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Into the Woods: Reading the Iliad with Boeotian Cult

  • Richard P. Martin

    Richard P. Martin earned his A.B. (in Classics and Celtic studies), A.M. and Ph.D. (in Classical Philology) from Harvard University. He has taught Greek, Latin, and Irish literature at Stanford University for the past 25 years as Isabelle and Antony Raubitschek Professor in Classics. He is the author of Healing, Sacrifice, and Battle: Amechania and Related Concepts in Early Greek Poetry (1983); The Language of Heroes: Speech and Performance in the Iliad (1989); Myths of the Ancient Greeks (2003); Mythologizing Performance (2020); and Classical Mythology: The Basics (2nd edit. 2022). He lives in San Francisco.
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Memory, Ritual, and Identity in Ancient Greece and Rome
This chapter is in the book Memory, Ritual, and Identity in Ancient Greece and Rome

Abstract

A story told by Pausanias, arising from his visit to Plataea (9.3.1–8) begins by explaining the cult-title of Hera “the Bride” (Νυμφ∊υομένη), and leads into an extended account of the local festivals called Daidala, said to commemorate the reconciliation of Zeus with Hera. This paper brings what we can glean of the ritual, from Plutarch and Pausanias, into extended dialogue with the earliest literary depiction in the Iliad of the leading dramatis personae in the cult-foundation stories. Memories of the Daidala or similar rites might have exerted influence on the ways in which an ancient audience received the epic at the local level. The investigation, along the way, locates Pausanias’ account alongside another Boeotian cult story that can be related to the Homeric poems. At the same time, it aims at opening larger questions about the mutual relations between the poetry and religion of ancient Greece.

Abstract

A story told by Pausanias, arising from his visit to Plataea (9.3.1–8) begins by explaining the cult-title of Hera “the Bride” (Νυμφ∊υομένη), and leads into an extended account of the local festivals called Daidala, said to commemorate the reconciliation of Zeus with Hera. This paper brings what we can glean of the ritual, from Plutarch and Pausanias, into extended dialogue with the earliest literary depiction in the Iliad of the leading dramatis personae in the cult-foundation stories. Memories of the Daidala or similar rites might have exerted influence on the ways in which an ancient audience received the epic at the local level. The investigation, along the way, locates Pausanias’ account alongside another Boeotian cult story that can be related to the Homeric poems. At the same time, it aims at opening larger questions about the mutual relations between the poetry and religion of ancient Greece.

Chapters in this book

  1. Frontmatter I
  2. Acknowledgments
  3. Contents VII
  4. Abbreviations
  5. List of Figures XIII
  6. Introduction 1
  7. Part I Ritual, Poetics, and the Past: Greece
  8. Into the Woods: Reading the Iliad with Boeotian Cult 17
  9. Epinician Rituals in Pindar’s Fourth and Fifth Olympians: Shaping and Preserving Identities in Song 35
  10. Repeat, Remember: Ritual and Literature (Horace; Sappho, Alcaeus; Homer, Sophocles, Epicurus, Callimachus, Vergil) 47
  11. Ritual, Meter, and Cultural Memories of Megatheism: A New Case for Sarapis as the God of Hyssaldomos’ Verse-Inscription from Mylasa 71
  12. Part II Ritual, Poetics, and the Past: Rome
  13. Georgics 4: Vergil on the Rites of Poetry and Philosophy at the Dawn of a New Era 97
  14. Horace’s Ritual Song in Augustan Rome: The Sacred Poet as an alter princeps 119
  15. Divining Identity in Seneca’s Oedipus 139
  16. Part III Performing Identity
  17. Call the Witnesses: Athenian Citizenship Practice at the Crossroads of Memory, Ritual, and Identity 153
  18. Embodied Memory in the Panathenaia 169
  19. Ritual Against Memory: Managing the Ancestors in Ancient Rome 195
  20. Part IV Trauma and Memory
  21. Aeneas’ tropaeum: Collective Trauma and Commemoration in Vergil’s Aeneid 213
  22. Broken Hospitality and Traumatic Memory in the Funerals of Vergil’s Pallas and Valerius Flaccus’ Cyzicus 237
  23. Memory, Ritual, and Identity in Prudentius, Peristephanon and Paulinus of Nola, Natalicia 271
  24. Part V Women, Ritual and Memory
  25. Remembering Female Names: Crisis, Ritual, and Collective Identity Formation in Ancient Greek Epic Poetry 289
  26. Ritual Lament, Memory, and Identity in Euripides’ Trojan Trilogy 307
  27. Memory, Ritual, and the Politics of Closure in Tacitus, Ann. 3.76 323
  28. Part VI Places
  29. Treasuries, Identity, and Politics 337
  30. Ancient Greek Construction Rituals, Tradition, and the Articulation of Communal Identities 355
  31. Ritual, Memory, and Identity: The Case of Theoriae 385
  32. Pomponius Mela’s Hercules: Preserving Phoenician Ritual Memory and Identity 405
  33. List of Contributors 423
  34. Index Rerum
  35. Index Locorum
https://doi.org/10.1515/9783111197456-002

Chapters in this book

  1. Frontmatter I
  2. Acknowledgments
  3. Contents VII
  4. Abbreviations
  5. List of Figures XIII
  6. Introduction 1
  7. Part I Ritual, Poetics, and the Past: Greece
  8. Into the Woods: Reading the Iliad with Boeotian Cult 17
  9. Epinician Rituals in Pindar’s Fourth and Fifth Olympians: Shaping and Preserving Identities in Song 35
  10. Repeat, Remember: Ritual and Literature (Horace; Sappho, Alcaeus; Homer, Sophocles, Epicurus, Callimachus, Vergil) 47
  11. Ritual, Meter, and Cultural Memories of Megatheism: A New Case for Sarapis as the God of Hyssaldomos’ Verse-Inscription from Mylasa 71
  12. Part II Ritual, Poetics, and the Past: Rome
  13. Georgics 4: Vergil on the Rites of Poetry and Philosophy at the Dawn of a New Era 97
  14. Horace’s Ritual Song in Augustan Rome: The Sacred Poet as an alter princeps 119
  15. Divining Identity in Seneca’s Oedipus 139
  16. Part III Performing Identity
  17. Call the Witnesses: Athenian Citizenship Practice at the Crossroads of Memory, Ritual, and Identity 153
  18. Embodied Memory in the Panathenaia 169
  19. Ritual Against Memory: Managing the Ancestors in Ancient Rome 195
  20. Part IV Trauma and Memory
  21. Aeneas’ tropaeum: Collective Trauma and Commemoration in Vergil’s Aeneid 213
  22. Broken Hospitality and Traumatic Memory in the Funerals of Vergil’s Pallas and Valerius Flaccus’ Cyzicus 237
  23. Memory, Ritual, and Identity in Prudentius, Peristephanon and Paulinus of Nola, Natalicia 271
  24. Part V Women, Ritual and Memory
  25. Remembering Female Names: Crisis, Ritual, and Collective Identity Formation in Ancient Greek Epic Poetry 289
  26. Ritual Lament, Memory, and Identity in Euripides’ Trojan Trilogy 307
  27. Memory, Ritual, and the Politics of Closure in Tacitus, Ann. 3.76 323
  28. Part VI Places
  29. Treasuries, Identity, and Politics 337
  30. Ancient Greek Construction Rituals, Tradition, and the Articulation of Communal Identities 355
  31. Ritual, Memory, and Identity: The Case of Theoriae 385
  32. Pomponius Mela’s Hercules: Preserving Phoenician Ritual Memory and Identity 405
  33. List of Contributors 423
  34. Index Rerum
  35. Index Locorum
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