The sacrificial rituals of Greek hero cults in the Archaic to the early ...

Literary evidence 189
keklåsetaidètoûktanóntovoºneka
semnòvPoseid÷nÌnom Çpwnomasménov
stoîv>EreqjeùvÇmfonaîsiboujútoiv.
For your husband I command the building in mid-city of a precinct with stone
enclosure. In recollection of his killer the citizens, slaughtering sacrificial oxen, shall
call him august Poseidon surnamed Erechtheus. 255
Athena instructs Praxithea (and the Athenians) to build a precinct with
a stone enclosure in the middle of the city
... peribóloisi
(shkòn Çn mésþ pólei teûxai
la·noiv). In the cult, Erechtheus is to be called Poseidon,
surnamed Erechtheus as a recollection of him being killed by the god. 256
The sacrifices are called phonai bouthytoi, “ox-sacrificing slaughters”. The
term phonai, often used for carnage on the battlefield, links these sacrifices
with war and bloodshed, and the ritual may be understood as a substantial
sacrifice of cattle at which the blood was of particular importance (see
above, pp. 175–176). The rest of the ritual was probably a regular thysia,
since the term used is bouthytoi, and ended with the worshippers dining
on the meat. 257 The blood of the victims may have been poured onto the
fissures in the Acropolis rock, usually considered as the location where
Erechtheus was killed, above which was later placed the hollow altar in
the northern portico of the Erechtheion. 258 Thus the sacrifices to Erechtheus
follow a ritual scheme corresponding to that of the Hyakinthids. 259 As for the
ritual context of these sacrifices to Erechtheus, there are no clear indications.
The rituals described may have formed a part of the Panathenaia, a festival
which has even been suggested as originally dedicated to Erechtheus, but
the o�ferings to this hero outlined in the Erechtheus have also been assigned
to the Skira. 260
255 Translation by Cropp 1995, 175.
256 On the complex question of the merging of Erechtheus and Poseidon in the cult, see, for
example, Kron 1976, 48–52; Kearns 1989, 210–211; Christopoulos 1994, 123–130; Cropp 1995,
193, lines 93–94.
257 Cf. Harmodios of Lepreum (FGrHist 319 F 1), who speaks of the bouthysia megale to the
heroes at Phigaleia, a sacrifice followed by a banquet in which the slaves could participate and
the boys dined with their fathers.
258 See above, p. 176, n. 196. See also Stern (1986, 57–58), who suggests that the northern
portico of the Erechtheion resembles the set of a theatre. The construction of the Erechtheion
definitely seems to have begun when Euripides wrote the Erechtheus, probably in 424 BC, see
Treu 1971, 125–126.
259 Sacrifices to Erechtheus are mentioned in the Iliad (2.550–551) astaúroisikaì rneioîv
°láontaikoûroi>Ajhnaíwn (the young men of the Athenians propitiate him with bulls and rams);
on the authenticity of this passage, see Kirk 1985, 179–180 and 208–209. Is the propitiation to
be taken as a reference to a blood ritual?
260 For the link Erechtheus-Panathenaia, see Mikalson 1976, 153; Connelly 1996, 77–78. For
Erechtheus receiving his sacrifices at the Skira, see Robertson 1985, 235 with n. 6; Robertson
1996, 45.