Volume 19, 2007 - Brown University

56 Amanda Earl
likened to heroes. According to archaeological evidence, hero cults did not
appear until around the late 8 th and early 7 th centuries, and were not centered on
actual burial and tombs (Antonaccio, 1993: 54). Instead of directly continuing
from earlier worship of ancestors as some have thought, hero cults seem to have
been inspired by Homeric epic and also to have been dependent “on differences
in power relations within these regions and competition among their communities”
(Antonaccio, 1993: 61). Hero worship was more widespread and “corporate;”
the objects were named, famous, and given a special sanctuary/place of
worship and enduring reverence. Thus with the spread of epic poetry, pottery,
and pan-Hellenic festivals and games, mythical heroes became accessible to all
of Greece and so became available for use as currency or commodity in the
ideological warfare of power struggles.
A growth in pan-Hellenism as well as the growth of colonization and tyranny
accompanied the growing population, wealth, and colonization of the 7 th
and 6 th centuries. The structure of society was changing. Whether a certain land
was being conquered (e.g., Messenia) or looking to conquer (e.g., Sparta), individual
kings gave way to powerful aristocratic families and tyrants who were
trying to satisfy citizens whom they might or might not have been related to. A
new kind of hero was needed. More inclusive heroes upon whom might be conferred
“a heroic identity derived from the myths of their region or even of a particular
canton of that region” were needed (De Polignac, 1995: 140). A cult
“establish[ed] a link between the previous and the existing masters of the land
and, through the sanction that the past thereby seemed to provide, legitimated
the present state of things” (De Polignac, 1995: 140). As new “upstarts” such as
the tyrant Kleisthenes of Sikyon came onto the scene pushing for social reform,
they were looking for ways to legitimize their own power and their reforms
(Sealey, 1976: 45). But hero-worship involved religious sanction and the whole
community, and so only in the cases of well-sanctioned leaders or groups that
established enduring political prestige was the currency of heroes valuable.
The actions of Kleisthenes of Sikyon stand as a good example of the tyrant’s
attempt to restructure social hierarchies and their objects of reverence in
the face of changing power dynamics (though in his case this restructuring was
never fully accomplished). It is significant that Herodotus describes the actions
of Kleisthenes in the context of the emergence of democracy in Athens (a major
political change) under Kleisthenes’ own grandson, Kleisthenes of Athens. In
this way hero transport to Sikyon is not successful in itself, but is used by the
historian only as a foil for what will happen in Athens and elsewhere. He begins
by stating that through his tribal reforms Kleisthenes of Athens was “imitating”
the actions of his grandfather in Sikyon (Herodotus.I.67). This makes sense if
one is to interpret both of their tribal reforms as anti-aristocratic. Because the ten
new tribes of Athens were geographic, they allowed the people to begin to identify
themselves according to demes instead of patronimically, encouraging a certain
leveling of the Athenian population. In the same way, Kleisthenes of
Sikyon, a pre-Dorian champion as Sealey would describe him, had renamed the