Themis, a study of the social origins of Greek ... - Warburg Institute

376 From Daimon to Olympian [CH.
as being more recent in sanctity wine is offered. All this is true,
but not the whole, nor even I think the main truth. The real
distinction is that heroes and chthonic divinities are Year-daimones
who die to rise again. The Olympians are, and, as will presently 1
be seen, it is nowise to their credit, Immortals (dOdvaroi). It is
as Year-daimones that Heroes have chthonic ritual with all its
characteristic apparatus of low-lying altars, of sunset sacrifices, and
above all of the pankarpia.
Herakles as Alexikakos of Epheboi.
We return to Herakles whose content is not yet exhausted.
The relief- on Fig. 101 shows
Fig. 101.
us the Hero in front of his
own Heroon, a small shrine on
a stepped basis and consisting
only of four pillars and a roof.
'// The shrine is not large enough
to hold the great humanized
hero, and probably at first it
held no figure at all, only a
sacred pot, a kadis/cos, with a
panspermia, or perhaps again
a slab with a holy snake.
Around the shrine is a sacred
grove as befits a daimon of fertility. The worshippers approach
bringing a bull. The bull will be sacrificed to the hero whose
animal shape he once was 3 . The character of a Herakleion is
shown very clearly in Fig. 102, from a Lower Italy amphora 4 . The
design also emphasizes in singular fashion the somewhat strained
relations between saga and daimon-cult. The scene is from a lost
tragedy the plot of which is preserved for us by Hyginus 5 .
Haemon is bidden to kill Antigone ; he saves her and she bears
1 Infra, chapter x.
2 A. Frickenhaus, Das Herakleion von Melite, A. Mitt, xxxvi. 1911, Taf. n. 2.
The reliefs in Figs. 101 and 104 are reproduced by kind permission of Dr Frickenhaus.
3 Cf. C.I.G. 1688, 32 tov /3oos tl/hol tov Tjpwos enarbv crra-r^pes Aiyivcuoi. I do not
feel certain whether this is to be construed 'the price of the Hero-Ox' or 'the price
of the ox of the hero,' but in any case hero and ox are intimately linked.
4 In the Ruvo coll., Mon. d. Inst. x. 1848, Tav. xxvi., and Klugmann, Annali,
1848, p. 177.
5 Fab. lxxii. ...hunc Creon rex, quod ex draconteo genere omnes in corpore
insigne habebant, cognovit, cum Hercules pro Haemone deprecatur ut ei ignosceret
non impetravit.