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Artemis and Iphigeneia*

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  11 October 2013

Hugh Lloyd-Jones
Hugh Lloyd-Jones
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Christ Church, Oxford
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Extract

Few problems in the Oresteia have been more debated in recent times than that of why Artemis sends the calm which detains the Achaean fleet at Aulis. ‘The main problem, a much vexed one’, wrote Eduard Fraenkel, ‘… arises from the fact that we are not told anywhere in the ode why the wrath of Artemis is directed against the Atreidae’. By ‘the ode’ Fraenkel means, of course, the parodos of the Agamemnon; he might have written ‘in the play’ or ‘in the trilogy’. He believed that Aeschylus had in mind the story, told in the Cypria and in the Electra of Sophocles, that Agamemnon had angered Artemis by boasting that he surpassed her as an archer, but that he made no allusion to it because it seemed to supply a motive too petty to accord with his great theme.

Others have protested that in a trilogy concerned with guilt and retribution it is strange that so important an action should be left unmotivated. Sir Denys Page revived the view of Conington and others that Artemis is angry with the Atreidai because they are symbolised by the eagles which appear at Aulis, and these eagles kill a pregnant hare, an animal under her protection. That is to confuse the world of the portent with the world of reality which it symbolises, besides assigning to the goddess a motive of a still more objectionable pettiness. In pointing this out, twenty years ago, I contended that since the eagles stand for the Atreidai the hare must stand for Troy, and deduced from this that Artemis must be angry at the prospective massacre of the Trojans. In Homer and in the later tradition, Artemis takes the Trojan side against the Greeks, and I argued that since the hare stood for Troy the partiality of Artemis for wild animals and their young must stand for her partiality for the Trojans.

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Research Article
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The Journal of Hellenic Studies , Volume 103 , November 1983, pp. 87 - 102
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Copyright © The Society for the Promotion of Hellenic Studies 1983

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References

1 Aeschylus, Agamemnon (Oxford 1950) ii p. 97Google Scholar.

2 Aeschylus, Agamemnon, ed. Denniston, J. D. and Page, D. L. (Oxford 1957) xxiii f.Google Scholar; cf. Lesky, A., Die tragische Dichtung der Hellenen3 (1972) 116Google Scholar.

3 CQ xii (1962) 187; cf. p. 23 of my translation, Aeschylus: Oresteia–Agamemnon2 (London 1979)Google Scholar. R. H. Klausen was the first to point out that Artemis was angry not with the birds but with the men they stood for; see his Theologumena Aeschyli Tragici (Berlin 1829)Google Scholar, and cf. Smith, P. M., “On the Hymn to Zeus in Aeschylus' Agamemnon’, Amer. Cl. Stud. v (1980) 76 n. 101Google Scholar.

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5 E.g. Peradotto, J. J., Phoenix xxiii (1969) 237 f.CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Ewans, M., Ramus iv (1975) 17 f.CrossRefGoogle Scholar; P. M. Smith (n. 3) loc. cit.

6 AJP lxxxii (1961) 78 f.Google Scholar

7 Peradotto (n. 5); Neitzel, , Hermes cvii (1979) 10Google Scholar.

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10 See Proclus, , Chrestomathia in Allen, , Homeri Opera v 104.12 fGoogle Scholar. Séveryns, A., Recherches sur la Chrestomathie de Proclos iv (Paris 1963) 82, 135 f.Google Scholar; Hesiod fr. 23a. 17 M.-W.

11 Ag. 1504.

12 See Burkert, HN 77 f.Google Scholar; C. Austin, Nova fragmenta Euripidea fr. 50.16 f. and fr. 65.65–89; Eur., Hcld. 408 f.Google Scholar; Paus. ix 17.1; iv 9.2, 5.

13 See Burkert, HN 78Google Scholar.

14 Henrichs; cf. Schwenn, F., Die Menschenopfer bei den Griechen und Römern, RGVV xv. 3 (Giessen 1915)Google Scholar; Stengel, P., Die gr. Kultusaltertümer (Munich 1920) 128 f.Google Scholar; Nilsson, GGR 3, index s.v. ‘Menschenopfer’; Burkert GR, index s.v. id.

15 See his ‘Griechische Opferbräuche’ in Phyllobolia für P. von der Mühll (Basel 1946) 185 f.Google Scholar, = GS ii 907 f.

16 Hes. Th. 535 with West ad loc.; Menander, , Dysc. 447 f.Google Scholar, with Handley and Sandbach ad loc.

17 See Nilsson, , The Minoan-Mycenaean Religion2 (Lund 1950) 503 f.Google Scholar; GGR 3 index s.v. ‘πότνια θηρῶν’; Burkert GR 233 f.; Dietrich, B. C., The Origins of Greek Religion (Berlin etc. 1974) 146 fCrossRefGoogle Scholar. Prof. Joanne P. Waghorn, of the University of Massachusetts at Boston, has drawn my attention to the startling parallel presented by the goddess who in Southern India presides over the forest and the battle-field, causes death in childhood, receives offerings in trees and is propitiated with blood. One looks forward eagerly to the publication of Prof. Waghorn's investigation of the religion of Southern India, a subject that has been neglected by western scholars.

18 Whether or not the name Artemis occurs in the Pylos tablets remains uncertain; see Sourvinou-Inwood, C., Kadmos ix (1970) 42Google Scholar, and other literature cited by Burkert GR 85 n. 23.

19 GF 218 f.

20 For a discussion of this rite, with full bibliography, see Piccaluga, Giulia, ‘L'olocausto di Patrai’, Entr. Hardt xxvii (1981) 243 fGoogle Scholar. She observes that the holocaust did not include corn or wine, and is surely right in connecting it with the transition from an economy based on hunting to one based on cultivation. But like J. P. Vernant (283–4 of the same volume), I have doubts about the details of her structuralist interpretation of the connection between the holocaust and the myth of Oeneus, and in particular about her contention that by choosing cultivation in preference to hunting Oeneus was choosing to remain mortal rather than to become immortal. After the fashion of structuralists, Prof. Piccaluga combines different forms of the myth that are attested at different times and places, as though we could be sure that each formed part of a unitary complex; and in her preoccupation with forming a neat pattern she resolutely averts her gaze from the unusual cruelty of the rite and the effect which it must surely have had upon participants (252 n. 1, and see G. S. Kirk on p. 280). She seems to think the holocaust was a deliberate defiance of Artemis; but surely it was an attempt to placate her by offering her things that were her own, and naturally not adding corn and wine, in which she had no part. While conceding that the Artemis of Kalydon preserved some elements of the Mistress of Animals, Prof. Piccaluga is scornful of those who have seen the Artemis of this ritual as the heiress of that divinity (245–6, 250–1); yet her own theory contains nothing that is inconsistent with that supposition.

21 Nilsson GF 216 f.; Calame 73, 245, 273.

22 Nilsson GF 190; cf. Dawkins, R. M., JHS Suppl. v (1929)Google Scholar; Calame 276 f.

23 ii 66–8.

24 Nilsson GF 187; Burkert HN 117.

25 Nilsson GF 183; Calame 297 f.; on Artemis Dereatis, see Calame 302.

26 Nilsson GF 191; on the complicated question of the name's possible implications, see Calame 289 f.

27 Deubner 209.

28 Eur. IT 1449 f.; Strabo 399; see Deubner 208.

29 Something may be learned from Papadimitriou's article in Scientific American ccviii (1963) 118Google Scholar and from his situation reports in Praktika and Ergon and those of Daux, G. in BCH between 1949 and 1963Google Scholar.

30 AK viii (1965) 20 f.; Beih. i (1968) 5 f.; CRAI 1976, 126 f.; AK xx (1977) 86 f. A thorough, though rather literal-minded, discussion of the cult, with a precious collection of testimonia, is in Brelich 241 f.; see also Kondis, J. D., ADelt xxii (1967) 156 f.Google Scholar; Calame 186 f.; Henrichs n. 35.

31 Brelich 276 takes too literally the explanation of the passage of Aristophanes that is offered in the scholia and by the Suda s.v. ῾Βραυρών᾿: ἐν Βραυρῶνι δὲ δήμῳ τῆς Ἀττικῆς πολλαὶ πόρναι, ἐκεῖ δὲ καὶ ⊿ιονύσια ἤγετο, καὶ καθ᾿ ἕκαστον δῆμον, ἐν οἷς ἐμέθυον, μεθύοντες δὲ πολλὰς πόρνας ἥρπαζον. The innocent rural deme of Brauron cannot have been a red-light district: the excavations indicate that there had been no settlement there since Mycenaean times. As for the alleged Dionysia, they were surely invented in order to explain ὑποπεπτωκότες (874), just as the prostitutes and the absurd notion that people got drunk and seized them was invented in a feeble effort to explain the text.

32 Wilamowitz, , Aristophanes, Lysistrate (Berlin 1927) 162Google Scholar. Line 643 appears in modern texts as κᾆτ᾿ ἔχουσα τὸν κροκωτὸν ἄρκτος ἦ Βραυρωνίοις. κᾆτ᾿ ἔχουσα is an interpretation of Г᾿s κατέχουσα usually ascribed to Bentley; I owe to Prof. Henrichs the awareness that Bentley was anticipated by the Flemish scholar Nicasius Ellebodius (see Schreiber, F., TAPA cv [1975] 328Google Scholar). But the Ravennas has καταχέουσα, and this reading has been defended by C. Sourvinou (-Inwood), CQ xxi (1971) 339, who inserts a stop after ἀλετρὶς ἦ in 644, removes one after τἀρχηγέτι at the end of that line (which she surprisingly thinks refers to Artemis rather than to Athena), and finds a reference to the shedding of robes common in initiation rites (see below) both here and at Aesch. Ag. 239 f. Dr Sourvinou may be right, but her view involves an awkward punctuation and an insistence upon one particular stage of the ritual which I find surprising. T. C. W. Stinton, CQ xxvi (1976) 11 f., who reads καὶ χέουσα, avoids the former drawback but not the latter.

33 Vidal-Naquet, P. in Comment faire l'histoire iii (1974) 137 fGoogle Scholar. = Myth, , Religion and Society, ed. Gordon, R. L. (Cambridge 1981) 163 fGoogle Scholar. treats the matter with admirable common sense. ‘Les étapes’, he writes, speaking of the successive religious duties which the women claim to have performed, ‘sont celles d'un pseudo-cycle’.

34 Some people have supposed that the buildings round the stoa contained a dormitory for the bears; but for all we know they contained dining-rooms or guest–houses such as there were in many sanctuaries. Dr Richardson refers me to Coulton, J.J., The Architectural Development of the Greek Stoa (Oxford 1976) 9 and 43Google Scholar. To supplement the one inscription from Brauron so far published (by Papadimitriou [n. 29] loc. cit.; cf. Robert, L., REG lxxv [1963] 135Google Scholar, Brelich 260 n. 60 and Kondis [n. 30]) in this sense is incautious; other supplements are possible.

35 Ap. Kahil, AK viii (1965) 25.

36 See Proclus, quoted in n. 10 above; Phanodemos, FGrH 325Google Scholar F 14; Henrichs n. 14.

37 See Pausanias Atticista 35 Erbse; Suda s.v. ‘Ἔμβαρος’; App. Prov. 2.54 (Paroem. Gr. i 402); Apostolius 7.10 (ib. ii 397); Bekker, , Anecdota i 444Google Scholar. All these are in Brelich 248–9; cf. Deubner 206.

38 See Burkert HN 110 f., citing Plut., Qu. conv. 675cGoogle Scholar; for a possible parallel instance of a race and a dance as parts of the same rite, see Calame 339.

39 Philostr., Gymn. 5Google Scholar (cited by Burkert, HN 112).

40 See Nilsson GF 370 f.; Gernet, L., L' Anthropologie de la Grèce Antique (Paris 1968) 203Google Scholar (p. 164 of the inadequate trans. The Anthropology of Classical Greece [Baltimore 1981])Google Scholar; Burkert, , Structure and History in Greek Mythology and Ritual (Berkeley 1979) 29 f.Google Scholar

41 Graf, F., MusHelv xxxvi (1979) 14Google Scholar, and the literature he cites p. 15 n. 118. On the Osc(h)ophoria and Pyanopsia in connection with Theseus, see Calame 225 f. Jacoby, , FGrH III b 1 (1954) and III b 2, 193 f.Google Scholar, gives the evidence. Cf. Vidal-Naquet, P., Annales ESC xxiii (1968) 947 f.Google Scholar, = PCPS cxciv (1968) 57Google Scholar n. 4, = Gordon (n. 33) 156 n. 24.

42 GRBS vii (1966) 117 f.Google Scholar; cf. Calame 220 f.

43 Hermes xciv (1966) 1 f.Google Scholar; he reminds me of the goat sacrifice probably connected with the arrhephoroi (HN 172).

44 See Burkert HN 75 n. 20: it is for proteleia that Iphigeneia is brought to Aulis at Eur. IA 433. On such rites in general see Burkert GR 390–5, and the excellent brief account by Vidal-Naquet (n. 33).

45 De virg. 17 f. (ed. Littré, viii 466–8).

46 See IG ii2 1514–25 and 1528–31 for fragments from the Acropolis, and Hesp. xxxii (1963) 169–82Google Scholar nos 7–10 for fragments from the Agora; cf. Linders, T., Studies in the Treasure Records of Artemis Brauronia, Skrifter Svenska Inst. i Athen iv. 19 (Stockholm 1972)Google Scholar. Relevant extracts from IG ii2 1514 and IG ii2 1388 and 1400 are translated by Lefkowitz, M. R. and Fant, M., Women's Life in Greece and Rome (London 1982) 120Google Scholar nos 123, 124. Dedications to Iphigeneia: Eur. IT 1464.

47 Paus. ii 35.1; vii 26.5; i 43.2.

48 Il. ix 287, in a list of daughters whose names describe different aspects of kingship; Lucr. i 85; Hes. fr. 23 M.-W.; for the tablet, see Ventris, M. and Chadwick, J., Documents in Mycenaean Greek (Cambridge 1956)Google Scholar no. 172 (Kn. O 2). As to the digamma, see Mühlestein, H., Colloquium Mycenaeum (Neuchâtel 1979) 235Google Scholar; Mr E. L. Bowie suggests that the derivation of Iphigeneia's name from ἶϕι may be a mere popular etymology, and that the first element may derive rather from the root of ἴπταμαι, a suggestion that I find attractive.

49 Fr. 191 in Page, PMG.

50 See West, M. L., ‘Immortal Helen’, Inaugural Lecture, Bedford College, London (1975)Google Scholar; Calame 333 f.; Ghali-Kahil, L. B., Les enlèvements et le retour d'Hélène dans les textes et les documents figurés (Paris 1955)Google Scholar.

51 See Plut., Thes. 31Google Scholar; cf. Page, D. L., Alcman: the Partheneion (Oxford 1951)Google Scholar, who speaks of ‘a further possibility that Alcman told a story of the Tyndarids’ punishment of Enarsphoros (and his brothers) for their insolence to Helen' (32 n. 2).

52 See Farnell, L. R., Greek Hero Cults and Ideas of Immortality (Oxford 1921)Google Scholar for a useful, though to my mind over–cautious, discussion of the question.

53 See Farnell, , The Cults of the Greek States ii (Oxford 1896) 444Google Scholar and the nn. on 567 f. On sacrifices to Artemis in connection with birth and pregnancy, see the sacral law from Cyrene in SEG ix i.72 = Sokolowski, F., Les lots sacrées des cités grecques, Suppl. (1962) 115Google Scholar, where ἄρκος may well be equivalent to ἄρκτος.

54 E.g., see Eur. Hipp. 145.

55 Il. xxi 483.

56 Cited in n. 30. Calame 292 f. thinks Artemis protected the newborn child, Eileithyia the mother; but if so, and I see no reason for believing it, this will have been a comparatively late development.

57 166 f.

58 See Farnell (n. 47) ii 451 f.; Deubner 208 f.; Nilsson GF 251 f.; Jacoby on Phanodemos FGrH 325 F 14.

59 See Paus. iii 16.8; cf. Graf, F., Ant. Welt iv (1979) 33 f.Google Scholar; for other cults making the same claims, see Brelich 244.

60 Paus. iii 16.9; see Burkert, , MusHelv xxii (1965) 172Google Scholar.

61 See Nilsson GF 294 f.; also 217.

62 See Akousilaos FGrH 2 F 28; Bacchyl. 11 passim; Burkert HN 189 f.; and cf. Hippocr., De virg., cited in n. 45 above. At Eur. Hipp. 145 Diktynna is mentioned in this connection; for Euripides she was identical with Artemis, as Barrett's parallels indicate. Kybele is coupled with Diktynna here; both together with Hekate are mentioned by Hippocr., De morbo sacro 4 in a similar connection. Kybele is often said to cause madness, sometimes in conjunction with the Korybantes, as in Menander, , Theophoroumene 27Google Scholar and in the fragment containing hexameters which Handley, E. W., BICS xvi (1969) 96Google Scholar with great probability assigned to that play (see Sandbach's Oxford text of Menander, pp. 145–6). It may well be relevant that Kybele, like Artemis, is an heiress of the Mistress of Animals; see Burkert GR 233–4 and Dodds, E. R., The Greeks and the Irrational (Berkeley/L.A. 1951) 77 f., 96 f.Google Scholar

63 FGrH 3 F 135, with Jacoby ad loc. (I a 424).

64 172; for appeals to Artemis to send away diseases, cf. Philip, AP vi 240 Gow–Page, , Garland of Philip 2648 fGoogle Scholar. and Hy.Orph. 36, 15 (cf. Weinreich, O., Gebet und Wunder [Stuttgart 1929] 18 f)Google Scholar.

65 See Farnell (n. 53) loc. cit. and his nn. on 569 f.

66 Op. cit. (n. 59) 41.

67 Aesch. Ag. 244 and Ar. Lys. 216; Fraenkel on the former passage agrees with Wilamowitz on the latter that the word must be hieratic. ταῦρος = κοχώνη, Pollux ii 173, Galen xiv 706; τὸ αἰδοῖον τοῦ ἀνδρός, Suda s.v.; ταυρίνδα is the name of a phallic game played at Taras, Hsch. s.v.; cf. Nilsson GF 184. One would like to know why the female flatterers who wheedled Macedonian princesses were called ταυρόπολοι or ταυρίτιδες: the latter name is suggestive of Hekate, a personage connected with Artemis (see Klearchos fr. 19, ed. Wehrli, p. 15). On the rape of girls dancing in honour of Artemis, see Calame 176, and cf. 189 f. For attempts to connect the etymology of ταυρόπολος with ταῦρος, see Phanodemos FGrH 325 F 14, Istros FGrH 334 F 18, Apollodoros FGrH 244 F 11.

68 See n. 26.

69 See Burkert, , GRBS vii (1966) 117 f.Google Scholar; Graf (n. 41) 1 f., esp. 13 f.; on the Sicyonian cult, see Nilsson GF 171 f., Calame 205 f., and Brelich 377 f.

70 See n. 37 above.

71 See Dodds, E. R., Euripides, Bacchae2 (Oxford 1960) xviii f.Google Scholar

72 See Meuli (n. 15), esp. 225 f. =949 f. and 242 f. = 969 f.; see also GS index s.v. ‘Bär’ (ii 1238). Paul Faure, BCH lxxxiv (1960)Google Scholar makes conjectures about bears in the cult of Artemis at Akroteri in Crete which if correct are highly relevant: see Willetts, R. F., Cretan Cults and Festivals (London 1962) 275 fGoogle Scholar. and The Civilization of Crete (London 1977) 122Google Scholar; also Hallowell, A. J., American Anthropologist xxviii (1962) 87 f.Google Scholar (on bear burials).

73 Carpenter, Rhys, Folk Tale, Fiction and Saga in the Homeric Epics (Berkeley/L.A. 1946)Google Scholar ch. 6 passim; cf. Dodds, in Platnauer, M., Fifty Years (and Twelve) of Classical Scholarship (Oxford 1968) 32Google Scholar n. 19.

74 See Burkert HN 98 f.

75 See Sale, W., RhM cv (1962) 122 f.Google Scholar; cviii (1965) 115 f.; cxviii (1975) 265 f.; Maggiulli, G. in Mythos: Scripta in honorem M. Untersteiner (Genova 1970) 179 f.Google Scholar; Henrichs 201 n. 27.

76 See Vidal-Naquet (n. 41), esp. 55 f. = 155 f.

77 See Burkert HN 50 and 142.

78 See Vidal-Naquet (n. 41); Brelich 116 f., citing older literature.

79 Myth and Society in Ancient Greece (Brighton 1980)Google Scholar (trans. of Mythe et Société en Grèce Ancienne [Paris 1974]) 23Google Scholar.

80 De morb. mul. 9 (ed. Littré, , viii p. 30)Google Scholar.

81 Burkert GR 235.

82 On Tityos, the Aloadai, Bouphagos, Orion, see Schreiber in Roscher's Lexikon i 578 f.; on Broteas, see Apollodorus, , Epit. ii 2Google Scholar (ed. Frazer ii 154 f.); on Aktaion, see Burkert HN 127 f.; on such myths in general, see Piccaluga, G. in Il mito greco, ed. Gentili, B. and Paioni, G. (Rome 1973) 33 fGoogle Scholar. and Fontenrose, J., Orion: the Myth of the Hunter and the Hunters, U. Cal. Publ. in Classics xxiii (1981)Google Scholar.

83 1416–22.

84 See Dodds on Eur. Ba. 337–40. The conjecture of Malten, L., Kyrene (Berlin 1911) 18Google Scholar that the story that Aktaion was killed for having pursued Semele occurred in the pseudo-Hesiodic Catalogue has now been confirmed by the papyrus published by Renner, T., HSCP lxxxii (1978) 283 f.Google Scholar; cf. Stes. fr. 236 Page, PMG.

85 See Burkert HN 72, with n. 12.

86 See p. 544 of my appendix to H. W. Smyth's Loeb edn of Aeschylus, ii.

87 See Burkert HN 212 f.

88 Gernet (n. 40) 39 f. = 23 f.; he notes their connection with Artemis.

89 Graf (n. 59) 41.

90 On the myth of Niobe, see p. 94 above. According to each of the great tragedians, as well as Lasos of Hermione and Aristophanes, she had seven sons and seven daughters; for the numbers of her children according to the various authorities, see W. S. Barrett ap. Carden, Richard, The Papyrus Fragments of Sophocles (Berlin etc. 1974) 227 fCrossRefGoogle Scholar. Their death at the hands of Apollo and Artemis may well be connected with an initiation rite in which a sacrifice symbolised the end of childish life for the participants. Herodotus' story of the rescue by the Samians of Corcyrean boys sent by Periander to Persia for castration looks like an aition connected with a rite of the same kind; see Nilsson GF 240 and Calame 185.

91 See Burkert, , RhM cxviii (1975) 1 f.Google Scholar; in his article in Grazer Beiträge iv (1975) 51 fGoogle Scholar. he has added to the evidence for an oriental element in Apollo's origins by showing that the early Greek statues of him belong to a type which had represented Rešep, the Egyptian lord of arrows and the plague, since the second millennium BC.

92 See de Santerre, H. Gallet, Délos primitive et archaïque (Paris 1958)Google Scholar.

93 See Hönn 76.

94 On Spartan practice see Xen. Lac. Pol. 13.8; Hell. iv 2.20; Plut. Lyc. 22.2; Burkert HN 78 and GR 107. On the general connection of Artemis with war, see Farnell (n. 53) ii 470–1.

95 ii 156.

96 See my new introduction to the Oresteia (n. 3) xvii f.