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Was Sophocles Heroised As Dexion?*

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  23 February 2012

Andrew Connolly
Andrew Connolly
Affiliation:
University of Otago
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Extract

Since the late nineteenth century it has been almost universally accepted that Sophocles gave lodging to the cultic snake or statue of Asclepius when it was brought to Athens in 420 BC, that he raised an altar or altars for the god, and that in recognition for these services as the so-called ‘Receiver’ of Asclepius he was heroised after his death under the name Dexion. This story derives chiefly from a Byzantine dictionary article, the earliest known form of which dates from the second half of the ninth century.

Type
Research Article
Information
The Journal of Hellenic Studies , Volume 118 , November 1998 , pp. 1 - 21
Copyright
Copyright © The Society for the Promotion of Hellenic Studies 1998

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References

1 Dexion: So Sophocles was named by the Athenians after his death. They say that the Athenians, wanting to secure honours for Sophocles when he had died, provided a heroum for him and named him Dexion because of his reception of Asclepius. For he received the god in his house and set up an altar. For this reason, therefore, he was called Dexion’.

2 Körte, A., ‘Die Ausgrabungen am Westabhange der Akropolis, IV. Das Heiligtum des Amynos’, MDAI(A) 21 (1896) 287–332Google Scholar, with pl. 11. Körte had already identified the site as the precinct of a healing god in ‘Bezirk eines Heilgottes’, MDAI(A) 18 (1893) 231–56Google Scholar, with pl. 11, esp. 235-42.

3 Both inscriptions refer to τὰ κοινὰ τῶν όργεώνων τοῦ Άμύνου καὶ τοῦ Άσκληπιοῦ καὶ τοῦ Δεξίονος (lines 3-4 and 5-7 respectively). 1252.14-17 refer to a ἰερόν of Dexion separate from that of Amynus and Asclepius, but 1253.10-11 imply the existence of only one ἰερόν for all.

4 Pfister, F., Der Reliquienkult im Altertum (Gießen 1909; reprinted Berlin 1974) 1, 121.Google Scholar

5 Whitman, Cedric, Sophocles: A Study of Heroic Humanism (Cambridge, Mass. 1951) 11CrossRefGoogle Scholar, questioned the consensus view of the story's significance as evidence for Sophocles’ piety, but accepted its historicity.

6 Lefkowitz, Mary R., The Lives of the Greek Poets (Baltimore 1981) 84.Google Scholar

7 Sophocles’ participation in the arrival of Asclepius has been restated most recently by Parker, Robert in Athenian Religion: A History (Oxford 1996) 184–5Google Scholar, and by Clinton, Kevin in ‘The Epidauria and the arrival of Asclepius in Athens’, in Hägg, Robin (ed.), Ancient Greek Cult Practice from the Epigraphical Evidence, Ada lnstituti Atheniensis Regnis Suecae, Series in 8°, 13 (Stockholm 1994) 17–34Google Scholar. Kearns, Emily, The Heroes of Attica (BICS Suppl. 57, London 1989) 154–5Google Scholar, expressly rejects Lefkowitz's objections to acceptance of the Sophocles-Dexion story.

8 ‘And he held the priesthood of Halon, who was a hero with Asclepius in the presence of Chiron… [a statue?] having been set up by his son, Iophon, after (his) death’. As the hero Halon is otherwise unknown, and as there is divergence among the manuscripts between Άλωνος and Άλωνος, there have been various emendations of the text here. Meineke's Άλκωνος was widely accepted until recent times. On the possible identification of Halon with Halirrhothius see Kearns (n.7) 20. The numerous attempts to fill the lacuna, first postulated by Bergk, are given by Radt. Many have suspected that the subject of ἰδρυνθεἰς was a statue or painting of Sophocles. Foucart, Paul (Le Culte des héros chez les Grecs (Paris 1922) 124)Google Scholar and Ferguson, W.S. after him (‘The Attic orgeones’, HThR 27 (1944) 87 n.35, and 91)Google Scholar thought it probable that Iophon was responsible for the establishment of his father's cult.

9 Philostratus, Vita Apollonii 3.17 (= TrGF 4 T73a): οἱ δέ ήιδον ώιδήν, όπαῖος ό παιὰν ό τοῦ ∑οϕοκλέους, ὂν Άθήνησι τῶι Άσκληπιῶι άιδουσιν.

10 Philostratus iunior, Imagines 13 (= TrGF 4 T174 lines 12-15): ‘And here is Asclepius at hand, I think, bidding you write a paean, no doubt, and not thinking it unworthy to hear himself called by you “famous for skill”, and his glance at you, mixed with joyfulness, hints at hospitable relations only a little later.’ The wording could imply two events, one when Asclepius is present to bid the poet write the poem and the other involving the έπιξενωσεις, but the separation could result from the non-narrative pictorial inspiration for the passage. The Demosthenis encomium which, although it is attributed to Lucian, ought probably to be dated to the first half of the fourth century AD, also seems to refer in a corrupt passage in chapter 27 to Sophocles’ paean as if it were well known. For a restored text see Oliver, James H., ‘The Sarapion monument and the paean of Sophocles’, Hesperia 5 (1936) 113–14CrossRefGoogle Scholar. For the dating see MacLeod, M.D., Lucian 8 (Loeb Classical Library, 1967) 237 and 147Google Scholar. On the problem of authorship see now Jones, C.P., ‘Greek drama in the Roman empire’, in Scodel, Ruth (ed.), Theater and Society in the Classical World (Ann Arbor 1993) 41–2.Google Scholar

11 For text, photograph and discussion see Oliver (n.10) 91-122, esp. 109-122. The text is reprinted by D.L. Page at PMG 737(b).

12 Although individual fragments of the monument had been published previously, Oliver (n.10) was the first to assemble and publish it as a whole. The monument has been discussed most recently by Aleshire, Sara B., Asklepios at Athens: Epigraphic and Prosopographic Essays on the Athenian Healing Cults (Amsterdam 1991) 49–74Google Scholar.

13 For the dating of Munatius Themison see Elias A. Kapetanopoulos, ‘The family of Dexippos I Hermeios’, Άρχαιολογικὴ Έϕημερἱς 1972 157-8 nos. 27 and 27a, and Follet, S., Athènes au IIe et au IIIe siècle: Études chronologiques et prosopographiques (Paris 1976) 101–2Google Scholar. The contemporaneity of the list and the paean depends mainly on restoration of a declaration above the list so that it refers to the paean. Two alternative restorations were proposed by Oliver, James (‘Paeanistae’, TAPhA 71 [1940] 309)Google Scholar, either of which would point to the paean.

14 W. Dittenberger, commenting on IG iii.1 Add. 17lg (p. 490), and Kaibel, G., ‘Supplementum Epigrammatum Graecorum ex lapidibus conlectorum’, RhM 34 (1879) 207Google Scholar. Of the 38 men named Sophocles who are listed in Osborne, M.J. and Byrne, S.G. (eds.), A Lexicon of Greek Personal Names 3, Attica (Oxford 1994)Google Scholar, only six are dated as late as ‘the Imperial period’ or I or II AD.

15 This paean may have been composed in the later part of the fifth century (see Oliver, n.10, 114-16). It survives in four copies: from Erythrae (380-360 BC), Athens (I-III AD), Ptolemais in Egypt (AD 97) and Dium in Macedonia (late II AD). The texts can be found respectively at Engelmann, H. and Merkelbach, R., Die Inschriften von Erythrai und Klazomenai 2 (Bonn 1973) no. 205Google Scholar; IG ii2.4509; Bernand, E., Inscriptions métriques de l'Égypte gréco-romaine (Paris 1969) no. 176CrossRefGoogle Scholar; and Oikonomos, G.P., Έπιγραϕα ὶ τῆς Mακεδονίας 1 (Athens 1915) no. 4Google Scholar. Bülow, Paul (‘Ein vielgesungener Asklepiospaean’, in Xenia Bonnensia (Bonn 1929) 35–49Google Scholar) argues persuasively that an Athenian paean from the first century BC (IG ii2.4473) was dependent on an Athenian version of the Erythrae paean (see esp. 39 n.1).

16 Sophocles first set up these altars for the gods, I (Sophocles), who won the greatest glory from the tragic Muse’. The text is uncertain; Radt's apparatus reads: ‘πρῶτος C: πόρου vel πόνου P; epitheton θεοȋς pertinens (πομποῖς?) latere suspicatus est Waltz | εἰλε C: εἰδε P’ A connection between AP 6.145 and Asclepius was made as early as Bergk, , ‘Commentatio de Vita Sophoclis’, in Bergk, T. (ed.), Sophoclis tragoediae (Leipzig 1858)Google Scholar.

17 Walton, F.R., ‘A problem in the Ichneutae of Sophocles’, HSCPh 46 (1935) 173Google Scholar, seems to have believed that the epigram was Sophocles’ own; for the view that it stems from a renovation see Bergk (n.16) §6, Sybel, L. von, ‘Asklepios und Alkon’, MDAI(A) 10 (1885) 99Google Scholar, and Wilamowitz, U. von, Der Glaube der Hellenen (3rd ed,, Darmstadt 1956) 2, 222 n.1.Google ScholarCf. Ferguson (n.8) 90-1, who speaks vaguely of an affirmation by ‘other writers’ of Sophocles’ construction of altars. Ferguson reconciles the one altar of the lexicon article with the plural altars of the epigram by assuming that Sophocles set up one altar in his home and another in the sanctuary of the hero Amynus, of whom Ferguson believes Sophocles to have been a priest. For Amynus see below.

18 Crönert, W., ‘De Lobone Argivo’, in Xάριτες Friedrich Leo zum 60. Geburtstag dargebracht (Berlin 1911) 145Google Scholar.

19 Page, D.L., Further Greek Epigrams (Cambridge 1981) 146Google Scholar; cf. 124 and 129.

20 Consider the following epigram from the base of a statue of Asclepius (CEG 2.847[i] from Lisus on Crete, c. 300 BC?): Θυμίλος ἴσσατο τόνδ’ Άσκληπιόν ένθάδε πρῶτος, | Θαρσύτας δ’ υιός τόνδ’ άνέθηκε θεῶι (‘Thymilus set up this Asclepius here first; | Tharsytas his son dedicated this to the god’). Or again consider this much earlier epigram (CEG 1.313 (= IG i3.1014), from near modern Chaidari in Attica, before c. 460 BC), which, it should be noted, found its way into the Anthologia Palatina in a slightly different form as AP 6.138: πρίμ μέν Kαλλιτέλες hιδρύσατο· [τόνδε δὲ ὲκέν]ọ | ἔγγονοι ὲστέσαν[το hοῖς χάριν άντιδίδο] (‘Calliteles established (it) before; but his descendants set this up; give them your thanks’)- To judge from a perusal of CEG 2, πρῶτος seems to be used more commonly to describe a notable achievement such as an athletic victory (e.g. nos. 794, 795, 849, 862 and 879) than to refer to a first dedication. For other parallels of usages found in AP 6.145 see CEG 2.767 and 837 (dedications to θεοῖς), 526 and 701 (epitaphs with ὔς introducing a pentameter describing an antecedent in the previous line).

21 Lefkowitz (n.6) 84 n.37. Her parallels, however, are by no means compelling (the mythical king Dexamenus, Hypodectes in IG ii2.2501 and Pindar, Pythian 8.5 and 19, and 9.73). An Imperial-age bronze tablet from Pergamum (Habicht, C., Die Inschriften des Asklepieions, Altertümer von Pergamon 8.3 (Berlin 1969) no. 71Google Scholar) records the dedication to Asclepius Soter and Hygieia of τόν δεξιούμενον δράκοντα (which presumably was a representation of a snake). Habicht thought the snake was greeting Asclepius and Hygieia, but it might equally have been greeting worshippers.

22 Bechtel, Friedrich, Die historischen Personennamen des Griechischen bis zur Kaiseneit (Halle 1917) 118–20.Google Scholar

23 Bechtel (n.22) 119. Cf Weinreich, Otto, Antike Heilungswunder (Gießen 1909) 39 n.4Google Scholar: ‘Wie mich H. Osthoff gütigst belehrte, ist es sehr schwer, und in manchen Fällen unmoglich, bestimmt zu sagen, ob ein Name des Stammes Δεξι–zu δεξιά oder δέχομαι zu stellen ist’. Parallel formations from aorist stems are more plentiful (e.g., Άγασίων from άγάσασθαι, Tιμασίων from τιμῆσαι, and Bλεψίων from βλέψαι), but alternative parallels are not lacking: see Bechtel for Άρηξιων (from ἄρηξις), Άσίων (from *Fάσις) and Έρξίων (from *Fέρξις), and for Αίσίων (from αίσιος), and for Αίσίων (from αίσιος), Θεωρίων (from Apollo Θεώριος), Ίδίων (from Fίδιος) and Όμολωίων (from Zeus Όμολώϊος). Graf, Fritz, Nordionische Kulte, Bibliotheca Helvetica Romana 21 (Rome 1985) 125 and 356Google Scholar, treats δεξίων, wrongly in my view, as an adjective modifying ἤρως and not as a personal name.

24 Weinreich (n.23) 27-8 (Chiron and Epaphios), 18-27 (Epaphos), 38 (Asclepius, Hygieia and Apollo).

25 Weinreich (n.23) 38-40.

26 Pfister (n.4) 121. One of the Journal's readers has drawn my attention to Εύώνυμος, the eponymous hero of the Attic deme of Εύώνυμον, whose name would refer to the left hand. On this hero see Schachter, A., Cults of Boiotia Part 1, Acheloos to Hera (BICS Suppl. 38.1, London 1981) 223Google Scholar.

27 Weinreich (n.23) 40 n.1, cites a sentence from Artemidorus 5.92 as evidence for ancient play on the etymological connection: άρθείσης γάρ τῆς δεξιᾶς ἔτοιμος ήν παραδέξασθαι αύτόν ό Kέρβερος (‘For with his right hand raised Cerberus was ready to receive him’). For the etymological link between δέχομαι and δεξιός/δεξιά (both deriving from an Indo-European root dek-) see Frisk, Hjalmar, Griechisches etymologisches Wörterbuch 1 (Heidelberg 1961)Google Scholar s.v. δεξιός and δεχομαι

28 It may be worth noting that whereas names ending in -ιων usually keep the long ō in the oblique cases (as is the case in the Byzantine dictionary entry), the two decrees of the orgeones always have Δεξίονος with no confusion elswhere of omega and omicron. Is the dictionary article referring to the same name?

29 Radt prints the reading of the Etymologicum genuinum, δέξεως; the other texts read δεξιώσεως.

30 Clinton (n.7) 26. Clinton also argues (at 25-6) that the Reception of Asclepius became an annually enacted event: in IG ii2.3195 (late I AD) an official at the Asclepieum in Athens recorded in a dedication that he paid for τήν ύποδοχήν καί μύησιν; Clinton assumes that this refers to an annual Reception and Eleusinian pre-initiation of Asclepius.

31 Plutarch, Numa 4: ‘And there is a report (for which many proofs have survived to the present) that when Sophocles was alive, Asclepius was entertained by him; and when he died, another god, it is said, saw to it that he received burial’. The story of Sophocles’ burial to which Plutarch is alluding is clearly the account of Dionysus’ intervention on behalf of the deceased poet told in the Vita and by other writers (see Vita Sophoclis § 15, Pliny, NH 7.109, Solinus 1.118 and Pausanias 1.21.1, which are TrGF 4 T1 lines 63-70; T92; T93 and T94).

32 Zaleucus claimed that Athena had often appeared to him (De se ipsum citra invidiam laudando 543A); Homer called Minos όαριστὴν Διός (Theseus 16.3; cf. Od. 19.179); Numa was the lover of Egeria; and Lycurgus was declared by the Pythia to be dear to Zeus and all the Olympians and more a god than a man (Lycurgus 5.4 and Non posse suaviter vivi secundum Epicurum 1103A). As far as I am aware, Plutarch does not elsewhere comment on communication between Zoroaster and the divine, but reports of Zoroaster's supernatural experiences were current among other Greek authors (see Bolton, J.D.P., Aristeas of Proconnesus (Oxford 1962) 159–60Google Scholar) and Plutarch himself refers to Heraclides Ponticus’ Zoroaster in Adversus Colotem 14.

33 Archilochus was honoured by the divine when the man who slew him in battle was refused a response by the Pythia and was only instructed how he might propitiate the soul of the poet after importunate prayer (De sera numinis vindicta 560D-E). Divine favour was shown to Hesiod when his Locrian murderers were detected and punished after a school of dolphins marvellously carried his body to Rhium where the Locrians were conducting a sacrifice (Septem sapientium convivium 162C-E). The story about Pan's love for Pindar to which Plutarch is here referring, though not told elsewhere by Plutarch, is presumably the one we find sketched in the life of Pindar known as the Vita Ambrosiana. There we read that Pan appeared between Cithaeron and Helicon singing a paean by Pindar and that the poet returned the favour by composing a song in the god's honour. See Vita Ambrosiana in Drachmann, A.B. (ed.), Scholia vetera in Pindari carmina 1 (Leipzig 1903; reprinted Amsterdam 1964) 2Google Scholar, lines 2-6. Cf the similar story told in the textus vulgatus of the Vita Thomana (Drachmann 1, p. 5 n. ad 10-11) and in the metrical life of Pindar (Drachmann 1, p. 7, lines 19-20).

34 Plutarch, Non posse suaviter vivi secundum Epicurum 1102F-1103B: ‘Or was Phormio or Sophocles only moderately pleased, when each of them, because of the epiphany that had occurred, was convinced, as were the rest, that he had entertained one the Dioscuri, the other Asclepius?’

35 See Xen. Hell. 6.5.31 for an earlier reference to this house.

36 Pausanias 3.16.2-3 (ed. M.H. Rocha-Pereira (Leipzig 1989)): ‘They say that originally the sons of Tyndareus inhabited it, but later Phormio the Spartan bought it. The Dioscuri came to this man in the likeness of foreigners. Having said that they had come from Cyrene they asked to be lodged with him and they requested the room that they used especially to like when they had been among men. He told them to stay wherever they wished in the rest of the house, but said he would not give them that room; for his daughter, who was unmarried, happened to have her quarters in it. On the following day that girl and all the attendants around her had disappeared, but there were found in the room statues of the Dioscuri and a table with silphium on it’. Phormio is the subject of another story of miraculous visitation preserved in the Suda, s.v. Φορμίων and discussed by Bolton (n.32) 161-65.

37 Word searches for the several forms of έπιϕάνεια in the Thesaurus Linguae Graecae text of all Plutarch produce seventy attestations. Of these only four, besides the one in this passage, were certain instances of its use to signify manifestations of divinities, but in all of these cases the manifestation is clearly of a supernatural kind. These four are: Themistocles 30.6 (manifestation of the divine foreknowledge and saving power of the Mother of the Gods in Phrygia), Camillus 6.3 (Rome's rise to power would have been impossible ‘without a god's assisting at every moment with many great manifestations’), De Pythiae oraculis 409A (Apollo was manifested in a miraculous productivity of milk herds), and De defectu oraculorum 412D (prophecies whose fulfilment demonstrated gods’ presence and power).

38 On the connections between Cyrene, silphium and the Dioscuri see Papachatzi, N.D., in Pausanias, ‘Έλλάδος Περιήγησις 2, Κορινθιακά καί Λακωνικά, trans. Papachatzi, N.D. (Athens 1976) 366Google Scholar, and A. Furtwängler, ‘Dioskuren’, in W.H. Roscher (ed.), Ausführliches Lexicon der griechischen und römischen Mythologie (1884-90) 1, 1166.

39 Certainly this would be the only case of theoxeny involving Asclepius, compared with a whole tradition of theoxeny associated with the Dioscuri, but the sources point towards such an interpretation. The epiphanies for curative purposes so characteristic of Asclepius, some of them involving the confutation of disbelief, might have made a story of Asclepian visitation more credible, if this were necessary.

40 Sybel (n.17) 98-9 believed that the τεκμήρια must be the paean and the altar mentioned in the Byzantine dictionary. Wilamowitz (n.17) 222 n.1 mused that one thought first of the epigram about the altars, AP 6.145, but admitted that the connection was unprovable. Kern, Otto (Die Religion der Griechen (1935; reprinted Berlin 1963) 2, 313 n.5)Google Scholar preferred to think that Plutarch had in mind an inscription—to be discussed shortly—which recorded the introduction of the cult into Athens; Sophocles, however, is not mentioned in any extant portion of this text. Flacelière, Robert (‘Sur quelques passages des Vies de Plutarque, II. Lycurgue-Numa’, REG 61 (1948) 413–14)Google Scholar thought that the τεκμήρια must have been the cult of Dexion and the paean to Asclepius.

41 Lefkowitz (n.6) 60-1 for Pindar and Demeter, and 84 for Sophocles and Asclepius.

42 Vita Pindari Ambrosiana at Drachmann (n.33) 2, lines 1-10: ‘He was not only a gifted poet, but also a man loved by the gods. For the god Pan at least appeared between Cithaeron and Helicon singing a paean by Pindar.… And then again Demeter stood over him in a dream and chided him, saying that he had not celebrated in song her alone of the gods. So he wrote a poem for her which begins, “Law-giving Mistress, golden-reined". Furthermore he set up an altar for both gods in front of his own house’.

43 Drachmann, A.B. (ed.), Scholia vetera in Pindari carmina (Leipzig 1910; reprinted Amsterdam 1964) 2, 80–1Google Scholar: ‘But I wish to pray to the Mother’: Aristodemus says that when Olympichus the flautist was being taught by Pindar, there occurred on the mountain where he was organising the practice a great noise and downpour of flame; and when Pindar had recovered his senses, he perceived a stone statue of the Mother of the Gods approaching on its own feet; and because of this he set up near his house a statue of the Mother of the Gods and Pan together; and when the citizens had sent to the house of the god they inquired about what would follow, and he proclaimed that they should establish a shrine for the Mother of the Gods; and amazed at Pindar because of his anticipation of the oracle they honour the goddess with rites there equally with Pindar’.

44 On the probable equivalence of the Mother and Demeter in Pindar, Pythian 3.77 see Slater, William J., ‘Pindar's house’, GRBS 12 (1971) 145–6.Google Scholar

45 See Farnell, L.R., Greek Hero Cults and Ideas of Immortality (Oxford 1921) 259Google Scholar, Foucart (n.8) 122-1, and Flacelière (n.40) 415-17.

46 Sybel (n.17) 97-100, and Deneken, ‘Heros’, in W.H. Roscher (ed.), Ausführliches Lexicon der griechischen und römischen Mythologie (1884-90) 1, 2536-37.

47 Körte (n.2, 1896) 287-332.

48 The six relevant inscriptions are: IG ii2.1252 and 1253, 4365, 4385, 4424 and 4457.

49 This may be so, but the earliest of the datable inscriptions (IG ii2.4365) puts Asclepius first.

50 Körte's discussion of Sophocles’ connections with Amynus and Asclepius can be found at Körte (n.2, 1896) 309-13. Wilamowitz (n.17) 225, described this emendation as a ‘gewaltsame Änderung’ and rightly concluded that, though the name Halon might be corrupt, it was not possible to correct it. Yet this tenuous connection between Sophocles and Amynus has been accepted by many. The emendation has recently been endorsed as ‘a highly probable correction’ by Clinton (n.7) 31 n.61.

51 Körte (n.2, 1896) 312-13.

52 Clinton (n.7) 21.

53 Lines 9-17: ‘… having come up from Zea at the time of the Great Mysteries he lodged at the Eleusinium, and having sent for servants from home [or “at his own expense”?] Telemachus brought (him) here in a chariot in accordance with oracles. At the same time Hygieia came’. Doubt remains about whether we have the nominative or genitive of Telemachus’ name in line 15, and so whether Asclepius or Telemachus is the subject of the finite verbs and nominative participles in lines 9-14 (the colon in line 12 is, of course, an editorial addition). Parker (n.7) 177-8 suggests that Telemachus was an Epidaurian and that he lodged at the Eleusinium and sent for a snake from home (i.e. Epidaurus).

54 Stephanos N. Dragoumis, ‘Ό Άσκληπιòς έν Άθήναις’, Άρχαιολογική Έϕημερὶς (1901) 97-112.

55 Körte (n.2, 1896) 316-17.

56 The clear parallel is found in an inscription of late II BC from Delphi published by Couve, Louis in ‘Inscriptions de Delphes’, BCH 18 (1894) 90–93CrossRefGoogle Scholar. It records the granting of a proxeny to an Athenian because he had transported a tripod in a chariot in a fitting manner (άγαγ[ών δέ κ]αί τόν τρίποδα έϕ’ ἄρματος). In his brief commentary on the text Couve observes of the expression ἅγειν τόν τρίποδα έϕ’ ἅρματος: ‘Elle paraît nouvelle [sc. in late II BC]; je ne l'ai, du moins, trouvée dans aucun autre texte épigraphique.’ Consequently we should beware of accepting Körte's restoration exempli gratia as if it were a common phrase, still less the usual one. Another inscription from Delphi, dating probably from the first decade of I BC (Couve, ‘Inscriptions de Delphes’, 87-90), describes a similar event without using the expression ἅγειν έφ’ άγειν έϕ’ άρματος. The other parallel of cultic transportation is Pausanias 2.10.3 where, speaking of the introduction of the cult of Asclepius into Sicyon, Pausanias says: ϕασί δέ σϕισιν έξ Έπιδαύρου κομισθῆναι τόν θεόν έπί ζεῦγος ήμιόνων, δράκοντι είκασμένον, τὴν δὲ άγαγοῦσαν Nικαγόραν είναι ∑ικυωνίαν (‘They say that the god, in the likeness of a snake, was conveyed from Epidaurus for them using a team of mules, and the one wh o brought (him) was Nicagora, a Sicyonian woman’). Here certainly we find a part of ἅγω used in a context which implies a wagon or a chariot, but we do not have ‘the usual expression’ itself. Körte's third parallel is taken from a lacunose section of a record of cures at Epidaurus (see P. Cavvadias, ‘Έπιγραϕαὶ έκ τῶν έν Έπιδαυρία άνασκαϕῶν’, Άρχαιολογική Έϕημερίς (1885) 1-30, at lines 69-73 of no. 80). Körte claims to find a parallel in the appearance in one cure story of the words [έ]ώρη έϕ′ άμάξας … (‘… he saw on a wagon …’) and … ΟΙΟΔΡ[(restored by Benson, E.F., CR 7 (1893) 185–6Google Scholar, to read οί ό δρ[άκων]). Even if the restoration of δράκων is correct, this text is far too lacunose to provide an illustration of the transportation of sacred snakes by wagon.

57 The word δράκων itself, however, is quite normal in Asclepian contexts, perhaps more so than oϕις. For examples of δράκων, see Pausanias 2.10.3 and 3.23.6 and IG iv2.1.88.10, 122.118 and 130, 123.1 and 94. For examples of δράκων and oϕις used interchangeably, see IG iv2.1 121.113-119 and 122.69-82. For oϕις used exclusively, see the Epidaurian accounts at IG iv2.1 102.236, 240, 279.

58 Körte (n.2, 1896) 317. Körte's assertion about the incomplete cutting of rho can be shown to exaggerate its frequency. Starting from two earlier lists (see Lademann, W., De titulis atticis quaestiones orthographicae et grammaticae (Kirchhain 1915) 129Google Scholar and Threatte, Leslie, The Grammar of Attic Inscriptions I, Phonology (Berlin & New York 1980) 484–5)Google Scholar and with the generous help of Professor J.S. Traill, who through computer searches and casual discovery has turned up several further instances not known to me, I have assembled twenty-one sure or uncertain instances, in twenty different texts, of a simple hasta standing in the place of a rho. From these twenty-one cases it is clear that the error is certainly attested in and around the period of the Telemachus monument, and that it is found in documents of a public nature and in ones laid out in the stoichedon format. But even if we accept all of the twenty-one instances as certain cases and assume that there are more to be found, twenty-one is not a large number to have drawn from a pool of some fourteen thousand Attic inscriptions spread over about seven centuries. This mistake is not an especially common one.

59 Parker (n.7) 178.

60 Clinton (n.7) 23.

61 The possibility that one or more cult officials are mentioned in the inscription receives some support from the first century BC text from Delphi mentioned above. In it the archon is said to have brought, not only a tripod, but also τὴν πνρϕóρov, presumably an Athenian priestess responsible for sacred fire. It must be admitted, however, that references to diakonoi in non-Christian inscriptions are rare and late. The only instances known to me occur in six texts from western Greece, Asia Minor and Troezen, all referring to cult officials. The earliest datable text is from III BC. See CIA 2.1800 and LSJ s.v. διάκονος 1.2 for the other five. Diakonos is not a category of attendant mentioned in Walton, Alice, The Cult of Asklepios (Ithaca 1894; reprinted New York 1965)Google Scholar, nor in Clinton, Kevin, The Sacred Officials of the Eleusinian Mysteries (Philadelphia 1974).Google Scholar

62 Clinton (n.7) 23-4.

63 Telemachus is not mentioned in this clause until line 15, but the reader must supply him for an understanding of oικoθɛν, μɛταπɛμψάμɛνος and ἥγαγɛν; the reader must supply the object of ἥγαγɛν (i.e., Asclepius in the form of a statue); and μɛταπέμπɛιν seems an unusual word to use for obtaining the services of hired labourers.

64 Foucart, Paul, Les Grands mystères d'Éleusis: Personnel et cérémonies (Mémoires de l'Institut National de France, Académie des Inscriptions et Belles-lettres 37.2, Paris 1904) 116–17Google Scholar (= Les Mystères d'Éleusis (Paris 1914) 318-20) and Foucart (n.8) 124-5. Foucart's idea of competing claims was taken up by Walton (n.17) 173-4 who saw the use of πρῶτος in AP 6.145 as a sign that some people considered that Sophocles had a claim to the honour of having introduced Asclepius. So also Ferguson (n.8) 90-1.

65 One of these inscriptions is IG ii2.4355, in which the name of Telemachus is only restored. Since Foucart wrote, Luigi Beschi has argued that the other, IG ii2.4961, forms part of one text with IG ii2.4960a and b, and that they are all fragments of a pilaster that supported a double-sided pinax displaying reliefs. Beschi dubbed his reconstruction of the whole the ‘Telemachus monument’. See Beschi, L., ‘II monumento di Telemachos, fondatore dell'Asklepieion ateniese’, ASAA n.s. 29–30 (1967-1968) 381–436Google Scholar, and ‘II rilievo di Telemachos ricompletato’, AAA 15 (1982) 31-43.

66 The relevant portion of lines 20-23 of Clinton's text reads: ′Αρχέας· ὲπὶ το|[ύτο οι K]ήουκες ήμϕεσβ|[ήτον τô] χωρίο καì ένια | [έπεκώλ]υσαν ποῆσαι (‘Archeas: in his archonship the Ceryces raised a dispute over the land and prevented some things from being done’).

67 Clinton (n.7) 28-9 and 32-3 sees in the wording of the inscription evidence of competition between Telemachus and the Eleusinian priestly clans. For the initiation of Asclepius see Philostratus senior, Vita Apollonii 4.18. Walton (n. 17) 172, suggested that the Ceryces may have wished Asclepius to remain in the Eleusinium rather than have a temple of his own.

68 Foucart (n.64, 1904) 116.

69 Walton (n.17) 172-3. Alphonse Dain argues in Sophocles, , Les Trachiniennes, Antigone (Paris 1955)Google Scholar xiii n.2 that Sophocles lodged Asclepius' statue in his house for one or two nights until the god, who had arrived in Athens too late to attend the beginning of the Eleusinian Mysteries, could be inducted in a second ceremony. For an illustration of how far the process of biographical elaboration can go, see Ferguson's delightful improvisation on the lodging at Ferguson (n.8) 90. Cf. Parker (n.7) 185.

70 Clinton (n.7) 25.

71 Clinton (n.7) 31.

72 For a full description and interpretation of the scene see Beschi (n.65, 1967-68) 422-28 with figs. 8 and 11 (on 401 and 403).

73 Beschi (n.65, 1967-68) 423, interprets the remains of the shape as a full crown of hair framing a low and wrinkled forehead.

74 Although I have suggested that the sympotic context of the funeral banquet might explain the presence of the lyre, I have been unable to find a convincing parallel among the many funeral-banquet reliefs collected by Dentzer, Jean-Marie, Le Motif du banquet couché dans le Proche Orient et le monde grec du VIIe au IVe siècle avant J.-C. (Rome 1982)CrossRefGoogle Scholar. Dentzer (466-68) follows Beschi's interpretation of the scene on the Telemachus monument without adding any new information. van Straten, F. T., Hierà kalá: Images of Animal Sacrifice in Archaic and Classical Greece (Leiden 1995) 70–71CrossRefGoogle Scholar, finds the idenification with Sophocles-Dexion convincing because of the lyre and the tragic mask.

75 Bernard Holtzmann, LIMC 2.892, says of the nineteen known banquet reliefs found in sanctuaries of Asclepius:‘L'identification avec A.,…, est loin d'être assurée: il peut s'agir d'un mort heroïsé placé sous la protection d'A. ou d'un hommage rendu par la famille du défunt à son dieu tutélaire’. Cf. Parker (n.7) 183 n. 109.

76 A marble relief, probably of Attic origin and dating from the fourth century BC (LIMC 2, s.v. ‘Asklepios’ no. 42 = Venice, Mus. Arch. 165), has Asclepius reclining on a kline with a knotted stick in his left hand and in his right a dish from which a snake is feeding. A Boeotian red-figure crater of c. 400 BC (LIMC 2, s.v. ‘Asklepios’ no. 41 = Athens, Nat. Mus. 1393) may show Asclepius, reclining and feeding a snake from a kantharos held in his outstretched right hand, but the figure may also be another healing deity, such as Amphiaraus or Trophonius. With these we should compare a relief from the Amphiareum at Oropus of mid-IV BC (LIMC 1, s.v. ‘Amphiaraos’ no. 66 = Athens, Nat. Mus. 3405) depicting Amphiaraus reclining, a rhyton in his outstretched right hand, a phiale in his left, with a woman (Hygieia?) sitting at his feet, a serving-boy standing at his head and a family of worshippers approaching from the left; and also a Boeotian red-figure bell-crater of late V BC (LIMC 1, s.v. ‘Amphiaraos’ no. 83 = Athens, Nat. Mus. 1393) showing a figure (Amphiaraus?) reclining with an egg in his left hand and in his outstretched right hand a kantharos towards which a snake bends down.

77 Vita §17 (= TrGF 4 Tl lines 74-5): ‘Iστρος δέ ϕησιν Άθηναίους διὰ τὴν τοῦ άνδρὸς άρετὴν ψήϕισμα πεποιηκέναι καθ’ ἔκαστον ἔτος αὺτῶι θύειν (‘Ister says that the Athenians, because of the man's excellence, had passed a decree to sacrifice to him each year’). From the six fragments attributed to Ister in the Vita Sophoclis (see FGrHist 334 F33-38, which cover origins, education, innovations, death and Nachleben) it is clear that Ister himself wrote a biography of the poet. For descriptions and assessments of Ister's work see Pearson, Lionel, The Local Historians of Attica (Philadelphia 1942) 136–44Google Scholar, and FGrHist 334.

78 Lefkowitz, who does not seem to accept the lacuna—see her translation at Lefkowitz (n.6) 161—, comments on the report of heroisation: ‘The original account by Ister may have referred to the cult of Sophocles as Dexion, but the biographer records only the information needed to show that by the Hellenistic age Sophocles had attained heroic status’ ( 87). This may be true, or it may not be: Lefkowitz does not demonstrate that this biographer or others handled their sources according to the principle of redaction implied in her suggestion.

79 By the term ‘historical person’ I mean a person whom the Greeks, or at least many Greeks, believed actually lived. I exclude the heroes of the ‘heroic’ age, who may have been historical in the view of Greeks, because I wish to investigate the likelihood that Greeks would have heroised a person like Sophocles: the Greeks themselves from Homer on made a distinction between the great men and women of the heroic age and the people of later, degenerate times. My choice of 336 as the cut-off date is a practical one based on a conventional division, rather than a distinction clearly justified by the history of Greek religion. Nevertheless, since I am investigating the heroisation of Sophocles, the evidence for religious practices before and shortly after his death is prima facie more significant. On the continuity of Athenian religious practices and beliefs into the third century and beyond see Parker (n.7) 256-81.

80 See Farnell (n.45) 420-26. Farnell has double entries for two persons, so that the total may be reduced to ninety-one.

81 The heroes included in Farnell's list but not in mine were excluded from my list because their dates of death were too late (most cases) or too uncertain (Farnell nos. 243a, 257), or because there was insufficient evidence from which to infer either heroisation (244, 275, 280, 292, 295, 318, 320) or the historical existence of the person (323). The twelve added by me are the Tegean law-givers, Archilochus, Zaleucus, Timaratas, Aristeas, Battus, Pixodarus, Athenodorus, the Rhegian Pythagoreans, the Megarians killed at Plataea, Themistocles and Hagnon. Farnell mentions the Megarians at his no. 242. I am grateful to Professor M.B. Wallace for bringing Battus and Aristeas to my attention.

82 We find cases in Attica and the Athenian colonies of Amphipolis and the Chersonese, in Ionian cities throughout the Aegean and in Magna Graecia, in Dorian communities in the Peloponnese and Sicily and at Cyrene, in Elis and Arcadia, and in Boeotia and central Greece. The areas wholly unrepresented or only poorly represented are Western Greece (including Aetolia), Thessaly, Doris, Crete, Euboea, Greek Cyprus and Aeolis. The Magnesian colony of Magnesia on the Meander provides the only instance of heroisation in a city with roots in northern Greece. That the list does not accurately reflect regional and tribal differences, however, may be inferred from the distribution of the cases among the authors. Pausanias provides thirteen items in the list and is often the only witness for the existence of any cult at all in some cities and even in some districts. Yet the Descriptio only covers Attica, the Isthmus, the Peloponnese and central Greece. How much we may be missing is suggested by the fact that we happen to learn about four hero cults in Sicily, an area not covered by Pausanias, from a writer with local knowledge, Diodorus.

83 Lysander is said to have received divine honours, albeit briefly, shortly before his death.

84 These six include the Spartan kings as a group. Whether they were honoured in a single group or by royal house or as individuals is uncertain. As a group they include kings dating from legendary times down to at least the time of Xenophon, and so attest to the heroisation of persons from the whole of the period under consideration. Consequently I have chosen to include them here in the fourth century in order to weight the table in favour of heroisation in the time soon after Sophocles' death.

85 These are Polycrite, whose story appears to have been known to Aristotle, and the Tegean law-givers.

86 Those fourteen are: Lycurgus, the Lacedaemonian Icings, Timesius, Battus, Miltiades, the Phocaeans murdered at Agylla, Harmodius and Aristogiton, Philippus, Onesilus, Artachaees, the Greeks killed at Plataea, Hagnon, Brasidas, and Euphron.

87 The reasons for the heroisation of Artachaëes and his worship by Greeks are unclear.

88 Sophocles' singularity emerges in a comment by Parker (n.7) 257-8, when, speaking of Athenian debate over worship of Alexander in 324, he observes: ‘There was in fact no tradition at Athens of treating historical mortals even as heroes, if we except the two tyrannicides and the war-dead on the one hand, and on the other the poet Sophocles, host of a god’.

89 Vita Aeschyli §11 (= TrGF 3 Tl, lines 46-7) says είς τò μνῆμα δέ ϕοιτῶντες ὄσοις έν τραγωιδίαις ήν ό βίος ένήγζόν τε καὶ τὰ δράματα ύπεκρίνοντο (‘coming to his memorial, all who made their living through tragedies would make offerings and perform [his] plays’). As one of the Journal's readers observed, those referred to in the words ὅσoις έν τραγωιδíαις ἠν ó βίoς may have been the Hellenistic Artists of Dionysus. If they were, the offerings alleged here would be unlikely to antedate the early third century. For the beginnings of the Artists of Dionysus see Pickard-Cambridge, A., The Dramatic Festivals of Athens (2nd ed., rev. Gould, J. and Lewis, D.M., Oxford 1988) 279–82Google Scholar and Davies, J.K., CAH 7.1 (2nd ed., Cambridge 1984) 319.Google Scholar

90 Deneken (n.46) 2541-43, argues that the heroisation of Sophocles is alluded to as early as Aristophanes' Frogs: the description of Sophocles as εὔκoλoς at Frogs 82 is alleged to be an indication that he had already been heroised, because the adjective εὔκoλoς is used of deities with chthonic associations and of heroes (viz Asclepius, Hermes and an otherwise nameless hero; cf. the by-name Εὐκολíνη used of Hecate). I do not find the evidence for such a usage of εὔκoλoς compelling. Rather, as one of the Journal's readers remarked, the absence from the Frogs and from Phrynichus, Musae fr. 32 of any clearer indication of Sophocles’ immediate heroisation tells against it.

91 On Sophocles’ military career see Woodbury, Leonard, ‘Sophocles among the generals’, Phoenix 24 (1970) 209–24.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

92 Those heroised in connection with military affairs were usually liberators or saviours (and often therefore quasi-founders), and almost all of them died in battle. Those heroised for political service were founders, law-givers or tyrants. Sophocles' military and political service falls short of these standards.

93 Foucart (n.8) 125.

94 Ferguson (n.8) 87 n. 35. Neither the need to distinguish homonymous rulers nor a desire to link them with positive attributes for the purpose of propaganda seems relevant in Sophocles' case.

95 Vitruvius 10.2.15. For the dating see Dinsmoor, W.B., The Architecture of Ancient Greece: An Account of its Historic Development (3rd ed., 1950; repr. London 1975) 127 n.2.Google Scholar

96 On the related phenomenon of double names see Horsley, G.H.R., Anchor Bible Dictionary 4 (New York 1992) 1011–17.Google Scholar

97 Nymphodorus apud Athenaeus 265D-266E.

98 Jacoby (FGrHist 572) and Laqueur (RE, s.v. ‘Nymphodoros’ no. 6) place Nymphodorus towards the end of the third century BC. For a very rough attempt to date the start of Drimacus’ career to the 270s or 260s see Alexander Fuks, ‘Slave wars and slave troubles in Chios in the third century BC’, Athenaeum n.s. 46 (1968) 102-11, esp. 105-7. Graf (n.23) 121-5 argues that the romantic story of Drimacus may have an historical core, but may equally be an aetiological tale. He looks to Sophocles and Pixodarus for evidence of the plausibility of Drimacus’ name-change and historical existence. The story has been treated most recently by Bonelli, Guido, ‘La saga di Drimaco nel sesto libro di Ateneo: ipotesi interpretativa’, QUCC 46 (1994) 135–42.Google Scholar

99 Deneken (n.46) 2528-29 argues that the cults in these two cases did not originate from heroisations of historical persons.

100 Lefkowitz (n.6) 84.

101 Compare the wording, for example, in one of the decrees of the orgeones of Amynus, Asclepius and Dexion discussed above: έπαινέσαι αύτούς | άρετῆς ένεκα καί δικαιοσύνη(ς) είς τοὺς | θεοὺς καὶ περὶ κοινὰ τὰ τῶν όργεωνων (‘to praise them for their excellence and justice towards the gods and concerning the common affairs of the orgeones': IG ii2.1252.6-8). Ferguson (n.8) 87 n.35 thought that the Byzantine lexicographer and Ister had mistakenly interpreted a decree of these orgeones as a decree of the Athenian state.

102 See Fairweather, Janet, ‘Fiction in the biographies of ancient writers’, Ancient Society 5 (1974) 231–75Google Scholar, esp. 249-56. One of the Journal's readers suggested that the heroisation story could have arisen from comic hyperbole, such as that put into the mouth of Aeschylus at Frogs 1039, where without derision he calls Lamachus ἤρως (cf. the sarcastic ὤ Λαμαχ' ἤρως of Acharnians 575 and 578). A comic situation could even have provided the starting point for belief in a decree: for examples of mock ψηϕíσματα in comedy see Birds 1032-44 and Ecclesiazusae 1012-20.

103 [Plutarch], Vitae decent oratorum 841F (= TrGF 4 T156). Cf. Pausanias 1.21.1 (= TrGF 4 T161).

104 For it to have been an obvious step, of course, some Hellenistic or later scholar must have had knowledge of some of the more obscure details of Attic cult. Reference by an atthidographer to a minor deity associated with a major one is not at all unlikely. We know that in this case a real Dexion was available for such mention.

105 See Phrynichus, Musae fr. 32 K-A (μάκαρ ∑οϕοκλέους, oς χρόνον βιοὺς | άπέθανεν εὐδαίμων άνὴρ καì δεξιός) and Ion of Chios FGrHist 392 F6 (άνδρì παιδιώδει παρ’ οίνον καì δεξιωι and τοιαυτα πολλὰ δεξιῶς ἔλεγέν τε καì ἔπρησσεν). I owe this suggestion to one of the Journal's readers.

106 The evidence for the heroic status of all those listed here is not equally secure. The most doubtful cases seem to me to be Polycrite, Timaratas, Sappho, the Rhegian Pythagoreans and Pindar. The historicity of some of the persons is also in doubt (notably Homer, Lycurgus, Timaratas and the one hundred Oresthasian warriors).