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

378 From Daimon to Olympian [CH.
The relief 1
chance we know it.
in Fig. 104 enables us to give to the figure of
Herakles a local habitation and a
name. The inscription on the basis
of the little shrine is clear— ' Of
Herakles Alexikakos'V As ' Defender
from Evil ' Herakles was worshipped
in the deme of Melite, the Pnyx
region of Athens. Again the hero
stands close to and overtopping his
little shrine. The shrine is sur-
mounted by a great krater on a
pedestal. Krater and pedestal to-
gether are about half the height of
the shrine itself. Whom is Herakles
to defend from evil ? The worshipper
only approaches; an ephebos, like in
age and stature to Herakles himself,
save that he wears cloak and petasos.
Is there any link between the great
krater and the youth and Herakles
'Defender from Evil'? It happens
that, in very singular and instructive
fashion there is, and by a happy
Photius 3 in a priceless gloss thus explains the word olvi\a\ar^pLa
'wine-doings':
Fig. 103.
A libation to Herakles performed by the epheboi before the cutting of their
hair.
Photius gives as his authority a play of Eupolis, the Demoi.
We should guess therefore that the custom was Athenian, but
1 A. Mitt, xxxvi. 1911, Taf. n.
2 For Herakles in Melite. see my Primitive Athens, pp. 146— 152. Dr Frickenhaus
holds that the triangular precinct with the wine-press, excavated by Dr Dorpfeld,
and by him explained as the old sanctuary of Dionysos-in-the-Marshes, is the
Herakieion in Melite. I followed Dr Dorpfeld, and this is not the place to re-examine
a question mainly topographical, but if Dr Frickenhaus's most interesting theory
be true, and we have a Herakieion close to the old orchestra, it may, as Prof. Murray
suggested to me, throw an odd light on the Herakles disguise assumed by the
Dionysos of the Frogs. Both are Kouroi; both, as will immediately be seen, have
a wine- service. So the shift from one to another is not as great as it seems.
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