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Published online by Cambridge University Press: 11 February 2009
In later antiquity few monuments at Athens had such a great reputation as what the Athenians called with pride the Altar of Eleos or Pity, the suppliants' altar. Philostratos links it in fame with Olympia and Delphi. The Athenians pay homage to Eleos along with Athena Polias, says Sopatros. ‘You have an Altar of Eleos’, says Apsines to the Athenians; ‘…for this you have a great reputation amongst all other men.’
page 143 note 1 Vit. Soph. 2. 12. 2.
page 143 note 2 
377 (Walz, , Rhet. Gr. viii. 210. 1).Google Scholar
page 143 note 3 Spengel, , Rhet. Gr. i. 391; the passage may be derived from Longinus.Google Scholar
page 143 note 4 Hesperia, Suppl. viii, pp. 82 ff.; see especially p. 102.Google Scholar
page 143 note 5 Hesp. xxi, 1952, pp. 47 ff.Google Scholar
page 143 note 6 For the setting of the play note particularly lines 32, 42, 70, 79, 121, 127, 341.
page 143 note 7 Note lines 1, 33, 63, 88, 93, 104, 173, 261, 290. Another recipient of the philanthropia of Theseus, Oidipous, stopped at Kolonos; he could never be brought to the Altar of Eleos; but the Schol. on O.C. 260 has the altar in mind even here, and says 
.
page 143 note 8 Lysias, , Epitaphios 11–15;Google ScholarIsokrates, , Panegyricus 54–60, v. (Philip) 34; [Demosthenes] 60.8.Google Scholar
page 144 note 1 For Adrastos the authorities are Apollo-doros 3. 7. 1; Nikephoros, Progymnasmata 7. 12 (Walz, , Rhet. Gr. i. 499Google Scholar). For the families of the Seven, Statius, , Theb. 12. 481 ff.Google Scholar; Zenobios 1. 30 (Leutsch, and Schneidewin, , Paroem. Gr. i, p. 10Google Scholar). For the Herakleidai, Apollodoros 2.8.1; Schol. Arist. Knights 1151; Apsines (see p. 143, n. 3); Schol. Demosth. 2. 6; Philostratos, Vit. Soph. 2. 1. 5, Epist. 39 (70); Statius, and Lactantius on Stat. 12. 487; Zenobios 2. 61 (L. and S. i, p. 48). Philostratos (Epist. 39), Statius, and Lactantius mention the tradition that the Herakleidai founded the altar.
Professor Thompson tentatively suggests (Hesp. xxi, p. 52, n. 19Google Scholar) a connexion between the painting of the Herakleidai by Apollodoros or Pamphilos, which according to the doubtful evidence of the confused scholia on Arist. Plutus 385 may have been in the Stoa Poikile, and the Altar of Eleos. There may well have been such a connexion; but possibly the picture came first, and its presence in the stoa near by helped to bring the Herakleidai to the altar.
page 144 note 2 Frazer, , Introduction to Loeb edn., p. xx.Google Scholar
page 144 note 3 I take this to mean ‘not easily distinguishable for all’; i.e. Pausanias found the altar a comparatively modest monument, which might not impress itself at first upon every visitor.
page 144 note 4 Adv. Mathemat. 9. 187.Google Scholar
page 144 note 5 Declam. 22 (Foerster, , vi, pp. 339 ff.Google Scholar; N.B. pp. 353–4Google Scholar). Cf. Liban, . Orat. 15. 39,Google Scholar and Lucian, , Demonax 57, for suggested removal.Google Scholar
page 145 note 1 Controversiae 10. 5. 34 (ed. Kiessling, p. 506). In addition, the Schol on Demosth. 2. 6 wrongly associates 
with the altar; note also the passage from Sopatros (p. 143, n. 2, and p. 149).
page 145 note 2 Die Stadt Athen, ii, p. 437, n. 3.Google Scholar
page 145 note 3 Hesp., Suppl. viii, p. 103, and vol. xxi, p. 51. They also suggest the possibility of a transference of the cult of the Twelve to the Stoa of Zeus, where Euphranor's picture of the Twelve was painted, and the altar in front of it; but for reasons developed below I doubt whether the superimposition of Eleos can have produced a drastic change in the conduct of the cult.Google Scholar
page 145 note 4 A little like 
and 
(Paus. 1. 28. 5), but hardly the same.
page 146 note 1 Epist. 39 (70).Google Scholar
page 147 note 1 Op. cit., p. 102. But though the incidents they refer to happened in 355 B.C. and 431 B.C., Lykourgos (Leocr. 93) and Diodoros know and use the name in 332 B.C. and the first century B.C.; and this fact in itself is of some significance. See also next note.Google Scholar
page 147 note 2 Nicias 13.
page 147 note 3 Libanios, , Declam. 16. 47Google Scholar (Foerster, , vi, p. 172Google Scholar) and 22 (Foerster, , vi, pp. 349 and 361Google Scholar), Orat. 15. 39 (Foerster, , ii. p. 134; note how Lib. says to the Emperor Julian 
); Nike-phoros (see p. 143, n. 1); Sextus Empiricus (see p. 144, n. 4); cf. also Apsines (see pp. 143, n. 3, and 148); Philostratos (Epist. 39).Google Scholar
page 147 note 4 For a recent discussion of Eros see Rosenmeyer, T. G. in Phoenix, v. 1, 1951, pp. 11 ff.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
page 147 note 5 I.G. iv 2. 1. 1282.
page 148 note 1 Cf. Farnell, , Cults of the Greek States, v, p. 444.Google Scholar
page 148 note 2 Op. cit., pp. 47–50.Google Scholar
page 148 note 3 For libations of tears at the altar, cf. Nikephoros (see p. 144, n. 1), and Philostratos (Epist.) 39 (70); also Libanios, , Declam. 22Google Scholar (see p. 144, n. 5). Libanios says that the Athenians honour Eleos with sacrifices (Foerster, , vi, p. 347Google Scholar); he is the only author who mentions sacrifices, and he later contra dicts this (p. 361) by saying that the only ⋯ορτ⋯ and θεραπεία is the safety of those who take refuge.
page 148 note 4 This is how these lines should be taken, I believe, with no stop after verendo, cultu being dative; the Loeb translation is unfortunate in giving ‘marked by the cult of the venerable, wool-entwined laurel and the suppliant olive’; the nearest the place approaches to the tree-cult which this seems to suggest is in the misspelling of the Thracians (see p. 146).
page 148 note 5 See p. 145, n. 1; we have Misericordia in Eumenius, , pro restaur, scholarum 7Google Scholar; both in Lactantius on Statius 12. 487 (the Herakleidai consecrated the altar of dementia, saying that Misericordia took up her abode at Athens exclusively).
page 148 note 6 See p. 143, n. 1.
page 149 note 1 See p. 143, n. 2.
page 149 note 2 Verrall enlarges on this in his essay on the altar in Collected Literary Essays, Cambridge, 1913, pp. 219 ff.Google Scholar (originally published in Oxford and Cambridge Review, 1907).Google Scholar
page 150 note 1 Suidas gives 
without comment or explanation, apparently presenting it as a familiar proverb. Note also how it provides Lucian with a vivid simile in bis accusatus, 21 ‘…taking refuge [from the severity of Stoic doctrine] in pleasure like a suppliant at the Altar of Eleos’.
page 150 note 2 I note now that DrPfeiffer, R. (Callimachus, vol. i, p. 58)Google Scholar, commenting on frag. 51, 
, which is quoted by Schol. Sophokles, O.C. 258Google Scholar, says ‘fort, mythographi, qui vel Heraclidas ad hanc aram confugisse vel ipsos earn condidisse et Adrastum eo supplicem venisse narrant, ad Call. Aet. redeunt; nemo priorum poetarum vel scriptorum Misericordiae aram cum his iabulis coniunxit’. But in fact no extant author brings these suppliants to the Altar of Eleos till much later still; and Kallimachos himself in this fragment merely says just the same as Sophokles, (O.C. 260 ff.)Google Scholar and Euripides, (Suppl. 188 ff.)Google Scholar. One might even add frag. 51 to die passages given above (p. 143), in which the absence of the Altar of Eleos is significant. The Schol. quoting Kallimachos, and mentioning (on 260) the Altar of Eleos, if Kallimachos had spoken of the Altar would surely have given the actual words in which he did so.