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Saturday, December 17, 2011

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….

3 comments:

  1. This whole Aristomenes thing is quite interesting, disturbing and inchoate.

    K. O. Mueller has the Spartans as teetotalers. Maybe after this incident, they passed a law to be such?

    They call the enslavement of the Dorians of Messene as "genocide". Well, after all this I would think that the Dorians at Laconia had good reason to put a stop to all these shenanigans. Not only did the Messenians lose their kings but maybe as well became very anti-religious and hence sacrilegious.

    It sounds like a prefigurement of the atheistic so-called "enlightenment". Just like the "Enlightenment" got rid of kings and attacked religion, we are seeing the same paradigm in Messene culture.

    Very Intelligent people either become atheists or religious zealots. High intelligence is a curse. High intelligence, without social conditioning, becomes very rebellious. We know that the Messenian Dorians got rid of their kings. The behaviour of Aristomenes then shows their sacriligious character.

    They became dangerous! Unlike the Hebrews who actually genocided idolatrous people, the Dorians of Laconia simply enslaved them.

    The Dorians were a very highly intelligent people. Very High Intelligent. They go to extremes, either extreme piety, or extreme atheism. If you look at all the Doric communities, only the Cretan and the Laconian communities stayed true to their cultural heritage.

    If you look, where did the Mafia arise? In southern Italy, in Sicily. The Mafia are Doric Greeks. When they don't do good, they do evil. High intelligence is very active. It must be doing something.

    I think this is quite enlightening and you see a picture of the Dorian Messenians in Aristomenes.

    I think you have uncovered the reasons why the Spartans had to advance upon the Messenian Dorians. Their loss of their kings was a sign of their loss of religiousity, and hence a sign of their lawlessness. This exact paradigm is what the so-called "Enlightenment" was.

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  2. Wow, I typed my comments, pushed publish, and they promptly disappeared.

    So I write again.

    This is very interesting, disturbing, and inchoate this whole Aristomenes thing. But I think you uncovered the reason why the Spartans finally had to subdue Messene.

    We know for certain that the Messenians got rid of their kings. Along with getting rid of kings, is always a sign of atheism, of egalitarians. This sacriligious character of Aristomenes is a sign of atheism.

    The Dorians were a very Highly Intelligent people. Highly Intelligent people easily slip into atheism. Highly Intelligent people either are atheists or deeply religious. There is no in-between. The Cretans and the Spartans managed to maintain their religious character.

    We see this paradigm also in the French Revolution. Atheists led the charge of getting rid of hierarchy and are egalitarians. And they were very sacrilegious.

    I think this is the reason, these two groups could not co-exist together. The Messianians became ir-religious along with their lack of kings.

    K.O. Mueller records that the Spartans were teetotalers. Maybe, these incidents spurred the Spartans to be teetotalers 24/7 because war comes at any time.

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  3. Aristotle remarked that everything can be turned into its opposite. The Higher one thing is---it will be the lowest. Mediocre things will not flucuate much. If little is given--only little will be taken and vice-a-versa.

    This is a dictum of nature.

    The Dorians as a very high people, if not conditioned and trained and kept to high ideals---will turn to be the lowest.

    The center of piracy during the Roman Empire was Crete! When people lose their virtue, they turn. The Mafia, which originated in Sicily and in Southern Italy, in my opinion, if you took DNA samples, would be Doric Greeks. The Mafia culture of family is very Doric. The Code of Silence.

    Plato in the Laws 875: "His frail human nature will always tempt such a man to self-aggrandizement and self-seeking, will be bent beyond all reason on the avoidance of pain and pursuit of pleasure, and put both these ends before the claims of the right and the good; in this self-caused blindness it will end by sinking him and his community with him in the depths of ruin."

    If a man is not turned to right and duty, he is turned to evil gain. And the higher the man is, if he doesn't keep to the straight and narrow, will be turned into the lowest of the lowest thiefs. If Dorians are not trained to the good, they will do the most viliest things. It is only a law of nature. In this can we see that the Messianians, by getting rid of their kings, sunk down and betrayed their heritage and then took up evil causes. Those that keep to the Straight and Narrow win.

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