Hero-cult in Plato’s Phaedo, Republic and the Laws

Plato’s Phaedo aims to restore the reputation of Socrates by transforming him from a political scapegoat of Athens to a hero of the city who had put him to death. As scholars have shown, the dialogue’s heroization of Socrates shares affinities with the religious tradition of the hero cult (see White, 2000; Nagy, 2015). In this article I argue that the conceptualization of the philosopher as a cult hero is developed further in the Republic and the Laws. The Republic presents Socrates as the “oikist” of the ideal polis, who makes religious decisions under the authority of god Apollo. In the same vein, the distinguished classes of the philosopher-rulers in the Republic and of the auditors in the Laws are compared to another group also subsumed under the category of cult-heroes, the victorious Olympic athletes.

Echoes of the Tragic in the Sacred Landscape of Ancient Salamis: A Geospatial Analysis of Hero Cult

What follows is a geospatial analysis of the sacred landscape of Ancient Salamis, an island polity located in the Saronic Gulf, which has been traditionally identified as the seat of the House of Telamon, from where Ajax the Greater (Αἴας ὁ Τελαμώνιος) reputedly launched his expedition to support the campaign against Troy (Iliad. 2.557). In particular, this analysis focuses on the relationship between two sanctuaries purported to be dedicated to Ajax and possibly coexisting during the late Classical and early Hellenistic periods (Figure 1): the first, the principal Temple of Ajax (ναὸς Αἴαντος) reported by Pausanias (Hell. Per. 1.35.3) to have been located at the Classicalperiod town at the Bay of Ampelakia; and the second, situated at a rural location some 12km away amidst the remains of a Mycenaean citadel at Kanakia and neighboring cult precinct at Pyrgiakoni at the far western side of the island excavated and identified by Yannos Lolos in 2005 (Lolos 2012: 47ff).1 Strong archaeological evidence suggests that this rural location (Figure 2) was the site of chthonic votive practice (ibid.: 49) often associated with hero or ancestor cult during the later Classical and Hellenistic periods and during a time when Athenian affiliation with the island and the figure of Ajax was officially sanctioned as a consequence of the political re-engineering of the Athenian polis under Kleisthenes.

The Politics of Neoclassicism in Belfast and Dublin

This chapter offers a comparative analysis of the divergent histories and symbolic associations of the neoclassical Stormont and General Post Office buildings, in Belfast and Dublin respectively. Completed in 1932, the Northern Irish Parliament buildings at Stormont were constructed as a bastion of unionism, designed according to the imperial neoclassical vision of Sir Arnold Thornely, but influenced by the idiosyncratic ideas of Sir James Craig, who is also buried on site in a manner analogous to classicizing hero cult. The General Post Office in Dublin, by contrast, although a colonial building in its 1818 origin, has become one of the most iconic representations of Irish independence as the headquarters of the 1916 Rising. Despite being bombed by British forces during the Rising, it has since been restored and divested of its colonial symbolism.

Metalepsis and the Apostrophe of Heroes in Pindar

This chapter is an analysis of the metaleptic effect of apostrophe in narratives that are embedded in a lyric frame, using the example of the Pindaric epinician ode. In apostrophe, a narrator ‘turns away’ from his default addressee, but in contrast to epic, Pindaric lyric has many addressees: the chapter therefore begins with an analysis of the Pindaric ‘you’, a topic much less explored than the Pindaric ‘I’, and concludes that in an epinician ode the victor and his family are the default addressee. Turning to the three instances of narrative apostrophe in Pindaric myths, the chapter argues that, owing to the hymnic associations of early Greek apostrophe, these instances serve to anticipate a mythical (Pelops) or historical (Battus) character’s status as a hero enjoying hero cult. These apostrophes suggest the movement of a character into the world of the ode’s performance (epiphany) rather than the movement of the narrator and his narratee into the world of the mythical past (immersion or enargeia). The conclusion is drawn that whereas modern metalepsis usually has an illusion-breaking effect and is typically found in experimental texts, the narrative apostrophes in Pindar show that ancient metalepsis rather tends towards increasing the authority of the narrator and the ideological force of his tale.

The Cult of Menelaus and Helen at Therapne

This chapter studies the cult of Menelaus and Helen at Therapne. A ‘happy congruence’ of evidence, from the seventh century BC onward, indicates that Menelaus and Helen were honoured at a place known in antiquity as Therapne. Indeed, authors from the early archaic period through the end of the era attest to the presence of a shrine to Menelaus and/or Menelaus and Helen on the hills across the Eurotas River from modern Sparta. The site, comprising an archaic shrine built next to and atop an extensive Mycenaean site, was well-studied by the British School early and late in the twentieth century. Moreover, inscriptional evidence corresponds with the ancient testimonia to indicate that Menelaus and Helen were worshiped at the place already known in antiquity as the Menelaion. Dedications to Helen and Menelaus dated to the seventh and sixth centuries BC are among the earliest reported inscriptional evidence for the worship of any Homeric hero in Greece. The archaic cult at the Menelaion is frequently discussed both for the study of hero cult in itself and for the question as to how early Greek cult did intersect with the proliferation of epic poetry.

Greek Praise Poetry and the Rhetoric of Divinity

This monograph focuses on passages of archaic and classical Greek poetry where certain human individuals in certain moments are presented as approximating to the gods. The approximation pursued is different from any form of immortality, be it apotheosis, hero cult, or fame preserved in song. Instead, this monograph is concerned with the momentary attainment of central aspects characteristic of divine life, such as supreme happiness, unsurpassed beauty, or boundless power. The three main chapters of this monograph (Chapters 2, 3, and 4) illustrate the approximation of human figures to these aspects in wedding songs, victory odes, and drama respectively. This monograph also explores the relationship between such approximations and ritual. In some genres, the surrounding ritual context itself seems to engender a vision of someone as more than human, and this vision is reflected also in other media. In contrast, where such visions are not rooted in ritual, they tend to be more problematic and associated with hubris and transgression. What emerges from this study is the impression of a culture where the boundaries between man and god are more flexible than is commonly thought.