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A Note on the Deity of Alcman's Partheneion

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  11 February 2009

A. F. Garvie
A. F. Garvie
Affiliation:
University of glasgow
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Extract

The recurrence of horse-imagery in Alcman's Partheneion (47 ff., 50, 58-59, 92) suggested to Bowra that the chorus may have been the guild of priestesses called Leucippides, who seem from a mysterious gloss in Hesychius to have been known as It is true that the comparison of girls with fillies is common enough in Greek, but the appearance of Helen as of girls like at Ar. Lys. 1308–15 seems, as Bowra says, ‘to hide a ritual use of ’. The existence of this guild of priestesses appears to be established from Paus. 3. 16. 1 and 3. 13. 7. In the latter passage they join with the in offering sacrifice to Dionysus and the unnamed hero who first guided him to Sparta, but it seems reasonable to assume that their principal concern was with the cult of the goddesses Phoebe and Hilaeira, the daughters of Leucippus, from whom, as Pausanias explicitly says (3. 13. 7), they took their name.

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Type
Research Article
Information
The Classical Quarterly , Volume 15 , Issue 2 , December 1965, pp. 185 - 187
Copyright
Copyright © The Classical Association 1965

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References

1 It may seem hazardous to add yet another name to the long list of deities (the Dioscuri, Artemis Orthia, Dionysus, Helen, Eileithyia, etc.) already suggested as possible recipients of Alcman's poem. No more is claimed for the present suggestion than that it is at least as likely as most of the others. I am grateful to Professor K. J. Dover, Dr. E. K. Borthwick, and Mr. H. H. O. Chalk for much helpful discussion of this note.

2 Hesych. s.v. Bowra, C. M., Greek Lyric Poetry (2nd ed., Oxford, 1961), pp. 53 ffGoogle Scholar. It is tempting to connect the of the Partheneion (61) with the Hesychius gloss: (MSS. cf. Ziehen, , R.-E. iii. A. 2. 1495 n.)Google Scholar Dr. Borthwick points out to me that the earliest use of recorded in L.S.J, refers to (Il. 10. 353Google Scholar, 13. 703, Od. 13. 32), while the word is used for a specific type of plough in Hes. Op. 433. Page, D. L., Alcman: The Partheneion (Oxford, 1951), pp. 78–79Google Scholar shows that there are no valid grounds for rejecting the Alexandrian interpretation of Cf. also Bowra, , p. 55Google Scholar. Garzya, A., Alcmane: I Frammenti (Naples, 1954), pp. 56–57Google Scholar returns to the view that it is a cf. also Grande, C. del, TPAΓΩIΔIA (2nd ed., Milan, 1962), pp. 34 f.Google Scholar

3 Wide, S., Lakonische Kulte (Leipzig, 1893), p. 160 suggested that this hero was Leucippus himself.Google Scholar

4 Wide, , pp. 331 ffGoogle Scholar; Wilamowitz, , Text-geschichte dergr. Bukoliker (Berlin, 1906), p. 188 n. 1Google Scholar, and ap. Th. Wiegand, , M.D.A.I.(A.) xxix (1904), 297 f.Google Scholar

5 The evidence is assembled and discussed by Cook, A. B., Zeus, i (Cambridge, 1914), pp. 441 ff.Google Scholar: cf. also Wide, , pp. 79 n. 1, 178 f.Google Scholar; Malten, I., Jahrb. d. Arch. Inst, xxix (1914), 249Google Scholar. Not only animal names are borrowed by worshippers from the deities whom they serve: cf. Usener, H., Gotternamen (Bonn, 1896), p. 358; Hitzig-Blümner at Paus. 3. 16. 1.Google Scholar

The term is found attached to the priestesses (or priests) of other goddesses too: Demeter and Persephone in Sparta (I.G. v. i. 594Google Scholar. 2; 1444a; cf. Wide, , pp. 178 f.Google Scholar, Bowra, , p. 53)Google Scholar, Isis in Ptolemaic Egypt (cf. Gerhard, G. A., Archiv f. Religionsw. vii (1904), 520 ff.Google Scholar; Otto, W., Priester und Tempel im hellenistischen Ägypten (Leipzig and Berlin, 1905), i, 411 f.)Google Scholar, Aphrodite (Mysian grave inscription; cf. Wiegand, , loc. cit.)Google Scholar: cf. Hesych. s.v. For the shrine of Artemis in Thasos see ThMacridy, , Jahrb. d. Arch. Inst, xxvii (1912), 1 ff.Google Scholar; Pfister, F., Woch. f. klass. Philol. xxviii (1911), 249 ff.Google Scholar

1 I.G. v. i. 305 (second century A.D.) shows that the Leucippides and the Dioscuri shared a common worship at Sparta.Google Scholar

2 Cf. ThBergk, , Philol. xxii (1865), 3Google Scholar; Davison, J. A., Hermes lxxiii (1938), 443 f.; Page, pp. 30–33.Google Scholar

3 Gf. Bethe, , R.-E. v. 1113 ff.Google Scholar; Kuhnert in Roscher's, Lexicon ii. 2. 1988 ff.Google Scholar; Frazer, J. G. at Apoll. 3. 11. 2 (Loeb); Preller-Robert, Gr. Mythologie (4th ed., Berlin, 1920), ii. 317 f.Google Scholar

4 Across the river, rather, from Therapne, near the modern village of Kalogonia. To Lobel's references add Paus. 3. 20. 2, Livy 34. 38. It is not clear why the Phoebaeum should have been called after Phoebe in isolation from her sister, but ‘No duality or trinity^rsquo;, says Farnell, L. R. (Greek Hero Cults and Ideas of Immortality [Oxford, 1921], p. 192)Google Scholar, 7lsquo;is inseparable in Greek religion’. Phoebe may in fact have shared the Phoe- baeum with her sister (cf. Preller-Robert, , p. 314 n. 1)Google Scholar. The joint shrine of Phoebe and Hilaeira at Sparta is mentioned by Paus. at 3. 16. 1; cf. Plut, . Quaest. gr. 48, p. 302. If the reference to at line 82 is specific (cf. Page, p. 91), more than one divinity is con- cerned in the ceremony.Google Scholar

1 Cf. Eitrem, , R.-E. xx. 1. 345Google Scholar; Usener, , Rh. Mus. lviii (1903), 326Google Scholar; Roscher's, Lexicon, iii. 2. 2396Google Scholar. Cf., however, Roscher, , Über Selene und Verwandtes (Leipzig, 1890),pp. 17 ff.Google Scholar, for the view that was an old title of the moon, and that this old moon-goddess hides behind the various owners of the name. Roscher points out that at Empedocles fr. B 40 (D-K) is described as (cf. fr. B 85). For the connexion of Artemis with the moon cf. Page, pp. 74–75. Others deny this syncretism for a date as early as Alcman. Cf., for example, d'Errico, A., Ann. della Fac. di Let. e Filos. dell' Univ. di Napoli vii (1957), p.Google Scholar

2 This provides a satisfactory explanation of the names Phoebe and Hilaeira. Cf. Maass, E., Gbtt. Gel. Anz. (1890), 346Google Scholar; Roscher's, Lexicon, ii. 2. 1992, 1996–1997, 1998Google Scholar; Gruppe, O., Gr. Mythologie, p. 1244. 6Google Scholar; Wide, pp. 123, 160, 216. Miss A. P. Burnett refers to the identification in her recent discussion of Eileithyia's claims to be the deity of the Partheneion (CI. Phil, lix [1963], 32–33). Farnell (pp. 231 ff.) seems unduly sceptical about the solar associations of the Leucippides.Google Scholar

Farnell (pp. 175 ff.) discusses, but rejects, the view that the Dioscuri are related to the heroic divine pair, the Dēwa-Deli or Dĕwo-Sunelei, who in Lettish-Lithuanian folk-poetry are found wooing the daughter of the sun, using the horses of the moon.

In the Cypria (Paus. 3. 16. 1) Phoebe and Hilaeira are the daughters not of Leucippus but of Apollo.

3 The white steeds of dawn are commonly mentioned: Od. 23. 246 A. Pers. 386 (see the commentary of Broadhead, H. D.); S. Aj. 672–3 and especially Theocr. 13. II Bacch. fr. 20C. 22 Snell .Google Scholar

The tradition that one of the Heliades, sisters of Phaethon, was called Phoebe apparently goes back as far as Hesiod (fr. 199 [220] Rzach).