Volume 19, 2007 - Brown University

“Meting Out” the Bones of Heroes in Ancient Greece 61
desire praise themselves for the Battle of Marathon and their subsequent military
actions, but they needed and were able to obtain validation of their territorial
claims by essentially “demanding the submission” of Scyros in the affair
(McCauley, 1999: 95). Thus, both the external and the internal political and
psychological demands of the state of Athens required the transferal of bones,
and consequently of power at that time (Boedeker, 1993: 173). Just as the
Spartans had become “masters of most of the Pelopponese” by the Persian Wars,
so Athens had become much more of a centralized, imperial city by the time of
the Pelopponesian Wars (Herodotus.I.68).
The bone transferals illustrate this dynamic change in power in Herodotus.
When religiously sanctioned power was obtained by a leader or body and its territory,
these transferals were successful and represented legitimate exchanges of
a kind of symbolic currency between the emerging city-states or poleis (Shapiro,
1999: 99). More than mere examples of political propaganda, these exchanges
are important because they demonstrate the tension and changing dynamic
which grew within the city-state and then between states as each region
embarked on a kind of search for self. Both religious and political, these
incidences are examples of the new need for divine sanction of territorial and
ideological conquest as well as for political and social group identification and
affirmation at this point in Greek history (Boedeker, 1993: 173). The possession
of a famous mythological hero gave to Sparta and Athens the psychological and
religious sanction they were seeking in the domination of “others.” Thus the
worship of heroes was intimately related with practical concerns of the state and
its citizens.
References
Antonaccio, Carla. 1993. “The Archaeology of Ancestors,” in Cultural Poetics in
Archaic Greece: Cult, Performance, Politics. Ed. C. Dougherty and L. Kurke, pp.
46-70.
Boedeker, Deborah. 1993. “Hero Cult and Politics in Herodotus: the Bones of Orestes,”
in Cultural Poetics in Archaic Greece: Cult, Performance, Politics. Ed. C.
Dougherty and L. Kurke, pp. 164-177.
De Polignac, Francois. 1995. Cults, Territory, and the Origins of the Greek City-State.
Trans. Janet Lloyd. Chicago.
Dougherty, Carol and Leslie Kurke. ed., 1993. Cultural Poetics in Archaic Greece: Cult,
Performance, Politics. Cambridge.
Hägg, Robin., ed. 1999. Ancient Greek Hero Cult. Stockholm.
Herodotus. 1942. The Persian Wars. Trans. George Rawlinson. New York.
McCauley, Barbara. 1999. “Heroes and Power: The Politics of Bone Transferal,” in R.
Hägg, 85-98.
Sealey, Raphael. 1976. A History of the Greek City States: 700-338 B.C. Berkley.
Shapiro, H.A. 1999. “Cult Warfare: the Dioskouroi between Sparta and Athens,” in R.
Hägg, 99-107.