I. Introduction: Herodotus the storyteller
Herodotus has charmed readers of his Histories with his tales of how the mighty and the powerful were undone by clever foes, by fate or by their own arrogance. Such are the plot lines of many of his stories of great men, from Candaules and Croesus to Cleomenes and Miltiades, and such is the arc of his narrative as a whole, culminating in the defeat of Xerxes. In each case his stories are filled with vivid details and often intimate conversations that reveal the thoughts and motives of the characters he portrays. These are the fictive elements, as is widely recognized, that Herodotus employed to create a dramatic and affective impact analogous to that of tragedy.Footnote 1 Such was the ‘storytelling element’, τὸ μυθῶδες, that Thucydides eschewed as he endeavoured to define his own work as more objectively based in observed facts and not given to such entertaining touches (1.22.4).Footnote 2 Herodotus, for his part, was composing a narrative in a genre that he was largely inventing, and doing so in ways that made the past most accessible to his audience. And that was an audience receptive to the verisimilitude of tragedy and tragedy’s heritage from epic poetry as a way of understanding how the past had unfolded, and how it came to define the world in which they lived.
But Herodotus did not write tragedy, as Aristotle famously stated, he wrote historia ‘to tell what happened’ (τὰ γενόμενα λέγειν, Poet. 1451b).Footnote 3 Herodotus himself gives many indications that what he writes is based on testimonies that he has gathered from others through his travels and through written accounts, strongly suggesting that some manner of external evidence should be presumed even where no source is named.Footnote 4 At one point he categorically states: ‘For me, the underlying principle of my whole work is that I write what each people traditionally says’ (ἐμοὶ δὲ παρὰ πάντα τὸν λόγον ὑποκέεται ὅτι τά λεγόμενα ὑπ’ ἑκάστων ἀκοῆι γράφω, 2.123.1).Footnote 5 Unless we assume that such declarations are no more than half-truths, or even outright falsehoods as some have argued, we should be prepared to accept that Herodotus’ many stories (or novellas as they have commonly been labelled) derive from accounts he has received and judged worthy of relaying, while we acknowledge that he has given them his own narrative form, and with it his own interpretive meaning.Footnote 6
The story of Atys and Adrastus has been described as the most dramatic and least historical of Herodotus’ ‘prose-tragedies’.Footnote 7 The story is a prominent episode in Herodotus’ depiction of the kingship of Croesus and his eventual fall. Shortly before this passage, in the opening chapters of his work, Herodotus famously identifies the lifetime of Croesus, in the mid-sixth century BCE, as the horizon of the past from which time events became more reliably knowable to him and his fifth-century contemporaries. This is a significant claim, as Carolyn Dewald has noted, in which Herodotus asserts an authority for his own narrative voice as distinct from the claims of sources which, he often notes, are of questionable reliability.Footnote 8 The story of Atys and Adrastus is narrated in his authorial voice alone, and so its novelistic character problematizes our understanding of what Herodotus may mean when he claims that he reports what he ‘knows’. While this story is by no means the only such novella or narrative episode that tests our ability to accept the authority that Herodotus has implicitly asserted, it certainly is a leading example that sceptics adduce as evidence that Herodotus has given himself a licence for invention. How free is that invention? My goal here is to demonstrate how this passage had a basis in local lore, allowing us to estimate the extent to which Herodotus has given the account his own dramatic touches.
II. The death of Atys
The story of Atys and his tragic death follows the account of the overweening pride of Croesus in his great wealth and power displayed to Solon during the latter’s visit to his court (1.30–33). Solon famously refuses to concede that Croesus is the happiest man that he has seen in all his travels. Instead, after a discourse on the nature of human happiness, Solon advises Croesus that he should ‘look to the eventual outcome of every matter, for after showing prosperity to many, god utterly ruins them’ (σκοπέειν δὲ χρὴ παντὸς χρήματος τὴν τελευτήν, κῇ ἀποβήσεται· πολλοῖσι γὰρ δὴ ὑποδέξας ὄλβον ὁ θεὸς προρρίζους ἀνέτρεψε, 1.32.9). Croesus thinks Solon a great fool for disregarding his present prosperity, and this verdict leads Herodotus into the story of Atys as a sign of the inexorable hand of fate bearing down on Croesus (1.34.1):
μετὰ δὲ Σόλωνα οἰχόμενον ἔλαβέ ἐκ θεοῦ νέμεσις μεγάλη Κροῖσον, ὡς εἰκάσαι, ὅτι ἐνόμισε ἑωυτὸν εἶναι ἀνθρώπων ἁπάντων ὀλβιώτατον.
After Solon had gone, Croesus underwent a terrible god-given reckoning, it would seem, for having thought himself to be the most fortunate of all men.Footnote 9
The principal features of the story of Atys (1.34–45) can be briefly summarized. Warned in a dream that his son would die by the point of an iron weapon, Croesus seeks to remove Atys from any such danger by forbidding his involvement with weapons of war and by detaining him in a prolonged marriage ceremony. While this is underway a royal Phrygian, Adrastus son of Gordias and grandson of Midas, exiled from his home for manslaughter, arrives at the palace of Croesus, who receives him into his household after performing a purification ritual. Not long thereafter, Croesus is visited by a delegation of Mysians begging him to send his son at the head of a hunting party to exterminate a giant boar that has descended from Mount Olympus in their land and has been ravaging their fields and injuring their people. Croesus denies their request for Atys to lead the hunt on the pretext that his son is preoccupied with his wedding, but promises to send a hunting party nonetheless. Atys, overhearing the petition and his father’s response, challenges his father to explain why he was being denied the honour of leading the hunt, asserting that his reputation as a leader of men and as a worthy husband was being injured by his enforced inaction. Croesus describes the ominous dream, but Atys points out that it warned against a weapon and not the tusk of a boar, and so persuades Croesus to relent and allow him to lead the hunting party. Still concerned about his son’s safety, Croesus summons Adrastus to accompany Atys as a bodyguard. Adrastus, aware that his ill-omened past makes him a less-than-ideal companion, nonetheless recognizes his debt of gratitude to his host and so agrees to accompany Atys, and the hunt is on. When the boar is cornered, spears are cast and Adrastus’ misses the boar but fatally strikes Atys. Receiving the news, Croesus bewails his fate and calls out in anger to Zeus, in whose name Adrastus had been purified. When Adrastus himself arrives along with the body of Atys, he asks Croesus to put him to death for the murder he has committed. Croesus relents from his anger against Adrastus, averring that this had all come about by the hand of a divinity, and proceeds to bury his son. When the funeral is over, Adrastus, considering himself the most unfortunate of men, commits suicide over Atys’ grave.
Herodotus cites no authority for the story of Atys. Given its tragic structure and intimate relationship to the larger narrative arc of the fate of Croesus, many commentators have expressed their readiness to see this tale as a creation of Herodotus’ imagination.Footnote 10 In terms of Croesus’ role in the history of Lydia, the story of Atys and Adrastus has little direct bearing. Thematically, however, as a story of sudden grievous loss, it is charged with ominous significance as it foreshadows the unexpected overthrow of Croesus himself.Footnote 11 The tale of Atys unquestionably bears ‘Herodotus’ fingerprint’, as Irene de Jong has termed it.Footnote 12 The story exemplifies Donald Lateiner’s characterization of the licence Herodotus gave himself to dramatize events:
The greater the aura of verisimilitude, the more mimetic a story, we may say, the less credence the author seems to give it. Thus we consider scenes dense with dramatic technique … to be intended as both persuasive and monitory. Herodotus warns the audience of factual uncertainty while entertaining it with dramatic skill.Footnote 13
In this case, however, we are in a position to see how Herodotus has draped his dramatic embellishments over the framework of a traditional tale that could reasonably have been introduced as ‘what the Lydians say’.Footnote 14
The story has features that reveal its relationship to, indeed its origin in, a deeply rooted tradition about the deaths of heroic men in the very lands where the story of Atys is set. This tradition is not preserved in literary form outside of this passage from Herodotus, but it is graphically illustrated in the funerary art that was current in this region of northwestern Anatolia during the era of Achaemenid Persian rule, that is, precisely the era during which Herodotus was composing his Histories.
III. Funerary stelae of northwestern Anatolia
A generation after the death of Atys and the subsequent fall of Croesus in Achaemenid Persian-ruled Anatolia, a class of funerary monuments in the form of stelae bearing a standardized repertoire of relief scenes begins to appear in Mysia, Phrygia and Lydia (fig. 1). The best-known examples of this class of relief stela come from the vicinity of Daskyleion, the satrapal capital of Mysia and Hellespontine Phrygia. They range in date from around the end of the sixth century BCE to the end of the fifth or early fourth. Related examples come from Sardis and greater Lydia and Phrygia.Footnote 15 Recently a number of stelae bearing similar reliefs but in a distinctive ‘rural’ style have been discovered in the borderlands between Mysia and central Phrygia below the eastern slopes of Mysian Mount Olympus (figs 2, 6, below; and figs 3, 4, 5 (SM)).Footnote 16 While most such stelae have been discovered in secondary use, or without an archaeological context, the few that have been found in situ or associated with foundations for their original display indicate that they stood before tombs, in some cases rock-cut chambers, but most often probably the tumulus mounds that were widespread throughout Lydia, Mysia and Phrygia in the Archaic and Classical eras.Footnote 17 The expense and care involved in preparing such monuments, along with the nature of the scenes depicted in the reliefs, are indicative of the high standing of the deceased who were thus memorialized.
Map, Western Anatolia.
Fig. 1. Long description
The map of Western Anatolia highlights several ancient regions including Mysia, Phrygia, Lydia, Bithynia, Caria and Lycia. Key locations such as Daskyleion, Sardis, Kelainai, Mylasa and Altintaş are marked. The map also indicates significant landmarks like Mt Olympus and the Hellespontine region. Various cities and historical sites are denoted with specific symbols, providing a geographical context for the distribution of funerary monuments in the form of stelae during the Achaemenid Persian rule in Anatolia.
Cat. no. 9, Dübekli/Bilecik, A-1274. Courtesy of Hüseyin Erpehlivan.
Fig. 2. Long description
The stone relief carving in three registers, featuresing a dynamic battle scene in the upper section, with a warriors on horseback engageding a foot soldier in combat. Below, a hunter with a dog spears a boar, and to the right a group of people, including a reclining man and two seated women beside him, and a standing attendant wine steward beside them figure and others standing, are depicted in a more static pose. Below, in the third register, a procession of horse riders moves left. The carving is divided into two horizontal registers, each containing distinct scenes. The upper register shows the battle with detailed depictions of the warriors and their horses, while the lower register includes the seated figure and other individuals, possibly indicating a narrative or hierarchical structure.
The scenes depicted in the reliefs are formulaic, being variations on a limited range of recurring themes: banqueting, hunting or combat, and processions. Whatever relationship they may have had to the life or passage from life of the deceased, we should consider these scenes to be representative of archetypal events that honour the memory of great men according to a set of culturally normative ideals.
What were these archetypal events? The question is most challenging as it relates to our understanding of the most common scene, the banquet. Commonly referred to as the ‘Totenmahl’ or ‘funerary banquet’, such scenes have variously been interpreted as memorials of the lifestyle or social status of the deceased, as representative of the funerary rites observed for the deceased or as symbolic of some aspect of the heroization or afterlife status of the deceased.Footnote 18 However they are to be interpreted, the ‘Totenmahl’ scenes on the Achaemenid-era monuments are remarkably consistent in what they depict.
The Anatolian monuments unambiguously display a special relationship between a man, shown reclining on a klinē, or banqueting couch, and a woman who sits beside him, either on one side of the klinē or on a separate chair with a footstool. They face each other and exchange objects, often a drinking bowl or rhyton (figs 2, 6, 7, 8, 10, below; and figs 9, 11, 12 (SM)), sometimes an egg or an egg-like fruit (figs 2, 7, 8, 15, below; and fig. 9 (SM)), and in one case a wreath (fig. 16). Details of their attire are vague in those scenes carved in outline, where details would presumably have been provided in paint, but where they are carved in relief the man is shown bare-headed and bare-chested, wearing a himation that extends from his midriff to his feet, while the woman wears a veil and a garment that extends to her feet, sometimes with a crown or headpiece atop her head (fig. 4 (SM); and fig. 15 (below)). In some cases the woman appears to hold a flower (figs 11 (SM); and fig. 15 (below)). In one relief a seated couple reach towards each other across a thumiatērion, or incense-burner (fig. 6).Footnote 19 Typically on either side of the couple are attendants: a wine steward usually stands beside a tripod crater or a table supporting an amphora or pitcher; a servant offers fruit or food; a fan-bearer provides them a refreshing breeze; occasionally one or more musicians serenade them (figs 7, 8, 16, 17). There are minor variations on this scene, most notably when there are two prominent women beside the reclining man (figs 2, 10; and fig. 11 (SM)). The multiplicity of such banqueting scenes as part of a recurring repertoire of images implies that they conveyed a standard and recognizable meaning. The extravagant and ceremonial nature of this tableau with its explicit gestures of exchange between a man and a woman suggests to me that these are wedding scenes.Footnote 20
Cat. no. 13, Vezirhan/Gülümbe Bahçeleri, IstAM 6219+71.27.
Fig. 6. Long description
The grey stone stelafeatures intricate carvings in relief. The upper section displays a central figure adorned with a headdress that resembles a flower or a stylized symbol. Surrounding this figure are birds of prey on each shoulder, and crouching lions on either side. Below this are two seated figures facing each other, exchanging objects, with an object on a stand between them, flanked by two standing attendant figures. The lower scene depicts a mounted hunter spearing a running boar pursued by a dog, with a man on foot behind the hunter. Below this is an inscribed section. The stela exhibits a standardized repertoire of relief scenes typical of funerary monuments from the region of Mysia, Phrygia and Lydia during the Achaemenid Persian rule in Anatolia.
Cat. no. 3, Sultaniye/Daskyleion (Adda Stela), Bursa AM.
Fig. 7. Long description
Tall stone anthemion stele, registers below showing a man and woman seated on a couch exchanging objects, with servants and musicians, one of figures on foot with a horse-drawn cart with bier, and one of a mounted hunter and attendant chasing a stag.
Cat. no. 3, detail.
Fig. 8. Long description
Detail of upper register in fig. 7, figures carved in silhouette profile, showing man and woman seated on couch exchanging items, tripod, wine steward and servant standing on left, aulos and lyre players seated on right.
Cat. no. 7, Ҫavuşköy/Daskyleion, IstAM 1502.
Fig. 10. Long description
Stele broken above and below, with two registers of relief scenes below moulding; top shows mounted hunter with dogs and footman spearing a boar beside a bare tree; lower is a banqueting scene shown in fig. 11.
Cat. no. 2, detail 1 Aksakal/Daskyleion, IstAM 5763.
Fig. 14. Long description
The upper scene of a stone stele, broken at the top, with two relief scenes. This shows a wheeled cart carrying a covered bier drawn by two horses and followed by two people on foot.
Cat. no. 2, detail 2 Aksakal/Daskyleion, IstAM 5763.
Fig. 15. Long description
Detail of lower scene of previous stele showing a veiled and crowned woman holding a flower seated on a couch beside a reclining man holding a cup. They exchange an egg-like object; servant on left offers food, wine steward on right serves from a tripod.
Cat. no. 5, Ödemiş/Hypaipa, IzAM 4344 (in Ödemiş).
Fig. 16. Long description
Rectangular stele in two registers: above, man holding fan reclining on couch hands wreath to woman seated to right, to left a table with krater, wine steward, seated lyre player, to right standing attendant; below crouching lions confront an ibex.
Cat. no. 6, Altıntaş/Phrygia, Afyon E1858.
Fig. 17. Long description
Stele in silhouette style, 3 registers: top, winged genii flank palm frond; mid, reclining man faces woman seated on couch, fan-bearers on left & right, wine steward & attendant on left; bottom, procession of musicians followed by oxen, broken below.
Why would the depiction of a wedding be appropriate to a funerary monument? A wedding is a sacral event, transforming the couple from separate individuals into a link in the chain of birth, life and death. The presence of a second prominent woman who interacts with the groom in some scenes can be understood as the formalization of the familial bond with the mother of one member of the new couple, who herself had previously played the role of the bride in such a chain of succession. Charged with metaphysical significance, the representation of this moment of union may be intended to assert that the marriage bond transcends even death. As we will see, the wedding couple may have taken on the roles of divinities for the purposes of the ceremony, or at least have invoked the blessings of divinities by likening their union to those of divine couples.Footnote 21 More certainly, the depiction of a wedding on a funerary monument affirms that the deceased and his bride have attained a state of union that has an enduring influence, through their offspring, on generations to come.
What of the hunt or combat scenes? These can be recognized as emblems of the bravery and manly vigour of the deceased, capable of subduing powerful beasts or pestilential enemies, and therefore a champion and capable defender of his people (figs 2, 6, 7, 10 and figs 3, 5, 12 (SM)). The mounted hunt in particular was a mark of status among the Persian nobility, demonstrating skills that were also useful in war.Footnote 22 An armed footman regularly accompanies the mounted hunter or warrior of the Anatolian scenes, signifying his noble status as a leader of men. Like the funerary banquet scenes, the iconography of the noble or royal hunt was widely disseminated. It occurs on the late fifth-century so-called Satrap’s Sarcophagus from Sidon, on which a funerary banquet, or wedding scene, is also depicted, and on the early fourth-century Çan Sarcophagus from the Troad, where a high-ranking Persian nobleman is depicted on horseback both in a combat scene and in two hunting scenes.Footnote 23 The monumental Hecatomnus Sarcophagus from Mylasa in Caria depicts a mounted hunting scene on one side and a funerary banquet or wedding scene on the opposite side.Footnote 24 Later examples of hunting scenes as appropriate memorials for heroized royalty are represented in the painting on the façade of Tomb II at Vergina in Macedonia, on the Alexander Sarcophagus from Sidon (where hunting and battle scenes occupy equal space) and in the over-life-size statuary group of Alexander and his companions in the hunt dedicated at Delphi by the son of his general, Craterus.Footnote 25
Interpretation of the processional scenes is contested (figs 2, 7, 14, 17; and fig. 18 (SM)). Among the interpretations that have been offered I favour the majority opinion that they are specifically funerary in character. They depict men on foot and on horseback escorting a two-wheeled horse-drawn cart conveying a covered structure that likely contained the remains of the deceased.Footnote 26 In one case the procession includes aulos players (fig. 17), calling to mind the thrēnos, or funeral dirge, associated with Phrygian musical tradition according to Greek sources.Footnote 27 In a related procession scene on the so-called Mourning Women Sarcophagus from Sidon, the men accompanying the two-wheeled cart wear Persian-style garments that are torn and dishevelled, clearly indicating that they are mourners.Footnote 28
In summary, the collective imagery of funerary monuments from northwestern Anatolia presents a consistent iconographic repertoire. Its consistency has no relationship to the language or ethnic identity of the deceased, to judge from the inscribed stelae: texts appear in Aramaic, Phrygian, Lydian and Greek, and they preserve personal names that reflect these linguistic groups as well as Persian, representing the cultural fusion that characterized the elite classes of Achaemenid Anatolia.Footnote 29 This funerary imagery therefore represents a form of praising and remembering outstanding leaders that was traditional within the satrapal realms of Hellespontine Phrygia, Mysia and Lydia. It should be noted that the conventions involved were not Persian in origin.Footnote 30 They represent a pre-Persian tradition that we can surmise was already customary in the lands of the Lydian Empire, elaborated particularly in the funerary rites of the Lydian kings.
IV. The heroic archetype and Herodotus’ story of the death of Atys
It should be apparent that the iconographic features of the funerary stelae reviewed here correspond exactly to the main elements of Herodotus’ story of Atys:
Herodotus narrates the story of the death and funeral of Atys as a sign of the ‘terrible god-given reckoning’ (ἐκ θεοῦ νέμεσις μεγάλη) in store for Croesus. Within that story are the elements depicted on the funerary monuments, and together they represent what I am calling an Anatolian heroic archetype. In all cases, an elaborate funeral consummates the archetype. The mourning for Atys that consumed Croesus for two years (1.45.3–46.1) was part of what Herodotus elsewhere describes as mass participation in ritual lamentation observed by ‘most of the barbarians in Asia … when their kings die’ (6.58.1–2).Footnote 31 In referring to funerals for kings of ‘the barbarians in Asia’, Herodotus must be referring to the sorts of local lords and tribal chiefs commemorated by stelae during his own lifetime. Several of these stelae depict funerary processions that memorialized just such elaborate rites as Herodotus says were customary. Lydian royal funerals will have been even grander spectacles, setting a pattern for later nobility to emulate as best they were able.Footnote 32
Herodotus remarks on the most massive of the royal tumuli of the Lydians, the tumulus erected by Croesus for his father Alyattes (1.93.1), which is still the most impressive monument in the Bin Tepe burial grounds north of Sardis.Footnote 33 Next in size to the tumulus of Alyattes is the mound known as Karnıyarık Tepe, which has been plausibly identified as the tumulus erected over the grave of Atys.Footnote 34 The great majority of lesser tumuli at Bin Tepe mark the graves of the nobility at Sardis of the late sixth and fifth centuries, testifying to a continuity of customs from the Lydian to the Persian period.Footnote 35 The dead who were so commemorated became the object of hero cult which likely entailed formulaic praise of their memory.
Persian regard for such customs is illustrated by the burial and commemoration of Artachaees, an esteemed companion of Xerxes who died in the course of the king’s march into Greece. Artachaees was accorded heroic honours at Acanthus, where he had earlier overseen the excavation of the Athos canal for Xerxes. Herodotus reports: ‘Xerxes was greatly distressed at his death and had him carried out and buried with all pomp and ceremony. The whole army helped to raise a mound over his grave. The people of Acanthus, in obedience to an oracle, offer sacrifice to Artachaees, as to a hero, and call upon his name in prayer’ (7.117).Footnote 36 By such means the heroized dead became features of the landscape, and their numinous presence became a matter of care and concern for both the local inhabitants and, especially, those who claimed rulership over the land. In this vein both Xerxes and Alexander are said to have made offerings at the tombs of heroes in the Troad, and the celebrated tombs of Hecatomnid royalty in Caria, at Mylasa and at Halicarnassus, were created to encourage veneration and obeisance to sovereign power.Footnote 37
The memory of Atys was certainly formed in the context of his funerary rites, probably enhanced by the display of a stela that could be considered the prototype for those that proliferated across the former Lydian realm a generation later. No such funerary stelae of the Lydian period have so far been found, which is likely due simply to the chances of survival. That such a stela did exist, however, is strongly indicated by the contemporary testimony of Hipponax, and by the historicizing record of Xenophon, writing a generation after Herodotus. The much-emended fragment 42 (West) of Hipponax, which names tombs of Lydian kings along the road from Lydia to Smyrna, mentions a stela among them, possibly even describing it as ‘the stela and monument of Atys’ (στήλην καὶ μνῆμα τ’ Ἄτυος, according to the emendation of Friedrich Schneidewin).Footnote 38 Xenophon mentions a royal stela marking a tumulus at Sardis allegedly from the lifetime of Croesus. In the Cyropaedia, in his imaginative description of the capture of Sardis by Cyrus and the Persians, Xenophon spins the romantic tale of the king of Susa who, inspired by his fabulously beautiful wife, Pantheia, gave his life in battle for Cyrus. Cyrus honoured the king with a grand funeral and tumulus beside the River Pactolus at Sardis, where Pantheia subsequently committed suicide over her husband’s grave. Stepping outside of his fictional narrative, Xenophon says (7.3.15):
καὶ νῦν τὸ μνῆμα μέχρι τοῦ νῦν … κεχῶσθαι λέγεται καὶ ἐπὶ μὲν τῇ ἄνω στήλῃ τοῦ ἀνδρὸς καὶ τῆς γυναικὸς ἐπιγεγράφθαι φασὶ τὰ ὀνόματα, Σύρια γράμματα.
And to this day it is said that the tumulus … still stands, with a stela on it which they say is inscribed with the names of the man and woman in Syrian letters.Footnote 39
Although the tale of Pantheia is a fanciful romance, Xenophon was personally familiar with Sardis and its monuments, and his account attests to the memory if not to the actual fact of a tumulus at Sardis with a stela depicting the deceased hero with his idealized wife. The relationship between the deceased hero and the woman he married is a distinctive aspect of the heroizing archetype, found in the story of Atys and prominent in the imagery on the funerary monuments. The monuments are unambiguously memorials to deceased men, who are sometimes named on the stelae. Yet anonymous women are depicted beside them, equal in stature and jointly participating in what I identify as wedding scenes. The nature of these marriages and the status of the women so depicted are thus essential to the heroic standing of the men at their sides. The meaning of marriage in this sense had no place in Herodotus’ story of Atys and his unnamed bride. But elsewhere Herodotus provides a clue to the significance of the matrimonial relationship in royal ideology among the Lydians.
Herodotus tells of the founding of the Mermnad dynasty by Gyges, who murdered the reigning Heraclid king, Candaules, and assumed the throne by marrying his wife. As Herodotus tells it (1.8–12), the anonymous queen is actually the instigator of the coup after her modesty was violated by her husband. Candaules regarded her as by far the most beautiful of all women, and he wished, foolishly, for his most trusted confidant and bodyguard, Gyges, to look upon his wife naked and so confirm her beauty. Reluctantly but dutifully, Gyges did so. But being detected in his voyeurism by the queen, she compelled Gyges either to kill Candaules and to have her as his queen, or to die himself for looking upon what he had no right to see. Gyges made the necessary choice and became king of the Lydians. Marriage to the queen is, in this story, the key to kingship. She embodies irresistible beauty, a quality implicit in her status but only to be fully appreciated by her wedded husband as an attribute of his status.Footnote 40
As the story of Candaules’ wife signifies, the bride of Atys as the bride of the king-to-be, and the brides represented on the funerary stelae, should be understood as fulfilling the role of the woman whose supreme beauty justifies the standing of her husband as a leader of men. In this respect she plays the role of Aphrodite as depicted in the fifth Homeric Hymn, To Aphrodite. There the goddess, in the guise of a Phrygian princess, persuades Anchises to consummate a marriage union and thereby to found a lineage of kings. The divinity of his consort, which is eventually revealed to Anchises, is to remain a secret according to Aphrodite in the hymn. As the mother of his son and successor she is presented as a mortal princess, although the myth makes it clear that her status transcended mortality.Footnote 41 Further evidence reveals that Aphrodite had a ritualized role in engendering rulers among the Lydians. According to an account preserved among a miscellany of stories by Ptolemy Chennus, Croesus was conceived while the Lydians celebrated a great festival of Aphrodite.Footnote 42 The occasion presumably was the marriage of Alyattes to the woman who became the mother of his son and eventual heir.Footnote 43 In accordance with this paradigm, we should recognize that the funerary monuments depicting the union of a man and a woman marked not only the cult place of the deceased hero, but also a shrine to the divine avatar of his wife, Aphrodite, all for the purpose of legitimizing power in the lineage of the hero.
V. Conclusions
From the evidence presented here it is clear that Herodotus’ story is a dramatic elaboration of genuine accounts he received about the death of the son of Croesus. Genuine, that is, in terms of the conventional imagery by which such heroic figures were memorialized. Herodotus could have seen a funerary monument for Atys in the manner of the later stelae depicting a marriage and a hunt, and in response to his inquiry a local informant would have told a story of the marriage, the boar hunt and the death of Atys, and of Croesus’ great grief to which the monument and associated burial mound would bear witness. The tragic death of Atys in the hunt may have been real, but need not have been. All that is required by plausibility is that, after a ceremonial marriage and achieving esteem as a warrior/hunter, Atys died prematurely, that he was then mourned ceremonially and that he was memorialized in a manner that is represented on the funerary reliefs. With the main elements of the story presented to him in such a way, Herodotus could feel authorized to relate this account to what else he knew about Croesus, applying the narrative skill he displays throughout his work to bring out the tragic nature of the drama that the death of Atys represented.
Herodotus thus draws upon epitaphic imagery that in origin signified the standing of Atys as a heroic member of a royal lineage. He had no interest in such a teleology of royal legitimation, but its propagation down to his day was sufficiently well attested, either by word of mouth (akoē) or by visual representation in a funerary stela, or both, that he could relate the deeds and fate of this Lydian prince without feeling the need to name a source.
The conventional imagery through which the honoured dead were remembered in Lydia in his day gives us a perspective on the process through which Herodotus went about his inquiries. From the evidence he gathered, Herodotus recognized elements that could be strung together in a narrative that conveyed a meaning of his own design. He often refers to monuments he has seen, stories he was told, oracles he has heard, and he often expresses scepticism about whether his informants have fully or correctly appreciated their significance. He was, in this respect, an adept chrēsmologos, collector of oracular pronouncements (along with other truths of arcane meaning). His authority came from his ability to interpret those signs in ways that would help his contemporaries understand the world in which they were living.Footnote 44 This was the art of the tragedian, to which Herodotus’ narrative artistry has rightly been compared. Like a tragedian, Herodotus was endeavouring to present an instructive account of ambitious men and their successes and failures, and of the men, women and gods who abetted, advised or warned them. In doing so, he had to represent a complex and culturally diverse world, the world in which Persian and Athenian imperial ambitions had become intertwined. Monuments would affirm the historical reality of individuals or events, but Herodotus could pass over their parochial significance among other peoples with a dismissive comment, as he does when he reports the burning of the ‘shrine of a local deity, Kybebe’, at Sardis (ἱρὸν ἐπιχωρίης θεοῦ Κυβήβης, 5.102.1).Footnote 45 That event warranted mention only insofar as it motivated actions which had manifest significance to his audience, namely the burning of the shrines and temples of the Greeks by Xerxes. Other parochial meanings could be ignored entirely, as Herodotus evidently does when he treats the wedding of Atys. The metaphysics of monarchical authority, which I refer to as the Anatolian heroic archetype, were not a concern to Herodotus. But what men did, and what happened to them, was.
Supplementary material
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Acknowledgements
I owe considerable thanks to the editorial guidance of Lin Foxhall and to the detailed comments of C.A. Munn and of the referees for JHS for the refinement of this article. I also owe thanks to Nicholas Cahill, Craig Melchert and Shane Hawkins for their helpful guidance on various points. I thank the General Directorate of Cultural Heritage and Museums of the Republic of Turkey for permission to photograph museum objects. I am especially grateful to Hüseyin Erpehlivan for allowing me to reproduce his illustrations of the reliefs from Bilecik.
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