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57-453: The Romans and the Greeks practised an extensive and widespread cult of heroes . Heroes played a central role in the life of a polis , giving the city a shared focus for its identity. The cult typically centred on the heroön in which the hero's bones were usually believed to be contained . In a sense, the hero still lived: he was offered meals; he was imagined to be sharing feasts. His allegiance

114-703: A burial, the entrance to the tomb was filled in with soil , leaving a small mound with most of the tomb underground. The chamber is always built in masonry , even in the earliest examples, as is the stomion or entrance-way. The dromos in early examples was usually just cut from the bedrock , as in the Panagia Tomb at Mycenae itself. In later examples such as the Treasury of Atreus and Tomb of Clytemnestra (both at Mycenae ), all three parts were constructed of fine ashlar masonry. The chambers were built as corbelled vaults, with layers of stone placed closer together as

171-439: A cluster of family figures, which included women who were wives of a hero-husband, mothers of a hero-son ( Alcmene and Semele ), and daughters of a hero-father. As Finley observed of the world of Odysseus , which he reads as a nostalgic eighth-century rendering of traditions from the culture of Dark Age Greece, Penelope became a moral heroine for later generations, the embodiment of goodness and chastity, to be contrasted with

228-413: A god. By the historical period, however, the word came to mean specifically a dead man, venerated and propitiated at his tomb or at a designated shrine , because his fame during life or his unusual manner of death gave him power to support and protect the living. A hero was more than human but less than a god , and various kinds of minor supernatural figures came to be assimilated to the class of heroes;

285-500: A grander past, were often the site of hero-cults. Not all heroes were even known by names. Aside from the epic tradition, which featured the heroes alive and in action rather than as objects of cultus , the earliest written reference to hero-cult is attributed to Dracon , the Athenian lawgiver of the late seventh century BC, who prescribed that gods and local heroes should both be honoured according to ancestral custom. The custom, then,

342-515: A natural development of tumulus burials dating to the Middle Bronze Age. In concept, they are similar to the much more numerous Mycenaean chamber tombs which seem to have emerged at about the same time. Both have chamber, doorway stomion and entrance passage dromos but tholoi are largely built while chamber tombs are rock-cut. A few early examples of tholoi have been found in Messenia in

399-483: A settlement during one specific time period, may indicate that their use was not confined to the ruling monarchy only, although the sheer size and therefore the outlay required for the larger tombs (ranging 10–15 m (33–49 ft) in diameter and height) would argue in favour of royal commissions. The larger tombs contained amongst the richest finds to have come from the Late Bronze Age of Mainland Greece, despite

456-498: A shrine at Mycenae dedicated to Agamemnon and Cassandra , another at Amyklai dedicated to Alexandra , and another in Ithaca 's Polis Bay dedicated to Odysseus . These all seem to date to the 8th century BC. The cult of Pelops at Olympia dates from the Archaic period. Hero cults were offered most prominently to men, though in practice the experience of the votary was of propitiating

513-581: Is believed to be the hero's wife, who possibly was slaughtered with him when the hero died. This idea of using a tholos tomb for heroa continued in Greece even into the Classical Age. This is illustrated by a heroön found at the Panhellenic Sanctuary of Olympia . This tomb, which was established around 450 B.C., follows the typical tholos tomb structure with a large dome with several other rooms flanking

570-588: Is consistent with the role that women played in not only Ancient Greece, but the ancient world as a whole — more in the shadows and service-oriented than focused on personal development and relaxation. Whitley distinguishes four or five essential types of hero cult: All across Greece and sometimes into Turkey lay burial mounds. Sometimes on ancient battlefields or just in a frequently visited common area lay giant mounds of earth. Scholars call these mounds " tumulus ". Many wondered why people built these mounds and what greater purpose they served. One notable example

627-564: Is following the Battle of Marathon in 490 BC. The Athenians, having defeated the Persians, needed to bury their dead. 192 dead in total, they were buried on the same field on which they had died and under a giant mound. This particular mound became what is known as the Marathon Tumuli . These mounds began popping up all over Greece as a gesture of respect to the dead, and as many scholars believe, it

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684-548: Is the Athenian king Erechtheus, whom Poseidon killed for choosing Athena over him as the city's patron god. When the Athenians worshiped Erechtheus on the Acropolis , they invoked him as Poseidon Erechtheus . Tholos tomb A beehive tomb , also known as a tholos tomb (plural tholoi ; from Greek θολωτός τάφος, θολωτοί τάφοι, "domed tombs"), is a burial structure characterized by its false dome created by corbelling ,

741-516: Is thought to have been dedicated to the worship of the family of Alexander the Great and may have housed the cult statue of Alexander's father, Philip II of Macedon . The sanctuary of Zeus in Nemea also contains a heroön, this one dedicated to the infant hero Opheltes . The Heroon at Nemea was known as a popular place to practice magic due to the nature of Opheltes' death. A well-preserved Roman heroön from

798-592: The Iliad and the Odyssey . Copious renewed offerings begin to be represented, after a hiatus, at sites like Lefkandi , even though the names of the grandly buried dead were hardly remembered. "Stories began to be told to individuate the persons who were now believed to be buried in these old and imposing sites", observes Robin Lane Fox . In other words, this is a clear cut example of an origin story for Heroes and what they meant to

855-573: The Augustan period is situated in the ancient city of Sagalassos in what is now Turkey . Another well-preserved and well-known heroön is the Library of Celsus in Ephesus , Turkey. It was built to honor a Roman senator , Tiberius Julius Celsus Polemaeanus , a consul and proconsul of Asia from 92 to 107 and governor of Asia when he died in 114. He bequeathed a large sum of money for its construction which

912-501: The Doric style . The building was constructed in 1st century BC and is surrounded by many other Greek temples. It was used as a church for a time after the end of the Greek and Roman periods. Greek hero cult Hero cults were one of the most distinctive features of ancient Greek religion . In Homeric Greek , " hero " ( ἥρως , hḗrōs ) refers to the mortal offspring of a human and

969-581: The Griffin Warrior Tomb might be an example of Mycenaean interaction with other areas of Greece. The tradition of building tombs to honor heroes continued from Mycenae into other areas of Greece. This can be seen by the heroön found at Lefkandi in Euboea . This site dates to around 950 BC during the Iron Age. This site differs from earlier sites, as it was built in an apsidal style. This means that one end of

1026-675: The Iberian Peninsula , beehive tombs appear among other innovative " megalithic " variants, from c. 3000 BCE. They are especially common in southern Spain and Portugal , while in Central Portugal and southeastern France other styles (artificial caves especially) are preferred instead. The civilization of Los Millares and its Bronze Age successor, El Argar , are particularly related to this burial style. The Bronze Age fortifications known as motillas in La Mancha (Spain) also use

1083-460: The Politics that plays a role in much of what we know about them today has all come from either written accounts or archeological findings. In fact, in many cases both types of evidence may contradict each other. Written evidence can be biased or incomplete, and archeological findings do not always tell us a definitive story. However, hero cults may be a case where they collide positively. First, despite

1140-505: The Spartans attributed their conquest of Arcadia to their theft of the bones of Orestes from the Arcadian town of Tegea . Heroes in myth often had close but conflicted relationships with the gods. Thus, Heracles 's name means "the glory of Hera", even though he was tormented all his life by the queen of the gods. This was even truer in their cult appearances. Perhaps the most striking example

1197-569: The Spartans raided the heroön of the city of Tegea , stealing the bones of Orestes . This was regarded as changing the hero's allegiance from Tegea to Sparta, ensuring that the Spartans could defeat the Tegeans as foretold by the Oracle of Delphi . (For an analogous practice in ancient Rome, see evocatio ). Many examples of heroa can be found around the tholos tombs of Mycenaean Greece and in or near

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1254-831: The U.A.E. , built of stacked flat stones which occur in nearby geological formations. They date to the Hafit period of the early Bronze Age , between 3,500 and 2,500 years BCE, a period when the Arabian Peninsula was subject to much more rainfall than now, and supported a flourishing civilization in what is now the Arabian Desert , to the west of the Hajar Mountains along the Gulf of Oman . No burial remains have ever been retrieved from these "tombs", though there seems no other purpose for their construction. They are only superficially similar to

1311-461: The tholos building technique. The imposing stone structures known as nuraghi , as well as the similar structures of southern Corsica , dominated the Bronze Age landscape of Sardinia (Italy). Nuraghi are truncated conical towers of dry-laid stone, about 40 feet in diameter, sloping up to a circular roof some 50 feet above the ground. The vaulted ceiling is 20 to 35 feet above the floor. Although

1368-517: The 8th century. Only Laconia has evidence of assigning its shrines to specific heroes meaning that the rest of the shrines were not to any one specific hero but allowed for worship to a hero via one shrine. Unlike the Roman beliefs it was thought that the Heroes did not ascend to the skies and be with the gods of Olympus, but rather they would go down into and become one with the earth. This impacted not only how

1425-726: The Aegean tombs (circular shape) as they are built entirely above ground level and do not share the same tripartite structure – the entrances are usually an undifferentiated part of the circular walling of the tomb. Currently there are three areas where these tombs can be found: Al-Hajar Region (particularly Jebel Hafeet near Al Ain in the U.A.E., and the Archaeological Sites of Bat, Al-Khutm and Al-Ayn in Oman), Hat Region, and Hadbin area close to Barkaʾ . The Hajar tombs are very numerous and one or two have been restored, allowing one to crawl into

1482-480: The Ancient Greeks. Greek hero-cults were distinct from the clan-based ancestor worship from which they developed, in that as the polis evolved, they became a civic rather than familial affair, and in many cases none of the worshipers traced their descent back to the hero any longer: no shrine to a hero can be traced unbroken from Mycenaean times. Whereas the ancestor was purely local, Lewis Farnell observed,

1539-516: The Greeks treated the Heroes, but thought about them in a political sense. They were respected and worshiped, but could even at times turn vicious if ignored and be the supposed cause of diseases or mishaps. Hero cults could also be of the utmost political importance beyond propaganda too. When Cleisthenes divided the Athenians into new demes for voting, he consulted Delphi on what heroes he should name each division after. According to Herodotus ,

1596-523: The Mycenaean heartland. In contrast, however, to the early examples these are almost always cut into the slope of a hillside so that only the upper third of the vaulted chamber was above ground level. This masonry was then concealed with a relatively small mound of earth. The tombs usually contain more than one burial , in various places in the tomb either on the floor, in pits and cists or on stone-built or rock-cut benches, and with various grave goods . After

1653-556: The SW Peloponnese Greece (for example at Voidhokoilia ), and recently near Troezen in the NE Peloponnese. These tholoi are built on level ground and then enclosed by a mound of earth. A pair of tumuli at Marathon, Greece indicate how a built rectangular (but without a vault) central chamber was extended with an entrance passage. After about 1500 BCE , beehive tombs became more widespread and are found in every part of

1710-403: The ashes piled in after that while the second step would hold any votives or items of sentimental value. Then the whole thing would be covered by a giant mound. In the case of the Athenian monument they also surrounded it with tall, skinny stone slabs that may read an honoring message or be dedicated to any one ' hero '. Much of the scholarship that has been done surrounding Heroes , Gods , and

1767-579: The cremated citizen-heroes of Marathon (490 BC), to whom chthonic cult was dedicated, as the offering trenches indicate. On the other hand, Greek heroes were distinct from the Roman cult of dead emperors , because the hero was not thought of as having ascended to Olympus or become a god: he was beneath the earth, and his power purely local. For this reason hero cults were chthonic in nature, and their rituals more closely resembled those for Hecate and Persephone than those for Zeus and Apollo : libations in

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1824-441: The dark hours, sacrifices that were not shared by the living. Two exceptions to the above were Heracles and Asclepius , who might be honored as either heroes or gods, with chthonic libation or with burnt sacrifice. Heroes in cult behaved very differently from heroes in myth. They might appear indifferently as men or as snakes, and they seldom appeared unless angered. A Pythagorean saying advises not to eat food that has fallen on

1881-553: The dead in a manner that reflected daily life. The beehive Thracian Tomb of Kazanlak is an example of the richly decorated tholoi tombs of Thracian rulers, many of which are found in modern Bulgaria and date from the 4th–3rd century BCE. The walls of the Kazanlak tomb are covered with plaster and stucco, with ornate scenes from the life of the deceased. Other tumuli , known as mogili in Bulgarian, that feature underground chambers in

1938-486: The distinction between a hero and a god was less than certain, especially in the case of Heracles , the most prominent, but atypical hero. The grand ruins and tumuli (large burial mounds) remaining from the Bronze Age gave the pre-literate Greeks of the 10th and 9th centuries BC a sense of a once grand and now vanished age; they reflected this in the oral epic tradition , which would become famous by way of works such as

1995-583: The examples known as tholoi found in the Neolithic Halaf culture of Iraq, Syria and Turkey. They were probably used as both houses and as storage structures, but ritual use may also have occurred. Other, later examples are found in Cyprus ( Khirokitia ), where they were used as homes. There is no clear connection between these domestic, circular buildings and later tholos tombs. In the Chalcolithic period of

2052-399: The fact that their population reacted to them in such a way that would allow them to use the hero shrines as political propaganda. For example, Lewis Farnell believed that, because of the fact hero cults are often not found in a hero's home territory, there is a greater chance that the cults were widespread and common among most Greeks. Whereas other cults may be ancestral dating back to even

2109-591: The faithless, murdering Clytaemnestra, Agamemnon's wife; but 'hero' has no feminine gender in the age of heroes. Where local cult venerated figures such as the sacrificial virgin Iphigeneia , an archaic local nymphe has been reduced to a mortal figure of legend . Other isolated female figures represented priestess-initiators of a local cult. Iconographic and epigraphal evidence marshalled by Larson combine to depict heroines as similar in kind to heroes, but in androcentric Greek culture, typically of lesser stature. This

2166-477: The floor, because "it belongs to the heroes". Heroes if ignored or left unappeased could turn malicious: in a fragmentary play by Aristophanes , a chorus of anonymous heroes describe themselves as senders of lice, fever and boils. Some of the earliest hero and heroine cults well attested by archaeological evidence in mainland Greece include the Menelaion dedicated to Menelaus and Helen at Therapne near Sparta ,

2223-645: The form of a beehive dome include, among others, the Thracian Tomb of Sveshtari , Thracian tomb of Aleksandrovo , Golyama Arsenalka , Tomb of Seuthes III , Thracian tomb Shushmanets , Thracian tomb Griffins , Thracian tomb Helvetia , Thracian tomb Ostrusha . There have been several significant gold and silver treasures associated with Thracian tombs currently kept at Bulgaria's Archaeological and National Historical Museum and other institutions. The earliest stone-built tombs which can be called "beehive" are in Oman and

2280-522: The hero and remember the hero's great feats. These events occurred primarily because of the Greek belief of heroes possessing special abilities that lingered locally even when he died, and it was believed that offerings and worship towards this hero would allow living cult members to tap into this power. The first examples of heroa in Greece were found at Late Bronze Age sites from the Mycenaean civilization . These tombs were built much like other tombs during

2337-584: The hero might be tended in more than one locality, and he deduced that hero-cult was more deeply influenced from the epic tradition , that "suggested many a name to forgotten graves", and provided even Dorians a connection to Mycenaean heroes, according to Coldstream . "Coldstream believed the currency of epic would account for votives in Dorian areas, where an alien, immigrant population might otherwise be expected to show no particular reverence for Mycenaean predecessors". Large Mycenaean tholos tombs that betokened

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2394-470: The heroa found at Leftkandi and Acragas. Heroa were common not only on the Greek mainland but also in the colonies . This can be seen at the heroön of Acragas on the south coast of Italy. This heroön, known as the oratory of Phalaris , was much more similar to classical architecture, with the building being prostyle , tetrastyle , and having columns in the Ionic order and both triglyphs and metopes , as in

2451-449: The numerous written accounts of these heroes, hero shrines are few in number and peculiar in pattern. This is proof that the cults were widespread on Greece, with multiple cities having their own iterations of each Hero to fit their own needs. Another way in which the Cults were used was for political propaganda and manipulation. Sparta's propping up of many hero cults was out of recognition of

2508-462: The remains of some 7,000 nuraghi have been found, up to 30,000 may have been built. There are also recorded Etruscan tombs at a necropolis at Banditaccia dating from the 6th and 7th centuries BCE, having an external appearance similar to a beehive. The interiors of these Etruscan tombs were furnished and decorated to resemble domestic dwellings, providing insight into the Etruscan practice of honoring

2565-635: The sacred areas of a number of Greek cities around the Mediterranean. A particularly well-preserved example, the so-called Tomb of Theron, can be found at Agrigento in Sicily . The Greek city of Paestum , south of Naples , has an unlooted heroon of an unknown figure, perhaps the city founder, with its contents intact (now in the museum there), including large metal vases. Another notable one, at Vergina in Greek Macedonia (the ancient city of Aigai - Αἰγαί),

2622-509: The same name for the circular houses belonging to the Neolithic culture of Tell Halaf ( Iraq , Syria and Turkey ), there is no relationship between them. In Greece , the vaulted tholoi are a monumental Late Bronze Age development. Their origin is a matter of considerable debate: were they inspired by the tholoi of Crete which were first used in the Early Minoan period or were they

2679-490: The superposition of successively smaller rings of mudbricks or, more often, stones. The resulting structure resembles a beehive , hence the traditional English name. Tholoi were used for burial in several cultures in the Mediterranean and West Asia , but in some cases they were used for different purposes such as homes (Cyprus), rituals (Bulgaria, Syria), and even fortification (Spain, Sardinia). Although Max Mallowan used

2736-555: The time, either as a shaft tomb (grave shaft) filled with elaborate grave goods , or as a tholos tomb (beehive tomb), a type of chamber tomb . In an untouched example of a Mycenaean heroön found in Pylos , the grave shaft-style tomb was dedicated to a " Griffin Warrior " whose votive objects include a mix of Mycenaean and Minoan objects. This grave group includes a large bronze sword , gold rings, jewels, and crafted seals . This shows that

2793-489: The tomb to provide the building with a square shape. Within the tomb, there is a large earthen mound that held the ashes of the cremated hero. This tomb must is likely to have been erected for an important figure that was known across Greece, as it was located at a Panhellenic Sanctuary rather than in the astu of a particular polis . This heroön also shows the wide variety of architectural styles used on heroa depending on time period and geography, as it differs considerably from

2850-463: The tomb was shaped like a half-circle. In addition, the site is much larger than previous tombs as it reaches up to 50 meters long. The inside of this heroön contains two human remains, which have been cremated and placed in bronze amphoras. One of these remains is the hero himself, who can be identified by the hunting scene found on his amphora, as well as the many swords that were left by his tomb as grave gifts. The other set of human remains at this site

2907-516: The tombs having been pillaged both in antiquity and more recently. Although the Vapheio tholos, south of Sparta, had been robbed, two cists in the floor had escaped notice. These contained, among other valuable items, the two gold “Vapheio cups” decorated with scenes of bull taming which are among the best known of Mycenaean treasures. Circular structures were commonly built in the Near East, including

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2964-492: The vault tapers toward the top of the tomb. These stone layers were trimmed from inside the tomb, creating a smooth dome. The entrances provided an opportunity for conspicuous demonstration of wealth. That of the Treasury of Atreus, for example, was decorated with columns of red and green “Lapis Lacedaimonius” brought from quarries over 100 km away. The abundance of such tombs, often with more than one being associated with

3021-406: The vicinity of his tomb or who belonged to the tribe of which he himself was the founder," observes Robert Parker, with the reservation that Heracles, with his pan-Hellenic scope, was again the exception. Whitley interpreted the final stage, in which hero-cult was co-opted by the city-state as a political gesture, in the archaic aristocratic tumulus surrounded by stelae , erected by Athens to

3078-468: Was already established, and there were multiple local heroes. The written sources emphasise the importance of heroes' tombs and the temenos or sanctuary, where chthonic rites appeased their spirits and induced them to continue to favour the people who looked to them as founders, of whom founding myths were related. In the hero's restricted and local scope he "retained the limited and partisan interests of his mortal life. He would help those who lived in

3135-462: Was also a way to connect them with the earth. Most commonly in Ancient Greece , these mounds could have had any 1 of 3 main components, composed in a staircase-like format, within the mound. This staircase like structure may have 1 or 2 steps that would help carry out various ceremonial functions as well as serve as storing places for valuable items. The first step would be used for cremation and

3192-474: Was carried out by his son. Apart from the library in Alexandria , Egypt, it was one of the largest libraries of the ancient world. Heroa sites were often linked to hero cults, due to the variety of different uses for hero cults that they provided. They acted as places of worship, where cult followers could leave grave goods and other worship offerings, and were used as locations where feasts could be held to honor

3249-414: Was seen as vitally important to the continued well-being of the city. This led to struggles between Greek cities for control of heroic remains. Greek literature records how Cimon of Athens avenged the death of the legendary hero Theseus in 469 BC, finding a set of bones allegedly belonging to the hero and returning with them in triumph to Athens. Similarly, Herodotus records in his Histories that

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