Volume 19, 2007 - Brown University

60 Amanda Earl
naively believe in the magical power of bones, per se. As Barbara McCauley
points out when describing the transferal of Orestes’ bones to Sparta, “it is not
the bones themselves which are important so much as the fact of their possession.
Once a cult has been established in the newly relocated hero’s honor, it is
assumed that the hero himself will lend his support to his new worshippers”
(1999: 95). Sikyon never really conquered Argos: they were rivals. But both
Sparta and later Athens did gain enough political and territorial power to appropriate
by their own virtue other lands’ heroes.
Again a contrast is drawn between Sparta and Athens during this period.
Sparta was superior to Athens in the time of Croesus, as is shown by the juxtaposition
in Herodotus of Lycourgos with the rise to power of Peisistratos
(Boedeker, 1993: 173). This is why Croesus ultimately chooses to ally with
Sparta instead of Athens to fight the Persians. It is not until after the Persian
Wars and the Battle of Marathon that Athens, enjoying isonomia, will be able to
appropriate a newly “democratic” hero (De Polignac, 1995: 147). While the
transferal of Theseus’ bones from Scyros to Athens can be seen as more
imperial and aggressive than Sparta’s acquisition of Orestes’ bones, both are
examples of powerful city-states acquiring renown and divine sanction because
they have enough political and social organization to do so. Both also involve
transcendence of the political body over the elite. De Polignac mentions
Kleisthenes’ of Athens preliminary hero manipulations as a beginning of the
consolidation of people-powered government in Athens. He says that:
. . . the figure of the king Erechtheus and that of its political founder, Theseus,
were both remodeled in conjunction with the image of the foundation of
the city . . . Kleisthenes brought Erectheus ‘down’ from the acropolis into the
new space shaped by isonomia by making him the eponymous founder of one
of its ten tribes, and the simultaneous diffusion of representations of the cycle
of myths about Theseus seems to have been inspired by the same antityrannical
ideology. (De Polignac, 1995: 147)
Just as Sparta had embarked earlier in the sixth century on an anti-tyrannous
campaign in the Pelopponese, so now Athens, as a growing imperial power is
trying to assert its identity as a polis inclusive to all its citizens (though not to its
kleruchies such as Scyros). “With the help of a divinely sent omen,” Kimon finally
brings back the bones of Theseus to Athens by his own might and good
sense when waging battle in Scyros (Plutarch in McCauley, 1999: 87). And
whether the oracle was faked by Kimon for his own advantage or not, the citizens
of Athens were at a point where they were proud of their government, tired
of being victims, and desiring to assert their authority: they needed justification
and affirmation of themselves.
Thus while the transferal of Theseus’ bones might have afforded Kimon
political advantages through restoring pride in the government and Miltiades’
victory at Marathon, there was clearly a reason why the Athenian citizens were
vulnerable to such propaganda at this time. Not only did the men of Athens