CLA 210 Chapter 8 Artemis and Apollo Questions and Answers

CLA 210 Chapter 8 Artemis and Apollo Questions and Answers Artemis PARENTAGE Zeus and the goddess Leto OFFSPRING None ATTRIBUTES Bow, quiver, wild animals (especially deer) SIGNIFICANT CULT TITLES Lochia (Protector of Women in Labor) Potnia Theron (Mistress of Animals) Agrotera (Of the Wilds)-Among the Olympian goddesses, three were eternal virgins: Athena, Hestia, and Artemis. The character of Artemis's virginity, however, is different from that of Athena and Hestia -Artemis's virginity, on the other hand, forges a connection between her and the nymphs with whom she is frequently depicted. These nymphs are the mythical counterparts to the mortal young girls who worshipped Artemis in rituals devoted to her. Artemis's virginity associates her closely with the life cycle of young women. Finally, Artemis, unlike Athena and Hestia, haunts the forests and open spaces outside cities, houses, and cultivated fields. She keeps company with wild and undomesticated animals. Wild animals, young girls and childbirth -In his epics, Homer refers to Artemis as Potnia Theron (Mistress of Animals) and Agrotera (Of the Wilds). Both titles describe Artemis's connection to wild animals (not domesticated animals or livestock) who dwell in the forests and the mountains where she roams. Among wild animals, bears often appear in myths and rituals associated with Artemis, whereas deer are most precious to her. Yet, paradoxically, Artemis is also often depicted with a bow in her hand or a quiver of arrows on her back (Figure 8.2). Her bow is not a weapon of war but a tool of the hunt. Thus Artemis is represented as both protecting and hunting animals in the wild. -Artemis is often portrayed as leading groups of nymphs in song or dance, and protecting their virginity as well as her own -Whereas written accounts emphasize that Artemis makes Actaeon's own dogs unwittingly kill their beloved master, many depictions equate Actaeon's dogs with Artemis's arrows: both animals and arrows are at her disposal, and both are equally lethal -In a variation on this group of myths, an attempted act of sexual violence against a nymph provokes Artemis to punish the female victim, not her attacker. -Taken together, these conflicting versions suggest the difficulties of determining whether Artemis's actions are offered as protection or punishment. Artemis appears both benevolent and cruel to the young girls in her retinue, just as she seems to the wild animals that surround her. The meaning of Artemis's actions in myth becomes more apparent from the perspective of Artemis's oversight of transitional moments in women's lives: the initiation of girls, rituals before marriage, and childbirth. -Artemis is called Lochia (Protector of Women in Labor), and her own birth illustrates this feature of her character. Angry with Zeus for philandering, Hera would not let any la Hippolytus in myth and ritual -A myth concerning Hippolytus—one of Artemis's adolescent male worshippers—and a ritual for brides that Artemis establishes in his honor offers a way to understand how Artemis attends to her devotees. In his play Hippolytus (c. 428 BCE), Euripides depicts Hippolytus as a young man, a virgin and a hunter who prefers the woods and the company of other young men to the city and the demands of adulthood. Hippolytus hoped to remain forever under the auspices of Artemis and never mature into a married man and warrior. -At the close of the play, Artemis promises Hippolytus that young women in his hometown of Troezen will cut their hair and sing laments for him before they marry. (In other versions of this myth, Artemis rescues Hippolytus and installs him as a king or as a temple servant in Aricia, in Italy.) -At first glance, this wedding ritual seems paradoxical because it requires young brides to commemorate Hippolytus's virginal devotion to Artemis (and, perhaps, his rejection of Aphrodite) and to mourn his death. Yet, if Hippolytus represents the youthful virginity and devotion to Artemis that young girls must relinquish on marriage, then lamenting his death could be seen as a way for girls to recognize and ritually mourn the end of their own youth and virginity. Moreover, the violence and sorrow attached to Hippolytus's death allows a young bride to address her conflicting emotions on her marriage: once she is transferred from her father's household to her husband's, she forever leaves behind her natal family. -Hippolytus's myth and the Troezen ritual, then, connect mythic transformation and death with the losses that adolescents experience when they must enter into a new stage of their lives. Artemis oversees this moment that is both joyful and sorrowful; thereby she herself appears both cruel and benevolent, and her ro Girls' initiations: The Brauronia -The most important initiation that Artemis oversaw was at Brauron, a region due east of Athens on the Aegean coast. When girls were initiated at Brauron, they were described as "playing the bear" for Artemis in a ritual variously called the Brauronia, a title emphasizing the ritual's location, or the Arcteia, a title that emphasizes the importance of bears in the worship of Artemis -Afterward, the Athenians become ill until an oracle advises them that in order to be cured they must make young girls "play the bear" for Artemis, who was angered over the death of the she-bear. -Archaeological evidence from the site at Brauron offers information about how girls played the bear for Artemis. A building structure with small rooms for sleeping suggests that girls stayed in Brauron, away from their families, during the festival. Small votive statues and vase paintings of young girls found at Brauron indicate that the age range of girls who played the bear was quite wide—perhaps from five to sixteen years, most certainly before they married (estimated to take place after the age of twelve and ideally between fourteen and sixteen years). -Vases from Brauron also suggest what sorts of activities constituted playing the bear: girls ran, danced, and even offered their toys to the goddess (Figure 8.4). These actions prepared them in some essential way to become brides once they had departed from Brauron. -The suggestion, then, of these myths and their associated rituals is that girls (even if raised by their human parents) were still believed by the Greeks to be somehow animal-like: wild, undomesticated, and separate from the adult world, with its social responsibilities. They are in Artemis's realm. The goddess accompanies them to their initiations, which are necessary to "tame" them and make them suitable members of human society. Boys' Initiations: Artemis Orthia -In Sparta, an initiation ritual for boys under Artemis's auspices also requires them to "kill off" a part of themselves that is socially unacceptable, although not "wild." This ritual stands out because male gods, especially Apollo, typically oversaw male initiatory rituals. The sanctuary to Artemis Orthia (Upright) was located along the Eurotas River outside of Sparta. The significance of this title remains unclear. The origin of the ritual to Artemis Orthia is attributed to the murder of inhabitants from four surrounding towns who fought at Artemis's altar. Those who survived fell ill, and an oracle advised that Artemis's altar had to be washed in human blood for them to be released from their illness (Pausanias 3.16.9). Rather than sacrificing human beings, an action that Greeks did not practice despite myths of human sacrifice, the community established a ritual that came to serve as an initiation for adolescent boys. In order to cover the altar with blood, young men were whipped at Artemis's altar, while a priestess held a statue of Artemis. If the statue weighed down the priestess's hand, the youth were to be whipped more vigorously. In some accounts, the young men had to steal offerings of cheese from Artemis's altar, and, if caught, they were whipped for their failure to steal successfully (not for the act of stealing itself). In other accounts, they were enjoined to laugh riotously at the fact of being whipped; the one who best endured the ordeal without showing signs of pain won a prize. During the Archaic and Classical Periods in Sparta, this ritual was part of an elaborate tiered system of initiating boys so that they could become well-trained hoplites in the Spartan army. -Thus the ritual of Artemis Orthia forced the initiates to endure being treated like a helot while acting like a Spartan (i.e., laughin Apollo PARENTAGE Zeus and the goddess Leto OFFSPRING Asclepius (with Coronis); Linus and Orpheus (with Calliope, a Muse); and many others ATTRIBUTES Beardless, long-haired, bow, quiver, lyre, laurel branch SIGNIFICANT CULT TITLES Catharsius (Purifier) Musagetes (Leader of the Muses) Paean (Healer) Pythian (Pythian)-In his first appearance in the Iliad, Apollo wields his bow and lyre in quick succession. -In a short span of verses, Homer conveys that Apollo's violence is tempered by his embodiment of the cultural arts: poetry and music. Apollo also oversees the cultural accomplishments and practices of medicine and prophecy. Healing arts -Apollo not only had the capacity to unleash the plague but was also associated with curing or ridding a city of plague, and with the healing arts more generally Oracles and prophecy -Apollo is an oracular god as well as a healing god; like Athena, who has access to Zeus's thunderbolts, Apollo has access to Zeus's thoughts. Apollo often says that his prophetic knowledge comes directly from Zeus. Apollo therefore provides "Zeus's counsel" to men at various sanctuaries, of which Didyma in Asia Minor and Delphi in Greece are the most famous. -Men sought oracles on political matters, such as colonization, war, laws, leaders, and treaties; on religious matters, such as whether to plow a field or which god to propitiate; and on personal matters, such as marriage and infertility. -Apollo at Delphi was also the source of certain adages, such as "know thyself" and "nothing in excess," suggesting that Apollo is a god of moderation and reason. -Delphi was a cosmopolitan oracular shrine at which many Greek states and individuals, including leaders from the Near East such as King Croesus of Lydia, sought Apollo's counsel. It also hosted quadrennial games (as did Zeus's sanctuary in Olympia), and it even offered purification from the crime of murder -Delphi also enshrined Apollo's relationship with several female figures: the Pythias (Apollo's priestesses at Delphi), Cassandra (the Pythias' mythical double), and Daphne. -The nymph Daphne, like Cassandra, also refused Apollo's advances and was transformed into a laurel tree by her father (a river god), who thereby fulfilled her wish to escape Apollo's attentions. (Contemporary explorations of this myth are described in section 8.4.) This tale offers an explanation of why Apollo is often shown carrying a laurel branch, which symbolized prophecy and poetry, and why poets (like Hesiod) also carry laurel branches or wear laurel crowns. Music and poetry -Apollo's lyre associates him most closely with music. -Apollo's children represent his spheres of influence, especially in the area of music. -Apollo is often seen in the company of the Muses and has the title Musagetes (Leader of the Muses). Boys' initiations: The Hyacinthia -In addition to his oversight of the arts of healing, prophecy, and music, Apollo, like his sister Artemis, presides over initiatory rituals for boys and young men. And, like his sister, in myths he often kills or greatly harms young men and women -In other words, Apollo's relationships with young adults can be as deadly as those of Artemis. Yet the significance of Apollo to the lives of young Greeks differs from that of his sister in some essential ways: Apollo is linked to cultural achievements of Greek society. This distinction reflects prevailing notions about men and women in ancient Greece. Men (unlike women) were believed to be the agents of culture and political actors whose fulfillment of public duties determined communal life. Apollo leads young men from childhood into public life and helps them achieve status and recognition. -Apollo is almost always depicted as beardless, with long hair. This conveys his connection with young men on the brink of becoming full-fledged citizens. -The length of men's hair in ancient Greece, then, is a way of describing age and social position. Long hair describes young men who are in the process of becoming adults. Thus the depiction of Apollo with unshorn hair indicates his affinity with young men -Among the Dorians (the ethnic group of Greeks who settled primarily in the Peloponessus), Apollo was worshipped in many festivals that marked the development of young men. -The Hyacinthia, a three-day festival, involved a form of ritualized loss. -The Hyacinthia connected Hyacinthus with the boys who participated in the festival. -Apollo's beauty as an unshorn young man is a measure of how much boys must relinquish in order to become men. They must overcome their particular circumstances and identity by cutting their hair to don the hoplite's helmet and by striving to enact the soc Jane Harrison and the Cambridge Ritualists -One of the most well-known Cambridge Ritualists, Jane Ellen Harrison (), stated the relationship between myth and ritual categorically: "Myth is the spoken correlative of the acted rite, the thing done." Harrison conceived of ritual as a series of events that was acted out, much like a drama or performance, often before or on behalf of others who formed an audience. A myth, in her formulation, was the script or libretto for a ritual. Often, when the ritual itself falls out of practice, the myth remains. -. But Harrison's formulation is not clearly applicable to most Greek myths or rituals, even if we acknowledge that we have lost the sorts of data and artifacts, not to mention eyewitness testimony, that might clarify such a connection. Greek myths are too elaborate and too detailed to be reduced to a ritual, no matter how creative their interpreters may be. -Thus, although later scholars have rejected Harrison's strong claim that myth correlates to ritual, she and the other Cambridge Ritualists did succeed in shifting the focus of myth studies to their societal contexts rather than their purely literary qualities, and in illuminating the vital connections between myth and ritual in ancient Greece and elsewhere. Arnold Van Gennep and Rites of Passage -Amid such diversity, van Gennep discerned a common form and function among one class of rituals that he called rites of passage. All rituals of that class, no matter how different they seem, share a common purpose: they facilitate the transition of participants from one stage to another. -Van Gennep argued that rites of passage "accompany every change of place, state, social position and age." They may accompany the installation of a new king or queen, a community's celebration of a new year, or a change in season. In sum, rites of passage (including initiations) enable individuals as well as entire groups to adapt to change. -In this way, van Gennep argued, rites of passage ensure both a society's internal cohesion, by enforcing individuals' assumption of their expected roles, and a society's continuity over time, by managing reproduction. -he also noted that all initiations share a similar structure. Initiations, he observed, consist of three stages: separation, time at the margin (or "limen"), and reaggregation -Borrowing the Latin word limen, which means "door" or "threshold," van Gennep also called these stages preliminal, liminal, and postliminal. These three stages are given different labels in subsequent literature but are generally applied to the same three broad categories: every ritual, like every story, has a beginning, middle, and end. -The first stage, separation, separates an individual (the initiate) from his or her former status or life stage. -The second stage, limen, is perhaps the most important. It may last from a single day to a full year and involves activities that are designed to transform initiates so that they can fulfill their new social role. Initiates often must undergo psychologically, emotionally, and/or physically challenging activities that are disorienting and that create a kind of c Comparison- Anatolia and Rome: Cybele -Apollo as the most Greek of all gods because he embodies the cultural values closely associated with Greek civilization, his name does not appear on Linear B tablets in Greece dating from the Bronze Age (Chapter 2.1). This striking absence suggests that Apollo's origins were outside of Greece. -Many scholars have explored how a linguistic connection between the Anatolian god Appaliunas and the Greek Apollo, as well as Apollo's worship in Lycia (a region in southern Anatolia), might suggest that Anatolian gods and religious practices have influenced the ways in which Apollo was understood. -This section traces how Anatolia has cast shadows on Artemis's worship in mainland Greece and, conversely, how Greek conceptions of Artemis, filtered by the Romans, influenced the design of the well-known statue of Artemis of Ephesus, a coastal city in Anatolia. Unlike Apollo, Artemis's name has been found on Linear B tablets in Greece, and thus we can conclude that she was worshipped in Greece during the Bronze Age. Artemis and the Phrygian Great Mother -The Greeks sometimes referred to the Phrygian Great Mother by the name Cybele, which derives from a Phrygian adjective, kubeliya, that means "of the mountains." The Greeks also worshipped a goddess they called "Mother" (meter) or the "Great Mother" (megale meter) who seems to harken back to the Phrygian Great Mother. Literary and visual evidence from as early as the eighth century BCE in Greece suggests that the Phrygian Great Mother left her imprint not only on goddesses with distinct maternal traits (such as Demeter) but also on Artemis. -The iconography and location of these reliefs suggest that the Great Mother was more closely linked to nature than to the political world of the city; yet she facilitated exchanges between natural and civilized spaces. She may have granted to her worshippers power over the natural world, which her attendance by predatory birds suggests she herself had. Curiously, although she is called "mother," she does not appear with infants or children. Thus she seems to be a caretaker of the natural world who ensures its abundance, but not a goddess who oversees human fertility. -The Phrygian Great Mother's influence can be detected in the attributes of several Greek goddesses, including Artemis, and even in the worship of the Greek god Dionysus (Chapter 9.3). -Demeter, for example, inherited the Great Mother's oversight of the abundance of the natural world. -grain and agriculture moves her away from mountains and the wild and toward cultivated fields of grain. Artemis, unlike Demeter, has no maternal traits and nothing to do with agriculture. She wears a short tunic, not the heavy garment of the Great Mother, and she is far removed from maturity or maternity, as she traipses through the woods and keeps company with young adolescent girls. She appears to have inherited the Great Mother's int Artemis in Roman Ephesus -Androcles established a sanctuary to Artemis roughly one mile away from the future site of the city (1086-85 BCE), where a temple to Artemis (called the Artemisium) served as a place of asylum as well as a bank that minted coins and took deposits. -The statue of the Ephesian Artemis (Figure 8.11) is noted for its many egg-shaped protrusions. The various interpretations of these protrusions allowed her to serve Greeks, Anatolians, and Romans alike -Whereas early Christian writers in