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| ISBN-13: | 9780520967250 |
|---|---|
| Publisher: | University of California Press |
| Publication date: | 05/23/2017 |
| Series: | Sather Classical Lectures , #72 |
| Sold by: | Barnes & Noble |
| Format: | eBook |
| Pages: | 261 |
| File size: | 2 MB |
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Greek Gods Abroad
Names, Natures, and Transformations
By Robert Parker
UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA PRESS
Copyright © 2017 The Regents of the University of CaliforniaAll rights reserved.
ISBN: 978-0-520-29394-6
CHAPTER 1
Names and Epithets
By the third century B.C., gods bearing Greek names were worshipped from Spain to Afghanistan. This book is about aspects of that divine diaspora. Its particular emphasis is on names and naming, one of the two principal aspects (iconography is the other) under which that diffusion is revealed to us. Later chapters will enquire how ways of addressing and referring to gods in Greek developed outside old Greece and over time, two processes that can scarcely be kept separate. But first some account of those naming practices in the period when they were relatively isolated from such external contact is needed. The isolation was only relative because contacts always existed, but a real change occurred when use of the Greek language spread and non-Greek gods had to be named in Greek. This chapter will attempt an outline of the status quo ante.
The obvious starting point is the names of the gods themselves, but first the concept of "naming the gods" must be complicated a little. In studying divine names, one needs, at a minimum, to distinguish ways of referring to the gods from ways of addressing them. Direct address brings respect and the desire to conciliate into play, often in very high degree; it may lead to avoidance of proper names in favour of respectful titles or at least the addition of such titles. But it was often necessary to refer to the gods, usually in relation to their shrines or property or priests, in a less charged but accurate manner in the third person. A dedication is perhaps halfway between these two registers: it is a direct address to the god, but there may also be concern to identify the addressee accurately. Respectful forms of naming can also spill over from direct address into referential naming. In many ancient Near Eastern cultures, periphrastic avoidance of the actual god's name occurred in all contexts, not just in prayers, so that, for instance, we are uncertain what the real name, if she had one, of the figure referred to as "the lady of Byblos" may have been. In Greece we find certain euphemisms similarly applied almost invariably: Demeter's daughter Persephone is Kore, "Maiden," in inventories as well as in invocations, and certain gods of mysteries are never referred to except by titles.
Another distinction is that between prose and verse. Many epithets are given to gods in poetry but not in cult; there are also cases such as that of Agesilas/Agesilaos ("Leader of the People"), an alternative name, probably euphemistic, for Hades which had a long life in poetry but is unattested in prose. The distinction is not between "literature" and "real belief," because, for instance, the periphrastic impulse present in Agesilaos is certainly an expression of religious feeling. It is a difference rather of register, between language that an ordinary Greek would recognise and respond to and that which he would actually use.
As a rule, gods had one name each. Though it was a title of honour for a god to be "many-named," what was meant by this was in fact "many-epitheted"; the multiple variant names of Akkadian gods lack a Greek equivalent. Phoibos and Pallas are not so much alternative as additional names for Apollo and Athena, regularly used in conjunction with the main name. Kore is not a second name for Persephone of equivalent standing, but, as just noted, a euphemistic alternative. The same is probably true of Plouton (deriving from nAoutoc;, "wealth") as an alternative name for Hades.
In contrast to some ancient polytheisms where gods are named from their functions, the names of the familiar Olympian gods and goddesses are opaque; none bears a speaking name with unmistakable meaning. The names of various Peloponnesian and Aeginetan figures — certainly or plausibly independent goddesses without mythological connections with the Olympian family but, within their own orbit, as important as any other — are equally obscure: Alea, Orthaia, Aphaia, Mnia, Auzesia. It is true that Greeks tried to extract meaning from the names of some Olympians by popular etymology: they heard aphros, "foam," in Aphrodite, and related it to her birth from the sea; they connected Apollo, sometimes a death-dealing god, with the verb apollumi, "destroy"; Demeter could be analysed as Ge meter, "earth mother" while the accusative case of Zeus, Dia, indicated that it was dia, "because of" him that most processes in the world occurred. Aristotle casually alludes to use of the name "in praises of the gods"; he is presumably referring to such attempts to infer the powers of gods from their names. But these were occasional interpretations; no automatic and transparent meaning attached to any of these names. It is true also that the euphemistic names just noted for the lords of the underworld, Kore and Plouton, have transparent meanings, but their true names were obscure like any other. Sun (Helios), Earth (Ge, Gaia), and Hearth (Hestia) were physical entities as well as deities, and therefore had speaking names, but their importance in cult was modest. The one major figure with a transparent name was Mother (Meter), and even she was sometimes identified with the opaquely named Rhea (or Cybele). Most major heroes too have meaningless names such as Theseus or Achilles or Herakles. Gods and heroes were thus marked off from mortals, who in the historical period typically had names compounded from ordinary Greek words and thus readily comprehensible. It has indeed been argued that divine names with recognisable meanings were dissimilated from their etymological origins to render them opaque. And, though mortals regularly bore theophoric names based on those of a wide range of gods, they never bore divine names unadjusted (with the possible exception of Artemis) until quite a late date, even if the difference was no more than a single letter (as in Dionysios from Dionysus).
At a lower level in the divine hierarchy, speaking names do appear. The Nymphs as a group are a collectivity of brides, nymphai, and many female figures of that level of power have transparent names: the Praxidikai, "Justice-Exacters," for instance, or Kourotrophos, "Child-Nurturer," sometimes a minor independent goddess, sometimes an epithet of some larger figure. A minority of cult heroes too have names indicating a function: Matton, "Kneader," and Keraon, "Mixer," culinary heroes in Sparta; the Attic Sosineos, "Save Ship"; the Thessalian Poliphylax, "City Guard" (honoured by human "city guards"); and others. There is also a great swarm of what we would call personified abstractions, figures such as Eros, "Sexual Desire"; Pheme, "Rumour"; Phobos, "Fear"; and many others. Some of these existed only as figures of speech or iconography, while others actually received cult, but there was no sharp division between the two groups: a personification who had only existed at a verbal or pictorial level could easily cross over to become a recipient of cult. Of personifications that received cult, a large number were closely linked with major deities whose power they expressed in some way; such was the case of two who were linked with Aphrodite, Peitho, "Persuasion," and Eros, "Love," and of Athena's associate Nike, "Victory" But a minority had a freestanding existence in cult, most notably Nemesis, "righteous outrage"; there were also groups such as the Graces (Charites), the Seasons (Horai), and the Muses, who might be broken down into individuals who bore speaking names in turn. There is again here a difference, though of a different kind, between divine and human naming. Whereas most human names had semantic content, no one will have expected the conduct of a Philodemos, "People-Lover," to be governed by his name; but we presume that a worshipper of "Save Ship" will normally have looked to him to do just that.
A majority of Greek divine figures have names of one of these two types: they are either opaque, or relate directly to their powers or functions. A minority — goddesses more commonly than gods — are normally referred to by titles or by adjectival descriptions of some kind. Such replacement of name by title may once have been commoner than it became. "Mistress (Potnia) of the Labyrinth" is one of numerous Mycenaean usages of Potnia in lieu of a name (whether Wanax and Wanassa, "Lord" and "Lady," are similarly used is controversial). At Perge in Pamphylia the goddess later familiar as Artemis of Perge is named on earlier coins and inscriptions simply as "Wanassa" of Perge, while Aphrodite on Cyprus is initially plain "Wanassa" of Paphos or of Golgoi. Somewhat similar is Alcaeus's remarkable address to what must be Hera as "glorious Aeolian goddess, source of all things"
These usages occur either very early or in places on the fringes of the Greek world where older naming conventions may have survived (though external influence is also possible). Later on the mainland, titles or adjectival descriptions are usually found in relation to mystery cults or gods who inspire fear or invite euphemism in other ways; the two factors, unwilligness to name mystery gods directly and fear of the underworld, often coincided, as in relation to the gods of Eleusis. Despoina, "Mistress," of Lycosura, the goddess most revered by the Arcadians according to Pausanias, presided over mysteries. Megaloi Theoi, "Great Gods" are found in separate mystery cults at Andania in Messenia, and in the Aegean. There are mysteries of Megalai Theai, "Great Goddesses" in Arcadia, while the Eumenides, "Friendly Ones" were those whom in Sophocles' words "we are afraid to name, and whom we pass without looking, without sound, without speech, moving our lips in respectful silence"; they were also called Semnai Theai, "Reverend Goddesses" A sanctuary on a hill at Pallantion in Arcadia, at which "oaths on the most important matters were sworn," was identified simply as belonging to the "pure ones" (katharoi): either "they do not know the names of the gods or are unwilling to reveal them," says our sole source, Pausanias (8.44.5–6).
Often the gods addressed by titles also had names known to their worshippers (Pausanias declines to tell the true name of Despoina to the uninitiated), but there was always an impulse respectfully to avoid direct naming when dealing with such powers. The Erinyes/Eumenides are even described by Euripides as "the nameless goddesses," and it is apparently this degree zero of naming that we encounter in the Eleusinian pair "God and Goddess" (presumably Hades and Persephone). Individual gods could be known under many different periphrases. The "Reverend Goddess" (hagne theos) of a fifth-century curse tablet from Selinus and a fourth-century Attic calendar is probably a further name for Persephone (we have already noted Kore and plain Goddess); she also appears in dedications (in northern Greece) as "Only Child" ([TEXT NOT REPRODUCIBLE IN ASCII]) and "Bride" (Nymphe), while her husband is Despotes ("Lord"), Basileus ("King"), Klymenos ("Famed One") (Paus. 2.35.9–10), and much else besides. The resident of Colonus near Athens in Sophocles' play, asked the "solemn name" of the "dread goddesses, daughters of Earth and Darkness" who inhabit the grove there, answers: "The people here would call them the all-seeing Eumenides; but different names are favoured in different places" (OC 42–43):" the title used, then, was seen as a locally variable euphemism for an invariable essence. Nonetheless, the use of titles could apparently lead to uncertainty and variation when the attempt was made to identify the power concerned: Pausanias has to explain that Klymenos at Hermione in the Argolid is (supposedly) a "king under the earth," not a mortal Argive, while in the mystery cult at Andania in the southern Peloponnese the apparent sex-change of the chief honorands between the first century B.C. and the time of Pausanias from Great Gods to Great Goddesses is a standing conundrum.
About some other deities known by adjective or title we know too little to interpret with confidence. Several distinct goddesses called Parthenos, "Maiden," are known, one from the Tauric Chersonese on the northern coast of the Black Sea, one from Leros and adjacent regions of Caria, one attested across a swath of northern Greece from Epirus to Neapolis (modern Kavalla) in Thrace. The title may be a euphemism — among Greeks, at least, the Parthenos of the Chersonese had a dire reputation, as a supposed recipient of human sacrifice; it may (for we are outside the Greek heartland) translate an indigenous term, or serve to label an originally anonymous goddess. Another anonymous figure from a border zone is Polystephanos, "Many-Crowned (Goddess)," worshipped at a spring near Butera in Sicily. The "Great God" or perhaps "Great God of the Odesitai" known from Hellenistic coins of Odessos on the west coast of the Black Sea, reappears in later inscriptions as "Great God Derzelas/Darzalas": such had presumably always been his name, but one initially shunned in favour of periphrasis by the Greek settlers. Gods in Greece itself who were recurrently addressed not by a proper name were a Basileia, "Queen" in West Locri (there was also a less prominent, perhaps euphemistic, Basile in Attica), and Kalliste, "Most Beautiful One (feminine)" sometimes paired with Ariste, "Best," in Attica; there are also isolated occurrences of "Beautiful Goddess," "Good God/s," "Good Goddess" (this last possibly in one instance identical with Kalliste). Agathos Daimon, "Good Power," "Good Destiny," grew from a figure toasted at symposia into a popular domestic god of Roman Egypt, often associated with Agathe Tyche, "Good Luck." Anake (dual), the title by which the Dioscuri (or figures assimilated to them) were known in Attica and Argos, is a mysterious fossil: Greeks probably heard in it a variant on Anakte, "Lords," so a title of respect. The explanation for these expressions may vary from case to case: euphemism; replacement of the theonym by an honorific accompaniment that has become fixed; emphasis on divine attributes particularly desirable in a particular case ("beauty," in patronesses of young girls; goodness, in the sense of friendliness to man); uncertainty about the identity of the power addressed; in the case of Anake, habitual usage.
A minor category is that of gods whose names were not yet known, acknowledged by those altars addressed to "unknown gods" out of which the apostle Paul seems to have created his altar to an "unknown god.
THE CULTIC DOUBLE NAME
In narrative, a god is normally designated simply by a single name. It is unusual when Apollonius (Argon. 2.2–3) speaks of a Nymph who slept with Poseidon Genethlios ("of Begetting"), as opposed to plain Poseidon. But, in cult, divine names were typically accompanied by an epithet, to give what is called the cultic double name; this makes the god what has been called "declinable" ("dieu decliné"). The specification added by an epithet is so important that, it has been claimed, a god's name taken alone reveals nothing about the function a god performs in a particular context, with the single exception of Asclepius, always associated with healing. (Triple and quadruple names, i.e., theonym plus two or even three epithets, are a rarity before the Hellenistic period; they become common later when the line between cult epithets stricto sensu and epithets of more celebratory type becomes blurred.) As one example out of thousands of its use one might take a dedication by an important Greek living in Egypt in the third century B.C., Apollonios the dioiketes (i.e., head of the civil administration), to "Apollo Hylates ("of Hylai"), Artemis Phosphoros ("Light-Bringer"), Artemis Enodios ("in the Road"), Leto Euteknos ("of Fair Children"), Herakles Kallinikos ("of Fair Victory"): it neatly illustrates a feeling on Apollonios's part that every god should be accorded an epithet. Heroes by contrast normally lacked epithets; the two who acquired a good set, Herakles and Asclepius, were the two who became functionally equivalent to gods.
The concept of cult epithet was already familiar in antiquity, but defining it is difficult, and establishing fixed boundaries between what is one and what is not is impossible. It is normal and correct to distinguish between poetic or honorific epithets and true cult epithets, though there was certainly overlap and possibility of crossover between the two classes. The cult epithet is perhaps best defined as one used in prayers and appeals to the god in prose, in dedications, and in indirect references to the god, and usually following the god's name. One cannot simply make it "an epithet used in a cult context," because hymns performed in cult oft en contained ornamental and honorific epithets borrowed from the poetic tradition; "in prose" is added in the definition above to exclude such cases. "Usually following the god's name" is added to exclude titles of respect such as anax, potnia, despoina, and kurios (all roughly meaning "master/mistress"): these are common in prayers, but are not found in calendars of sacrifices, for instance; they do not individualise the god in the way that is here taken as a necessary characteristic of the cult epithet. A little different again are "acclamatory" epithets such as megas, epekoos, epiphanes, and soter ("great," "who gives heed," "manifest," and "saviour") which celebrated the power of a god in hopes of assistance or, very oft en, in gratitude for assistance received. But the dividing line between acclamatory and true cult epithets is again a porous one, soter, for instance, being frequent in both roles.
(Continues...)
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Table of Contents
Preface1. Names and Epithets
2. Interpretatio
3. Gods of Many Nations and Their Naming in Greek: Non-Greek Naming Traditions
4. Supreme, Ancestral, and Personal Gods
5. Ad Maiorem Deorum Gloriam: The Growth of Praise Epithets
6. Delos: Where God Meets God
Conclusion
Appendix A. Postclassical Use of the Epithet O?ρ?νιος
Appendix B. Translated Theophoric Names
Appendix C. Interpretatio in India
Appendix D. Some Non-Greek Theonyms in Anatolia
Appendix E. Thasian Herakles
Appendix F. Some Epithets in Bilingual Texts
Appendix G. Divine and Human Names Juxtaposed
Appendix H. Exported Gods: Th e Cults of Hellenistic Colonies
Bibliography
Index