ROBERTSON, NOEL, Melanthus, Codrus, Neleus, Caucon: Ritual Myth as Athenian History , Greek, Roman and Byzantine Studies, 29:3 (1988:Autumn) p.201 Melanthus, Codrus, N eleus, Caucon: Ritual Myth as Athenian History Noel Robertson I. The Problem Melanthus, Codrus, and Neleus are the leading figures in Athens' second dynasty of kings, the N eleids from Pylos who displace the ancient line of Cecrops and Erechtheus. The Cauconians and their eponymous hero are other refugees from Pylos who come to Athens at the same time. Neleids and Cauconians bring important changes, for they soon go forth from Athens to found the cities of Ionia. In modern accounts of the Ionian migration this tradition, if tradition it is, is sometimes cited with respect. Others are sceptical, and a few have offered reasons. A century ago, apropos of the genos (as it then seemed to be) Medontidae, Toepffer argued strongly that this second dynasty was contrived by Athens in order to authenticate her claim to be the mother city of Ionia-a claim, he further argued, that was false and belated. For it is Pylos, not Athens, which the Ionian poet Homer treats with all the interest and affection due to one's place of origin; and the Ionian poet Mimnermus recalls the exodus from Pylos to Colophon. A short while after, Wilamowitz discounted Codrus and Neleus on rather different grounds, as creatures of Ionian aetiology. Eduard Meyer, like Toepffer, gave more to Athenian invention. As for Caucon, Toepffer found it easy to show that the genos Lycomidae usurped this hero at a late stage; but he did not ask why the Cau­ conians were brought to Athens in the first place. Since then the figures of the second dynasty, but not the Cauconians, have been examined more than once with impressive learning, as by Jacoby. Yet after all, the results are far short of explaining the origin and develop­ ment of the story. The connected story of the second dynasty is not attested before the fifth century, but at least part of it goes back to the sixth. Solon speaks of Attica as "the most revered land of Ionia" (fr.4a West); Peisistratus claimed to be a Neleid (Hdt. 5.65.3f). Pherecydes tells of Codrus' sacrificial death and of a son who founds Ephesus (FGrHist 3 F 15 3f); the Codrus Painter shows the king departing to meet his fate (AR V2 201 ROBERTSON, NOEL, Melanthus, Codrus, Neleus, Caucon: Ritual Myth as Athenian History , Greek, Roman and Byzantine Studies, 29:3 (1988:Autumn) p.201 202 MELANTHUS, CODRUS, NELEUS, CAUCON 1268.1), and he stood beside other Attic heroes on the Marathon Base at Delphi (Paus. 10.10.1) Panyassis spoke of Codrus and Neleus as Ionian ancestors (Suda s. v. I1avvaULs=test. la Matthews). Herodotus knows Melanthus and Codrus as Neleids who ruled Athens and whose descendants ruled the cities of Ionia; Neleus founded Miletus, and a companion instituted the cult of Eleusinian Demeter on Mycale (1.147.1, 5.65.3, 9.97, cf. 4.148.4). Hellanicus recounted the Athenian exploits of Melanthus and Codrus, and the founding of Ionian cities by Neleus (FGrHist 323aF 11=4F48, 323aF23=4F 125). The story was common coin thereafter. We find details in Ephorus (FGrHist 70FF22, 125-27), in Demon (327FF1, 22), in Apollodorus as the presumed source of Strabo (9.1.7 [393]), and in the chronogra­ phers (Castor FGrHist 250F4). In the wider world Codrus is held up by Plato, Aristotle, and Lycurgus (PI. Symp. 2080; Arist. Pol. 5.8 [1310b36f]; Lycurg. Leoc. 84-88), so that his gallantry becomes pro­ verbial (Zenobius Ath. 2.6 Buhler). Hellenistic poets allude to Melae­ nae and Melanthus (Callim. Hecale fr.266 Pfeiffer, whence Rhianus FGrHist 265F8, Stat. Theb. 12.619, Nonn. Dion. 26.88; Euphorion, Suppi.Hellenist. fr.418.25-27; cf. Nonn. 27.301-05); also to Neleus' voyage overseas (Callim. Dian. 226f; cf 1: Jov. 77). In outline the story runs as follows. The Neleid Melanthus left Pylos in consequence of the Dorian invasion; he obtained the kingship at Athens by answering a challenge which the former king, Thymoetes, declined. A border district was in dispute between Athens and Boe­ otia, and Melanthus met and vanquished the Boeotian king in single combat; the cult of Dionysus melanaigis and the festival Apaturia commemorate this exploit. In the reign of Melanthus' son Codrus the Dorians invaded Athens from Megara, and Codrus turned them back at the cost of his life. Both sides had learned from the Delphic oracle that for Athens to be saved her king must die at the hands of the enemy, and Codrus managed this by going forth in disguise; the spot where he fell is still shown. Codrus' son Medon succeeded, and the line continued for generations after that, though by some accounts the kingship was changed to a life-archonship in the time of Medon. More importantly, Codrus' son Neleus and other sons or grandsons led the Ionian migration and founded Miletus, Ephesus, and other cities. None of these persons or adventures is heard of in early poetry or even in tragedy. Surely they are figments, but how were they made up? The explanations already in the field do not take us very far. Though the advancement of Melanthus makes use of a commonplace motif, a combat between champions which is decided by a trick, all the details ROBERTSON, NOEL, Melanthus, Codrus, Neleus, Caucon: Ritual Myth as Athenian History , Greek, Roman and Byzantine Studies, 29:3 (1988:Autumn) p.201 NOEL ROBERTSON 203 point away from the issue of royal power. It has always been obvious that the episode is somehow aetiological. For Melanthus gains the place Melaenae; and his enemy is also an antonym, Xanthus; and the cult of Dionysus melanaigis is now established at Eleutherae nearby; and the festival Apaturia is allegedly named from Melanthus' trick, a7raTT]. But the several things to which the aetiology refers do not belong together. In particular, the border district Melaenae and the cult of Dionysus at Eleutherae have no discernible connection with the festival Apaturia, a reunion of phratry members which was cele­ brated at phratry lodges throughout Athens and Attica. Nor does one see why it should be a newcomer from Pylos who is associated with Melaenae, Dionysus melanaigis, and the Apaturia. Codrus too is a recognizable type, the self-sacrificing leader, but again the motif explains nothing by itself. The other Athenians to whom this motif attaches, Erechtheus and Leos, have strong roots in cult, and we may suspect, even if we cannot demonstrate, that the sacrificial daughters as well as Erechtheus himself have been projected from ritual. Though Codrus is joined with Neleus and Basile in a shrine near the Ilissus (lG P 84), no one has been able to say what cult function he might have. On the prevailing view he was added to the shrine because of his pre-existing role in myth; as a mythical figure, a Sagengestalt, he has been variously assigned to Attica, or to Ionia, or to Pylos or Messenia. But there is no trace of Codrus anywhere but at Athens, in the story of his self-sacrifice. An alternative view makes him the embodiment ofa royal title in Ionia; yet the title is illusory. Neleus' role in cult has been more readily granted, since he gives his name to a shrine in Athens, the N7JAEtOV, but attempts to define it are not convincing. It is even harder to grasp the relationship between the figure of cult and the two mythical bearers of the name, the ancient king of Pylos and the founder of Miletus. Despite the shrine the younger Neleus has nothing to do in Athens except to leave. It is a surprising but almost un regarded fact that at Miletus Neleus gives his name to a festival of Artemis, the N71A71Ls. The Cauconians, by contrast with the figures of the second dynasty, are seldom heard of and have not been much attended to. Herodotus refers to them quite offhandedly as fleeing from Pylos, just like the Neleids, and as ruling in Ionia, where he equates them with the Neleids (1.147.1, 4.148.4). Later the Cauconians were caught up in Homeric exegesis, as we see from Strabo; but Strabo also seems to hark back to the same migration as Herodotus (7.7.1 [321]=Heca­ taeus FGrHist 1 F 119). The eponym Caucon was marked out for the ROBERTSON, NOEL, Melanthus, Codrus, Neleus, Caucon: Ritual Myth as Athenian History , Greek, Roman and Byzantine Studies, 29:3 (1988:Autumn) p.201 204 MELANTHUS, CODRUS, NELEUS, CAUCON strangest fate of all, to serve as the linchpin of the antiquarian theory that derives the mysteries of Andania from Eleusis and Phlya (Paus. 4.1.5-9, etc.). Such are the puzzles posed by the evidence. Scholars working from the historiographic point of view-and they include the great names already mentioned-have left them unsolved. Melanthus, if not the other elements of the story, also has a fascination for students of myth and religion. In the border exploit Usener saw a conflict of light and dark, summer and winter; and Farnell saw goatskin mummers, a primaeval "masque of the seasons" that became tragedy; and Jean­ maire and Brelich saw the initiation of young warriors; and, in a recent and notorious variation, Vidal-Naquet has seen a structuralist paradigm of Athens' ephebeia, a frightening ordeal which is the oppo­ site of adult life. These larger theories may have some larger value, but in Melanthus' case they do not fit the evidence. Some will be content to leave the matter here, and to dismiss the background of Melanthus and the others as either unknowable or not worth the knowing. Unknowable it is not. The origins of Athens' sec­ ond dynasty are not hid in the distant past; the story was invented not long before our earliest witnesses, literary and documentary, and it was elaborated further in the course of the fifth century. All these figures, not Melanthus alone, derive from aetiological myths; real-life customs and institutions give rise to the different elements of the story. When the several elements have been accounted for, we can see why they were brought together as a kind of charter for Athens' role in the Ionian migration. We can also identify the literary hands that helped to shape the story, and this is a point of some importance in Athenian historiography. A word is needed about the method adopted here. The connected story is interpreted as a tissue of myths-mainly of the type we call aetiological, because they purport to explain the origin of some pe­ culiar custom that was however felt to be no less important than peculiar. The aetiology presumes that the abiding custom is also the momentary action of long ago, an action of Melanthus, Codrus, Neleus, or Caucon. The customs thus explained are for the most part magic rites in the service of the gods, rites which are always misunder­ stood, and therefore destined to be a fertile source of myth-or of 'history', for aetiology is a large part of Greek writing about the past, even the recent past. Aetiological myths are freely accepted or in­ vented by most Greek historians; collections of exciting episodes in Greek history, such as we find in Plutarch or Polyaenus or Aelian, are largely aetiological myths. In the eyes of many modems, intent on a ROBERTSON, NOEL, Melanthus, Codrus, Neleus, Caucon: Ritual Myth as Athenian History , Greek, Roman and Byzantine Studies, 29:3 (1988:Autumn) p.201 NOEL ROBERTSON 205 literal narrative, this is a dismal showing. But Greek historians had other interests, and it is possible for us to share them. The different elements of the story are best considered in the following order. The episode of Melanthus has been made to answer several preoccupations-Athens' control of a remote border district (§n); her control of Eleutherae, with its distinctively Boeotian cult of Dionysus (§m); the festival Apaturia, common to Attica and Ionia (§IV). Codrus reflects a duty of the Basileus at Athens (§v). Neleus is at home in Miletus, and his function there explains why he was brought to Athens (§VI). The Cauconians are emblematic of the worship of De­ meter, which Athens shares with their reputed homeland (§vn). The role ofCaucon is embroidered further in the antiquarian theory of the Andanian mysteries, something entirely distinct from the realities of cult (§ VIII). After the different elements, the connected story (§ IX). II. Melanthus and Melaenae Melanthus fights for a place which is disputed between Athens and Boeotia" The name most often given, a name which poets evoke, is M£AaLvaL; nearly everyone agrees that this is the original setting. It is true that the scholiast who cites Hellanicus F23, our earliest source, also records a difference of opinion about the setting: "some say it was over Oenoe and Panactum, others say it was over Melaenae" (1: PI. Symp. 208B). The mythographer Conon mentions only Oenoe.2 As the scholiast is mainly reproducing Hellanicus, the first variant, Oenoe and Panactum, must be his; no doubt Conon has Oenoe from Hellani­ cus, though Hellanicus is not his only source, or his immediate source. Now Hellanicus' account is indeed the earliest to survive, but it was not the first to circulate; for Melanthus is well known to Herodotus (1.147.1, 5.65.3). In fact Melanthus' combat has been somewhat 1 For Melanthus see J. TOEPFFER, Attische Genealogie (Berlin 1889: hereafter 'Toepffer') 231f; RE 1.2 (1894) 2672-75 S.v. "Apaturia (2)"; H. Usener, RhM N.S. 53 (1898) 365-69=Kleine Schriften IV (Leipzig 1913) 293-97; ARW 7 (1904) 303- 13=Kl.Schr. IV 439-49; Farnell, Cults V 234-37; A. Ledl, Studien zur iilteren athenischen VerJassungsgeschichte (Heidelberg 1914) 225f; W. R. Halliday, CR 40 (1926) 179-81; W. Kroll, RE 15.1 (1931) 434f s.v. "Melanthos (2),,; M. Guarducci, L'istituzione della Jratria I (MemLinc SER. VI 6 [1937]) 30-32; H. Jeanmaire, Couroi et Couretes (Lille 1939) 382f; Jacoby on Hellanicus F23; M. B. Sakellariou, La migration grecque en Ionie (Athens 1958) index s. v. "Melanthe"; A. Brelich, Guerre, agoni e culti nella Grecia arcaica (Bonn 1961) 55-59; F. Kolb, JdI 102 (1977) 125- 30; F. Prinz, Grundungsmythen und Sagen chronologie (Munich 1979) 348-51; F. Schachermeyr, Die griechische Ruckerinnerung im Lichte neuer Forschungen (SBWien 404 [1983]) 137-47; P. Vidal-Naquet, The Black Hunter (Baltimore 1986) 106-28, and PCPS 212 (1986) 126-44. 2 FGrHist 26F 1 §39; cf Syn.Lex. 416 Bekker; ~ PI. Tim. 21B. ROBERTSON, NOEL, Melanthus, Codrus, Neleus, Caucon: Ritual Myth as Athenian History , Greek, Roman and Byzantine Studies, 29:3 (1988:Autumn) p.201 206 MELANTHUS, CODRUS, NELEUS, CAUCON rationalized by Hellanicus; there is no mysterious apparition as in Conon and other reports. He has also rationalized the scene of combat by naming Oenoe and Panactum, two strategic fortresses that were constructed during the Peloponnesian War. The scholiast adds the variant Melaenae-it is the only variant he records-because Melae­ nae was the traditional name. Other evidence shows that Melaenae was a district in its own right, not to be identified with either Oenoe or Panactum, nor yet with Eleu­ therae. The notice in Stephanus, "a deme of the tribe Antiochis" (s. v. MEAaLvlis), is no doubt mistaken, for Attic inscriptions do not suggest that Melaenae was ever a constitutional deme. 3 In the fourth century it appears as a place-name in a property record (IG IP 1602.14); only in the Late Roman period, when constitutional demes had lost signifi­ cance, are persons described as originating in Melaenae (IG II 2 2119.55, 6823.3). The other places mentioned in the story of Melan­ thus have all been identified on the ground-Eleutherae with the fortress at Gyphtokastro, beside the road to Plataea; Oenoe with the fortress at Myoupolis, on the east side of the Mazi plain; Panactum with the fortress above Kavasala, on the south side of the Skourta plain.4 As Melaenae was not a deme, and as there is no other settle­ ment site in the area, it must have been a district sparsely occupied. The Skourta plain was such a district, a remote upland plain enclosed by mountains, more heavily wooded once than it is now.S In its iso­ lation it is not a necessary part of either Attica or Boeotia. The Skourta plain has also been proposed as the ~pvfL6s, 'Woodland', which on the evidence of literature and documents was near Panac­ tum and had always been divided or disputed between Athens and Boeotia (Arist. fr.612 Rose3; cf Thuc. 5.42.1). Melaenae and 'Wood­ land' cannot be quite the same, since both names were used concur­ rently; perhaps 'Woodland' is a more inclusive term. Part of 'Wood­ land' was cultivated (IG IP 1672.271f), and this might be Melaenae. Nearly every place has its eponymous hero or nymph; it is obvious that M(Aav8os (or MEAav8Los), 'The Dark One', is the eponymous hero of the 'dark' place MEAaLval. Melanthus is also linked with Dionysus melanaigis, god of the dark goatskin, but this link is secondary. Dionysus melanaigis belongs not to Melaenae but to Eleutherae (1: 3 W. Wrede, RE 15.1 (1931) 387 s.v. "Melainai (1)"; J. S. Traill, The Political Organization of Attica (Hesperia Suppl. 14 [1975]) 91, 95f, 118. 4 E. Vanderpool, CSCA 11 (1978) 227-45; J. Ober, Fortress Attica (Lei den 1985) 152-55, 160-63, 223-25, and Hesperia 56 (1987) 209-20, 225-27. S E. Kirsten, RE 20.2 (1950) 2261 s. v. "Plataiai (1 )"; J. R. McCredie, Fortified Military Camps in Attica (Hesperia Suppl. 11 [1966]) 83-83; Vanderpool (supra n.4) 232f; Ober (supra n.4) 115f, 225f. ROBERTSON, NOEL, Melanthus, Codrus, Neleus, Caucon: Ritual Myth as Athenian History , Greek, Roman and Byzantine Studies, 29:3 (1988:Autumn) p.201 NOEL ROBERTSON 207 Ar. Ach. 146, whence Suda s. v. JJ.€AavalYLoa). The place-name Melae­ nae and the epithet melanaigis are quite unrelated. Other place-names too are colour words in the feminine plural C Epv()pal, Kvav€al, KE'­ AaLvaL), and each is doubtless taken from some feature of the land­ scape. On the other hand Dionysus melanaigis is also found at Her­ mione (Paus. 2.35.1), and the ritual business that gives rise to the epithet, the sacrifice of a black goat and the use of its skin, can be discerned at other places too (more on this in §m). Furthermore, the black goat or goatskin would not produce a hero Melanthus by any normal kind of myth-making. It follows that the original story of Melanthus was entirely dictated by the topography of Melaenae. Since Melaenae is in dispute between Athens and Boeotia, its eponymous hero must be responsible for winning the dispute. To do so he overcomes an enemy champion, the opposite of himself, 'The Fair One', Eav()os or Eav()Los. The Boeotian king is unknown outside our story, unless we count a small piece of embroidery in Pausanias (9.5. 16)-and even this has been inspired by subsequent events on the Athenian side. After Xanthus was slain, says Pausanias, the Thebans changed their government from kingship to the rule of a larger number. Athens saw a similar development two generations later, under Medon; so according to Pausanias' source, presumably a Boeotian source, Thebes took the lead in constitutional reform.6 If two equal but opposite heroes, 'The Dark One' and 'The Fair One', are pitted against each other, and if 'The Dark One' prevails, it is natural to say that he did so by a trick. About the simplest trick of all is to call out, "Look behind you!" Melanthus, as reported by Hella­ nicus, says rather, "You do wrong to come against me with a second," , Ii> ~ l' - I () \. I ", \ " h· h· th G k . auLK€LS, w :::.av L€, (TVV €T€P~ €7T €JJ.€ 7JKWV-W lC IS e ree versIOn of the trick. When the king of the Aenianians fought the king of the Inachians in single combat, c.t>~JJ.LOS against • Y 7TE'pOXOS, he used the same trick, in much the same words, and won possession of the new land (Plut. Mar. 294a). Though the enemy king is 'Pre-eminent', he is overmastered by the trick, which consists in a 'lucky utterance', ~JJ.7J. The transparent names show that here too the combat and the trick are merely a narrative motif. Another detail is significant for the evolution of our story, and again it will help to compare Plutarch on the Aenianians. Phemius calls out when he sees Hyperochus advancing with a dog, so that Hyperochus tries to drive the dog away-and while he turns to do so, 6 In Pausanias' account the name 'Andropompus' for Xanthus' adversary also has a Boeotian flavour, for it derives from the ritual of Dionysus at Eleutherae (§ IV). ROBERTSON, NOEL, Melanthus, Codrus, Neleus, Caucon: Ritual Myth as Athenian History , Greek, Roman and Byzantine Studies, 29:3 (1988:Autumn) p.201 208 MELANTHUS, CODRUS, NELEUS, CAUCON Phemius throws a stone. Perhaps it was more an opportunity than a trick; the interpretation is left open. Now as Hellanicus tells it, Xan­ thius has no actual second; it is indeed a 'trick', aWclT7J, to be com­ memorated by the festival Apaturia. Yet this is not the original story; Hellanicus has dropped an actual second so as to make it all a trick. For he says that the festival Apaturia was at first called' AwaT7Jv6pLa, a form which is more truly derived from aWclT7J, and which belongs to the worship of Dionysus melanaigis, as we shall see below (§ IV). Hellanicus therefore knew the form of the story that serves as an aition for Dionysus melanaigis at Eleutherae; in this form of the story, a mysterious apparition, someone in a black goatskin, appeared be­ side Xanthus and caused Melanthus to call out. Yet this is not the original story either: we have just seen that the link with Dionysus melanaigis is secondary. The original story that we must now postu­ late told of some actual second like Hyperochus' dog. When Dionysus melanaigis was brought in, the second became the mysterious appari­ tion; when the Apaturia was brought in, the second was suppressed. So much then for the original story of Melanthus and Melaenae. It has nothing to do with Dionysus melanaigis or with the festival Apaturia. Or with the Neleid dynasty, whether of Pylos or Athens or Ionia. Melanthus and Xanthus are simply the eponym and antonym of one of the remotest areas in Attica and Boeotia. They have no historical context; it would be idle to canvass the attested conflicts on this border. The local tale might have been told at any time when people lived in these parts, and for long ages before it entered the literary record. III. Melanthus and Dionysus melanaigis It is said that the cult of Dionysus melanaigis at Eleutherae com­ memorates Melanthus' victory.7 The earliest direct mention occurs in a papyrus fragment of Euphorion, perhaps from the Chiliades, which happens to coincide with two lines already known from the lexica (SuppI.Helienist. fr.418.25-27). In Euphorion Dionysus' epithet is not melanaigis but apatenor, recalling the festival name Apatenoria in Hellanicus F23, and the place of combat is as usual Melaenae. Yet the words L£pfjS a£LK7JAa CTLCTVPV7JS allude to the strange apparition that followed Xanthus, someone dressed in a black goatskin (Conon F 1 §39; 1: Ar. Ach. 146; 1: Ar. Pax 890; Syn.Lex. 417 Bekker; Apost. 3.31=Arsen. 4.60, Corp.Paroem.Gr. II 294). The god of the black 7 For Dionysus melanaigis see the studies of Melanthus cited in n.1 supra; also G. Kruse, RE 15.1 (1931) 385 s.v. "Melaina (1)"; H. W. Parke, Festivals of the Athenians (London 1977) 90; A. Schachter, Cults of Boiotia I (=BICS Suppl. 38.1 [1981)) 175. ROBERTSON, NOEL, Melanthus, Codrus, Neleus, Caucon: Ritual Myth as Athenian History , Greek, Roman and Byzantine Studies, 29:3 (1988:Autumn) p.201 NOEL ROBERTSON 209 goatskin, Dionysus melanaigis, received an altar or a shrine in conse­ quence (Conon, 1: Ach., Syn.Lex.). That this cult belongs to Eleu­ therae, not Melaenae, does not emerge from the story of Melanthus but rather from a rival aition in which the eponym Eleuther estab­ lishes the cult to cure his daughters' madness (1: Ach.; Suda s. v. JJ.fAaval'Y,~a; Hyg. Fab. 235). Eleutherae was a small but important place on a main road leading north from Attica and southern Greece, a road that also served as a processional route to Delphi. 8 Because of this location the myths and cults of Eleutherae are well known to literature.9 Melaenae by contrast was thoroughly obscure, and not so very close to Eleutherae, if we are right to think of the Skourta plain. Three reasons can however be discerned for attaching the story of Melanthus and Melaenae to Dionysus melanaigis at Eleutherae. First, Eleutherae like Melaenae came into dispute between Athens and Boeotia, and therefore the cult of Dionysus, a god who personified the traditions of Eleutherae, also came into dispute. Second, the dark goatskin of Dionysus called to mind the dark champion Melanthus. Third, the goatskin was used in ritual to perform a 'trick' which called to mind Melanthus' trick. In early days Eleutherae like the rest of Mount Cithaeron was firmly Boeotian, not Attic; all her myths and cults have a Boeotian colour, and in a standard genealogy, which doubtless comes from the Hesi­ odic Catalogue, the eponym Eleuther is nestled among other Boeotian eponyms. 10 The town had come under Athenian control by 519, when Plataea formed an alliance with Athens; for a Boeotian outpost could not stand between these allies. We can take it back a little further, to the middle of the sixth century or not long after. I I It is fair to assume that Dionysus Eleuthereus was brought to Athens at the moment Eleutherae was annexed (cl Paus. 1.38.8); his festival, the civic Dio­ nysia, was very likely instituted not long before the traditional date for Thespis' acme or first performance, one of the years from 536/5 to 532/1 (Marm.Par. FGrHist 239A.43; etc.); the archaeological evidence for the first temple roughly agrees. 12 8 For Eleutherae see the works cited in n.4 supra; for the processional route, A. Boethius, Die Pythais (Upsala 1918) 47-51. 9 E.g. Hes. Theog. 54, on the cult of Mnemosyne; Eur. Antiope fr.179 Nauck/Snell= Strab. 8.6.16 (375), the Vatican palimpsest, on the birth of Zethus and Amphion; Pluto Mor. 300A-B, on a purification rite connected with Zeus Lykaios. 10 Apollod. Bibl. 3.10.1; Paus. 9.20.1; cf [Hes.] fr.251a.l0fM.IW. 11 Kirsten (supra n.5) 2260; R. J. Buck, A History of Boeotia (Edmonton 1979) 99, 113. 12 Kolb (supra n.l) 124; R. E. Wycherley, The Stones of Athens (Princeton 1978) 183. ROBERTSON, NOEL, Melanthus, Codrus, Neleus, Caucon: Ritual Myth as Athenian History , Greek, Roman and Byzantine Studies, 29:3 (1988:Autumn) p.201 210 MELANTHUS, CODRUS, NELEUS, CAUCON In one respect the festival Dionysia plainly agrees with Boeotian custom and departs from Attic. The main business, the dramatic competition, owes nothing to Eleutherae, but the calendar date, to­ wards mid Elaphebolion, can only come from this quarter. For Athens and rural Attica reted Dionysus in the months Poseideon, Gamelion, and Anthesterion, but never so late as Elaphebolion. In Boeotia, on the other hand, Dionysus' commonest festival, the Agrionia, gives its name to the month equivalent to Elaphebolion, Agrionius. 13 This innovation is reflected in the tale of Pegasus, the oddly-named mis­ sionary who brought a statue of the god from Eleutherae to Athens (Paus. 1.2.5; 1: Ar. Ach. 243). The nearest celestial indication of the festival date is the acronychal rising of the constellation Pegasus, which takes place about March 7. 14 Although this constellation is not mentioned before Eudoxus, it must have been observed from of old, for its commoner name tlI'1T'1TOS is like other animal names for stars which have a long history in Greek and related languages. ls Eleutherae then honoured the god in the fashion of Boeotia, which included the festival Agrionia. The ritual appertaining to Dionysus melanaigis, though distinctive in its way, was only one item among many. It was not reproduced at Athens, but the Athenians laid claim to it in the person of Melanthus. As already mentioned, the ritual has another aition, and the parallels that can be cited show that this aition is true to native belief, and that the festival Agrionia is behind it. When the daughters of Eleuther see an apparition of Dionysus, they scoff and are driven mad; to cure their madness Eleuther institutes the cult. At Orchomenus in Boeotia the daughters of Minyas scoff and are driven mad; here the tale goes with the festival Agrionia (Plut. Mor. 299E-300A). At Argos the daughters of Proetus scoff and are driven mad; here the tale goes with the corresponding festival in the Dorian domain, the Agriania (Hsch. s. v. 'AypctvLa). Athens or Attica, it may be added, has no story of this kind. The story of Melanthus, as applied to the cult of Dionysus melanai­ gis, is a very makeshift aition which is meant to assert Athenian control. Melanthus of Melaenae sees the apparition beside the Boe­ otian king Xanthus, and is able to kill him after calling out, and wins possession of the disputed territory. This is the earliest datable ele­ ment that we shall find: the story of Melanthus and the goatskin 13 A. E. Samuel, Greek and Roman Chronology (Munich 1972) 67. 14 Ov. Fast. 3.449-58; Colum. 11.2.24; cf Plin. HN 18.237. IS Cf F. Boll, in Roscher, Lex. 6 (1924-37) 928-31 s.v. "Stembilder"; W. Rath­ mann, RE 19.1 (1937) 62-64 s.v. "Pegasos (3)"; A. Scherer, Gerstirnnamen bei den indogermanischen Volkern (Heidelberg 1953) 186. ROBERTSON, NOEL, Melanthus, Codrus, Neleus, Caucon: Ritual Myth as Athenian History , Greek, Roman and Byzantine Studies, 29:3 (1988:Autumn) p.201 NOEL ROBERTSON 211 apparition was first told when Athens seized Eleutherae or soon after, at all events in the second half of the sixth century. To understand the apparition in the story, and more importantly, to understand the epithet apatenor (§ IV), we must ask just what was done with the goatskin. The daughters of Eleuther see "an apparition of Dionysus with a black goatskin," cpau}',a rot) ~tovvuov fXOV p.b\atvav aZy,aa (I: Ach. 146; Suda s. v. fI-€Aava'ytaa). Melanthus sees "a sort of apparition, a man following Xanthus, of a boy's age," C/>aufl-a n rijl 2av8~ avopa €7TOfl-€VOV a:YfVHOV (Conon F 1 §39). Someone appears be­ side Xanthus "dressed in the skin of a black he-goat," rpayijv EVHfl-fVOS fl-fAaWaV vel sim. (I: Ar. Ach.; Syn.Lex. 417; Apost. 3.41). Or it may be Dionysus himself who appears beside Xanthus, as he appeared before the daughters of Eleuther, "with a rustic form," i.e. dressed in the goatskin, rov ~tOvvuov 7Tapaurijvat ... ubv aypoucu(ijl uX~fl-an (I: Ar. Pax 890). The two stories, of Melanthus and of the daughters of Eleuther, tell us what was done in the cult of Dionysus melanaigis, for, like every aition, they start from the assumption that what happened once long ago is re-enacted in the rite forever after. Someone was dressed in the skin of a black he-goat; it was a pre-pubescent boy; and to judge from the story of the daughters of Eleuther, he was presented to nubile girls. To dress in goatskins was fairly common in the worship of Dio­ nysus. The god has the same epithet, melanaigis, at Hermione (Paus. 2.35.1), but we cannot be sure that the skin was again worn by a boy. For the word TpaY1J4>opOt, obviously a cult title, is explained by the notice "the girls performing secret rites for Dionysus would put on the skin of a he-goat" (Hsch. s. v.). A cult at Argos was reputedly estab­ lished when the Argives returning from Troy were shipwrecked on Euboea, and killed some wild goats and dressed in their skins to keep warm (Paus. 2.23.1); here the wearers are men. At Megara and its colony Callatis Dionysus has the epithet oauVAAtOs, 'shaggy',16 which like melanaigis points to the wearing of a skin-a goatskin, for an inscription from Callatis, where the cult of Dionysus was to the fore, speaks of conducting a he-goat in procession and then of operating with its skin at a shrine called ~auVAAt€'i:ov,l7 We shall see below that the cult at Megara resembles ours in yet another detail (§ IV). 16 Paus. 1.43.5; Etym.Mag. s. V.; LSCG 90. Cf Nilsson, Feste 31Of; Farnell, Cults V 96, 118, 282; K. Hanell, Megarische Studien (Lund 1934) 100, 181f; Sokolowski ad loco I? Sokolowski presents lines 4ff as follows: on the 12th of the month Dionysius, L!.WVVO'Wt T ]payov ?T~[p.?T€w], then €]VUAE[S TO b~p ]p.a O't.v Tat K€cpaAat Kal T[ a's ?TOO'l K ]al T[ OtS K£paO't ?TWA€tV] £V TWL L!.aO'VAAw:Wt. The verb ?TWAEtV is not a likely restoration, for ROBERTSON, NOEL, Melanthus, Codrus, Neleus, Caucon: Ritual Myth as Athenian History , Greek, Roman and Byzantine Studies, 29:3 (1988:Autumn) p.201 212 MELANTHUS, CODRUS, NELEUS, CAUCON These goatskins, like other skins and fleeces used in ritual, come from freshly slaughtered victims: so at Eleutherae a black he-goat was sacrificed. At Potniae south of Thebes, not far from Eleutherae, Dio­ nysus had the epithet 'Goat-slayer', aLyo/3oAos, in virtue of a porten­ tous goat-sacrifice (Paus. 9.8.2). The aition recounted by Pausanias has been variously interpreted;18 we can now recognize the same prac­ tice as at Eleutherae. Long ago, after a murder and a plague, an oracle bade the people sacrifice a boy to Dionysus, a boy close to puberty, 1TaLS wpaLos; but after a few years a goat was allowed as a substitute for the boy. At Potniae too, we infer, a pre-pubescent boy was dressed in the skin of a freshly slaughtered goat; observers said that it was done because the goat had been sacrificed in place of the boy. There is no lack of parallels for the wearing of goatskins, but one element of the rite at Eleutherae is still unexplained, and this element is precisely the point of attachment for the story of Melanthus. The boy wearing the goatskin was presented to nubile girls with alarming effect; he seemed a sudden apparition, perhaps an apparition of the god himself. The girls were driven mad by the apparition, and by means of it Xanthus was distracted and overcome. As already said, other girls were driven mad by Dionysus at Orchomenus and Argos; likewise the women of Thebes, and by one report those of Sparta and Chios too (Ael. VH 3.42). Were there goatskin apparitions at any or all of these places? It is possible, but not very likely. The goatskin apparition is a magical means of directing the god's fertilizing power, and ritual has many such means. The notoriety of Dionysus melanai­ gis at Eleutherae suggests that he was more or less unique. For other goatskin apparitions we tum from Dionysus to Athena. The goatskin, aigis, is best known as an attribute of Athena. Non­ nus plays on the likeness of Athena's attribute and Dionysus' epithet: "Shake your aigis," says Zeus to his daughter, "and help your brother melanaigis, who will save your land by driving out the Boeotian chief" (Dion. 27.301-03). Like all such attributes Athena's aigis de­ rives from ritual. It was typically an instrument of weather magic, as we see from the stories of its origin and above all from descriptions of either Athena or Zeus, her partner in cult, shaking the aigis to bring clouds and storm. 19 But it was also used very much like the black the skin appears in a context of ritual actions, and is described as if it were destined for ritual use, and we expect it to be so used in the place named after it, the ~aUVA­ ALE'iOV. 18 See Schachter (supra n.7) 182 and the works there cited. 19 Cf W . Fiedler, Antiken Wetterzauber (Stuttgart 1931) 49f. Nowadays the aigis is ROBERTSON, NOEL, Melanthus, Codrus, Neleus, Caucon: Ritual Myth as Athenian History , Greek, Roman and Byzantine Studies, 29:3 (1988:Autumn) p.201 NOEL ROBERTSON 213 goatskin at Eleutherae. Consider the following instances, the first a ritual directly reported, the others aetiological myths. At Athens "the priestess," certainly a priestess of Athena, went round to new brides "carrying the holy aigis" and begging toO.20 Though the proverb in question has been combined with a lexical definition in which the aigis is a "network of fillets," "the holy aigis" in the hands of the priestess can only be the skin of a freshly slaugh­ tered goat. A goat was brought up to the Acropolis and sacrificed to Athena on one occasion only, as "a necessary sacrifice" (Varr. Rust. 1.2.20); the explanation of the proverb expressly says that the priest­ ess "started from the Acropolis. "21 The priestess was doubtless she of the genos Buzygae, and the occasion Athena's festival in Maemacteri­ on, when the Buzygae officiated.22 This is the time to summon rain for the crops just sown: rain magic is unmistakable in the bathing of the palladion in the sea, and in the mock combat that ends with a display of the palladion and the aigis. Weather, sex, and combat: these in­ gredients recur in the myths about the aigis, such as the following. In a passage of Ps.-Apollodorus that may be interpolated from another source, but will still have the same value for us, the aigis is in effect presented first to nubile girls, then to new brides.23 Athena, it is said, grew up with another girl, Pallas daughter of Triton, and they practised combat with each other; as Pallas was about to strike, Zeus commonly explained as a primitive shield, which is loony rationalism; sometimes as a totem or a bogey, which is no explanation at all. Ever since weather magic was thrown out along with nature mythology, a large part of ancient religion has been closed to understanding. From Homer to Virgil and beyond, the shaken aigis brings sudden lowering skies; in a vase-painting Salmoneus operates with the aigis as with other instruments of rain magic (Chicago 1819=ARV2 585.29); a fire-breathing monster named Alyi.; causes parching drought until Athena kills him and adapts the hide to its proper use (Diod. 3.70.3-5=Dion. Scytobrachion FGrHist 32F8); another monster whose hide becomes the aigis is the giant "AUTfP0'; or 'AUT~P (Meropis= P.Ko/n III 126; [Arist.] Pep/os fr.637 Rose3 ), i.e. the Dog-star, TO ClUTPOV; the verbs €7I"alY'(fLv, KaTalY'(flV, are formed from the noun aly{.; and are used accordingly­ winds 'up-aegidize' because the aigis makes them blow. 20 Paris.gr. 676 s. v. aly't.; 7I"fP't 7I"6AlV, ed. L. Cohen, BreslPhilolAbh 2.2 (1887) 65=Corp.Paroem.Gr. Suppl. I 65. Cf Robertson, TAPA 113 (1983) 162-64. 21 Varro's goat-sacrifice has been claimed by Burkert for the Arrhephoria, which he regards as an initiation rite for girls: Hermes 94 (1966) 20; Homo necans (Berlin 1972) 172; Griechische Religion der archaischen und k/assischen Epoche (Stuttgart 1977) 349. For a different view of the Arrhephoria, Robertson, HSCP 87 (1983) 241- 88. 22 This festival is studied by Burkert, ZeitschrReligGeistesgesch 22 (1970) 356-68, but he misses the purpose of it, which is rain magic; and what he calls "the deed of blood," i.e. the violent encounter described in the myths of Demophon and the Ar­ gives, is not an ox-sacrifice but a prognostic mock combat. 23 Apoll. 3.12.3; cf Tzetz. r. Lycoph. A/ex. 355. ROBERTSON, NOEL, Melanthus, Codrus, Neleus, Caucon: Ritual Myth as Athenian History , Greek, Roman and Byzantine Studies, 29:3 (1988:Autumn) p.201 214 MELANTHUS, CODRUS, NELEUS, CAUCON interposed the aigis, so that she looked up at the object, and Athena dealt a fatal blow; afterwards in sorrow Athena made a wooden image of Pallas and hung the aigis upon it. In the sequel Electra is assaulted by Zeus as she takes refuge at the image with the aigis. Finally Zeus flings it into Troy, where, as everyone knows, it witnessed the rape of Cassandra, and was therefore instrumental in raising the storm which destroyed Ajax.24 Another companion whom Athena killed in combat, how we are not told, is Iodama daughter of Itonius (~ Lycoph. 355); Iodama is elsewhere a maiden priestess of Itonian Athena who meets her end when she sees the statue at night, with its Gorgon-head (Paus. 9.34.2). On this showing the ritual was very likely conducted at the sanctuary at Coroneia. Or again, when Athena's father Pallas assaulted her, she killed him and his skin became the aigis. 25 Or the curling snakes on Athena's breastplate, i.e. the aigis, recall the day when Poseidon raped Medusa in sight of her statue (Ov. Met. 4.798-801). Or Chryse daugh­ ter of Pallas received the palladia, plural, as a wedding present from Athena when she married Dardanus; Dardanus left Arcadia because of rain and flood. 26 In sum, Athena's goatskin is presented to nubile girls, like Diony­ sus' goatskin, and also to new brides. At Athens the priestess carried the goatskin, but the myths indicate that it was often placed on a wooden image, so that it becomes a constant feature of the palladion and of Athena's iconography. Some myths further imply that the girls saw the image and its goatskin within a shrine, others that it was carried out of doors. We should note that all these methods were in use, and are reflected just as clearly in other stories in which Athena's accoutrement, it may be the helmet or the Gorgon-head rather than the aigis, serves as an instrument of terror. When the Aetolians attacked Pellene in Achaea in 241 B.C., they were routed by a Lrrifying apparition that is reported in three variants. Either the priestess came out of the temple wearing Athena's panoply (Polyaen. Strat. 8.59); or a maiden who had just been lodged in the temple ran out wearing a helmet (Plut. Arat. 31.4, 32.1 f-Plutarch confuses Athena and Arte­ mis); or the priestess carried forth the dread image of the goddess (32.3f). Knowing the ritual, we also know why the story of Melanthus was attached to it at second hand. In the original story Melanthus won 24 Seneca and Quintus tell how Athena caused the storm-and made use of the aigis (Ag. 530; Posthom. 14.452-58); they doubtless draw on some early source. 25 Cic. Nat.D. 3.59; Clem. Protr. 2.28; Firm. Mat. Err.pro/rel. 16.2; 1: Lycoph. 355. 26 Dion. Hal. Ant.Rom. 1.68.3, citing Calli stratus (FGrHist 433 FlO) and Satyrus (20F I). ROBERTSON, NOEL, Melanthus, Codrus, Neleus, Caucon: Ritual Myth as Athenian History , Greek, Roman and Byzantine Studies, 29:3 (1988:Autumn) p.201 NOEL ROBERTSON 215 Melaenae by calling out to Xanthus, "You do wrong to come against me with a second!" This is a narrative motif, which we also meet in the guise of Hyperochus' dog, and which we might call the 'distracting companion'. Now, the girls of Eleutherae encountered the goatskin figure in frightening circumstances; according to the myth he scared them to madness. Some of Athena's myths speak of sudden fright and sudden death (the girl Pallas and also the girl lodama, whether play­ mate or priestess; Pallas the licentious father); the priestess at Athens must have accosted the brides suddenly, perhaps flapping the aigis as in rain magic, since her action was proverbial for "those going round in a rush," oL aVE01]V 7r€pLtovns (Corp.Paroem.Gr. Sup pI. I 65). So the goatskin figure who startled the girls became a distracting companion for Xanthus. 27 IV. The Apaturia and Dionysus apatenor The ritual we have just surveyed enables us to interpret another curious item in the tradition. Hellanicus, while recounting the combat without mention of Dionysus meianaigis or the apparition, says that the Athenians commemorated Melanthus' victory by establishing a festival "which they once called Apatenoria, but later Apaturia, as if from the trick that was used," ~v 7rUAaL /J-(V ' A7raT1]vOpta, t)unpov O( 'A ' " ... ., \ ~ ", (23) F H 11 . 7raTOVpta €KaI\.OVV ws a7rO T1]S y€VO/J-€V1]S a7raT1]S F . or e anlCUS the victory has two great results, control of those strategic fortresses Oenoe and Panactum, and the institution of the phratry festival Apa­ turia, which came to be shared by Attica and Ionia. Everyone is aware that the festival name' A7raTOVpLa means 'the rites for those begotten by the same father', *a7raTOPfOS = o/J-07raTWp, an etymology that was recognized in ancient times and was even imprinted in the festival business.28 To derive the name from a7raT1} is perverse ingenuity; 27 We should allow for the possibility that contamination has occurred among our myths. Both Pallas and Iodama engage in single combat with Athena, and are distracted by the aigis, and killed as a result. The aigis interposed by Zeus is perhaps an odd use of the narrative motif, and these myths are very like the developed story of Melanthus and Xanthus, which, as we saw at the outset, had a wide currency from the fourth century onward; and aigis and melanaigis are readily associated, as in Nonnus. Even so our conclusion stands, that the ritual use of the black goatskin first attracted Melanthus and Xanthus from Melaenae to Eleutherae. 28 I: Ar. Ach. 146: "some say that since fathers meet together for the enrolment of their children the festival is called as it were 'Op.o7TaTop,a. Just as we speak of the OP.OAEIos 'Joiner' (as if he built the chamber himself) and ' H£P[17 'Darkling'. It is obvious at once that Tectaphus and Eerie have been transposed to India from some other setting, like so many figures who fill up the ranks either of Dionysus' army or of the enemy. Tectaphus is already named as an Indian commander in Dionysius' Bassarica (fr.9.4 Heitsch, a papyrus frag­ ment which jibes with a line in Stephanus); whether Dionysius told of his confinement does not appear. The story belongs to a recurring type, die saugende Tochter: a father is shut up in prison, and his daughter comes and suckles him. An­ ciently the story is told several times with different names, and is also rendered in wall-paintings and terracottas; the type continues with wider variations in the Middle Ages. 37 It has become a folktale-it was already such when attached to the shrine of Pietas at Rome-but it originates as a ritual myth, the older species that often passes into folktale. 38 None of the ancient versions save that of Tectaphus and Eerie is told in sufficient detail for us to identify the rite, although one version gives MvlCwv as the father's name,39 and so points to agri­ cultural magic; for Hesychius glosses P.VICWV as uwpos, 617P.~V, i.e. a heap of com. In the story of Tectaphus and Eerie the prison is de­ scribed as an underground chamb~r, dark and close and mouldy, and the father is described as a virtual corpse, wasted and reeking of d th "It' A , " r. .... ' It 'It" .,. (D· ea : ota u£ V£ICPOV £IC xpoos a~al\£oto uVUWuHS E1TV£OV avpat IOn. 26.115f). These details remind us of other fathers who were strangely used: Oenopion of Chios, Oeneus of Calydon, Icarius of the deme Icarium, and of course old Oedipus.40 37 Stith Thompson, Motif Index of Folk-Literature (Bloomington 1957) V 275, R 81: "Woman suckles imprisoned relative through prison wall." For the ancient sources, and older folktale studies, see HOfer, in Roscher, Lex. 5 (1916-24) 214f s. v. "Tektaphos (2)"; van der Kolf, RE 5A.l (1934) 170f s. v. "Tektaphos (2)." 38 For the general rule see R. Merkelbach, HSCP 82 (1978) 1-15, apropos of the Turkish tale of "The girl in the rosebush," which he traces to the ritual of a west­ Anatolian tree-goddess. Whether this case is allowed or not-and Merkelbach's clos­ ing arguments are to my mind quite convincing-the rule is exemplified by innumer­ able folktales deriving from the ancient world. 39 Hyg. Fab. 254.3, and a wall painting at Pompeii; cf. Val. Max. 5.4 ext. 1 "Cimon." 4°0enopion: K. Keyssner, RE 17.2 (1937) 2272-75 s.v. "Oinopion"; F. Graf, Nordionische Kulte (=BibIHelvRom 21 [1985]) 125f. Oeneus: C. Robert, Die grie­ chische Heldensage I (Berlin 1921) 85-87; R. Hanslik, RE 17.2 (1937) 2193-2204 s.v. "Oineus (1)." Icarius: R. Merkelbach in Miscellanea di studi alessandri in memoria di A. Rostagni (Turin 1963) 469-526. Oedipus: L. Edmunds, Oedipus: The Ancient Legend and Its Later Analogues (Baltimore 1985) 6-17, 225-28. ROBERTSON, NOEL, Melanthus, Codrus, Neleus, Caucon: Ritual Myth as Athenian History , Greek, Roman and Byzantine Studies, 29:3 (1988:Autumn) p.201 NOEL ROBERTSON 219 When Orion assaulted Oenopion's daughter, he suffered for it, and afterwards threatened to take revenge on Oenopion; the dutiful father was therefore hidden away beneath the earth-whether Poseidon did it, or the people of Chios, or Oenopion managed it himself; in the fullest version the hiding place is said to be "an Hephaestus-built chamber" fashioned by Poseidon, TIOtTELSWV ~ HaLtTT6TEVICTOV ~'7I"b y~v KaUtTKEVatTEV OtKOV (Apollod. 1.4.4), i.e. a bronze chamber. As for Oeneus, he was shamefully mistreated by his usurping brother Agrius, and by one account the mistreatment occurred while he was penned up, ICa(lEtptavus nICt(OVTO (1.8.6); in a tradition going back to Peisan­ der, Oeneus had relations with his own daughter Gorge (1.8.5). It is also said that the daughter was given in marriage after Oeneus was set free (1.8.6). The remains of Icarius, brutally done to death by shep­ herds, were either thrown into a well or buried beside a tree, and his daughter found them after long search (Hyg. Astr. 2.4; Nonn. Dion. 47.141-47, 211-17). Oedipus after the discovery of the incest was confined in the palace at Thebes, whether by Creon or by his sons or by the Thebans at large; this is such a constant feature of the story that it is probably referred to by Homer, who says that Oedipus "suffered woe" at Thebes, even while he continued to bear rule (Od. 11.275f). The plight of Oedipus strikingly resembles the plight of Tectaphus: he is confined in a dark recess, stretched on a cot perhaps, aged and helpless, a picture of squalid decay (e.g. Eur. Phoen. 327-36, Stat. Theb. 1.49-51). At the last he is brought forth by his daughter. Our instances do not all come from the same ritual background. Oenopion, Oeneus, and Icarius are associated with Dionysus, Oedi­ pus with Demeter.41 The ritual origin of the Oedipus story is perfectly transparent, and will help us to understand the other instances. The palace of Cadmus at Thebes, the palace where Oedipus was confined, was equated with the Theban sanctuary of Demeter; Oedipus' 'grave' was shown at still other sanctuaries of Demeter, at Eteonus and Colonus and on the northeast slope of the Areopagus; at the end of Sophocles' play Oedipus vanishes into a bronze chamber in the earth at or near a sanctuary of Demeter (OC 1590f, 1600-02, 1661f). Demeter's sanctuaries typically contain an installation called the meg­ aron, the 'hall' or even 'palace', a flattering or auspicious term for a dark, close underground chamber which was opened only twice a year, to begin and to conclude a drastic rite of agricultural magic.42 41 On Oedipus and Demeter cf L. Edmunds, HSCP 85 (1981) 221-38. 42 L. Deubner, Attische Feste (Berlin 1932) 40-45; W. Burkert, Hermes 94 (1966) 7f; A. Henrichs, ZPE 4 (1969) 33-36; B. C. Dietrich, RivStorAnt 3 (1973) 1-12; J. Prytz Johansen, Temenos 11 (1975) 78-84; Burkert, Griechische Religion (supra n.21) ROBERTSON, NOEL, Melanthus, Codrus, Neleus, Caucon: Ritual Myth as Athenian History , Greek, Roman and Byzantine Studies, 29:3 (1988:Autumn) p.201 220 MELANTHUS, CODRUS, NELEUS, CAUCON During the hot dry summer, after the threshing and before the plough­ ing and sowing, the earth was replenished by the offering or infusion of a pig, Demeter's animal. The pig, an ungelded male, was slit open for its whole length so as to expose the inwards, and then thrown into the megaron;43 at the end of the summer the remains were removed with anxious ceremony. Ola{1Tov~, 'Swell-foot', is a riddling name for the pig and its knobby hocks;44 'Swell-foot' is embraced by his 'moth­ er', either Demeter or the earth, and is also shut up in the 'palace', the megaron as an underground chamber, and undergoes a ghastly mu­ tilation; afterwards he is brought forth by his 'daughter', the female officiants who remove the decayed remains. A profound and fascinat­ ing story has been inspired by an ancient and obsessive ritual. Of the other anguished fathers 'Mycon', to judge from his name, belongs to the cult of Demeter. At the same time it is very clear that a similar rite was performed in the cult of Dionysus; some animal victim was placed in the earth and was tended by women. The cult of Dionysus is notorious for a form of animal sacrifice in which the victim was tom apart, or chopped up, and tasted raw by the worship­ pers: the rite called omophagia.45 Different victims are attested-a bull-calf, a ram, also an he-goat;46 the he-goat was used at Eleutherae and in some other versions of the Agriania canvassed above (§ III). It goes without saying that the whole animal was not consumed as raw meat by the celebrants; it was a matter of drinking the blood and tasting the inwards, especially the heart, or simply of dabbling and smearing. What was done with the rest? We now learn that after the 366f; Robertson (supra n.21) 255-57. The season or duration of the rite is not agreed; the view taken here is close to Deubner's, though I do not reason quite as he does. 43 The treatment of the pig is clearly seen in the Thasian terracottas published by F. Salviat, BCH 89 (1965) 470 figs. 30f. It is implied in a few sanguinary myths which are studied from another point of view by M. Detienne in Detienne and J.-P. Vemant, La cuisine de sacrifice (Paris 1979) 183-214. 44 Everyone allows that the ancient explanation of the name, the pinning of the infant's feet, is a very lame one (if I may put it so), but modems have not found a better-Edmunds (supra n.41) 234 suggests it is a plant name. Shelley however saw the true meaning, in his satire "Swellfoot the Tyrant" (George IV, at the time of his attempt to divorce Queen Caroline). 'Swellfoot' rules a swinish multitude of Boeotian pigs; his name, says Shelley in the Advertisement, leaves it doubtful "whether a swelling of the hind or the fore feet of the Swinish Monarch is particularly indicated." 45 A. Henrichs, HSCP 82 (1978) 150-52, and in B. F. Meyer and E. P. Sanders, Jewish and Christian Self-Definition III (London 1982) 144, 159f; J. N. Bremmer, ZPE 55 (1984) 274f. Burkert, GRBS 7 (1966) 87-121, appears to think of Dionysus' he-goat as cooked and eaten in the usual style of sacrifice; this goes against the evi­ dence. 46 Lactant. Plac. ad Stat. Theb. 5.159; Am. Adv.nat. 5.19; pictorial Maenads rend goats as well as deer, doubtless wild goats. ROBERTSON, NOEL, Melanthus, Codrus, Neleus, Caucon: Ritual Myth as Athenian History , Greek, Roman and Byzantine Studies, 29:3 (1988:Autumn) p.201 NOEL ROBERTSON 221 animal was torn and tasted, the parts were gathered up and placed in the earth. These ritual actions are most plainly reflected in the fate of Icarius, for the shepherds first dismember him with their implements, then gather up the pieces for burial.47 In still other mythical tran­ scripts the remains of Pentheus or of Dionysus himself are gathered up for burial. The proceeding is quite straightforwardly described in an inscrip­ tion of Miletus which regulates the civic cult of Dionysus (AbhBerl 1908 [=LSAM 48], of276/5 B.C.): "no one is permitted to throw in raw flesh, w/J-ocpaytov €/J-f3aA€LV, until the priestess throws it in on behalf of the city." As the original editor observed, the destination that is left unspoken can only be an underground chamber; scholars have since been oddly reluctant to accept this conclusion, despite the clear anal­ ogy of Demeter's pigs.48 Just the same language is used of the pigs: xolpov~ €/J-f3aAAovuLV (Clem. Protr. 2.12.1), PL7TT€LUOaL TOt~ xo{pov~ €l~ " d ~ , f3\ 0' ", d' f3'\\ llt" Ta xaU/J-aTa, an TWV €/J- 1\1/ €VTWV €L~ Ta /J-€yapa, an f./J- al\l\OVTaL u€ KaL €l~ TO. /J-Eyapa ... XOLPOL (1: Lucian Dial. Meretr. 2.1, pp.275f Rabe), £~ TtL /J-Eyapa ... aqnauLv ~~ (Paus. 9.8.1). Furthermore, a chamber called /J-ayapov is epigraphically attested for the cult of Dionysus, though its use does not appear;49 the variant spelling also occurs in the cult of Demeter. In the light of the myths we may now accept the inscription of Miletus at face value, as indicating standard practice in the cult of Dionysus.5o 47 Since the shepherds assail their victim with all the implements that are to hand (Nonn. Dion. 47.119-24), we infer that in the actual rite each celebrant had his own knife. As Henrichs observes (supra n.45: 151 n.97), the Maenads of Greek and Roman art have their own swords and knives to dismember animals. Despite Merkelbach (supra n.40) 497, 503, the details of Icarius' death and burial do not at all suggest the pressing of the grapes; and the whole story is played out at three festivals earlier in the year: at the Anthesteria (lcarius' tour with a wagon-load of skins, and the tirst tasting of wine), the Dionysia in Elaphebolion (the death of Icarius), and the Aeora in Metageitnion (the roaming and swinging of Erigone): cf Robertson, MusHelv 44 (1987) 38f. 48 The range of opinion is as follows. The victim or part of it was thrown into a pit (Wiegand, Haussoullier); the flesh was placed in a basket (Festugiere); the live victim was thrown from a roof or platform into a waiting crowd, who tore and ate it (Eisler, Dodds, Jeanmaire); the victim was somehow presented to Dionysus 'Raw-eater' as a special form of sacritice (Henrichs); it is quite impossible to know what was done (Wilamowitz, Kern, Nilsson). For references and further discussion see Sokolowski ad loc.; Henrichs (supra n.4S) IS0-S2; J.-P. Yernant et aI., Le sacrifice dans l'antiquite (=EntrHardt 27 [1981]) 37-39 (loquuntur Henrichs, Yernant, Yersnel). 49 L. Robert in Melanges Bidez (Brussels 1934) II 811 f (=Opera Minora Selecta II [Amsterdam 1969] 1006f); J. Bousquet, BCH 62 (1938) 51-53; Henrichs (supra n.42) 3Sf; Sokolowski on LSCG 10.B.20. 50 One would like to know whether the word wp.ocpaywv, which is an hapax, refers to a dismembered animal in the hands of each celebrant or to single pieces of a dis­ membered animal which is shared by the celebrants. ROBERTSON, NOEL, Melanthus, Codrus, Neleus, Caucon: Ritual Myth as Athenian History , Greek, Roman and Byzantine Studies, 29:3 (1988:Autumn) p.201 222 MELANTHUS, CODRUS, NELEUS, CAUCON It is not surprising that the same kind of magic is used for both the com and the vines: a prepotent male animal is converted to elemen­ tary blood and flesh, and is laid within the earth. And since these are secret rites, orgia, it is not surprising either that there is no direct evidence for the bestowal of Dionysus' victim save that inscription of Miletus: the bestowal of Demeter's pig is expressly mentioned only by a few late sources. For the present purpose we need go no further. Our concern is with the nubile girls who join in the rite, the daughters of Eleuther and the daughter of Tectaphus, and with the epithet apate­ nor. The daughter of Tectaphus deceives the guards with 'trick-man speech', a7raT~VOpL fLv6~, and enters the chamber to suckle her father. She is like other young nursing mothers in the myths of Dionysus­ like the Nymphs who suckle the infant Dionysus, or like the daughter of Minyas who suckles a child of her own. In the story of Tectaphus and in the others we surveyed, the nursling is not a divine or human infant, but an aged father, wasted and decayed, because the stories are focussed on the underground chamber and the horrid remains within. The mythical Nymphs or royal daughters stand for actual girls of like age who perform another magic action on behalf of the vines and the grapes: they pretend to give suck, so as to make the grapes swell with juice.51 The mimic suckling in the cult of Dionysus recalls the mimic childbirth in the cult of Demeter, the rite called kalligeneia, 'fine­ offspring'. The matrons who resort to Demeter's sanctuary at the fes­ tival of the sowing pretend to conceive and to grow big and give birth, so as to make the earth bear crops. About this rite of Demeter something more is said below, apropos of Neleus and his daughter Elegels ( § VII). The matrons' fertility was enhanced by magic means, e.g. by the eating of pomegranate seeds. The girls' milk was also stimulated by magic means, and one of the means employed was the goatskin apparition at Eleutherae. So we see why Dionysus was called a7raT71- vwp and the ritual a7raTTJV6pta. A prepubescent boy dressed in the skin of a black he-goat is a 'trick-man'; in Conon's version as already quoted the apparition is described as both man and boy, 4>aCTfLa TL ••• livapa . .. aylvELov. We may be reminded of other customs associating boys with nubile girls or brides-for example, the custom of putting a boy to bed with the bride on the first night, surely another 'trick-man'. 51 The correspondence is implicit in the Greek language, for CTt/>p'yav is used literally, not figuratively, of both breasts and grapes, and of other swelling animals and plants. In Dionysiac imagery milk spouting from the earth portends an abundant vintage; cf Eur. Bacch. 708-10 and Dodds ad loco ROBERTSON, NOEL, Melanthus, Codrus, Neleus, Caucon: Ritual Myth as Athenian History , Greek, Roman and Byzantine Studies, 29:3 (1988:Autumn) p.201 NOEL ROBERTSON 223 Here it is the goatskin that makes the boy a man; it comes from the he-goat freshly slaughtered, which is used to fertilize the earth and make the vines grow. The goatskin works upon the girls, and they in tum work upon the earth. Such is the magic link between the fertility of the vines and that of men and animals. Returning to Melanthus, we observe that 'trick-man'-the term and the outlook-suits the motif of the distracting companion; so it was all the more natural to reuse the story of Melanthus as an aition at Eleutherae. 'Trick-man' also explains another element of the tradi­ tion: the name ' Avapc),r0JJ.7Tos which is borne by the father of Melan­ thus (Hellanicus F23). Andropompus moreover takes the place of his son in one version of the border exploit. In his account of Theban kings Pausanias speaks of Andropompus, not Melanthus, as the op­ ponent of Xanthus (9.15.16), and just because the substitution is unexpected-Melanthus and Xanthus being antonyms-it is much more likely to be a variant than a mistake. The name, an odd one for a hero, means 'He who conducts the man', just as E>E07TOJJ.7TOS means 'He who conducts the god', sci!. Dionysus at his advent festivaI.S2 'The man', av~p, who is conducted is again the boy dressed in the skin of a black he-goat. The nearest analogy is the term aL07TOJJ.7TEtV, literally 'to conduct Zeus', which describes the business of the Athenian festival TIoJJ.7Ta'ia; the actual object here conducted is a fleece, a'iov lC~aLOV, as an instrument of rain magic. 53 When Melanthus was brought from Me­ laenae to Eleutherae, a local father was invented for him, the ritual personification Andropompus. Since the ritual is Boeotian, the name will be so too; hence it was preferred by Pausanias' Boeotian source. Melanthus of Melaenae was attracted to Eleutherae by the 'black' goatskin and the 'trick-man' apparition. At a later stage, in Hellani­ cus' account of Melanthus, 'trick-man' made a stepping-stone to the festival Apaturia. But why did Hellanicus think of the festival Apa­ turia in the first place? This question is much more acute than any modem study has allowed. It has been surmised that Dionysus must have some role or other at the Apaturia. 54 He does not. The deities of kinship honored at the phratry festival are, at least in the Ionian 52 Wilamowitz, Aristoteles und Athen II (Berlin 1893) 129, renders the name as "der die Manner auf die Fahrt bringt," with reference to the Ionian migration. This is a poor way of explaining the element avlipo-; the meaning would be better expressed by • A~W7TOJJ.7TOS. Jeanmaire (supra n.l) 382 was partly right to say that "the name evokes the leader of a procession." H Eustath. ad Od. 22.481. Cf Deubner (supra n.42) 157f. 54 Toepffer, RE (supra n.l) 2677; Deubner (supra n.42) 233; Guarducci (supra n.l) 30-32; Parke (supra n.7) 90. ROBERTSON, NOEL, Melanthus, Codrus, Neleus, Caucon: Ritual Myth as Athenian History , Greek, Roman and Byzantine Studies, 29:3 (1988:Autumn) p.201 224 MELANTHUS, CODRUS, NELEUS, CAUCON domain, Zeus and Athena, sometimes Apollo as well. 55 No doubt a given phratry in a given place might take charge of a local sanctuary of whatever deity; but a merely local tradition would not reflect on phratries at large, or on the festival Apaturia.56 Moreover, no such tradition is ever hinted at in the story of Melanthus; we hear only of his trick, apate. Hellanicus like Herodotus before him regarded Melanthus' descen­ dants, the Neleids of Athens, as the founding family of Ionia. After speaking ofCodrus, the scholiast on Plato concludes, "And his young­ er son Neleus became the founder of the Ionian dodekapolis" (F23). Among the criteria by which Ionians may be recognized, Herodotus mentions the kings they chose, including the line of Melanthus and Codrus (1.147.1). But there is only one real criterion, he says immedi­ ately after. "They are all Ionians who originate in Athens and keep the festival Apaturia"; Ephesus and Colophon, however, have dropped the festival because of some matter of blood guilt (1. 147.2f). We may suspect that even this real criterion is one that Herodotus had heard from others. It is not however the same criterion as having kings of the line of Melanthus and Codrus. Herodotus knew Melanthus as the first Neleid king of Athens (5.65.3), and hence he doubtless knew also of his border exploit; yet he did not know of the Apaturia as a com­ memoration of this exploit. But once it was observed, as it is by Herodotus, that the festival is common to Attica and Ionia, it was natural, indeed inevitable, to say that it was instituted by the Neleid family, in fact by the first family member who came to Athens. The inevitable step was taken by Hellanicus. Perhaps he had his eye on this very passage of Herodotus; or perhaps the two criteria were so commonly mentioned together that he did not need Herodotus. V. Codrus the Wood-cutter When an oracle declared that Athens must fall to the Dorians unless they killed her king, Codrus went forth to meet his death disguised as a wood-cutterY The story was told by Panyassis,58 and by Pherecydes 55 D. Rousel, Tribu et cite (Paris 1976) 133-37. 56 A decree of the later third century awarding honors to an Athenian general calls for them to be announced at different places on different occasions (IG IP 1299.28- 32); at Panactum the occasion is the Apaturia-not because Dionysus melanaigis is at home nearby, but because the Apaturia is the chief festival celebrated by the gar­ rison of this remote outpost. 57 For Codrus see Toepffer 230-35, 239f; Wilamowitz (supra n.52) 129-31; E. Meyer, Forschungen zur alten Geschichte II (Halle 1899) 533-35; Wilamowitz, SBBerlin 1906, 71 (=KI.Schr. V.I 166); Ledl (supra n.l) 226-35; T. Lenschau, Bursians Jahresb. 44 (1916-18) 187f; Scherling, RE 11.1 (1921) 984-94 s.v. "Kodros ROBERTSON, NOEL, Melanthus, Codrus, Neleus, Caucon: Ritual Myth as Athenian History , Greek, Roman and Byzantine Studies, 29:3 (1988:Autumn) p.201 NOEL ROBERTSON 225 (FGrHist 3 F 154, from Pollux, where the enemy is not identified), and alluded to by Herodotus (5.76), and told again by Hellanicus (F23). Pherecydes, like Herodotus and Hellanicus, knew ofCodrus' posterity as ruling in Ionia (F 155, from Strabo); so did Panyassis. Codrus was included in the odd assortment of Athenian heroes whom Pausanias names as standing on the Marathon Base at Delphi, said to be the work of Pheidias (10.10.1 f). On a red-figure cup of the later fifth century, the name-piece of the Codrus Painter, Koopos is a young warrior in full armour who takes leave of an older man AlvETOS (AR V2 1268.1). It is not that the painter knows a different version of Codrus' death, but that the king is here assimilated to the type of the departing hero (two others are shown elsewhere on the cup, Theseus and Ajax). Plato puts Codrus beside Alcestis and Achilles (Symp. 208n, where the scholiast cites Hellanicus), and Lycurgus expatiates on the oracle and on the manner of his death (Leoe. 84-87). Thereafter his story is famous (some sources speak as if he died in battle, but only through inadvertence), and his gallantry proverbial (ElJ''1EV(CTTEPOS Koapov). 59 While touring the Ilissus, seemingly its right bank, Pausanias says that "the spot is shown where the Peloponnesians killed Codrus son of Melanthus as king of Athens" (1.19.6). Lycurgus evidently knew the spot, for he tells how Codrus "slipped outside the gates and was gath­ ering wood in front of the city" when accosted by the enemy (Leoe. 86; ef. A need. Gr. 1.192 Bekker, "in front of the wall"). In the Augustan period the spot was marked by a relief or statue depicting the moment of death; for we have a four-line epigram which begins, Koopov TOVTO 7r(CT1]Jla, "Here is Codrus in the act of falling" (IG IJ2 4258)-it must have labelled the monument. Codrus' role in cult is known solely from the decree of 41817 which deals with the hieron of Codrus and Neleus and Basile and with the (1)"; Meyer, Geschichte des Alterturns lIP (Stuttgart 1937) 399f; F. Brommer, in Charites: Studien ... E. Langlotz (Bonn 1957) 161; F. Casso la, La Ionia nel rnondo rniceneo (Naples 1957) 84-88; Sakellariou (supra n.1) index s. vv. "Codrides'" and "Codros": Prinz (supra n.1) 323-25, 327-33, 348-53; W. Buhler, Zenobii Athoi proverbia IV (Gottingen 1982) 80-85; P. earlier, La royaute en Grece avant Alexandre (Strasbourg 1984) 360-72; Schachermeyr (supra n.1) 137f, 146-48. 58 Suda s. v. llavvauLf = test. 1 a Matthews. I accept the notice of Panyassis' Ionica as more likely true than false. A further reason for belief is that Herodotus presupposes some such contribution in verse (§ VII). 59 Zenobius Ath. 2.6 Buhler. Buhler thinks that the proverb properly refers not to Codrus' gallantry but to his lineage, which according to Hellanicus F23 went back to Deucalion. This would be distinctly odd, since Codrus is praised everywhere for his gallantry, and since moreover Plutarch speaks of him as one who came to the kingship from the obscurity or privation of an exile family (Mor. 607B; cf Hdt. 5.65.3). The term £bi'£V~f, as Buhler himself allows, can denote character just as well as lineage. ROBERTSON, NOEL, Melanthus, Codrus, Neleus, Caucon: Ritual Myth as Athenian History , Greek, Roman and Byzantine Studies, 29:3 (1988:Autumn) p.201 226 MELANTHUS, CODRUS, NELEUS, CAUCON extensive temenos of Neleus and Basile.60 As the purpose of the decree is severely practical, to improve the condition of the place by leasing it to someone who will be made responsible, it tells us nothing about the nature of Codrus or his partners. The pedimental relief shows a bearded man sitting with a sceptre and a younger man on horseback; who they might be we do not know, unless it is Codrus and his younger son Neleus; if it is, we are still no wiser. The stone was found south-east of the Acropolis, not so far from the right bank of the Ilissus; to judge from the decree, which mentions several landmarks, our temenos did indeed lie in this quarter. Quite recently the bound­ ary stone of a nameless shrine emerged in situ not far from the re­ ported finding place of IG P 84, and has been claimed for Codrus et al.; but this is quite uncertain. Whether the sanctuary included the site of Codrus' death is impossible to say. If it did, it lay outside the city wall (for we can hardly believe that Lycurgus thinks of an earlier wall with a narrower circuit); the landmarks mentioned in the decree are within the wall, but they delimit a catchment area for water, not the sanctuary, which must have occupied distinctly lower ground. It has also been supposed that the grave ofCodrus was on display.61 No such grave is indicated by the opening words of the epigram, as quoted above, though they were for long subject to misunderstand­ ing.62 The epigram however goes on to say, in the second couplet, that "the body of one who raised his fame to the heavens was carried off and buried beneath the Acropolis by the people of Athens," crwlJ-a a' < " I \ .f.. I I [ , A8 I ] \ \ , , 8 I 'SI. 't' V7T aKp07TOI\1J' 'f'EpWV TapxvcrEv 1JV1J~ I\ao~ E~ a avaTOV~ vo£av anpa- IJ-E[VOV]. Lycurgus too says that the Athenians sent a herald to the enemy to ask for the body, and that the Peloponnesians gave it back (Leoc. 87). The story dwelt on the retrieval of the body, but an actual grave is not attested. One point on which broad agreement has been reached is that the sanctuary of IG P 84 once belonged to Neleus and Basile alone, and that Codrus was added later.63 Codrus has no part in the temenos as 6°IG P 84. For the sanctuary see W. Judeich, Topographie von Athen 2 (Munich 1931) 387f; R. E. Wycherley, BSA 55 (1960) 60-66; J. P. Barron, JHS 84 (1964) 47; P. Stavropoullos, ArchDelt 20 (1965) Chron. 68-70; D. Behrend, Attische Pachtur­ kunden (Munich 1970) 55-61; J. Travlos, Pictorial Dictionary of Athens (New York 1971) 332-34; Wycherley (supra n.12) 168f. 61 E.g., Scherling (supra n.57) 986; Judeich (supra n.60) 387; Wycherley (supra n.60) 65f; Travlos (supra n.60) 332. 62 The misunderstanding was exposed by A. Wilhelm, AnzWien 1950 366-70 (=Akademieschriften zur griechischen Inschriftenkunde I [Leipzig 1974] 380-84). Wycherley (supra n.60) 66 overlooked this. 63 E.g., Wilamowitz (supra n.52) II 130; Scherling (supra n.57) 991f; Wycherley (su­ pra n.60) 61. But Toepffer (240 n.2) was of a different mind. If Neleus and Basile ROBERTSON, NOEL, Melanthus, Codrus, Neleus, Caucon: Ritual Myth as Athenian History , Greek, Roman and Byzantine Studies, 29:3 (1988:Autumn) p.201 NOEL ROBERTSON 227 distinct from the hieron; the place where the decree is posted, i.e. the most prominent part of the sanctuary, is called TO N1}A€,OV (lines 27f);64 Neleus and Basile, it is said, make a natural pair as underworld deities. A different view of Neleus and Basile will be argued below (§ VI), but as to Codrus the conclusion may stand. It seems to follow that Codrus originates in myth or legend, but how and where? The posterity of Codrus are all, except his son Medon, founders and kings of Ionian cities: is not Codrus an Ionian Stammesheros?65 But whereas Codrus' sons and grandsons have various ties with Ionian institutions-some are eponyms, some have tombs-Codrus himself has none; his whole story is played out at Athens. As a variant of the Ionian hypothesis it has been held that the name KoopoS' is a personi­ fication of royal power, another form of KVOPOS; hence his partner /3autA1}, and his son KvoP1}AOS', and the patronymic KoopLoaL, equiva­ lent to BauLAtoaL.66 This ingenious construction fails on both linguistic and substantive grounds. The upsilon of KVOOS', KVOLfJ.0S', KvoaALfJ.OS', etc., is always long, and an alternative form KOO- is inconceivable.67 KOOPL­ oaL is a literary name for the line of Codrus (cf 'Ep€x8€LOaL, 01}U€LOaL, etc. )68 and has nothing to do with the institutional BauLALoaL of Ephe­ sus. Let him be a Pylian, then; it has been firmly said oflate that in the original legend of the Ionian migration Codrus was at home in Mes­ senia and Pylos, as the Stamm vater of all the founding heroes of Ionia.69 But no trace of him exists in the myths or the history or the institutions of these places. As Eduard Meyer saw long ago,70 there is no escaping the conclu­ sion that Codrus is a figure of Athenian belief. The question is why he comes to view so late, why Athenian belief did not enrol him among the ancient kings who start with Cecrops, a numerous and disparate company. The answer must be sought in the details of his story, which have never been attended to. We shall not understand any Greek myth unless we consider those details that are most peculiar and most persistent. The story of Codrus is full of such details. As one destined came before Codrus, then Barron (supra n.60) is wrong to suggest that in 418/7 the construction of Neleus' shrine had just begun. 64 As Wycherley (supra n.60) 63 says, "the use of the name has more point if it refers to the particular cult-spot of Neleus." 65 Toepffer 239. 66 Wilamowitz (supra n.52) II 129-31; Toepffer, RE 3.1 (1897) 96 s. v. "Basilidai"; Scherling (supra n.57) 990. 67 Wilamowitz's theory is unmentioned by either Frisk or Chantraine in their etymological dictionaries s. v. KVaOS. 68 Cf Toepffer 233f (this before he succumbed to Wilamowitz). 69 Prinz (supra n.l) 351-53. 70 Meyer (supra n.57) Forschungen 533f; Geschichte 399f. ROBERTSON, NOEL, Melanthus, Codrus, Neleus, Caucon: Ritual Myth as Athenian History , Greek, Roman and Byzantine Studies, 29:3 (1988:Autumn) p.201 228 MELANTHUS, CODRUS, NELEUS, CAUCON by an oracle for sacrifice, as a king on whom his country's fortune hangs, Codrus is a common type. But nothing else is typical-not his dress, or his instrument, or his occupation, or the manner of his death. Codrus goes to his death in disguise, and from Pherecydes onward the disguise is always described in the same terms. He dresses in the homespun of a humble wood-cutter, and takes up a bill-hook useful for cutting sticks, and goes out of the city to gather wood, and on meeting two of the enemy strikes down the one and is himself struck down by the other. All these details are mentioned by Pherecydes (F 154), by Hellanicus (F23), by Lycurgus (Leoc. 86), and in an ex­ planation of the proverb E1J"YEVElTTfPOS Koopov which cites Demon and perhaps derives from Pausanias the Atticist. 71 They were undoubtedly depicted in the relief or statue of Codrus which has left us the epigram of Augustan date (IG IJ2 4258): we should imagine Codrus wearing homespun, and holding a bill-hook, and falling beneath the enemy stroke.72 Another detail mentioned by Lycurgus and the epigram is that the Athenians were at pains to recover the body. Codrus' disguise is the main preoccupation of the story. Codrus is a wood-cutter, as Syleus (say) is a vine-dresser (Eur. Syieus frr.687-94 N., etc.). A wood-cutter's toil is quite literally enacted when Codrus goes forth with his bill-hook; it is also represented figuratively when Codrus hews down an enemy and is hewed down himself. Thus did Heracles use a mattock first to dig the vines, then to strike down Syleus (Diod. 4.31.7). It is not only that Codrus is a wood-cutter, but that he personifies the very act of cutting wood. This is the usual style of Greek myth; one does not need the prompting of any particular theory of myth or magic in order to think of innumerable figures whose life and death personify a sacrificial victim or some staple crop.73 Just as Codrus' death at the hands of an enemy is the act of cutting wood, his body is the result; the Athenians are concerned to recover the body and bring it within the walls, or "beneath the Acropolis," as the epigram says, because this is the destination of the wood which he gathered. In myths like ours the names are often transparent. ~VAE1~S 'De- 71 Demon FGrHist 327F22=Paus. Att. E 79 Erbse=Zenobius Ath. 2.6 Buhler, test. 111. 72 Wilhelm (supra n.62) 370 also imagines the other enemy lying dead and a bundle of sticks at Codrus' feet. 73 The danger is that in citing any examples at all, one will be lumped together with the school or doctrine that happens to dwell on those examples. Burkert, Homo Necans (supra n.21), treats myths about sacrificial victims; Mannhardt and Frazer treat myths about the crops. ROBERTSON, NOEL, Melanthus, Codrus, Neleus, Caucon: Ritual Myth as Athenian History , Greek, Roman and Byzantine Studies, 29:3 (1988:Autumn) p.201 NOEL ROBERTSON 229 spoiler' presumably refers in the first instance to the rough work of a vine-dresser, to digging and lopping and burning; 'Ep£XOdJS is 'Thresher', OlvnJs is 'Wine-grower'. Other names are simply the crop or plant (A{vos, !.raq>vAos, ilac/>v7J, r YaKtVOos) or its desired condition (' AvO£vs 'Blooming', PL~OS 'Bristling', like an ear of ripe corn). Now, some of the commonest shrubs and trees in the Mediterranean are denoted by the term KEOPOS, 'juniper'.74 Koopos shows a normal alter­ nation of vowels (cf e.g. '7T£o-/'7Too-); the proper name was thus differ­ entiated from the generic noun. The wood-cutting that gave rise to the myth of Codrus had special significance. To grasp its significance we should recall that Codrus the wood-cutter is also Codrus the king, responsible for his city's welfare. Wood was required for every sacrifice, but it was not always easy to obtain, especially in an urban setting. Many sacrificial calendars in­ scribed on stone make provision for the requisite wood or sticks, ~vAa or c/>pvyava.75 Athens' public sacrifices were mostly the concern of the Basileus ([Arist.] A th. Pol. 3.3, 57.1). "The laws of the Basileus" quoted by Athenaeus from Crates and other Hellenistic sources show that the Basileus had charge of supplies such as barley meal (Ath. 235c). Though the text may not be quite sound, it appears to say what we should anyway assume, that the supplies were kept in the Basileus' official quarters, the Bucoleium.76 The Bucoleium like some other public buildings stood in the older city-centre that was in use long before the Agora at the northwest (Ath.Pol. 3.5; Paus. 1.18.3). This city-centre is now firmly located on the east side of the Acropolis, for the shrine of Aglaurus which was part of it has yielded an inscription in situ;77 the east side of the Acropolis is the steepest (cf Hdt. 8.53.1, on the unexpected ascent of some Persian soldiers), so that the city­ centre was in the very shadow of the citadel. These facts explain the myth of Codrus. The king who goes out of the city to gather wood is the Basileus who must find wood for sacrifice; the remains that are carried back to a point "beneath the 74 R. Meiggs, Trees and Timber in the Ancient Mediterranean World (Oxford 1982) 47,410-16. 75 The Attic instances are IG P 129.5, 241.15, 246C.25f; IP 1356.3, 8, 22; 1363 b.24; LSCG Suppl. 19.87f, 9lf. The Cyrenaean purification law, LSCG Suppl. 115A.8-10, authorizes the use of certain wood for sacred and also secular purposes. 76 TOils o~ 7TapaulTovs (IC TfjS f3ovlCo>..las (1C>"'y~'v (IC TOV I'.ipovs TOV favTwv ~KaCTTov fKrfa ICp,ewv KTA. Cj. Wilamowitz (supra n.52) I 216 n.55, II 43; Robertson, Historia 35 (1986) 163 n.35. R. Schlaifer, HSCP 54 (1943) 51-55, 60f, interprets fiovKoAla as a sacred herd of cattle and assumes a lacuna after €KAfYfLV, to be supplemented e.g. . 77 G. S. Dontas, Hesperia 52 (19K3) 48-63; Robertson (supra n.76) 158-68. ROBERTSON, NOEL, Melanthus, Codrus, Neleus, Caucon: Ritual Myth as Athenian History , Greek, Roman and Byzantine Studies, 29:3 (1988:Autumn) p.201 230 MELANTHUS, CODRUS, NELEUS, CAUCON Acropolis" are the supply of wood that is kept at the Bucoleium. Codrus is not the only king of Athens who personifies an essential action and an essential thing. Erichthonius, earth-born offspring of Athena and the fire-god, personifies the kindling and fetching of new fire at the festival Panathenaea. Erechtheus, sprung from the corn­ field and stricken by Poseidon's trident, personifies the threshing of the com at the festival Scira.78 All these myths were once told separ­ ately for their own sake, not as successive episodes of Athenian history. Erichthonius and Erechtheus, the new fire and the new crop, are much more important than Codrus and the wood for sacrifice, and so it is natural that they, and not Codrus, found a place in the original line of Athens' kings. Erechtheus even became an object of cult, distinct from the god Poseidon, who could also be styled 'Thresher'. Codrus too will have received or shared a sacrifice at the sanctuary of IG P 84, but as already said, this is a secondary development. Codrus had been enrolled in the second dynasty by the time of Panyassis and Pherecydes and the Marathon Base. Yet there was a time when only Neleus and Basile were honoured at the sanctuary. If the Neleus of the sanctuary was always thought of as a Neleid (so to speak), whether as the ancient king and eponym or as the founder of Miletus, then there was also a time when Athens acknowledged the second dynasty but did not include Codrus within it. Neleus and Basile deserve a closer look. VI. Neleus and Miletus Neleus son of Codrus is the founder of Miletus and sometimes of other Ionian cities, and by far the leading figure in most accounts of the Ionian migration-as we might expect of one who bears the same name as the ancestor of his line, that ancient king ofPylos;79 Mimner­ mus evokes the mother city as TIvAOS N17A~'OS (fr.9 Bergk/West). The younger Neleus first appears, so far as the record shows,80 in Panyas­ sis' Ionica (Suda s. v. TIavvaou=test. 1 a Matthews), but whether he was credited with other settlements besides Miletus we cannot tell. Among 78 For Erichthonius and Erechtheus see Robertson, RhMN.F. 128 (1985) 254-69. 79 For Ne1eus son of Codrus see Toepffer 235-40; Jacoby, Das Marmor Parium (Berlin 1904) 91f; Wilamowitz (supra n.57) 67f; van der Kolf, RE 16.2 (1935) 2280 s. v. "Neleus (2)"'; Meyer, Geschichte (supra n.57) 400f; Jacoby ad FGrHist 323aF 11, on Hellanicus; Cassola (supra n.57) 88-94; Sakellariou (supra n.l) index s. v. "NeU~e"; Prinz (supra n.1) 325-34; Schachermeyr (supra n.1) 297-300, 303-05. 80 On the Marathon Base the three heroes whom Pausanias names after the eponymous heroes are Codrus, Theseus, and f6vEL (8.3.16). The lore of the three Athenian missionaries is obviously drawn from an Athenian source (Pausanias quotes a poem displayed at Phlya); more­ over, since none of this lore was to be found in Myron and Rhianus, the third-century authorities whom Pausanias cites for the bulk of the pseudo-history, it is no doubt of later origin. We may reasonably sup­ pose that Caucon the hierophant was once indigenous to Triphylia. When the story was first told of the dreams of Epameinondas and Epiteles, the phantasmagoric figure who called for the refounding of the mysteries was very likely the Triphylian Caucon; for as we shall see, the legendary role of the Argive Epiteles agrees with the attested Argive oracle of 9211 B.C. which gave instructions for the mysteries of Andania-without any reference to Eleusis. It is also worth noting that Triphylia plays a part in the story of the Athenian missionaries. The second of these missionaries is Lycus son of Pandion. Lycus, we are told, went first to Arene, that ancient city, and imparted the mysteries to the ruling family, including the epony­ mous queen Arene; he then proceeded to Andania, where Caucon, he of Eleusis and Phlya, had already instructed an earlier generation of the family, in the person of the eponymous queen Messene (Paus. 4.2.6, cf 1.5). Arene is a legendary town in Nestor's domain (I/. 2.591, 11.722), which in the pseudo-history is said to have been founded, and occupied for two generations, by the ruling family of Messenia (Paus. 4.2.4-6, 3.7). Homeric scholars fixed Arene, if at all, either at Samicum in Triphylia or at Erana in Messenia, both about equidis- 114 So S. Eitrem, RE 1l.l (I 921) 63f s. v. "Kaukon (2)." ROBERTSON, NOEL, Melanthus, Codrus, Neleus, Caucon: Ritual Myth as Athenian History , Greek, Roman and Byzantine Studies, 29:3 (1988:Autumn) p.201 242 MELANTHUS, CODRUS, NELEUS, CAUCON tant from Andania; there is no doubt, however, that the pseudo­ history looks to the site in Triphylia, the usual identification;llS for Queen Arene also gives her name to a spring at Lepreum nearby (Paus. 5.5.6). The reason why Arene becomes, in the pseudo-history, another early capital of Messenia, after Andania and before Mes­ senian Pylos, is that it happened to be known already as the home of Aphareus and his sons. 116 At the same time we get an explanation of Demeter's cult at Lepreum or thereabouts: Arene as well as Andania receives a visit from the missionaries of Eleusis. Triphylia then was renowned for its worship of Demeter, and the worship was embodied in the priestly Caucon, eponym of the Cau­ conians. The Cauconians were merely a name in Homer, and so far as we can see, they or their eponym never acquired any distinctive trait but this, the Triphylian worship of Demeter. Hecataeus was presum­ ably the first to conjure with the name; he certainly helped to form the later tradition. It follows that in bringing the Cauconians to Athens he pointed to the worship of Demeter, both the Triphylian and the Athenian, i.e. Eleusinian. The strange confection which we find in Pausanias, about Caucon of Eleusis and Phlya and other Athenian missionaries to Arene and Andania, can only be understood as a very late development, as a final twist to the story, after the Triphylian Caucon or his people had long been connected with Eleusis (as in Hecataeus), and after they had also been connected with the so-called mysteries of Andania (as in the Argive oracle). We shall come back to this (§vm), but let us first consult Herodotus on the cult of Eleusinian Demeter. In 479 B.C. the Persian encampment on Mycale was situated at "Gaeson and Scolopoeis, where the shrine of Eleusinian Demeter is, which Philistus son of Pasicles established when he came with Neleus son ofCodrus to the founding of Miletus" (Hdt. 9.97). The location is thus specified because of a strange coincidence, scil. that the battles of Mycale and Plataea were both fought beside a shrine of Eleusinian Demeter (9.101.1). We may think it curious that the shrine near Mi­ letus was established not by Neleus himself but by a follower named liS Strab. 8.3.19 (346); cf, Paus. 5.6.2f. Modem scholars are likewise agreed in placing Arene here, in virtue of important Mycenaean remains: e.g. F. Bt>lte, RhM 83 (1934) 322, 326; J. Sperling, AlA 46 (1942) 82, 86; R. Hope Simpson and J. F. Lazenby, The Catalogue of Ships in Homer's Iliad (Oxford 1970) 83. 116 Pherec. FGrHist 3 F 127; Ap. Rhod. Argon. 1.152; Apollod. 3.10.3. Aphareus and the Apharetiadae were also assigned to Pharae "a city of Messenia" (Steph. Byz. s. v. fIlapaL), i.e. to Homeric Pherae, whether as real or as bogus eponyms; cf, Robert (supra n.40) I 311. This would be easier to understand if Pherae lay on the upper Alpheius, as argued by Ernst Meyer, MusHelv 14 (1957) 81-88, and (supra n.88) 2144f. ROBERTSON, NOEL, Melanthus, Codrus, Neleus, Caucon: Ritual Myth as Athenian History , Greek, Roman and Byzantine Studies, 29:3 (1988:Autumn) p.201 NOEL ROBERTSON 243 CPt.A'CTTo~-not a mythical name of the usual sort, nor yet an Athenian name of common or notable occurrence (cf PA 14458-60). Why did 'Dearest' sail with Neleus, and why was he prompt to honor Eleu­ sinian Demeter? Philistus is not the only link between Neleus and Demeter. Neleus left Athens for Miletus because of an omen produced by his daugh­ ter's lewd behavior,ll7 and this behaviour can be recognized as a fertility rite in the service of Demeter. As we saw above (§VI), the myths of Neleus, and even his name, reflect the old custom of be­ trothing girls with high ceremony at a public festival; the elder Neleus is best known for his nubile daughter Pero. Conformably with this pattern, Neleus son of Codrus has a nubile daughter Elege'is (by one account her real name was Pero), but her story takes a different tum, as follows. When Medon instead of Neleus became king of Athens, Neleus asked the Delphic oracle where he should now go, and was told that his daughter would show the way. And so it was that Neleus overheard Elege'is as she smacked her privates and cried out, "Find yourself a big man, who will bring you to Miletus, a bane to the Carians!" As others have remarked, such demonstrative indecency, as also the name 'EAE)'7J{~, derives from ritual;118 it is the sort of women's magic that was practiced at festivals of Demeter, especially at the autumn festival of the sowing. With the bluntest words and gestures nubile girls made a pretence of desire, and matrons made a pretence of con­ ceiving and bearing children, all this so as to stimulate the goddess of the com. Such magic is very widely documented in cults of Demeter (and of her congener Damia or Bona Dea). Eleusis is no exception: witness the antics of Iambe in the Homeric Hymn to Demeter, and even more those of Baubo in Orphic literature. The antics of Elege'is, daughter of Neleus and Codrus, are the mythical projection of a civic cult at Athens: it can only be Eleusis. Elege'is must have found her man, and he and she must have sailed with Neleus to Miletus, and the cult that gave rise to the omen must Il7 Lycoph. Alex. 1385-88, I. 1378, 1385; Etym.Magn. s. VV. aITEA:yaLvfLv, ' EAE),7JL~. 118 See O. Crusius, RE 5.2 (1905) 2258-60 s. v. "Elegei's"; M. L. West, Studies in Greek Elegy and Iambus (Berlin 1974) 9. West however spoils his own argument by suggesting that at a certain stage the name ' EA(),7Jl~ was wrongly substituted for the epithet t\(A(),7J'~' In a similar vein Wilamowitz, Einleitung in die griechische Tragodie (Berlin 1889) 58 n.18, asserted that 'Pero' was the original name. For Iambe and Baubo as equivalent figures, see N. Richardson on Hymn.Hom.Cer. 192-211; F. Graf, Eleusis und die orphische Dichtung Athens (Berlin 1974) 168-71; Robertson, CQ N.S. 34 (1984) 16. On the manifold obscenities in the worship of Demeter, H. Fluck, Skurrile Riten in griechischen Kutten (Endingen 1931) 11-33, 52-59, 66-70. ROBERTSON, NOEL, Melanthus, Codrus, Neleus, Caucon: Ritual Myth as Athenian History , Greek, Roman and Byzantine Studies, 29:3 (1988:Autumn) p.201 244 MELANTHUS, CODRUS, NELEUS, CAUCON have been transplanted to the new land. Philistus, 'Dearest', is her man; for he established the shrine of Eleusinian Demeter on Mycale. The story of Elegels has been pieced together from Herodotus, Lycophron, and comment on Lycophron. The general sense of the story is clear, but the details of transmission are not, particularly in the early stages. As we saw before, Hecataeus feigned that the Cau­ conians brought the mysteries of Demeter from Triphylia to Athens and Eleusis. But Hecataeus need not have feigned that the Cau­ conians went on to Ionia, still less that they brought Demeter across the sea; and the story of Elegei's seems quite beyond his scope. When Herodotus scornfully describes the line of Codrus ruling in Ionia as "Pylian Cauconians," this is very likely his own extension of Heca­ taeus' doctrine. Philistus, however, founder of the cult on Mycale, must come from an earlier source. After Hecataeus linked Demeter with the migration from Pylos to Athens, something further was sure to be said, especially since Eleusinian Demeter was also worshipped at a few places in Ionia. The next step was taken before Herodotus, but by whom? If Herodotus stood alone, we might suppose that he had only heard the story, not read it. But the story was handed down later; indeed more than one version was current. To say that Elegei's was seduced by a Carian, as a scholiast does and as Lycophron perhaps implies, is to embroider the tradition that the first Ionian settlers took Carian wives (Hdt. 1.146.2f). One or more of the Attic chroniclers may have told the story in one or other of these versions. 119 All that matters here is that later writers must depend in the first instance on the same source as Herodotus. The story turns on the words which Elegei's addressed to her pri­ vates. The two verses are not uniformly reported in the scholia and the lexica, 120 but the following seems the most basic form: ~/I". ~/I". ~\ 1 ,,~, u'~EO uL~EO U'1/ fLEyav avup ••• EOOV could just as well be feminine, but there is no likelihood that the Messenians ever took cognizance of the story which Pausanias relates about the Great Goddesses and the three Athenian missionaries. Pausanias cites as his authority an epigram at Phlya, displayed on 140 There are two other instances of the name Aeschines at Argos, but none other of Epiteles: M. T. Mitsos, 'AP'Y0A'/c~ npOCTW7roypapaToS'.155 In the light of the Hesiodic Catalogue it is impossible to believe that Athenians as early as these professed to be Neleids from Pylos. More­ over, they need not even belong to the same family as the tyrant, who comes a full three generations after the archon; the name may have been commoner in early days than it was later. We should also note that the name was not in fact borne by any of the mythical Neleids ancestral to Athens' royal house; the line descended through Neleus' brother Periclymenus, and Peisistratus had no issue at all (Paus. 2.18.9). When Hippocrates stood by the cradle he chose a fine aristo- 152 H. A. Shapiro in W. G. Moon, ed., Ancient Greek Art and Iconography (Madison 1983) 87-96, thinks that the Peisistratid claim stimulated interest in pictorial renderings of the Pylian heroes Nestor and Antilochus, and even of Poseidon and of Herac1es fetching Cerberus. But these subjects have other, more obvious associations. 153 J. K. Davies, Athenian Propertied Families 600-300 B.G. (Oxford 1971) 445. 154 T. J. Cadoux, JHS 68 (1948) 90. 155 E. Vanderpool in Commemorative Studies in Honor of T. L. Shear (Hesperia Suppl. 8 [1949]) 405-08; L. H. Jeffery, The Local Scripts of Archaic Greece (Oxford 1961) 70. ROBERTSON, NOEL, Melanthus, Codrus, Neleus, Caucon: Ritual Myth as Athenian History , Greek, Roman and Byzantine Studies, 29:3 (1988:Autumn) p.201 258 MELANTHUS, CODRUS, NELEUS, CAUCON cratic name, but not a programmatic name. It was many years later that Peisistratus declared himself a Neleid. Athens' claim to be the mother city of Ionia is the precondition for Peisistratus' claim to be a Neleid. And the former claim goes back to Solon's day. To support the original claim it was perhaps enough to say that the younger Neleus started from Athens; the cult of Neleus and Basile bears witness to this fundamental connexion between Athens and Miletus. How Neleus came to be in Athens was less important. But when it was further said that the line continued in Attica and pro­ duced the family of Peisistratus, the claim turned into a question of genealogy, and it was necessary to supply the right ancestors. Not as many as we hear of later, after genealogy had been tested and refined by chronology. But Peisistratus must have named at least the Neleid who migrated from Pylos to Athens. This was Melanthus, as all our sources agree. Now in the time of Peisistratus Melanthus had just come to general notice as the champion who won Eleutherae and established the cult of Dionysus melanaigis. And since Melanthus was in origin merely the eponym of Melaenae, he had no genealogy of his own and no agreed place in Attic history. This was the time to enrol Melanthus in the story. The step was not taken until Athens had seized Eleutherae; but it was taken before the end of the tyranny, for the tyrant family was bound to name the first Pylian in Athens. Hecataeus of Miletus is the first writer who can be seen to have treated our story (unless Pherecydes is as early). No doubt he was at work after the tyranny, but within the next generation, while the tyrant family was still a threat. By his account the Cauconians mi­ grated from Pylos to Athens soon after the Dorian settlement of Laconia, and brought with them the worship of Demeter which pros­ pered forever after at Eleusis (§vn). It is likely too that Hecataeus presented the eponym Caucon as son of 'Celaenus', a doublet of Melanthus (§vm). To suppress the Neleids and the name Melanthus was perhaps a reaction, whether at Athens or at Miletus, against the claims of the tyrant family. Ca 499 B.C. Aristagoras is said to have reminded the Athenians that Athens was the mother-city of Miletus (Hdt. 5.97.2); on this outlook the Peisistratid genealogy was of mo­ ment in Ionia as well. But we do not know the details of Hecataeus' account, and any political implications are guess-work. It is more important to observe the role of the Cauconians in the general de­ velopment. Another Ionian, Panyassis, wrote a poem of uncertain length on Codrus and Neleus and the settlement of Ionia. Hecataeus having pointed to Demeter as a Pylian heritage, it was natural to say that ROBERTSON, NOEL, Melanthus, Codrus, Neleus, Caucon: Ritual Myth as Athenian History , Greek, Roman and Byzantine Studies, 29:3 (1988:Autumn) p.201 NOEL ROBERTSON 259 Neleus, or rather his daughter and her man, brought the cult of Eleusinian Demeter to Ionia. Panyassis lived and died during the earlier and, on the orthodox view, the happier period of the Delian League; we may suppose that Neleus was not neglected by spokesmen for the League. 156 But Codrus, also attested for Panyassis' account, has no particular attraction for Ionians. Codrus is part of the connected story in all our fifth-century sources after Hecataeus-in Panyassis, Pherecydes, Herodotus, and Hellani­ cus; he was added to the cult of N e1eus and Basile before 41817, and is shown on the Codrus Cup and was included in the group on the Mar­ athon Base at Delphi. Since Pherecydes cannot be closely dated,157 Panyassis and the Base give the terminus ante quem, ca 450 B.C. Panyassis was killed by the tyrant Lygdamis, who seems to have ruled for about a decade down to ca 450. 158 The Base is usually dated to Cimon's lifetime but near the end of it (ob. ca 450), because Pheidias is said to be the sculptor and because Miltiades, the only historical figure in the group, would not have been so honoured before this time nor perhaps after it.159 To be sure, Pheidian attributions are often suspect; but Pausanias had an eye for sculpture,160 so that the attribu­ tion should at least be true in spirit. The Marathon monument gives Codrus an unexpected promi­ nence, as if the hero and his victory were of topical interest. There is indeed a terminus post quem for Codrus' admission to the connected story. The enemy whom he defeats by his death are the Dorians, now advancing from Megara (only the Schwindelautor Sostratus, FGrHist 23F2, describes him as a general elected against the Thracians, thus recalling Ion and Erechtheus). Codrus the wood-cutter had once en­ countered nameless enemies, for the encounter personifies the very task of cutting wood; but the connected story took him up at a time when the Dorians were a menace. It is true that Melanthus was up­ rooted from Pylos by the Dorian invasion, directly or indirectly. Yet 156 Barron, JHS 82 (1962) 6 and (supra n.60) 46-48, thinks of the Neleus story as propaganda for the Delian League and for Athens' hold on Miletus. There is however no warrant for the view, adopted by Barron from Glotz, that a powerful family or faction in fifth-century Miletus called themselves Neleids: M. Pierart, Antel 38 (1969) 368f; H.-J. Gehrke, Historia 29 (1980) 26f. 157 For different suggestions see Jacoby, Mnemosyne SER. III 13 (1947) 33 (=Ab­ handlungen zur griechischen Geschichtsschreibung [Lei den 1956] 116); G. L. Huxley, GRBS 14 (1973) 137-43. 158 Matthews (supra 0.120) 12-19. 159 W. Gauer, Weihgeschenke aus den Perserkriegen (IstMitt Beih. 2 [1968]) 25, 65- 70; U. Kron, Die zehn attischen Phylenheroen (Berlin 1976) 215-27; Vidal-Naquet, Black Hunter (supra n.l) 302-24. 160 C. Habicht, Pausanias' Guide to Ancient Greece (Berkeley 1985) 131 f, 144, 159. ROBERTSON, NOEL, Melanthus, Codrus, Neleus, Caucon: Ritual Myth as Athenian History , Greek, Roman and Byzantine Studies, 29:3 (1988:Autumn) p.201 260 MELANTHUS, CODRUS, NELEUS, CAUCON the movements set in train by the Dorian invasion are a general theme, and Melanthus' part in it should not inspire a sequel in which the Dorians march north against Athens. Round 510 B.C. Sparta and the Peloponnesian League attacked Athens twice to overthrow the tyranny; in the years that followed they attacked again, and yet again they threatened to attack. Before this time Athens had no reason to fear or even to imagine a Dorian invasion of Attica. The threat abated when Corinth stood with Ath­ ens. After the Persian Wars, however, Athens came to mistrust Sparta more than ever and to dispute her leadership. And in the late 460's Corinth turned into a bitter enemy; shortly after, she invaded Megara; the lines were drawn which lasted down to the Peloponnesian War (Thuc. 1.89-106). Codrus entered the story after 510, and he speaks directly to the preoccupations of the period after ca 460. Some have held that Codrus was inserted as a filler in the genealogy, but this could not be a prime consideration and probably did not weigh at all. The connected story has only one firm chronological repere, the return of the Heraclidae, which led in due course to the expulsion of Melanthus from Pylos; the Ionian migration will find its place as a consequence of Melanthus' relationship to the Heraclidae. The relationship, it seems, was first worked out by Hellanicus (F23); for Melanthus' ascending line includes some very pale figures. On the Athenian scene our story occupies a slot between the first dynasty of kings ending with Thymoetes (himself a mere foil to Melanthus) and the long descending line of kings, or life-archons, and ten-year ar­ chons; there is general agreement that both lists were first elaborated by Hellanicus. It is hard to see how Codrus could have served chro­ nology when he was first recruited, by ca 450 at the latest. Nor has he been deduced from any other element in the story. We saw above that Codrus has nothing to do with Ionia (§v), and that Neleus alone provides the link with Miletus (§VI). The Athenian kings or life-archons are MEaOVTlaat who trace their line to another son of Codrus; Koaplaat is a literary name, not an institution (§v). In short, the only reason for enrolling Codrus in the connected story is his ad­ venture, the oddly triumphant death of a king disguised as a wood­ cutter. The old story had not earned him a place in the first dynasty, but it was well suited to the second, if the baftled enemy were identi­ fied as Dorians. We have now accounted for as much of the connected story as can be discerned in Herodotus. Since Herodotus makes only passing reference to the story, while discussing the Ionians or the Peisistra­ tids, the Minyan settlers of Thera, or the setting of the battle of ROBERTSON, NOEL, Melanthus, Codrus, Neleus, Caucon: Ritual Myth as Athenian History , Greek, Roman and Byzantine Studies, 29:3 (1988:Autumn) p.201 NOEL ROBERTSON 261 Mycale, he may well have known some other elements-the sons and grandsons of Codrus who founded cities other than Miletus, the long posterity who ruled in Athens. Hellanicus set the story in a larger historical context by compiling a full genealogy of Pylian kings down to Melanthus and of Athenian kings after Codrus. He also linked the Apaturia with Melanthus' 'trick', apate, and thus showed why the founding family of Ionia brought this festival from Athens-a surprising innovation which was assisted by the title apatenor in the cult of Dionysus at Eleutherae (§ IV). The innovation enjoyed great success, being reflected in various ways in all subsequent accounts of Melanthus. If Hellanicus had such authority, it must be that no earlier writer offered any comparable treatment of the connected story. Hecataeus, Panyassis, and Pherecy­ des played a certain part; there is nothing to suggest that any other literary hand was at work before Hellanicus. Our reconstruction is complete down to ca 400 B.C. BROCK UNIVERSITY July, 1988