing existence, which seems contradicted by their function as

~iXaCKECg OVlTOiV JTXovUTo 6OTat (Hes. Op. 121). 98 See Farnell 13, and Rohde 75. The old notion of H.

Chadwick, The Heroic Age (Cambridge 1912), that con- struction and celebration of a heroic age springs up dur-

ing an ensuing dark period, may thus be of use here; see Antonaccio 1994 ch. 5 and Sherratt (supra n. 77) 814. Fontenrose (supra n. 87) 9 says that the heroic age is the Bronze Age "from another point of view, romanticized and glorified. As Heriod's bronze age preserves a genuine, if not entirely accurate, memory of the later historical Bronze Age, roughly 1400-1000 B.C., so the age of heroes carries the legendary and epic tradition of that time. He- siod did not realize that the two genea were really two representations of a single period."

408 CARLA M. ANTONACCIO [AJA 98

Sherratt characterizes this latter phase as one of "social and political fluidity and change when new

family or social groups emerge jostling for power and eager to establish their credentials, and when

legitimation and self-propaganda of individuals or small groups become particularly crucial issues."99 As for the offerings at chamber tombs, she thinks that "the growth of local 'hero' (or ancestor) cult, focussed on tombs of the evidently distant

past, marks a transition away from legitimation grounded in the present. Heroes in general were

settling into the past. From now on their value to the interests of family, community and wider groupings lay in possession and conservation of the heritage of tradition they already provided. The scene was set for the spontaneous transubstantiation of kleos (epic glory) into a ready-formed body of polydynamic myth."'"00As we have seen, the identification of tomb cult with hero cult is not secure, and if anything the

eighth century represents an intensification of the

competition over the past, though its significance as contested ground may have been agreed (infra).

While it is not legitimate to seek a completely con- sistent historical consciousness within this myth, there is a faded memory behind the description of the Heroic Age that is preserved in epic. The tombs of the Mycenaeans that are the object of tomb cult

beginning in the early Iron Age lie just beyond epic's reach, and seem to belong to Hesiod's Bronze

VWVUVLot, hidden by Zeus. As Rohde noted, "imme-

diately after the disappearance of the Heroes the

poet begins the age in which he himself must live. Where the reach of poetry ends, there is an end of all further tradition; there follows a blank, and to all

appearances the present age immediately begins. That explains why the Heroic Age is the last before the fifth, to which the poet himself belongs, and why it does not, for example, precede the (undated) Bronze Age."'o' By contrast, the epic heroes, for all their identification with Late Helladic places and features of material culture, function in a Dark Age matrix: the ideology of epic poetry is current al- though the setting of the Heroic Age is in the past. The poems do not present a fossilized society, but

they embody one that evolved gradually and did not

arise without undergoing long gestation. Hesiod's wish to belong to another time expresses the ten- sions inherent in the process; the heroes immedi- ately prior are the pivot, and the early historical Iron Age now appears to fit this very well, as recent finds at Lefkandi and elsewhere suggest.102

The stresses in these competing versions of the past, mythic as well as ritual, are illuminated by the work of Arjun Appadurai. The past is a "scarce re- source," not mere grist for contemporary ideologi- cal mills (whether a genos's heroic genealogy or polis cult). Instead, cultures have rules that govern the past's debatability.'03 There are four dimensions to these norms: first, authority, or communal agree- ment on credibility; second, continuity, or agree- ment about the connection with the source of

authority; third, depth, the differing valuation given to depth of time in the past; and finally, inter- dependence, the degree to which competing ver- sions of the past are minimally credible.104 A shared past may exist (Panhellenic, say), but different groups in a community may each hold a separate past, or place a different emphasis upon some as- pect of the shared past. The rules within which the past is debated also mediate change, as occurs at the beginning and end of the Iron Age in particular (cf. civic kinship and ideologies of descent in the po- lis).'05 Whereas Ernest Bloch identified a pragmatic past, within which originate challenges to the un- changing ritual past dominating the present, Ap- padurai suggests a past that negotiates between ritual eternity and the present (cf. KXEog and uLtL'): "the past is an intrinsically alternative mode of dis- course to those other cultural modes of communica- tion which can, and often do, assume an eternal present. Such norms, therefore, constitute an aspect of culture in which concessions to change are built in, and division and debate are recognised. As a result, such norms permit new forms of action, at the same time as they allow cultures to regulate so- cial change."'06 The norms that seem to be reflected in our written sources especially do not necessarily determine action; ritual behavior actually generates symbolism. Morris makes a similar observation: "So- cial structure, as a set of internalised but constantly

99 Sherratt (supra n. 77) 815. On the contested topic of the end of composition, see G. Nagy, "Homeric Ques- tions," TAPA 122 (1992) 17-60 with references.

100 Sherratt (supra n. 77) 816 with references. 101 Rohde 75. 102 Cf. Querbach (supra n. 83); on Lefkandi, supra

n. 73. 103 A. Appadurai, "The Past as a Scarce Resource," Man

16 (1981) 201-19, esp. 201, contra M. Bloch, "The Past

and the Present in the Present," Man 12 (1977) 278-92 (and see also Morris).

104 Appadurai (supra n. 103) 203. 105 Appadurai (supra n. 103) 216-17. 106 Appadurai (supra n. 103) 218. Note, however, that

Bloch's main point is to link the appearance of the past in discourse about the present as a correlate of hierarchy, not problematic for Indian society but of interest for the Greek Iron Age as it advances and develops.

1994] CONTESTING THE PAST 409

renegotiated roles and rules, is an artefact of this knowledge."'07

It is Appadurai's emphasis on cultural norms or rules that is useful for the Greek case. Morris has argued that tomb cult had several meanings to dif- ferent actors in different regions, as well as within a single community or region: "Each cult probably had its own associations and special significance" in which he sees the "conflict of ideologies in the 8th c."'18 In the end, though, he is unable to account for both the widespread distribution of tomb cult and its local variations, or to integrate it with literary constructions of the past: Hesiod's, which he explic- itly cites. Instead, Morris glosses apparent contra- dictions in the preserved epic system(s) of the past, which he sees as contemporary with the late eighth- century developments attending the emergence of the polis, by claiming that our own understanding is at fault: we underestimate "the subtlety of early Greek poetic thought." This solution consists in sim- ply denying the contradictions generated by differ- ent versions of the past. Yet it is true that we cannot "arbitrarily exclude the tomb cults as being 'archae- ological' rather than 'literary"' and Morris is right to point to the eighth century as a time of crisis and change, when tomb cults became particularly im- portant and their frequency peaked.'10 The focus on the Mycenaeans fulfills Appadurai's criterion of authority, but the present is the key; epic and cult therefore function for contemporary purposes. Tombs, rather than avenues to supernatural relics, allowed direct access to this authority, but by way of an active creation of ancestors."10

The focus on Bronze Age tombs begins with the very close of the Bronze Age, and intensifies in the eighth century, when hero cult is also instituted, connected to habitation sites as well: it should be noted that some Dark Age cemeteries were also lo- cated in former habitation areas."' Appadurai's

model applied to the Iron Age choice of Late Hel- ladic tombs and other remains acknowledges their authority, their connection with actors in the pres- ent, values their place in time, and accepts limits for the range of variability in accounts of the past. We can acknowledge tensions within a community and begin to deal with what we can see in the archae- ological record: not a uniform or continuous evolu- tion but a dynamic and variable process of rupture, appropriation, and conflict both synchronically and diachronically. The cusp of pre- and protohistory provides a communally acknowledged source of authority for emergent Greek communities. If He- siod's adaptation of a metallic sequence is from an Eastern source, the status of Eastern cultures in the Bronze and Iron Ages as sources of prestige with their goods, motifs, and forms may help to account for the choice of this framework for the past in Works and Days.

By providing us with authority, continuity, depth, and interdependence as a cross-cultural framework for using the past, Appadurai's work also helps to explain an apparent anomaly in Greek systems of thought and practice. Genealogy dominated Greek thought in the Archaic period, but this is contra- dicted by the archaeological record for sporadic ten- dance of tombs, which as already discussed shows a limited concern in practice. In Greece, changing structures of authority, from basileia ("kingship") to tyranny and aristocracy, are for the most part achieved statuses, rather than inherited. These figures of authority are all "big men," persons whose position depends on the ability to attract and keep followers through personal talent, feasting, and gift-giving, right through the historical pe- riod."2 The status of "big man," which rather than "king" or even "chief" best fits the basileus of early Greece, is what emerged after the end of Bronze Age power structures based on the palaces."3 Since

107 Morris (supra n. 46) 7-9 with references. 10s Morris 758. 109 Morris 754-55, referring to Vernant (supra n. 83)

64; he also seems to have in mind Rudhardt's introductory remarks (supra n. 83). Cf. also Querbach (supra n. 83) 6, on Hesiod's poetic tradition: "A certain amount of anom- aly, both in structure and content, can be attributed to the immediate needs of a particular situation."

110 Morris 750-51; cf. 758: "Whether Heroes or a Silver race, their bones became a source of power and an arena for conflict."

"' See my forthcoming article (supra n. 54). 112 B. Qviller, "The Dynamics of the Homeric Society,"

SymOslo 56 (1981) 109-55; R. Drews, Basileus: The Evidence for Kingship in Geometric Greece (New Haven 1983), and esp. E. van der Vliet, "'Big-Man', Tyrant, Chief: The

Anomalous Starting Point of the State in Classical Greece," in M.A. van Bakel et al. eds., Private Politics: A Multi-Disci- plinary Approach to 'Big-Man' Systems (Leiden 1986) 117-26; cf. Y. Ferguson, "Chiefdoms to City-States: The Greek Ex- perience," in T. Earle ed., Chiefdoms: Power Economy, and Ideology (Cambridge 1991) 169-92.

113 See Antonaccio 1993 contra J.-P Vernant, The Ori- gins of Greek Thought (London 1982) 38-48. Whitley (supra n. 3) 184-86, and (supra n. 2) 352 has contested the ap- propriateness of the "big man" model for all of Greece in the Iron Age, and sees it as a phenomenon of the early Iron Age only. His argument seems to me too determined by the specific case of Melanesia and its settlement pat- terns, and he is not aware of van der Vliet's work (supra n. 112), which points out the commonalities of Greek authority through time.

410 C.M. ANTONACCIO, CONTESTING THE PAST

birth alone does not secure position, and competi- tion for authority is the rule, tomb cult, the cult of ancestors, may constitute a legitimating device for the elite that allowed leaders to claim links with the

past that did not exist in real kinship, descent, or other continuity. In fact, Appadurai's allowance for a mediating past makes it possible for various

groups among the Mycenaeans' successors, on the

cusp of new social realities at the end of both the

Mycenaean period and the Iron Age, to appropriate them as their ancestors in a period of change. In the polis, hero cult creates a civic kinship that may serve individuals or the needs of the state to foster a new group identity.114 But tomb cult, distinct from hero cult, was practiced at different locations, using dif- ferent forms, and established other links with the past. When hero cult emerges, perhaps first at Sparta in the late eighth century, heroes indeed

were settling into the past, as Morris and Sherratt

suggest. The richness and variety of the evidence for the

Greeks' concern with their own past make many readings possible. No single version should be sought; ritual and text, archaeology and philology, reveal differences that should be acknowledged, not reconciled. The ambiguities and multiple stories of the Greeks are keys to understanding how the past functioned for them: a source of authority, a fertile field for the ever-shifting definitions of power, iden- tity, and authenticity.115

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114 In Athens, e.g.: E. Kearns, "Change and Continuity in Religious Structures after Cleisthenes," in P Cartledge and ED. Harvey eds., Crux: Essays Presented to G.E.M. de Ste. Croix (Exeter 1985) 188-207 and supra n. 61.

15 There is no room here to pursue several other is- sues: hero and tomb cult in ethnj or the Classical and Hel- lenistic periods, the connection of tombs with possession

of land, or the cults of heroic city-founders, especially in the West. See Whitley (supra n. 36) and de Polignac (supra n. 51) on activities at Mycenaean tombs in Attica and the Argolid and their possible relation to the possession of territory, as well as Morris (supra n. 57); Alcock (supra n. 35) on post-Classical tomb cult; and Malkin (supra n. 41) on founders.