2. Xen. Rep. Lac. 13.2–3, cf. Nic.Dam. FGrH 90 F 103 z 14, on the purphoros. The king also performed other sacrifices at the border, Xen. Hell. 3.4.3.
3. Szymanski op. cit. 76–7.
4. E.g. Lonis 1979:102–3, and Popp op. cit. 39–73.
5. Lonis (1979:102) sees the men who fought and died at Thermopylai as an exception to the rule that battle was not engaged unless the signs were favorable. In this case there was no alternative (Hdt. 7.219). True enough, but it was evident, after the fact, that neither human nor supernatural prognosis could have been anything but negative once the Greeks had been taken in the rear. The gods were not thought to have been mistaken about this glorious defeat. But who was to say what the signs had really shown? Pritchett (War 3.89–90) discusses the Greek acceptance of failure in terms of the unexpectedness of supernatural action.
6. Eitrem op. cit. 9.
7. Burkert op. cit. 46–8, 64–6, followed by Connor 1988:22–3.
8. Translation by Hugh G.Evelyn-White, Hesiod, the Homeric Hymns and Homerica (Loeb Library, Cambridge, Mass., 1936). This passage and others are discussed by Eitrem op. cit. 16–18.
9. Representations in art of the actual killing of an animal are confined to sphagia, either the sacrifice before the battle-line or mythical human sacrifice (on the latter, cf. J.-L.Durand in M.Detienne andJ.-P.Vernant, The Cuisine of Sacrifice among the Greeks (Chicago, 1989) 91). In the former a sword or knife is driven down into the neck of the victim (see Figure 1). This would seem to confirm the interpretation of Stengel op. cit. 92–102, 123–35 (who, however, uses illustrations of widely different dates and origins), and Ziehen op. cit. 1670; that sphazein refers to piercing, not cutting.
10. Stengel op. cit. 92. For the language of sacrifice, see Rudhardt op. cit. and Casabona op. cit. (overlapping categories discussed at 330–9).
11. Cf. Nock op. cit. 158 (but destruction of the body, included in his definition, is not relevant to military sphagia), M.H.Jameson, 'Sacrifice and ritual: Greece' in Michael Grant and Rachel Kitzinger, eds, Civilization of the Ancient Mediterranean: Greece and Rome (New York, 1988), vol. II, 973–5.
12. Diabateria are attested only for the Spartans and only by Xenophon, with the single exception of a reference to the legendary Herakleidai attacking Sparta (huperbateria, Polyaenus Strat. 1.10).
13. The testimonia for inanimate objects, D.M.MacDowell, Athenian Homicide Law (Manchester, England, 1963) 85–6.
14. M.N.Tod, Greek Historical Inscriptions, II (Oxford, 1948), no. 204, line
19, SEG XVI 140, P.Siewert, 'The ephebic oath in fifth-century Athens,' JHS 97 (1977) 103.
15. Apollo Horios, Paus. 2.35.2 (Hermion in the Peloponnese). Zeus Horios, H.Schwabl, 'Zeus,' RE Suppl. 15 (1978) 1469; in Attica he may have been concerned only with local boundaries.
16. It is not necessary to suppose with J.von Prott, Leges Graecorum Sacrae, Fasc. 1, Fasti Sacri (Leipzig, 1896) 18 that the animals killed at the river were thrown in and so unavailable for consumption.
17. In Alexander's campaigns as recorded by Arrian the language of normal sacrifice was used for all river crossings. It has been suggested that there had been a shift from understanding the rite as propitiation of a river god (by means of sphagia) to a normal sacrifice to higher gods with observation of signs of their approval (Szymanski op. cit., 31). Perhaps in foreign parts and in ignorance of the particular local god, the seers recommended consultation of familiar gods without the pouring of blood into the river. Arrian, incidentally, also reports two sacrifices, evidently of the normal type, after successful crossings, and for these he uses the term diabateria, earlier attested only for the sacrifice before crossing the borders of Lakonia (1.4.5, 5.8.2).
18. Trans.Jowett. As has been frequently pointed out, it is the massed advance of the hoplites that waits on the performance of sphagia. The light-armed are already engaged. But to conclude that sphagia were limited to pitched battle, parataxis (as does Pritchett, War 3.88–9) goes too far. Xenophon explicitly performs sphagia before racing to help a foraging party that has been set upon by natives (An. 6.4.25). Any serious fighting required sphagia. The fluid, tentative testing of the light-armed did not count.
19. So no less an authority than Pritchett, War 1.110 (Sphagia were not necessarily, if at all, for divination purposes'), War 3.87. Delays resulting from unpropitious sphagia (Hdt. 9.61–2) and references to their coming out favorably with the first victim (Xen. An. 6.5.8) show unmistakably that signs were an essential feature of the rite. Pritchett understands the phrase, 'The sphagia are good (kala, or the like),' as 'merely to mean that the sacrifice went well' but then goes on to say that this 'could be deduced from many things, the flow of the blood etc' (War 1.113) which I would understand as a form of divination. It should be noted that references to the preceding sacrifices on the march or in the camp ground also often omit reference to the results (e.g. Xen. An. 4.6.13, Hell. 5.4.49). In his later study of the subject Pritchett lays stress on the very different methods of taking omens in the two rites (War 3.83). The difference, as I see it, lies in the stark simplicity of the sphagia. We can hardly suppose that whatever good or bad signs resulted from that killing would have been dismissed in a more leisurely and complex sacrifice. Rudhardt op. cit. 275 rightly sees sphagia as both propitiatory and mantic. Several scholars have suggested that the mantic function was not original but was added later, e.g. Szymanski op. cit. 89, Eitrem op. cit. The relationship of the seer (mantis) to the commander has been fully treated by Pritchett, War 1 and 3, and Lonis 1979. A seer had more specialized knowledge but a competent commander knew enough for
most purposes. The sacrifices and the decisions based on them were the commander's responsibility. He may be spoken of as sacrificing without mention of his mantis just as any person may be who undertakes a sacrifice even though other persons perform the ritual acts.
20. Pritchett, War 3. 73–8. On the tail of cattle and the gall-bladder put on the fire, see M.H.Jameson, 'Sophocles Antigone 1005–1022. An illustration,' in Martin J.Cropp and Elaine Fantham, eds, Greek Tragedy and its Heritage. Essays presented to Desmond Conacher (1986) 59–65.
21. Two instances in Plutarch where the language is not precise: Phokion, while performing sphagia, might have been having no success with the hiera (dusieron), unless he was delaying for tactical reasons (Phoc. 13). Before the Battle of Salamis, Themistokles is said to have been engaged in sphagia when, on the arrival of three Persian prisoners of war, a large and conspicuous flame shot up from the hiera (Them. 13). The story, which will be considered shortly, is apocryphal and a fire is not surely attested for sphagia before land battles. On the question of the rituals preliminary to sea battles, see n. 47, infra.
22. An element of local piety has crept into the story. It seems that there had been a delay, for whatever reason, in the advance of the Lakedaimonian hoplites during which time Persian archery took its toll. Both the difficulty and the eventual success were later said to be religious in origin, and credit was given to the local goddess, Hera. The story requires that difficulties in the final sacrifice, sphagia, were credible.
23. It forms part of a well-known festival in the sanctuary of Artemis Orthia. Cf. Plut. Mor. 239C and M.P.Nilsson, Griechische Feste von religiöser Bedeutung (Leipzig, 1906) 190–6.
24. Walter Burkert, Structure and History in Greek Mythology and Ritual (Berkeley, 1979) 59–61.
25. Trans. by Elizabeth Wyckoff, in David Grene and Richmond Lattimore, eds, The Complete Greek Tragedies, vol. IV, Euripides (Chicago, 1959). These notoriously difficult lines have exercised ancient and modern commentators. Wyckoff (p. 456) regards them and most of the messenger speech in which they occur as spurious, and lines 1242–58 are deleted by Eduard Fraenkel, SBBay (1963) 60–3. But D.J.Mastronarde, ed, Euripides' Phoenissae (Teubner edn, 1988) regards lines 1255–8 as difficult to interpret and requiring emendation, but not spurious.
26. The Muses and Eros are mentioned as receiving sacrifices from the Spartans before warfare
or battle—they sacrifice to the Muses before war (Plut. Mor. 458E), offer sphagia before dangers (Mor. 221A, cf. 238B) and the king makes preliminary sacrifices to them in battle (Lyc. 21.6). According to Athenaeus (13.561E) the Spartans make preliminary sacrifice to Eros in front of the battle-lines 'with the belief that salvation and victory depend on the friendship (philia) of the men in the battle line.' The latter is connected with the sacrifice of maidens before battle by Burkert op. cit. 65–6 and in Greek Religion (Cambridge, Mass., 1985) 267, cf. Connor 1988:23–4. I do not fully understand the significance of the information nor the interpretations that have been offered.
27. See Lewis Farnell, Cults of the Greek City-States II (Oxford, 1896–1909)
431–4; Schwenn, op. cit. 62–7; no doubt more instances of her worship could now be added.
28. Pierre Chantraine Dictionnaire étymologique de la langue grecque (Paris, 1968–80), s.v.agros.
29. Cf. Burkert, op. cit. 46–8.
30. The poetic depiction of towns under siege (cf. Hom. Il. 18.509–40; [Hes.] Scut. 237–69) shows the failure for the defenders of fighting in the countryside, through being defeated or outwitted. In the Homeric passage the ambush of cattle and herdsmen by men from the besieged town is set in what could be described as the agros of the attackers.
31. Cf. Edward Kadletz, Animal Sacrifice in Greek and Roman Religion (Diss. University of Washington, 1976) 87–92.
32. The evidence together with a very useful note in P.J.Rhodes, A Commentary on the Aristotelian Athenaion Politeia (Oxford, 1981) 650. It is usually thought that the day of her festival, 6th Boedromion (or 6th Thargelion), was not the day of the battle but was the date of her festival even before Marathon. H.W.Parke suggested that it was 'the date on which the resolution was passed by the Athenian army [rather, the assembly] to set out from Athens, and the vow was made in anticipation of the battle,' Festivals of the Athenians (Ithaca, NY, 1977) 55. On the location and remains of her sanctuary, John Travlos, Pictorial Dictionary of Ancient Athens (London, 1971) 112–14.
33. Chrysis Péiékides, Histoire de I'éphébie Attique (Paris, 1962) 215–16.
34. E.Fraenkel, Aeschylus Agamemnon II (Oxford, 1950) 133, asserted that Athens (cf. Eitrem op. cit., 19) and several other Greek cities offered her battle-line sphagia but his citations do not show this to have been the case. Aristoph. Eq. 660–2 is an allusion to the vow.
35. On the sanctuary and its use, M.H.Jameson, 'Apollo Lykeios in Athens,' Archaiognosia (Athens) 1 (1980) 213–36. For the relationship between the two shrines, see Travlos (supra n. 31), fig. 379.
36. Cf. Ziehen op. cit. and Eitrem op. cit. Stengel op. cit. saw the sphagia as essentially apotropaic, to avert hostile spirits.
37. J.E.Harrison, Prolegomena to the Study of Greek Religion (Cambridge, England, 1980 3rd edn), 65; Pritchett, War 3.86.
38. The scholiast commented that the sphagia were performed in front of the army. One expects phero to refer to something that is carried with the arms, ago to refer to the bringing of animals. Cf. Eur. Heracl. 673 of the sphagia of both sides.
39. On human sacrifice, Friedrich Schwenn, Die Menschenopfer bei den Griechen und Römern (Berlin, 1915) and Henrichs op. cit.
40. See, especially, Henrichs op. cit.; Helene P.Foley, Ritual Irony. Poetry and Sacrifice in Euripides (Ithaca, NY, 1985).
41. In general, see Henrichs op. cit., 198–208. On the chorus's description of Iphigeneia's death in the Agamemnon, see Fraenkel (supra n. 34), 232 and K.J.Dover 'Some neglected aspects of Agamemnon's dilemma,' JHS 93 (1973) 58–69.
42. Dicaearchus, Fr. 66 in Fritz Wehrli, Die Schule des Aristoteles (Basle, 1944) with discussion on pp. 62–3. On the foreign origin of a number of tutelary heroes see François de Polignac, La naissance de la cité grecque
(Paris, 1984) 132–40.
43. Human sacrifices in story are reviewed by Friedrich Schwenn (supra n. 39), 121–39. Cf. Foley, op. cit. 65 and passim. On the death of virgins in particular, Henrichs op. cit., 195–208, and Burkert (supra n. 1) 65–7, who sees their killing as an element in the sexualization of war, sexually aggressive acts requiring restitution.
44. Cf. Pritchett, War 3.86, 'a surrogate—an animal in substitution for the human victim of earlier times.' Paley suggested reading boteion, 'sheep's,' for broteion, 'mortal.' Wilamowitz deleted lines 819–22, Hermes 17 (1882) 337 ff. Murray daggered the word broteion.
45. See Joseph Fontenrose, The Delphic Oracle (Berkeley, 1978) 146–8.
46. Hdt. 7.220.4, 239.1. Fontenrose (supra n. 45), 77–8 and 319, Q127.
47. Frank Frost, Plutarch's Themistocles. A Historical Commentary (Princeton, 1980) 150; Henrichs, op. cit. 208–24. Henrichs finds the language of the description correct up to the sacrifice of the Persians, at which point an unparalleled second sacrifice is added. It should be noted, however, that while Themistokles is engaged in sphagia (sphagiazomenoi) there are hiera burning in the fire, which we have not found surely attested for the battle-line sacrifice. There is a question whether the same rites were performed before a naval engagement as before hoplite battle. Xenophon is silent about the sacrifices before the Battle of Arginousai (406 BC) but Diodorus Siculus (13.97) has a melodramatic account of the head of the Spartan victim disappearing in the sea, which the seer interpreted to mean the death of the Spartan admiral, as indeed happened, and favorable hiera on the Athenian side being reported to the fleet while a dream of the Athenian commander of the day, Thrasyllos, that he and six other strategoi were playing the parts of the seven against Thebes in Euripides' Phoenissae in Athens, was not reported because the seer foretold that it meant their death. Normal sacrifice for hiera are indicated by the eisiteria before a naval expedition (to be distinguished from the rites performed on entering a public office). A seer is honored for having predicted Athenian victory in the Battle of Knidos (396 BC), as explained by Pritchett, War 3.63–7. We can safely assume that camp-ground sacrifice for hiera was normal before a naval battle, as for all engagements, but it is unlikely that there was any equivalent of the final sphagia before the battle lines on land. Plutarch's sphagiazomenoi of Themistokles is vivid but probably not realistic.
48. e.g., SIG3 1024, line 6, etc.; cf. Henrichs op. cit., 217, n. 2.
49. Example one (shown in Figure 1), five joining fragments of a red-figure cup, CVA Cleveland Museum of Art 26.242. Pl 37.1, ca. 490–80 BC, cf. the Eucharides painter (Cedric G.Boulter); example two, a fragment of a red-figure calyx crater, formerly in the Bareiss Collection, now in the J.Paul Getty Museum, Malibu, California, Greek Vases. Molly and Walter Bareiss Collection (1983) N. 106, ca. 430 BC (Getty Museum number: 86.AE.213). The third example is the Heroon from Gjolbaschi-Trysa, now in Vienna. Fritz Eichler, Die Reliefs der Heroon von Gjölbaschi-Trysa (Vienna, 1950) Pl. 19 [upper left] and p. 62. A much larger series on coins and in reliefs of figures kneeling on a victim in this pose shows the goddess Nike or a hero. These too I believe represent military
sphagia; I hope to discuss them elsewhere. It should be noted that in all cases of this pose the head of the victim is pulled up, not down as has been claimed was necessary for sphagia as chthonic rites (e.g. Ziehen op. cit., 1670–1). What matters is where the blood flows.
50. See Durand, (supra n. 10) but my example (Fig. 1) is an exception to his rule. My second and third examples show that for representations of the battle-line sphagia whether the implement is or is not in the victim's neck does not matter.
51. When hoplites faced light-armed men their only defense, aside from trying to avoid missiles, was to advance. Agesilaos' hoplites suffered wounds at the hands of light-armed Akarnanians until the sphagia were completed whereupon they advanced against them (Xen. Hell. 4.6.10, and cf. supra n. 18). On the dilemmas of commanders forced to balance religious and military considerations, see K.J.Dover (supra n. 41) 62–7. There is an informative incident from peacetime Sparta. Early in the fourth century BC King Agesilaos at Sparta, while performing routine sacrifices in peacetime, received unfavorable signs from the
hiera which pointed to a plot against the state (Xen. Hell. 3.3.4). After repeated sacrifices to 'apotropaic and saving' powers the king and his mantis were barely able to get favorable signs and so stop and resume their secular activities, which included investigations that led to the discovery of the source of subversion, a certain Kinadon and his associates. One might well speculate that the Spartan authorities wanted to move against a suspected danger and welcomed supernatural support for their views. The use of the apotropaic rites is a way of getting out of a situation that requires action by other means, comparable to turning off a smoke alarm while looking for the fire and putting it out.
Hoplites: The Classical Greek Battle Experience Page 32
