The Limits of the Olympian and Chthonian Ritual Distinction in Greek Religion

Olympian and Chthonian
Author(s): Scott Scullion

Source: Classical Antiquity, Vol. 13, No. 1 (Apr., 1994), pp. 75-119
Published by: University of California Press
Stable URL: https://www.jstor.org/stable/25011006
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SCOTT SCULLION
Olympian and Chthonian
To THE OLYMPIAN sky gods-so tradition has it-the Greeks sacrificed

animals in sunlight, at a high altar, pointing the victim's throat skyward when
slaughtering it; they burned the bones, thigh, and fat for the god, and ate the
meat themselves, all to the accompaniment of music and, at least at the banquet
stage, in a mood of general jollification.1 Libations to the Olympians were
I am indebted for helpful suggestions and correction to Albert Henrichs and to two anonymous
referees for this journal.
1. The following works are referred to in abbreviated form: Walter Burkert, Homo Necans
(Berkeley and Los Angeles, 1983) = HN; Walter Burkert, Griechische Religion der archaischen und
klassischen Epoche (Stuttgart, 1977) = GR; Georges Daux, "La grande demarchie: Un nouveau
calendrier sacrificiel d'Attique (Erchia)," BCH 87 (1963) 603-34; Georges Daux, "Sacrifices a
Thorikos," GMusJ 12 (1984) 145-52; A. Fairbanks, "The Chthonic Gods of Greek Religion," AJP
21 (1900) 241-59; Michael S. Goldstein, "The Setting of the Ritual Meal in Greek Sanctuaries: 600
300 B.C." (diss. Berkeley, 1978); Fritz Graf, "Milch, Honig und Wein," in Perennitas: Studi in onore
di Angelo Brelich (Rome, 1980) 209-21; Albert Henrichs, "Namenlosigkeit und Euphemismus: Zur
Ambivalenz der chthonischen Machte im attischen Drama," in Annette Harder and Heinz Hofmann,
eds., Fragmenta Dramatica (Gottingen, 1990) 161-201; Albert Henrichs, "The Eumenides and
Wineless Libations in the Derveni Papyrus," in Atti del XVII congresso internazionale di papirologia
(Naples, 1984) 255-68; Albert Henrichs, "The 'Sobriety' of Oedipus: Sophocles OC 100 Misunder
stood," HSCP 87 (1983) 87-100; Michael Jameson, "Notes on the Sacrificial Calendar from Erchia,"
BCH 89 (1965) 154-72; Michael H. Jameson, "Sacrifice before Battle," in Victor Davis Hanson, ed.,
Hoplites: The Classical Greek Battle Experience (New York, 1991) 197-227; LGS = H. von Prott and
L. Ziehen, eds., Leges Graecorum Sacrae, vols. 1 and 2 (Leipzig, 1896-1906); LS = F. Sokolowski,
Lois sacrees des cites grecques (Paris, 1969); LSAM = F. Sokolowski, Lois sacrees de l'Asie mineure
(Paris, 1955); LSS = F. Sokolowski, Lois sacrees des cites grecques: Supplement (Paris, 1962); Martin
P. Nilsson, Griechische Feste von religioser Bedeutung mit Ausschluj3 der attischen (Leipzig, 1906) =
GF; Martin P. Nilsson, Geschichte der griechischen Religion 13 (Munich, 1967) = GGR; A. D. Nock,
"The Cult of Heroes," (HThR 37 [1944] 141-74 =) Essays on Religion and the Ancient World
? 1994 BY THE REGENTS OF THE UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA
76 CLASSICAL ANTIQUITY Volume 13/No. 1/April 1994
similarly "participatory": a minimal portion of the liquid was poured out for the
god, the rest reserved for the worshiper. A wholly different atmosphere pre
vailed in cult offered to the chthonian powers-the gods of the underworld,
heroes, and the dead. Black victims were sacrificed by night over a low hearth or
pit, into which the flow of blood was directed; they were wholly consumed by the
flames, so that in these grim and silent rites the worshiper tasted nothing. Nor
did one participate in liquid offerings to the chthonians, which were poured in
their entirety into the earth. The sharp distinction between Olympian and
chthonian, applicable both to divinities and to ritual, not only was familiar to the
ancients themselves but found clear expression, down to particulars, in the sacral
terminology of the Greek language, OUeLV, p3cot6, ojovbai, and so forth on the
Olympian side corresponding to evayt;elv, eoXaQa, P6OQog, Xoal on the
chthonian.
The validity of this distinction and its fundamental importance have gener
ally been taken for granted by modern students of Greek religion;2 indeed in the
flux of scholarly fashion Olympian and chthonian have been seen as coinciding
with a rich variety of cosmic opposites: rich/poor, aristocratic/democratic, Indo
European/indigenous, masculine/feminine, patriarchal/matriarchal, advanced/
primitive, rational/mystical, and so on. No aspect of Greek religion has seemed
more central or more basic, and none has a greater appeal: it has attracted the
attention of the most universalizing theorists in a number of disciplines, as of the
most antiquarian of classical philologists.
The nature and limits of the applicability of the Olympian/chthonian distinc
tion to the phenomena of Greek religion have, however, been searchingly reas
sessed by some of the most respected twentieth-century authorities. The recent
tendency to consider ritual, as "fact," the primary element in Greek cult, and the
gods, as "fluid," secondary and variable3-a tendency that can skew our percep
tion of Greek religion-has found expression in the claim that the character of
the divine recipient does not determine the type of ritual offered. Fritz Graf, for
example, in a study of libations, reaches the conclusion that "nicht die Gottheit
oder die Toten, denen die Spende gilt, bestimmen ihre Form, sondern die innere
Logik des Rituals," and Walter Burkert holds much the same to be true of
(Oxford, 1972) 575-602; Renate Schlesier, "Olympian versus Chthonian Religion," SCI 11 (1991/92)
38-51; Paul Stengel, Opferbrauche der Griechen (Leipzig, 1910). The sacrificial calendar from
Thorikos (= Thorikos) is cited according to the edition (with translation and commentary) of
Georges Daux, "Le Calendrier de Thorikos au Musde J. Paul Getty," AC 52 (1983) 150-74, which
supersedes the edition with commentary of Jules Labarbe, Thorikos: Les testimonia, Fouilles de
Thorikos / Opgravingen van Thorikos 1 (Ghent, 1977) 56-64.
2. See above all Erwin Rohde, Psyche: Seelencult und Unsterblichkeitsglaube der Griechen2
(Freiburg i. B., 1898) 1.146-279; for a basic account and bibliography, Burkert, GR 306-12 with 306
n. 1, 307 n. 8; K. O. Muller, Aeschylos, Eumeniden (Gottingen, 1833) 165-78, should not be
forgotten. For fuller treatment of the scholarly tradition, see now Schlesier.
3. I allude to Burkert, HN xv. For criticism of this trend in the modern study of Greek religion,
see Albert Henrichs, Die Gotter Griechenlands: Ihr Bild im Wandel der Religionswissenschaft,
Thyssen-Vortrage: Auseinandersetzungen mit der Antike 5 (Bamberg, 1987), esp. section X.
SCULLION: Olympian and Chthonian 77
animal sacrifice.4 This stands as a quite radical rejection of the tradition

that recipients of cult are either Olympian or chthonian in character an
exclusively offered as a consequence the corresponding form of worship.
tance of the new approach would have far-reaching consequences for our g
view of Greek religion; careful reexamination is therefore indicated, and m
course be based on the minutiae of the cultic record, however notorious
plex and refractory. What follows is intended as a contribution to debat
defends the view that the character of the recipient is a constitutive elem
ritual, and resumes the modern attempt to replace earlier, extreme formu
of the Olympian/chthonian distinction with a more open and accurate app
THE TRADITIONAL DISTINCTION QUESTIONED
Arthur Fairbanks commenced the modem debate in 1900, complaining

his contemporaries tended "to include the worship of the dead, of chthon
proper, and of heroes, together with all propitiatory and purificatory rites, un
one heading, and to apply the term 'chthonic' to this whole group of divi
and to this entire type of worship." In Paul Stengel's work, for example
approach has "the result that Apollo, Artemis, and indeed most of the Oly
divinities, come to be classed as at times chthonic gods."5
Fairbanks claims that the term "chthonic" should strictly be applied o
divinities who rule over or are closely associated with the souls of the d
Hades and Persephone, Ge, the Erinyes, Hekate; and to Zeus, Demete
Hermes, Olympian gods who often receive the epithet "chthonian" in ass
tion with the same realm. Our knowledge of these gods is mostly obtaine
poetry, and Fairbanks therefore describes "chthonic" in this sense as "a
term to denote a god associated with souls" (247). When used as an epith
gods from whom prosperity of crops is sought, "chthonian" is "a cultus t
denote a god of agriculture" (247), and this class of agricultural gods is no
identified with the rulers of souls (248). There are two further classes of
beings connected with the earth: heroes and the souls of the dead; none o
four classes is to be confused with any of the others (248-49).
Fairbanks maintains that the character of the chthonic gods as a class d
from that of the Olympians; this character is not, however, exclusive t
chthonic gods, but theirs by virtue of their membership in a larger group. "If
make a distinction between gods of national worship and gods who w
source both of special blessings and of special evils, the chthonic gods, as
heroes and agricultural gods, will belong to the latter class" (250). The am
lent character of this group, which involves also the trait of being easily rous
4. Graf 220; see also id., Nordionische Kulte, Bibliotheca Helvetica Romana 21 (Rome
26-30; Burkert, HN 9 n. 41: "We are dealing with an antithesis within the ritual, not w
fundamentally different and separate things"; GR 307 with the cross-references in n. 8.
5. Fairbanks 241f.
anger, determines the type of cult they are offered. "They are approached with
fear and receive sacrifices that are intended to propitiate their anger," as for
example holocaust sacrifices or wineless libations, or in a different context purifi
catory rites with their focus on blood (253-58). "At the same time, they are not
so clearly differentiated from the other gods as not to receive the ordinary types
of sacrifice" (258), and Fairbanks lists examples of sacrifices to gods of this class
involving participation.
On Fairbanks's view, then, "the conclusion is unavoidable that we are not
justified in describing any one type of worship as distinctly chthonian" (259).
The type of worship the chthonic gods normally receive is not peculiar to them,
but shared with the wider class of easily angered divinities; and even at that the
many exceptions forbid an inflexible typology. What is true of the worship is also
true of the character of the recipients, for neither are the chthonic gods unique in
their propensity to anger. It is as part of the larger class that they normally
receive propitiatory rites, for-and the point is of special interest for us-"the
forms of worship correspond with the character of the gods" (259).
In his famous article "The Cult of Heroes," A. D. Nock took a further step
beyond the nineteenth-century view by questioning the validity of this principle
of the correspondence of worship with divine character. Nock first notes that the
distinction between banquet sacrifice for the Olympians and sacrifice without
participation for the underworld gods and the heroes was "a matter of well
established practice, familiar to intelligent Greeks" (578). He then collects a
number of exceptions, all from the realm of hero cult, which lead him to the
conclusion that "when the sacrifice is a holocaust, the victims dark, not light, and
the time night rather than day, then the cult in question is usually directed to
heroes or to deities of the earth or underworld, but we cannot make even this
proposition universal. Certainly we cannot reverse it, and say that, where such
rites were not employed, the objects of cult were gods or goddesses of the
Olympian type" (582).
Nock suggests two basic reasons for the performance of holocaust sacrifice:
"First, there are offerings to persons who have lived and died and who are
supposed to need real sustenance and nourishment.... Secondly, there are
offerings which may best be called heilige Handlungen, ceremonies wherein an
animal was consumed (not always by fire) in a proceeding intended to exercise
direct and efficacious influence upon divine powers or upon forces of nature"
(590). The first category includes rites for heroes and for the dead; the second,
fertility rites, "sphagia in general, oath-sacrifices . .. , offerings of victims in a
crisis, cathartic sacrifices . . . and various ceremonies to avert evil" (ibid.). In all
such rites the victim is completely destroyed, whether the gods in question are
Olympian or from the earth or underworld. Nock adds the case of human sacri
fice as "a classic instance. They are powerful forms of action" (591): thus, as he
remarks in a note, there is a similarity between the sacrifice of Polyxena to
Achilleus and that of Iphigeneia to Artemis, though the first recipient is a hero,
the second an Olympian. "For this second category," Nock concludes, "wou
not be true to say that non-participation followed upon the purpose and
sphere of the ritual and upon the disposition or aspect imputed to the d
rather than upon their identity or supposed habitat?" (591). He points out
is common for Greek divinities to have more than one aspect, and adds
"most forms of supernatural activity are common to Olympians and chth
(591f.).
Nock, then, considers the mode of worship to be determined not, as for
Fairbanks, by "the character of the gods," but by a combination of the intention
of the ritual and the "aspect imputed to," as opposed to the "identity of," the
deity.
CURRENT APPROACHES
The traditional, hard-and-fast distinction of Olympian and chthonian sacrifi

cial modes is challenged especially by several attested cases of single ritual se
quences involving both sorts of offering. Two of these have in recent years been
discussed against the theoretical background and provide excellent case studies
in current thinking. In 1963 Georges Daux published a long and well-preserved
sacral calendar of the deme Erchia, which substantially increased our fund of
attested sacrifices in classical Attika. Under the festival Diasia in the month
Anthesterion it specifies the victim for Zeus Meilichios: oig, vtlpdaLog gLXQL
oankayX[v]wv.6 No wine is to be used until the victim's offal has been burned.7 M.
H. Jameson, in his commentary on this sacrifice, explains the restriction with
reference to Nock's category of heilige Handlungen.8 It seems clear that the
victim was eaten and that to this extent we have to do with a "normal sacrifice,"
but the restriction on wine represents a "divergence . . . from normal practice in
the direction of 'powerful actions' " (164). Jameson compares the elaborate
ritual for Zeus Polieus on Kos (LS 151 A), where sacrifice of an ox with participa
tion is preceded by holocaust of a piglet accompanied by wineless libations.
"What they have in common is that the first part of each ceremony is in the
direction of a powerful action . . . followed by normal procedures" (165).
It is especially interesting for our purposes that Jameson prefaces his discus
sion with the statement that "the sacrifices for Zeus Meilichios reflect his mixed
character" (162). The god's uncanny and dangerous nature, his close connections
6. Daux, "Erchia" = LS 18, at A.37ff.

7. So Daux, "Erchia" 629 n. 2; and Henrichs, "Sobriety" 91 n. 19; Jameson, "Erchia" 164,
assumes that the use of wine begins during the burning of the offal.
8. Jameson, "Erchia" 159-72, esp. 162-65. Nock's term, presumably adopted from an article
by one of his heroes, Hermann Usener ("Heilige Handlung," ARW 7 [1904] 281-339 = Kleine
Schriften 4 [Leipzig, 1913] 422-67), who uses it quite differently, is not an especially happy one, but
has achieved a certain currency (see Jameson, "Battle" 201: "may be freely rendered as 'powerful
actions' ") and might as well be retained.
with the underworld, and his snake form are well known;9 Jameson cites other
evidence for "mixed" rites in his honor, and it is presumably this consistent
pattern that suggests to him that the various rites reflect the character of the god.
Though Jameson does not confront the question directly, the evidence he gath
ers would appear to justify his supposition that in this case we may speak of the
god's character as the determining factor. In Nock's terms, the two "aspects"
reflected in the mixed character of the ritual occur together so consistently that it
seems reasonable to regard them as constituting the "identity" of the god: he and
the worship offered him are not "normal" here and now and "abnormal" there
and then, but always and everywhere both.
If Jameson reverts to an old-fashioned focus on the character of the recipi
ent, Graf goes farther than Nock in questioning the validity of this approach. It
happens that Graf illustrates his thesis that the form of worship is determined
solely by "die innere Logik des Rituals" with the rites for Zeus Polieus on Kos,
Jameson's comparandum for the Erchian rite. Focusing on the several libations
specified in the Koan inscription (LS 151 A), Graf poses the question, "Lassen
sich diese Riten verstehen als rituelle Zeichen, 'ritual symbols' der ethnologi
schen Terminologie, die im Ablauf des Gesamtrituals Aussagen machen?"
(211). He returns a positive answer.
The data are as follows. The holocaust of the piglet with libations of
?eXFixQatov over its oanXayXva and, following the placing of its EvTega in the fire,
over them, is followed by the herald's announcement of the festival of Zeus
Polieus. Someone, perhaps the priest of Zeus Polieus, then throws or pours onto
the ivTeQa in the fire incense, cakes, libations of unmixed and of mixed wine,
and a garland. The participants then proceed to a nocturnal entertainment dur
ing which those who will wield the knife at the sacrifice next day of Zeus
Polieus's bull are chosen, and sexual abstinence during the same night is imposed
upon them.
Noting that wineless libations and those of unmixed wine are equally depar
tures from the norm of mixed wine, Graf concludes about the rite that "bis zur
Verkiindigung des Festes von Zeus Polieus ist es durch eine Reihe von Signalen
als ausserordentlich gekennzeichnet" (218). Holocaust sacrifice, [teXExQartov liba
tions, and the time, "gegen Abend ... im Gegensatz zum olympischen Nor
malopfer," are the signals. "So wird das Voropfer als kontrastierender Durch
gang zum Fest des Polieus ausgespielt: den Ubergang vollzieht, nach der
Verkiindigung des Zeusfestes, nun eben der Priester des Zeus: in markantem
Schritt von der Spende mit reinem zu derjenigen mit gemischtem Wein, von
Aussergewohnlichkeit zum Normalen" (218f.). Finally, "so eignet den Fliissigkei
9. See Burkert, GR 308f.; Graf, Kulte (supra, n. 4) 24 with further bibliography n. 24; id.,
"Zum Opferkalender des Nikomachos," ZPE 14 (1974) 139-44; Jameson, "Erchia" 159-65. New
evidence in "an early lex sacra from Selinous" in the Getty Museum, to be published by M. H.
Jameson, R. D. Kotansky, and D. R. Jordan: see D. R. Jordan, "A Meilichios Stone from Selinous,"
ZPE 86 (1991) 279-82.
ten der Libation Zeichenfunktion, bezeichnen sie Marginalitat oder Norm

im Ablauf und Vollzug des Rituals" (219).10 Hence the restriction to "die i
Logik des Rituals."
THE TEST CASE OF ZEUS POLIEUS
Critical assessment of these approaches will involve a close look a

Koan ritual, which not only has been interpreted in detail by Graf but f
very prominently in Burkert's brief discussions as illustration of his view
the difference between holocaust and participatory sacrifice has to do wit
antithesis in the ritual," and does not coincide with the Olympian/chtho
distinction. 1
It may be noted first that the "ritual symbol" interpretation works best
when, as here, we are faced with a ritual sequence involving phases of obviously
different character; the first component of a new phase manifests the change and
may easily be regarded as having a signalizing function, but it is not self-evident
that this must be its only significance. What are we to make of simpler se
quences, where there are no contrasts of normality and marginality to be symbol
ized? In the Erchian cult calendar (LS 18) eight sacrifices are specified as
vrlq(parog, which can only mean that no wine was used at all. Four of these
involve participation, which is generally regarded as "normal"; granted that the
information provided by the calendars is very spare, it seems difficult to under
stand the restriction on wine as finding its meaning "im Ablauf des Gesamtritu
als." The natural conclusion is that the restriction has an independent meaning.
This appears even more clearly from the fact that altars could be "wineless."
The priest of Asklepios at Peiraieus set up a stele specifying the sort and number of
cakes that were to be used in preliminary sacrifices to various divinities in the circle
of Asklepios and marking the vTlqpdaXLOL Teig PCOROL where these were to be
offered.12 Wineless offerings, generally of cakes, to heroes and lesser or subordi
nate gods are frequently attested as preliminaries to sacrifice to gods (here presum
ably Asklepios).13 In this sense they form part of a sequence, but it is significant
here that particular provisions are made for particular divinities and that the
offerings are made on a separate altar.14 The worshiper performs one sort of
worship for certain divinities at a certain place, and then proceeds to another altar,
another sort of offering, and another god. The two stages clearly stand in a
10. Graf 211 n. 5 acknowledges a methodological debt to the social anthropologist Victor
Turner.
11. HN 9 n. 41, GR 112 with n. 83, cf. 307 n. 8. Burkert had earlier stated a similar view on the
basis of the frequent cases of preliminary holocaust for a hero followed by banquet sacrifice to a god:
see "Greek Tragedy and Sacrificial Ritual," GRBS 7 (1966) 87-121 at 104 n. 36.
12. LS 21; this and most of the other examples of wineless altars are collected by Henrichs,
"Sobriety" 92 n. 21 and 100 n. 62.
13. See Henrichs, "Eumenides" 258, with further references in n. 9.
14. The particular recipients mentioned in LS 21 are considered below.
significant relationship, but they are also separate acts of worship whose distinc
tive character is closely associated with distinct recipients and altars.
This conclusion suits the fact that several wineless altars are associated with
a single cult and offerings that do not form part of a sequence. Thus Hesychius
s.v. vriqcpdlol (v 545) mentions v0iRtax xati potoi e:p' (bv oivog ori o0ev6xEal,
and Phylarchos (FGrHist 81 F 25) says that the Greeks do not bring wine to the
altars of Helios, but pour libations of honey. We have also the evidence of
plaques and stelai set up on or beside altars. From Paros, sixth or fifth century:
Bo)log Ai6g 'E[cFXaotE]o TCiv &at6 M[av]6Qo0eutLog. S[tkxt oTev6eEtaC (LSS 62);
from Chios, fourth century: Otvov yn njQO0owEQe[v]. MOLQcov xai Zavog
MoTrlyETeoe (LSS 79); from Thasos, second quarter of the fifth century:
NZVLTqToLv x' 'A6nokkXov NvppqyEY?Tqi 0Qkuv xai & aoevy i oI 36rTi toogQ6ev, oiL
oi 09:LLg oV6e Xol@ov* oi 3tacCLWvieTeal (LS 114). Pausanias attests similar pro
scriptions in the cult of Zeus Hypatos at the Athenian Erechtheion (1.26.5) and
of Zeus Sosipolis at Olympia (6.20.2-3); wineless libations are of course normal
in the cult of the Semnai/Eumenides at Athens and elsewhere.15 Such detailed
restrictions in the cult of a given deity are common. The inscription from Thasos
proscribes piglets and paians, and other victims or the presence of women or of
various objects such as weapons are forbidden elsewhere.16
The conclusion seems inescapable that in these cases it is not "the inner logic
of the ritual" but precisely the divinities to whom it is offered that determine this
aspect of its form. Not only is the restriction absolute at a given altar for a given
god; it may be attested for the same god at different places, as in the case of the
Eumenides and, as we shall see, of some of the others mentioned above. It might
be argued that such cults are simply extreme cases of ritual marginality, the gods
recipients of a quite general ritual pattern stereotyped by the absence of "normal
ity," and that this is not specific to any individual god. If we can discover
examples of rituals that involve a very distinctive atmosphere and combination of
components and that occur regularly in the cult of one god or obviously similar
gods and not in that of others, we will have shown that ritual was at least
sometimes suited to the individual god.
Here we may turn to the Koan rite for Zeus Polieus. We notice first that
Graf's interpretation of the ritual involves certain artificialities. The ox for Zeus
Polieus is taken in procession to the sanctuary of Hestia Hetaireia, where incense
is burned(?) and where the priest of Zeus Polieus garlands the animal and pours
a libation of mixed wine in front of it. All this seems "normal"; a procession to
the sanctuary of Zeus Polieus follows,17 and this is the quite literal "transition" to
15. Aisch. Eum. 107; Soph. OK 100,469-81; 2 Aischines 1.188; Kall. fr. 681 Pf.; Philon, Prob.
140; Paus. 2.11.4; these passages are cited by Henrichs, "Eumenides" 259 n. 14, as parallels for the
new attestation in col. ii of the Derveni Papyrus (ZPE 47 [1982] after p. 300).
16. E.g., Ziehen, LGS 2 nos. 79, 96, 105-6; LSS 57-60, 63, 73-74, 88; see further Ziehen,
LGS 2.285-87; E. Norden, Aus altromischen Priesterbuchern (Lund, 1939) 263.
17. Graf 210 says that the preliminary holocaust, etc., are for Hestia Hetaireia. This cannot be
the "marginal" holocaust sacrifices and libations of honey mix. There fo

what Graf speaks of as a "markanter Schritt von der Spende mit rein
derjenigen mit gemischtem Wein, von Aussergewohnlichkeit zum Norma
(219), but both libations, preceded by incense and cakes and followe
garland, are added to the holocaust of the EvTespa. The "normal" compon
thus forms part of a "marginal" offering, and is not even the last item in it.1
rather looks as though this whole phase of the rite is "exceptional," and th
mixed wine would be better regarded as a warning against excessively
typologizing.
The piglet holocaust and its attendant offerings thus constitute a single
of fundamentally consistent character. This is linked, partly by the unusu
ence of the ox, with other rituals and events. The first part of the inscri
describes the elaborate procedure for selecting the ox from among many th
paraded in the agora. At the gathering that follows the holocaust, the pr
chooses the official who will kill the animal next day; the heralds likewise
the killer of the ox they will offer, and both are required to abstain from sex
entry concerning the sacrifice of the ox on the following day includes ela
specifications for the distribution of portions, which end with the proviso Ta.U
j6rav[] | [ovi] a.CPq . q.T. 5 x!T . $ T[6XLog (LS 151 A.54f.). Athena P
receives on the same day, and doubtless as part of the same occasion, a pre
sheep (A.55f.).
There are several unusual features here. The ox is specially selected, attends
the piglet holocaust, and then passes a peaceful night while his executioner is
right: the ox is taken to her sanctuary, and the priest there pours the libation after a sacrifice, perhaps
of incense (cf. Sokolowski ad loc.), to Hestia (LS 151 A.27-29); but there clearly follows a proces
sion elsewhere, presumably to the sanctuary of Zeus Polieus (29-31), and it is here that the prelimi
nary sacrifice is offered. See Prott, LGS 1.22; Nilsson, GF 19. That the sacrifice is for Zeus is
confirmed by the provisions for Zeus Machaneus in B. 12f., which refer back to the Zeus Polieus rite.
"Hetaireia" is Herzog's reading of the stone; Hicks read "Tamias" (cf. LS 169.A.9): Susan M.
Sherwin-White, Ancient Cos, Hypomnemata 51 (Gottingen, 1978) 323 n. 303, says the stone is now
too worn to allow a decision.
18. The author of the text, at least, saw no very marked distinction between the two libations,
and brackets them: tolSg vtQotig tOvie[two] I [O]vrn xal Qo5g qp06tag xai onaov6&g [&xQarxoly xal
xexQatalevaz xal t orE[]- | .a (LS 151 A.36-38). Thus we have syntactically four items, with the third
subdivided; Graf's "markanter Schritt" coincides with the subdivision. The garland is not a markedly
"normal" component; there is evidence that they were offered to and burned for the dead: see
Donna C. Kurtz and John Boardman, Greek Burial Customs (London, 1971) 207 and plates 39, 84
85; and the olive garland in particular is associated with funerals by Kall. fr. 194.40-56 Pf. and Plut.
Lyk. 27. XTEtiLa ought strictly to refer to a garland of wool, which was associated with supplication
and purificatory rites: see J. Pley, De lanae in antiquorum ritibus usu, RGW 11.2 (Giessen, 1911);
M. Blech, Studien zum Kranz bei den Griechen (Berlin, 1982) 30, 289, 297. Note especially that the
wineless xoat to be poured by Oidipous for the Semnai at OK 469ff. are garlanded with wool (472
75). Wilamowitz ad HF 677 stresses the distinction between orgttua and ortqpavo;.
Graf also assumes that the proceedings pass over from the kerykes, "gewohnlich untergeord
nete Diener," to the priest of Zeus Polieus (218). Both enter the text by conjecture (A.32, 36); the
kerykes are very probable-see further below-but the priest is only a guess where the single keryx
who has made the proclamation is just as likely. In any case, such a shift could not make the single
mixed-wine libation any more "normal."
being selected, and is obliged to abstain from sex, at a strange nocturnal gather
ing.19 The animal seems, moreover, to be self-selected. The priest and sacred
officials sit round a TdQ3tea (A.8f.) while representatives from the three Dorian
tribes drive in oxen by threes, up to a maximum of thirty-six, until the victim is
chosen. Hicks, the first editor of the inscription, assumed that oxen were gradu
ally added to the group because the process continued until one of them eventu
ally paid some attention to sacred cakes or grain on the TQdantea and thus
selected itself as victim.20
This conclusion was suggested by the closely analogous procedure at the
Athenian Dipolieia, the eponymous festival of Zeus Polieus. Porphyrios, in our
fullest account of Dipolieia, attests self-selection from among oxen driven round a
TQa&teca by the tasting of cakes or barley on it.21 By the time of Pausanias, our
other principal source, an ox was apparently preselected and "held in readiness,"
but still tasted of grain on the altar (1.24.4). Fifth- and fourth-century epigraphical
evidence coheres with Porphyrios's account: he used the verb n3tEQeXaUveLv, and
traces of this verb or the related noun are found on two inscriptions, of which one
certainly and the other probably have to do with Dipolieia (LS 17 Ab.2, 179.9).
This will then be closely parallel to the contemporary rite at Kos.
19. It may be that all the participants in the nocturnal gathering are to practice sexual absten
tion, as assumed, e.g., by Nilsson, GF 20, but lines 43-44 suggest that the proclamation was directed
to the chosen slayer alone.
20. E. L. Hicks, JHS 9 (1888) 327ff.; see Nilsson, GF 18f. One of the journal's referees regards
the application of the example of Dipolieia to the Koan selection process as problematic, and
suggests that it would be natural to suppose that on Kos the priest and sacred officials themselves do
the choosing (so also, naming the priest in particular, Prott, LGS 1.21). This is undoubtedly a
reasonable conclusion: the Koan inscription mentions no grain on the table, nor specifies in any way
the principle of selection-an ox is simply "to be chosen" (XQLoi L). If none is chosen from among the
first twenty-seven available (three rounds of three per tribe), a further nine are driven in and made to
mix with the others, and it is then clearly the officials who eu0/i x[i(v]Qvtl (LS 151 A.17-18). It is,
however, precisely the very elaborate process of introducing the animals that led Nilsson and others
to suppose that something other than a simple choice by the officials was in question. What, after all,
can they have been waiting for? Surely not an especially handsome animal, since the first round is to
consist of Toi]g xaWiXqoug (10) from each tribe, and subsequent rounds therefore of the progres
sively less attractive. This certainly suggests that something about the choice is beyond the officials'
control, as indeed does the fact that they are only spoken of as "making a choice" in the active voice
in connection with what is clearly a distinct, "extraordinary," final round of oxen-they "go ahead
and choose," that is, only if all else fails. The immediately succeeding passage of the inscription
provides for the choice of a second ox by the same procedure (xata Ta'ct6, 19): Overai 6 at RAiy xa
vzJoxv4eL Tlt 'IorCaL (19). Given the explicit parallel, Nilsson finds it natural to suppose that the
choice of the victim for Zeus Polieus likewise awaited the "bending down" of one of the oxen (if the
"bending" is in fact the criterion of selection rather than a separate requirement). If this line of
interpretation is reasonable, then the centrality of the "table" and Zeus Polieus as recipient make the
collation with Dipolieia almost irresistible. In any event, it is the elaboration of the process of
selection through general participation by groups that is important for our purposes, not an exact
parallel in detail.
21. Porph. Abs. 2.29-30, esp. 30.4, probably from Theophrastos. On Dipolieia, see Nilsson,
GF 14-16; Ludwig Deubner, Attische Feste (Berlin, 1932) 158-74; Burkert, HN 136-43, with full
citation of sources and bibliography: add now Jean-Louis Durand, Sacrifice et labour en Grece
ancienne (Paris, 1986) 43ff.
There is a further parallel in the special, uncanny role of the slayer.

ing to Pausanias one of the priests at Dipolieia is called the Iovp6vog; w
has killed the ox, he throws away the ax and flees; the ax is subsequen
and acquitted of the crime of killing the ox (1.28.10). Porphyrios speak
LLoqpCag; after the sacrifice the ox's hide is "filled out" so as to resem
live animal, and the knife, aXtXaLQa, is cast into the sea. Again, Porphy
be closer to classical practice: the taxaaQa recurs in one of the inscript
179.10). The opayevg chosen from among the sacred officials at Kos is s
prominent in an uncanny atmosphere, though flight and the special rol
weapon are apparently restricted to Athens.
There seems to be another quite specific link between the two festiv
has gone unrecognized. In the fifth-century Athenian inscription (LS
there are mentioned in connection with Dipolieia-after the apparent r
to the JeQLEXaotg-piglets, wood, and kerykes. This seems unlikely to
coincidence, and we should conclude that, as at Kos, the rites for Zeus
included a holocaust on a wood fire of piglets, performed by the guild
alds.22 The latter are certainly prominent at the Koan holocaust, and the
no alternative to restoring them in the inscription as officiants (LS 151
The aitiological legend of Dipolieia recounted by Porphyrios (2.29) t
Sopatros, a foreigner farming in Attika, who, in the days before animal sacr
had placed a pelanos cake and other offerings on a table. One of his oxen
them, and Sopatros killed it in anger; realizing what a heinous thing he had
he buried the animal and fled to Crete. Drought and fruitlessness,
ensued, and the Delphic Oracle ordained that all would be well if the ox w
on its feet at the festival at which it was killed, and if everyone taste
without reserve. The Athenians find Sopatros; he supposed that he cou
his blood guilt if everyone in the city would participate in a common sla
consumption of an ox, and offered to slay it himself on the conditions
Athenians grant him citizenship and take part in the slaughter; and so
Two themes are prominent here: the transgression inherent in anim
fice and the necessity of sharing responsibility for it; and the contrast of ag
tural life and products with weapons and the destruction and consump
animals. The latter is presented as a historical sequence, but we will of
find a conceptual link, which is manifested in the fact that agricultural pros
is made to depend on the shedding of an animal's blood and the eating
flesh. These features of the story may be held suspect as occurring in
22. The text should now be consulted in the edition of D. M. Lewis, IG 13 241. Sokolo
Tzv heyVoTv in his Ab.3, which would rule out a holocaust (cf. Ziehen, LGS 2.81), b
comments (ad 241.12) "non recte," reading Tov hiXS Tov. The comparison with the K
might favor Kirchhoff's supplement 3Qoxe1[4eiov in the same line, but Lewis prints jtL
without mentioning any alternative, perhaps for some compelling reason.
23. The other group prominent at Kos are the ieQo3toLoL: they participate in the selecti
ox, and the priest chooses its slayer from among them; they appear in the other Athenian in
LS 179.5f.
about abstinence, but the grain is on the table in Pausanias too, and the concep
tual link may be detected in other sources.
Burkert notes that Dipolieia falls in midsummer between harvest and sow
ing, and that "the celebration of the Dipolieia presupposes the end of the har
vest. But the predominance of such paradoxical, uncanny features at a 'harvest
festival,' where gratification and joy would ordinarily prevail, cannot be ex
plained as agricultural."24 He therefore prefers to integrate Dipolieia into the
pattern of "dissolution" he finds in the festivals of Skirophorion, the last month
of the Athenian year, and to focus on the expression in the rite and its aitiology
of what he sees as fundamental contradictions inherent in all animal sacrifice.
Yet the link with agriculture is built into the ritual, as Burkert acknowledges.
We are, unfortunately, unable to establish either a relative or an absolute chro
nology for the Koan months,25 so that we cannot even approximately place the
Koan rite of 20 Batromios in its chronological context. But here too there are
hints of an agricultural significance. The victim for Athena Polias is a pregnant
sheep (LS 151 A.55f.), and pregnant victims are otherwise attested only for
female divinities connected with the prosperity of the earth, most often Deme
ter: "nach einer naheliegenden Analogie wurden den Fruchtbarkeitsgottinnen
trachtige Tiere geopfert."26 As we shall see, both Athena Polias and Zeus
Polieus have close ties with the earth.
The agricultural connection reappears in several other rites clearly related to
Dipolieia and the Koan Polieus festival. The close connection of Zeus Polieus
with Zeus Soter and Zeus Sosipolis was noted by Nilsson;27 it is evident both in
their epithets and in their cult, and Porphyrios's Sopatros perhaps provides the
link of the oco- root with Zeus Polieus and Dipolieia. The remarkable rites for
Zeus Sosipolis at Magnesia on the Maiandros exhibit clear links with those we
have been considering. A bull as beautiful as possible is to be bought at public
expense at the annual marketing, and then displayed (consecrated) to Zeus
Sosipolis "at the beginning of the sowing" with prayers "for the s6teria of the city
and the land and the citizens and women and children and other sojourners in
24. Burkert, HN 142. For criticism of Burkert's focus on killing and guilt as central features of
Greek sacrifice, see especially Henrichs, Gotter (supra, n. 3) 29f.; a valuable recent criticism, largely
based on art, is Sarah Peirce, "Death, Revelry and Thysia," CA 12.2 (1993) 219-66. Some readers'
comments prompt me to make it clear that when I speak of "shared responsibility," "blame" aut sim.
in connection with Dipolieia, I do not mean "guilt" in Burkert's sense, nor do I regard even the
degree of culpability that is a prominent motif of this particular festival as characteristic of Greek
sacrifice in general.
25. See Alan E. Samuel, Greek and Roman Chronology (Munich, 1972) llf.
26. Nilsson, GGR 151; see also Stengel 26 with nn. 8-9; id., Die griechischen Kultusaltertiimer3
(Munich, 1920) 155 with n. 7. A third-century-B.c. Koan inscription, in prescribing remedies in the
event that an animal sold for sacrificial use as pregnant turns out not to be, refers to "gods or
goddesses to whom pregnant victims [are sacrificed]" (LS 154 B.37ff.). To my knowledge this is the
only text even to allow the possibility of pregnant victims for gods, and it is likely that "gods or
goddesses to whom" is merely a stereotyped legal phrase.
27. GF24; cf. GGR 415.
the city and country, and for peace and wealth and the fruitfulness of
and of all the other fruits of the earth and of the herds."28 The bull, ho
sacrificed some months later, probably at the time of the harvest in May
perhaps is a link with Kos, where the animal enjoys an overnight stay o
tion. Provision is made in the Magnesian inscription for the collection of con
tions toward the maintenance of the bull from "the grain merchants an
who conduct business in the agora" (59-64). When it is eventually sacri
everyone who takes part in the elaborate procession receives a portion
flesh (54f.).
The Magnesian combination of shared expenses and universal distribution of
portions is an equivalent of the emphasis at Dipolieia on shifting the blame for the
slaying of the ox. It emphasizes the communal importance of the sacrifice through
the shared responsibility of members of the community; the prominence of the
issue of responsibility in Dipolieia, and its shared evasion, is the opposite way of
expressing the same anxiety. The nocturnal selection of slayers at Kos, representa
tives of the sacred officials and the heralds respectively,30 is doubtless another
reflection of this anxiety. The fact that in the aition and in classical ritual the ox
chooses itself seems a curious feature in a rite focusing on the collective responsibil
ity of the sacrificers, yet this too is a reflex of the central theme. The apparent
contradiction seems to have been removed: in the Hellenistic inscription from
Magnesia and in Pausanias this feature has disappeared. When the animal no
longer offers itself, the burden of its provision is shared, as at Magnesia.
We have now considered evidence for the cult of Zeus Polieus and close
congeners in three different places. Nilsson, who has been over the same ground,
adds the self-selected goat sacrificed at Halikarnassos for Zeus Askraios, who
was closely connected with agriculture; and the evidence for a self-selected bull
offered to Zeus-epithet, if any, unknown-by the Milesians.31 Despite all the
variations of time and place, a remarkable, fundamental consistency on both the
conceptual and the ritual plane is clearly exhibited. Nilsson in particular recog
nized this, but we have been able to find further detailed links even in the
28. LSAM 32.7, 10-14, 26-31.

29. See Nilsson, GF25f., GGR 154f.
30. Porphyrios's account of Dipolieia involves several groups of specialists: water carriers,
whetters, goaders, ox slayers, and carvers; at the trial for the killing, these groups pass the responsibil
ity from one to another until it reaches the knife, which, being voiceless, is convicted. At Kos
representatives of the three tribes drive oxen into the agora by turns, and the Magnesian festival
involves a very large number of officials, colleges, and groups. The involvement of such groupings is
a further means of "collectivizing" the sacrifice, and is another specific against the association of the
killing with any single individual: all the participants, and the slayer in particular, are turned into
stereotypes.
31. See Nilsson, GF 16f., 27; note that the Milesian bull is described as avei6g in Hesych. s.v.
At6g Coiiv; and compare the delay at Magnesia and at Kos, where the word xbjloavxeg (LS 151
A.31) may mean that the ox is let loose until the morrow. The Koan rite for Zeus Machaneus (LS 151
B) is explicitly modeled on that for Zeus Polieus: see Nilsson, GF21f. All these rites are discussed at
GF 14-27.
evidence available to him. The most remarkable of these is the likelihood that
the Athenian Dipolieia involved a piglet holocaust performed by the kerykes, as
in the Koan festival.
The sacred calendar of Thorikos provides valuable new information about
the cult of Zeus Polieus that fits the pattern very well. In the month Boedro
mion, possibly in connection with the pre-plowing festival, Prerosia, but in any
case at that season, we find the following provision: ALL lo^eXl XQLTOV oiLv
Xo@Qov XQLTOV EIAYTOMENAX XoLQov dVTlT6v o6Xxauov xtX.32 However
we understand the problematic letters EIIAYTOMENA--Daux translates
"des femmes acclamant le dieu"; Parker, "to Automenai"33-we have here an
other piglet holocaust for Zeus Polieus alongside "normal" offerings, and possi
bly with agricultural significance.
The principal observation of Pr(o)erosia was at Eleusis and in honor of
Demeter,34 but we now know that several of the Attic demes held local versions
of it at different times, and sometimes with Zeus as honorand.35 We cannot
safely conclude that this was the case in Thorikos, but an agricultural connection
is nonetheless likely. Zeus Chthonios is invoked together with Demeter at plow
ing time in Hesiod (Erga 465-67), and with Ge Chthonie sniQ xagQniv on
Mykonos (LS 96.24-26).36 More to the point, when the Magnesian bull is conse
crated, at the time of sowing, it is the grain merchants who are singled out among
those contributing to its maintenance until it is sacrificed, at harvest time; and a
contribution is said to be propitious (LSAM 32.63f.: xal &CIELvov EivYaL To;g
b6LbouoLv). As for Dipolieia, Porphyrios (2.30.2) tells us that after the remains of
the victim had been restored to the shape of the living animal "they yoked a plow
to it as though it were working." This, together with the other agricultural
features of the rite, suggests that Athenians saw in the victim the plow ox, the
32. "Thorikos" 13-15. Daux, "Calendrier" 164, notes that if the sacrifice were prescribed as
part of the festival, the convention elsewhere in the calendar would require that the name of the
festival be in the dative case rather than the nominative; on the other hand, the calendar is not
notable for strict consistency in the arrangement of its entries. Cf. Parker (infra, n. 33) 141 n. 39, 145
ad loc.
33. Daux, "Sacrifices" 148 - "Calendrier" 154, defended at "Calendrier" 171-73; Robert
Parker, "Festivals of the Attic Demes," in Tullia Linders and Gullog Nordquist, eds., Gifts to the
Gods, Boreas 15 (Uppsala, 1987) 137-47 at 144 with note on 145; the same sequence of letters shows
up in line 47. Daux's interpretation seems very strained, and Parker's, however odd Automenai may
be as a place name, is to be preferred. Parker questions whether the holocaust is for Zeus, and says
that the association of Polieus with plowing "would be a little surprising" (141 n. 39). But there can
be no doubt that the holocaust is for Zeus Polieus, the last-named deity; there is either a change of
venue for the holocaust stage of the rite, or the holocaust at Automenai is really a separate occasion,
but still dedicated to Zeus Polieus.
34. See Deubner (supra, n. 21) 68-69.
35. See Parker (supra, n. 33) 141 with n. 39.
36. For self-selection of the victim, a different sort of isolation of the sacrificers, agricultural
significance, and other common features, cf. the festival of Chthonia for Demeter at Hermione
(Paus. 2.35.5-7; Ailianos, NA 11.4 = Aristokles, Suppl. Hell. 206), where the sacrificial implement
was a sickle.
farmer's best friend, not the dangerous prey and food supply of Burker
hunters.
As in the case of Zeus Meilichios, a specific combination of themes and
ritual features seems to emerge from our evidence for Zeus Polieus: mixed rites
against a background of plow oxen and the fruits of the earth, together with an
elaborate emphasis on collective responsibility for the sacrifice of the animal in
the interest of the prosperity of crops and community. Indeed, it is perhaps
precisely the fact that the ox's cooperation is fundamental to the abundance of
the crop that makes the killing of it to the same end an especially ungrateful
act.37 It is consonant with this general atmosphere that the ritual incorporates
both the "normal" festal mood of the common meal and the sense of "marginal
ity" expressed in the holocaust of the piglet.
From this perspective, the self-contained holocaust component has more
than a signalizing function: the libations, the holocaust itself, and all the other
features of the sacrifice together express an independent meaning. The prosper
ity of the community is at stake, and the god of the city is approached with
caution: a propitiatory offering-but also with cautious optimism: a festal meal
in a ritual context that keeps the transgressive aspect of the sacrifice in the
forefront of the worshiper's mind. Wherever we have fairly full information
about rites for Zeus Polieus, these features are present, and the total package is
very distinctive.38 This suggests that the god is not so readily separable from the
ritual, or secondary to it, as is sometimes supposed.
THE POWERS OF THE EARTH
The evidence we have surveyed for the cult of Zeus Polieus indicates his
close connection with the earth and the products of agriculture; even his bovine
victim is sacrificed to him in the role of plow ox. We have seen a Zeus called
Chthonios connected with Demeter in an agricultural context, and Athena Polias
received at Kos a pregnant victim, a common feature in the cult of female
powers of the underworld. The god "of the no6XLg" exhibits interests that are
"chthonian" in the most literal sense. Again, it seems most appropriate to speak,
in Nock's terms, of chthonian interests as central to the god's "identity" rather
than as an "aspect" that is "imputed to" him in association with "the purpose and
atmosphere of the ritual": so far as we can tell, god and ritual are well suited to
37. Cf. Varro, RR 2.5.3: "Hic [viz., taurus/italus] socius hominum in rustico opere et Cereris
minister, ab hoc antiqui manus ita abstineri voluerunt, ut capita sanxerint siquis occidisset. Qua in re
testis Attice . . . nam ab hoc pecore Athenis Buzuges nobilitatus."
38. Noel Robertson, "The Dorian Migration and Corinthian Ritual," CP 75 (1980) 1-22 at 18
22, finds in various rituals including Dipolieia a general ritual pattern. Dipolieia and its immediate
congeners are, however, only roughly comparable with the others, and Robertson rather forces it
into the pattern. Neither the migration theme nor the clod of earth prominent at Korinthos and
Ainiania figure in Dipolieia, and the statement that "at Athens as in Aeniania the officiants withdraw
in haste with the meat" (20) runs counter to the evidence of Porphyrios.
one another. The aspect is always there as part of the god's identity and is always
recognized in the ritual; it is not imputed to him-that is, imposed upon him
because a given ritual requires that the god conform to its mood. Where god and
ritual are so perfectly matched the attempt to isolate one or the other as primary
is about as worthwhile as in the similar case of the chicken and the egg. If, then,
we have a sense of the character of the god, we are well placed to consider
whether and how the terms "Olympian" and "chthonian" may be applied to him
and to the rituals dedicated to him.
It should be clear that one need not hesitate to associate the term "chtho
nian" with Zeus Polieus; but we may doubt whether it is a sufficient definition of
him. It is even clearer that in terms of the traditional distinction between Olym
pian and chthonian ritual the rites for Zeus Polieus are neither the one nor the
other, but include both. Is this, then, one of the cases that demonstrate the
limited usefulness of the distinction?
Difficulty arises only when we regard Olympian and chthonian as mutually
exclusive categories. Zeus Polieus is a particularly clear case of consistency of
character and worship, and an obvious possibility is that, like Zeus Meilichios,
Asklepios, and others, he crosses the Olympian/chthonian boundary. Athena
Polias is closely related to him; they most often appear together in the cultic
record. In her case too there are features suggestive of chthonian connections:
the pregnant victim at Kos, the mysterious rites of Arrhephoria linked with the
daughters of Kekrops, her close links with Erichthonios and the snake. She too,
then, seems to straddle the divide, but here the opposite characteristics are more
often addressed separately than together in the worship, as comparison with the
eminently "normal" Panathenaia indicates.
For some this last fact will tend to support the conclusion that we have to
deal with an aspect imputed to the goddess rather than her identity. We will
remember that Fairbanks speaks of a group of divinities who have both special
blessings and special evils in store, and who are easily roused to anger; Nock's
heilige Handlungen involve the imputation of some such aspect to the recipient.
Our study of Zeus Polieus allows us to conclude that consistent character was at
least not unknown. If it was in the character of a divinity to be ready both with
good and with evil, and to be easily angered, or if, from a slightly different point
of view, the divinity was closely associated with notably precarious activities such
as agriculture, it is readily comprehensible that the ritual should display more
than one aspect, either at the same time or serially.
Two famous examples of mixed rites may be cited in this connection. Her
odotos (2.44) and Pausanias (2.10.1) tell us that Herakles received both participa
tory sacrifice "as to a god" and holocaust sacrifice "as to a hero." Herakles is
perhaps the best-known example of a divinity who is simultaneously Olympian
and chthonian: his prominence in myth has made the fact obvious. No one,
surely, would dispute that what Herodotos and Pausanias tell us follows natu
rally upon the identity of the god. It would manifestly get the thing the wrong
way round to say that a chthonian aspect is imputed to the god as a by-pro
a chthonian ritual that happens to be offered to him-in the case of Paus
Sikyonians, the same sheep is partly burned and partly eaten. Here, then
further evidence of consistent character coinciding with ritual variation.
A clear picture of the way in which the character of the god may lead
variations is offered by Pausanias's notorious account of the cult of the M
ErinyeslEumenides near Megalopolis (8.34), regarded by both Fairbank
Nock as an exception to the normal distinction.39 Pausanias tells us that O
went mad here after killing his mother; near the sanctuary of the goddes
mound with a stone finger on top of it, commemorating the spot where O
bit off one of his fingers in his madness; near this again is a place called
"Remedies," where he recovered. This is all closely connected with the E
nides: when they were about to drive Orestes mad, they appeared to him
when he had bitten off his finger, they appeared white, and he was cured
sight. Thus he offered holocaust sacrifice to the black ones to turn away
wrath, but normal sacrifice to the white ones.
"This may or may not," says Nock, "reflect historic duality of ritual
certainly shows the significance of the aspect of the deity." He and Fair
compare Pausanias's (1.28.6) report that those acquitted at the Areopagos
ficed to the Semnai, since it seems very likely that this offering involv
banquet. One need go no farther than the Eumenides of Aischylos or
kles's Oidipous at Kolonos for abundant evidence that these divinities are
those specially associated with anger, curses, and blessings,4 and their cha
accounts for the ritual variations in both the rites attested by Pausanias
caust offering is appropriate to their wrathful and dark side, but when
bless-and here, unusually, it is the sight of the white Eumenides that cu
Orestes-a celebratory offering is called for; so also in Athens a "no
offering suits the circumstances that the worshiper has just been acquitted
court with which the goddesses were closely associated. It is legitimate h
speak of the aspect of the divinity, but the aspect cannot be divorced fro
identity. The Erinyes/Eumenides are intimately connected both with the myth
Orestes and with the myth and cult of the Areopagos, and in neither conn
is their role uniformly malevolent or benevolent. The ritual does not im
anything to them, ad hoc, as it were, that is not always there; it is simply
given act of worship does not necessarily tell the whole story of their char
but may reveal only the aspect to the fore in the given circumstances.
Hard-and-fast schematizations are therefore to be avoided. The old as
tion that gods are either Olympian or chthonian and that they must recei
one type of sacrifice and not the other cannot survive such cultic facts as we h
been considering. But if we take a less mechanical view of the matter, allo
39. Fairbanks 258, Nock 591 with n. 65.

40. See Henrichs, "Ambivalenz" passim.
for ritual variation in special circumstances, the basic typology proves its useful
ness. In each case the character of the god will be the central factor, whether this
is known to us from myth, ritual, cultic aitia, poetry, or some combination of
these. Herakles is partly Olympian, partly chthonian; both varieties of ritual will
therefore be normal in everyday worship, but special circumstances may call for
one or the other. The Eumenides are chthonian, not Olympian, and will nor
mally be propitiated, as with soothing wineless libations or the appeasing holo
caust; but when they smile on the worshiper, a measure of festivity becomes
tolerable to them. By contrast with these, the very distinctive character and
interests of Zeus Polieus are reflected in a group of closely related and highly
idiosyncratic rites.
What is it that these gods and rituals have in common? Is there a meaningful
way in which the term "chthonian" can be applied to all of them? So far as these
deities are concerned, the link is provided by the most literal sense of the term,
by the earth. As a hero, Herakles resides there; the Eumenides are among its
most prominent inhabitants, and Aischylos shows us their close connections with
the fertility of the earth and other forms of reproduction; Zeus Polieus holds a
similar brief. This seems straightforward enough, but the objections of Fairbanks
and Nock, and their attempts to establish stricter and more accurate groupings,
must be dealt with.
Fairbanks allowed only gods associated with souls to be termed "chthonian,"
and described the term in this sense as "poetic." The use of the same term in
connection with deities of agriculture he termed "cultic," and he refused to iden
tify the two groups. The overlap of these two realms is abundantly attested-we
need mention only the Eleusinian Demeter and the Athenian Eumenides-but is
dismissed by Fairbanks as "purely local" (247). He goes on to distinguish four
classes of divinities connected with the earth, namely, souls of the dead, rulers of
the dead (the chthonioi proper), agricultural gods, and heroes. The first two, he
allows, are regarded as "essentially alike," and "in certain localities the second
and third classes are also merged into one" (248). The heroes, however, though
always associated with some spot in the earth and often conceived as presiding
over local agriculture, are nevertheless "sharply separated from the rulers of the
dead and from souls generally" (249).
Even on Fairbanks's own showing, these distinctions tend to collapse when
faced with the evidence of actual cult, and it will not do to dismiss this as "purely
local" or as the situation "in certain localities." We must always remember that
what we call "Greek religion" is the sum of innumerable individual cults with
deep roots in local soil, very few of which were genuinely Panhellenic. It was in
this context that the Greek worshiped his gods, and it is here that the essence and
lifeblood of Greek cult are to be found. To speak as Fairbanks does of "gods of
national worship" is to regard as normative for Greek religion what is at bottom
a drastic simplification of the pantheon convenient for purposes of poetry, in
particular of Homeric poetry, and for manageable modern presentation of
Greek mythology and religion. "Zeus" is a figure encountered in certain

literature, hard to pin down; Zeus Meilichios and Zeus Polieus are
figures with particular interests, sharply defined powers to whom, in
place, one offers cult, and they have more in common with heroes and
gods than with "Zeus." If carefully drawn academic distinctions are ro
ignored in local cults, they may be hindering rather than aiding our un
ing of Greek religion.
Fairbanks's restriction of the term "chthonic" to poetic rulers of s
belied by Zeus Chthonios in Hesiod (Erga 465ff.) and on Mykonos
26), who is explicitly connected with the prosperity of crops. So also H
applies the term to Demeter and Kore,41 for whom the souls and agricu
inseparable, and Demeter in particular is often elsewhere associated w
realms under the epithet Chthonia.42 Nor can cultic heroes be e
Aischylos refers to them collectively as X06vloL.43 That the term "chth
more commonly used in poetry in connection with souls is doubtless du
to the fact that dealings with the dead are a prominent theme of Greek
agriculture a very rare one; it is not surprising, therefore, that it is in Hesi
we find the term attested in connection with agriculture.
What is true of the terminology can be endlessly illustrated on the
tual level from both literary and cultic evidence. Thus, again on Fairban
showing, both the Erinyes and heroes are closely connected with a
earth" (249f.), and heroes are often connected with agriculture; Persep
often under the epithet Soteira, and Demeter and even Hades are co
associated with "the delivery of a nation from the perils of war": "in th
instances the chthonic gods perform the distinctive function of heroes"
When Fairbanks turns to the topic of ritual, he distinguishes from "go
national worship" those ambivalent local dispensers both of special bless
of special evils who are prone to anger and therefore receive propitiato
ings. It is no surprise that these should turn out to be "chthonic gods, a
heroes and agricultural gods" (250). Again the link is the earth, and th
every reason to follow the Greek sources in applying the term "chthonia
whole group.
It is in fact the case that the "rulers of souls" receive cult only if t
this group, that is, if they offer blessings alongside the evils of punish
oblivion. Pausanias (6.25.2) describes a weird cult of Hades of Elis, w
was a national savior, but notes that only the Eleans worshiped him. H
are told elsewhere, had no altar anywhere; he could not be s
(atti?tLXog), and therefore nothing was offered him. According to Ai
41. 6.134, 7.153; cf. Aristophanes, Thesm. 101.

42. At Hermione, Paus. 2.35.4-9 and other passages quoted by L. R. Farnell, The Cult
Greek States (Oxford, 1896-1909) 3.320 n. 37; at Sparta, Paus. 3.14.5; cf. Burkert, GR 308
43. Suppl. 25: see Friis Johansen and Whittle ad loc. and Fraenkel ad Ag. 454; cf. Pin
4.159, 5.101.
"Thanatos, alone of the gods, does not desire gifts": the name "Death" indi
cates that nothing good could be expected from this source.44 Under the promis
ing name Plouton, or "Wealth," however, the lord of the underworld did
receive cult. The same principle is at work in Eumenides: the Erinyes, drinkers
of human blood, are shunned by gods and men (69-73), but the Eumenides,
who have fertility of all sorts on offer, join the other gods in receiving cult at
Athens (see esp. 916-26).
Chthonian recipients of cult, then, can "send up" both good things and bad
things.45 This is true of Demeter in an agricultural context (HH Dem. 333), of
the lord of the dead sending up the souls of the dead, of the Eumenides, Plouton,
or the dead themselves sending up the good things of the earth in response to
propitiatory offerings, and, as is now securely attested by the new fragment of
Aristophanes' Heroes, of those other denizens of the underworld sending puni
tive ailments or blessings:46 they describe themselves indeed as oi TarUat I TaO
xaxov xaL TCOv &ya0wv (3f.).
The new Aristophanic fragment and an older one from Tagenistai (F 504
KA) are strong evidence against a false dichotomy in Nock's discussion of holo
caust sacrifice. We remember that he distinguished two categories of these, on
the one hand heilige Handlungen, on the other "offerings to persons who have
lived and died and who are supposed to need real sustenance and nourishment."
Aristophanes' Heroes advise men to be on their guard and reverence the heroes
"since we are the stewards of good things and evil things." In Tagenistai a fan of
the underworld, who seems to have burial rites in view, describes the reciprocal
process by which the living give victims and libations wholly over to the dead "as
though to gods" and "beg them to send the good things up here." In a tragic
context Elektra and Orestes bring offerings to the grave of Agamemnon, and
seek his assistance. These are clearly transactions "intended to exercise direct
and efficacious influence"-Nock's characterization of heilige Handlungen
rather than simply to provide sustenance.47 This sort of attempt to draw firm
functional distinctions among the chthonioi must also therefore be counted a
failure.
In terms above all of their origins, no one will deny that chthonian gods,
lesser divinities, heroes, and the dead are distinguishable from one another and
from the gods whose connection with the chthonian realm is partial or fugitive.
But so far we have found no good reason to dispense with the term "chthonian"
as a general designation of the powers of the earth, who are linked by a series of
44. I/. 9.158, HH Dem. 259, 2 AbT I/. 9.158, Aisch. Niobe F 161 R; cf. Soph. F 770 R, Eur.
Alk. 424.
45. See Henrichs, "Ambivalenz" 189-90 with n. 61 and 199-200 with n. 83.
46. F 322 KA; the ailments sent by the heroes in this comic context are comparable to those
that the Erinyes of his father threaten to inflict on Orestes if he fails to kill his mother (Ch. 278ff.).
47. Though "sustenance for the dead" was of course a familiar way of viewing these rites; cf.
Aisch. Ch. 483-85; Loukianos, Peri penthous 9.
common and fundamental characteristics and interests, and worshiped with

lar intentions and in similar modes.
HEILIGE HANDLUNGEN
Among the varieties of what might be called renunciatory sacri

holocaust and other forms of total destruction of the victim-included by
under the rubric heilige Handlungen are fertility rites like Thesmoph
"sphagia . .. , oath-sacrifices, . . . offerings of victims in a crisis, cathartic
fices ... and various ceremonies to avert evil." In the same category he in
human sacrifices. Thesmophoria is an annual festival offered to Deme
which her usual connections with the earth and agriculture are prominen
destruction of piglets by women who throw them into a chasm is a s
offering in a sharply defined context.48 It is notable that all the other rites lis
by Nock fall outside the ordinary routine of worship; they are resorted
accordance with the needs of men: in crises of various sorts, when oaths
required, when steps need to be taken against some immediately threaten
danger. In such cases a stereotyped ritual is employed, which takes its cha
from the situation rather than being suited to that of any divinity with whom
may be associated. Thus the oath taker very commonly must handle the b
innards of the victim while calling down (and up) dire consequences on him
he fails to fulfill his pledge.49 Most often a plurality of gods are invoke
witnesses to the oath; these will include gods both of the sky and of the ear
that the oath taker is completely hedged round with divine wrath in the event
perjury. In the case of treaties and the like, each side may swear by its mig
gods. The innards are also prominent in sacrifice before battle, sphagia; au
for the battle are taken from them, and when the results are favorable, ba
joined.50 It is almost always the case that no divine recipient is mention
connection with sphagia.51 The consciousness of danger that is normal in
nary worship of the chthonians is present in most of Nock's heilige Handl
not because of the character of the gods but because of the particular so
situation. Here the gods are clearly secondary, and are seldom mentioned
name; the danger that threatens is more palpable, but it is of course the se
immediate danger that accounts for the similarity of ritual, the feeling that th
not the occasion for a festal meal, perhaps a sense that in this situation one
give something up to have any hope of survival.
48. See Burkert, GR 365-70, with further bibliography.

49. See, in general, Rudolf Hirzel, Der Eid (Leipzig, 1902); Stengel, Kultusaltertumer (su
n. 26) 136-38; Nilsson, GGR 139-42; Burkert, GR 377-82.
50. See esp. Jameson, "Battle."
51. See Albert Henrichs, "Human Sacrifice in Greek Religion: Three Case Studies,"
sacrifice dans l'antiquite, Entretiens sur l'Antiquit6 Classique 27 (Geneva, 1981) 195-235 at 21
n. 3, 219f.; Jameson, "Battle" 209-12.
Such extraordinary, occasional rites, then, express the anxiety of the partici
pants or, in the case of oaths, deliberately court the direst evils. They are
centered on the act itself rather than on any divine "recipient," and tend to be
addressed "to whom it may concern," only occasionally with various likely candi
dates or even a specific divinity named. They are grim rites, guaranteed to focus
the attention of the participants, and thus appear also the form of ritual action
most likely to awaken divine response. In this sense they involve no imputations
about individual gods, but are calculated to attract the notice or aid of any of
them. The character of the god is not necessarily at issue here, and when a given
god is mentioned in connection with such rites, that fact in itself may tell us
nothing about his character: the only reliable index to this are the rituals and
aitia of his regular worship.
Human sacrifice, as an essentially mythical and literary phenomenon,52 is yet
further removed from ordinary cult, the heiligste of heilige Handlungen. In many
cases human sacrifice is designed to avert catastrophe in war, and is thus compa
rable to sphagia. The only attested recipient of sphagia is Artemis Agrotera, to
whom the Spartans regularly sacrificed before battle. Recipients of human sacri
fice are much more commonly named, and Albert Henrichs has pointed out that
they often share with Artemis Agrotera a strong association with wildness and
savagery: Dionysos Omestes as recipient of the pseudohistorical sacrifice of
Persian prisoners at Salamis is a notable case in point. Similar, but unconnected
with battle, are Zeus Lykaios and Zeus Laphystios.53 So also the Greeks tended
to attribute the practice of human sacrifice to barbarians like the Taurians, and
their barbaric Artemis. Historical and literary fictions can be illuminating from
our point of view. In the story of Iphigeneia the human sacrifice as such is less
interesting than the conceptual context, associated with Artemis, in which it
finds its place.54 The goddess is said to demand the sacrifice of a maiden on the
basis of an omen, the sacrifice of a pregnant hare, yet she is not only the
protectress of human and animal birth, but a patroness in cult of maidens, in
close association with Iphigeneia herself. The festival involved, the Arkteia, is
aitiologically a recompense for the slaughter of an animal sacred to Artemis;
among the Taurians, Iphigeneia, having been saved from human sacrifice, offici
ates in a cult of Artemis that culminates in it. In the Aischylean treatment, there
seems to be a sense in which the eagles' sacrifice of the hare and its young is an
equivalent, and not merely the "motivation," of the sacrifice of Iphigeneia in the
interest of the Greek army. This gives some sense of the richness of implication
that the tragic poets in particular found in the figures of Artemis and Iphigeneia.
Here then-what is seldom the case in the other varieties of heilige Handlungen,
those actually practiced-a divinity may be prominently associated with the rite,
52. See Henrichs (supra, n. 51).

53. Ibid. 219-21.
54. Aisch. Ag. 104-59; cf. Eur. IT.
and the particular sphere or conceptual associations of the divinity are f

tal to the exceptional rite demanded.
But human sacrifice remains sui generis. It is often described in the t
Olympian sacrifice,55 though the "unmarked" Ov- terminology may be e
only because certain associations of such "marked" terms as EvayCi
body burned or left to rot, normally at a low altar or pit56-were felt
inappropriate, and there existed no technical term for human sacrifice.5
case, its grimness, the context of danger, and the lack of participation m
different. The closest analogue in actual cult is the sphagia, and indeed it
that the case of Iphigeneia must have been understood against this back
In Iphigeneia at Aulis Euripides has Klytaimnestra refer to the sacrifi
oGpayLov (1200), and Aischylos speaks of uaQ0evooqpdyoLoLv (Ag. 209)
Iphigeneia as held over the altar 6ixav Xtai@ag (Ag. 232), which in its
must bring to mind the XiCtaLQaL offered to Artemis Agrotera as sphag
Spartans and as promised recompense for victory at Marathon by t
nians.58 She is also ntQovwonri (234), like Polyxena on the famous vas
regular posture of the victim in chthonian sacrifice and sphagia.60 Th
55. Henrichs (supra, n. 51) 218f. n. 4.

56. In the special case of human sacrifice, the killing seems commonly to have been done
altar (p3wl6Sg) of the divinity who demanded it: Aisch. Ag. 232, Plut. Them. 13.4. It is interest
the latter case the human sacrifice is distinct from, but obviously closely related conceptua
sphagia that Themistokles is performing when the three Persian prisoners are led in; the flam
fire for the sphagia is one of the omens requiring their sacrifice. They are then killed at an
Dionysos Omestes; it seems reasonable, here and in the case of Iphigeneia, to suppose that th
suited both to the recipient and to the unusual status of the victim, but that we have to do w
sphagia rather than rites on the model of Olympian animal sacrifice. It is worth noting in t
that the Aischylean Erinyes connect the slaughter of Orestes, dedicated to them as victim (
with the high altar: xaLi div ,e b6aoCEg, oi6 3tg6g POLw LUo opayeig (305), where the poi
Orestes would be eaten without being slaughtered, not that he would not be slaughtered at a h
57. The term xa0LE0euELv seems, however, to have been used more often of human
animal victims: see Henrichs (supra, n. 51) 218f. n. 4. On Ov- terms as the more ge
therefore sometimes applied to "chthonian" sacrifices, see Jean Casabona, Recherch
vocabulaire des sacrifices en Grec (Aix-en-Provence, 1966) 83-85; further examples in
Pfister, Der Reliquienkult im Altertum 2, RGV 5.2 (Giessen, 1912), 478-80. Inferences ab
form of worship should never be drawn from Ov- terms alone, which are "unmarked," a
rightly observes, though without employing the now-familiar linguistic distinction; their a
to chthonian rites does not need to be explained as loose, careless, or late usage.
58. Sparta: Xen. Hell. 4.2.20, Lak. Pol. 13.8; Plut. Lyk. 22.4; Athens: Xen. Anab
Ailianos, VH 2.25; cf. Plut. De Her. Mal. 862A; Ath. Pol. 58.1. It seems unlikely that
hundred kids offered annually at Athens were not eaten, but the fact that this rite cele
victory rather than belonging to the period of anxiety about the outcome justifies the festa
above at n. 39 on the Eumenides.
59. Attic amphora ca. 550 B.C., British Museum 97.7-27.2, Beazley, ABV 97.27; rep
e.g., at Jane E. Harrison, Prolegomena to the Study of Greek Religion3 (Cambridge, 1922)
Paul Maas, "Aeschylus Agam. 231ff. Illustrated," CQ, n.s., 1 (1951) 94 = Kleine Schriften
1973) 42; Marcel Detienne and Jean-Pierre Vernant, La cuisine du sacrifice en pays grec (P
159 fig. 3.
60. The neck of the Olympian victim is turned upward; the distinction was established by
Stengel 103ff., 113ff., id., "Zu den griechischen Sakralaltertiimern," Hermes 59 (1924) 307-21 at
conceptual connection of the sacrifice of Iphigeneia with that of the pregnant

hare lends to the former a chthonian air: pregnant victims, as we have seen, are
confined to the cult of female divinities with chthonian associations.
These basic similarities to the chthonian paradigm are readily comprehensi
ble in terms of the special anxieties or purposes underlying human sacrifice,
sphagia, and the other sorts of heilige Handlung. But because the gods play an
obviously secondary role in them, it makes sense to retain the designation heilige
Handlungen for this distinctive class of rituals standing apart from ordinary
cultus. It remains interesting for us, however, that there were certain gods whose
character made it comprehensible to the Greeks that they should demand
sphagia or human sacrifice.
AN UNRECOGNIZED ASPECT OF CHTHONIAN WORSHIP?
Bearing the heilige Handlungen in mind, we may now revert to the

Olympian/chthonian distinction in regular worship and attempt to develop some
sharper criteria for recognizing a chthonian element in ritual. On this basis, we
can then take another look at the lists of exceptions to the traditional typology
compiled by various scholars. These discussions will demonstrate the remarkable
consistency with which, in the cultic record, individual gods and the cult offered
them correspond to the basic polarity of Olympian and chthonian.
We have found the element common to the chthonian divinities in their
status as powers of the earth: appropriately enough. Characteristic features of
chthonian cult are a nocturnal setting, dark victims, total renunciation of the
victim or the libation, and soothing sober libations or vegetable offerings. Sev
eral of these features are characteristic also of the heilige Handlungen, but the
word "cult" marks the basic distinction by indicating ritual repeated regularly for
a named recipient.
Few would deny that chthonian cult on this model was, in Nock's words, "a
matter of well-established practice" (578). Yet in current scholarly writing the
apparent exceptions, often in Nock's canonical list, are not seldom regarded as
more significant than the rule, and used to justify various interpretative ap
proaches to Greek ritual more or less radically opposed to the principle known to
Greek writers and almost always respected in Greek cult. We shall try here to
take a closer look at the exceptions from the point of view of the rule; this is
surely a more sensible procedure than simply to conclude that the distinction of
Olympian and chthonian everywhere present in Greek myth, literature, and cult
is inadequate or dispensable. The apparent exceptions are in any case not so
numerous as to jeopardize the validity of the rule, but if we sharpen our under
313ff. The matter may, however, be more complicated: Jameson, "Battle" 226f. n. 49, points out that
some depictions of what are apparently sphagia show the victim's head pulled upward. Even in these,
however, the total posture seems designed to produce a flow of blood directly downward, and
Jameson is surely right to conclude that "what matters is where the blood flows."
standing of the distinction in two respects, they can be reduced to a ver

ble number indeed. The first of these has already been touched upon: w
to recognize that among the myriad Greek recipients of cult Hera
Asklepios are only the most prominent-correspondingly with their prom
in myth-among those who combine chthonian and Olympian character
They have many congeners in the often obscure province of local cult. It
as we have seen, that the cult offered such recipients will likewise
chthonian and Olympian, in single ritual sequences or as appropriate o
ent occasions.
The second way forward is in a sense similar to the first; it involv
recognition that there is a type of sacrifice that compromises between p
tion and renunciation: participating in the victim, but "on the spot." Thi
ment, in such forms as 6bailvo0(v cratoio, o6'x aotpoqad, oi0 pogd,
uncommon one; I present here the most complete collection known to m
forty cases. Twenty-two of these occur in the sacrificial calendar from
this remarkable accretion excited some discussion, but as yet little attem
been made to reconsider the old controversy about the meaning of the
ment in the light of this doubling of our evidence.
A brief survey of earlier opinion is in order. Stengel in 1906 suggeste
banquet in the cult of Ge Chthonie on Mykonos (LS 96.25f.) was an ind
of her "double nature," but noted that such participation is "nicht imm
Bedenken und gewisse VorsichtsmaBregeln," pointing to the "on-the-sp
striction on Mykonos and elsewhere: "Diese Bestimmung findet sich n
Opfern fur Gotter mit chthonischem Charakter."6' Ada Thomsen claim
years later that this view "needs no refutation," and maintained that th
tion was a survival of what had once been the custom at all meal sacrifi
victim was "Tabu," so that the flesh must be eaten "auf der heiligen S
wahrend der heiligen Handlung," and all the unconsumed parts of the
burned, buried, or otherwise disposed of.62 Friedrich Pfister followed T
in explaining the "on-the-spot" provision as a survival of this original ta
Thomsen's position has recently been defended by Michael Goldstein.63
Ziehen also regarded the provision as a survival, but doubted the applica
the concept of taboo; on his view all meal sacrifices were communion
god and man, and the flesh sacralized in the ritual could not be taken f
sanctuary and put to "profane" use.64
The taboo and communion explanations ultimately derive from the t
61. "Opferblut und Opfergerste," Hermes 41 (1906) 239 - Stengel 27 with n. 2, from
quote; cf. id., Kultusaltertiumer (supra, n. 26) 116. He had earlier maintained that the restric
to do with scarcity of meat: Hermes 27 (1892) 167.
62. "Der Trug des Prometheus," ARW 12 (1909) 460-90, esp. 466-78; quotations fr
478. Thomsen's article includes a valuable collection of comparative material.
63. RE 11.2 (1922) 2184, s.v. "Kultus (Opfer)"; Goldstein 52-54 with 94-95 n. 182.
64. RE 18.1 (1939) 621-22, s.v. "Opfer (Mahl)."
of W. Robertson Smith, which have, professedly at least, long been out of vogue
among Hellenists.65 More recently, Sterling Dow suggested in his study of the
Erchia inscription that the twenty-two "on-the-spot" requirements were "in
tended to compel a more equitable distribution of meat."66 Burkert disputed
Dow's conclusion that the provision was "a purely secular matter"67 by collecting
many of its occurrences elsewhere, and describing it as among "many other
special provisions in sacrificial ritual, each of which has its own function and
meaning"; Burkert does not, however, take a stand on the meaning of o0
qpoQd.68
Neither the "survival" approach of Thomsen, Pfister, and Ziehen nor the
"secular" of Dow will withstand scrutiny. We remember that the provisions for
the sacrifice of the ox for Zeus Polieus at Kos include elaborate specifications for
the distribution of portions, which end Ta 68 ak]a xCta .t . o.6k.o taVTL
ajv[Ta] I [ovx] .nQfpTo. X. . . T aS J4[6XLog (LS 151 A.54f.). This is couched
in the technical language of the common restriction,69 which is very frequent in
the Koan calendar, but here it is the city rather than the sanctuary from which
the flesh cannot be removed. It is immediately obvious that this has some concep
tual basis; it cannot be designed for the equitable distribution of the flesh, which
in any case has already been seen to, nor could this be the intention in the many
single, isolated cases known to us from places other than Erchia. The conceptual
basis cannot, however, be that put forward by Thomsen and the others; it would
be absurd to suppose that the city and the cooking of the flesh at various places in
it are some sort of extension of the heilige Stelle and heilige Handlung as they
conceive these. Moreover, this unique restriction to the city is surely to be
explained with reference to the particular divine recipient, Zeus Polieus, the god
of the city. This is scarcely reconcilable with the notion that such restrictions are
isolated survivals of beliefs and practices associated with the very origin of meal
sacrifice. It is also damaging to this view that the restriction is attested in a
second-century-B.c. inscription (LSAM 34.7) from the Magnesian cult of Sara
pis, a god whose Greek cults are not attested until the late third century.70 The
Magnesians must have had some reason for imposing the restriction, and it
would be strained to suppose that they arbitrarily adopted a rare procedure
whose meaning had long been forgotten.
A final objection is suggested by the same Koan inscription we have been
looking at in connection with Zeus Polieus: provision is three times made there
for the sacrifice of a piglet and a kid to Dionysos Skyllites, with the proviso TOj
65. Lectures on the Religion of the Semites2 (London, 1894).

66. Sterling Dow, "The Greater Demarkhia of Erkhia," BCH 89 (1965) 180-213 at 209.
67. Ibid. 210.
68. Burkert, "Greek Tragedy" (supra, n. 11) loc. cit.
69. Cf. the frequent o'ix 4&opqood in the same inscription (see below), and for the form of the
provision ibid. B.10: TOVI6wO oVx pxqpoQ& ?x TOv vaov; LS 69.31f.: TCOV 6e xQe6v Al t eOvaL txqCooQhv
E:o) TOv TeJLveog.
70. Thomsen (supra, n. 62) 467 actually mentions this case, but without naming the recipient.
XoiQov ovx &acocpoQa (LS 151 A.45, 58, 62). In other parts of the same calen
we find that the restriction is applied to a pregnant sheep and other offerings fo
Rhea (LS 151 B.4: TzotOv ovx urcocoQad), but is explicitly not applied to
subsequent sacrifice of a young cow for Hera (LS 151 B.8: tazlg a; &roqpod)
to a sheep sacrifice for Apollon Dalios and Leto (LS 151 D.2: TovTOv i aoqpo
D.4: Taztag &roqpoea). These clear distinctions indicate conscious organiza
rather than random survival, especially in the case of Dionysos, where the t
victims of the same ritual occasion are differently treated.
The "survival" interpretation cannot withstand the cumulative weight of
evidence, all of which suggests that the restriction was applied on the basi
some clear and conscious conceptual discrimination; moreover, the case of
Polieus shows that it could be adapted to suit the character of the individu
recipient, suggesting that it was felt to stand in a significant relationship with t
character.
What, then, is the conceptual basis of the restriction? Stengel's answer ap
pears to be on the right track, but is limited by the very absolute way in which he
often seems to apply the Olympian/chthonian distinction. The restriction is for
the most part attested in the cult of chthonian or partly chthonian divinities, but
there are a very few cases in which the recipient is not chthonian in any meaning
ful sense, but is among the select group of powers most closely associated with
heilige Handlungen. We have already encountered meals in chthonian cult, and
accounted for them with reference to the Olympian side of the partly chthonian,
or to blessings that have manifestly been conferred by any of them. If these cults
anyway admitted of occasional meals, it would not be surprising if a meal in a
tightly controlled ritual setting-confined to the sanctuary and thus, so to speak,
under the eye and at the sufferance of the god-could be felt to effect a satisfac
tory reconciliation of eating with the "abnormal" atmosphere of the standard
renunciatory sacrifice. Certainly the constraint involved here will have presented
a more or less gloomy contrast to the relaxation of a festive dinner at home. The
natural inclination to eat good meat will of course have provided the impetus for
the reconciliation. All this is reasonable enough, but it is pure speculation. If,
however, we can demonstrate that "on-the-spot" meals are consistently associ
ated with recipients of chthonian cult or-again in a few cases only-heilige
Handlungen, then this or similar thinking surely lies behind them.
Before proceeding with this end in view to detailed examination of the
attested cases, we may note that support for our thesis is forthcoming from the
ancient sacrificial tradition that stands in the closest relationship to the Greek. In
the priestly typology of sacrifice presented in detail in the third book of the
Hebrew bible there are five distinct modes: 'Olah or holocaust (Leviticus 1:3-17;
additional instructions for priests 6:8-13 [6:1-6], 7:8); Minchah or cereal offer
ing (2:1-16; add. 6:14-18 [6:7-11], 7:9-10); Zebach Shelamim or "sacrifice of
well-being" (3:1-17; add. 7:11-21, 28-36); Chattat or "purgation sacrifice" (4:1
5:13; add. 6:24-30 [6:17-23]); and 'Asham or "reparation sacrifice" (5:14-6:7
[5:14-26]; add. 7:1-10).71 'Olah and Minchah, originally the animal and cereal
constituents of the daily sacrifice offered by the priests in the temple, are both
burned whole, except that the skin of the animal is a perquisite of the officiating
priest; when the Minchah is offered by a layman, however, only a portion is
burned, the rest going to the priest. Zebach Shelamim corresponds to Olympian
sacrifice: portions, including fat, kidneys, part of the liver, and the tails of sheep
are burned, the rest taken away to be eaten by the donor; the breast goes to the
priests in general, the right thigh to the officiant. Chattat and 'Asham are sacri
fices designed to deal with impurities or offenses, and the person who provides
them does not partake of the meat, which goes as a perquisite to the priest who
officiates, unless the priest is making the offering in his own behalf, in which case
it is burned. This last provision, paralleling that for the Minchah, indicates that
like it Chattat and 'Asham were in essence renunciatory offerings.
Of special interest for us are certain specific requirements about where
eating is to take place. It is required that the portions of lay Minchah, Chattat,
and 'Asham offerings that went to the priests had to be eaten by them within the
sanctuary precincts (Lev. 6:16 [6:9], 6:26 [6:19], 7:6). No such restriction is
placed on Zebach Shelamim offerings either for priests or for donors: indeed the
requirement that they be eaten either the same night (in the case of thanksgiving
offerings) or within two days (7:15-18) and the familial, celebratory atmosphere
intended (Deut. 27:7) indicate that they were eaten at home. Here too the
parallel of Zebach Shelamim with Olympian sacrifice is clear. The procedure in
the other rites constitutes the eating, in a controlled ritual setting, of what is
fundamentally a renunciatory offering, and this is a close parallel for what we are
suggesting here about "on-the-spot" meals among the Greeks. The only differ
ence is that the Greek worshipers themselves participate, but then Greek offer
ings are rarely as personalized as Israelite, and the contrast of lay and priestly,
even where present, is rarely so marked.
This, so far as I can see, is the only clue in the ancient sacrificial record to the
meaning of the Greek restriction, but it is a remarkably clear one.72 Of course its
value can be tested only by a close look at the Greek material. Let us begin with
some salient features of the Erchian calendar (LS 18).73 It prescribes four holo
71. References to the Hebrew text are given in square brackets. The best guide is now Jacob
Milgrom, Leviticus 1-16, Anchor Bible 3 (New York, 1991). Milgrom discusses the distinction
between eaten and burnt Chattat offerings at 261-64; but see also Baruch Levine, In the Presence of
the Lord: A Study of Cult and Some Cultic Terms in Ancient Israel, Studies in Judaism in Late
Antiquity 5 (Leiden, 1974) 103-4. The relationship between Greek and Near Eastern religions,
Hebrew in particular, has until recently been notoriously neglected by several generations of Helle
nists; for general orientation and many particular connections, see esp. Walter Burkert, The Orien
talizing Revolution (Cambridge, Mass., 1992); and Sarah P. Morris, Daidalos and the Origins of
Greek Art (Princeton, 1992).
72. Other Hebrew material is gathered by Thomsen (supra, n. 62) 469-71.
73. Dow (supra, n. 66) 189-91 provides a useful chart tabulating the sacrifices of all five
columns by date; note, however, that on pp. 190f. the months are out of their proper order.
caust sacrifices, each of which is also designated vqqIpdXog, "sober."74 Th

four cases of sober sacrifices that are not holocausts: one of these is the p
sober sacrifice for Zeus Meilichios discussed above;75 the others are a
WpoQd.76 In the case of Zeus Meilichios the rite ceases to be chthonian a
halfway point, and evidently concluded with normal, unrestricted distribu
the meat. On the face of it, the four cases combining sobriety and holocaust m
certainly be chthonian; one or two of the recipients are in fact heilige Han
recipients rather than chthonians, but we shall turn to them in due course
are right that ob cpood sacrifice is a variation on the holocaust of chthonia
we have here a clear pattern: sober sacrifices, which are usually or a
chthonian, accompanied either by chthonian holocaust or by an oi qpoda
ing. Every sober sacrifice in the calendar, apart from the special case of
Meilichios, is associated with one or other of these restrictions, which su
that the three components are conceptually related. And one of the recipi
a sober ouir poQg sacrifice is undeniably chthonian: the hero Leukaspis (r
Our next step is to survey the recipients of the roughly forty-five oi
sacrifices I have been able to collect.77 We may begin with Zeus Chthon
Ge Chthonie at Mykonos, who receive black victims Vjnt@ xa@Qaov, with
further injunctions VWLoa o 0efLtg- atLvvo60cv axtovI (LS 96.24-26). He
accumulation of obviously chthonian components practically compels us
clude that 6aLvo6o0v cavtxo should be numbered among them. At the end
same inscription there is prescribed a sacrifice for an Archegetes, doubt
hero founder (40). The stone is poorly preserved at this point; Sokolowski
the remnants of lines 41ff., but Dittenberger (Syll.3 1024) prints line 4
6atvvo[wv - _. It is clear that we must restore the whole technical
already twice used in this inscription (26, 28f.):_ _] 6aLtvo[0cov aTovi_
thus another case of our restriction in connection with a chthonian recipie
74. B.15ff., r.19ff., A.19ff., E.lOff.

75. A.38ff.; see above at n. 6.
76. r.48ff., A.41ff., E.59ff.
77. Of previous collections the fullest are those of Thomsen (supra, n. 62; much comp
material); Ziehen (supra, n. 64); Burkert, "Greek Tragedy" (supra, n. 11) loc. cit.; an
nearly complete-Goldstein 322-55. Two or three further examples, including those colle
Headlam on Herodas 4.92, have not been noted by students of Greek religion. For discussion
provision in Greek sanctuaries for the cooking and consumption of sacrifices, see Martin P. Ni
"Archaic Greek Temples with Fire-Places in Their Interior," in Opuscula Selecta 2 (Lund, 1
10; Goldstein; recent bibliography in Oswyn Murray, ed., Sympotica (Oxford, 1990) 323-25
In addition to the examples of the restriction noted below in connection with named recip
we have a cuitic regulation from Kos that probably-the text is badly damaged-disting
between pregnant victims that are and are not &ncocpooA (LS 154 B.37-44). The text mentio
or goddesses" as possible recipients (see n. 26 supra), but the actual recipient most likely t
view is Demeter. The use of a similar phrase (ouvx oayoyd) in connection with sacrifices bef
departure of the theoria to Delos from Kos (R. Herzog, Heilige Gesetze von Kos [Berlin,
B.13-16) is clearly "secular," as Goldstein 349 n. 492 notes. This sort of usage is not uncom
Kos: see n. 82 infra.
78. Cf. the same restriction for a Heros Archegetes in Paus. 10.4.10, cited below.
There is one, and probably a second, further example of "on-the-spot"

sacrifice in this inscription, in both cases for Dionysos. Dionysos Bakcheus is
the certain recipient (27-29); Dionysos has close connections with the un
derworld that may or may not be to the fore in any given case: this example is
therefore reconcilable with our theory, though not evidence for it. The prob
able case would provide positive support: immediately before the entry for
Zeus Chthonios and Ge Chthonie a yearling is prescribed for Dionysos Leneus
(24); we are in the month Lenaion and this is clearly the Lenaia of Mykonos. A
date precedes the Dionysos entry, but not the Zeus/Ge entry immediately
following, so that both sacrifices must take place on the same day. On the three
other occasions when there is more than one entry on the same day, however,
the phrase tflL avoUiL jiliiQEa precedes the second and subsequent entries, mark
ing them as distinct occasions (8, 11, 34f.). We ought therefore to conclude that
the sacrifice for Dionysos Leneus is part of the same ritual as the offerings for
Zeus Chthonios and Ge Chthonie, with the latter specified as imeg xttaQoiv. In
that case baLvo0owv a'Xtoi applies to Dionysos's yearling as well. That
Dionysos's chthonian side is in play here is strongly suggested by his pre
eminently chthonian companions and by the fact that on the previous day the
calendar prescribes a sacrifice for Semele (22-24), and on the day before that,
also incQ xctaQov, for the underworld trio Demeter, Kore, and Zeus Bouleus
(15-22). All these together constitute a coherent chthonian and agricultural
series.79
Some other chthonian recipients of "on-the-spot" sacrifices may be enumer
ated here: Demeter (LS 151 A.60, Kos: male sheep and pregnant sheep),8 Rhea
(LS 151 B.4, Kos: pregnant sheep),81 Sarapis (LSAM 34.7, Magnesia), Theoi
Meilichioi (Paus. 10.38.8, Myonia in Lokris), Heros Archegetes (Paus. 10.4.10,
Tronis in Phokis); and from the Erchian calendar Ge (LS 18 E.16ff.: pregnant
sheep), Hera Thelchinia (A.6ff.: black lamb),82 Kourotrophos (F.2ff., A.2ff.),
79. See Nilsson, GF278f. The Athenian Lenaia festival is also closely associated with the gods
of the underworld, and with the Eleusinian priesthood: see Deubner (supra, n. 21) 125f.
80. On pregnant victims for goddesses of fertility, see n. 26 supra; additional examples are
adduced below. There is one item of evidence suggesting that the on-the-spot restriction in fact
applied to all offerings to Demeter and Persephone: 2 Ar. Knights 282, o0x ijTv Ta& v6tueva
ATqrTLIxeQ xai HInEoEcpVrlIt E^( dlcp& v. This may, however, be a guess of the scholiast's, prompted
by the word n6p6oQrla, which Aristophanes uses in the sense "contraband," but which had clear
Eleusinian connotations. The notice has not been cited in discussions of the restriction.
81. The victim indicates that Rhea is seen here in her chthonian character, as an equivalent of
Demeter or Ge.
82. Both epithet and color of victim indicate a chthonian. The Telchines were threatening and
deceitful demons often connected with the underworld (see KI. Pauly s.v.); the spelling here brings
out the derivation from 0BXyo, appropriate for a dangerous power (cf. eL.IXLxtO;). At a Koan
sacrifice for Hera the meat is removable, but what are obviously priestly perquisites (the iv6oQa
and a hemiekton loaf of wheat) are obx Cxqpo@a ix iixo vaoi (LS 151 B.5-10). The phrase is
extremely common in Koan inscriptions, and is here employed as "officialese," without ritual
significance.
Heroinai (A.17ff., E.2ff.), Leukaspis (r.48ff.),83 Menedeios (A.52ff.),84 H

kleidai (B.41ff.),85 and Aglauros (B.56ff.).86
A very interesting case noticed by Headlam in the Orphic Lithika (699-
Abel) has never been discussed in this connection.87 The narrator describes
magical, mantic rite of strong mystical coloring, addressed to Helios and G
Orphic contexts Helios is often identified with Zeus, Dionysos, and Hades as
one supreme divinity, an amalgam therefore of Olympian and chthonian.88
pairing here with Ge likewise indicates that the combined power of heaven
earth is being invoked. Under their all-embracing authority is "evil-contr
Megaira," probably an Erinys;89 when the worshipers invoke the gods by t
aiQqTxov oivolta or VotLIXOv binvviov (725-27), they pray for the banishm
of Megaira from the spot (728f.). The result of the rite is perfect knowledg
the future through the ability to interpret mantic signs (745-47). The rite itself
weird: attracted by incense, snakes emerge from beneath the "rock of Hep
tos"; one of them is caught by three young men and cut into nine pieces, t
each for all-seeing Helios, fertile and nourishing Gaia, and all-knowing pro
ecy. These are then boiled in a tripod kettle with oil, wine, salt, berries, "
other ingredients to taste" (722f.); after the invocations we find the provi
6atlvvveOa TO6' EJuetxa xoQEvwvUoecaL [?eta)xa I auT6o0ev ex x@tJtzoog- xa
ietLava ycyaa xaXvjnTOL (732f.). Over the buried remnants are poured mi
wine, oil, and honey, and the participants then garland themselves and dep
Until they reach home they must not turn back or speak to anyone they m
83. On this little-known hero, see Gunter Dunst, "Leukaspis," BCH 88 (1964) 482-85.
84. Also a hero; Jameson, "Erchia" 158f., suggests that he may belong to the circle of B
he is worshiped on 19 Thargelion, the day of the Athenian Bendideia.
85. Here (B.44) and at B.59 and E.36f. abbreviated forms of o6 (poda have been a
sometime after the first inscription of the stone. Daux notes this in his discussion ("Erchia" 628),
does not print them in his text; Sokolowski neither prints them nor notices them in his appar
86. See supra, n. 85. The sacrifice takes place 3 Skirophorion and is most probably part of
festival Plynteria, now clearly attested early in this month for another Attic deme, Tho
("Thorikos" 52ff.); Aglauros was prominent in this festival (Hesychios s.v. nIkvvrixta; Anecd.
Bekker s.v. K6l3Lov), which involved mystic components and was regarded as a day of ill
(Plut. Alk. 34.1): see further Noel Robertson, "The Riddle of the Arrhephoria at Athens," HSC
(1983) 241-88 at 281f., whose case for Plynteria at Erchia is not, however, as open and shut
makes out, particularly as he systematically underplays the importance of Pandrosos at Arrhepho
87. Partly because of an error of Knox, who published Headlam's work after his deat
appears that on Herondas 4.92 Headlam left a bare reference to Orph. Lith. 731f. in the numer
of the standard edition of Abel, but Knox refers to and actually (mis)quotes the irrelevant lines 7
of Hermann's numeration. Two further parallels collected by Headlam involve thank offerin
men who have survived the perils of a sea journey; for our purposes they are rather suggestiv
relevant: Polycharmos of Naukratis, FGrHist 640 F 1; Euphron F 1 KA.
88. See, e.g., Martin P. Nilsson, Geschichte der griechischen Religion 23 (Munich, 1974) 42
Orph. frr. 236, 239 Kern (M. L. West, The Orphic Poems [Oxford, 1983] 36 n. 108, compa
Macrob. Sat. 1.18.20). On the chthonian aspect of earlier cult of Helios, see Stengel 20ff., 155f
contra, Nilsson, GF 427f. Goldstein 336 includes in his list of examples of the restriction a sac
for Helios on Rhodes (LS 142.4-7), but this is based on Sokolowski's very dubious interpretatio
the inscription.
89. 728; at Orph. H. 69.2 Quandt she is one of the three Erinyes.
but keep their eyes on the path in front of them. They then offer at home normal
roasted sacrifices for the gods, spilling the blood that was forbidden at the
"bloodless altars" (699ff.) of Helios and Ge.
aivvoOat . . . aTo60ev is the technical language of our restriction, and the
whole passage is by far the fullest description of the context of such a meal
known to us; late and bizarre, it is also very instructive. The intense and uncanny
atmosphere of the meal on the spot contrasts sharply with the normal festive
sacrifice, and inwardness, gloom, and a sense of danger continue during the walk
home, which adds a physical dimension to the marked transition of atmosphere.
The motif of "averted eyes," a telling expression of the spirit of chthonian cult,
has excellent classical precedent in scenes of supplication of the dead (Aisch. Ch.
98f.) and of the Eumenides (Soph. OK 490). The thorough ritualization of the
disposal of the leftovers is further indication of the anomalous status of this very
chthonian meal of snake stew-and it would be bold indeed to find here a
survival of an Ur-Tabu. The chthonian ambience of the rite is striking; we have
to do with a heilige Handlung rather than ordinary chthonian cult, but as we have
seen the two are closely related in their ritual aspect. The rite presented here is
highly distinctive and very late, but this is the best evidence we have for the
atmosphere and context of "on-the-spot" meals, and it supports, if it does not
confirm, our hypothesis about them.
Reverting to our catalogue of recipients, we may list those whose character is
not exclusively chthonian, but who have a well-known chthonian side, such as
Amphiaraos (LS 69.31f., Oropos) and Asklepios at Epidauros (Paus. 2.27.1)90
and, with Hygieia, in Attika (LS 54.10). The "on-the-spot" meal for Athenaia
Machanis at Kos (LS 151 B.24) accompanies an apparently removable sacrifice
for Zeus Machaneus. Some difficulty is caused here by the fact that the victims
and the ritual for these two vary according to whether they are in "the year of the
Karneiai," a festival celebrated every second year, or "the other year." In the
year of the Karneiai the main rite, that for Zeus Machaneus, is explicitly based
on, and refers back for details to, the Zeus Polieus ritual treated at length above,
where the flesh was apportioned but could not be removed from the polis, and
where in the secondary rite Athena Polias received an apparently removable
pregnant sheep. The "on-the-spot" meal for Athenaia Machanis occurs in the
non-Karneiai year; the stone breaks off as the procedures for the year of
Karneiai begin to be described. Given the system of cross-references and the
obvious interrelationship of rites for the pair of Zeus and Athena under the same
epithet, it is probable that some of the apparently removable sacrifices were
understood from the context to be nonremovable. It is likely, for example, that
the pregnant sheep for Athena Polias was not removable: the two other pregnant
90. Pausanias tells us that the same restriction applies at Titane, and it is usually assumed that
he refers to the sanctuary of Asklepios there, though he has not mentioned the restriction in his
description of the site (2.11.6-8).
sheep in this calendar, for Demeter and Rhea, are both designated ou
ajioqpo@a (A.60, B.4).91 In other cases it may be that on-the-spot consumptio
one of a number of victims was felt to suffice. In any case, the rites for
Machan- pair were partly based on those for the Poli- pair, and doubtle
cause of a similarity of character. The clear chthonian affinities independen
attested for both Athena Polias and Zeus Polieus therefore justify us in inclu
the little-known Athenaia Machanis among our partly chthonian recipient
on-the-spot meals. There are two valuable new parallels for the mixed Koan
for Zeus Polieus: the same god appears twice in the Erchian calendar, and o
both occasions his victim is a sheep, oi qpoda (LS 18 r.l4ff., 60ff.). In comb
tion with the holocaust at Thorikos, this is all consonant with our thesis, th
at Erchia Zeus plays second fiddle to Athena Polias.92
We noted above, in connection with the inscription from Mykonos (LS
that its 6atvUooawv aiuto sacrifice for Dionysos Leneus, in connection wit
Semele among others, supports the chthonian interpretation, and that that
Dionysos Bakcheus is consonant with it. The god is often elsewhere associat
with such rites; we have already mentioned the thrice-prescribed rite at K
which, as Skyllites (< oxvXkiS, "twigs, kindling"), he receives a piglet and a k
the former oi'x d&oqpo@a (LS 151 A.45, 58, 62). The epithet suggests a deit
vegetation (as Sokolowski says ad loc., comparing the Koan Diony
Thyllophoros),93 and we have noted the strongly agrarian character of the ot
rites in this part of the Koan calendar.94 Here, then, we have specific as we
general grounds for attributing a chthonian aspect to the god. The first of
partly on-the-spot sacrifices is on the same day as the preliminary piglet
caust for Zeus Polieus; the Koans seem to have been fond of mixed rites. T
Erchian calendar now offers a parallel for the Mykonian rite in particular; o
Elaphebolion on the same altar Dionysos and Semele receive oi (poQa vict
(A.45ff., A.34ff.). The sacrifice follows the end of the City Dionysia by tw
days, but the worshipers here are women; the combination of Dionysos
Semele may well suggest a chthonian significance.95
The case of Hestia is difficult but very interesting. One of the few things
91. There is a possible parallel for this in the calendar from Erchia: on 12 Metageitnion b
Zeus Polieus and Athena Polias receive a sheep e.t jn6OXe v &oTE, of which only the first is design
oi (poed (LS 18 r.l4ff., A.14ff.: specifications can be coordinated across columns, as in the cas
the sacrifice for Semele at A.45ff. "on the same altar" as that for Dionysos at A.34ff.; in the l
case, where there would be room for doubt, both are designated o qpood).
92. The festival is probably Plynteria; cf. n. 86 supra. The sheep for Athena Polias is ter
&v[x]iBo>So (LS 18 A.64f.); it will have been a holocaust, if we can trust the evidence of Hesych
5390 Latte, &vt(potLov- ia6OoLov. &vTid o6og xa0ayLat6jevov. XoqpoxXgi MEXkEayQO (F 405 R)
93. We have a financial regulation of this apparently prominent cult, LS 166.
94. The Zeus Polieus rite, and pregnant sheep for Athena Polias, Demeter, and, at the beg
ning of the second column, Rhea.
95. These sacrifices have been discussed by Albert Henrichs, "Between Country and C
Cultic Dimensions of Dionysus in Athens and Attica," in M. Griffith and D. J. Mastronarde,
Cabinet of the Muses, Festschrift Rosenmeyer (Chico, 1990), 257-77 at 263f.
are told about her cult is that "those sacrificing to her carried away nothing from
the sacrifice": oi yag 'Eoriati 0ovveg oV6 o v eqpeQov Tfg 0voia;g.96 Of course
the most common offering to Hestia was a meal cooked on the family hearth; a
rule forbidding the removal of such an offering from the domestic premises
seems to provide the material for a joke in comedy. In Aristophanes' Ploutos the
starving Hermes asks Karion to fetch him some meat d)v Oe0' 6?5EI; iv6ov, and
Karion replies &X' ovk exxpoad (1138). The scholion ad loc. preserves virtually
the same joke from Theopompos (F 71 KA): etao cbQazWbv aitTxoov. (B.) &dX'
oiVx Exqpopa.97 No recipient is mentioned in either case, but the emphasis on
"inside" in both points to Hestia. The language is clearly that of our restriction,98
but the situation is quite different, and the comic passages suggest that Karion
and his equivalent are citing a rule more often ignored than observed. Still, in
our scanty evidence for the character of the personified Hestia there is at least
one clear sign of chthonian affiliation. The Derveni commentator cites from "the
hymns," namely Orphic hymns of the fifth century B.C. or earlier, the verse
AYtYTxQ ['P]ea FrJ Mil[T]'q 'Eoica Aqrll.99 The last is an Eleusinian cult title of
Demeter, so that we have here a group of earth goddesses; whatever may have
been made of the syncretistic project, Hestia must generally have been seen as
close in character to the others. The restriction in the cult of Hestia stands
somewhat apart from our other examples of it, but the goddess herself presents
no obstacle to our interpretation of them.
The 'YXXowv N1upcat of Thera, whose victims are designated ovix aJoqpoea
(LS 132), are even more obscure than Hestia. Nymphs were female spirits of
water and the wild, and were sometimes adopted into chthonian circles. In the
Heraion at Olympia they were depicted in company with Plouton, Dionysos, and
Persephone in a scene that Pausanias (5.20.3) tells us had an obvious reference
to the underworld; one of them was playing with a ball, so that they probably
represented Persephone's companions at the time of her abduction, but, with
Dionysos, had somehow become members of her established circle. Nymphs are
also frequent recipients of wineless offerings: in Attika (Suda v 356 = Polemon
of Ilion fr. 42 Preller); with Apollon Nymphagetes at Thasos, where piglets and
paians were also forbidden (Ziehen summarizes other reasons for regarding this
cult as chthonian: LGS 2 no. 109); in the Altis at Olympia, where libations of
wine are poured on all the altars except those of the Nymphs, the Despoinai
(Demeter and Persephone), and that of all the gods (Paus. 5.15.10). In Sicily,
however, they were honored in a drunken pannuchis (Athen. 250a). On Rhodes
we find Nymphai Telchiniai closely associated with Hera Telchinia (Diod. 5.55),
96. Diogenianos 2.40; cf. Hesychios s.v. 'Eoriat 0v6otlvaL; Wilamowitz, Der Glaube der Hel
lenen (repr. Darmstadt, 1955 [Berlin, 1931-32]) 1.152 n. 1.
97. The scholiast comments that this is said /v EviaLg OvolalS and notes that it is feminine
singular rather than neuter plural.
98. Note that oix ExpoQod in the comic passages corresponds to oV6iv qipEQov in Diogenianos.
99. ZPE 47 (1982) after p. 300, col. xviii.12; cf. West (supra, n. 88) 81.
and they are often found, at Krete and elsewhere, linked with Hermes. Nym
must be numbered among those groups of minor Greek divinities who can ad
themselves to any company; the Theran Nymphs and their otvx antooQad m
could very easily have a chthonian character.
In certain cases of our restriction there seem to be distinct signs of th
heilige Handlung. Thus Athena Apotropaia and Zeus Apotropaios are honore
at Lindos on Rhodes with an on-the-spot sacrifice from which women
barred (LSS 88 a.3f., b.4f.). The restriction is also applied to sacrifices
Poseidon at Kamiros: the occasion is the festival Hippokathesia, at wh
horses are cast into the sea for the god (LSS 94.13). There is a strong
apotropaic element in these and similar rites for Poseidon; he is a preeminen
dangerous god, and many of his cults are what we might call thalassian equ
lents of chthonian ritual;100 Wilamowitz described Poseidon as "von Hause
der Herr der Erdtiefe."'10
There remain seven cases where the restriction is clear but a chthonian in
pretation appears problematic. Five or six of these are, however, explicable on
basis of connections with heilige Handlungen, while one occurs in the neighb
hood of some of the strangest rites in the Greek cultic record. On
Hekatombaion Artemis receives at Erchia, in association with the od WpoQg pi
offerings for Kourotrophos, two oi qpoad goats with the further specification (o6
6?EQta xaTa(L)yi?(ELv) (LS 18 F.8ff., A.8ff.). Daux prefers to take the latter
referring to a mutilation of the skin by tearing when it is presented to the shri
most will be inclined to follow Sokolowski, despite the psilosis, in regarding i
requiring that the skin be burned, for which he points to a parallel on Kos (LS 15
D.16-17).1?2 Sokolowski concludes that the sacrifice was "in effect" a holocau
and assumes that the recipient is Artemis-Hekate, who receives an Olympi
offering elsewhere in the calendar (LS 18 B.1lff.). This is a possibility, but
enormous holocaust of all manner of victims, domestic and wild, was offere
Artemis under the epithet Laphria at Patrai (Paus. 7.18.8-9), and as Agrotera,
we have seen, she is a frequent recipient of sphagia. Aischylos, as Herodoto
(2.156) tells us, made Artemis the daughter of Demeter. Some such associatio
might account for the oi qpogQ rite here, but with no epithet to go on we must l
it at that: a renunciatory offering for Artemis is in any case hardly surpris
Apollon Lykeios is twice specified in the Erchia calendar: on 12 M
geitnion, a day when the Erchians made offerings outside the deme to Deme
at the Eleusinion in Athens (LS 18 B.2ff.: sheep; Olympian rite, as often
Eleusis) and to Zeus Polieus and Athena Polias on the Akropolis (F.14f
A.14ff.: sheep; that for Zeus o cqpooa), they also offered Apollon Lykeios an
100. See Stengel 155-6.

101. "Ionische Wanderung," SB Berlin 1906, 67 = Kleine Schriften 5.1 (Berlin, 1937) 162, ci
by Stengel 155. Another case for Poseidon at Rhodes, if Prott is right in his interpretation of the
OoLvjxaL: LGS 1 no. 23.5 (= LS 140).
102. Daux, "Erchia" 630; Sokolowski ad loc.
cpoQd sheep in the city (A.2ff.). On 8 Gamelion he received at Erchia an o6

qpogd sheep, "to be handed over to the Pythaistai" (E.2ff.).0?3 Apollon Lykeios
is in Athens connected above all with military life, as patron of the army; in
tragedy the "wolf god" is very frequently invoked for aid against an enemy or to
avert ills.104 Here, then, is a god to whom a heilige Handlung for the protection
of the city is eminently suitable, though we have no other evidence for Attic
sacrifices to him. His epithet might be taken to suggest distant associations with
the weird lykanthropy, cannibalism, and human sacrifice of Mount Lykaion in
Arkadia (Paus. 8.38.6-7; cf. 6.8.2).105 A further example of our restriction is in
fact attested for the cult of Apollon Parrhasios on that mountain (Paus. 8.38.8):
a boar is sacrificed for Apollon Epikourios, conveyed immediately into the
sanctuary of Parrhasios, and there eaten on the spot. The odd victim and the on
the-spot rite are not surprising in this locality, famous for its cultic bizarrerie,
though again we know nothing further about the cult.
This leaves us with four recipients of oir poga offerings in the Erchia calen
dar: the Tritopatores (LS 18 A.41ff.), Zeus at Petreus (E.23ff.), Zeus Horios
(E.28ff.), and Zeus Epakrios on Hymettos (E.59ff.). The offerings for the
Tritopatores and Zeus Epakrios are sober as well as o/ (poLd. With these it is
convenient to consider two recipients of sober, holocaust sacrifices: Zeus
Epopetes (F.19ff.) and Epops (bis: A.19ff., E.lOff.).106 Zeus Horios is the god of
the frontier and of the hermlike boundary stones, 6oot, that marked it,107 and
that are invoked as witnesses to the Athenian "Ephebic Oath," in company with
various gods and personifications of war and fertility and with various fruits of
the earth.108 The oath is valuable as sketching the sorts of associations Zeus
Horios might be expected to elicit; a chthonian coloration is not out of the
question; nor is a connection with heilige Handlungen. 109
Of the other five of this final group, four and almost certainly the fifth fall
into a general category that is seldom given proper recognition: powers of the
weather and mountaintop Zeuses, who belong together. The Tritopatores are
ancestral spirits who are also winds.10 Zeus at Petreus, Zeus Epakrios on
103. The oi WpoQa was in this case inscribed later: see n. 85 supra.
104. See Michael Jameson, "Apollo Lykeios in Athens," Archaiognosia 1 (1980) 213-35.
Aisch. Ag. 1257, Seven 145f., Suppl. 686f.; Soph. El. 6f., 203-6, 645, 655, 1379-83.
105. See Burkert, HN 84-93.
106. The fourth sober holocaust in the calendar is for Basile (B.15ff.), the chthonian compan
ion of Neleus and Kodros; cf. R. E. Wycherley, The Stones of Athens (Princeton, 1978) 168; David
Whitehead, The Demes of Attica (Princeton, 1986) 204 with n. 171. Unusually, the victim is white: cf.
LSAM 41.6.
107. See Nilsson, GGR 205.
108. Text: Georges Daux, "Le serment des 6phebes atheniens," REG 84 (1971) 370-83; also,
e.g., P. Siewert, "The Ephebic Oath in Fifth-Century Athens," JHS 97 (1977) 102-11. See Reinhold
Merkelbach, "Aglauros (Die Religion der Epheben)," ZPE 9 (1972) 277-83 (incl. text), esp. 282f.
109. His offering is on the same occasion as that for Zeus at Petreus, on whom see further below.
110. Winds: Phanodemos, FGrHist 325 F 6 with Jacoby ad loc.; Hesychios T 1448; Orph. fr. 318
Kern; cf. Demon, FGrHist 327 F 2; Philochoros 328 F 182; Anon. Exeg. 352 F 1.
Hymettos, and Zeus Epopetes "on the Pagos at Erchia" all look like moun
top gods;11 Epops was assumed by Daux to be the hoopoe, which seems
unlikely recipient of cult. The fact that Epops receives exactly the same of
ings as Zeus Epopetes suggests that their names are related and that he
hero "Overseer."'12 That the names suggest a mountaintop location is li
enough in itself, but there is an excellent Attic parallel in the altar of Apo
Proopsios, likewise on Hymettos. There were altars of Ombrios Zeus both o
Hymettos, where he was paired with Semalios Zeus, and on Parnes, wit
variant epithet Apemios.113 "Overseer," "Rain God," "Sign Giver," "Ave
of Ills": the mountaintop god is a powerful presence, and is everywhere ass
ated with magical and often weird rites, including human sacrifices in the c
of Zeus Lykaios, Zeus Laphystios, and Zeus Ombrios.l4 Some of these san
aries on the heights had ash altars, indicating burnt offerings."5 It is not sur
ing, then, that Zeus Epopetes and the hero Epops should receive winel
holocausts,1l6 nor Zeus Epakrios and Zeus at Petreus their more modest
sions of the heilige Handlung. The Tritopatores will fall into the same gen
category. Wind magic is common; we remember that the sacrifice of Iphig
to Artemis is ravouaveFog (Aisch. Ag. 214),117 and sphagia and black victim
for the winds are known elsewhere.l8 The annual nighttime a6@roTaI
four p6o0oL for the winds at Titane in Sikyon, accompanied by "charm
Medea" (Paus. 2.12.1), together with other evidence, led scholars such
Stengel and Farnell to regard the winds as chthonian powers, either as resid
in the earth or in connection with ancestral ghosts.19 Further support for
notion might be derived from that treasure house of chthonian concepts,
111. Zeus Epakrios is certainly one; see Et. M. and Hesychios s.v. 'Ea6dxQLog ZEUg, quoted
Daux, "Erchia" 621; Et. M. actually refers to our cult.
112. Cf. the hero Epopeus at Sikyon, near the Apotropaioi Theoi and a temple he built
Athena destroyed by a thunderbolt, Paus. 2.11.1. On the Epop- name the most useful collectio
evidence is in Pfeiffer ad Kall. Ait. 3 fr. 85.14.
113. All attested by Paus. 1.32.2. See the evidence for mountaintop Zeuses collected by Far
(supra, n. 42) 1.147-48; and in general M. Langdon, A Sanctuary of Zeus on Mt. Hymettos, Hesp
Suppl. 16 (Princeton, 1976). For a possible sanctuary of a Zeus Exopsios on the Hill of the Nym
see Wycherley (supra, n. 106) 188-89.
114. See Nilsson, GGR 393-401, Burkert, HN 85, 114f. Zeus Ombrios: Lykophron 160 w
scholia.
115. See Burkert, HN85 with n. 10; Plut. fr. 191 Sandbach.
116. Burkert, GR 112 n. 82, cites these cases as evidence against the traditional distinction; he
does not make the connection with the mountaintop, and appears to regard the name as indicating a
god in the sky, preeminently "Olympian." The connection is, however, made by Ludwig Preller and
Carl Robert, Griechische Mythologie 14 (Berlin, 1894) 117 n. 2, q.v., to which Burkert refers.
117. Cf. Henrichs (supra, n. 51) 203 n. 4.
118. Xen. Anab. 4.5.4: Ev0a 6ii TCIv g&dveTEv Tig Elje oqEcayLado(aoea TOL aVpLMoL, xaC
oqapcryLt tat; Aristoph. Frogs 847f.: aQv' 6ava sXkava 3naL6eg ievyxaTE- I tvqxbg yaQ xpat3ivELv
naQcaoxEvatcTaL. Cf. in general Farnell (supra, n. 42) 5.416f., 448f.
119. See Stengel 146-53, esp. 150-52; Farnell (supra, n. 42) 5.417; Sam Wide, "Chthonische
und himmlische G6tter," ARW 10 (1907) 257-68 at 258. Ar. Clouds 314f. probably indicates that
weather powers and heroes are associated with the same conceptual realm.
Eumenides of Aischylos: when the chorus are promising general fertility for the
land and people of Athens, they say among other things that no dreadful winds
will blow-TaZv layv XaQLv Xeyo (939; cf. 905f.). At any rate, the offerings at
Erchia to mountaintop gods are readily comprehensible as heilige Handlungen
for well-established recipients of such rites.
With the possible exceptions of Apollon Lykeios, Apollon Parrhasios, and
perhaps Zeus Horios, all the attested recipients of on-the-spot sacrifices are at
home in a chthonian or partly chthonian ambience, or among the restricted
group of powers who are named in connection with heilige Handlungen. 120
If we are accused of petitio principii for sometimes supporting a chthonian
interpretation on the basis of ritual features that traditionally mark the distinc
tion that was supposed itself to be in question, it is perhaps sufficient to reply
that we are after all looking for patterns in the evidence, and that few would
deny that the traditional typology is in general valid enough. It is surely no
accident, for example, that with the exception of the eccentric rite for Zeus
Meilichios all the wineless sacrifices in the Erchian calendar are also either oi
poLa or holocaust. If we come to the conclusion that a few of our rites and
recipients are rather heilige Handlung-related than chthonian, this is no damn
ing indictment of the distinction but allows it to be applied with greater accuracy;
most important, the heilige Handlung recipients make particularly clear the re
markable consistency of character to be discovered in the cultic record. Under
standing the on-the-spot provision in the way suggested here, then, we may now
take another look at the standard lists of exceptions to the traditional distinction.
THE EXCEPTIONS RECONSIDERED
The three bodies of evidence I propose to consider as an application of our

approach are the examples of participation in sacrifices to chthonian gods col
lected by Fairbanks, Thomsen, and Stengel; Nock's catalogue of meals in heroic
cult; and Henrichs's compilation of wineless libations in Attika.121 The last has to
do with a feature of cult that has rarely been seen as common to all the
chthonians, but it was on the basis of a study of libations that Graf came to his
conclusions, and as it happens the list illustrates nicely the fundamental role of
the character of the god. Henrichs has also organized his list according to other
features of the wineless rites in question, so that it makes a useful study in the
compatibility of ritual components.
120. There is a suggestive Roman parallel, mentioned by Cato, RR 83, in an offering to Mars
Silvanus "pro bubus, uti valeant": "ubi res divina facta erit, statim ibidem consumito. Mulier ad eam
rem divinam ne adsit neve videat quo modo fiat"; cf. CIL 6.1.576 = Dessau 2.4915: "Extra hoc limen
aliquid de sacro Silvani effere fas non est." Other Roman material is cited by Thomsen (supra, n. 62)
469.
121. Fairbanks 258f.; Thomsen (supra, n. 62) 482f.; Stengel 130-33; Nock 578-81; Henrichs,
"Sobriety" 96-97.
Of the examples collected by Fairbanks, Thomsen, and Stengel, amount

to nine or ten altogether, five have been referred to above: the Eriny
Megalopolis and the Semnai at the Areopagos court have been discuss
examples of ritual varying comprehensibly according to circumstances ma
clear in the evidence; Zeus Chthonios and Ge Chthonie (and probably Seme
at Mykonos and the Theoi Meilichioi at Myonia as on-the-spot meals; and t
rite for Zeus Sosipolis at Magnesia was fitted into the general pattern of rites fo
the partly chthonian Zeus Polieus.122 In the partly chthonian group ought a
be included Trophonios at his Boiotian oracle; according to Pausanias (9.
those who are to consult the oracle enjoy "plenty of meat from the sacrifi
during their stay there.
The rest of the exceptions gathered under this head have to do with th
worship of Demeter and Persephone on the one hand, and Hades/Plout
Eubouleus on the other. None of these involves direct description of sacrif
modes, but Fairbanks and Stengel note inscriptional evidence for sacrifices
Demeter, Persephone, Eubouleus, and other Eleusinian figures, includ
Athena, at Athens and Eleusis; for Plouton's hieron at Eleusis; for pries
Plouton and Kore at Athens and elsewhere; and for an altar of Plouton near
Areopagos.123 Only the last provides any detail about the worship, specify
xkivTr and TQd'Etea, which are standard equipment in the type of offering c
theoxenia.
Demeter herself, despite her clear links with the earth, was numbered
among the twelve Olympians; and Eleusinian sacrifices in particular, though
we are not well informed about them, seem generally to have been participa
tory, being also on the whole celebratory in atmosphere. In the nature of
things they will have been "on the spot" as well, but it is preferable, given the
paucity of our information, to explain the apparent exceptions in the cult of
Demeter on the grounds of her dual status, general beneficence, and intimacy
with the Athenians; and what holds for Demeter will hold for her divine
circle.124
The worship of Hades in Elis, where he had a temple, is less reasonably
listed as an exception: the temple was opened only once a year, and entered then
122. Zeus Sosipolis was regarded by Fairbanks, and has been by others, as chthonian tout
court, but seems to fit more naturally into the particular group of Doppelwesen sketched above.
123. LS 5.36-40, LSS 13.20-24 and elsewhere; IG 22 1231; Preller and Robert (supra, n. 116)
802 n. 1; IG 22 1933-35 (connected with the Semnai; cf. Paus. 1.28.6).
124. The sanctuary at Eleusis is equipped with high altars, at least one /oxtaQa, and several
megara around the porch of the Telesterion: see most recently Kevin Clinton, "Sacrifice at the
Eleusinian Mysteries," in R. Hagg, N. Marinatos, and G. C. Nordquist, eds., Early Greek Cult
Practice (Stockholm, 1988) 69-80 at 71f. Thus both Olympian and chthonian sacrificial modes must
have played a role in the cult; in particular, a banquet was presumably provided from the bulls
sacrificed on the day of celebration and departure following the night of initiation in the Telesterion
(Clinton 71 with n. 27). Our information about these and other sacrifices at the Mysteries is,
however, too spare to allow firm conclusions. See also n. 80 supra.
only by a sacred official (Paus. 6.25.2-3, Str. 8.344). The form of worship is not
described, but was presumably correspondingly cautious.
In the rite of theoxenia the worshipers prepare a couch and table of vegetar
ian offerings for their divine guests as for themselves, and in some sense offer
them hospitality.125 By far the most frequent recipients of such offerings are the
Dioskouroi, other partial chthonians such as Asklepios and Herakles, and he
roes; Nilsson (GF 418) remarks that the famous Delphic theoxenia of Apollon
must have been taken over from the cult of the Dioskouroi. The obvious analogy
of such rites to the proverbial practice of leaving to the heroes scraps of food that
fall from the table has been noted. Plouton, so often depicted in art on a couch,
is similar in character to the most frequent recipients of the rite. Regarding such
rites as exceptions to the traditional distinction, however, is ultimately a reflex of
Robertson Smith's communion theories, since there is little likelihood that any
of the worshipers would have eaten the portion appointed for the divine guest.
Nock (582-88) demonstrated long ago that there is no support in the evidence
for the notion that such banquets involved communion with the god.
Of the fourteen cases gathered by Nock126 of participation in animals offered
to heroes, two are dubious (5, 6),127 two involve an explicit on-the-spot provision
(8, 11), seven are in fact eaten on the spot (1-4, 9, la, 3a),128 and one more very
probably is (7). In one case the meat of a victim is actually offered as a prize in a
contest (2a); in another we do not know where the meal took place (10). Thus
none of Nock's examples is an obstacle to our theory, which could be used to
explain them all; but there is really no need to invoke it. Meals-at least of the
theoxenia type-were fairly well established in the cult of heroes,129 and we have
argued that there are occasions when it is acceptable to celebrate the beneficent
side of chthonians with a participatory sacrifice. Several of Nock's examples
would fall very naturally into this category: three are organized by private
orgeones or cult associations, which were doubtless constituted for purposes
125. See F. Deneken, "De Theoxeniis" (diss. Berlin, 1881); Nock 585f.; Nilsson, GF 418-21;
Meuli as in n. 129 infra.
126. Nock's cases are: (1) hero Echelos, LSS 20; (2) heroes Egretes and Hypodektes, IG 22
2499, 2501; (3) Attic Theseia festival; (4) various sacrifices to heroes by the "Salaminioi," LSS 19; (5)
same by the Marathonian tetrapolis, LS 20; (6) a heroine, LGS 2 no. 24; (7) hero Paralos, IG 22
1254; (8) hero Archegetes at Tronis, Paus. 10.4.10; (9) heroes at Phigalea, Ath. 4.149c; (10) Aga
memnonidai, Ps.-Arist. Mir. Ausc. 106, 840a; (11) Archegetes at Mykonos, LS 96.40; (la) Muses
and heroes, foundation of Epikteta, LS 135; (2a) hero Aleximachos, IG 12.7.515; (3a) Tyche Agathe
and Daimon Agathos of Poseidonios and parents, Syll.3 1044.
127. Case 5 is based on the specification of iQc)ovvaa, which are however payments in cash and
therefore not decisive; case 6 depends on an uncertain textual supplement.
128. W. S. Ferguson, who published the decrees of the orge6nes that provide three of Nock's
examples, laid stress on the fact that the banquets were cooked and eaten on the spot: see "The
Salaminioi of Heptaphylai and Sounion," Hesperia 7 (1938) 1-74 at 33f.; "The Attic Orgeones,"
HThR 37 (1944) 61-140 at 80f.
129. See, e.g., F. Deneken in Roscher, Lexikon 1.2507-9; Nock 588f.; Karl Meuli, "Griechische
Opferbrauche," in Phyllobolia: Festschrift Peter von der Miihll (Basel, 1946) 185-288 at 194-201 =
Gesammelte Schriften (Basel, 1975) 2.916-24.
rather of good fellowship than of renunciatory piety (1-2, 4); two (3, 9) an
possibly a third (10) are public festivals at which large crowds were entertain
the heroin; two are late private cults of the dead (la, 3a), in the one case (l
provided for in the will of the deceased woman. The fact that banquets to
place at their graves does not make these recipients any less "chthonian"; i
simply that on these occasions or for these worshipers in particular their be
cent side is the exclusive focus. Hero feasts are doubtless exceptions to
distinction as traditionally formulated, but they are not arguments against
importance of the recipient's character, and seem in any case to be relativ
uncommon. The value of the distinction is in its general validity, and we m
allow for differentiation among the various branches of the chthonian family: th
heroes are on the whole more approachable than the chthonian gods.130
Henrichs's catalogue of wineless libations makes a more interesting subjec
Here again the heroes, for whom, as for the dead, libations of unmixed wine
other ingredients must have been normal,131 stand slightly apart. The chall
here is to discover why various divine recipients of sober offerings should
received them. Henrichs notes the presence of the various chthonian recipie
one would anticipate for wineless libations: the Semnai/Eumenides, Zeus M
lichios, the Erechtheids, Leukaspis; he refers as a separate group to the W
and the Tritopatores-we will see here typical recipients of heili
Handlungen-and he singles out " 'Olympian' divinities such as Zeus Hypa
Aphrodite Urania, and even Dionysos." We may discuss these categorie
turn. Other apparently chthonian or partly chthonian powers in the catal
are Zeus Georgos (pankarpia), Basile (Erchia: holocaust), Nephthys and O
(holocaust), the snake of Asklepios.132 We can now recognize in the list a gr
of heilige Handlung recipients, including not only the Winds and the Trito
tores but Zeus Epopetes, Epops, and Zeus Epakrios; Zeus Hypatos on t
heights of the Akropolis belongs in this group as well: he is attested as a mo
130. Burkert, GR 299 with n. 47, cites two "heroic banquets" in tragedy, both for Agam
non, which, if interpreted by him correctly, would be damaging to the view argued here. In A
Ch. 483-85, however, the banquets must be customarily provided, not eaten, by mortals, and
"richly feasted" will be the other dead; see Garvie ad loc. Soph. El. 283f. speaks of a monthly
instituted by Klytaimnestra, with choruses and sheep sacrifices to "savior gods," to mark the day
which she murdered her husband; this is certainly not heroic cult, and does not take plac
Agamemnon's tomb (xaxa o=ryag, 282): the festivities are simply named after him, by a typi
grisly "subversion." Anxious after her dream, Klytaimnestra later sends Chrysothemis with p
offerings for the dead, which surprises Elektra (405-10; cf. 326-27). Burkert also cites Louk. M
Cond. 28, which seems more to the point, but surely refers to the practices of the rich Roma
whose employ Loukianos imagines his Greek addressee.
131. See Henrichs, "Sobriety" 99. The sources of Henrichs's catalogue are Aisch. Eum. 106
Soph. OK 469-81; Eur. Erechtheus fr. 65.73-89 Austin; Kall. fr. 681 Pf.; Z Soph. OK 1
Philochoros, FGrHist 328 F 12; Suda v 356 = Polemon of Ilium fr. 42 Preller; Paus. 1.26.5; LS 1
21, 52; LSS 16.
132. The snake seems to be the genuine recipient of the sober offerings of LSS 16; they w
doubtless placed on the table (with an image of a snake) on which the text is inscribed. Henr
attributes this offering to Asklepios and Hygieia.
taintop god in Boiotia, and an oracle is quoted in Demosthenes advising the

Athenians to make sacrifice for him among others as a result of a sign in the
heavens.133 Henrichs's other two "Olympians" are not straightforward either.
Now that the new gold leaves from Thessaly have associated Dionysos firmly
with the realm of the chthonioi, we are more alert than ever to this aspect of the
god, which on a given occasion could put his connection with wine in the
shade.134 Aphrodite Ourania does not owe her epithet to impeccably Olympian
credentials; she is in fact the Greek form of the Mesopotamian goddess Ishtar/
Astarte, as the Greeks recognized.135 Apuleius (Met. 11.2) has Lucius address
the moon as regina caeli and suggest four identifications-Ceres, caelestis Venus,
Ephesian Diana/Lucina, Proserpina/Hekate-of the goddess, who turns out to
be Isis; this is at least a useful warning that a celestial goddess is not necessarily
an "Olympian." Little can profitably be said about most of the others: Poseidon
Chamaizelos must be connected with the crops, and Helios and Mnemosyne
receive their wineless offerings as members of the circle of Asklepios; Mnemo
syne has a fountain in the underworld, according to the gold leaves; and there
are indications elsewhere of "chthonian" cult for Helios,136 but we know too little
about them. The same is true of Eos and Selene, and in cult both of the Muses
and of the Nymphs the specific context-about which we know nothing in the
case of their wineless rites-is fundamental.
We thus find in respect of the pattern of wineless libations in Attika more or
less what has turned up elsewhere. Recipients of the various ritual features
traditionally assembled under the rubric "chthonian" almost always display a
connection with the earth; those who do not will fall into a restricted class of
beings, including weather gods of the heights and recipients of wartime sphagia
or mythical human sacrifice, who are in temperament similar to the chthonians.
Differences among the chthonians of course exist: heroes and the dead receive
libations of wine; the chthonian gods generally do not; likewise the heroes are
133. Paus. 9.9.13, Dem. 43.66. On the cult in general, Jessen RE 9.1 (1916) 250ff.; Graf, Kulte
(supra, n. 4) 202f.: "wo wir Naheres wissen, wurde der Gott in der Hohe verehrt." Cf. Zeus
Hypsistos on the Pnyx: Wycherley (supra, n. 106) 197 n. 48.
134. K. Tsantsanoglou and G. M. Parassoglou, "Two Gold Lamellae from Thessaly," Helle
nika 38 (1987) 3-16; on chthonian connections of Dionysos, see now Henrichs (supra, n. 95) 266-68.
135. See Her. 1.105, 131 with How and Wells ad loc., 4.59; Paus. 1.14.7. The evidence is
collected by Farnell (supra, n. 42) 2.746f. Xenophon's statement (Symp. 8.9) that the sacrifices to her
were &yv6dzeqal than those to Aphrodite Pandemos is probably not relevant to our interests. Cf. in
general Burkert, HN 115; id., Die orientalisierende Epoche in der griechischen Religion und Li
teratur, SHAW 1984, 1 (Heidelberg, 1984) 92-95 = Eng. transl. (supra, n. 71) 96-100; Graf, Kulte
(supra, n. 4) 261. Her altar at the NW entrance to the Agora has been excavated: T. Leslie Shear, Jr.,
"The Athenian Agora: Excavations of 1980-1982," Hesperia 53 (1984) 1-57 at 24-40; for analysis of
the faunal remains, David S. Reese, "Faunal Remains from the Altar of Aphrodite Ourania, Ath
ens," Hesperia 58 (1989) 63-70, replaces G. V. Foster, "The Bones from the Altar West of the
Painted Stoa," Hesperia 53 (1984) 73-82.
136. Mnemosyne: Giorgio Colli, La sapienza greca 1 (Milan, 1977) 4 [A 62]-[A 64], pp. 172
76, with a text unavailable to Gunther Zuntz, Persephone (Oxford, 1971) B1-2, pp. 358-61. Helios:
Stengel as in n. 88 supra.
more prone to festivity. It is worthwhile in this regard to point to the case of th

Erechtheids. Henrichs describes the two rites prescribed in the aition of Eur
des' play: annual bull sacrifices accompanied by girls' choruses, and win
sacrifices before battle. Here we find linked with the same recipients the dic
omy we encountered in the scattered record of the cult of heroes: peri
festivity in contrast with the sense of danger we normally expect to find in
cult of the chthonioi. Both approaches correspond to the character of the he
ines, which would not be made clear by either in isolation.
CONCLUSIONS
Even in the limited evidence we have dealt with some recipients have con
tently reappeared in connection with the various ritual features. Patterns h
emerged that not only indicate the fundamental soundness of the distincti
between Olympian and chthonian gods and rituals, but remind us that one of
most basic constitutive elements of Greek polytheism is the nature of the ind
ual divinity. To the objection that the approach we have outlined can account
anything but explains nothing, we can at least reply that wb have had no occa
to explain away regular cult of a chthonian type for any such figure as Olym
Zeus, and that we encountered Delian Apollon only in connection with
explicitly removable offering. It remains to make a few general points aris
from our reassessment of the evidence.
It may be hoped first of all that we are now beyond trying to save the o
hard-and-fast distinction by more or less contrived expedients, such as Sten
argument that meals only occur in the cult of exclusively agricultural chthonians
or Pfister's claim that banquets occur only for heroes whom Entruckungslege
place in heaven rather than in a grave.'37 It ought also to be recognized tha
evaluation of the distinction cannot rely on instances of "Olympian" sacrific
terms applied to offerings to chthonians, where the rite itself is not furt
described, since this is the "unmarked" terminology.138 Nor are names and e
thets in themselves reliable guides; we have seen, for example, that the fir
glance reaction to Zeus Epopetes' epithet is not a sufficient basis for evaluati
his case.
In formulating and applying the distinction between Olympians and chthoni
ans we ought always to bear in mind the caveat concisely stated by Burkert: "Das
tatsachliche Brauchtum blieb ein Konglomerat mit vielerlei Zwischenstufen."'39
Endless ramification is a reflex of the nQoclxovoa aQtexf of polytheism, and
hybrids are therefore to be expected in divine character and in ritual as well. The
vision of the Greek pantheon offered in Homer, the Hymns, and the handbooks
137. Stengel 131; Pfister (supra, n. 57) 480-89.

138. See n. 57 supra.
139. GR310.
is not privileged and does not set a standard, or, more accurately, does so only in
literary terms; it should not be allowed to distort our perception of the world of
actual cult and cultic legend, which, in religious terms, is a larger and a more
complex and serious world.
We must also avoid burdening the Olympian/chthonian distinction with im
plications that the evidence cannot bear. There is, for example, no reason to
suppose that the avoidance of participation in chthonian offerings corresponded
to the folk belief, reflected in the myth of Persephone, that to eat the food of the
underworld is to be consigned there, nor to accept the notion that sacrificial
banqueting involved "communion" with the recipient. Few would profess such
ideas now, but vestiges of them seem to underlie rejection of the basic distinction
on the basis of attested participation in offerings to some chthonians. The distinc
tive trait of the chthonians is their ambivalence, and the mode of worship spe
cially suited to them amounts to holding nothing back in the appeasement of
dangerous and unpredictable powers. Ambivalence is not, however, unrelieved
nastiness, so that forms of worship reflecting assurance or cautious assurance of
chthonian good will need not surprise us, let alone lead us to rash shifting of
paradigms. Ambivalence elicits meticulous caution, but there are degrees of
caution, and such a compromise as carefully restrained or controlled participa
tion may sometimes be felt to suffice.
If we are right that the temperament of the recipient is fundamental to the
mode of worship, the Greek evidence seems to fall into place. There are powers,
in no sense chthonian, that are yet of such similar temper and unpredictability that
the chthonian mode of worship seems best suited to them. Even for those properly
called chthonian the term is not a complete definition. Binary oppositions of the
Olympian/chthonian kind generally need to be kept somewhat fluid, human phe
nomena of any significance being by nature complex; this does not invalidate
them, or mean that they have not been of fundamental influence in shaping the
phenomena. The evidence seems to indicate that definite and consistent constella
tions of specific character traits and ritual features occur most frequently on the
level of the individual divinity. Given the Greeks' astonishing fertility in the
generation of vividly realized mythical personalities, this is not surprising. The
more general differentiae, such as the Olympian/chthonian distinction, play their
role here, but precisely because they are more general they can never constitute
our full analytical equipment. Moreover, even quite basic distinctions may be
blurred or disregarded in order to people the pantheon with a variety of discrete,
compelling entities, or in other words to allow the imaginative potential of the
human mind to get itself fully projected onto the divine plane. Even those of us
who agree that gods and other mythical powers come second to ritual historically
are free to recognize their primacy for the societies that create them and express in
them their sense of the nature and limits of the human condition. The expressive
power of ritual is after all limited by what one can do; the limits of myth coincide
with those of the imagination, and it can therefore express everything. In this
sense the facts of ritual are and always were projections into action of what can
projected in a more complex way, and therefore more completely and direc
through myths and mythical figures. Very few myths are of the sort generated
explain rituals, and the significance even of these is rarely exhausted by discover
of the rituals behind them. In the study of human culture much of what is
essential and distinctive in any individual or group is directly accessible only in t
products of their imagination, including their gods, who are, like the figure
dreams, aspects of themselves and of their response to everything that is no
might not be themselves.140
Union College
140. Renate Schlesier's recent paper carries the tendency I have been opposing here t
logical conclusion: she argues that the Olympian/chthonian distinction is essentially a modern
struct, and denies that it can be applied to ritual. The latter view she bases mainly on the ea
studies dealt with here. The most important parts of her paper are an illuminating treatment of
nineteenth-century background of the modern formulation, and a radically skeptical examination
some of the few explicit ancient references to the distinction. Given the haphazard nature of
references-no genuinely systematic exposition has come down to us-Schlesier's brief, serial,
somewhat dismissive treatment of them seems to me insufficient to establish her conclusion, and
mass of texts generally seen as making implicit use of the distinction are not discussed. The re
ment of the relationship between divine figures and rituals undertaken in the present paper, so f
it may be valid, involves clear consequences for assessment of the basic distinction, and to that e
constitutes a first response to Schlesier's paper.

The Limits of the Olympian and Chthonian Ritual Distinction in Greek Religion

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Olympian and Chthonian

Author(s): Scott Scullion

Olympian and Chthonian

To THE OLYMPIAN sky gods-so tradition has it-the Greeks sacrificed

? 1994 BY THE REGENTS OF THE UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA

animal sacrifice.4 This stands as a quite radical rejection of the tradition

THE TRADITIONAL DISTINCTION QUESTIONED

Arthur Fairbanks commenced the modem debate in 1900, complaining

The traditional, hard-and-fast distinction of Olympian and chthonian sacrifi

6. Daux, "Erchia" = LS 18, at A.37ff.

ten der Libation Zeichenfunktion, bezeichnen sie Marginalitat oder Norm

THE TEST CASE OF ZEUS POLIEUS

Critical assessment of these approaches will involve a close look a

the "marginal" holocaust sacrifices and libations of honey mix. There fo

There is a further parallel in the special, uncanny role of the slayer.

28. LSAM 32.7, 10-14, 26-31.

THE POWERS OF THE EARTH

39. Fairbanks 258, Nock 591 with n. 65.

Greek mythology and religion. "Zeus" is a figure encountered in certain

41. 6.134, 7.153; cf. Aristophanes, Thesm. 101.

common and fundamental characteristics and interests, and worshiped with

Among the varieties of what might be called renunciatory sacri

48. See Burkert, GR 365-70, with further bibliography.

52. See Henrichs (supra, n. 51).

and the particular sphere or conceptual associations of the divinity are f

55. Henrichs (supra, n. 51) 218f. n. 4.

conceptual connection of the sacrifice of Iphigeneia with that of the pregnant

AN UNRECOGNIZED ASPECT OF CHTHONIAN WORSHIP?

Bearing the heilige Handlungen in mind, we may now revert to the

standing of the distinction in two respects, they can be reduced to a ver

65. Lectures on the Religion of the Semites2 (London, 1894).

caust sacrifices, each of which is also designated vqqIpdXog, "sober."74 Th

74. B.15ff., r.19ff., A.19ff., E.lOff.

There is one, and probably a second, further example of "on-the-spot"

Heroinai (A.17ff., E.2ff.), Leukaspis (r.48ff.),83 Menedeios (A.52ff.),84 H

100. See Stengel 155-6.

cpoQd sheep in the city (A.2ff.). On 8 Gamelion he received at Erchia an o6

THE EXCEPTIONS RECONSIDERED

The three bodies of evidence I propose to consider as an application of our

Of the examples collected by Fairbanks, Thomsen, and Stengel, amount

taintop god in Boiotia, and an oracle is quoted in Demosthenes advising the

more prone to festivity. It is worthwhile in this regard to point to the case of th

137. Stengel 131; Pfister (supra, n. 57) 480-89.

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