Herakles the ‘Dactyl’ of Mount Ida and his links with Herakles the Olympian

Herakles the ‘Dactyl’ of Mount Ida and his links with Herakles the Olympian

By Gregory Nagy | 2024.08.30

§0. This standalone text, dated 2024.08.30, can best be described as a preliminary survey. It is a pre-edited draft of a chapter submitted for future publication, it is hoped, in an encyclopedia centering on the Greek hero Herakles. My survey is formatted with numberings of each paragraph as tentatively sequenced here. What are meant to become footnotes or endnotes are written out here simply as occasional notes that are appended, where needed, at the end of each numbered paragraph that requires further documentation.

Introduction

§1. The aim of this survey is to account for links that exist between ancient myths about Herakles and other ancient myths about a separate First Herakles and a separate Second Herakles—as if there had been two heroes who had the same name but were born in different places and lived in different times. According to myths that recognize only one single Herakles, he was the founder of the athletic festival known as the Olympics—and he not only competed but also won in every athletic competition that was organized at the time of the founding. According to myths that allow for two different heroes by the name of Herakles, on the other hand, there was a First Herakles who founded the athletic festival of the Olympics and a Second Herakles, born later, who competed and won in only two of the athletic competitions. According to myths that allow for both a First Herakles and a Second Herakles, we learn that the first of the two, also known as the ‘Dactyl’, was born in the near-heavenly heights of a mountain named Ida, situated on the island of Crete. The meaning of this term ‘Dactyl’ is not obvious, and it will need to be explained at a later point in my survey. As for the other Herakles, who lived in a later era, there is a myth that tells about his rebirth—not birth—on top of an overtly heavenly mountain named Olympus. Here too, as with the term ‘Dactyl’, the very idea of a rebirth for Herakles will need to be explained at a later point. For now, however, the essential fact to be highlighted in my survey here is simply this: the name of Olympus and the name of Olympia, the site of the Olympics, are linguistically related. And this fact leads to the main argument to be made in this survey, which is, that there exist links, in ancient myths, between Mount Olympus and the athletic festival of the Olympics at Olympia, Such links, as we will see, can be reconstructed by comparing myths about a First Herakles, the ‘Dactyl’ who was born on Mount Ida in Crete, with myths about a Second Herakles who was reborn, according to myth, on Mount Olympus. To begin a reconstruction of such mythological links, three further points need to be made right away, since each one of the three is relevant to the overall title of my survey: “Herakles the ‘Dactyl’ of Mount Ida and his links with Herakles the Olympian.”

§1.1. The ancient name Ida refers to a real mountain where Herakles was born—according to some myths. This name is relevant to the modern word Olympian, derived from the ancient name Olympus, which refers to mountain where Herakles was reborn as an Olympian—according to other myths.

§1.2. The modern word Olympian, referring to the hero Herakles as a reborn Olympian, is relevant to another modern word, Olympic, referring to the ancient athletic festival that is now known by its modern name, the Olympics. And this word Olympian is also relevant to the fact that Herakles was figured as the founder of the Olympics—according to some myths.

§1.3. The athletic festival of the Olympics is relevant to the description of Herakles as Daktulos, transliterated in this survey simply as ‘Dactyl’, since Herakles in his role as ‘Dactyl’ of Mount Ida was figured as the founder of the Olympics —according to a myth that we will consider at a later point. So, the Herakles of Mount Ida, just like the Herakles of Mount Olympus, is linked with the athletic festival of the Olympics. This link, as we will see, leads to a further point that overrides all three of the points made so far, and the overriding point is this: ancient myths about Herakles consistently highlight his heroic identity as a prototypical athlete.

Note 1. Some paragraphs in this survey are rewritings from an essay published online / in print, listed as Nagy (2021 / 2023) in the Bibliography below. Some other paragraphs are rewritings from a book published simultaneously online and in print, Ancient Greek Heroes, Athletes, Poetry, listed as Nagy (2024). Part I of that book, “Twelve Olympian Surveys,” is especially relevant to what is being argued overall in my survey here. Also included in my survey, sporadically, are paragraphs rewritten from other essays about Herakles that are archived online in Classical Inquiries. The laborious process of rewriting, mostly by way of compressing a wide variety of detailed arguments, has resulted in a significant rethinking of my overall argumentation in this survey. About the illustrations for the survey, permissions for all the images have been prearranged.

§2. Returning to the reported birthplace of the First Herakles, we need to reckon with the fact that this place was and is a real mountain. Known as Mount Ida in the ancient world, it is better known to speakers of Modern Greek today as Psilorítis, which means ‘land of the towering mountains’. It is an enormous mountain-range located in the western part of Crete, a vast island in the Aegean Sea. And the myths about this Mount Ida are old—so old that they can be reconstructed all the way back to the era of the so-called Minoan Empire—an era dating back to the earlier centuries of the second millennium BCE, back when the island of Crete was an imperial power that ruled over vast stretches of surrounding seas.

§3. As for the birthplace of the Second Herakles, a mountain named Olympus, the surviving myths about a rebirth of this Herakles in the heights of this Mount Olympus are so lacking in detail as to make it difficult to make a direct equation between such an Olympus, on the one hand, and, on the other hand, the famous mountain-range named Olympus that is located in a region known as Macedonia in modern times. The difficulties are compounded by the fact that there existed, in ancient times, not one but many mountains named Olympus throughout the Greek-speaking world. And, as we will see, each one of these mountains could be mythologized by the local population as the royal palace of their immortal gods, who are known to us as the Olympians.

Note 2. The fact that there were many mountains named Olympus in the world of the Mycenaean Empire is documented in a book by Martin P. Nilsson, The Mycenaean Origins of Greek Mythology. Published in 1932, this book was based on the author’s Sather Classical Lectures, delivered in 1930/1 at the University of California, Berkeley.

§4. So, even though the Macedonian Olympus, which was the grandest of all mountains named Olympus, eventually became the only Olympus to be equated with the abode of the Olympian gods—as we see, for example, when we read about this mountain in the Homeric Iliad and Odyssey—it can nevertheless be argued that other mountains named Olympus could have been imagined not only as the abode of the gods but also as the sacred site where Herakles, immortalized by way of being reborn on Mount Olympus, could join the immortal Olympians as an Olympian in his own right.

§5. But then the question is, can we find a real mountain named Olympus, mythologized as the celestial abode of the immortal gods, that is directly linked with myths about a rebirth of Herakles? The answer, it will be argued, is that there did exist such a real mountain, venerated by the local population as the sacred place where their hero Herakles was reborn, and that the myth about such a rebirth can be reconstructed all the way back to the era of the so-called Mycenaean Empire, which superseded, in the later centuries of the second millennium BCE, an even earlier empire that had held sway in the earlier centuries of that millennium, namely, the Minoan Empire. In the context of the Mycenaean Empire, as we will see, the mountain that was primarily linked with the rebirth of Herakles was not the Macedonian Olympus. Instead, it was another real mountain by the same name—a mountain that was far more modest in size, though, than the Macedonian counterpart. In any case, as we will also see, this other Mount Olympus, mythologized as a sacred space of rebirth for a Mycenaean Herakles, was related to the Mount Ida of a Minoan Herakles who was venerated by the local population of Crete and who was known to them as Herakles the ‘Dactyl’, native son of Ida. The illustration that appears as the featured image of my survey here will be relevant to the ultimate aim of the argumentation, which is, to link Herakles, ‘Dactyl of Ida’, with his Olympian double.

Figure 1. Sketch, by Jillian Robbins, based on a drawing of an impression (to say it another way: an imprint) made on a clay sealing found on the acropolis of Kastelli Hill in Khanià, on the island of Crete (Archaeological Museum of Chania, museum number KH 1563). The impression, known to archaeologists as “The Master Impression,” was stamped by a signet ring that has not survived. Estimated dating of the original ring: Late Minoan I (1600–1450 BCE; the impression, however, is probably of a later date).

About textual sources for Cretan and post-Cretan myths about Herakles

§6. The Cretan version of myths about Herakles was significantly older than other versions that we find attested in ancient Greek textual sources. But the textual evidence for the Cretan myths is sparse, by contrast with corresponding textual evidence for post-Cretan versions of myths about Herakles. In this case, two ancient authors who narrated myths about the post-Cretan Herakles stand out.

§7. The first of these two authors is Diodorus of Sicily, who lived in the first century BCE and who composed an enormous “universal history” of the world as he knew it. This “history” of Diodorus included not only the historical past but also the supposedly previous mythological past—all of it, in its notional entirety. Accordingly the narrative of Diodorus about the myth of Herakles and all his deeds is particularly detailed as well as comprehensive.

§8. The second of these two authors is known today simply as “Apollodorus.” His writings, known as the Library, are conventionally dated to the second century CE. I must add, with regard to the dating of this Library, that the author’s text seems to have undergone a series of later accretions. And that why the Library cannot be directly equated with the writings of an earlier author, of great renown, known as Apollodorus of Athens, who is dated far earlier, back to the second century BCE. That said, however, I will hereafter cite Apollodorus, author of the Library, without quotation marks. Whether or not he is an accretive version of the earlier Apollodorus, this later Apollodorus is worthy of renown in his own right. Like Diodorus of Sicily, the Apollodorus of our Library provides an admirably comprehensive narrative of his own about Herakles and all his deeds. Also, in this case, the author’s comprehensiveness is further enriched by an extraordinarily valuable commentary by J.G. Frazer (1921) in his edition and translation of Apollodorus.

§9. As we are about to see, however, neither one of these two authors just mentioned—neither Diodorus nor Apollodorus—engages in narrating an ancient Cretan myth centering on Herakles as a native son of Mount Ida in Crete—though Diodorus does in fact make a passing mention of such a Herakles. As I will note in detail at §132 of my survey, Diodorus at 3.74.4 refers to a Cretan Herakles, describing this other Herakles as a ‘Dactyl’ of Mount Ida without choosing to narrate anything he reads about him in the texts of other authors, left unnamed.

§10. By contrast, we do find a brief narrative about such a Herakles as ‘Dactyl’ of Mount Ida in the vast writings of a third ancient Greek author. He is Pausanias, author of the Periegesis (usually translated as ‘travelogue’ or ‘itinerary’), an antiquarian traveler who lived in the second century CE. From the text of Pausanias, 5.7.6–7, we are about to read a markedly concise narrative about such a Cretan Herakles. Elsewhere, however, this same author tells also about a post-Cretan Herakles whose deeds he narrates most expansively—not at all concisely. And the deeds of this post-Cretan Herakles as selectively narrated by Pausanias are mostly matched—though not entirely— by the correspondingly expansive narrations we read in the vast writings of Diodorus and Apollodorus.

§11. What makes the overall narration of Pausanias especially valuable, then, is that he narrates myths about two heroes named Herakles—both a succinct narrative about a Cretan hero and an expansive narrative about a post-Cretan hero—while Diodorus and Apollodorus devote their narrations—and most expansively so—to the post-Cretan Herakles.

§12. As the argumentation further unfolds in this survey, we will see that the overall narrative of Pausanias, accounting for a Cretan as well as a non-Cretan Herakles, provides evidence for the deepest and broadest possible reconstruction of myths about a hero who evolved, over countless centuries, from a Strong Man of the Minoan Empire—and then, of the Mycenaean Empire—into a super-hero who was figured as a universal guardian of civilization in the Greco-Roman imperial world of authors like Pausanias.

The Olympism of Herakles, athlete from Mount Ida

§13. As we now proceed to look into what exactly is being said in the succinct narrative of Pausanias, 5.7.6–7, I signal in advance one salient detail where myths about a Cretan Herakles, native son of Mount Ida, converge with myths about a post-Cretan Herakles—even though these two sets of myths are otherwise radically divergent. That one convergent detail centers on claims about the founding of the oldest and most prestigious athletic festival of the ancient Greek-speaking world, known in modern times as the Olympics. As we will see, the Cretan and the post-Cretan Herakles are both credited with the founding of this ancient athletic festival. This connection of Herakles with the Olympics will be described, from here on, as the hero’s Olympism.

§14. Throughout most of recorded ancient history, the ancient Olympics were celebrated every four years at a site named Olympia, located in the northwest region of the Peloponnesus. In what follows, I focus on one single detail about Olympia and the Olympics as narrated by Pausanias, 5.7.6–7, in myths about the hero Herakles. For Pausanias, as already just noted, both the Cretan and the post-Cretan Herakles can be credited with the founding of the Olympics. Before we consider the relevant text of Pausanias, however, it is important to compare his narration with a divergent narration we read in the universalizing history of Diodorus, 4.14.2, who says, quite unequivocally, that the festival of the Olympics in Olympia was founded by one single hero whose name was Herakles. Moreover, according to the myth as narrated by Diodorus (again, 4.14.2), this Herakles not only founded the athletic festival of the Olympics, but he also competed and won in every athletic event on the occasion of the very first celebration of that festival at Olympia. And here is where we find a striking convergence between, on the one hand, a deed performed by this seemingly post-Cretan Herakles according to the myth as narrated by Diodorus and, on the other hand, a deed performed by a single Cretan Herakles according to the Cretan myth as narrated all too succinctly by Pausanias (again, 5.7.6–7).

§15. In the Cretan version narrated by Pausanias, as we are about to see, the founder of the Olympics was, yes, a hero named Herakles. But this hero was not the same Herakles who founded the Olympics in the version narrated by Diodorus (again, 4.14.2). No, the prototypical founder of the Olympics, according to the Cretan version narrated by Pausanias (again 5.7.6–7), was a different Herakles, an earlier Herakles, who was a native son of Mount Ida in Crete. This Cretan Herakles traveled across the sea from his native island to the mainland of the Peloponnesus, making his way to a sacred place in the northwest region of that mainland. The name of that place was Olympia. There, at Olympia, this Cretan Herakles organized and presided over the very first athletic festival known as the Olympics. The occasion was an act of improvisation. More specifically, this occasion was an act of improvised athleticism. What this hero did was to improvise an athletic competition for his brothers, likewise native sons of Mount Ida, in a primordial footrace. This Cretan Herakles, as Pausanias adds, also improvised a prize to reward the winner in such a footrace, and this prize was simply the adorning of the athletic victor’s hair with a garland made from leaves of wild olive.

§16. Here is the original wording of Pausanias (5.7.6-7), followed by my working translation, taken from an ongoing project, A Pausanias reader in progress:

Note 3. Nagy (2022.01.28).

{5.7.6} […] ἐς δὲ τὸν ἀγῶνα τὸν Ὀλυμπικὸν λέγουσιν Ἠλείων οἱ τὰ ἀρχαιότατα μνημονεύοντες Κρόνον τὴν ἐν οὐρανῷ σχεῖν βασιλείαν πρῶτον καὶ ἐν Ὀλυμπίᾳ ποιηθῆναι Κρόνῳ ναὸν ὑπὸ τῶν τότε ἀνθρώπων, οἳ ὠνομάζοντο χρυσοῦν γένος· Διὸς δὲ τεχθέντος ἐπιτρέψαι Ῥέαν τοῦ παιδὸς τὴν φρουρὰν τοῖς Ἰδαίοις Δακτύλοις, καλουμένοις δὲ τοῖς αὐτοῖς τούτοις καὶ Κούρησιν· ἀφικέσθαι δὲ αὐτοὺς ἐξ Ἴδης τῆς Κρητικῆς, {5.7.7} [πρὸς] Ἡρακλέα καὶ Παιωναῖον καὶ Ἐπιμήδην καὶ Ἰάσιόν τε καὶ Ἴδαν· τὸν δὲ Ἡρακλέα παίζοντα – εἶναι γὰρ δὴ αὐτὸν πρεσβύτατον ἡλικίᾳ – συμβαλεῖν τοὺς ἀδελφοὺς ἐς ἅμιλλαν δρόμου καὶ τὸν νικήσαντα ἐξ αὐτῶν κλάδῳ στεφανῶσαι κοτίνου· παρεῖναι δὲ αὐτοῖς πολὺν δή τι οὕτω τὸν κότινον ὡς τὰ χλωρὰ ἔτι τῶν φύλλων ὑπεστρῶσθαι σφᾶς καθεύδοντας.

{5.7.6} […] As for the festival-of-competitions [agōn] named the Olympics, here is what is said by those people-of-Elis who commemorate [mnēmoneuein] the most ancient of all ancient things. Kronos [the god] took possession of kingship in the sky [ouranos], in the beginning, and a temple [nāos] was built for him, in Olympia, by the humans who lived back then and who were named the Golden Generation. When Zeus was born, [his divine mother] Rhea entrusted the guardianship of her son to the Dactyls-of-Ida [Idaioi Daktuloi]—who were also called Kourētes. They came [to Olympia] from Ida-in-Crete, and they were Herakles, Paiōnaios, Epimēdēs, Iasios, and Idas. {5.7.7} Herakles, being the eldest [of the Dactyls], had his brothers compete, as a game, in a footrace, and he garlanded the one of them who won. The garland was made [of leaves] from a branch of wild olive [kotinos]. They had such an ample supply [of wild olive] that they slept on piles of its leaves while still green.

Pausanias 5.7.6-7

§17. Highlighted here are some salient details about this myth as reported by Pausanias in the text as quoted. Selectively added are further details that he reports elsewhere in his extensive writings about the Olympics and about Olympia as the primordial site of the Olympics:

§17a. As we see from the narrative of Pausanias, the venue for the first Olympic competition that ever took place was Olympia in the Peloponnesus. This primordial version of the Olympics centered on one athletic event, the footrace, and the competitors were prototypical heroes who are identified as ‘Dactyls’ in the narrative. As already noted, Herakles was likewise a ‘Dactyl’. This Herakles, together with his fellow ‘Dactyls’, had traveled across the sea from the island of Crete, their homeland, to Olympia in the Peloponnesus. These ‘Dactyls’ were five in number. They were uterine brothers, and Herakles was the eldest. Their birthplace in Crete was their very own Mother Mountain there, named Ida.

§17b. It was supposedly because this Cretan Herakles and his uterine brothers were five in number that they were called the Daktuloi ‘Dactyls’ or ‘Fingers’. Alternatively, however, the Greek word daktuloi could also refer to the five toes on each foot, not only to the five fingers on each hand, so that the meaning ‘toes’ could be more fitting than ‘fingers’ in a myth about a footrace.

§17c. It seems that Herakles was not a competitor in the primordial footrace: instead, he organized this athletic competition by presiding over it and by awarding a primordial prize to the winner of the race. The primordial nature of this prize, a most simple kind of garland, plaited with the leaves of the wild olive, corresponds to the primordial time when all this was happening. It was a beginning of beginnings, when the first of all gods had taken possession of the sky. That first god was Kronos, ruler of the Golden Age, and there had been no previous god in this particular version of theogonic mythmaking, since Ouranos or ‘Sky’, who is pictured elsewhere as the personalized father of Kronos (for example, in the Hesiodic Theogony), is depersonalized here as the elemental sky that Kronos possesses as his abode simply by virtue of his own personalized role as the first king of the gods.

§17d. Because Herakles and his brother ‘Dactyls’ were five in number, the Olympics were celebrated every recurring fifth year. The numerology here, as in saying the ‘fifth’ year, reflects the ancient Greek system of inclusive ordinal numbering, since the Greek language had no zero. Correspondingly, Herakles was a fifth ‘Dactyl’ because he complemented the four ‘Dactyls’ by way of presiding over the competition of these four runners in their primordial footrace, and these four ‘Dactyls’ matched in number the four full years that would intervene from one recurring Olympic festival to the next. From such a point of view, the understanding of ‘Dactyl’ as ‘finger’ and not as ‘toe’ could after all be the more appropriate alternative, since the counting of numbers is expected to be done primarily with the fingers of the hand, not with the toes of the foot.

§17e. Just as Herakles and his fellow ‘Dactyls’ originated from Mount Ida in Crete, so also a later hero who presided over the Olympics, named Klymenos, was a Cretan by origin, as we read further in the text of Pausanias, at 5.8.1, where he then adds a another detail: this Klymenos, whose name means ‘Famous’, became eligible to preside over the athletic events precisely because he claimed descent from the earlier Cretan Herakles.

§18. As we can see from the succinct narrative of Pausanias, the founder of the Olympics was an earlier Herakles originating from Crete, while the post-Cretan Herakles was a later hero who gets credit only for re-organizing the festival and for competing in some of the athletic events. In the myth of such a Herakles as narrated by Pausanias, at 5.8.4, this second Herakles competed in only two athletic events on the occasion of his presiding at the Olympics; and he emerged victorious in both competitions, namely, (A) in wrestling and (B) in the pankration, which was a less regulated form of combat sport. With regard to these two details, the myth as narrated by Pausanias is to be contrasted with the myth as narrated by Diodorus (again, 4.14.2), where, as we have seen, the post-Cretan Herakles not only founded the athletic festival of the Olympics but also competed and won in every athletic event on the occasion of the very first celebration of this festival at Olympia. By contrast, from the standpoint of the overall myths about the Olympics as narrated by Pausanias, the founder of the Olympics was not a second Herakles but an earlier Herakles, a First Herakles, originating from Crete. Either way, the mythological connection of Herakles with the festival of the Olympics is a most telling sign of what has been described here as the hero’s Olympism.

About the deeds of the post-Cretan Herakles

§19. The focus here moves away, for the moment, from the myth about Herakles, founder of the Olympics, as a hero originating from the island of Crete, which had been in the distant past the center of the so-called Minoan Empire. That myth about a Cretan Herakles diverges radically from the vast variety of alternative myths about Herakles as a hero originating from other places in later times. These alternative myths are thoroughly tracked by the first two authors who have been highlighted as reliable sources in my survey, namely, Diodorus and Apollodorus. But even our third author, Pausanias, who has been our only source in tracking the myth about Herakles as a native son of Crete, actually narrates still other myths about a hero whom he considers to be only the second Herakles but whose origins match, for the most part, the origins of the one and only Herakles to be considered worthy of extensive narration by Diodorus and Apollodorus.

§20. So, what are these other lands—lands other than the island of Crete—that could be credited as the homeland for the Second Herakles in the version of Pausanias, as also for the one and only Herakles in the versions of Diodorus and Apollodorus? From the perspective of all three authors, these other lands were known as two regions, namely, Boeotia and the Argolid. But the myths themselves are more precise. In the mythological era of what was actually being narrated about the regions known as Boeotia and the Argolid, a more precise way of referring to these places of origin for Herakles would be to name the two cities that were most relevant to myths about this hero that actually originated from Boeotia and the Argolid. In the case of Boeotia, that city would be Thebes. As for the Argolid, in that case the most relevant city would be Mycenae, paired with the city of Tiryns, which, in myths about Herakles, was figured as the seaport of Mycenae. Further, again in mythological terms, each one of these two cities, Thebes and Mycenae, would be visualized primarily as a citadel, which would be the site of a royal palace as the center of power for the king who ruled over the given region dominated by the given citadel. Even further, as we can see most clearly in a separate formulation by Pausanias, at 1.26.2, with specific reference to prehistoric phases of the city of Athens, the Greek word polis had in the earliest times meant ‘citadel’, and the meaning ‘city’ became prevalent only in later times, necessitating the use of a more precise word, akropolis ‘acropolis’, in the sense of ‘citadel’.

A post-Minoan and then a pre-Mycenaean and then a Mycenaean Herakles

§21. So, the palaces situated on top of the citadels of Thebes and Mycenae would have been the setting, in myth, for the life and times of a post-Cretan hero named Herakles. From here on, however, the term post-Cretan needs to be replaced, for the sake of achieving more precision, by the term post-Minoan, which signals the mythological legacy of an earlier reality, namely, the era of the so-called Minoan Empire of Crete. As already noted, this ancient empire dates back, roughly, to the earlier part of the second millennium BCE. That said, however, it would still be imprecise simply to go one step further by equating the term post-Minoan with the term Mycenaean—used by archaeologists in dating the era of the so-called Mycenaean Empire, which superseded the Minoan Empire and which dates back, again roughly, to the latter part of the second millennium BCE. For the moment, the analysis here is focused not on the Mycenaean Empire in general but rather, much more specifically, on the citadel of Mycenae, where, in terms of myths about Herakles, the palace of the king of Mycenae would be situated. And the point is, myths about the life of Herakles connect him first with the citadel of Thebes, not with the citadel of Mycenae. And the Theban phase in the life of Herakles, as we are about to see, is still pre-Mycenaean. Only the Mycenaean phase in myths about the hero’s life, where his deeds are linked with the palace of Mycenae and no longer with the palace of Thebes, is truly Mycenaean in the sense that it signals the mythological legacy of a later reality, namely, what archaeologists recognize as theMycenaean Empire, which can be defined as a loosely-structured confederation of kingdoms ruled by minor kings but dominated by one major kingdom ruled by one major king, who was the over-king of Mycenae.

§22. As we are about to see, especially from the narratives of Diodorus and Apollodorus, myths about a post-Minoan Herakles reflect a fusion of pre-Mycenaean and Mycenaean myths originating respectively from the kingdoms of Thebes and Mycenae. It was in the kingdom of Thebes where the pre-Mycenaean Herakles was born and where he performed the deeds of his early life. But then it was the kingdom of Mycenae that became the staging for the later deeds performed by the hero.

Two deeds of Herakles: killing the Lion of Cithaeron and killing the Lion of Nemea

§23. For illustrating the fusion of pre-Mycenaean and Mycenaean myths about the deeds of Heracles, the investigation now focuses on two of these deeds, originating respectively in the kingdoms of Thebes and Mycenae. In the earlier Theban phase of the hero’s life, he killed the Lion of Cithaeron, a beast that was ravaging the region of Boeotia in the environs of a mountain named Cithaeron. He performed this deed as a favor to Kreon, king of Thebes. Then, in a later phase of the hero’s life, he killed the Lion of Nemea, a beast that was ravaging the region of the Argolid, in the environs of a mountain named Trētos, situated between Mycenae and a site named Nemea. The most straightforward narration of both killings is by Apollodorus: Lion of Cithaeron at 2.4.9–10, Lion of Nemea at 2.5.1.

§24. As we will see, the hero performed the second of these two deeds, the killing of the Lion of Nemea, not as a favor to a king, as in the case of his killing the Lion of Cithaeron, but as an act of obligation. As we will also see, Herakles was commanded to perform this deed by the over-king of Mycenae, whose orders he was obliged to obey. But before we consider the identity of this over-king of Mycenae, who commanded Herakles to perform the deed of killing the Lion of Nemea, further elaboration is needed about pre-Mycenaean and Mycenaean phases of myths about the deeds of Herakles, as exemplified respectively by the hero’s twin deeds, noted just now, where he first killed the Lion of Cithaeron in the pre-Mycenaean phase of his life and then killed the Lion of Nemea later on, in the Mycenaean phase. While narrating the Mycenaean phase of the hero’s life, both Diodorus and Apollodorus use a special word in referring to special deeds performed by Herakles—deeds he performed, as we will see, in service to the over-king of Mycenae. That special word for these special deeds is āthloi, conventionally translated as ‘labors’. As we are about to see, Herakles performed these deeds, unlike his many other deeds, only because he was obliged to obey the over-king of Mycenae, who had ordered the hero to undertake each one of these āthloi. A conventional way of referring to these such special deeds is to call them the Labors of Herakles.

§25. There were twelve such āthloi or Labors as narrated by Diodorus (4.11.3-4.39.4) as also by Apollodorus (2.5.1-12), and the main details of all twelve of these deeds match each other in the two narrations, though not exactly in the same sequence. Also, both narrations about the Twelve Labors include a vast number of additional deeds performed by Herakles—deeds interwoven with the Labors but not described by either author as āthloi. In studies of myths about all the deeds of Herakles considered together, such additional deeds of the hero are generally known as sub-Labors. Still other sub-Labors of Herakles—that is, other deeds that are likewise not counted by Diodorus and Apollodorus as āthloi—are those younger deeds of this hero as narrated by both authors about the pre-Mycenaean phase of Herakles, when he was still based in Thebes, not yet having relocated to Mycenae and to its mythologized seaport, Tiryns.

Note 4. An example of studies about the sub-Labors as well as the Labors of Herakles: Nagy (2024) Part I “Twelve Olympian Essays” Essay 4.

§26. With this clarification about the Labors and the sub-Labors of Herakles in place, the time has come to consider in more detail the two different myths about two different lions killed by Herakles. In the overall narrations by both Diodorus and Apollodorus, the very first Labor of Herakles was the hero’s killing of the Lion of Nemea in the Argolid, and the hero’s deed is described as an āthlos (Diodorus 4.11.3-4, Apollodorus 2.5.1). To be contrasted is the hero’s earlier killing of the Lion of Cithaeron in Boeotia, which, as we will see, is not counted as a Labor of Herakles in the narratives of either Diodorus or Apollodorus. Accordingly, it can be described as a sub-Labor.

§27. But this is not to say that the killing of the Lion of Cithaeron, just now described as a sub-Labor, is a deed that is any less typical of Herakles than those deeds of his that are counted among the Twelve Labors as narrated by both Diodorus and Apollodorus. It is only to say that the Lion of Cithaeron, unlike the Lion of Nemea, was part of a mythological tradition about heroic labors that were linked to Thebes and Boeotia, yes, but not to Mycenae and the Argolid.

Note 5. What follows is based on Nagy (2024) Part I “Twelve Olympian Essays” Essay 10 §§5-7.

§28. As already noted, the killing of the Lion of Nemea by Herakles is straightforwardly narrated in the Library of Apollodorus (2.5.1). Likewise in the same Library (2.4.9–10), we read a straightforward narration about the hero’s earlier killing of the Lion of Cithaeron. And, as also already noted, this earlier deed is a sub-Labor, not counted among what I will hereafter describe as the canonical Twelve Labors of Herakles. In the Library of Apollodorus (2.4.9–10), this other myth—this sub-Labor—is situated at a markedly early point in the Theban phase of the hero’s life. Here is a paraphrase of the narration by Apollodorus:

Herakles is an adolescent, only eighteen years old, when he hunts down and kills a lion roaming the highlands of Mount Cithaeron near Thebes and Thespiai in Boeotia. The lion had been preying on the cattle in the lowlands. The hero then skins the dead lion and, from this time forward, he wears the lionskin. The scalp of the lion’s entire head has become a makeshift helmet for the hero’s skull, and the face of Herakles is hereafter framed within the gaping jaws of the beast.

§29. The detail here about the hero’s wearing of the lionskin belongs only to the specific narration about the Lion of Cithaeron in the overall narrative about Herakles as retold by Apollodorus (2.4.9–10), whereas the narration about the Lion of Nemea, also retold by Apollodorus (2.5.1), has nothing to say about any wearing of a lionskin. By contrast, in the overall narrative as retold by Diodorus (4.11.3–4), the detail about the skinning of a dead lion belongs to the specific narration about the killing of the Lion of Nemea—and there is in this case no narrative to be told about that other lion, the Lion of Cithaeron.

§30. So, the way for the narrative of Diodorus to include the specific detail about the wearing of the lionskin in his retelling of the myth about Herakles and the Lion of Nemea is to occlude altogether the myth about Herakles and the Lion of Cithaeron. By contrast, the narrative of Apollodorus includes the myth about Herakles and the Lion of Cithaeron alongside the myth about Herakles and the Lion of Nemea—but it occludes the specific detail about the wearing of the lionskin in the retelling of the myth about Herakles and the Lion of Nemea. We see a comparable pattern of occlusion in the overall narrative of the Labors as visually retold in the relief sculptures of the metopes built into the temple of Zeus in Olympia, dating from the mid-fifth century BCE. The primal scene in the first metope pictures the First Labor of Herakles who, still a beardless adolescent, has just killed the Lion of Nemea, and who is shown wearing a lionskin neither here nor in any one of the remaining eleven metopes that retell the rest of the narrative about the hero’s canonical Twelve Labors.

§31. What we learn, then, from the two localized narratives about Herakles and his killing of a lion is that the hero’s actual deed of killing such a beast is a heroic āthlos or ‘labor’ in and of itself. And here the translation of āthlos is now spelled with a lower-case L, as labor, not necessarily Labor. The point is, the distinction between Labor and labor—or between Labor and sub-Labor—is not a matter of distinguishing deeds that are more typical and less typical of a hero like Herakles. Rather, the distinction reflects a difference between two kinds of narrative about the many deeds of Herakles. In the case of one kind of narrative, the deed that is being narrated can be any āthlos or ‘labor’ of the hero. In the case of another kind of narrative, by contrast, the deed that is being narrated can only be the kind of āthlos or ‘Labor’ where Herakles is obliged to perform the given deed because he is commanded to do so by the over-king of Mycenae, whom he is obliged to obey. As we will now see, the canonical Twelve Labors of Herakles can be traced back to a Mycenaean phase of mythmaking about such deeds, and, in such cases, it is fitting to use the term Mycenaeanas a specific way to describe those myths about the hero that originate from Mycenae as the centerpoint of what archaeologists call the Mycenaean Empire.

Why the canonical Twelve Labors of Herakles are distinct from his other labors

§32. A set of myths that most clearly reveal the reason for a distinction between deeds specified and not specified as the hero’s canonical Twelve Labors is retold by Apollodorus (2.4.5-12). What follows here is an epitome of the most significant details, which will be vitally important for the argumentation that follows:

– A hero named Elektryon, who was a son of Perseus who in turn was a son of the sky-god Zeus himself, was king of Mycenae

– Elektryon decided to entrust his kingship as well as his daughter, the princess Alkmene, to a hero named Amphitryon, who was obliged not to consummate his marriage to Alkmene until he successfully helped Elektryon defeat a band of cattle-rustlers who had killed his sons. Amphitryon was obliged because these sons of the king were the brothers of his wife Alkmene.

– But then Amphitryon accidentally killed Elektryon. What resulted was that Amphitryon lost the kingship of Mycenae to Sthenelos, brother of the dead king Elektryon. This Sthenelos, like Elektryon, was a son of Perseus, who as we already saw was the son of the sky-god Zeus himself.

– What also resulted from the accidental killing of Elektryon by Amphitryon was exile from Mycenae. Amphitryon and his bride Alkmene were now forced to go into exile from the palace of Mycenae and to find refuge in the palace of Thebes, where they were received by the king of the Thebans, Kreon, whose name means ‘King’.

– Now a future son of Amphitryon and his wife Alkmene could have regained the kingship of Mycenae, besting a future son of Sthenelos and his unnamed wife. Why? It was because the god Zeus himself had meanwhile impregnated Alkmene. Zeus had succeeded in seducing Alkmene by deceitfully assuming the appearance of her mortal husband.

– Thus the wife of Amphitryon was now pregnant with Herakles, son of Zeus, but, meanwhile, the wife of Sthenelos was also pregnant. Here is where the goddess Hera, sister and consort of the god Zeus, intervened: she deceitfully accelerated the pregnancy of the wife of Sthenelos and retarded the pregnancy of Alkmene, so that Eurystheus, the son of Sthenelos, was born ahead of Herakles, who was both the apparent son of Amphitryon and the real son of Zeus.

– Now the primogeniture of Eurystheus, cousin of Herakles, validated this inferior hero as the rightful king of Mycenae, who was thus socially superior to Herakles. This disequilibrium would lead to major consequences.

– Before the consequences are narrated, what follows next in the narration of Apollodorus is a series of famous deeds performed by Herakles as he was growing up in Thebes. Among these deeds was the hero’s killing of the Lion of Cithaeron.

– Herakles performs other great deeds, including his saving the city of Thebes from subjugation by a rival city in Boeotia, Orkhomenos. To reward the hero, Kreon, king of Thebes, now gives away his daughter Megara to be married to Herakles. But the marriage is doomed: suffering a fit of madness, induced by Hera, Herakles kills the sons born to his wife Megara.

– The resulting pollution could only be expiated if the hero exiled himself from Thebes and relocated himself to Tiryns, seaport of Mycenae. Herakles now became subject to commands imposed on him by Eurystheus, king of Mycenae.

§33. These events as narrated by Apollodorus (again, 2.4.5-12) are closely matched, though with some variations, in what is narrated by Diodorus (4.9.1-4.11.2). Both narrations, then, record a transition from Thebes to Mycenae in myths about the deeds of Herakles. Once Herakles is relocated in the realm of Mycenae, his canonical Twelve Labors in the service of Eurystheus will be ready to commence.

§34. We read in Diodorus (4.9.5) an essential detail about these Labors of Herakles. They were sanctioned by the hero’s divine father, Zeus himself, who had accepted, though reluctantly, what resulted from a deceptive plan of Hera, namely, that Eurystheus and not Herakles should become the over-king of Mycenae, so that this inferior hero could thus possess the kingly authority of giving orders to the superior hero Herakles, commanding him to perform his Twelve Labors. But Zeus had his own plan, which in turn was accepted by Hera, and Diodorus goes on to narrate the myth about this divine plan as well. Basically, Zeus agreed to enforce the commands of Eurystheus for Herakles to perform the Twelve Labors—but only on the condition that Herakles be compensated for performing these Labors by being rewarded with immortalization after death. Moreover, this myth as narrated by Diodorus makes it clear that Hera, who had been initially maleficent in her relationship with Herakles, ultimately became beneficent in agreeing to the plan of Zeus to immortalize the hero. A narration of the myth about this immortalization is attested already in a Hesiodic fragment (F 25.19-33). Moreover, as we learn from the more detailed narration of this myth as retold by Diodorus, Hera became the agent of Zeus in making the immortalization complete. In the heavenly heights of Mount Olympus, Herakles was literally reborn after death, becoming a new son of the goddess Hera. The physical aspects of this myth about a rebirth of the hero from the body of Hera are made evident even in the stylized wording Diodorus (4.39.2), and I translate here: ‘Hera got into her bed and drew Herakles close to her body; then she ejected him through her clothes to the ground, re-enacting [= making mīmēsis of] genuine birth’ (τὴν δὲ τέκνωσιν γενέσθαι φασὶ τοιαύτην· τὴν Ἥραν ἀναβᾶσαν ἐπὶ κλίνην καὶ τὸν Ἡρακλέα προσλαβομένην πρὸς τὸ σῶμα διὰ τῶν ἐνδυμάτων ἀφεῖναι πρὸς τὴν γῆν, μιμουμένην τὴν ἀληθινὴν γένεσιν). This stylized birth in the bed of Hera is the hero’s rebirth, a birth into immortality.

Note 6. Further analysis in Nagy (2013) The Ancient Greek Hero in 24 Hours (hereafter abbreviated as H24H) Hour 1 §§46-47.

§35. What we see here, then, is a basic mythological motivation, linked with Mycenae, for the distinctness of the canonical Twelve Labors in comparison with other labors performed by Herakles. The role of Eurystheus, over-king of Mycenae, is linked with the special use of the word āthlos in referring to the Labors of Herakles in the narrative of Diodorus, as also of Apollodorus, even though the word itself could have been used in referring to deeds other than the Twelve Labors—including the multitude of sub-Labors narrated by both Diodorus and Apollodorus.

§36. The use of the word āthlos in referring to the Labors of Herakles is attested already in Homeric poetry, since the deeds performed by the hero in the service of the over-king Eurystheus are actually called aethloi in the Iliad (19.133). But it is impossible to determine whether this word aethlos, which is the earlier form of āthlos, referred specifically to the canonical Twelve Labors as narrated in such far later sources as Diodorus and Apollodorus. There were other deeds that could have merited just as much fame as those deeds of Herakles that were later known as the Twelve Labors. A case in point is the highly poeticized retelling of the Twelve Labors in the Herakles of Euripides, a drama first performed around 416 BCE. In this version, where Herakles in a fit of madness tragically kills his own sons in Thebes—and where the deed is done not before the hero performs his Twelve Labors but only afterward—we find that the concise Euripidean retelling of these Labors, which are actually called āthloi at line 827 of the drama, includes deeds that are not included among the Twelve Labors as narrated in the retellings by later sources like Diodorus and Apollodorus. In the sequence of the hero’s Twelve Labors as narrated in the drama of Euripides by way of choral performance, at lines 359-427, we read fleeting mentions of deeds like his shooting of Centaurs with his poisoned arrows (Labor Two, lines 364-374), his killing of the brigand Kyknos, son of Ares (Labor Five, lines 389-393), and his opening up the seas for safe navigation (Labor 7, lines 400-402). Not one of these labors is counted among the canonical Twelve Labors as narrated in later sources like Diodorus and Apollodorus.

Note 7. More on the Labors of Herakles in the Herakles of Euripides: Nagy (2022.03.28).

Indo-European mythological precedents for the Labors and the sub-Labors of Herakles

§37. The mythological traditions underlying the narratives about the Labors and the sub-Labors of Herakles are shaped by what I describe here as “Indo-European” precedents that can be reconstructed by way of using the methodology of linguists who compare not only the cognate languages stemming from the so-called Indo-European language family, which of course includes Greek, but also any cognate myths inherited by any of these languages.

Note 8. What follows at §§87-92 is a rewriting of Nagy (2024) Part I “Twelve Olympian Essays” Essay 4 §§14-20.

§38. A convenient starting-point for such reconstruction is the set of narrations by Diodorus (4.10.1) and by Apollodorus (2.4.12) about a non-Cretan Herakles in his more youthful phases—before he started to perform his canonical Twelve Labors. These two sources report that the hero in such earlier phases of his heroic lifetime had a different name, which was Alkaîos according to Diodorus and Alkeídēs according to Apollodorus. The basic meaning of both these names, derived as they both are from the Greek form alk– as attested in the noun alkḗ ‘strength’, is ‘Strong Man’. This hero, then, is treated as a generic Strong Man in the general context of narratives about his sub-Labors, as I have already described some of his reported deeds—and he becomes a particularized hero named Herakles in the particular context of narratives about his canonical Twelve Labors.

§39. Such a particularization of this hero’s identity is relevant to the actual etymology of the name Hērakléēs, which can be analyzed morphologically as meaning ‘he who has the glory [kléos] of Hērā’, as I argued in H24H Hour 1§45 (and, earlier, in Nagy 1996:48n79, following what is argued in an article by Olga Davidson 1980). Also, in parallel argumentation at H24H Hour 1§§45, I added that the problem of the short a in the second syllable of the form Hērăkléēs / Hērăklês can best be addressed by comparing the short a in the second syllable of the form Alkáthoos(Alkăthoos), the name of a hero of Megara (as in Theognis 774) who figures in myths that are closely related to myths about Herakles. This name Alkáthoos, the meaning of which I interpret as ‘running [verb théein] with strength’, points to yet another generic ‘Strong Man’—like Alkaîos and Alkeídēs.

§40. This etymology of Hērakléēs / Hēraklês ‘he who has the glory [kléos] of Hērā’, is actually validated in Homeric poetry: the narrative about the birth of Herakles in Iliad 19.95-133 makes it clear that, after all is said and done, this hero actually owes to the goddess Hera the glory he got from the songs that were sung about him, since it was the original antagonism of the goddess toward the hero that caused her consort Zeus to authorize, however reluctantly, the ‘Labors’, called āthloi (aethloi) at line 133, which were imposed on Herakles by the king Eurystheus. And it was these Labors that earned for Herakles his glorification by way of song. Thus the evidence of Homeric poetry confirms the explanation for the meaning of the name Hērakléēs as formulated by Matris of Thebes (FGH 39 F 2, by way of Diodorus 1.24.4; restatement by Diodorus at 4.10.1). And this meaning in turn confirms the etymology, ‘he who has the glory [kléos] of Hērā’, as reconstructed by way of Indo-European linguistics.

§41. Here I cite the pathfinding work of Georges Dumézil, an expert in reconstructing myths transmitted in Indo-European languages—the language-family of which includes Greek, Italic, Celtic, Germanic, Indic, and so on. Most relevant are two books of his, the English titles for which are Destiny of the Warrior (1970; in French, Dumézil 1969, second edition 1985) and The Stakes of the Warrior (1983b; in French, Part 1 of Dumézil 1971). I should add that the second of these books of Dumézil is actually the source for my having used in my survey here the term sub-Labor as distinct from Labor, following his use of the term sous-travaux as distinct from Travaux (Dumézil 1971:118; the English translation likewise has “sub-Labor”: Dumézil 1983b:124).

§42. For Dumézil, as I read him, it is primarily the Labors and not the sub-Labors of Herakles that derive from an Indo-European mythological tradition. Unlike the sub-Labors, which are voluntarily undertaken by the hero, the Labors are divinely imposed, and they are at first resisted by Herakles. As Dumézil shows, such resistance is a typical “sin” for a warrior, and it leads to divine punishment. The story of such a “sin” is explicitly retold by Diodorus (4.10.6–4.11.1). In the retelling, the king Eurystheus ‘commanded’, as expressed by the verb pros-tattein, that Herakles must perform twelve ‘labors’, as expressed by the noun āthloi (4.10.6), and then the god Zeus himself authorized the royal command by sending word to Herakles that he must obey and perform these labors (4.10.7). But the hero at first hesitated, aware as he was that Eurystheus, despite that man’s social superiority as king, was inferior as a man (4.11.1), and now the hero’s “sin” of resistance is punished: the goddess Hera, consort of Zeus, inflicts a toxic fit of madness on Herakles, leading to his slaughtering of the children he had with his wife Megara (4.11.1-2); after a period of grieving, Heraklessteels himself to undertake his Labors in the service of the king Eurystheus (4.11.2).

§43. Although Dumézil tracked the Greek myths about the antagonism of Hera toward Herakles in his books, Destiny of the Warrior (1970) and The Stakes of the Warrior (1983b), he did not use the relevant evidence from Homeric poetry, in Iliad 19.95-133, relying only on the prose texts of Diodorus and, secondarily, of Apollodorus. In a volume edited by Jacques Bonnet, published in 1981, which was a collection of essays paying tribute to the wide-ranging intellectual influence of Dumézil (I look back with some nostalgia at the title given to that volume: Cahiers “Pour un temps”: Georges Dumézil), I contributed a piece (Nagy 1981, rewritten in Nagy 1990:7-17: “Homer and Comparative Mythology”) arguing for the importance of adding the comparative evidence of Homeric poetry in reconstructing the Indo-European heritage of myths about Herakles, and I focused on Iliad 19.95-133 (Nagy 1981:140 and 145n16; also 1990:12n32), citing the earlier work of Davidson (1980) on this same Homeric passage. I quote here what can serve as a summary of my findings in that piece (again, Nagy 1990:12n32): “the compressed retelling of the Herakles story in Iliad 19.95-133 is a clear attestation of the same Indo-European pattern that Dumézil has reconstructed from such nonpoetic retellings as in Diodorus (4.8-30).”

A special sub-Labor: the founding of the Olympics by the Olympian Herakles

§44. Among the deeds of Herakles, I focus here on a special kind of sub-Labor, not directly treated by Georges Dumézil, where the hero’s prowess in athletics is highlighted. A most prestigious example is the founding of the Olympics by Herakles—a deed that explains the supreme fame of this hero as an ultimate model of athleticism. As already noted, the myth about this famous deed is retold by Diodorus (4.14.1-2), who reports that Herakles not only founded this prestigious festival: he also competed in every athletic event on the prototypical occasion of the very first Olympics. On that occasion, as also already noted, Herakles won first prize in every Olympic event. This myth about what I have described as the Olympism of Herakles is a perfect illustration of a fundamental connection between the labor of a hero—any hero, not just Herakles—and the effort of any athlete who engages in any athletic competition, not only in the supreme athletic competitions of the Olympics. From the standpoint of linguistics, the hero’s effort as a ‘labor’ and the athlete’s effort as an athletic ‘competition’ are the “same thing,” since the ancient Greek word for a hero’s ‘labor’ and for an athlete’s ‘competition’ is the same: that word is āthlos. And the modern word athlete originates from the ancient Greek word āthlētēs, meaning ‘athlete’, which in turn is linguistically derived from the ancient Greek word āthlos, translated as ‘labor’ in references to his heroic deeds, which include the founding of the Olympics.

Note 9. Η24Η Hour 1§41.

§45. An ideal illustration of the athleticism that is linked even with the canonical Labors of Herakles is the description of the first Labor, the hero’s killing of the Lion of Nemea, in the narratives of both Diodorus (4.11.3–4) and Apollodorus (2.5.1): in both narratives, the lion is impervious to weapons and must be killed by choking it to death. This detail is relevant to another detail, narrated by Pausanias, about the participation of Herakles as an athletic competitor in the Olympics. In the myth as retold by Pausanias at 5.8.4, already noted, Herakles was the winner in two athletic events, that is, both in wrestling and in the pankration, which was a more free-form type of wrestling. Such a mythological focusing on Herakles as a champion of the pankration is relevant to the stratagem that Herakles devised, myth has it, in his killing of the Nemean Lion: as already noted, this beast was impervious to weapons, and so the hero choked it to death. And the hero’s choke-hold, as described in this myth, is an athletic maneuver that typifies the pankration as a form of combat sport. By contrast with the regulations of wrestling, the pankration was relatively unregulated, allowing for not only punching and kicking but even choking.

§46. Thus even the canonical Labors of Herakles, all twelve of them taken together, can be seen as a mythological expression of the hero’s athleticism. Further, this athleticism of Herakles corresponds to what has already been described as the hero’s Olympism, in the sense that Olympia, the site of the Olympics, that greatest athletic festival of the Greek-speaking world, was also the site where the canonical Twelve Labors of Herakles were most prominently celebrated in the visual narrative of the relief sculptures that grace the twelve metopes of the Temple of Zeus, built at Olympia in the mid-fifth century BCE to celebrate the prototypical founding of the festival of the Olympics—as mythologized by the state of Elis, which controlled the festival in that era.

Note 10. H24H Hour 1§43.

§47. In the mid-fifth century, when the Temple of Zeus was built in Olympia, both the site of Olympia itself and the athletic festival of the Olympics were officially controlled by the state of Elis, which had become the dominant political power in the northwest Peloponnesus, the region where Olympia was situated. In earlier times, by contrast, the state that had dominated Olympia and the Olympics was not Elis but a rival state, named Pisa. But then, at some point in the earlier part of the fifth century, as we can reconstruct the history from a passing remark by Pausanias at 5.10.2, the state of Elis decisively defeated the state of Pisa in a war, and now the wealth of the conquered state—could be appropriated as spoils of war by the victorious state for the purpose of creating a magnificent new expression of wealth, power, and prestige, namely, the great Temple of Zeus in Olympia. Adorning that Olympian temple, as we have seen, were the relief sculptures of the twelve metopes celebrating the myth of the Twelve Labors of Herakles. But now we can see also the political relevance of the myth itself, as shaped and reshaped by the state of Elis. The reshaped version of this myth, visually narrated in the twelve metopes, was meant to celebrate also the glory of the victorious state of Elis, which now eclipsed the former glory of the defeated state, Pisa.

Note 11. The work of Paul Christesen (2005:343–344) analyzes evidence that points to an era when Olympia and the Olympics were controlled by Pisa, not by Elis. Further analysis by Nagy (2024), “Twelve Olympian Essays, Essay 1: Herakles, Mount Olympus, and the Olympia of the Olympics.” Part of the evidence comes from Pindar’s Olympian 10.

About a Mount Olympus that was once a visual backdrop for a royal citadel at Pisa

§48. In myths about Herakles that had been shaped in earlier times by the state of Pisa, there was one significant detail that went missing, it will now be argued, in corresponding myths that were being shaped in later times by the state of Elis. What went missing in myths maintained by the state of Elis was an idea that was very much present in myths that had formerly been current in the glory days of Pisa. It was the idea of a local Mount Olympus, which would have been viewed as a sacred site where Herakles, back in the age of heroes, had been immortalized by way of being reborn as a new son of the goddess Hera. The place-name Olympia, site of the Olympics, would have been a cherished commemoration of such a localized Mount Olympus that was venerated by the local population of Pisa. According to the geographer Strabo, the acropolis or citadel of Pisa was situated between two mountains, one of which was actually named Olympus while the other was named Ossa:

Τὴν δὲ πόλιν ἱδρυμένην ἐφ’ ὕψους δεικνύουσι μεταξὺ δυοῖν ὀροῖν, Ὄσσης καὶ Ὀλύμπου, ὁμωνύμων τοῖς ἐν Θετταλίᾳ.

And they point out [about Pisa] that the polis [of Pisa] was founded on top of an elevation [hupsos] situated between a pair of two mountains, Ossa and Olympus, which had the same names as those [mountains] situated in Thessaly.

Strabo 8.3.31 C356

§49. In what follows, we will see that the word polis in this context can be understood as ‘acropolis’, that is, as the ‘citadel’ of the city known as Pisa. And, as we will also see, such an acropolis could be viewed, from the standpoint of a long-gone heroic age, as a citadel fit for a king who had ties to the Olympian gods living on what was viewed as Mount Olympus, paired with Mount Ossa as the visual backdrop that looked over the acropolis. As Strabo points out in his description, just quoted, the pairing of these two names of mountains, Olympus and Ossa, matches the pairing of the grand mountain Olympus in Macedonia with an adjacent and comparably grand mountain named Ossa in Thessaly, and he refers to the location of those two towering heights, in politicized terms, as ‘Thessaly’. Relevant here are remarks made by Herodotus (7.128), who notes that the narrow pass that separates Mount Ossa in Thessaly from Mount Olympus, which extends northward into Macedonia, was the gateway to approaching the entire region of ancient Thessaly. In the era, documented by Herodotus, when a powerful military expedition launched from the Asiatic side of the Aegean Sea succeeded in invading the European side, the access to Europe, as it were, was this narrow pass leading westward from the seacoast into the interior of Thessaly. And the dynasts who were then the rulers of Thessaly collaborated with Xerxes, ruler of the Persian Empire, in allowing the king’s imperial forces to enter the European Greek-speaking world by way of this narrow pass separating Ossa to the South from Olympus to the North. The space between these two grand mountains, then, was the gateway to imperial power. In this connection, it is important to take note of a relevant historical fact: there had existed an alliance, in the later part of the sixth century, between these dynasts of Thessaly with the Peisistratidai, dynasts of Athens. In that era, such an alliance found its self-expression by way of laying claim to the “ownership,” as it were, of the heroic age as represented by Homeric poetry. While the dynasts of Athens “owned” the transmission of Homeric poetry, the dynasts of Thessaly could at the same time “own” the grandest of mountains, which was celebrated as the one and only abode of the gods in that same poetry—at least, in the form of that poetry as it has survived to our time in writing.

Note 12. Further analysis in Nagy (2024) Part I “Twelve Olympian Essays” Essay 1 Section D and Section E. In what now follows, Section D §§8-17 and Section E §1 of Essay 1 have been abridged and rewritten here as §§43-53. But other parts of Essay 1, especially Section D §§18-21 and Section E §2, have been omitted here and need to be consulted there, especially with reference to relevant evidence in the texts of Pindar and Herodotus.

§50. What Strabo in the passage just now quoted about Pisa, as will now be argued, is most relevant to the history—and the prehistory—of Olympia and the Olympics. First to be considered here is the prehistory, reconstructed backward in time, to be followed by an attempted reconstruction that then moves forward in time, bringing us into the historical period as noted sporadically by sources dating from the fifth century and later. Such reconstruction forward as well as backward in time can throw at least some light on an era when the state of Pisa, not the state of Elis, controlled Olympia and the Olympics. Such an era, however, was eventually ignored in the course of history—not only because Pisa was ultimately destroyed by Elis but also because, even before any ultimate destruction of Pisa by Elis, the mythology shaped by Pisa, once it was defeated though not yet destroyed by Elis, was overwhelmed by rival mythology shaped by the state of Elis, especially as represented by an intellectual named Hippias of Elis, who lived in the late fifth and early fourth centuries BCE. This Hippias was mostly successful in erasing memories that contradicted the idea that control of Olympia and the Olympics had always legitimately belonged to the state of Elis, not to the state of Pisa, ever since the very first year when the festival of the Olympics was supposedly celebrated. According to Hippias, that Olympiad year would have been 776 BCE—if we convert his chronological calculations into our own system of dating. Although the relevant writings of Hippias have not survived, the arguments he made on the basis of lore favoring the claim of Elis ultimately won out in the writings of later ancient authors about the rival claims of Elis and Pisa. Today we have access to a vast number of academic publications dealing with these rival claims, which can be linked with the complicated history of ancient attempts at documenting and listing chronologically the victors in the various athletic competitions of the Olympics starting from 776 BCE.

Note 13. Among these publications is a detailed analysis by Paul Christesen (2007:68, 170-173), who reviews the essentials of ongoing research and who also, most perceptively, traces forward in time the reconstructions modeled by Hippias, which were followed for many centuries by a lengthy succession of later ancient sources. The most prominent of these later sources was Aristotle in the fourth century BCE, whose efforts at dating the earliest Olympiads correspond closely to the dating by Hippias.

§51. Given, then, the basic claim of Hippias, that Elis was the only legitimate custodian of the Olympics ever since the founding of that festival, supposedly in 776 BCE, and given that this claim became the prevailing narrative of world history, we are faced with the task of trying to piece together an alternative version of the narrative about custody of the Olympics—a version that links this festival not only with the site named Olympia but also with a local mountain named Olympus, which, together with a local mountain named Ossa, framed the acropolis of Pisa. Here are three pieces of ancient testimony that are relevant to the project of reconstructing such an alternative version of myths about political control over Olympia and the Olympics:

§51.1. It is reported by Pausanias (5.10.2), as already noted, that the state of Elis decisively defeated the state of Pisa in a war, so that the wealth of this defeated state could then be appropriated, as spoils of war, by the victorious state of Elis for the purpose of creating a magnificent new expression of wealth, power, and prestige, namely, the great Temple of Zeus in Olympia. Since the building of the temple can be dated to the mid-fifth century BCE, it can be inferred that the defeat of Pisa happened in the early part of that century.

§51.2. It is reported by both Strabo (8.3.2 C336–337) and Diodorus (11.54.1) that the state of Elis annexed the territory of Pisa—so, the state of Elis had appropriated, along with the overall territory of the defeated state, also the sacred site of Olympia. This annexation happened, our sources tell us, some time after the failure of Xerxes to occupy the European side of the Greek-speaking world—so, in the early fifth century BCE . Our sources also tell us that Elis, in the process of annexing the territory of Pisa as well as other territories further to the south, reorganized itself as a polis—let us translate this word here, just for the moment, as ‘city-state’.

§51.3. It is also reported elsewhere, by Pausanias at 6.22.4, that Pisa was in the end completely destroyed by Elis. In the context of this report, we may infer that the destruction was provoked by what happened when the Olympics were held for the one-hundred-and-fourth time, that is, in the Olympiad year 364 BCE—a date that Pausanias mentions in passing (6.22.2). That year, as already in previous years, Pisa was dominated by Elis but revolted from this domination and participated in depriving Elis, that same year, from custodianship of the Olympics. But that same year was also the very last time that Elis ever again lost custodianship of the Olympics. Sometime after 364 BCE, Elis destroyed Pisa altogether. In this same context, Pisa is called a polis by Pausanias (6.22.2)— let us translate this word here again, just for the moment, as ‘city-state’. Also in this same context, Pausanias makes it clear that control of the Olympics by the state of Elis was never again threatened—now that Pisa was destroyed in the wake of the failed revolt.

Note 14. A major source for the history of conflicts where Elis lost or almost lost control of the Olympics to its rival, Pisa, is the reportage of Pausanias (especially at 6.22.2–4, also at 5.3.5–5.4.6). His version of the history differ in significant ways with the versions that survive in other sources, and the differences in the versions cannot be perfectly reconciled with each other, as we see from the analysis of Mait Kõiv (2013:319), who cites in this context a judicious comment made by Hans-Joachim Gehrke (2010:17-18) about Greek history in general: as Gehrke observes, we find no single “history” but many “histories.” About the “histories,” let us say, of the Olympics, especially with reference to the conflicts between Elis and Pisa over the control of this festival, I rely especially on the in-depth analysis, with bibliography, by Kõiv (2013:320-325), who tracks a wide variety of relevant sources besides Pausanias.

§52. Here we return to what is reported by both Strabo (8.3.2 C336–337) and Diodorus (11.54.1) about Pisa and the region of Pisa, called the Pisatis. We see in their reports clear evidence for arguing that Pisa lost control of the Olympics only in the fifth century BCE—at the same time when Elis annexed Pisa and the Pisatis. And once Pisa was subjugated by way of being annexed into a new city-state that called itself Elis, the region of Pisatis now became merely a new part of a new whole. The new whole was Elis. Meanwhile, Elis could now claim ownership not only of its own new part, Pisatis, but also of the old part of Pisatis that was Olympia. And, among other regions that were now claimed by Elis, as we read in our sources, was a territory that was named Triphylia.

About the relevance of Triphylia to the prehistory of Pisa

§53. What ancient sources tell us about Triphylia is relevant to our understanding of Pisa—and even of Elis. According to these sources, Triphylia was a region located to the south of the river Alpheus (Alpheios), and further to the south of Triphylia was the region known as Messenia. As for the territory of Pisa after it was annexed by Elis, it is described as a region located to the north of the river Alpheus—so, the region immediately to the north of Triphylia. Finally, to the north of this redefined region called Pisatis was the old region called Elis or Koilē Ēlis, the meaning of which conveyed the idea of a ‘valley’, and all these regions were now dominated by the consolidated city-state of the new Elis, located within the ‘valley’ that was Koilē Ēlis. A famous landmark of the city that now simply called itself Elis, as we read in Strabo, 8.3.2 C337, was the river Peneus (Pēneios) that flowed through it. There is also another famous landmark of this city of Elis, that is, its acropolis, which as we will see is particularly relevant to our consideration of Triphylia—and of Pisatis—as territories annexed by Elis in the early fifth century. Our ancient source here is Pausanias (6.22.8-6.26.3). Surveying the landmarks he saw when he visited the city of Elis, he makes special mention of this city’s acropolis (6.26.3), on top of which was located a temple of Athena, inside which was a statue of the goddess, reportedly fashioned by Pheidias.

§54. What Pausanias says here about the acropolis of the city of Elis is in turn relevant to a most telling detail that we learn about the region that he knows as Triphylia. The detail comes from a far earlier source, Herodotus, who was writing in the late fifth century BCE, only decades after the actual annexation of the region called Triphylia by the newly-reorganized city-state of Elis. We read in Herodotus, 4.148.4, that there had existed six poleis or ‘cities’—that is what he calls them—in Triphylia at the time of its annexation by Elis in the early fifth century: these ‘cities’ were Lepreon, Makistos, Phrixai, Pyrgos, Epion, Noudion (in the text of Herodotus, the forms are given in the accusative case: Λέπρεον, Μάκιστον, Φρίξας, Πύργον, Ἔπιον, Νούδιον), and the name of Phrixa is given in the plural, Phrixai. Herodotus goes on to say that the foundation of these poleis ‘cities’ can be traced back to the Minyans, who claimed a genealogy stemming from the heroic age—and who had emigrated from Thessaly to Triphylia. But Herodotus, I must emphasize, does not refer to this region of six poleis in terms of a region called Triphylia, which, I think, might have been a relatively recent nomenclature created by Elis at the time when it undertook its initiative of widespread annexations. In any case, we know from later sources that these poleis or ‘cities’, as Herodotus calls them, were located in the same region that later sources do in fact identify as Triphylia. That said, I now come to a detail—a most telling detail, as I described it earlier—about these poleis or ‘cities’. We read in Herodotus (again, 4.148.4) that most of these cities were demolished by Elis ‘within the period of my own lifetime’ (ἐπ’ ἐμέο). So, by the later part of the fifth century BCE, there would be hardly any traces of some of these demolished cities. Many centuries after Herodotus, however, we do have a record of a visit to one such demolished site, and the visitor was Pausanias, in the second century CE. What Pausanias reports, as we will see, is relevant in general to the pattern of annexations initiated by Elis in the early fifth century BCE.

More about the acropolis of Phrixa in Triphylia

§55. As we read in the reportage of Pausanias, 6.21.6, a demolished city that he visited in the region called Triphylia was Phrixa. Herodotus at 4.148.4 had referred to the name of this city in its plural form, Phrixai, which I compare with such plural place-names as Athênai ‘Athens’, Thêbai ‘Thebes’, and even Mukênai ‘Mycenae’, though Pausanias uses the singular form, Phrixa. I will have more to say at §64 about the significance of the plural form, but for now I concentrate on the name Phrixa itself, singular or plural. The only significant landmark of this city in ruins, Pausanias says, was the acropolis, also in ruins, on top of which was a temple of the goddess Athena, also in ruins; but the local population, he adds, would still worship their goddess at an altar that had reportedly stood outside the temple and had thus escaped demolition. I note with the greatest interest the word used by Pausanias here (again, 6.21.6) in referring to the acropolis: he equates it with a polis ‘city’—this even though the only part of the city that was now worth noting was the acropolis as a visually commanding pinnacle in the landscape. We see a comparable usage of the word polis in what is said by Pausanias (1.26.6) about the acropolis of Athens, which, he notes, used to be called simply the polis of Athens; he dates this nomenclature back to prehistoric times—before Athens became a city-state comprised of dēmoi, which Classicists translate as ‘demes’—and which were political sub-units that together constituted, eventually, a unified Athenian state. In prehistoric times, however, as Pausanias also notes (again, 1.26.6), the dēmoi were ‘districts’, only loosely interconnected, within an overall region that was loosely connected to the acropolis of Athens, and such ‘districts’ once had their own localized and hence diverse ways of worshipping the goddess Athena, who possessed the acropolis. I will have more to say at §62 about Athena’s relationship with the very idea of ‘acropolis’. For now, however, I simply highlight the older use of the word polis in the sense of ‘acropolis’.

§56. What Pausanias at 6.21.6 says he saw in ruins when he visited the acropolis of the old city of Phrixa was the equivalent of what he says he saw not in ruins but very much intact: this happened later in his travels, at 6.26.3, when he visited the old acropolis of the new city of Elis. I see an irony here, since Elis had been responsible for demolishing, many years before, the old city of Phrixa. As we saw from the reportage of Pausanias at 6.26.3, Elis in his time had its own acropolis and its own temple of Athena, just as Phrixa in the distant past had its own acropolis and its own temple of Athena. I will have more to say at §62 about Athena’s relationship with the very idea of ‘acropolis’. For now, however, I continue to focus on the relationship of the word polis with this idea of ‘acropolis’. What we have just seen in the case of the state known as Elis, is that the new status of this state as a polis in the sense of a ‘city’ was modeled on the old status of a site like Phrixa, where the very idea of a polis is derived from the idea of an acropolis. Also relevant here is the reportage of Strabo (8.3.2 C336–337) and of Diodorus (11.54.1) about the new political structure of Elis in the early fifth century BCE. Both these sources describe that structure as a result of sunoikismos, a term that I define as a process where a confederation of separate districts is transformed into a unified polis in the sense of a ‘city’ or a ‘city-state’.

Note 15. The very idea of sunoikismos, like the idea of a polis, can be derived from the idea of an acropolis. Turning back here to the comment of Pausanias at 1.26.6 about the earlier meaning of polis as an acropolis, I find that his formulation of an evolution in the meaning of the word dēmoi is really an apt working definition of the term sunoikismos, especially as used by Strabo (8.3.2 C336–337). Here is the way I would paraphrase this evolution in the meaning of dēmoi: an earlier and more general sense, ‘districts connected to an acropolis’, evolves into a later and more specific sense, ‘demes constituting a city’. And there is actually a passage in Strabo (8.3.2 C336) where he uses the word dēmoi in the general sense of ‘districts’, not in the specific sense of ‘demes’, while referring to the constituent parts of Elis as it evolved into a city-state. My analysis of terminology referring to the history Elis has led me to conclude, then, that the word polis in the sense of ‘city-state’ was applicable to this place only after the early fifth century BCE.

An acropolis of Pisa

§57. On the basis of attested usage, where the word polis can refer to an acropolis, I posit the same usage in the passage I quoted earlier from Strabo (8.3.31 C356) with reference to what he calls the polis of Pisa. In this passage, the geographer mentions a tradition according to which the polis of Pisa was situated between Mount Olympus and Mount Ossa. The word polis here, I argue, refers to the acropolis of Pisa. Although Strabo does not directly indicate his source, he does in fact say that this source refers explicitly to Pisa as a polis. And he even adds, in this same passage, that it was the ancient Greek poet Stesichorus, conventionally dated to the seventh/sixth centuries BCE, who referred to Pisa as a polis. In the edition of Stesichorus by David Campbell (1991), the reference by Strabo at 8.3.31 C356 to this usage of Stesichorus is printed as “fragment” 263, although there is no trace of the poet’s own text. But I think it is possible that the lost text of Stesichorus was in fact the source for the reference made by Strabo to the location of Pisa between Olympus and Ossa. In the same passage of Strabo, he is formulating a theory of his about the meaning of polis in the sense of a ‘region controlled by a polis’, and it is in this context that he cites the usage of Stesichorus. Strabo needs this theory to explain a problem: why, in his time, can he find no city named Pisa in the region named Pisatis? In terms of my analysis, however, the problem faced by Strabo could be solved if the reference to Pisa as a polis in the songs of Stesichorus could be interpreted to mean not ‘city’ but ‘acropolis’ or ‘citadel’. Given the grim record of Elis in demolishing landmarks that had once belonged to territories it was annexing in the wake of its aggressive new policies starting in the fifth century BCE, I would consider the fate of Phrixa in Triphylia to be a possible point of comparison for imagining the fate of an acropolis of Pisa in Pisatis. The difference would be that there were still traces of the ruins at both the city and the acropolis at Phrixa, but there may have been no traces left of either city or acropolis in the case of Pisa, once it was destroyed by Elis.

§58. I find here the testimony of Pausanias at 6.22.4 most relevant. He says there that Elis ultimately destroyed Pisa. And now I add what he says in the same context, at an earlier point: at 6.22.1-2 Pausanias speaks of a khōrion ‘place’ covered by vineyards and showing no trace of any built structure. At this earlier point, at 6.22.2, Pausanias also says this about the place: ‘at which place [= the place about to be described] Pisa was settled/founded [oikeîsthai]’ (ἔνθα ἡΠίσα ᾠκεῖτο). Continuing further at this earlier point, at 6.22.2, Pausanias adds explicitly, still in the same context: ‘they say that the city [polis] had as its settler/founder [oikistēs] Pisos son of Perieres son of Aiolos’ (οἰκιστὴν μὲν δὴ γενέσθαι τῇ πόλει Πίσον τὸν Περιήρους φασὶ τοῦ Αἰόλου). In this case, I doubt that Pausanias was even searching for an acropolis of Pisa: he knew that the city of Pisa had been eventually destroyed without a trace. And the only acropolis he could identify nearby was the acropolis of the nearby city of Phrixa: in that case, the city and the acropolis were in ruins, yes, but there still survived at least a semblance of a city. Not so in the case of Pisa. And when I say that the acropolis of Pisa must have been close to the acropolis of Phrixa, I need only point out that the khōrā ‘place’ that is identified as Phrixa by Pausanias at 6.21.6 is located immediately to the south of the river Alpheus (Alpheios), while Pisa is located on the other side of the river, immediately to the north.

§59. In another context, already noted, Pausanias at 5.10.2 refers to a war between Pisa and Elis where Pisa was defeated and lost control of Olympia and the Olympics. But I must emphasize that this disaster befalling Pisa, as reported by Pausanias at 5.10.2, is different from the other disaster that he reports at 6.22.4, where he refers to the total destruction of Pisa by Elis. The two disasters for Pisa took place at different times: whereas Elis took away from Pisa its control over Olympia and the Olympics in the early fifth century BCE, the destruction of Pisa took place only later, some time after 364 BCE—as I already indicated earlier. Having made this distinction, however, I still find it most interesting that Pausanias has omitted any explicit mention of the differences in time between the loss of Olympia by Pisa and the final destruction of Pisa. I find that such an omission by Pausanias fits the historical realities of his own era, the second century CE, by which time Elis had been in control of Olympia and the Olympics for about half a millennium, as we have already seen. And the narrative about the winning of control by Elis—which centers on the defeat of Pisa and on its loss of Olympia to Elis—is all in favor of the winner of long-term control: the winner takes all, as it were.

§60. There is something else here, however, that has I think also been omitted in the reportage of Pausanias. The defeat of Pisa by Elis may have been in some ways gradual. That said, though, I still leave room for thinking that even a gradual victory of Elis over Pisa did involve some episodic events of total destruction—especially when it comes to visible signs of power, such as a citadel, that is, an acropolis. I would not be surprised if an old citadel of the state of Pisa would have been ostentatiously destroyed by the rival state of Elis, whether earlier or later, without any trace of any building, In that case, it would also be understandable why we are left in the dark when we read Strabo’s reference to a source claiming that Pisa was located between two mountains named Olympus and Ossa. We would be understandably in the dark about such a location if any structures once built on top of a citadel of Pisa had been destroyed without a trace. And we could be left forever in the dark unless—or, I hope against hope, until—ruins of a citadel are found. But there is another problem here: in the area surrounding Olympia, there are all too many relatively miniature mountains that could look like Olympus and Ossa. So, only a hoped-for finding of ruins located between two miniature mountains could lead to certainty about the precise location of an acropolis that could once have functioned as the center of power for Pisa.

About Athena as goddess of the acropolis at Phrixa

§61. Having started to model a reconstruction of the acropolis of Pisa by comparing what we know from Pausanias about the acropolis of Phrixa in Triphylia, I now extend the reconstruction by focusing on what Pausanias says about Athena as the goddess presiding over the acropolis at Phrixa. I quote here the exact words of Pausanias:

ἐν ταύτῃ τῇ χώρᾳ λόφος ἐστὶν ἀνήκων ἐς ὀξύ, ἐπὶ δὲ αὐτῷ πόλεως Φρίξας ἐρείπια καὶ Ἀθηνᾶς ἐστιν ἐπίκλησιν Κυδωνίας ναός. οὗτος μὲν οὐ τὰ πάντα ἐστὶ σῶς, βωμὸς δὲ καὶ ἐς ἐμὲ ἔτι· ἱδρύσασθαι δὲ τῇ θεῷ τὸ ἱερὸν Κλύμενόν φασιν ἀπόγονον Ἡρακλέους τοῦ Ἰδαίου, παραγενέσθαι δὲ αὐτὸν ἀπὸ Κυδωνίας τῆς Κρητικῆς καὶ τοῦ Ἰαρδάνου ποταμοῦ. λέγουσι δὲ καὶ Πέλοπα οἱ Ἠλεῖοι τῇ Ἀθηνᾷ θῦσαι τῇ Κυδωνίᾳ πρὶν ἢ ἐς τὸν ἀγῶνα αὐτὸν τῷ Οἰνομάῳ καθίστασθαι.

In this region [of Triphylia] there is an elevation [lophos] culminating in a sharp peak, and on top of that elevation are the ruins of an acropolis [polis] called Phrixa and a temple [nāos] of Athena, whose name-of-invocation [epiklēsis] is Kudōniā. This temple is not completely preserved, but it still has an altar [bōmos], even in my time. And the people say that this sacred-space [hieron] was founded in honor of the goddess [theos(feminine)] by Klymenos, descendant of Herakles, the-one-from-Mount-Ida [Idaios], and that he [Klymenos] came on the scene from Kudōniā-in-Crete and from the river Iardanos. And the people of Elis say that Pelops sacrificed [thuein] to Athena Kudōniā before he entered the contest [agōn] [of a race-to-the-death in chariots] with Oinomaos.

Pausanias 6.21.6

§62. Five details here are pertinent to the overall argumentation in my survey:

1) The population of Phrixa worships the goddess Athena as a divine presence who defines and even personifies the acropolis of Phrixa.

2) The epithet of the goddess, that is to say, the epiclesis or ‘name of invocation’ that she is given by her worshippers when they invoke her as the divine personification of the acropolis of Phrixa, is Kudōniā.

3) This name for invoking Athena on the acropolis of Phrixa by her worshippers, Kudōniā, is identical with the name of an ancient city named Kudōniā, located in the western part of the island of Crete, in the region of Mount Ida. And I argue here, and further at §144, that the city was named after an acropolis that was likewise named Kudōniā. For now, however, I focus only on the location of this city in the region of Mount Ida on the island of Crete.

4) There is a direct connection between the naming of Athena as Kudōniā by her worshippers on the acropolis of Phrixa and the name of the city in Crete, which is likewise Kudōniā. The connection takes the form of a hero named Klymenos, meaning ‘Famous’, who is said by Pausanias to have traveled from Kudōniā-in-Crete to the acropolis at Phrixa, where he initiated—or let us say founded—the practice of worshipping Athena, who was to be invoked thereafter as Kudōniā. This Cretan hero Klymenos is described by Pausanias here as a descendant of the Cretan hero Herakles, who in turn is described as Idaios ‘the one from Mount Ida’.

5) There is a fifth detail, left unspoken but still assumed by Pausanias in the passage here at 6.21.6. The detail was mentioned by him already at an earlier point in another relevant passage, at 5.8.1, and I have already made a comment, at §17e above, about this detail. I recapitulate here what Pausanias says at 5.8.1: he notes that the Cretan hero Klymenos had once presided over the athletic festival of the Olympics by virtue of being a descendant of the Cretan hero Herakles, native son of Mount Ida, who was the founder the Olympics according to Cretan myths. What Pausanias said there at 5.8.1 is relevant to what he says now in the passage I just quoted, at 6.21.6, about an city named Kudōniā, located on the island of Crete. I argue that this name given to a city in Crete is identical to the name given to the acropolis that guarded that city—and that same name is identical to the name of invocation for the goddess Athena  in her role as the divine presence who presides over the acropolis of Phrixa in Triphylia. So, we can now link the detail we have just learned, from Pausanias at 6.21.6, concerning Klymenos as the Cretan founder of the worship of Athena Kudōniā at the acropolis of Phrixa in the territory of Triphylia, with a detail we learned earlier, at 5.8.1, where we learned that this same Klymenos was a descendant of Herakles in that earlier hero’s mythological role as the Cretan founder of the Olympics at Olympia. And this mythological role is defined here at 6.21.6 by way of the adjective Idaios, indicating that Herakles here is the native son of Mount Ida in Crete.

Athena’s personified relationship with the very idea of ‘acropolis’

§63. Before we can delve into further implications stemming from the report of Pausanias at 6.21.6 about connections of Herakles with a city on the island of Crete, more needs to be said about the first four of the five points I have just made at §62. Further comment is needed about the general idea that the goddess Athena can be seen as a divine presence who defines and even personifies an acropolis. A most relevant question that now needs to be addressed is this: whether the Greek proper noun Athḗnē, which is the name of the goddess Athena, is the name of a persona who is the goddess known to us as Athena, or the name of a place, that is, the city known to us as Athens. In earlier phases of my research, I had assumed that the city of Athens—or, at least, the citadel or acropolis of Athens—was named after the goddess Athena. What has changed my mind is my overall reading of Pausanias, whose detailed reportage about the many different ways of worshipping gods and heroes in the many different places he visited during his travels in the Greek-speaking world of the second century CE has led me to a different way of thinking. On the basis of relevant evidence attested by Pausanias, I no longer think that Athens was named after Athena. Rather, I think that Athena was named after Athens—or, to say it more accurately, the names of goddesses known as Athena were based on the names of the places where these goddesses were worshipped. Such a rethinking of Athena can lead to a fuller understanding of ancient ideas centering on divinities as personifications of places sacred to them, and one way to get a close look at these personifications is to view them through the lens of Pausanias, who carefully focuses, one at a time, on each one of the many different goddesses named Athena whom he encounters in each one of the many different places he visits.

Note 16. What follows at §§1-10 is an abridged rewriting of Nagy (2020.05.01).

§64. I trace my rethinking all the way back to a problem I faced in my earlier research concerning a unique attestation of the personal noun Athḗnē as a place-name in Homeric poetry, at Odyssey 7.78, where this singular form seems to be referring to the citadel of Athens as we know it, not to the goddess herself. Elsewhere in the Iliad and Odyssey—and, for that matter, everywhere else in all Greek texts attested in the first millennium BCE and thereafter—the singular Athḗnē refers to the goddess Athena while the plural Athênai refers to the city of Athens. In previous work (especially in Nagy 2004:157-175), I explained the meaning of the plural in terms of a semantic device known as ellipsis, where Athênai as a plural refers not to ‘many cases of a singular Athḗnē’ but rather, elliptically, to ‘Athḗnē and whatever is connected with Athḗnē’—or, in a narrower interpretation, ‘Athḗnē and whatever places are controlled by Athḗnē’. This explanation, where Athênai is the elliptic plural of Athḗnē, solves many problems in interpreting the plural formations of place-names. But one problem remains: if we interpret the place-name Athênai as an elliptic plural meaning ‘Athḗnēand whatever places are controlled by Athḗnē’, how are we to understand the singular form Athḗnē? Is Athḗnē to be interpreted as the goddess Athena or as the acropolis of Athens?

§65. For an answer to this question, I point to a relevant fact: the suffix -ḗnē that we see in the name of the goddess Athḗnē, who presides over the acropolis of Athens as we know it, is visible also in the name of the nymph Mukḗnē, linked by Pausanias at 2.16.4 (with reference to the Homeric Odyssey 2.120) with the acropolis of Mycenae, that is, Mukênai (more in Nagy 2004:163). Comparable is the name of the city of Thebes, Thêbai, named after the nymph Thḗbē, as we read in Apollodorus (3.5.6 ed. Frazer; again, more in Nagy 2004:163). We see in these examples a formal parallelism with the singular Athḗnē referring to the goddess Athena and the plural Athênai referring to the city of Athens. As for the suffix -ḗnē as in Athḗnē and Mukḗnē, it is visible also in the place-name Messḗnē, which means something like “Midland” (more in Nagy 2004:163n1). To be compared is the place-name me-za-na written on a Linear B tablet from Pylos, Cn 3.1. Here is what I have already observed on the basis of this comparison: “I suspect that the suffix -ḗnē is endowed with an elliptic function” (Nagy 2004:163n17). I should add that Messḗnē is also the name of a heroine (scholia for Euripides Orestes section 932 line 11); the nymphs that I have mentioned earlier, I should add here, could likewise be described as “heroines.”

§66. Here I pause to elaborate on the term “elliptic.” A form that is elliptic refers not only to X but also to everything that belongs to X, such as X2, X3, X4 and so on. An elliptic form of X implies X2, X3, X4 and so on without naming X2, X3, X4 and so on explicitly. In terms of this definition of ellipsis, the name Athḗnē refers not only to the goddess ‘Athena’ but also to everything that belongs to the goddess. The primary example of that ‘everything’ in this case is the acropolis of Athens.

§67. And we see yet another level of ellipsis in the plural form Athênai: this elliptic plural refers not only to the acropolis of Athens but also to everything that belongs to the acropolis of Athens, namely, the city of Athens—and that also belongs, by extension, to everything that belongs to the city, and that everything becomes ultimately the region of Attica.

§68. But there is an even deeper level of ellipsis: the suffix -ḗnē of Athḗnē indicates that the goddess Athena is also a personification of the place of Athena, which is the acropolis of Athens and, by extension, the city of Athens, and by further extension, everything that belongs to the city of Athens.

Note 17. Nagy (2015.09.10).

§69. This formulation leads me to think that the form Athḗnē itself, like the form Messḗnē or “Midland”, must have been primarily a place-name and only secondarily the personal name of the goddess of the place. And the function of the form as a personal name can be explained, to return to my earlier formulation, as a personification of the place that was Athens.

§70. A further piece of evidence can be found, again, in the testimony of Pausanias about the myths and rituals of an Athenian dēmos ‘deme’ called Colonus. As we read in Pausanias, at 1.30.4, the epithet of the goddess as worshipped at Colonus was Hippiā, which, as I will argue in detail later, can be interpreted as ‘charioteer’. And, as I highlighted in Hour 18 of my book The Ancient Greek Hero in 24 Hours (Nagy 2013), the most ancient local cult hero who was worshipped in this deme of Colonus was a figure named Kolōnos, who is described at line 59 of the Oedipus at Colonusby Sophocles as hippotēs, that is, ‘charioteer’ (comments at H24H 18§4).

§71. Here is further evidence, then, showing that a figure who is worshipped in a given locale may be a personification of that locale, so that the personal name of such a figure is primarily a place-name. In the case of Kolōnos, the primary function of the name as a place-name is evident from the meaning of this proper noun as a common noun. The fact is, kolōnos means “tumulus”. As I show in my book about ancient Greek heroes (H24H, Hours 14 and 18). the common noun kolōnos, meaning “tumulus”, refers primarily to landmarks for the worship of cult heroes. So the personified Kolōnos or Colonus, who is worshipped by the people of the deme of Colonus, had been named after a place that was called just that, Kolōnos or Colonus.

§72. In sum, I argue that Athena the goddess was named after a place called ‘Athena’, which was an acropolis—a fitting landmark for the worship of the goddess. I find it relevant that Stephanus of Byzantium (33.17–34.18 ed. Meineke 1849), an expert on place-names (he was writing in the sixth century CE), reports on authoritative statements made by his predecessors Ōros of Miletus (second century CE) and Philon of Byblos (first/second century CE) about the existence of other ancient cities named Athens. Such testimony can be correlated, as we will see, with the existence of other goddesses named Athena who presided over cities other than Athens.

A Mycenaean Athena beyond Athens

§73. In conversations about the ancient world, my sorely-missed colleague and friend Emily Vermeule was fond of asking this rhetorical question: in Mycenaean times, was Athena a goddess who was worshipped only in Athens? And there can be variations on such a theme. For example, I have an underlying question: did Athena, goddess of Athens, belong only to the Athenians? And there is a related question: was Athens the only place that was ever named after Athena? Further, here is yet another related question, with specific reference to the “Classical” Athena as visualized in the illustration that accompanies my comments here: did this goddess always look like that?

Note 18. What follows at §§74-79ab is an abridged rewriting from Nagy (2020.04.17).

Figure 2, Statue of Athena in the reproduction of the Parthenon in Centennial Park, Nashville, Tennessee. Sculptor: Alan LeQuire.  Image via Wikimedia Commons.

§74. Turning first to Pausanias for possible answers, I will argue that we can find, in traditions reported by this traveler, traces of a Mycenaean phase for the worship of Athena—not only in Athens but also throughout those regions of the Greek-speaking world that had once been dominated by a social order that I have been describing as the Mycenaean Empire. As we will see, moreover, traces of a Mycenaean Athena can occasionally be linked with traces of a Mycenaean Herakles. This is not to say, granted, that Athena figures as the only goddess to be linked with Mycenaean myths about Herakles. From what we have already seen, it is clear that the goddess Hera also figures as a most important complementary link in Mycenaean myths about Herakles. But now we will see the matching importance of Athena in her own relationship with Herakles—already in the era of the Mycenaean Empire.

§75. As we will see in what follows, however, the picture that emerges from the reportage of Pausanias about attestations of Athena as she is worshipped outside of Athens is a far cry from the “classical” Athenian picturing of the goddess as visualized in the featured image that I just showed in speaking here about “a Mycenaean Athena beyond Athens.”

§76. Before we can look beyond Athens, however, we must start with Athens, returning to a most relevant passage I already cited at §70 from Pausanias. This time, I will not only cite this passage but also quote it. We are about to read about an Athenian Athena who is worshipped in one of the Athenian dēmoi ‘demes’ in a special way: the goddess, as I already mentioned at §70, is invoked as Hippiā by her worshippers in that deme. For the moment, I will translate this epithet or epiclesis simply as ‘controller of horses’ as I now quote the passage:

δείκνυται δὲ καὶ χῶρος καλούμενος κολωνὸς ἵππιος, ἔνθα τῆς Ἀττικῆς πρῶτον ἐλθεῖν λέγουσιν Οἰδίποδα – διάφορα μὲν καὶ ταῦτα τῇ Ὁμήρου ποιήσει, λέγουσι δ’ οὖν – , καὶ βωμὸς Ποσειδῶνος Ἱππίου καὶ ἈθηνᾶςἹππίας, ἡρῷον δὲ Πειρίθου καὶ Θησέως Οἰδίποδός τε καὶ Ἀδράστου.

There is also pointed out a place [khōros] called the Kolōnos Hippios [‘Tumulus of Horses’], the first point in Attica, they say, that Oedipus reached—these things that are said do differ from what is in the poetry [poiēsis] of Homer, but they say these things in any case—and an altar [bōmos] of Poseidon Hippios [ ‘controller of horses’], and of Athena Hippiā [‘controller of horses’], and a hero-shrine [hērōion] of Peirithoös and Theseus, Oedipus and Adrastos.

Pausanias 1.30.4

§77. I see here a most revealing set of details that point to a far earlier Mycenaean role of Athena. We have just learned from Pausanias that the epithet Hippiā was the epiclesis or mode of invoking the goddess by her worshippers at the deme of Colonus, just as they invoked Poseidon by way of the epithet or epiclesis Hippios in worshipping this god. I will now show that this epiclesis, which I translated for the moment, in both cases, as ‘controller-of-horses’, is referring primarily to the skill of charioteering. Decisive evidence comes from another passage of Pausanias, at 8.46.1, 4–5, where he is commenting on an old statue of the goddess Athena that had been safeguarded by the people of Tegea in Arcadia—until they were robbed of their prized possession by their Roman conquerors; they then replaced that statue of Athena that was lost to Rome by appropriating another statue of Athena from another site that was sacred to her—in this case, from a neighboring Arcadian dēmos or ‘district’ by the name of Manthouria, as we read further in Pausanias 8.47.1. We learn there that the goddess represented by this statue was invoked as Hippiā by the local Arcadian population that worshipped her, and that she was addressed this way, as ‘controller of the horses’. Pausanias then proceeds to give the reason for worshipping Athena as Hippiā. In the mythology of these Arcadians, he reports, Athena went to war as a charioteer in their local version of a widespread myth traditionally known as the Battle of the Gods and Giants.

§78. With these details in mind, I now turn to relevant evidence dating from the earliest attested phases of the Greek language, known to linguists as Mycenaean Greek. The texts I will cite, written in the Linear B script, were found at the palace of Knossos in Crete and at the palace of Pylos in the southwest Peloponnesus. In these texts, as we are about to see, the comparable forms Athānā and hikkʷeiā are attested in contexts that correspond to the contexts of Athēnē and Hippiā as reported by Pausanias. In analyzing these texts and contexts, I cite the relevant argumentation presented in a paper jointly authored by Joann Gulizia, Kevin Pluta, and Thomas Palaima (2001). The authors, hereafter abbreviated GPP, concentrate on two texts in particular: the tablet V 52 from Knossos, which GPP date around 1400 BCE, and the tablet An 1281 from Pylos, unambiguously dated around 1200 BCE.

§79a. We start with the Linear B tablet V 52 from Knossos. The specific context of this text, according to GPP, can be traced back—with some certainty—to the Room of the Chariot Tablets or RCT, as it is known to archaeologists. This context, as we will see, is relevant to a detail mentioned by Pausanias at 1.30.4: according to our traveler, as I have just noted, the goddess Athena is worshipped as Hippiā in the Athenian dēmos ‘deme’ of Colonus. Now we will see that the simple translation ‘controller of horses’ can be made more specific: the goddess is seen here as the ‘charioteer’ at Colonus. Relevant is the fact that the goddess Athena is mentioned in the Knossos tablet V 52, which is situated in the RCT, that is, in the so-called Room of the Chariot Tablets. Athena is mentioned prominently, in the first line of this tablet V 52, where we read her name as a-ta-na-po-ti-ni-ja—which is how linguists and archaeologists transcribe what is written by the writer using the syllabary of the Linear B script. The second element, -po-ti-ni-ja, spells potniāi, dative case of the noun potnia, corresponding to a classical Greek word that is conventionally applied to goddesses. That word is potnia (πότνια), conventionally translated as ‘Lady’. As for the first element, a-ta-na-, it can be interpreted as spelling either Athānāi or Athānās—so, either the dative or the genitive case of the name Athānā, corresponding to the classical Greek name Athēnē. A question remains, though: is this Mycenaean name Athānā (1) the personal name of the goddess Athena or (2) a place-name, referring to the citadel of Athens, a primary residence of the goddess? In the paper of GPP, a persuasive argument is made for the second of these two alternative explanations. Crucial for their argumentation is a fact that I have highlighted at §64 in my survey, with reference to Odyssey 7.78. As I argued there at §64, the singular form Athēnē refers in Homeric Greek to the citadel of the goddess Athena in what later became, already well before the classical era, the city of Athens. Accordingly, if we follow the interpretation preferred by GPP, the wording of the first line in the tablet V 52 can be interpreted this way: ‘to the Lady [potnia] of Athens’, where a-ta-na- spells Athānās, in the genitive case, while po-ti-ni-ja spells potniāi, in the dative. Alternatively, if we were to read a-ta-na- as Athānāi, in the dative case, then we could interpret the wording this way: ‘to the Lady Athena’. Either way, in any case, the referent would be the goddess Athena, in a Mycenaean phase of her evolution.

§79b. More can be said about such a Mycenaean Athena as a charioteer, to be matched with the role of the “classical” Athena at Colonus as Hippiā in the Athenian dēmos ‘deme’ of Colonus. Here I turn to the Linear B tablet An 1281 from Pylos, dated around 1200 BCE. We read in this text the noun po-ti-ni-ja, spelling potniāi, in the dative case, and meaning ‘to the Lady [potnia]’. Although the name of the goddess who receives the offering is not indicated, the identity of the divine referent here is most likely to be the goddess Athena. As we see from the analysis of GPP (p. 456), the noun po-ti-ni-ja that we see in the text of this tablet is described by way of the epithet i-qe-ja, which can be interpreted as hikkʷeia, in the dative case—so, we see here an adjective hikkʷeiāi describing and agreeing with the noun potniāi. As observed by GPP (again, p. 456), this Mycenaean Greek epithet hikkʷeia would be the equivalent of hippeiain classical Greek. Thus the combination of po-ti-ni-ja and i-qe-ja in the text of this tablet can be interpreted to mean this: ‘to the Lady [potnia], controller-of-horses [hikkʷeia]’—or, to word it more specifically, ‘to the Lady, Charioteer’.

Mycenaean Athena, Charioteer and Patroness of Herakles

§80. In classical Athenian visual art, we see representations of the goddess Athena in the act of driving her own chariot. In one particular painting, which I have chosen as a featured image for this part of my survey, we see the goddess driving her chariot while accompanied by the hero Herakles, who is standing there, right next to her, on the platform of her speeding chariot. As we are about to see, this picturing of Herakles and Athena centers on a myth about the immortalization of the hero as aided by the goddess, and this myth can be traced back, I will argue, to the Mycenaean era.

Note 19. What follows is an abridged rewriting from Nagy (2020.04.24).

Figure 3a. Attic red-figure pelike depicting Herakles conveyed to Olympus by Athena, ca. 410 BCE, attributed to the Kadmos Painter, Staatliche Antikensammlungen, Munich. Image via Wikimedia Commons.

Figure 3b. Drawing: Adolf Furtwängler and Karl Reichhold, Griechische Vasenmalerei, Vol. 2 (Munich, 1909), pl. 109.

Figure 3c. Close-up of the drawing above.

§81. The chariot that we see being driven by the goddess here is speeding upward into the atmosphere, heading for Mount Olympus, which will be the destination for the hero who is riding with her. The key to my saying that such a mountain is the destination in this scene is what we see in the lower register of the painting. What the hero has left behind down below as we see him being spirited away by the speeding chariot of the goddess is a burning funeral pyre, the fires of which are about to be doused, but the pair of Athena and Herakles are by now above it all, soaring toward the heights of Mount Olympus.

§82. This painting represents a central moment in a version of a myth about the death of Herakles on top of Mount Oitē in the region of Trachis and his subsequent immortalization on top of Mount Olympus. Such a version is most concisely retold in the narrative of Diodorus (4.38.3-4.39.4), and I have already referred at §34 in my survey to the part of this retelling by Diodorus (4.39.2) where the goddess Hera goes through the motions of re-enacting a birth for Herakles—or, to say it another way, of enacting a rebirth for Herakles. As I then acknowledged at a later point in my survey, at §74, Hera is after all a primary goddess in the life of Herakles as narrated by Diodorus, since it is Hera who formally gives the hero a new life, but now we can see more clearly what I also acknowledged at §74, namely, that the importance of Athena for Herakles matches in some respects the importance of Hera. And we can witness this matching importance in the picturing of Athena in the act of spiriting Herakles away from the scene of his death on a funeral pyre. It is Athena, driving her chariot, who actually conveys the hero to his place of immortalization on Mount Olympus. In the succinct narrative of Diodorus, however, the detail about this divine agency of Athena is not explicitly narrated, though such a detail meshes with other details that we do learn from Diodorus (again, 4.38.3-4.39.4), which I will briefly review here

– Herakles is burning up inside, and the agonizing fires that burn from within his body are caused by a toxic ointment that had made contact with his skin from outside—and had then pervaded his entire interior being. The toxic ingredients of the ointment were not understood by Deianeira, who had mistakenly thought that she could win back the love of her straying husband Herakles by smearing this ointment on the wedding gown of the hero on the occasion of his impending re-marriage to another woman, Iole (the part of the myth about the toxic ingredients is graphically retold by Diodorus at 4.38.1-2).

– In his agony, Herakles gives orders to be burned alive on a funeral pyre to be constructed on top of Mount Oitē in the region of Trachis/

– He is now positioned on the funeral pyre, ready for burning, and he gives orders for the fire to be lit.

– At the moment of ignition, a thunderbolt from Zeus strikes Herakles, putting him out of his misery.

– But the thunderbolt becomes an instrument of immortalization for Herakles, since, the very next moment, he finds himself on top of Mount Olympus, where he will now be immortalized as an Olympian.

Note 20. On myths about the thunderbolt as an instrument of immortalization, I offer extensive commentary in Nagy (1990) 181-201, Chapter 7: “Thunder and the Birth of Humankind.”

§83. What is missing in this sequence of events as narrated by Diodorus is what happens between the moment when Herakles is struck by the thunderbolt of Zeus and the moment when he finds himself on top of Mount Olympus. What is filled in between the moment of the thunderstroke and the moment of immortalization is what we see in the painting I have just shown, which pictures the agency of the goddess Athena in transferring Herakles from the top of Mount Oitē, the place of his death, to the top of Mount Olympus, the place of his immortalization. In the light of what I have already argued about a Mount Olympus that looks over the acropolis of Pisa, I will now be arguing that the destination of Herakles as he is riding in the chariot driven by Athena could have been, in the Mycenaean era, this alternative Mount Olympus.

§84. In general, I resist any assumption that the visualization of the hero’s immortalization, known formally as his apotheōsis (we see this wording in Diodorus 4.39.2), derives from an exclusively Athenian myth—even though the “Classical” Athena is the goddess of the city of Athens and is therefore Our Lady of Athens, so to speak. Rather, I argue that such a myth involving both the goddess Athena and the hero Herakles is not at all uniquely Athenian—and that the goddess herself, in her role as charioteer of the hero and in other such roles, is not uniquely Athenian either. In other words, Athena was multiple and was not at all unique to Athens. And one of the easiest ways to get a good sense of this multiplicity is to read through all of Pausanias, who conscientiously keeps track of the many different Athenas that are still being worshipped even in his time. Traveling around so many different locales of the Greek-speaking world in the second century CE, Pausanias finds different versions of myths and rituals linked with a goddess who is generally but not exclusively known by the name of Athena. And for me the only viable explanation for such multiplicity, as it survives into the first millennium CE, is to posit a pre-existing multiplicity of Athenas in Mycenaean times, that is, already in the second millennium BCE.

§85. Here I return to a basic question that I asked already at §73: did Athena, goddess of Athens, belong only to the Athenians? And there was a related second question: was Athens the only place that was ever named after Athena? Further, there was even a third question: did this goddess always look the way she looks in “Classical” Athenian visualizations? All three of these questions had been left unanswered at §73, though it was becoming obvious, already there, that my answer to all three questions would ultimately be negative. But I held off, since I also needed to answer another question, formulated by Emily Vermeule, that was less basic but more specific than the other three questions. That question was this: in Mycenaean times, was Athena a goddess who was worshipped only in Athens? Here too, I now have a negative answer. And a prime example of my reasons for giving a negative answer here as well is a detail I find in the reportage of Pausanias about the myths and rituals of territories controlled by ancient Sparta in the post-Mycenaean era, that is, in the first millennium BCE.

§86. This detail comes from one of many visual representations that adorned a celebrated work of art, now lost, known as the Throne of Apollo at Amyklai, attributed to an artist named Bathykles of Magnesia and conventionally dated to around the middle of the sixth century BCE. Among these representations, described by Pausanias at 3.18.9–3.19.1, was the picturing of the apotheōsis of Herakles, who is described in this context as being ‘taken into the sky’ by Athena in particular and by other gods in general. That is what Pausanias saw, as he describes it at 3.19.5. And we have here a clear validation of the argument that the Athenian vase-painting that pictures Herakles as likewise ‘taken into the sky’ by Athena is not at all an exclusively Athenian visualization.

§87. So, here again, I argue that this detail from Greek mythology, as seen and described by Pausanias at 3.19.5, can be traced back to the Mycenaean era. To be added here is the fact that the ancient site of Amyklai, where the Throne was located, is linked with older ways of mythological thinking that Pausanias at 3.19.6 describes as non-Dorian in origin. Our traveler is setting up a contrast here between older ways of thinking and newer ways that he links with the Dorian world view represented by Sparta. These older ways, in terms of my overall argumentation, date back to the Mycenaean Empire. The Dorians, Pausanias adds, had put an end to the political power of Amyklai already in the heroic age, reducing what had once been an ancient city to its eventual status as a kōmē or ‘village’.

§88a. As I argue, then, Athena in the region of Sparta was distinct from Athena in the region of Athens—ever since Mycenaean times. In territory eventually controlled by Sparta—and elsewhere as well—there was more than one way of worshipping the goddess Athena already in Mycenaean times. Moreover, it may be argued more generally, there was more than one city by the name of Athens—again, already in Mycenaean times. Such an argument would be relevant to further interpretations of what we saw at §79a, where we considered a reference to the goddess Athena in the Linear B tablet V 52, found in the room of the Chariot Tablets at Knossos and probably to be dated to around 1400. It is at least marginally possible that this charioteering Athena may not have originated from the city of Athens as we know it.

§88b. Such marginal possibilities aside, however, my central argument remains that the myth about Herakles where he is ‘taken into the sky’ by a charioteering Athena, as pictured on the Altar of Amyklai as Pausanias describes it at 3.19.5, is a variable myth, situating the goddess as the personification of various different citadels that could have been named Athena. And, as I argued at §83, one such citadel could have been the acropolis of Pisa, personified as the goddess Athena herself in a localized version of the myth that tells about the conveying of Herakles ‘into the sky’ by our charioteering personification of the goddess Athena. who is driving. The celestial destination in this version of the myth, as I further argued at §83, could have been a Mount Olympus that looks over the acropolis of Pisa.

A Mycenaean Athena and her Minoan predecessor

§89. Having argued for a Mycenaean Athena who personified the acropolis of Pisa in the region known as the Pisatis, I will now argue for a divine predecessor who personified the nearby acropolis of Phrixa in the region of Triphylia. And here I return to my comment about the fifth of the five details I had highlighted at §62 with reference to what Pausanias says at 6.21.6 about the acropolis at Phrixa. To summarize here what I noted in my comment there, I highlighted the fact that the epithet or epiclesis of the goddess Athena who presided over the acropolis at Phrixa was Kudōniā, which was also the name of a city named Kudōniā, located on the island of Crete. And, by extension, I suggested that this name of the city was derived from the name of the acropolis that was protecting the city. In the light of such a Cretan connection, I could describe the goddess who presided over the Cretan acropolis as a Minoan predecessor of a Mycenaean Athena.

§90. As for the goddess who presided over the acropolis at Phrixa, on the other hand, this Athena could be described as a blend of Minoan and Mycenaean mythological traditions. Relevant is what we learn from Pausanias at 6.21.6 concerning a Cretan hero by the name of Klymenos who was reportedly the founder of the worship of Athena Kudōniāat the acropolis of Phrixa in the territory of Triphylia. Also relevant is a detail we learned earlier from Pausanias, at 5.8.1, where we are told that this same Klymenos was a descendant of Herakles in that earlier hero’s mythological role as a prototypical Cretan founder of the Olympics at Olympia. And this mythological role is defined at 6.21.6 by way of the adjective Idaios, indicating that Herakles here is viewed as the native son of Mount Ida in Crete.

§91. On the basis of such mythological connections between the acropolis of Pisa and the acropolis of Phrixa, I posit the existence of a special blend of Minoan and Mycenaean myths that validated control of Olympia by the successive kings of Pisa, who ruled over the territory known as Pisatis and who were allied with other successive kings of other neighboring cities. One such city was Phrixa, situated in contiguous territory to the south—territory that ultimately became known as Triphylia. Such myths would have combined Mycenaean traditions about Herakles with earlier Minoan traditions about a supposedly earlier Cretan hero who was also supposedly named Herakles and who, like his Cretan descendant Klymenos, had participated in the primordial phases of the Olympics at Olympia.

Connecting Pisa and Phrixa

§92. My positing of alliances between the rulers of Pisa and the rulers of cities like Phrixa in Triphylia is based on historical fact. There are documented cases, tracked in the work of Paul Christesen (2005 and 2007), where various combinations of rulers in the Pisatis and in Triphylia to the south of Pisatis—as also in neighboring Arcadia to the east—were allied with each other from time to time in occasionally successful attempts to revolt from domination by Elis and to wrest control of Olympia and the Olympics in a given Olympiad year. In earlier times, however, before the fifth century BCE, it would not have been a matter of sporadic revolts attempted by weaker states against a stronger state. Rather, in such earlier times, before the annexations of territories defeated by Elis—that is, before the fifth century BCE—ultimate victory was still in doubt in struggles between Pisa and Elis over the custodianship of the Olympics. Only with the passage of time did the grip of Elis on custodianship become so strong and the resources of rival cities become so weak or nonexistent that ultimate victory for Elis became inevitable. As the work of Christesen also shows, however, even the prevailing historical record shaped by Elis acknowledged an earlier era, before the fifth century, when the city of Pisa and cities allied with Pisa were still potentially successful competitors. For cities then allied with Pisa, then, the prestige of sharing with that city the custodianship of Olympia and the Olympics can hardly be overestimated.

A Cretan connection for Herakles as well as for Athena

§93. Having argued that there existed a Cretan connection for Athena as goddess of the acropolis at Phrixa, I will now argue that there was likewise a Cretan connection for Herakles himself as hero of that same acropolis. And I will also argue that such a Cretan connection for Herakles was mythologized not only by a city like Phrixa, longtime ally of Pisa, but also by the city of Pisa itself in that city’s claimed role as primary custodian of the Olympics. Given the fact, however, that Pisa, in the end, was totally destroyed by Elis, the primary evidence for my argument comes only indirectly from Pisa but directly from Phrixa as a longtime ally of Pisa.

§94. With reference to a Cretan connection for Athena, I have already expanded on the term Cretan by positing the earlier existence of a special blend of Minoan and Mycenaean myths that validated the identity of cities like Phrixa, and I now proceed to posit the same kind of mythological background with reference to a Cretan connection for Herakles. But before I can proceed any further, I must face a question: although I have already argued that a hero who is actually named Herakles is a figure inherited from Mycenaean mythology—and the same argument can be made about a goddess who is actually named Athena—the question is whether I can go on to argue that a Mycenaean hero named Herakles and a Mycenaean goddess named Athena were preceded by a Minoan Herakles and a Minoan Athena. In what follows, my answer is this: yes, there had existed such a hero and such a goddess, though their Minoan names cannot necessarily be ascertained.

§95. That said, I proceed to consider an image of such a Minoan Herakles, which I showed already as the featured image to be placed at the beginning of my survey.

Note 21. What follows at §§96-103 is rewritten from Nagy (2021.11.15) §§8-17

Figure 4a. Repeated here is a sketch, by Jillian Robbins, based on a drawing of an impression (= imprint) made on a clay sealing found on the acropolis of Kastelli Hill in Khanià, Crete (Archaeological Museum of Chania, museum number KH 1563). The impression, known to archaeologists as “The Master Impression,” was stamped by a signet ring that has not survived. Estimated dating of the original ring: Late Minoan I (1600–1450 BCE; the impression, however, is probably of a later date)..

Figure 4b. Photograph of “The Master Impression.” Image via Wikimedia Commons.

§96. As I say in the caption for the picture I showed at the beginning, we see here a sketch based on a drawing of an impression or imprint made on a clay sealing, stamped by a magnificent signet ring that has not survived. The original picture that had once been carved into that signet ring must have been a wonder, since even the impression that it made on the clay sealing is a wonder in its own right. This Minoan sealing, reverently described by archaeologists as “The Master Impression,” bears the image of a heroic figure who is I think directly comparable to the Mycenaean and post-Mycenaean hero Herakles. There he is, standing proudly on top of a palace, with a commanding view of the landscape that surrounds him. This landscape—a composite of sea, land, and sky—is personified, as I will argue at §103, by a goddess comparable to Athena in her role as a vigilant patroness of Herakles. For now, however, I will concentrate on what is pictured in “The Master Impression,” arguing that we see pictured here the equivalent of a Minoan Herakles.

§97. Foundational for my argument is a book about “The Master Impression” written by a most perceptive archaeologist, Erik Hallager (1985). Throughout his book, the author emphasizes the obviously exalted social importance of the person who owned the grand signet ring, now lost, with which he had stamped the clay sealing known as “The Master Impression.” An additional indication of this person’s importance, according to Hallager (p. 14), is that the clay sealing was probably attached to a text written on parchment, now also lost. Viewing the overall scene as pictured in “The Master Impression,” Hallager starts his description from down below and then moves from there to higher and higher zones in the picture. Down below, in the lowest zone, we can see a rocky shore next to the sea (p. 16). Further up, there is a likewise rocky and mountainous “landscape,” with “a clearly marked summit, near to the sea,” and with “a building complex placed upon it” (p. 17). Standing on top of the “building complex” is “a male figure surrounded by four objects which it has not been possible to identify.” […] Hallager goes on to describe this male figure (p. 22), and I now quote him without further interruption (though I do not include his parenthetical references to illustrations that accompany his statements): “Compared with other representations in Minoan art, this male figure is unusually sturdy and strongly built, with large thighs and upper arms, although he has been rendered with the typical, Minoan wasp-waist. The impression is not clear in respect of the face and hair treatment, but he does have long hair, which falls down behind his back and flares out on each side of his body in four tresses. He wears a necklace, has a ring on his upper, left arm and apparently also a ring on his left wrist, indicated by a small projection. He is dressed in a typical, short kilt with a belt around the waist and the codpiece in front. His footwear is of a type well known in Minoan art. The whole pose of the figure gives an immediate impression of strength.”[The italics here are mine.]

§98. I now propose to compare the details reported in Hallager’s description of this Minoan picture carved into a signet ring and impressed on a clay sealing dated to the fifteenth century BCE with some details I have already noted in analyzing the text of Pausanias, at 6.21.6, where he describes his visit to the acropolis of Phrixa in the region of Triphylia (6.21.6). Before I start the comparison, however, I find it essential to emphasize a further detail about “The Master Impression”: it was found on the acropolis known today as Kastelli Hill in the city of Khanià in western Crete—and the ancient name of this city was Kudōniā. That said, I am ready to review what Pausanias says at 6.21.6 about the acropolis of Phrixa. He speaks of an ancient nāos ‘temple’ of Athena, situated on top of a steep elevation, and he says that this temple, in ruins, is the centerpiece of a whole complex of ancient ruins that he found there—ruins that he describes as the polis of Phrixa. In situations where our traveler is describing a living city, he will of course refer to such a city as a polis, but, as I have already noted, in situations where he is reconstructing in his mind the distant past, he uses this same word polis to mean ‘acropolis’ or ‘citadel’.

§99. If we compare the acropolis at Phrixa, which was for Pausanias a city in ruins, with the acropolis at Athens, which remained a living city, could there be something that is missing in the picture that our traveler gives us in describing what he actually saw when he visited the acropolis at Phrixa? I think that there was in fact something that was very much missing in this picture, and this something, I also think, can best be described as an absent signifier. Here is what I mean: at Phrixa, there was no statue of the goddess for Pausanias to see.

§100. In terms of Greek mythological traditions, however, such a situation does not rule out the idea that the goddess Athena is nevertheless ever present, ever ready to be worshipped by the local population that venerates her sacred space on high. In the case of the acropolis at Phrixa, for example, Pausanias goes out of his way to note that the altar for worshipping the goddess on high is still functional, even if her temple is in ruins. It is the sacred space of the goddess that remains essential, not the statue that marks the space.

§101. That said, I now review what is said further by Pausanias at 6.21.6 about the sacred space of Athena at Phrixa. As we see from the wording of our traveler, the clearest indication that the goddess was still being worshipped in that space by the local population is this detail: the people of this city in ruins had an epiclesis (epíklēsis) for their goddess, that is, they had a special ‘name-of-invocation’ for Athena when they were praying to her, worshipping her, and, presumably, sacrificing at her altar. The epiclesis or ‘name-of-invocation’ for Athena, Pausanias goes out of his way to say, was Kudōniā. Thus the name that the people of Phrixa gave to the goddess Athena when they worshipped her is identical to the ancient place-name Kudōniā—which was once the name of the place in Crete where archaeologists found “The Master Impression.”

§102. There is much more to be said about the convergences in the details given so far. But I must note already now that there was a river by the name of Iardanos not only in northwest Crete (Odyssey 3.293) but also in the region called Elis (Iliad 7.135). Further, the region of Kudōníā in northwest Crete is not far from the heights of Mount Ida, the place of origin for Herakles, the-one-from-Mount-Ida [Idaios].

§103. I return to the idea that “The Master Impression” pictures a landscape—a composite of sea, land, and sky—that is personified by a goddess comparable to Athena, who figures prominently in later myths as the vigilant patroness of Herakles. But how can such a personification be imagined, when there is no goddess to be seen in the Minoan picture? The answer, I propose, has to do with mythological thinking about a sacred wooden statue that drops out of the sky and falls to the earth, landing on top of an acropolis where the local population is worshipping a goddess who personifies their landscape as viewed from the vantage point of the heights looking over their locale. We can see such thinking come to life in a myth reported by Pausanias at 1.26.6 about a wooden statue of Athena Poliás—this epithet can be interpreted to mean ‘Our Lady of the Polis’. The statue, according to the narration of Pausanias, fell out of the sky once upon a time and landed on top of the Acropolis of Athens, thus marking the personification of that Acropolis as the goddess herself. In terms of this myth about the statue of Athena Poliás, the Acropolis of Athens is already protected by an invisible goddess even before she makes herself visible in the form of a statue that descends from the heavens. But then, once she arrives at her acropolis in person, as a wooden statue, she can personally claim this sacred space as a personification of her divine self.

A Minoan equivalent of a post-Minoan Athena, patroness of Herakles

§104. I am about to show a Minoan pictorial representations of such a goddess at the moment of her arrival, fully personified and taking her rightful place as the patroness of the hero who guards her sacred space.

Note 22. What follows at §§105-114 is a rewriting of Nagy (2020.05.22/23).

§105. Before I do show such a Minoan picture, however, I must review what we already saw in the featured image for this survey, the Minoan picture known to archaeologists as “The Master Impression,” where we saw what I would describe as a Minoan equivalent of an acropolis. That is, we saw an elevation fortified and crowned with a palatial building. We also saw a male figure standing on top of the elevation, whom I would describe as a Minoan equivalent of a hero known in post-Minoan times as Herakles. That said, we are now ready to look at a Minoan equivalent of a goddess known in post-Minoan times as Athena, primary patroness of the hero Herakles:

 Figure 5. Sketch, by Jillian Robbins, based on a drawing of impressions (= imprints) made on a number of clay sealings found in Crete, at Knossos (“Central Shrine” and chamber to west, CMS II.8 no. 256, HMs 141/1-2, 166/1-3, 168/3). All these impressions were stamped by the same signet ring, which has not survived. Estimated dating of the original ring: Late Minoan I (1600–1450 BCE).

§106. This picture, as I have just said more fully in the caption, is based on a composite drawing of impressions made on a number of clay sealings found at the palace of Knossos and stamped by the same signet ring, which has not survived. The original picture that had once been carved into that signet ring shows a female figure presiding over an elevation, which is a stylized mountain, and she is flanked by two lions, one at each side. Archaeologists refer to this female figure as “The Mother of the Mountain.”

§107. In what follows, I will argue for a modification of such a term, in the sense that the female figure whom we see landing on top of the mountain is not only the “Mother” presiding over the mountain. Already at §17a, I had used the term “Mother Mountain,” with reference to Mount Ida, mother of her native son, known to Greek-speaking people as Herakles. When archaeologists speak of “The Mother of the Mountain,” on the other hand, they they are simply conveying the idea that the Minoan Mother Goddess is connected to a Minoan Mountain. In other words, the wording “Mother of the Mountain,” unlike my wording “Mother Mountain,” may imply that the Mother is not necessarily to be equated with a Mountain, such as, say, Mount Ida. She could be, rather, simply connected with a Mountain. By contrast, my wording “Mother Mountain” implies that the Minoan Mother Goddess is both a depersonalized mountain and, simultaneously, a personified heavenly goddess who makes contact with a mountain like Mount Ida. And such a “Mountain Mother” prefigures Mount Ida in her role as divine mother of the Cretan Herakles in his role as the native son of Mount Ida.

§108. In what follows, I also propose to compare this picture with the other Minoan picture I already showed, “The Master Impression.” That other picture too, as I already noted, is based on a drawing of another impression, made on another clay sealing and stamped by another signet ring that has not survived. But before we can proceed to compare the similarities we see in the picture of “The Master Impression,” which features a male figure dominating the landscape, and in the picture of the other impression, “The Mother of the Mountain,” which features a comparably dominant female figure, I need to highlight a salient dissimilarity between the two pictures. Unlike the male figure in “The Master Impression,” the female figure in the other impression is positioned in a most special way: as I have already noted, she is flanked by two lions.

§109. I find the positioning of this female figure, flanked by two lions, analogous to the column flanked by two lions on top of the Lion Gate at Mycenae:

Figure 6a. The Lion Gate at Mycenae. Image via Wikimedia Commons.

Figure 6b. Close-up of the column flanked by two lions above the gate to the citadel of Mycenae. Image via Wikimedia Commons.

§110. I focus on the symbolism of this column positioned at the centerpoint of the Lion Gate. It is a matter of common knowledge, I trust, that this single column guarded by two lions stands for the entire building complex of the acropolis of Mycenae. Such symbolism is a perfect example of the kind of metonymy where a most prominent aspect of a set of details stands for the sum total of those details.

Note 23. In Nagy (2015), titled Masterpieces of Metonymy, my general definition of metonymy is this: metonymy is a mental process that expresses meaning by connecting something to something else that is next to it or at least near to it, thereby making contact.

§111. That said, I now go on to argue that the positioning of the column flanked by two lions in the Mycenaean visualization of Mycenae as an acropolis is comparable to the positioning of the female figure flanked by two lions in the Minoan visualization of the elevation that we see pictured in the clay impression under study.

§112. Here I carry the reasoning one step further. Just as the figuring of a single column flanked by two lions was a way of symbolizing, in Mycenaean architecture, the overall idea of the acropolis at Mycenae, so also the figuring of “The Mother of the Mountain” flanked by two lions was a way of symbolizing, in Minoan glyptic art, the overall idea of a mountain that looks down, from the heights above, at such an acropolis and at the building complex situated on top of the acropolis, from where the protector of the region is positioned to look up at the heights above, which is the Mountain that looks down at the acropolis. And, in this case, the female figure who appears as a woman magnified in size, in a picture known to archaeologists as “The Mother of the Mountain,” is I think the figure of a goddess who dominates both her mountain and her acropolis, since her acropolis is a political reflection of her mountain. But the building complex situated on top of a real acropolis itself is visualized in this picture differently from the picturing we have already seen in “The Master Impression.” In the picture we see now, that is, in the impression known as “The Mother of the Mountain,” what is shown dead center is a mountain that looks like a mountain, not like an acropolis, while the building complex that could be imagined as situated on top of an acropolis is pictured in the form of the built structures that we see represented off to the side, to our left in the same picture. These structures that we see featured off to the side actually correspond, I think, to the palace, built on top of an acropolis, as we see it featured at the front and center of the picture known as “The Master Impression.”

§113. I recall again here the Athenian myth, retold by Pausanias at 1.26.6, about a wooden statue of Athena Poliás that descended from the heavens above and landed on top of the acropolis of Athens. I think we see in that myth a visualization that is comparable to what we see in the Minoan picture of a goddess as she lands on top of her mountain, which looks down on the building complex of her acropolis, which in turn looks up at the mountain. I continue to base my thinking here on what I interpret as the built-in logic of the Athenian myth: once the statue of Athena Poliás lands on top of the acropolis of Athens, the fortified elevation that is already visualized as the personified goddess Athena can now become re-visualized not only as a divine place but also as a divine persona, visible in magnified human form. Such a visualization is an epiphany of the goddess.

§114. So also in the mythological scene that is pictured in the Minoan impression that we are now considering: the goddess is making herself visible in magnified human form, and the vision of this epiphany is experienced by the male figure who stands on the side, off to our right. As for what the goddess holds in her hand—which I interpret to be a staff of authority—it is comparable to the staff that the heroic figure in “The Master Impression” is holding in his own hand. What a Minoan prefiguration of Herakles is shown holding in the picture of “The Master Impression” may thus turn out to be the same symbol of authority that is being offered to the male figure by a Minoan prefiguration of Athena, with her arm extended, in the corresponding picture of “The Mother of the Mountain.” The transfer of a staff of authority would be happening in the context of an epiphany, where the acropolis becomes personified by manifesting itself as a goddess in magnified human form.

§115. What I have written in §§105-114 here benefits from the advice of a treasured colleague, Georgia Flouda (per litteras 2020.05.22), who pointed me to two works that helped me enhance my thinking about the staff of authority that we see pictured in “The Master Impression.” One of these works is an article by Christos Boulotis (2008), who studies Minoan seals and sealings that picture human figures who are holding what I described here as a staff of authority. The other of these two works is an article by Evangelos Kyriakidis (2005), who studies Minoan seals and sealings that picture human figures hovering above ground-level, parallel to figures of objects that are similarly pictured as “floating” in the sky. I should add that the reconstructions I have offered here, where I focus on pictures that I have described as Minoan prefigurations of Athena and Herakles, are not at odds with what archaeologists like Boulotis and Kyriakidis reconstruct as gods and heroes of the Minoan world. Also, my interpretation of the elevation that is pictured in “The Master Impression” as a generic acropolis is not at odds with the views of archaeologists who think that this elevation can be specifically identified with Kastelli Hill at Khanià in Crete, which is where the impression was found. As noted already, Khanià is the Modern Greek name for ancient Kudōniã.

The Minoan “Mother” as Mount Ida,

§116. So far, I have argued that the Minoan seal-impression known to archaeologists as “The Mother of the Mountain” is picturing a goddess who prefigures a post-Minoan Athena and who is seen here in the act of descending from the celestial heights and landing on top of an mountain while handing over her staff of authority to a male hero who prefigures a post-Minoan Herakles. That said, I will now argue that this picture is relevant to Cretan myths about Herakles as a native son of Mount Ida in Crete—and that the “Mother” pictured in the impression known as “The Mother of the Mountain” can be linked directly with Mount Ida in Crete—a mountain viewed as the mother of Herakles in his role as native son of Mount Ida. This is not to say, however, that the goddess whom we see pictured in the seal-impression here is directly visualized as the Mother herself. In terms of my argument, the Minoan goddess descending from the sky here prefigures a post-Minoan Athena, patroness of a post-Minoan Herakles. And whereas this goddess as personalized in the picture prefigures a post-Minoan Athena, the mountain where she is landing prefigures a depersonalized Mount Ida. So, in terms of my argument, the Minoan goddess descending from the sky to make contact with a mountain that looks over an acropolis is a personalized link to an otherwise depersonalized Mother who is herself the same Mountain that archaeologists have in mind when they refer the Minoan picturing of “The Mother of the Mountain.”

Note 24. What follows in §§82-84 is a rewriting of Nagy (2021.12.13).

§117. To back up my formulation, I turn to the evidence of Minoan double-axes inscribed with syllables written in the Linear A script. In an article I published over half a century ago (Nagy 1963), I drew attention to four Linear A syllabic characters inscribed on a golden double-axe dating from Minoan times, first published by my late colleague and friend Emily Vermeule (1959). In my article (p. 200), I suggested that the Linear A inscription, which I read as i-da-ma-te, referred to Mount Ida in Crete, and that the mountain is invoked, in the inscribed wording, as a ‘Mother’. Since those publications, important new work by Georgia Flouda (2013 and 2015) on Minoan double-axes has emphasized the existence of a parallel inscription on another Minoan double-axe, which can be read the same way: i-da-ma-te.

§118. For the archaeological contexts of these double-axes, I rely on the insightful analysis of the researcher already highlighted, Georgia Flouda (2015:45–48). As for a linguistic analysis of what I read as i-da-ma-te, I will simply say for now that i-da- corresponds to what was later written in alphabetic Greek as ῎Ιδα (ídā)—῎Ιδη in Homeric Greek—which is described as “non-Indo-European” in the etymological dictionary of Pierre Chantraine (1968–1980) under the entry ἴδη, meaning ‘wooded mountain’, while -ma-te corresponds to what was later written in alphabetic Greek as μάτηρ (mā́tēr)—μήτηρ in Homeric Greek—which means ‘mother’ and which is clearly “Indo-European” in derivation.

§119. But what about a palaeographical explanation for my reading phonetic values of Linear B into Linear A spellings, as in this case, i-da-ma-te? Here I return to my earliest published study on Linear A (Nagy 1963), where I first suggested (p. 200) that the Linear A sequence as I have just interpreted it can be read in terms of phonetic values that we find in the Linear B syllabary. I have been away from studying such topics for a long time, returning to them only quite recently (Nagy 2019.12.27). As I look back on my argumentation in my two early articles on Linear A (Nagy 1963 and 1965), I find many things to update and rethink in many ways, but I stand by my main argument in both articles (as also in Nagy 2019.12.27): that the Linear B writing system, as a syllabary, was interchangeable, in terms of its phonetic values, with the Linear A syllabary. Such interchangeability has been convincingly affirmed in an article by Thomas Palaima (1988) and, more recently, in a thoroughgoing book by Ester Salgarella (2020).

Note 25. Thanks to Georgia Flouda, I have added the following relevant entries to the Bibliography below: Meißner and Steele 2017, Thomas 2020/2021, Younger 2020.

On a Minoan Herakles, predecessor of a Mycenaean Herakles

§120. Just now, at §118, in referring to my interpretation of the wording i-da-ma-te, inscribed in the Linear A script on Minoan double-axes, I used the term “Indo-European” in describing the component -ma-te. I was saying that this -ma-te is the equivalent of “what was later written in alphabetic Greek as μάτηρ (mā́tēr)—μήτηρ in Homeric Greek—which would be clearly Indo-European in derivation.” I said this because I remain open to the possibility that the island of Crete, in the era of the Minoan Empire in the earlier part of the second millennium BCE, was populated by speakers of a wide variety of languages, including Indo-European languages. In my early work on Linear A texts stemming from the era of the Minoan Empire (Nagy 1963, 1965), I had even argued that the Greek language was one of the Indo-European languages spoken by at least some segments of the variegated population then living on the island. That said, however, I cannot expect that a Cretan Herakles, native son of Mount Ida, his divine Mother, would have a name that matches closely the Greek name of the Mycenaean Herakles, which is clearly Indo-European in derivation. On the other hand, as I will argue, the Mycenaean Herakles is a blend of non-Greek as well as Greek mythological traditions. In other words, the Mycenaean Herakles owes a significant portion of his characteristics in myth to an earlier Minoan Herakles.

§121a. There are, in any case, complications with reconstructing the Mycenaean Herakles by way of Indo-European mythological traditions. Mycenaean traditions of mythmaking evidently integrated also other traditions that were not Indo-European in derivation, and such integration took place in the overall context of a long-lasting and all-pervasive cultural interconnectedness between the Mycenaean Empire and the earlier Minoan Empire originating from the island of Crete. The Minoan-Mycenaean cultural continuum was in turn strongly influenced by extensive contacts with other civilizations, especially in the Near East and in Egypt. And most of these civilizations, with the prominent exception of a cultural continuum represented by languages like Hittite and Luvian in Asia Minor, were represented by populations that spoke non-Indo-European languages.

§121b. And there are further complications involving our Mycenaean Herakles. Although, as we have seen, the so-called sub-Labors of Herakles can follow, like the Labors, various Mycenaean traditions of mythmaking, they can also follow, as we will now see, Minoan traditions that we find attested in visual arts. To make this point, I return to the myth about Herakles that tells about his killing of the Lion of Cithaeron, narrated in the Library of Apollodorus (2.4.9–10). This myth, as we have seen, counts only as a sub-Labor by contrast with the myth about the same hero’s killing of the Lion of Nemea, also narrated by Apollodorus (2.5.1), which counts as a canonical Labor. Here we have the advantage of being able to compare the sub-Labor and the Labor as they coexist within one integrated narrative, and the comparison shows one big difference: the detail about the wearing of the lionskin by the hero Herakles in the narrative about the sub-Labor differs from the detail about the presentation of the lionskin as a prize to the king Eurystheus in the narrative about the Labor. When we compare these two coexisting myths about the Lion of Cithaeron and the Lion of Nemea in the narrative of Apollodorus with the single unified myth about the Lion of Nemea in the narrative of Diodorus (4.11.3–4), it is the sub-Labor and not the Labor in the narrative of Apollodorus that matches more closely the Labor in the narrative of Diodorus. From a comparative point of view, then, the detail about the wearing of the lionskin has less to do with the Indo-European model of foregrounding the service of a Strong Man to a King—and has more to do with what can best be described as a blended Minoan-Mycenaean model of identifying the generic hunter with the generic beast that he is hunting.

Toward a reconstruction of an Aegean Herakles

§122. Here I will elaborate on such a blended modeling of Herakles, who turns out to be not merely “Mycenaean” but, more properly, “Minoan-Mycenaean” in his synthetic prehistory. And, given that non-Indo-European elements as transmitted by Minoan civilization got to be synthesized with whatever Indo-European elements were at least partly inherited by Mycenaean civilization, I am prepared to shift the terminology: instead of describing such synthesized mythological models as Minoan-Mycenaean, I propose now to use the term Aegean.

§123. In a most relevant article by Janice Crowley (2010), she actually uses this term “Aegean” in highlighting an image of a figure whom I would otherwise describe as a Minoan-Mycenaean Herakles. Her article shows several examples of this kind of image, but I will limit myself here to showing only the first example that she cites, which is Figure 1 in her article (CMS I 89) —and which becomes Figure 7 in my survey here. I now show the image, carved into a Mycenaean gem—a jasper signet ring that was excavated at Mycenae:

Figure 7. Drawing after a seal on a Mycenaean jasper signet ring (Corpus der minoischen und mykenischen Siegel no. I 89).

§124. We see here a weaponless and barehanded human domination of lions. The human protagonist in this image is a figure whom Crowley (2010) describes, aptly, as a generic “Aegean Master of Animals.” Here is her further description of the image (p. 77):

The human figure is depicted in the Aegean combination pose, head in profile with the upper torso frontal and swiveled at the waist to render the lower torso in profile, the regular pose for Master figures. He is depicted as a muscled man clothed in belt and kilt and so full of power that he holds both lions clear of the ground, one by the neck, the other inverted and suspended by a hind foot with head regardant.

§125. To clarify the “Aegean” persona of our “Master of Animals,” I now quote an apt formulation by Crowley (2010:88) about a reshaping, in a Mycenaean world representing the “West,” of an earlier Minoan model that is strongly influenced by analogous models stemming from an alternative world representing the “East” that we know as the Near East:

The many and varied representations on the [Mycenaean] seals, this most endemic Aegean art form, are the clearest indicators of the Master’s happy domicile in the West. He carries forward much of the iconography of earlier Near Eastern motifs, but he has also acquired distinctively Aegean characteristics. He has new Aegean names since he has gained new Aegean animal attendants [besides the lion, primarily]: the Minoan [“]genius[”], the Cretan agrimi, the dolphin, hound, and stag. His metamorphosis into the athletic Minoan male is seen in most portrayals, but he may also be a Mycenaean warrior-hunter, a [“]genius[”], a hybrid human, or deity Lord. […] It is a pity that the absence of textual gloss prevents us from calling the master by his Aegean name.

§126. In at least some details, I propose, the figure of Herakles matches the Aegean Master of Animals. The picturing of the Master’s weaponless and barehanded domination of wild animals seems to me parallel to some of the deeds of Herakles where our Strong Man hunts down wild animals but then “brings them back alive,” as in the case of the Erymanthian Boar. This beast is captured alive and delivered alive to Eurystheus by Herakles, as we read in the narratives of Diodorus (4.12.1–2) and Apollodorus (2.5.4). In this case, I should add, it is relevant that boars as well as deer, roaming Mount Erymanthos, are described in Odyssey 6.102-104 as the favorite animals of Artemis, goddess of the hunt, who in turn reminds me of the Mistress of Animals as described by Crowley (2010:85-87) in her survey of carved seal-images picturing a goddess who dominates wild animals in poses that are in many details parallel to the poses of the Master.

§127. Also, in general, the picturing of our Master of Animals as a manhandler of lions seems to me parallel to what we find being narrated in some other narratives about the Labors of our Strong Man. In particular, I have in mind the moment when Herakles subdues the Nemean Lion by choking it to death in a free-style wrestling hold. In the narratives about this Labor, as we have seen, the weaponless and barehanded subduing of the Lion by the Strong Man actually results in the death of the beast—which in turn results in the wearing of the lionskin by Herakles, at least in some versions of the Labor. Such wearing of the lionskin is what I have had in mind all along when I referred to the idea of a hunter’s identification with the hunted beast.

§128. A comparable identification of Hunter with Hunted takes place in the narrative about the killing of the Lion of Cithaeron. Like the Boar that roams the highlands of Mount Erymanthos and ravages the lowlands of Arcadia according to the story as narrated by Apollodorus (2.5.4), the Lion roams the highlands of Mount Cithaeron and preys on the cattle pasturing in the lowlands of Boeotia according to an earlier parallel story as retold, again, by Apollodorus (2.4.9–10). I now paraphrase for the second time, repeating from §28, exactly what happens when our Strong Man enters the scene. He is not yet called Herakles, and he is still an adolescent, only eighteen years old, when he hunts down and kills the Lion in this story as transmitted by Apollodorus. The youthful Strong Man then skins the dead lion and, from this time forward, he wears the lionskin. I repeat my initial description. The scalp of the lion’s entire head has become a makeshift helmet for the hero’s skull, and the face of the hunter is hereafter framed within the gaping jaws of the beast that he has hunted down and killed. Such a Mycenaean narrative about a sub-Labor performed by our Strong Man is a good fit, I propose, for earlier Aegean narratives, now lost, about the Minoan-Mycenaean Master of Animals.

An Aegean Herakles authorized as a hero by an Aegean Athena

§129. So far, I have argued that the Aegean Herakles is authorized as a hero by the Aegean goddess who is pictured in the Minoan clay impression known to archaeologists as “The Mother of the Mountain”—and who prefigures, as I will now argue further, an Aegean Athena.

Figure 8. Repeated from Figure 5.  Sketch, by Jillian Robbins, based on a drawing of impressions (= imprints) made on a number of clay sealings found in Crete, at Knossos (“Central Shrine” and chamber to west, CMS II.8 no. 256, HMs 141/1-2, 166/1-3, 168/3). All these impressions were stamped by the same signet ring, which has not survived. Estimated dating of the original ring: Late Minoan I (1600–1450 BCE).

§130. What we see in this Minoan image is the Aegean goddess descending from the heavenly heights and making a soft landing on top of a mountain, which is situated next to a palace. The picturing of this palace, visible to our left as we look at the image of the impression, is a representation of a building complex that would be visible on top of an acropolis. The goddess, having descended to the top of the adjacent mountain, centered in the image, is now seen in the act of handing over a staff of authorization to a male persona, seen to our right. This male persona, as I argue, represents a Cretan version of Herakles in his role as native son of Mount Ida. Such a role of the Cretan Herakles, as native son, makes him also the biological son of a personified Mount Ida, who, once she turns into a female persona, represents the biological mother goddess of the hero. So, the descending goddess, as pictured in the Minoan impression, is a representation of this Mount Ida personified, and we see her landing on top of a depersonified mountain—such as Mount Ida—which represents her very own other self.

§131. As a female persona, such an Aegean mother goddess is authorized to act with divine powers of agency. She can now become the divine agent who authorizes the male persona who is extending his hand to receive from her the staff of authority that will authorize him as a hero.

§132. Such an Aegean mother goddess can be seen—once she is personified—as a prefiguration of the post-Minoan and post-Mycenaean “Classical” goddess Athena, even though the “Classical” myths about Athena cancel the potential of such a “Classical” Athena to be seen as a mother goddess. This goddess, from a “Classical” point of view is by now to be seen strictly as a virgin. And yet, in pre-“Classical” myths about Athena, there survive traces of an earlier phase of this goddess where she could still be worshipped as a mother goddess of heroes. Such a phase of mythmaking will be analyzed below, at §§138-141. In sum, the Aegean goddess is both a mountain—such as Mount Ida—and the personification of such a mountain, so that this personified part of her divine essence, where we see her as a superhuman goddess and not as a mountain, is essentially a prefiguration of the “Classical” Athena. Correspondingly, the Aegean hero who is authorized as a hero by the Aegean mother goddess is a prefiguration of the “Classical” Herakles.

Note 26. I analyze further evidence for an earlier role of Athena as a mother goddess in Nagy (2024.07.10): “About Greek goddesses as mothers or would-be mothers.”

A transcendent role for the Aegean hero

§133. In the Minoan impression of the “Mother of the Mountain,” where we see the female persona of the Aegean goddess in the act handing over her staff of authority to the male persona of an Aegean hero, the authorization of the male persona as a hero transcends the role of such a hero as a Strong Man. As I will now argue, there is also another role, a transcendent one, attributed to this Aegean Strong Man.

§134. In looking for such a transcendent role attributed to our Strong Man, I highlight a singularly relevant point made about Herakles by Diodorus of Sicily, who as we saw is dated to the first century BCE and whose stated aim was to provide a comprehensive summary of all existing myths about Herakles that were known to him—Diodorus at 4.39.4 actually states this aim of his. True to his own chosen role as a “universal historian,” although he was primarily interested in the roles of a non-Cretan Herakles who performed his canonical Twelve Labors and his many more sub-Labors, Diodorus nevertheless goes out of his way, though only at one single point in his entire work, to make mention of alternative myths about another Herakles. Even more than that, Diodorus says at this one point that he knows of myths about not two but three different heroes named Herakles, though he credits only the third of these three. I am about to quote this statement made by Diodorus, at 3.74.4-6, which he makes only after he had just finished engaging in a lengthy earlier discussion, from 3.62 all the way to 3.74, about three different and distinct personae in myth who were named Dionysus. Just as the third of these three personae named Dionysus eventually inherited all three of the roles of the three personae viewed together—according to Diodorus—so also, he claims, a third Herakles inherited the roles of the other two. Here is how he makes his claim:

{3.74.4} ἀλλὰ καὶ μετὰ ταῦτ’ ἐφ’ Ἡρακλέους. δυοῖν γὰρ ὄντων τῶν προγενεστέρων τῶν τὴν αὐτὴν ἐσχηκότωνπροσηγορίαν, τὸν μὲν ἀρχαιότατον Ἡρακλέα μυθολογεῖσθαι γεγονέναι παρ’ Αἰγυπτίοις, καὶ πολλὴν τῆςοἰκουμένης τοῖς ὅπλοις καταστρεψάμενον θέσθαι τὴν ἐπὶ τῆς Λιβύης στήλην, τὸν δὲ δεύτερον ἐκ Κρήτης ἕνατῶν Ἰδαίων ὄντα Δακτύλων καὶ γενόμενον γόητα καὶ στρατηγικὸν συστήσασθαι τὸν Ὀλυμπικὸν ἀγῶνα· τὸν δὲτελευταῖον μικρὸν πρὸ τῶν Τρωικῶν ἐξ Ἀλκμήνης καὶ Διὸς τεκνωθέντα πολλὴν ἐπελθεῖν τῆς οἰκουμένης, ὑπηρετοῦντα τοῖς Εὐρυσθέως προστάγμασιν. {3.74.5} ἐπιτυχόντα δὲ πᾶσι τοῖς ἄθλοις θέσθαι μὲν καὶ στήληντὴν ἐπὶ τῆς Εὐρώπης, διὰ δὲ τὴν ὁμωνυμίαν καὶ τὴν τῆς προαιρέσεως ὁμοιότητα χρόνων ἐπιγενομένωντελευτήσαντα κληρονομῆσαι τὰς τῶν ἀρχαιοτέρων πράξεις, ὡς ἑνὸς Ἡρακλέους γεγονότος ἐν παντὶ τῷπρότερον αἰῶνι.

{3.74.4} But these kinds of things [in the case of Dionysus and his times] happened also later, in the times of Herakles. You see, there were two previous personae having the same name [Herakles]. The most ancient Herakles [of the three], it is said in myth, was born in the land of the Egyptians. He conquered, by way of warfare, most of the inhabited world, and he set up the Pillar [of Herakles] that is in Libya. As for the second [of the three], he was one of the Dactyls-of-Ida [Idaioi Daktuloi]. He was a wizard [goēs] and an expert leader in warfare. Also, he founded the Olympic competition [agōn]. As for the last [of the three], he was born not too long before the Trojan War, the son of Alkmene and Zeus. He traveled through most of the inhabited world in the service of Eurystheus and his commands [prostagmata]. {3.74.5}After succeeding in the completion of all his Labors [āthloi] he set up the Pillar [of Herakles] that is in Europe. But because he had the same name [as the other two] and because he made similar choices in life, what happened, with the passage of time after his life came to an end, is that he ended up successfully inheriting the deeds of the other two more ancient personae, as if there had existed only one Herakles all along in the entire given cycle of time.

Diodorus 3.74.4-5

§135. The formulation of Diodorus in this passage, although I resist the theologizing that went into it, is nevertheless a most valuable collection of details he found in various different myths about a persona named Herakles. In particular, I value one single detail that has not survived anywhere else except in this passage of Diodorus. The detail concerns the Cretan Herakles. As we have just seen in the passage as I quoted it, this Herakles is described as a goēs, which I have translated for the moment simply as ‘wizard’. This word, as we will now see, reveals an essential aspect of the Aegean hero that goes beyond his role as a Strong Man.

§136. The Aegean hero as a Strong Man is an idealized combination of athlete and warrior—we have already seen that. But now we will see that such a hero is also an idealized artisan, an ultimate master of craftsmanship. As I will now argue, the significance of the word goēs as used by Diodorus at 3.74.4 can best be explained by translating this word not as ‘wizard’ here but as ‘artisan’, in the sense that this Cretan Herakles can be seen not only as the supreme athlete and warrior but also as the supreme artisan who masters all crafts. Such an idea is also conveyed by further wording used by Diodorus in the same context where he has just now used this word goēs: he also says at 3.74.4 that the Cretan Herakles was not only a goēs but also, as he puts it, ‘one of the Dactyls-of-Ida [Idaioi Daktuloi]’. This combination of the word goēs with the description of the Cretan Herakles as a ‘Dactyl’ originating from Mount Ida is immediately comparable to the same description of this Cretan Herakles as a ‘Dactyl’ in another passage. That other passage is from Pausanias, and I already quoted it at §16 of my survey. But now there is a new reason for quoting the passage again here:

{5.7.6} […] ἐς δὲ τὸν ἀγῶνα τὸν Ὀλυμπικὸν λέγουσιν Ἠλείων οἱ τὰ ἀρχαιότατα μνημονεύοντες Κρόνον τὴν ἐν οὐρανῷ σχεῖν βασιλείαν πρῶτον καὶ ἐν Ὀλυμπίᾳ ποιηθῆναι Κρόνῳ ναὸν ὑπὸ τῶν τότε ἀνθρώπων, οἳ ὠνομάζοντο χρυσοῦν γένος· Δ’ ιὸς δὲ τεχθέντος ἐπιτρέψαι Ῥέαν τοῦ παιδὸς τὴν φρουρὰν τοῖς Ἰδαίοις Δακτύλοις, καλουμένοις δὲ τοῖς αὐτοῖς τούτοις καὶ Κούρησιν· ἀφικέσθαι δὲ αὐτοὺς ἐξ Ἴδης τῆς Κρητικῆς, {5.7.7} [πρὸς] Ἡρακλέα καὶ Παιωναῖον καὶ Ἐπιμήδην καὶ Ἰάσιόν τε καὶ Ἴδαν· τὸν δὲ Ἡρακλέα παίζοντα – εἶναι γὰρ δὴ αὐτὸν πρεσβύτατον ἡλικίᾳ – συμβαλεῖν τοὺς ἀδελφοὺς ἐς ἅμιλλαν δρόμου καὶ τὸν νικήσαντα ἐξ αὐτῶν κλάδῳ στεφανῶσαι κοτίνου· παρεῖναι δὲ αὐτοῖς πολὺν δή τι οὕτω τὸν κότινον ὡς τὰ χλωρὰ ἔτι τῶν φύλλων ὑπεστρῶσθαι σφᾶς καθεύδοντας.

{5.7.6} […] As for the festival-of-competitions [agōn] named the Olympics, here is what is said by those people-of-Elis who commemorate [mnēmoneuein] the most ancient of all ancient things. Kronos [the god] took possession of kingship in the sky [ouranos], in the beginning, and a temple [nāos] was built for him, in Olympia, by the humans who lived back then and who were named the Golden Generation. When Zeus was born, [his divine mother] Rhea entrusted the guardianship of her son to the Dactyls-of-Ida [Idaioi Daktuloi]—who were also called Kourētes. They came [to Olympia] from Ida-in-Crete, and they were Herakles, Paiōnaios, Epimēdēs, Iasios, and Idas. {5.7.7} Herakles, being the eldest [of the Dactyls], had his brothers compete, as a game, in a footrace, and he garlanded the one of them who won. The garland was made [of leaves] from a branch of wild olive [kotinos]. They had such an ample supply [of wild olive] that they slept on piles of its leaves while still green.

Pausanias 5.7.6-7

§137. As we now re-read Pausanias, we find further details about the Cretan Herakles, ‘Dactyl’ of Mount Ida, that were not yet relevant when we had first read what our traveler says about this ‘Dactyl’, as quoted at §16 of my survey. Now that we know from Diodorus that this Cretan Herakles is not only a supreme athlete and warrior but also a supreme artisan—a status that is linked not only with the noun goēs ‘artisan’ but also with the “naming” noun Daktulos‘Dactyl’, we can start to appreciate more fully why Walter Burkert, in his influential book titled Greek Religion in its English-language version, describes the mythical Daktuloi ‘Dactyls’ in general as primordial metalworkers (Burkert 1985:173). As Burkert also observes in his book, there is a vast variety of ancient Greek myths about Daktuloi ‘Dactyls’ in their role as superhuman artisans, and this general subject of ‘Dactyls’ as artisans opens up a whole world of further mythological connections that go far beyond the limits of my survey here. Within my limits, however, I insist on the importance of the link we see in the two passages we have just considered—one from Diodorus and the other from Pausanias—where both sources provide evidence for connecting the status of the Cretan Herakles, this Aegean hero, with the status of a supreme artisan. Nowhere else in ancient sources do I find such a connection being made. Even in the case of Pausanias, I find no mention of such a connection in his vast collection of local myths—though our antiquarian traveler does mention myths about Daktuloi ‘Dactyls’ in other locales (Megalopolis, at 8.31.3; Mykalessos, at 9.19.5; Thespiai, at 9.27.6–8). The fact is, none of these other ‘Dactyls’ mentioned by Pausanias has anything to do with the persona of Herakles. Only in the passage we have just read again does Pausanias link the naming noun ‘Dactyl’ with Herakles.

A transcendent role for the Aegean mother goddess

§138. So far, I have reconstructed a transcendent role for the Aegean hero, where such a hero figures not only as a supreme athlete and supreme warrior but also as a supreme artisan. And now I will attempt to reconstruct a correspondingly transcendent role for the Aegean mother goddess, who conceives such a hero by mating with a god who is a supreme artisan in his own right. My reconstruction starts with the post-Mycenaean era, and with myths from that period about the god Hephaistos as a supreme artisan—especially as a supreme metalworker. Such a mythological role for Hephaistos is amply attested even in “Classical” traditions. And, in this same connection, I now compare the mythological role of the goddess Athena as the divine patroness of artisans in the city of Athens—together with the god Hephaistos as the divine male patron of artisans. This relationship in the divine roles of Athena and Hephaistos as patrons of artisans is relevant, I argue, to what I reconstruct as an earlier role of this goddess in Athenian mythology. In terms of such a reconstruction, as I will now argue, the goddess Athena as prefigured in Minoan mythology can be seen as a mother goddess instead of a virgin goddess.

Note 27. What follows at §§139-141 is an abridged rewriting of Nagy (2024.07.10) §8abc.

§139. Such a reconstruction is based on a myth that tells about the fathering of the primordial hero of the Athenians—their first human ancestor—by the god Hephaistos himself. The myth is retold by Pausanias at 1.2.5 and 1.14.6, who reports that the first Athenian human, Erikhthonios, was born not from anthrōpoi ‘humans’ but from Mother Earth or Gē/Gaia, and that his father was the divine artisan Hephaistos. Pausanias keeps Erikhthonios distinct from Erekhtheus, who is described at 1.5.3 as the grandson of Erikhthonios. In Homeric poetry, however, Erikhthonios is not distinct from Erekhtheus, and it is the second of the two names that refers to the hero who was born of Mother Earth. There is a reference to the hero cult of this Erekhtheus at verse 547 of Iliad 2, where he is described as the prototypical Athenian human: the goddess Earth gave birth to him, and the goddess Athena ‘nursed’ him—the verb here for ‘nursed’ is trephein, at verse 548 (θρέψε).

§140. In this context, Erekhtheus is pictured as a cult hero who is worshipped by the Athenians in a festive setting of seasonally recurring sacrifices. The link between Athena and this cult hero Erekhtheus is reflected also in another Homeric reference, at Odyssey 7.78–81, where we learn that the goddess is said to reside in the palace of Erekhtheus—located in Marathon. As I argue elsewhere (Nagy 2008 1§138), the persona of this cult hero underwent a mitosis. The one persona with one name becomes two personae with two names. In the evolution of Athenian myths and rituals, the name Erikhthonios displaced the name Erekhtheus in occupying the older role of the prototypical human conceived by the goddess Earth, while the name Erekhtheus was reassigned to the newer role of a dynastic grandson of Erikhthonios. In terms of this pattern of displacement and reassignment, as we see most clearly from the narrative of Apollodorus (3.14.6), Erikhthonios now became the name of the prototypical human who was begotten by the god Hephaistos, was born of the goddess Earth, and was ‘nursed’ by the goddess Athena—once again, the verb that I translate as ‘nursed’ is trephein (3.14.6, ἔτρεφεν).

§141. Pausanias at 1.14.6 says cryptically that he knows a myth about a relationship between Erikhthonios and Athena. One way to describe such a relationship, I suggest, is to say that Erikhthonios is the son that Athena “never” had. And here is how I would explain the scare quotes that envelop my wording “never” in referring to a myth about any relationship between Erikhthonios and Athena. As we see from several sources, including the text of Apollodorus as already cited, there was a myth that told how Hephaistos had tried to have sex with Athena, but he was too slow in catching up with the fleeing Athena, and his semen fell on the ground instead and thus impregnated Earth. The myth is analyzed most perceptively by Douglas Frame (2009:461–462), who shows that earlier versions of such a myth could have pictured Athena herself as a mother goddess in her own right, so that she could have been once upon a time not only the wet nurse but also the mother of Erekhtheus in his role as the earthling ancestor of the Athenians. In terms of such an analysis, Erikhthonios eventually displaced Erekhtheus as the prototypical earthling hero, though the sacred space that housed the myths and rituals concerning Erikhthonios and the goddess Athena Poliás continued to be defined by the name Erekhtheus, as we see from the context of the reference made by Pausanias at 1.26.5 to this space as the Erekhtheion or Erechtheum.

§142. In sum, although Athena is only the would-be mother of a primordial Athenian hero in the “Classical” version of Athenian mythmaking, in earlier versions she could be a mother goddess in her own right, prefigured by the generic Aegean mother goddess whose sons are generic Aegean heroes. And one such native son, a ‘Dactyl’ born of Mount Ida, is destined by myth to become the Cretan Herakles.

One last look here at the citadel of Phrixa in the region of Triphylia

§143. Of all the ancient citadels in the Greek-speaking world as described by our traveling antiquarian Pausanias in the second century CE, I was considering in my survey here one such citadel or acropolis in particular. It was the citadel of Phrixa, located in a region of the western Peloponnesus known as Triphylia. I would have preferred to give more consideration to the citadel of Pisa in the neighboring region of the Pisatis, across the river Alpheus (Alpheios), to the north of Triphylia, since I think that this other citadel had once dominated both regions. But by now it is obvious that historical realities have interdicted such a preference. Since the state of Pisa was completely destroyed, well before the life and times of Pausanias, by the neighboring state of Elis to the north, and since the mythological traditions of the people of Pisa were subsequently appropriated and absorbed by the people of Elis, I have throughout this survey viewed the citadel of Phrixa in Triphylia as the best available comparandum in my efforts at reconstructing what precious few things can be learned about the lost citadel of Pisa.

§144. Two ancient authors provide vital evidence about the importance of Phrixa in Triphylia for my reconstruction of the lost glories of Pisa. One of these authors has been, all along, Pausanias, whose report at 6.21.6, quoted at §61 in my survey, has been all-important for my overall reconstruction of myths about two phases of the hero known ultimately as Herakles. First there was a Minoan Herakles born from a Mount Ida that was also personified as a Mother Goddess who could project herself from up above by coming down from her mountain and landing on top of a citadel named Kudōniāthat protected a Cretan city further down below, which, I now argue, was named after the citadel up above. Then there was a Mycenaean Herakles, reborn from the goddess Hera on top of a depersonified Mount Olympus that looked down, from up above, at a citadel named after a goddess who personified this citadel and whose name, as invoked by her worshippers, was the epithet or epiclesis Kudōniā—a name established by the Cretan founder of the citadel, Klymenos, who originated from the Minoan city named Kudōniā. For the detail about the rebirth of Mycenaean Herakles as enacted by Hera, the Mother he never had before, there is only one attested source in all the textual evidence that has survived from the ancient world: that source, as we have seen, is the author Diodorus at 4.39.2, quoted at §34 in my survey, whose brief narrative about the hero’s rebirth on top of Mount Olympus has been connected, in my survey, with myths originating from Pisa about a local Mount Olympus that looked down not only at the citadel of Pisa down below but also, further down, at a sacred site of athletic competitions that was once protected by this citadel and that was named after the local mountain, Olympus.

§145. But this local mountain by the name of Olympus was looking down not only at the citadel of Pisa in the region of the Pisatis. Across the river Alpheus (Alpheios), to the south of Pisa, was the citadel of Phrixa in the region known eventually as Triphylia. Even as the citadel of Pisa was surely visible from the top of this local Mount Olympus, situated in the region of the Pisatis, I propose that the nearby citadel of Phrixa, across the river, was likewise visible. In other words, I posit a visual connection between the local Mount Olympus and the citadel of Phrixa, comparable to a visual connection between this same local mountain and the the citadel of Pisa—a connection verified by the report of the geographer Strabo at 8.3.31 C356, quoted at §48 in my survey. And I can cite a unique ancient source for backing up what I posit here. That source is, again, the author Diodorus, our “universal historian,” who has also been our only ancient source for the myth that told about the rebirthing of the hero Herakles by the goddess Hera on top of Mount Olympus.

§146. In the report of Diodorus about the myth about the rebirth of Herakles, as we have seen, our universal historian does not indicate directly his own source for what he is reporting. By contrast, what Diodorus reports about the existence of a Mount Olympus that is linked with the region of Triphylia is explicit about his own source. That source, as Diodorus says at 6.1.1, is Euhemerus of Messene (Εὐημέρου τοῦ Μεσσηνίου), who lived in the fourth century BCE and was a protégé of Cassander, the king who succeeded Alexander the Great as ruler of Macedonia. Diodorus at 6.1.4 actually describes Euhemerus as a most favored researcher, employed at the royal court in Macedonia. Living where he lived, in Macedonia, Euhemerus surely knew the difference between the prestigious Homeric Mount Olympus that dominated this territory ruled by Cassander, on the one hand, and, on the other hand, the other Mount Olympus that looked over Olympia, that most sacred site, which was actually named after that other mountain, as I have argued. And, as I would also argue, the city called Messene that is mentioned by Diodorus as the birthplace of Euhemerus was a city that was founded in 369 BCE as the new capital of the ancient region of Messenia, situated to the immediate south of the adjacent region of Triphylia. And here I come to what Euhemerus says about a mythologized time, invented by him, when Zeus and the other Olympian gods were supposedly humans—to be divinized only in later eras. Euhemerus, as reported by Diodorus, says that the mountain from where the god of the sky could see, looking down from the heights above, the vast universe down below, sky and stars and all, was named Olympus. And the name was not just Olympus: the name was Olumpos Triphulios ‘Triphylian Olympus’, that is Olympus-in-Triphylia:

ὄρος ἐστὶν ὑψηλόν, καθιερωμένον μὲν θεοῖς, ὀνομαζόμενον δὲ Οὐρανοῦ δίφρος καὶ Τριφύλιος Ὄλυμπος. μυθολογοῦσι γὰρ τὸ παλαιὸν Οὐρανὸν βασιλεύοντα τῆς οἰκουμένης προσηνῶς ἐνδιατρίβειν ἐν τῷδε τῷ τόπῳ, καὶ ἀπὸ τοῦ ὕψους ἐφορᾶν τόν τε οὐρανὸν καὶ τὰ κατ’ αὐτὸν ἄστρα, ὕστερον δὲ Τριφύλιον Ὄλυμπον κληθῆναι

There is a high mountain, made sacred to the gods, and its name is ‘The Throne [diphros] of Sky [Ouranos]. Its other name is ‘Sky [Ouranos] of Triphylia. You see, those who tell myths say that, in ancient times, Ouranos was the king of the inhabited world and he took delight in frequenting this place. Looking down from the heights, he would see the sky and the its stars. In later times, the place was called The Olympus of Triphylia.

Diodorus 5.44.5-6

Note 28. I raise the possibility that the diphros of Ouranos is not ‘The Throne of Sky’ but ‘The Chariot of Sky’.

§147. So, in terms of my overall argumentation, what we see here is a linking of the name for a region, Triphylia, with the name for a localized Mount Olympus that looked over Olympia, sacred site of the Olympics—just as this same mountain looked over two citadels, one of which, at Phrixa, looked over, with a commanding view, the region of Triphylia while the other, at Pisa, looked over the region of the Pisatis. Although the linking happens here in a narrative derived from the fictionalized mythology of Euhemerus, the names involved in the narration were derived, I argue, from genuine myths originating from Triphylia and the Pisatis. I should add that the theologizing mythological fictions of Euhemerus about primordial humans who are rethought as gods—fictions described in modernity by naming such a way of thinking as “euhemerism”—are not incompatible with a way of thinking that typifies Diodorus as well. A case in point is what Diodorus says at 3.74.4-5, quoted at §134 in my survey, where our historian historicizes three different non-historical lives of heroes named Herakles.

§148. Now, while I am taking one last look here in my survey at the citadel of Phrixa, I must emphasize one last time the importance of the traditional connections that existed between this citadel on the one hand and, on the other hand, an ancient Minoan citadel that had once graced the top of an elevation now known as Kastelli Hill, in Khanià, on the island of Crete. The ancient name of the city that was once protected by this citadel was Kydonia, and I continue to transliterate this place-name as Kudōniā. As we saw in the illustration that I used as the featured image in my lengthy survey, we actually have a picture of this Minoan citadel, which had been a functioning acropolis in the glory days of the Minoan Empire, and my featured image has been a line drawing of that picture, which is an impression or imprint made on a clay sealing that was actually found at the site of Kastelli Hill.

§149. I review, one last time, the basics here. This impression, known to archaeologists as “The Master Impression,” had been stamped by a signet ring, now lost, the estimated dating of which is “Late Minoan I,” that is, somewhere between 1600 and 1450 BCE—though the impression itself is probably of a later date. And what we see pictured in this impression on the clay sealing, to repeat, is the actual Minoan acropolis where the clay sealing was found.

§150. I review from a detailed report by Pausanias, at 6.21.6, quoted at §61, five most relevant details about the Cretan city once protected by the Minoan citadel that we see pictured in “The Master Impression”:

1) This Cretan city was Kudōniā, and a hero by the name of Klymenos came from there to Olympia, where he participated in a primordial version of the athletic contests known as the Olympics.

2) The goddess Athena was likewise named Kudōniā by her worshippers when they invoked her in her role as the goddess who protected the city of Phrixa in Triphylia.

3) According to myths about Olympia, once controlled by Pisa—myths later appropriated and absorbed by the state of Elis—the hero Pelops had worshipped the goddess Athena by invoking her as Kudōniā when he made sacrifice to her at Olympia before he engaged in a chariot-race-to-the-death with the king Oinomaos. As we know from a variety of other sources, the winning of this primal race by Pelops at Olympia resulted in his winning as wife the daughter of Oinomaos, Hippodameia. And the ultimate result was that Pelops became over-king of the Peloponnesus, now named after him.

4) The narrative about this chariot-race, pictured as an ultimate feat of athleticism on the East Pediment of the Temple of Zeus in Olympia, became a central myth that aetiologized all the athletic events of the Olympics at Olympia. So, it is no accident that Pausanias, in the report we are considering, connects this myth about the primal athletic event of a chariot-race at Olympia with the role of a Cretan hero named Klymenos, who came from Kudōniā-in-Crete to Olympia as a primordial participant in the Olympics.

5) This same Klymenos is the Cretan hero who reportedly founded the temple of Athena that once graced the acropolis of Phrixa, and it was he who is credited with the naming of the goddess as Kudōniā by her worshippers whenever they invoked her for their protection. And this female persona of the goddess also prefigures the post-Mycenaean goddess Athena as she was still worshipped, in the days of Pausanias, on top of the citadel of Phrixa in Triphylia.

A summary

§151. The Cretan myth about Herakles, Dactyl of Mount Ida, claims this Herakles as the original founder or president of the grandest of all ancient Greek athletic festivals, the Olympics. By contrast, the post-Cretan myths about Herakles as narrated by the two authors Diodorus and Apollodorus claim that a post-Cretan Herakles was the real founder or president of the Olympics—with no mention of a Cretan Herakles. As for a third author, Pausanias, he not only narrates the myth about a Cretan Herakles who originally founded the Olympics: more than that, he also narrates, and extensively so, the various myths about a post-Cretan Herakles who gets credit elsewhere as the original founder of this athletic festival. Such double crediting is made possible not by Pausanias himself but by the myth as narrated by Pausanias. According to this myth, which is more complex than the corresponding myth as narrated by Diodorus and Apollodorus, there is a split in the identity of Herakles himself. In this myth as narrated by Pausanias, there existed an earlier Herakles, a ‘Dactyl’ from Mount Ida in Crete who originally founded the Olympics—but there was also a later and different hero, also called Herakles, who later re-founded the Olympics.

Reviewing the outcome of the overall argument

§152. In terms of my argument, a split results from contradictions between different myths about a hero claimed as a native son by different locales, where the different social agenda of each locale is reflected in different versions of myths about a Strong Man who is linked with a celestial Mountain—and who is figured as an athletic ideal for his people. As for the athleticism of such a Strong Man, it is demonstrated in heroic deeds of defending society by hunting down or at least by dominating harmful beasts —as well as by combating evil humanoids that likewise harm humanity. In my survey, I have undertaken a reconstruction of such a Strong Man and his Mountain. And this reconstruction shows that the athleticism of such a hero is linked with the very idea of a Mountain as his birthplace. One name for such a place was Ida in Crete, but another name was Olympus, which in the narrative preserved by Diodorus is the place of the hero’s rebirth. This name, Olympus, turns out to be a missing link, an unspoken detail that points to the hero’s athleticism, since the athletic festival of the Olympics at a site named Olympia was actually named after a mountain named Olympus—not after the well-known Mount Olympus of Homeric poetry but after another Olympus, much less grand in scale than the Homeric equivalent but comparably prestigious in a far earlier time, long-gone, that archaeologists today would recognize as the era of the Mycenaean Empire, heir to the Minoan Empire, championed by an earlier Herakles, ‘Dactyl’ of Mount Ida.

BIBLIOGRAPHY

Bonnet, Jacques (1981), ed. Cahiers “Pour un temps”: Georges Dumézil. Aix-en-Provence.

Boulotis, Christos (2008) From mythical Minos to the search for Cretan kingship. From the Land of the Labyrinth. Minoan Crete, 3000-1100 B.C., ed. M. Andreadaki-Vlazaki, G., Rethemiotakis, and N. Dimopoulou-Rethemiotaki, 44-55. New York: Alexander S. Onassis Public Benefit Foundation (USA).

Burkert, Walter (1985) Greek Religion. Translated by J. Raffan. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. Originally published 1977 as Griechische Religion der archaischen und klassischen Epoche. Stuttgart: Kohlhammer.

Chantraine, Pierre (1968–1980). Dictionnaire étymologique de la langue grecque, Histoire des mots (DELG). Paris. I (Α-Δ), 1968; II (Ε-Κ), 1970; III (Λ-Π), 1975; IV/1 (Ρ-Υ), 1977; IV/2 (Φ-Ω), 1980, by J. Taillardat, O. Masson, and J.-L. Perpillou. New edition 2009, with a supplement Chroniques d’étymologie grecque 1–10, ed. A. Blanc, Ch. de Lamberterie, and J.-L. Perpillou. Paris: Klincksieck.

Christesen, Paul (2005) Imagining Olympia: Hippias of Elis and the First Olympic Victor List.  A Tall Order: Writing the Social History of the Ancient World Essays in honor of William V. Harris, ed. J. J. Aubert and Zs. Várhelyi, 320-356. München and Leipzig: De Gruyter.

— (2007) Olympic Victor Lists and Ancient Greek History. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

Crowley, Janice L. (2010) The Aegean Master of Animals: The Evidence of the Seals, Signets, and Sealings. The Master of Animals in Old World Iconography, ed. D. B. Counts and B. Arnold, 75-91. Budapest: Archaeolingua / 2010 / 261.

— (2024) ICON: Art and meaning in Aegean Seal Images. Heidelberg: Propylaeum.

Davidson, Olga M. 1980. Indo-European Dimensions of Herakles in Iliad 19.95–133. Arethusa 13 (1980) 197-202.

Dumézil, Georges [1995] Mythe et épopée I, II, III. New combined and corrected edition of the original three volumes, with original paginations retained in the inner margins. Edited by J. H. Grisward, with preface at pp. 7–30. Paris: Gallimard.

— [2005.] Esquisses de mythologie. New combined and corrected edition of the original four volumes of the Esquisses (Dumézil 1982, 1983, 1985, 1994), with original paginations retained in the inner margins. Edited by J. H. Grisward, with preface at pp. 7–27. Paris: Gallimard.

— (1968), 2nd ed. 1979) 3rd ed. (1986) Mythe et épopée I. L’idéologie des trois fonctions dans les épopées des peuples indo-européennes. Paris: Gallimard.

— (1969), 2nd ed. (1985) Heur et malheur du guerrier: Aspects mythiques de la fonction guerrière chez les Indo-Européens. Paris: Gallimard. There is an especially important citation to be found in the comments of Vidal-Naquet 1986:138n111.

— (1970) The Destiny of the Warrior. Translation of Dumézil 1969 by A. Hiltebeitel. Chicago: Univeristy of Chicago Press.

— (1971), 2nd ed. (1986) Mythe et épopée II. Types épiques indo-européens: un héros, un sorcier, un roi. Paris: Gallimard.

— (1973a), 2nd ed. (1978), 3rd ed. (1981). Mythe et épopée III. Histoires romaines. Paris: Gallimard.

—  (1973b). The Destiny of a King. Translated by A. Hiltebeitel. = Part 3 of Mythe et épopée II = Dumézil (1971). Chicago: University of Chicago Press.

— (1975) Fêtes romaines d’été et d’automne, suivi de dix questions romaines. Paris: Gallimard.

— (1980) Camillus: A Study of Indo-European Religion as Roman History. Translated by A. Aranowicz and J. Bryson. Edited and with introduction by U. Strutynski. Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press. = Part 2 of Mythe et épopée III = Dumézil 1973, plus Appendices 1 and 2 of Dumézil 1973, plus Appendices 3 and 4 of Dumézil 1975.

— (1982) Apollon sonore et autres essais. Vingt-cinq esquisses de mythologie (1–25). Paris: Gallimard.

— (1983) La Courtisane et les seigneurs colorés et autres essais. Vingt-cinq esquisses de mythologie (26–50). Paris: Gallimard.

— (1983b) The Stakes of the Warrior. Translated by D. Weeks. Edited, with an Introduction, by J. Puhvel. Berkeley and Los Angeles : University of California Press. = Part 1 of Mythe et épopée II = Dumézil 1971:13–132 = Dumézil 1995:681–800.

— (1985) L’oubli de l’homme et l’honneur des dieux et autres essais. Vingt-cinq esquisses de mythologie (51–75). Paris: Gallimard.

— (1986) The Plight of the Sorcerer. Translated by D. Weeks and others. Edited by J. Puhvel and D. Weeks. Introduction by D. Weeks. Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press. = Part 2 of Mythe et épopée II = Dumézil 1971.

— (1994) Le roman des jumeaux et autres essais. Vingt-cinq esquisses de mythologie (76–100). Edited by J. H. Grisward, with preface at pp. 9–15. Paris: Gallimard.

Flouda, Georgia (2013) Materiality of Minoan Writing: Modes of Display and Perception. Writing as Material Practice: Substance, Surface and Medium, ed. K. E. Piquette and R. D. Whitehouse, 143-174. London: Ubiquity Press.

— Materiality and script: Constructing a narrative on the Minoan inscribed axe from the Arkalochori cave. SMEA (Studi Micenei ed Egeo-Anatolici) Nuova Serie 1:43-56.

Frame, Douglas (2009) Hippota Nestor. Hellenic Studies 34. Cambridge, MA, and Washington, DC.: Harvard University Press. http://nrs.harvard.edu/urn-3:hul.ebook:CHS_Frame.Hippota_Nestor.2009.

Frazer, J.G. (1921), ed., with translation. Apollodorus: The Library. I/II. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.

Gehrke, Hans-Joachim (2010) Representations of the Past in Greek Culture. Intentional History: Spinning Time in Ancient Greece, ed. L. Foxhall, H.-J. Gehrke, and N. Luraghi, 15–33. Stuttgart: Franz Steiner Verlag.

Gulizio, Joann, Kevin Pluta, and Thomas G. Palaima (2001). Religion in the Room of the Chariot Tablets. Potnia: Deities and Religion in the Aegean Bronze Age. Proceedings of the 8th International Aegean Conference held in Göteborg, Sweden, 12-15 April 2000, ed. R. Laffineur and R. Hägg, 453-461. Liège: Université de Liège, Histoire de l’art et archéologie de la Grèce antique.

H24H. See Nagy (2013).

Hallager, Erik (1985) The Master Impression. A Clay Sealing from the Greek-Swedish excavations at Kastelli, Khania. Göteborg: Studies in Mycenaean Archaeology 69.

Kõiv, Mait (2013) Early History of Elis and Pisa: Invented or Evolving Traditions? Klio 95:315–368.

Krzyszkowska, Olga (2010). Impressions of the natural world: landscape in Aegean glyptic. Cretan Offerings: Studies in honour of Peter Warren, ed. O. Krzyszkowska, 169-187. Athens: British School at Athens Studies 18.

Kyriakidis, Evangelos (2005) Unidentified Floating Objects on Minoan Seals. American Journal of Archaeology109:137-154.

Meineke, August (1849), ed. Stephan von Byzanz. Ethnika. Berlin: G. Reimer. Reprinted 1958. Graz: Akademische Druck- und Verlagsanstalt.

Meißner, Torsten, and Pippa M. Steele (2017) Linear A and Linear B: Structural and Contextual Concerns. Aegean Scripts. Proceedings of the 14th Mycenological Colloquium 2-6 September, Copenhagen 2015, ed. M.-L. Nosch and H. Landenius Enegren, 99–114. Rome: Incunabula Graeca vol. CV, 1.

Nagy, Gregory (1963) Greek-like Elements in Linear A. Greek Roman and Byzantine Studies 4:181-211.

— (1965) Observations on the Sign-Grouping and Vocabulary of Linear A. American Journal of Archaeology 69:295-330.

— (1981) Essai sur Georges Dumézil et l’étude de l’épopée grecque. In Cahiers “Pour un temps”: Georges Dumézil, ed. J. Bonnet, 137–145. Aix-en-Provence: Centre Georges Pompidou. Rewritten as part of ch. 1 in Nagy (1990).

— (1990) Greek Mythology and Poetics. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press. https://continuum.fas.harvard.edu/greek-mythology-and-poetics/.

— (1996) Homeric Questions. Austin, TX: University of Texas Press. http://nrs.harvard.edu/urn-3:hul.ebook:CHS_Nagy.Homeric_Questions.1996.

— (2008). Homer the Classic. Hellenic Studies 36. Cambridge, MA, and Washington, DC: Harvard University Press. http://nrs.harvard.edu/urn-3:hul.ebook:CHS_Nagy.Homer_the_Classic.2008. Print edition 2009.

— (2013) The Ancient Greek Hero in 24 Hours. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. https://chs.harvard.edu/book/nagy-gregory-the-ancient-greek-hero-in-24-hours/.

— (2015) Masterpieces of Metonymy: From Ancient Greek Times to Now. Hellenic Studies 72. Cambridge, MA, and Washington, DC: Harvard University Press. http://nrs.harvard.edu/urn-3:hul.ebook:CHS_Nagy.Masterpieces_of_Metonymy.2015.

— (2015.09.10) From Athens to Crete and back. Classical Inquiries. https://classical-inquiries.chs.harvard.edu/from-athens-to-crete-and-back/.

— (2018-) A Pausanias reader in progress. Washington, DC. http://nrs.harvard.edu/urn-3:hlnc.prim-src:A_Pausanias_Reader_in_Progress.2018-. Superseded by Nagy (2022.01.28).

— (2019.11.27) Thinking comparatively about Greek mythology XVIII, a post-Mycenaean view of Hēraklēs as founder of the Olympics. Classical Inquiries. https://classical-inquiries.chs.harvard.edu/thinking-comparatively-about-greek-mythology-xviii-a-post-mycenaean-view-of-herakles-as-founder-of-the-olympics/.

— (2019.12.27) Minoan and Mycenaean fig trees: some retrospective and prospective comments. Classical Inquiries. https://classical-inquiries.chs.harvard.edu/minoan-and-mycenaean-fig-trees-some-retrospective-and-prospective-comments/.

— (2020.04.17) Questions while viewing Greek myths and rituals through the lens of Pausanias, I: Did Athena, goddess of Athens, belong only to the Athenians? Classical Inquiries. Updated 2020.04.23. https://classical-inquiries.chs.harvard.edu/questions-while-viewing-greek-myths-and-rituals-through-the-lens-of-pausanias-i-did-athena-goddess-of-athens-belong-only-to-the-athenians/.

— (2020.04.24) Questions while viewing Greek myths and rituals through the lens of Pausanias, II: In Mycenaean times, was Athena a goddess who was worshipped only in Athens? Classical Inquiries. https://classical-inquiries.chs.harvard.edu/questions-while-viewing-greek-myths-and-rituals-through-the-lens-of-pausanias-ii-in-mycenaean-times-was-athena-a-goddess-who-was-worshipped-only-in-athens/.

— (2020.05.01) Questions while viewing Greek myths and rituals through the lens of Pausanias, III: Is ‘Athena’ the name of a person or of a place? Classical Inquiries. https://classical-inquiries.chs.harvard.edu/questions-while-viewing-greek-myths-and-rituals-through-the-lens-of-pausanias-iii-is-athena-the-name-of-a-person-or-of-a-place/.

— (2020.05.08) Questions while viewing Greek myths and rituals through the lens of Pausanias, IV: Is Athena, viewed theologically, a person? Classical Inquiries. https://classical-inquiries.chs.harvard.edu/questions-while-viewing-greek-myths-and-rituals-through-the-lens-of-pausanias-iv-is-athena-viewed-theologically-a-person/.

— (2020.05.15) Minoan-Mycenaean signatures observed by Pausanias at a sacred space dominated by Athena. Classical Inquiries. https://classical-inquiries.chs.harvard.edu/minoan-mycenaean-signatures-observed-by-pausanias-at-a-sacred-space-dominated-by-athena/..

— (2020.05.22) More about Minoan-Mycenaean signatures observed by Pausanias at sacred spaces dominated by Athena.” Classical Inquiries. Updated 2020.05.23. https://classical-inquiries.chs.harvard.edu/more-about-minoan-mycenaean-signatures-observed-by-pausanias-at-sacred-spaces-dominated-by-athena/.

— (2020.05.29) About some kind of an epiphany as pictured in Minoan glyptic art, and about its relevance to a myth as retold by Pausanias. Classical Inquiries. https://classical-inquiries.chs.harvard.edu/about-some-kind-of-an-epiphany-as-pictured-in-minoan-glyptic-art-and-about-its-relevance-to-a-myth-as-retold-by-pausanias/.

— (2021 / 2023) Thinking about Herakles, ‘Dactyl’ of Mount Ida. Classical Continuum 2021.11.15. https://continuum.fas.harvard.edu/thinking-about-herakles-dactyl-of-mount-ida/. Printed version, published also online, in Ariadne, 28, 238-246, also online at https://doi.org/10.26248/ariadne.v28i.1686

— (2021.12.13) The so-called Mother of the Mountain and a possible reference to her in Linear A inscriptions found on two Minoan double-axes. Classical Continuum. https://continuum.fas.harvard.edu/the-so-called-mother-of-the-mountain/

— (2022.01.28) A Pausanias reader in progress. Classical Continuum. https://continuum.fas.harvard.edu/https-continuum-fas-harvard-edu-a-pausanias-reader-in-progress-description-of-greece-scrolls-1-10/.

— (2022.03.28) A sampling of comments on the Herakles of Euripides: ready for annotation. Classical Continuum. https://continuum.fas.harvard.edu/a-sampling-of-comments-on-the-herakles-of-euripides/.

— (2024) Ancient Greek Heroes, Athletes, Poetry. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.

— (2024.07.10) About Greek goddesses as mothers or would-be mothers. Classical Continuum. https://continuum.fas.harvard.edu/about-greek-goddesses-as-mothers-or-would-be-mothers/.

Nilsson, Martin P. 1972. The Mycenaean Origins of Greek Mythology. Sather Classical Lectures 8. Paperback edition, with new introduction and bibliography by E. Vermeule. Berkeley: University of California Press. Original publication 1932.

Palaima, Thomas (1988) The Development of the Mycenaean Writing System. Texts, Tablets and Scribes: Studies in Mycenaean Epigraphy and Economy offered to Emmett L. Bennett, Jr., ed. J.P. Olivier and T. Palaima, 269-342. Minos Supplement 10. Salamanca.

Salgarella, Ester (2020). Aegean linear script(s): rethinking the relationship between Linear A and Linear B. Cambridge: Cambridge classical studies.

Thomas, Rose (2020-04-01 / 2011). Some reflections on morphology in the language of the Linear A libation formula. Kadmos 59:1-23.

Vermeule, E.D.T. (1959) A Gold Minoan Double Axe. Bulletin of the Museum of Fine Arts in Boston 57/307:4-16.

Vidal-Naquet, Pierre (1986) The Black Hunter Revisited. Proceedings of the Cambridge Philological Society 212:126–144.

Younger, John. 2020. Linear A Texts & Inscriptions in phonetic transcription & Commentary. http://people.ku.edu/~jyounger/LinearA/.