The Feast of the Dioskouroi - An Excerpt from "A Heroic King"

We know very little about Spartan religious festivals -- except that they were taken seriously. We also know they were marked by choral and dance performances, by sports contests including chariot racing in which women drivers could participate, and sacrifices to the gods. 

In the following excerpt from "A heroic King" I have tried to construct a Spartan festival based on these fragments of information. In the novel this festival is being celebrated after a devastating epidemic has killed hundreds of school children and the city is only slowly recovering as the epidemic has burned itself out.

The Feast of the Dioskouria, in honor of the Divine Twins was one of Sparta's most sacred holidays. However, because it fell after the autumn equinox, when travel was uncertain, it was not well-known outside of Lacedaemon and rarely attended by strangers.  In consequence, it was more a domestic festival than the Hyacinthia, the Karneia, and the Gymnpaedia, but no less important in Spartan eyes. 

The Dioskouria traditionally followed the end of the Phouxir, and was an opportunity to celbrate the successful graduation of a class of little boys to the status of youths. It also anticipated the winter solstice, when a class of eirenes would graduate to citizen status. The five day holiday celebrated the important deeds of the Divine Twins and culminated in a torchlight sacrifice at Kastor's Tomb, conducted by the reigning kings. Events included singing and dancing to mark the birth of the twins and their sister Helen, equestrian events in honor of Kastor, boxing to honor Polydeukes, and a day-long boar hunt culminating in an outdoor feast on the banks of the Eurotas. Throughout the holiday, special pear pastries and pear cider were consumed in large quantities. All in all, the Dioskouria was one of the Sparta's most pleasant festivals.

...

The third day of the Dioskouria commemorated the participation of the Dioskouroi in Herakles' hunt of the dangerous Kalydonian boar. The central event was a boar hunt led by the kings and guard, in which (theoretically) every able-bodied Spartan male participated. As citizen numbers had grown over the years, however, such a hunting party became unwieldy. Nowadays, many citizens, particularly the older men who felt they couldn't keep up with the Guard, went off in small groups to hunt on their own. The objective was to bring in as much game as possible to lay on the altar of the Divine Twins.  After the hearts and livers of the game had been given to the Divine Twins, what was left of the carcasses was taken down to the Eurotas and the meat roasted over open fires for a collective feast.

...

The equestrian events on the fourth day of the Dioskouria included horse and chariot racing. One of the favorite events was a two-horse chariot race in which Spartan maidens drove light chariots in competition. Over the years it had become customary for the sweethearts of the maiden charioteers to gallop alongside their favorite's team, cheering and urging on the horses. Gorgo had hated the event because she didn't have a sweetheart, and though she was sure she could have won the race itself, she was ashamed to advertise her lack of popularity by competing.

...

The [final] choral performance struck a chord with the audience in a rare way. Somehow Euryleon had put together a program that acknowledged and honored the dead, but at the same time focused on new life. The story of Kastor was well suited to that, of course, and yet not every choral master could have pulled it off.  The audience was given a chance to mourn, and Leonidas heard more than one person sobbing in the darkness behind him. Even Gorgo clutched his hand more tightly and dabbed at her eyes with her other.  But then the maiden chorus came down the aisles of the amphitheater, singing lyrics about Helen guided home from Troy by the stars of her brothers in the night sky. Each girl was carrying an oil lamp and when they met in the center of the stage, they joined their lamps together to light a larger fire. They formed a circle and started to dance around it, soon joined by young men. The song was joyous, and the dancers, followed by the audience, started to clap in time. At the end, the audience broke out into thunderous applause.

Gorgo leaned to her husband to shout in his ear over the cheering, "Do you think they really have anything in Athens that can beat that?"

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Spartan Piety - Reflections on the Relgion of the Spartans

In the ancient world, Sparta was famous for its piety.  Individual Spartans could be granted leave even from a campaign to take part in a religious festival, and on two famous occasions recorded in Herodotus the entire Spartan army delayed deployment in an emergency because of the need to “honor the gods.” (The deployment to Marathon and Thermopylae).

But just what did “piety” or “honoring the gods” entail in Ancient Greece? I admit, I find it difficult to understand this concept of “honoring” fickle, unpredictable, immoral (as well as immortal) gods. And how could one ever please all the different gods of the Greek pantheon when they were so often at odds with one another?  In a polytheist world, honoring one god might offend another.

Yet in trying to understand Spartan society better, I discovered some very interesting aspects of Spartan religion.  First, Sparta’s patron was not, as I expected, Ares, but rather Athena.  On reflection, this made sense since Sparta was not, as modern commentators would like us to believe, a society obsessed exclusively with war, but a society which placed as high a value on training the intellect as the body. (See the excellent article by w. Lindsay Wheeler, “Doric Crete and Sparta, the home of Greek Philosophy,” in Sparta: Journal of Ancient Spartan and Greek History, Vol. 3, # 2). So giving pride of place to Athena was understandable. 

Even more fascinating was to discover how multi-faceted Spartan religious beliefs were, and what an important place gods with positive connotations – Apollo, Asclepius, Helios and even Aphrodite – played in Spartan society. Nikolaos Kouloumpis in his article “The Worship and the role of Religion in the formation of the Spartan state,” (Sparta: Journal of Ancient Spartan and Greek History, Vol. 6, #1) lists cults to Asclepius, Achilles, Hercules, Alexandra/Cassandra, Agamemnon, Castor and Pollux/ Polydeukes and Helios. And, of course, Sparta’s most important festivals, the Karneia and Hyacinthia, were dedicated to Apollo.  Even the Gymnopaedia, arguably the most famous of Sparta’s annual festivals, was dedicated to Apollo and Artemis, Dionysus and Leto, while the more infamous than famous festival of Artemis Orthia was, as the name implied, dedicated entirely to Artemis.  However, the cult of Menelaus and Helen was only slightly less important, although we do not know how the Eleneia was celebrated.

Turning from festivals to sanctuaries, Pausanias, in his detailed guide to the “significant” sites of Sparta, records ten temples/shrines to Athena, six to Zeus, and five to Aphrodite.  The Devine Twins, Castor and Polydeukes, Apollo, Artemis, and Poseidon and Asklepios all have four temples each.  In contrast, there are only three temples out of more than 150 temples, sanctuaries and shrines mentioned by Pausanias that are dedicated to Ares. Two are notably located outside of Sparta proper, one in Amyclae and the other even farther away in Geronthrai.  The only temple to Ares in Sparta itself is one in which the God of War is shown in chains, according to Pausanias because “in Lakonia they think the god of war will never desert them if they keep him in chains; [just as] in Athens they believe Victory will stay with them forever because she has no wings.” (Pausanisus, Book III, 15:6). 

While the large number of sanctuaries dedicated to Athena and Zeus hardly need an explanation given their power and prominence in the ancient Greek pantheon, it does seem odd that Aphrodite, Poseidon and Asklepios should receive comparatively more honors than the god of war in land-locked, warlike Sparta.  Poseidon might be explained in that he was also called the “Earth Shaker” and, given impact earthquakes had on Lacedaemon, the Earth Shaker was clearly a god to be appeased.  Notably one of Sparta’s temples to Poseidon is to the “Horse-Breeding” Posiedon, and so a reflection of Sparta’s interest and success in equestrian sports.

But why do Aphrodite and Asclepius place ahead of Ares in terms of the number of sites dedicated to them? One possible explanation would be the association of Aphrodite with Kythera, which was part of Lacedaemon for the better part of 500 years.  Allegedly, the worship of Aphrodite originated on Kythera, and conceivably the cult spread from there to the mainland of Lacedaemon.  However, it is notable that to date the only temple from the Classical period to have been identified on Kythera was dedicated not to Aphrodite but to Asclepius. (Again!)  Possibly the worship of the God of Healing also moved from Kythera to Sparta.  Alternatively, the need to treat battle injuries fostered a particular reverence for Asclepius. Such an interpretation and the fact that there appear to have been more temples to Asclepius than Ares suggests the Spartan’s trusted more to their own skills to win wars, than survive the aftermath.

In short, Sparta was filled with sanctuaries and temples to a great diversity of gods, demi-gods and heroes. By no means was Spartan worship narrowly focused upon the god of war, or even warrior heroes such as Achilles. Instead, the heroes Heracles, Castor and Polydeukes, whose greatest deeds were performed outside the context of war, receive more attention.  This plethora of religious/cult focus in turn suggests that Spartan society was far less narrow-minded and obsessed with things military than most modern commentators imply. 

Yet the essence of Spartan piety and how the Spartans related to these various gods still eludes me.  The very diversity of god and demigods suggests, however, that there was no one Spartan religion or one Spartan way of worship.  On the contrary, I suspect that each Spartiate chose the god or gods he felt closest to and developed a highly individualistic and private relationship with these deities.  At the same time, Spartans publicly took part in the seasonal rituals celebrated by the city for each of the gods in turn -- just as many people do today.

Marathon, Religion and Military Preparedness in Sparta

In 490 BC, the Persians landed a large force on the plain of Marathon.  This military expedition had already crushed the city-state of Eretria, and Athens saw its very existence threatened.  Athens at once sent a runner to Sparta begging for aid. The Spartans notoriously agreed to come only after the full moon. The delay resulted in the Spartans missing the battle of Marathon altogether. 

This Spartan delay in responding to an urgent summons has puzzled historians for almost two thousand years.  Herodotus stated explicitly that "it was the ninth day of the month, and they [the Spartans] could not take the field until the moon was full," which most historians take to mean that Sparta was celebrating the Carneia and out of piety delayed deployment. Plato, however, claimed that the Spartans arrived too late for the Battle of Marathon because they were delayed by a helot revolt, an uncorroborated theory that has become very popular with modern historians. More recently, W. P Wallace in his article, “Kleomenes, Marathon, the Helots, and Arkadia,” (The Journal of Hellenic Studies, Vol. 74 (1954), pp. 32-35) suggests that King Cleomenes was creating so much anti-Spartan sentiment among the Arkadian cities that the Spartans could not risk deploying their army until King Cleomenes was back in Sparta. In my essay "The Importance of Marathon for Sparta -- and Leonidas," I argue that since the Spartan army was then always commanded by one of her kings and King Cleomenes was either in Arkadia or mad and King Leotychidas was either still on Aegina or discredited that the Spartans needed to select a non-royal commander which in turn required the approval of the Spartan Assembly -- a procedure that took (a finite and predictable amount of) time. (I.e. "after the full moon.")

Yet the bottom line is that all these theories – helot uprising, Arkadian discontent, or a crisis in command – are essentially the product of dissatisfaction with the explanation provided by Herodotus: a religious festival. Before we reach for alternative explanations, however, we ought to admit to ourselves that we know very little about Spartan religious festivals. Most especially, we do not how they affected the readiness of the Spartan army. The assumption that a religious festival might delay departure of the army simply because of pious scruples may be entirely wrong. 

What if, for example, the Spartan Army was given leave during religious festivals, or reduced to a skeleton of “duty officers” for each unit? It is certainly normal for religious festivals, in all cultures over all times, to be family occasions. Why should Sparta have been any different?  The very fact that there is no mention of how “odd” the Spartans were in this regard suggests that their behavior was conform to other Greeks and elicited no comment.

A family holiday in Sparta might have implied that even the young men were exempt from sleeping in barracks and all men exempt from dining at their messes.  Again, the fact that this is not explicitly mentioned is no evidence that it is not possible. There is no mention of men being exempt from duty and collective dining to participate in the Olympic Games either, but Spartan athletes were very prominent at the Olympics and they had to train in Elis for a month before the events just like all the other competitors. Likewise, Spartan spectators at the Games could not be eating and sleeping in Sparta while they were at Olympia. In short, the rules about living in barracks and eating at the messes where for “ordinary” days.  The Olympics, war, and, arguably, religious festivals would have been “extraordinary” or “exceptional” days.

We know, further, that Spartans all had at least one state kleros, and that wealthier Spartans had more extensive estates.  Without knowing the yield of an acre of land using 5^th Century agricultural methods, I have no way of estimating just how large a kleros had to be to support a man and his family, and without knowing how large a kleros had to be, I cannot estimate how many could have been located within easy walking/riding distance of Sparta’s barracks and messes. However, I think it is fair to say that not all 8,000 – 9,000 kleroi could have been within a couple-hours reach of the heart of Sparta.  It is far more likely, that many kleros were more than a half-day, even a day or two, away from Sparta.  Some may even have been located in Messenia, on the far side of Taygetos, or on Kythera.  Reaching these estates to check up on things, and to collect rents, would have taken Spartans away from Sparta for days on end.

The requirement to be present in Sparta most of the time, meant that most of the time the estates were left in the hands of helots, perioikoi overseers or wives.  Yet the fact that Spartiates were absent from their estates most of the time only reinforces the need to be present some of the time.  Particularly if Spartiate/Helot relations were as bad as most people make them out to be, no Spartan could afford to leave his kleros entirely in the hands of his helots or even perioikoi overseers. It would have been necessary for Spartiate landlords to periodically visit their estates in order to ensure nothing was so mismanaged as to endanger payment of his syssitia and, if he had sons, agoge fees. If a kleros was left to a wife, the desire to visit periodically would have been even greater, particularly if there were young children with her.

In short, Spariates would have periodically travelled to their distant kleros and while doing so they would have been excused both from their military duties and exempted from eating at their syssitia.  Probably, any man could apply for leave to go to his estates whenever it suited him. Possibly, it was traditional for men to go to their estates during holidays, when men were given leave to be with their families in any case.

For the wealthier Spartiates from the so-called “better” families, the 400-500 families that made up Sparta’s elite, the need to visit estates would have been even more acute than for the poorest with only one kleros.  The elite would have had multiple estates to look after, horse-farms, kennels, orchards etc.  They would have needed to be away from Sparta even more often than the poor. And it was this elite that, at least in the later years of the 5^th Century, occupied most of the positions of authority, power and command in the Spartan state and army.

What this means is that Pheidippides may have arrived in Sparta when the entire Spartan army was dispersed and the commanders scattered about Lacedaemon on their distant estates. The ephors would have needed to recall at least the members of the Gerousia and the officers of the army as well as cancel leave for those units they wanted to send to the aid of Athens. The ephors could, I suspect, calculate pretty accurately how long it would take messengers to reach the lochagoi and other senior officers, and how long they would need call up their troops and get them ready to march.  That time frame alone – and nothing so impenetrable as piousness, helot revolts, foreign policy considerations, or even command uncertainties – might have determined the date the Spartan army marched out to Marathon.  

The Sacrilegious Seducer: Aristomenes of Messenia

Last week I summarized the most dramatic episodes of the legend of Aristomenes that portray him as a heroic, martial figure. In the tales told last week, Aristomenes routed the Spartans in battle repeatedly, devastated their economy and confounded them in the very heart of their city by his daring escapes. These tales are well suited to give a defeated people pride, and to buoy them up even in defeat. But the legend of Aristomenes includes other characteristics that are less obviously “heroic,” albeit very much in the Homeric tradition of fallible heroes.

One of these characteristics, perhaps inevitable in a popular hero, is Aristomenes undeniable sex appeal. On at least two occasions, Aristomenes is freed from captivity by women who fall in love with him. In one instance, he is rescued by the “virgin” daughter of a Messenian farmer, who at Aristomenes’ urgings serves too much wine to Aristomenes’ Cretan guards, and then, when the Cretons are in a drunken stupor, cuts Aristomenes’ bonds so he can kill his erstwhile captors and escape. In a second, more sensational episode of the Aristomenes legend, Aristomenes is shown charming (seducing?) a (presumably virgin) priestess of Demeter.

This second seduction is one of three incidents in the Aristomenes legend in which Aristomenes seeks to to capture unarmed Spartan women and girls for ransom. In the incident referenced above, Aristomenes and his companions try to carry off unarmed women celebrating a festival to Demeter at Aigila in Laconia, but the women defended themselves so effectively with their sacrificial knives and spits that they succeed in either killing or frightening off his companions while capturing Aristomenes himself. Aside from Aristomenes’ prowess as a seducer (since he subsquently seduces the chief priestess), this incident is not terribly heroic. Not only does he attack unarmed women, he fails in his attempt and -- on top of all that -- is himself captured by mere women.

The other two legends about the capture of maidens are more ambiguous. To be sure, in both the other episodes involving the capture of women, Aristomenes’ is successful. In one case he snatches girls dancing in honor of Artemis at Caryae and in the other he snatches fifteen virgins (presumably from Sparta itself) when “the defeated Spartans were celebrating some nocturnal rites called the Hyacinthia.” (See David Ogden, Aristomenes of Messene: Legends of Sparta’s Nemesis, p. 39) The Messenian version of this latter event significantly recounts how some of Aristomenes men try to rape the girls, but Aristomenes kills his own men rather than let the captive girls be violated, thereby demonstrating his high moral character. Furthermore, he returns the girls "intact" to their fathers after their ransoms are paid, and the grateful girls later plead for his life when he is captured by the Spartans and put on trial. (Note: no further information about when this trial occurred or whether the Spartans heeded the pleas for mercy by the grateful girls is provided by my source.)

The Spartan version of these epidsodes is (not surprisingly) quite different. The Spartans claim the girls were carried off and raped and then killed themselves from shame. Alternatively, King Teleklos rushed to their defense, only to be killed by the Messenians – and this incident triggered the First Messenian War. Then again, according to another interpretation in Messenian legend, the “girls” were in fact “beardless” youth who attacked the Messenians, and they, in self-defense, killed the youth disguised as girls, but this understandable act of self-defense was wickedly used by King Teleklos as a transparent excuse to attack Messenia, as he had always intended form the start…..

Returning to Aristomenes, there is another aspect of all three of these incidents that would have been more obvious to ancient Greeks than to us: in each case Aristomenes seized (or attempted to seize) the girls when they were in the act of worshiping one or another deity. In short: all three episodes constitute an act of sacrilege. One other legend underlines Aristomenes sacreligious character particularly dramatically.

Ogden provides the following quote from Polyaenus, (Ogden, p. 63):

When the Spartans were making a public sacrifice to the Dioscuri, Aristomenes the Messenian and a friend mounted white horses and put golden stars around their heads. In the course of the night, they manifested themselves at a moderate distance before the Spartans, who were celebrating their festival outside the city with their women and children. They thought there had been an epiphany of the Dioscuri and launched themselves into drinking and great pleasure. But Aristomenes and his friend dismounted from their horses, drew their swords and slaughtered a great many of them before riding off again. (Polyaenus 2.31.4)

This was clearly an act of inexcusable sacrilege. It entails not just attacking unarmed men (with their wives and children present), who were in the act of worshiping the gods, it involves impersonating the gods themselves. If, as Ogden suggests, this incident was intended to explain how Aristomenes incurred the enduring hostility of the Dioscuri, it would have to pre-date the Battle of the Boar’s Grave and so would have occurred at the very start of the Second Messenian War. This in turn suggests that at that time the Messenians could ride right up to the border of Sparta. If combined with the capture of Spartan maidens at another festival, it might have provided the kind of provocation that made the notoriously pious Spartans mad with rage and determined to defeat Aristomenes at all costs. In short, the incident might in fact offer significant insight into the roots of the Messenian Wars – or at least the bitterness with which they were apparently pursued.

It is also noteworthy that the conquered Messenians would keep alive legends in which their greatest hero shows decidedly sacrileges tendencies. One explanation would be that they preferred to attribute their defeat to the hostility of the gods than to their own failing. They needed, however, to explain the unrelenting hostility of the gods, and Aristomenes’ impudence did just this. Another explanation might be that, as a conquered people, they felt abandoned by the gods and identified with a hero who was impious. Precisely because the Diosouri were some of Sparta’s most honored gods, being disrespectful of them was in effect being disrespectful to Sparta, so this particular legend might have been particularly popular – especially since it shows the Spartans being duped by such a cheap trick.

Another consistent feature of the Aristomenes legend is the frequency with which the hero is humiliated. Aristomenes is not just captured by women and (lowly) Creton archers, he is wounded in the buttocks, loses his shield (by divine intervention) in the middle of a battle, is turned back during another night raid by Helen (of all martial figures!), forced to retreat to a fortress, then to flee his homeland, and yet he remains defiant and capable of outwitting and escaping his opponents. In short, for all his failings and defeats – or rather because of them – the Legend of Aristomenes is ideally suited to giving a defeated people hope. Aristomenes is defeated – but never killed (unless we want to believe that story with the hairy heart), and so he was an ever-present companion to the Messenians, promising a better future -- just as soon as the bias of the gods in favor of Sparta ended….