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Melikertes­Palaimon, Hero of the Isthmian Games

Melikertes-Palaimon, Hero of the Isthmian Games

By Elizabeth R. Gebhard and Matthew W. Dickie

(This article originally appeared in:

Proceedings of the Fifth International Seminar on Ancient Greek Cult,

organized by the Department of Classical Archaeology and Ancient History,

Göteborg University, 21-23 April, 1995

Edited by Robin Hägg

Stockholm 1999

and is made available electronically with the permission of the editors.)

Abstract

A fragmentary Isthmian ode of Pindar portrays the founding of the Isthmian Games as a funerary celebration for

Melikertes. Examination of the language in which Pindar speaks of the cults of other heroes at places where

athletic contests were celebrated in their honour leads to the conclusion that Melikertes was worshipped as a hero

at the Isthmian Sanctuary, at least by the time of Pindar, although no remains of a shrine to him before the

Roman period have been found.

The monuments of the Isthmian sanctuary either as revealed by excavation or as described by Pausanias tell us

nothing about the Greek cult of the hero Melikertes-Palaimon in whose honor the Isthmian Games were

traditionally founded.1 Pausanias saw only the Roman buildings of his day: a Temple of Palaimon and an

underground passage approaching an adyton where the hero lay concealed (2.2.1 ). Excavations have uncovered

three sacrificial pits and two successive temples to the hero belonging to the 1st and 2nd centuries A.D., located in

an area where no prior cult activity existed.2 The archaeological context thus precludes any continuation or

resumption of earlier ritual practices on the same site.3

At the time that the first pit for sacrifices to Palaimon was opened in the mid-1st century A.D. about 10 m south of

the old long altar, tracks of roads criss-crossed the sacred area in front of the Temple of Poseidon, itself in a

ruinous state. Traces of former sacrifices may have been visible in the area around the long altar, but there is no

obvious reason why that site was chosen for the Roman cult of Palaimon. The long altar was never rebuilt after

having been destroyed at some time, perhaps not immediately, after the sack of Corinth in 146 B.C. The Isthmian

sanctuary, closely tied to the political fortunes of Corinth, appears to have been abandoned.4 With her

constitutional identity removed Corinth lost control of the Isthmian Games, which were then held by the

Sicyonians.5 The most obvious archaeological evidence for the cessation of sacrifices and festival at Isthmia is the

fact that the wagon road between Corinth and the Isthmus ran across the foundations for the altar and the center

of the temenos; another road crossed the sacred area on the south side.6 The period of abandonment before

resumption of the games on a regular basis appears to have lasted for almost 200 years.7 During that time cult

activities may well have been continued by residents of the area, but without deposits that can be dated to the

interval it is impossible to form any picture of their nature and scope.

The limits of excavation in the area surrounding the Temple of Poseidon may be responsible for the gap in

information concerning a Greek shrine to Melikertes-Palaimon. To the west of the temple only 50 m has been

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cleared along the road coming from Corinth; on the north side a space of only 30 m is visible.8 The sacrificial

area, enlarged over the years by a series of terraces, stretched almost 35 m eastward from the altar; much but not

all of the terrace fill has been excavated. The area of the central plateau that remains to be investigated is the

northeast comer where, until recently, the dump from the early excavations covered the surface. Thus, future

campaigns may yet reveal a cult place for the hero, but at present no enclosure with evidence for sacrifices

(nothing comparable to the temene of Pelops at Olympia and Opheltes at Nemea) has been found.9

The lack of archaeological evidence for a hero cult to Melikertes-Palaimon at Isthmia has led some scholars to

conclude that such a cult did not exist for the Greek period but was a Roman invention.10 Others have assumed a

continuity without directly addressing the problem posed by the absence of remains.11The archaeological

evidence is not, however, the be-all and the end-all of the matter. There is a passage from an Isthmian ode of

Pindar now lost that points to the existence in the time of the poet of a cult of Melikertes at Isthmia. Walter

Burkert was responsible for bringing it to the attention of the scholarly world and drawing the appropriate

conclusions from it.12 The three surviving lines of the ode tell of the Nereids bidding Sisyphus to pay honors to

the dead Melikertes:

The Nereids appeared before Sisyphus in dance. The bade him to arouse an honor to be seen from afar for the

dead child Melikertes.13

The paraphrase of the lines to be found in one of the versions of the Hypothesis (a) to the Isthmian Odes leaves

little room for doubt that the ancient commentators took the verses to refer to the founding of the Isthmian

Games.14 If the interpretation of the lines by the ancient commentator is correct, Pindar presented the

foundation of the Games as a funerary celebration for Melikertes. Since ancient commentators do not invariably

interpret Pindar correctly, it is appropriate to ask whether the lines of Pindar quoted do in fact support such an

interpretation. What will be argued is that the terms in which Pindar couches the command the Nereids give

Sisyphos mean that for Pindar the Isthmian Games are a celebration of international repute in honor of the dead

child-hero Melikertes. The key-words are ; and the adjective qualifying it, . We have to ask

what in concrete terms Pindar means by “arousing an honor that is to be visible from afar”. More specifically we

have to ask what it means to do such a thing for a dead child. There are further questions then to be asked about a

cult to the hero and the location of sacrifices in his honor.

The basic meaning of is an honor. The crucial parallel fom in the sense in which we are interested,

which is that of honoring a hero by setting up a cult of some form, is to be found in vv. 26-35 of Pindar’s Fifth

Isthmian Ode. At that point in the poem are recorded a list of heroes who in various locations receive sacrifices

accompanied by hymns of praise: at Thebes, Iolaos, master of horses, is said to have , amongst the Aitolians

it is given to the sons of Oineus (Tydeus and Meleager), in Argos, to Perseus, at Sparta, to Kastor and Polydeukes,

and on Aigina, to Aiakos and his sons:

Pindar’s is the only testimony to the existence of some of these hero-cults.15 It is nonetheless clear that in the

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Fifth Isthmian refers to a festival or rites in honor of a hero. The denominative verb that derives

from is used by Pindar of honoring by sacrificing at games:

Kamarina, he exalted your city that nourishes its people at the greatest festival of the gods. He bestowed honor on

six double altars with sacrifices of oxen.

What is at issue in this case is a victor at the Olympics offering sacrifices on six double altars at Olympia, probably

for his victory there. In sum, Pindar uses of a festival or rites in honor of a hero and of sacrifices performed.

In the Isthmian fragment, Pindar qualifies by , “visible from afar”. In doing so, he is in effect

defining the kind of games that are to be founded. The new institution is not to be a local festival whose fame

reaches no further than its own community, but a festival that is to be known in far places, which is another way of

saying that the festival is to be panhellenic. The related adverb Pindar employs in speaking of the

farreaching visibility of the fame that attaches to victory in the Olympic Games:

The glory of the Olympic festival shines far from the race-course of Pelops, where are contested speed of foot and

might of strength that calls for brave endurance.

Not only, then, is the dead hero Melikertes to be celebrated with a festival, but it is to be a festival of international

renown like the Olympic Games. An extension of the idea that major games cast their renown to the farther

reaches of the Greek world is present in the poet’s description of the Olympian and Pythian victory wreaths that

Hieron brought home to Syracuse as far-shining , The fame of the contests has been

transferred to the wreaths given the victors. In our fragment, therefore, Pindar describes the Isthmian Games in

the same terms as he uses for the Olympic Games. For him and his audience the fame of Isthmian Games, if not as

great as the Olympic contests, was certainly in the same league.

The second stage in the argument will be to show that, if the celebration of the Olympic Games as funeral games

for Pelops, and the Nemean as funeral games for Opheltes entails a hero-cult of Pelops and Opheltes, then the

same should hold good for Melikertes. Pindar in the First Olympian Ode imagines Pelops receiving bright blood

sacrifices as he reclines in his tomb by the altar of Zeus, where many come to visit:

Now Pelops reclining by the crossing of the Alpheos participates in the glorious blood-sacrifices and has his much-

tended tomb by the altar that receives many visitors.16 The sacrifices are called , a term that the

scholiast tells us is the Boeotian equivalent of , the more commonly used term for sacrifices to the

dead and to heroes ( in Pi. O. 1.90). Pelops is the recipient of cult at his tomb next to Zeus’ altar. The adjectives

used to qualify both tomb and altar in the next lines affirm his close connection with the games. The tomb is often-

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frequented and the altar visited by many ( , respectively). The Olympic racecourse

itself belongs to Pelops. The founding story in the Tenth Olympian Ode makes Herakles establish and celebrate

the first games next to the ancient burial mound ( ) of Pelops (24-25). The temenos, altar and sacrifices he

dedicates to his father Zeus (43-50). In another version of the founding story mentioned by Pausanias, Pelops

himself celebrates the first festival. The Olympic Games, then, were held in honor of Zeus, but Pelops, the

eponymous hero of the entire land, received his own special sacrifices as appropriate to a hero. The account that

Pindar gives of Pelops’ tomb and of Herakles as founder of the festival is echoed by Pausanias in his description of

the actual monument and the offerings to the hero as they existed in his time: it is enclosed by a stone fence, trees

grow inside, statues are dedicated there; Herakles set it apart to Pelops and sacrificed to him in a pit; now annual

magistrates sacrifice a black ram to him; whoever eats of the meat may not enter the Temple of Zeus (5.13.1-7).

The legends surrounding the establishment of the Nemean Games are not mentioned in the Pindaric odes, but the

principal explanation in the Hypothesis to the Nemean Odes explains the Games as funeral games (

) for the child, Opheltes-Archemoros, who was killed by a serpent while his nurse, Hypsipyle, fetched water for the

Seven marching against Thebes. An alternative and perhaps later version makes Herakles at the time of his victory

over the Nemean lion reorganize the games and dedicate them to his father, Zeus.17 That Opheltes was in fact

worshipped as a hero at the Nemean Sanctuary is not made explicit in these accounts, but Pausanias describes his

tomb and that of his father, saying that there were beside them altars and that they were enclosed by a stone

fence, the same term he used for the enclosure of Pelops (2.15.2-3). Sacrifices at the Nemean shrine, beginning at

least in the 6th century, are confirmed by deposits of sacrificial debris and votives within an enclosure.18

Thus, two of the four panhellenic athletic sanctuaries contain monuments associated with the tombs of heroes in

honor of whom the games were founded; and at the tombs, sacrifices were offered to those heroes. Therefore,

since the Isthmian Games were founded as funeral games for Melikertes, the probability is high that Melikertes

had a tomb-monument at the Isthmian sanctuary, where too he received heroic sacrifices. The validity of these

inferences is strengthened by the peculiar nature of the wreath that was bestowed on victors at the Isthmian

Games, the same wreath as was given at Nemea, explicitly in memory of Opheltes. The wreath was made of wild

celery, selinon, a plant used in funerary wreaths worn by mourners and hung on tombs (Duris, FGrH 76 F 1).

Although there was a tradition in antiquity that the first Isthmian victor’s wreath was rnade of pine, it had

apparently been changed to selinon before Pindar’s time, since the poet knows only the selinon crown.19 If the

selinon wreath symbolized the funerary aspect of the Nemean Games in honor of the dead Opheltes, and, if

Opheltes was worshipped at Nemea, then it is reasonable to suppose that the selinon wreath at Isthmia was

likewise given in honor of the dead Melikertes, and he, as Opheltes, was worshipped as the hero of the games.

Sacrifices and games celebrated at the tomb of a hero were not limited to the panhellenic sanctuaries. In two odes

Pindar mentions Theban games celebrated at or near tombs. In the Fourth Isthmian Ode, the games are

specifically located outside the Electran Gate, where sacrifices were made to Heracles and his eight murdered

sons, and the victors were crowned with myrtle (61-73). The scholiast adds the information, attributed to the

philosopher Chrysippos, that Amphitryon lived by the Electran Gate, and that Herakles, after murdering his sons,

took their corpses there and in that place, every year, the Thebans made heroic sacrifices ( ) to the boys

and held funeral games ( in I. 4.61). By Pausanias’ time, a temple of Heracles, remains known as the House of

Amphitryon, a gymnasium and a stadium were to be seen outside the gate (9.11.1-4).20 In the Fourth Nemean

Ode, Pindar simply says that the victor was crowned beside the Tomb of Amphitryon (19-22). Pausanias locates

the monument outside the Proitid Gate, where he also saw the Gymnasium of Iolaos, a stadium beside it and a

little farther on, a hippodrome (9.23.1-2). The two odes may refer to victories in two sets of games, one to

Herakles and his sons and the other to Iolaos, although the scholiast says the two titles referred to the same

games, the Heracleia ( in N. 4.20).21

The vivid picture that Pindar draws in the Fourth Isthmian Ode gives us an idea of how rites to heroes were

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celebrated. The proceedings began at sunset and continued throughout the night. There were sacrifices and

feasting. All activities took place in the vicinity of the altars established in memory of the slain boys. On the second

day of the festival athletic contests were held in which the victor was crowned with a myrtle wreath, the

characteristic plant of the Underworld.22 The games were held by a monument identified as the house of

Amphitryon where, according to the scholiast, the bodies of the eight sons had been taken and presumably buried

(61-73).

Other games in honor of heroes and celebrated at their tombs are recorded. Pindar mentions, among the victories

of Diagoras, his triumph at a local festival dedicated to Tlepolemos, a son of Herakles (O. 7.77-80).23 In this case,

the rites for the hero were the same as those to a god, consisting in a procession, sacrifice of sheep, and athletic

competitions. Battus, founder of Cyrene, was celebrated as a hero at his tomb in the agora (P. 5.95). At Megara,

games were held for Alkathoos, the son of Pelops (I. 8.67). The pattern of tomb, sacrifice and games is clear.

Thus, we come to the problem of where Melikertes’ tomb was located at Isthmia. Pausanias, who is the only

source, simply says that Sisyphos buried the boy on the Isthmus and founded the Isthmian Games in his honor

(2.1.3). Later, in his tour of the Isthmian Sanctuary, Pausanias mentions that Melikertes is reported to be hidden (

) within an underground in the Palainionion. This is probably his tomb in Roman times.

Pausanias may reflect the same tradition that is recounted by Philostratus that Melikertes was buried in a chasm

opened by Poseidon (Imag. II.362.30 Kayser). By the shore, Pausanias saw an altar and pine tree dedicated to the

hero. He does not mention a funerary monument here. Local tradition may have revered the place as that at which

the boy’s body was brought to shore and where Sisyphus found him. The hero’s tomb of Pindar’s day remains to

be discovered.

In conclusion, we have seen that Pindar’s brief account of the first Isthmian Games in our fragment of a lost

lsthmian ode takes much the same form as his much longer and more detailed description of the first Olympic

contests (O. 10). Their identification as funeral games to the hero is confirmed by the phrase in line

3. Although in the short compass of the fragment a cult of Melikertes at his tomb is not mentioned, so widespread

was the custom of sacrificing and celebrating games at the tombs of heroes, that the Isthmian Games almost

certainly included blood-offerings at a monument called the tomb of Melikertes. In the First Olympian Ode,

Pelops receives such ritual at his tomb, where he himself is pictured as receiving it. The nearby racecourse belongs

to him. In the Tenth Olympian Ode, Herakles is represented as sacrificing and founding the Olympic Games next

to Pelops’ tomb. In Pindar’s version of the Isthmian myth, Sisyphos takes the place of Herakles and he holds the

games as funeral celebrations for Melikertes. The same pattern exists in the Hellenistic accounts of the first

Nemean Games. The founders are the Seven marching against Thebes; the occasion was the supernatural death of

the child, Opheltes. Since archaeological evidence places sacrifices in the Opheltion in the 6th century B.C., it is

likely that the cult was linked to the Nemean Games and the story associating the games with the funeral of the

boy was current in Pindar’s day. A monument representing the tomb of Melikertes, perhaps similar in form to the

Pelopion and Opheltion, would surely have existed at the Isthmian Sanctuary.

Melikertes-Palaimon Footnotes

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