Hornblower 2014 Lykophron and Epigraphy CQ 64

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LYKOPHRON AND EPIGRAPHY: THE VALUE AND
FUNCTION OF CULT EPITHETS IN THE
ALEXANDRA
Simon Hornblower
The Classical Quarterly / Volume 64 / Issue 01 / May 2014, pp 91 - 120
DOI: 10.1017/S0009838813000578, Published online: 16 April 2014
Link to this article: http://journals.cambridge.org/abstract_S0009838813000578
How to cite this article:
Simon Hornblower (2014). LYKOPHRON AND EPIGRAPHY: THE VALUE AND
FUNCTION OF CULT EPITHETS IN THE ALEXANDRA . The Classical Quarterly, 64,
pp 91-120 doi:10.1017/S0009838813000578
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LYKOPHRON AND EPIGRAPHY: THE VALUE AND FUNCTION
OF CULT EPITHETS IN THE ALEXANDRA
I. INTRODUCTION
1
The subject of this paper is a striking and unavoidable feature of the Alexandra:
Lykophrons habit of referring to single gods not by their usual names, but by multiple
1
An early version of this paper was delivered in April 2012 in an Oxford ancient history seminar
series organized by Prof. Robert Parker, at which faculty members spoke about their projects in pro-
gress. It is a product of my work on a full-scale commentary on Lykophrons Alexandra (with text,
translation and thematic introduction), forthcoming from OUP. I gratefully acknowledge comments
from Robert Parker and others who heard the paper at its delivery; and afterwards, for help over indi-
vidual points, from Giulia Biffis, Stephen Colvin, Esther Eidinow and Martin West. Finally, I thank
CQs referee for valuable suggestions and references. I dedicate this article to the memory of P.M.
Fraser (19182007), who first got me interested in the Alexandra by his two-term Oxford graduate
class on it, held in All Souls more than thirty years ago (1981); and who bequeathed to me his
Lykophron library. See my biographical memoir (PBA, 2013) for remarks about his work on
Lykophron, and cf. below, n. 5.
Because of this papers focus on cult epithets, the editors of CQ have agreed not to Latinize the
transliterated Greek names of authors, places, characters, etc.
Abbreviations:
Cusset and Kolde: C. Cusset and A. Kolde, Rle et reprsentation des dieux traditionnels dans
lAlexandre de Lycophron, in M.A. Harder, R.F. Regtuit and G.C. Wakker (edd.), Gods and
Religion in Hellenistic Poetry. Hellenistica Groningana 16 (Leuven, Paris and Walpole, MA,
2012), 130.
clats: C. Cusset and E. Prioux (edd.), Lycophron: clats dobscurit (Paris, 2009).
Furley/Bremer: W.D. Furley and J.M. Bremer, Greek Hymns, vols. I, The texts in Translation and
II, Greek Texts and Commentary (Tbingen, 2001). Numbering of hymns and other texts is the same
in both vols.
Graf: F. Graf, Nordionische Kulte: Religionsgeschichtliche und epigraphische Untersuchungen zu
den Kulten von Chios, Erythrai, Klazomenai und Phokaia (Rome, 1985).
Holzinger: C. von Holzinger, Lykophron Alexandra, griechisch und deutsch mit erklrenden
Anmerkungen (Leipzig, 1895).
IACP: M.H. Hansen and T.H. Nielsen (edd.), Inventory of Archaic and Classical Greek Poleis
(Oxford, 2004); referred to by either inventory no. or page no.
I. Labraunda 1 and 2: J. Crampa, Labraunda Swedish Excavations and Researches Vol. III Parts 1
and 2, The Greek Inscriptions (Lund and Stockholm, 1969 and 1972).
Jost: M. Jost, Sanctuaires et cultes dArcadie (Paris, 1985).
Nommer les Dieux: N. Belayche, P. Brul and others (edd.), Nommer les Dieux: Thonymes,
pithtes, piclses dans lAntiquit (Rennes, 2005).
Parker (2003): R. Parker, The problem of the Greek cult epithet, Op.Ath. 28 (2003), 17383.
Parker (2011): R. Parker, On Greek Religion (Ithaca, NY and London, 2011).
Rennes database (of cult epithets): see below, n. 17.
Schachter, Cults: A. Schachter, Cults of Boiotia, 4 vols. (London, 198194).
Schade: G. Schade, Lykophrons Odyssee: Alexandra 648819 (Berlin, 1999).
Scheer: E. Scheer, Lykophronis Alexandra, 2 vols. (Berlin, 1881, 1908).
Schwabl: H. Schwabl, RE 10A (1972) cols. 253376, Zeus I: Epiklesen, reprinted as final section
of Schwabl, Zeus (Munich, 1978; no new pagination).
Usener: H. Usener, Gtternamen. Versuch einer Lehre von der religisen Begriffsbildung (Bonn,
1896).
Classical Quarterly 64.1 91120 The Classical Association (2014) 91
doi:10.1017/S0009838813000578
lists of epithets piled up in asyndeton. This phenomenon first occurs early in the
1474-line poem, and this occurrence will serve as an illustration. At 1523,
2
Demeter
has five descriptors in a row: | ,
Ennaian Herkynna, Erinys, Thouria, Sword-bearing. In the footnote I give the prob-
able explanations of these epithets. Although in this sample the explanations to most of
the epithets are not to be found in inscriptions, my main aim in what follows will be to
emphasize the relevance of epigraphy to the unravelling of some of the famous obscur-
ity of Lykophron.
3
In this paper, I ask why the poet accumulates divine epithets in this
Wentzel: G. Wentzel, sive De deorum cognominibus per grammaticorum graecorum
scripta dispersis (Gttingen, 1890), expansion of 1889 Gttingen thesis which had as second
word of title. The book version has an appendix listing cult epithets in scholiasts and grammarians. In
both versions, chapter pagination begins again at 1, so in what follows, Wentzel 2.3 = ch. 2, p. 3.
Wide: S. Wide, Lakonische Kulte (Leipzig, 1893).
2
All refs. to line nos. of Lykophrons Alexandra (abbrev. Lycoph.) will be given in this simple
form. In the nn. below, = a or the scholiast (e.g. 1225= scholiast on line 1225), and sometimes,
for brevity, includes Tzetzes commentary. The main scholia vetera are in the best MS of Lykophron,
namely Marc. 476, ed. G. Kinkel (Leipzig, 1880, with scholia at end); modern ed. of scholia: P.A.M.
Leone (Lecce, 2002). For Tzetzes, see Scheer vol. 2. In my text and footnotes, the scholiast or do
not imply there was only one.
3
As usual (see III below for this pattern in the poem), the first epithet is not too hard: it was at
Enna in Sicily that Demeters daughter Persephone was carried off.
The Sicilian location of the abduction did not feature in Hymn. Hom. Dem., or in any poet earlier
than Callim. (Hymn 6. 30 and fr. 228 line 43 Pf.) and the present passage. But it probably featured in
Timaios, as appears from a comparison of Diod. Sic. 5.3.2 and [Arist.] Mir. ausc. 82. See J. Geffcken,
Timaios Geographie des Westens (Berlin, 1892), 104 and esp. L. Pearson, The Greek Historians of
the West: Timaeus and his Predecessors (Atlanta, GA, 1987), 58 and n. 17. And it is hard to believe
that Timaios invented it. Might it go back to Stesichoros? Note that in Pindar (Nem. 1.1314) Zeus
gave the island of Sicily to Persephone as a wedding present. G. Zuntz, Persephone (Oxford,
1971), 70 n. 4 argued that a mid 5
th
-cent. coin of Enna (HN
2
137, Demeter in a chariot) depicted
her seeking her daughter, and held this to refute the view that the rape of Persephone was not localized
in Sicily before Timaios, who (he believed) recorded a tradition current in his homeland. The con-
clusion is likely enough, even if Zuntz over-interpreted the coin.
For (Demeter) Herkynna, a Boiotian goddess, see Schachter, Cults 1.1567; cf. R. Parker,
Polytheism and Society at Athens (Oxford, 2005), 223 n. 35. The cult of Herkyn(n)a, daughter of
Trophonios, had its centre at Lebadeia (Livy 45.27.8, Paus. 8.39.23; Hesych. 5931 Latte).
Herkynna may be an old Indo-European goddess, a cognate of Norse Fiorgyn, mother of Thor and
mistress of the wooded mountains; both names may be related to that of the storm god Perkunas.
See M.L. West, Indo-European Poetry and Myth (Oxford, 2007), 243.
Demeter was Erinys at Arkadian Telphousa (she is at 1040): Paus. 8.25.4, quoting
Antimachos (fr. 35 Wyss = 33 Matthews); see also Callim. fr. 652 Pf., quoted by Lycoph. 152
(and more fully at 1225). Demeter Erinys appears on the citys coins, cf. IACP no. 300 at
p. 534, citing HN
2
, 356 (but the identification of the goddesss head is inference from Paus. The
name Erinys does not appear). See U. von Wilamowitz, Glaube der Hellenen (Berlin, 19312),
1.398407; Jost, 6270, 30312; L. Breglia Pulci Doria, Demeter Erinys Telphoussaia tra
Poseidon e Ares, in P. Lvque and M.-M. Mactoux (edd.), Les grandes figures religieuses (Paris,
1986), 10726; E. Aston, Mixanthrpoi: Animal-human Hybrid Deities in Greek Religion. Kernos
Suppl. 25 (Lige, 2011), 99, 108, 184; and see VI for the evidence of Linear B. At 669, Erinys
is Skylla.
In antiquity, Thourian was explained in terms of Demeters frenzied () grief for her daugh-
ter (), or else (the older paraphrase of Lykophron, printed in the left-hand column of the text in
Scheer vol. 1) as an inexact reference to the Greek west and thus to Enna (above), because of
Thourioi in S. Italy. But A. Schachter, A Boeotian cult type, BICS 14 (1967), 15, at 6, and
Cults 1.151, cf. 44 n. 1, suggests instead a Boiotian cult, related to Apollo , for whom see
n. 63 below. With Lykophron, one must always reckon with the possibility of deliberately unstable
meanings.
Demeter Xiphephoros, sword-bearer is Boiotian (). Schachter, Cults 1.171 (under DEMETER
[UNSPECIFIED]) thinks, with acknowledgement to L. Farnell, Cults of the Greek States (Oxford,
18961909), 1.325, of a warlike Demeter, located in the southern and western fringe of the
SI MON HORNBLOWER 92
special way. I also ask whether the information provided by the ancient scholiasts, about
the local origin of the epithets,
4
is of good quality and of value to the historian of reli-
gion. This will mean checking some of that information against the evidence of inscrip-
tions, beginning with Linear B. It will be argued that it stands up very well to such a
check. The Alexandra has enjoyed remarkable recent vogue,
5
but this attention has
come mainly from the literary side.
6
Historians, in particular historians of religion,
and students of myths relating to colonial identity, have been much less ready to exploit
the intricate detail of the poem, although it has so much to offer in these respects.
7
The
present article is, then, intended primarily as a contribution to the elucidation of a dif-
ficult literary text, and to the history of ancient Greek religion. Despite the articles main
title, there will, as the subtitle is intended to make clear, be no attempt to gather and
assess all the many passages in Lykophron to which inscriptions are relevant. There
will, for example, be no discussion of 114174 and the early Hellenistic Lokrian
Maidens inscription (IG 9.1
2
706); or of the light thrown on 599 by the inscribed pot-
sherds carrying dedications to Diomedes, recently found on the tiny island of Palagruza
in the Adriatic, and beginning as early as the fifth century B.C. (SEG 48.692bis694); or
of 7334 and their relation to the fifth-century B.C. Athenian decree (n. 127) mentioning
Diotimos, the general who founded a torch race at Naples, according to Lykophron; or
of 57085 and the epigraphically attested Archegesion or cult building of Anios on
Delos, which shows that this strange founder king with three magical daughters was
a figure of historical cult as well as of myth.
8
A cult epithet is ordinarily a second word attached to a gods name, though
Lykophron usually omits the actual name, and these elliptical adjectival designations
must have created puzzles or riddles of identification even among the poems first read-
ers or hearers,
9
who knew much more than we do. The epithet is usually an adjective,
such as Aphrodite Euploia, of fair sailing (that particular one is not actually in
Lykophron), and among such adjectives, some are in effect ethnics: Aphrodite
Troizenia and Dionysos Phigaleus (610, 212), from Troizen and Arkadian Phigaleia.
Substantives may do duty as epithets, such as Apollo Iatros, the Doctor (discussed
below), perhaps , King, for Zeus. An interesting subclass of epithets is formed
from names of other gods, like Athena Hephaistia, Athena who in some sense partakes
Kopais. explains that sword-bearer relates to the way the god was depicted in the relevant
Boiotian sanctuary, wherever that was; Schachter, Cults 1.171 n. 3 rejects this as worthless etymolo-
gizing, but it is plausible enough, and is accepted by Parker (2003), 174 n. 7.
4
On this information see Wentzel. For this books thesis, see below, VII.
5
Some of the most important work published since 1992 is listed in my bibliographical additions to
the late P.M. F[raser]s entry Lycophron (2) in OCD
4
(Oxford, 2012).
6
On Cusset and Kolde, see below, n. 48.
7
Honourable exceptions are T. Scheer, Mythische Vorvter: Heroenmythen im Selbstverstndnis
kleinasiatischer Stdte (Munich, 1993); I. Malkin, The Returns of Odysseus: Colonization and
Ethnicity (Berkeley, 1998), 1735 (Odysseus), 21314 (Epeios), 21426 (Philoktetes) and 23457
(Diomedes); and R. Lane Fox, Travelling Heroes: Greeks and their Myths in the Epic Age of
Homer (London, 2008). The approach taken in the present article resembles (I believe and hope)
that which I. Petrovic, Von den Toren des Hades zu den Hallen des Olymp: Artemiskult bei
Theokrit und Kallimachos (Leiden and Boston, 2007) has, in a brilliant book, successfully used for
Kallimachos and Theokritos.
8
For Anios see F. Prost, Peuples, cits et fondateurs dans les Cyclades l poque archaique, in
V. Fromentin and S. Gotteland (edd.), Origines gentium (Bordeaux, 2001), 10921 (esp. 110 for the
inscribed dedications). See already E. Rohde, Psyche: The Cult of Souls and Belief in Immortality
among the Greeks (London and New York, 1925), 152 n. 102.
9
Recitation (about two hours of it) is a possibility, as will be argued elsewhere.
LYKOPHRON AND EPI GRAPHY 93
of the character of Hephaistos.
10
This particular example is curious if we try to make
sense of it through myths, given that Hephaistos attempted to rape Athena. I will return
to the conceptual categories implied by all these name types.
The topic is religiously important. Robert Parker says that learned poets worked
epithets and aetiologies for them into their verses in great numbers; Lycophrons
Alexandra in particular is a major source.
11
Of all Hellenistic poets, Lykophron is eas-
ily the richest in this respect. Apollonios Rhodios Argonautika also has many divine
epithets: Zeus Phyxios, god of exiles/refugees, is said by the scholiast on 2.1147 to
be Thessalian, though the cult is more widespread than that in fact.
12
In Euphorion,
in some ways the poet who perhaps most resembles Lykophron in teasing allusiveness,
Tainarie is Artemis (fr. 11.11 Lightfoot). Kallimachos has some cult epithets, but they
are not piled up asyndetically, even in the Hymns (see below for the way in which
hymns generally, including Theoc. Id. 22, to the Dioskouroi, are characterized by divine
polyonymy). One epithet in a fragment of Kallimachos Iambi is found in Lykophron
also and is attested epigraphically, and so will also feature briefly in VI below. It
is Aphrodites epithet , derived from Mt Kastnia in Pamphylia. She is men-
tioned twice as Kastnia by Lykophron, and is said to be a plural goddess by
Kallimachos (Aphrodites). Coins, and especially an inscription from Pamphylian
Aspendos, satisfyingly confirm this.
13
Such convergence of different types of evidence
may indicate that an epithet for Aphrodite which seems obscure to us may have been
much less so to Lykophrons intended audience, whatever that was. In passing, we
may note here an important point: Lykophrons version of the name () is not
quite the usual one, although would also have fitted into an iambic line;
we must be prepared for other such small divergences from otherwise attested spellings.
10
For this category of epithets see R. Parker, Artmis Ilithye et autres: le problme du nom divin
utilis comme piclse, Nommer les Dieux, 21926.
11
Parker (2003), 174 (this short article is the best modern discussion of Greek cult epithets). By
contrast, Usener, who was just too late to use Holzinger, made very few references to Lykophron,
even when discussing Kassandra/Alexandra at 1767. Useners theory (see esp. 216 and 279) that
cult epithets originated with an earlier category of functional gods, Sondergtter, can not be dis-
cussed here; see Furley/Bremer 1.52 n. 138. For that tr. of the German word, see M.P. Nilssons pref-
ace to the 1948 printing of Usener.
12
Divine epithets in Ap. Rhod.: Wentzel 7.38. For Zeus of fugitives or exiles, see J. Schmidt, RE
20.1179. on 2.1147 (207.20 Wendel) says this was a Thessalian Zeus,
. But he also had cult at Argos, Paus. 2.21.2, and Sparta (Wide 14). See also 4.119
with Livrea, who cites the mention in SEG 7.894 (and cf. 35.1570), Gerasa, first cent. A.D.
also features (in the order ) at Lycoph. 288. For Apollonios epithets see D.
Feeney, The Gods in Epic (Oxford, 1991), 613.
13
Lycoph. 403 and 1234; Callim. fr. 220a Pf. (from Strabo) = Ia. 10, with A. Kerkhecker,
Callimachus Book of Iambi (Oxford, 1999), 2079 for doubts about how much is really
Kallimachos. The inscription: SEG 17.641, Aspendian dedication of Roman date to
with L. Robert, Monnaies et divinits dAspendos, Hellenica 11
12 (Paris, 1960), 1847. Parker (2011), 66 n. 4 compares LSS 95.4 (Demeters, in plural).
There are, naturally, cult epithets in Kallimachos Aitia also; see e.g. fr. 110.57 Pf. (Zephyritis i.e.
Arsinoe-Aphrodite, cf. Epigram 14 GowPage HE [= V Pf.]), fr. 43 Pf. (= 50 Massimilla) 117
(Dionysos Zagreus), fr. 100 and 101 Pf. (Samian and Argive Hera), fr. 75 Pf. 601 (Zeus
Alalaxios, of the War-cry). Demeter Pylaie in Epigram 39 is the familiar amphiktionic deity. For
Hermes Perpheraios, see fr. 197 Pf. (= Ia. 7) line 1. Most of these epithets are transparent, in the
sense that they are accompanied by the gods standard name. in fr. 485 (a brief frag-
mentum incertae sedis) probably refers to Apollo Maloeis on Lesbos, for whom see Thuc. 3.3.3 and
SGDI no. 255.20 = IG 12.2.284 (date: Imperial Roman); cf. also Isyllos of Epidauros (Powell, Coll.
Alex. pp. 1334 with R. Hunter, The Shadow of Callimachus [Cambridge, 2006], 1112). For
Kallimachos see further n. 125.
After this Introduction (I), I consider the nature of and direction taken by modern
work on divine epithets (II). Then (III) I discuss the ancient Greek vocabulary for cult
epithets, , , and so on. After that I look (IV) at polyonymy in ancient
Greek religion generally, and why it occurs where it does. Then I turn to Lykophrons
epithets in particular (V). I shall ask if there is any literary pattern to the poems first
use of multiple epithets, and will suggest that there is. I also ask whether they have a
structural literary function in the poem; the answer to this is not so clear. Having argued
that the poet takes care over the choice and positioning of cult epithets I will then and
this will be the core of the paper from the historical aspect ask how far epigraphy can
be invoked as a control on these specifications of polis cults (VI). I also ask (this, too,
is in part a literary problem) how appropriate the local epithets are to their immediate
context in the poem. VII will examine the source and reliability of the detailed local
information provided by Lykophrons paraphrasers and commentators, chief among
whom is the Byzantine scholar Tzetzes. Finally, I offer suggestions as to how the mater-
ial in the poem and its ancient commentaries might bear on the tension between local
and Panhellenic religion (VIII). A Conclusion (IX) offers a suggestion as to why
the poem deploys chains of cult epithets in this highly distinctive way, and why these
epithets are of value to the historian.
The importance of the scholia and Tzetzes (n. 2), is that they show that many cult
epithets in the poem are tied to particular places. The problem of Lykophrons cult
epithets is thus inseparable from that of the scholiastic information, which is presented
in the form of local specification, thus: Amphibaios: Poseidon among the people of
Kyrene, ( 749). I will return to that example. We might hope
that Lykophron would help us to decide whether cult epithets proliferate in number
and geographical extension in the Hellenistic age. As for number, it may be that what
proliferates is relevant epigraphy itself, not the phenomenon it attests, a familiar eviden-
tial trap. As for geography, the eastern expansion of the Greek world after Alexander is
disappointingly not reflected in the poems divine epithets, any more than in the
poem as a whole, though so much of it is about Greek overseas settlement. The eastern-
most places mentioned are Sarapta in Phoenicia, a little-known place between Tyre and
Sidon (1300), and the strong citadel of Myrrha, that is, Phoenician Byblos (829). By
contrast, South Italy and Sicily, areas long colonized by Greeks, are overwhelmingly
prominent in Lykophron; indeed, the poem may in my view have originated in South
Italy, not (as is usually assumed) Alexandria,
14
while showing clear knowledge of
Alexandrian culture. But unlike Apollonios Rhodios, Lykophron seems not to be
aware of the Rhone valley and Massilia, that is, the Phokaian colonial zone. (But at
663, Peukeus is said by the scholiast to be an epithet of Herakles in Iberia. This
can be either a district in Transcaucasia or else Spain perhaps likelier for Herakles;
so this would either be the poems easternmost or its westernmost cult epithet; but
the true reading may be Abdera instead. Note in any case 63347, Boiotian settlement
of the Balearic islands, including at 643 a clear reference to Spanish Iberians in
.) Lykophron is well aware of three other Greek colonial areas, North
Africa and Cyrenaica (see 648 and 877902, and below for Poseidon Amphibaios),
the Black Sea (for traces of Achilles, see 190201), Chalkidike (for Torone, see 115
14
See n. 116. But in favour of Attalid Pergamon, see E. Kosmetatou, Lycophrons Alexandra
reconsidered: the Attalid connection, Hermes 128 (2000), 3253. For the god of Sarepta (sic), epi-
graphically attested at Italian Puteoli, see P. Lombardi, Mediterraneo Antico 14 (2011), 392431,
esp. 424 for Lycophron.
16) and Thrace, notably Abdera, where the Apolline epiklesis Derainos at 440 is
Abderite. Indeed it had been known, from the scholiast on Lykophron, that Derainos
was a place , and that Pindar in the paians had mentioned Derainos as
an epithet of Abderite Apollo, long before the relevant poem, Paian 2, was discovered
on papyrus in 1906.
15
In a small but valuable way, this confirmation encourages faith in
the explanatory material about cult epithets, and about their local affiliations, which is
provided by the Lykophronic scholia.
II. CULT EPITHETS IN MODERN WORK
Divine cult epithets,
16
which subdivide and categorize gods according to locality, func-
tion, or preferred mode of sacrifice or other type of honour (), offer a means to the
better understanding of ancient Greek polytheism. That is why they have been the object
of close study in recent years, culminating in the establishment of a valuable database by
a team at Rennes university in France.
17
Scholarly efforts have been made to categorize
such epithets, and so impose taxonomic order on a huge variety, but this is, as they say,
like herding cats. A crucial distinction, already made in antiquity (see III below) is
between poetic epithets and cult titles. This will not concern us much, because so
many of the epithets in Lykophron are said by the scholia to be place-specific, and
that implies cult. One other main and valuable distinction has been hinted at already:
that between epithets which are really, so to speak, the ethnic of the god (thus at 610
Troizenia alone designates Aphrodite i.e. she is a citizen of the polis of Troizen,
see above), and functional or power epithets like Apollo Iatros, the doctor god
18
(he
is Iatros alone at 1207, 1377).
19
But we soon run into trouble at the level of detail;
thus although Apollo is the healer god par excellence, Iatros or Doctor was also a
title of his son Asklepios, unsurprisingly, and also, more surprisingly of Poseidon.
Philochoros, quoted by Clement of Alexandria, says Poseidon was Iatros on the
15
Apollo at Abdera: Lycoph. 440 with : ; see Pind. Pae. 2.4, ]
[]. There was no circularity in the identification of the poem, because it mentions
Abdera in line 1, and calls itself a paian in line 3. Again (see above on Kastnia) there is a small
but insignificant difference in spelling.
16
By divine I mean divine: Lykophron mostly confines the piled-up asyndetic cult epithets to gods.
Very few heroes or heroines are treated in this way, apart from Kassandra herself (below, VIII for her
epiklesis Alexandra). Achilles at 177 gets two descriptors, Pelasgian Typhon (i.e. Thessalian giant)
but these are not cult titles.
17
P. Brul, Le langage des piclses dans le polythisme hellnique (lexemple de quelques
divinits fminines). Quelques pistes de recherche, Kernos 11 (1998), 1334; Nommer les Dieux.
For the CRESCAM (Rennes) database of cult epithets, see P. Brul and S. Lebreton, La Banque
de donnes sur les piclses divines (BDDE) du Crescam : sa philosophie, Kernos 20 (2007),
21728. Googling crescam bdde leads to the database. The criterion for inclusion as an epiklesis
is receipt of cult; cf. below. Note: I consulted the database in mid 2012, and checked it again in
January 2013, at which time the site was said to be still under construction (en dveloppement con-
tinu). I have therefore refrained from noting the many Lykophron-related omissions or partial omis-
sions which still remain in the database, because they may have been put right by the time this article
is published.
18
This epiklesis is specially common in Ionia and its colonies: Graf 250 and n. 251. See generally
Usener 14955.
19
Cusset and Kolde 14, attempting to pin Lykophrons Apollo down to a mantic role, seek to
derive Iatros not from , I heal, but from e.g. , I cry out. This seems over-ingenious,
if that word can ever be used where Lykophron is concerned.
Kykladic island of Tenos. We have no idea why.
20
This raises a general problem, but
one specially acute with respect to Lykophrons scholia, namely that on the evidence
of the grammarians and scholiasts, functional/descriptive epithets, on the one hand,
and local epithets, on the other hand, overlap, sometimes bafflingly. The challenge is
to explain the local variation, answers to which might give us a handle on the polis-
specific character of Greek religion and its tension with Panhellenic religion.
21
Thus
Hesychios says that Artemis is Kaprophagos (Boar-eater) at Samos, and this
means that wild boar were abnormally sacrificed to her there, on a principle which
Parker has explained with reference to Hera Aigophagos, goat-eating Hera, at
Sparta.
22
Discovery of an inscribed sacred law might confirm these implications.
Let us return to Lykophrons , which the scholiast told us was Poseidon
among the Kyrenaians.
23
This epithet has been speculatively identified as a synonym
for or , which is (this is yet more speculation) none other than
the familiar Gaieochos, Earth-shaker or Earth-holder.
24
One might be tempted to dis-
miss this as a poetic epithet: surely there was no cult to the Earth-shaker any more than
to Zeus Cloud-gatherer? But in fact there was cult to the Earth-shaker (I amassuming that
is the right translation, rather than e.g. Earth-holder) at one classical city, namely
Sparta, according to Hesychios and Pausanias; that rare thing, a lengthy fifth-century
B.C. inscription from Sparta, namely the Damonon inscription, bears this out by men-
tioning a festival Gaiaochia in an agonistic context.
25
(At Athens the cult is not attested
before the second century B.C., and in so well-documented a religious centre, this
absence in earlier centuries has some weight.
26
A late sixth-century B.C. potsherd
20
FGrH 328 Philochoros F 175, Poseidon Iatros at Tenos, with Wentzel: 4.4 and Parker (2011), 87
n. 59 (archaeological support). M.P. Nilsson, Geschichte der griechischen Religion 1
3
(Munich,
1967), 452, suggested that this Poseidon was predecessor of the famous Panagia Evangelistria of
Tenos, whose church is still a place of pilgrimage. For a healing Dionysos, see Paus. 10.33.11
(Amphikleia in Phokis), with Furley/Bremer 1.128 n. 100, discussing their no. 2.5, for which see
below n. 95 (Dionysos as Paian, healing god).
21
For an illuminating approach in terms of social network theory, see E. Eidinow, Networks and
narratives: a model for Ancient Greek religion, Kernos 24 (2011), 938.
22
Parker (2003), 1789 n. 46. Kallimachos (fr. 220a Pf.) says that swine were, abnormally, sacri-
ficed to Aphrodite Kastnietis.
23
Amphibaios = Poseidon at Kyrene: Lycoph. 749 with .
24
This is given as hard fact in LSJ
9
under : epith. of Poseidon at Cyrene, =
[this word only was corrected, in the Revised Supp. (1996), to ], , Tz. ad Lyc.
749. This is misleading: Tzetzes and are authorities only for the first part (up to the comma),
not for the equation of Lykophrons epithet with . The latter and crucial point evidently
derives from Holzinger, who cited F.G. Welcker, Griechische Gtterlehre, 3 vols. (Gttingen,
185763), 2.679. Welcker wrote statt Geochos sagte man auch , von , also statt
[bare ref. to Lycoph. 749 in footnote], nach Tzetzes in Kyrene. (Welcker does not actually
suggest emending to , as Schade 154 n. 301 says he does.) This is bold (what about the ?),
but the identification has been repeated by many scholars (e.g. Wide 37 and n. 1, and F.
Schachermeyr, Poseidon und die Entstehung des griechischen Gtterglaubens [Salzburg, 1950], 31
and n. 53). The 1996 change in LSJ to (with land on both sides) is not explained:
Martin West suggests to me that its likely author, E.A. Barber, may have wanted to produce a refer-
ence to Kyrenes harbour (Apollonia, cf. IACP p. 1236). But even with the change, the ultimate der-
ivation from is by implication retained in LSJ.
25
For Poseidon Gaiaochos at Sparta see Paus. 3.20.2, Hesych., and IG 5(1) 213.9;
cf. I. Mylonopoulos, . Heiligtmer und Kulte des Poseidon
auf der Peloponnes (Lige, 2003), 229.
26
IG 2
2
3538 (second cent. B.C.), 5058 (time of Nero). C. Sourvinou-Inwood, Athenian Myths and
Festivals: Aglauros, Erechtheus, Plynteria, Panathenaia, Dionysia (Oxford, 2011), 6872 can cite
nothing earlier than these, but nevertheless argues that the Athenian cult of Poseidon Gaieochos ante-
dated 450 B.C.
from Mende in Chalkidike bears a heavily restored inscription which might be relevant,
but it is not certainly cultic.
27
) It is tempting to connect the Spartan cult with the areas
well-known proneness to earthquakes. Sparta was, via Thera, the grandmother city of
Kyrene. Thus a cult which was appropriate in a colonizing city was inherited by the col-
ony and then the colonys colony, even though Kyrene is not seismically active, and we
would expect the Theraians to be more worried about the volcano god Hephaistos than
about Poseidon of earthquakes, unless they knew that earthquakes and volcanic erup-
tions are related (as they are).
28
So here is an example of a poetic epithet which had
real cultic force in one city, and of colonies which adopted cultic name and cult without
the specific motive which held for the metropolis.
III. VOCABULARY: EPITHET, EPIKLESIS AND OTHER TERMS
In this paper I shall use epithet and epiklesis indifferently. Greater precision has been
claimed: it is held that indicates actual cult, because of the derivation from
, I invoke.
29
This, to be sure, would provide us with a convenient and harm-
less modern technical term for a cult epithet. But it is not so harmless, if it implies that
less loaded or marked ancient Greek words for name, such as or simple
, did not sometimes have cultic force. If that is the implication, it is misleading,
for two reasons. First, although can certainly mean a cult epithet (for
instance, Pausanias distinguishes from poetic names, ),
30
the
word can also, from Homer onward, mean nickname or even just name, with no reli-
gious implications.
31
Second, different Greek authors have different preferences or no
preference at all: in definitely religious contexts Herodotus once uses and
once , and on a third occasion uses both expressions in the course of a single
sentence.
32
The Greek original of English epithet is . Although LSJ
9
does not
list divine epithet as a separate sense of the Greek word, it is used by Hesychios and
others in that way.
33
And there are many periphrastic expressions such as we have
27
SEG 45.776, from a sanctuary of Poseidon, tentatively restored as [][] [].
This looks like a snatch of Homer (cf. Od. 9.528, also in the vocative), rather than a simple dedication,
so it is not clear evidence for local Mendaian cult to Poseidon as Gaieochos specifically.
28
See http://www.therafoundation.org/articles/volcanology/abriefnoteontectonicearthquakesrelated
tosantorinifromantiquitytothepresent. For Poseidon as Earth-shaker, see Mylonopoulos (n. 25), 379.
29
Wentzel (preface; not paginated), followed by BrulLebreton and the Rennes database (n. 17).
30
See Paus. 7.21.7 with Parker (2003), 173. For the term epiklesis see e.g. Paus. 3.15.11, Spartan
cults of Aphrodite, . Cf. Hdt. 1.19.1, the burning of
the temple of Athena at Assessos near Miletos (IACP p. 1058),
.
31
Hom. Il. 22.506 on Skamandrios, , , and I. de Jongs
commentary (Cambridge, 2012) on 22.29. But note 9.562, . Thucydides (1.3.2)
uses both and in the same breath when discussing the absence of any single early
name for Hellenes.
32
For meaning (local) cult epithet in Hdt. see n. 30, and for , see Hdt. 5.45.1,
. Both terms used of Aphrodite Xeine: Hdt. 2.112.2.
33
See e.g. 352, , where Leone (n. 2) adds <
> in between the other two; Hesych. 1967 Hansen, , or
Eustathios on Il. 2.25: . Cf.
FGrH 244 Apollodoros F 102 (f), from Cornutus, on names for Hades:
,
. (For Polydegmon, see Lycoph. 700.)
already encountered above (god x is honoured at Kyrene and the like); despite their
looseness and informality, these certainly imply cult.
34
IV. DIVINE POLYONYMY
By many names men call us;
In many lands we dwell [Dioskouroi]
The gods who live for ever
Have fought for Rome this day.
These be the Great Twin Brethren
To whom the Dorians pray [High Pontiff]
(Macaulay, The Battle of the Lake Regillus)
O Venus regina Cnidi Paphique (Horace, Odes 1.30.1)
Multiple epithets form a subcategory of polyonymy. The Dioskouroi, Kastor and
Polydeukes (Latin Castor and Pollux) were polyonymous to an exceptional degree.
Other names for them were the Guests (, their epiklesis at Sparta, according to
the scholiast on Lykophron),
35
the Tyndaridai, and the Anakes; if we look up to the
sky they are the Twins (but there were other Greek candidates for the constellation
Gemini, which may anyway represent cultural transference from Babylonian
Mash-Mash);
36
and if we look back to Indo-European prototypes they are the
Indo-European Ashvins. This is an aspect of polytheism which we could call poly-
polytheism. Multiple asyndetic epithets are occasionally found in inscriptions, with
no special emotional charge. In a sacred calendar from fourth-century B.C. Kos, a heifer
is to be sacrificed to Hera Argeia Eleia Basileia.
37
But in literary contexts, accumulation
of divine epithets can have special power. This is specially true of prayers. There are
multiple epithets or divine ethnics in Homeric prayers: King Zeus, Dodonaian,
Pelasgian, you who live far off, , , ,
(Hom. Il. 16.233), where Pelasgian is vague, but not interchangeable with or a mere
elaboration of Dodonaian. That is a prayer by Achilles (the most solemn in
Homer, according to Janko),
38
and it is easy to see why in prayers a supplicant should
34
Above, p. 96. There are various roundabout expressions, e.g. a god is honoured as [x] by the
Lesbians, , or is so called by the Thebans,
.
35
563: , registered as an epiklesis by Wentzel, 7.50. Lines
5645 of the poem say that Hades and Olympos will receive them on alternate days as guests for ever,
. This is an elegant allusion to the special proneness of the
Dioskouroi to theoxeny, god-entertainment: R.C.T. P[arker], Dioscuri, and E. Ke[arns], theox-
enia, in OCD
4
.
36
G.J. T[oomer] and A. J[ones], OCD
4
, constellations and named stars, para. 3.
37
P.J. Rhodes and R. Osborne, Greek Historical Inscriptions 404323 B.C. (Oxford, 2003),
no. 62 B, line 5.
38
R. Janko, The Iliad: A Commentary, Vol. IV: Books 1316 (Cambridge, 1992), 348. An ancient
scholar (Aristarchos?) remarked that Homer has few cult epithets derived from places,
, and commented that he never mentions them in his own person but always through a heroic
character: Il. 5.422, with R. Nnlist, The Ancient Critic at Work: Terms and Concepts of
Literary Criticism in Greek Scholia (Cambridge, 2009), 11719, explaining this as due to Homers
desire to avoid anachronism (the places did not exist at the time of the dramatic composition of the
poem).
wish to catch the god in as many manifestations as possible. But the attempt at com-
pleteness can bring its own risks: what if you miss one god who turned out to be
vital?
39
A well-known story told by Xenophon about himself in the Anabasis (7.8.4)
shows that it had been a mistake, in the opinion of the seer whom he consulted, to
have sacrificed to Zeus the King to the neglect of Zeus Meilichios. Burkert remarks
that, in Greek prayers, as much as possible, epithets are heaped one upon another
.
40
Tragedy reflects this type of polyonymy, perhaps taking its cue from epic.
Euripides in the Trojan Women (a play well known to Lykophron, and one which fea-
tures Kassandra prominently) has Zeus invoked by Hekabe as 12889 as Son of
Kronos, Phrygian lord, ancestor , , , (and compare
Andromache 886, , which may allude to the line of the Iliad quoted above).
The same is true of divine invocations in oaths. Kretan inscribed inter-polis oaths of the
Hellenistic period are specially rich in this sort of catch-all polyonymy.
41
Lykophron extends this technique to descriptive narrative, and characteristically
takes it to extremes. But for an example of multiplied divine epithets in Lykophron
which do form part of a genuine narrated prayer, see 35960, where Kassandra invokes
Athena as helper, , to save her from her intending ravisher Ajax. We shall
return to this important passage. See also 5367 where Zeus, too, is an with
many epithets.
Hymns regularly celebrate a god as having many names, . Among the
Orphic hymns, that to Hekate is specially dense in epithets, and there is much
Hellenistic evidence, both literary and inscribed. The literary model for all such
hymns must be the shorter Homeric hymns, for instance no. 1 to Hermes; but all this
evidence (prayers as well as hymns) must reflect real-life religious behaviour.
42
Some
evidence suggests awareness of the puzzles generated by plural divine naming.
Prometheus says his mother is Gaia and Themis, a single form with many names,
, .
43
An unusual metrical inscription from Lykian
Oinoanda, dated to the second century A.D., is an oracular response concerning the
39
D. Aubriot, Linvocation au(x) dieux dans la prire grecque: contrainte, persuasion ou
thologie?, Nommer les Dieux 47390 esp. 482 (Orphic hymns) and 484 for precision as limitation:
what if you miss one god who turned out to be crucial? (cf. Furley/Bremer 1.52). One solution was to
add and all the gods: see Furley/Bremer 1.38 and A. Harder, Callimachus Aetia (Oxford, 2012),
2.806. For a similar problem (the perpetual threat of inadequacy) in connection with the lists of
body parts and so on found on curse tablets, see R.L. Gordon, Whats in a list? Listing in
Greek and Graeco-Roman malign magical texts, in D. Jordan, H. Montgomery and E. Thomassen
(edd.), The World of Ancient Magic (Bergen, 1999), 23977 at 269. Lycoph. 1410 is very relevant
to the question of divine polyonymy (what shall I call the god? etc.; cf. Aesch. Ag. 1602).
40
W. Burkert, Greek Religion (Oxford, 1985), 74.
41
Parker (2011), 67; A. Chaniotis, Die Vertrge zwischen kretischen Poleis in der hellenistischen
Zeit (Stuttgart, 1996), no. 6, early third cent. B.C. (Zeus invoked by four separate epithets); cf. Brul,
Nommer les Dieux 14373.
42
See e.g. the hymn to Adonis in Theoc. Id. 15, esp. 109 with Gow, who cites Pind. Isthm. 5.1 and
Artemis request to Zeus for at Callim. Hymn 3.7 (cf. the fragmentary third-cent. A.D.
Samian hymn to Artemis, IG 12(6) no. 604 line 5, ]); also Callim. Hymn 2.6970.
Theoc. Id. 22, in effect a hymn to the famously polyonymous Dioskouroi (above, p. 99), piles up pre-
dicates asyndetically (24; 136). The word and idea recur in the first-cent. B.C. hymn to Isis, SEG 8.548
line 26, cf. P.M. Fraser, Ptolemaic Alexandria (Oxford, 1972): 1.6712 (tr.) and 2.940 n. 436 (Greek
text); see also the first-cent. A.D. hymn to Apollo from Susa, SEG 7.14.28. Gow (above) says numer-
ous attributes and cult titles confer prestige. See also Furley/Bremer 1.52, who suggest that polyo-
nymy was partly to avoid the sin of omission (n. 39), but partly a way of showing off, to gods and
men, your technical proficiency.
43
[Aesch.] PV 20910 with Parker (2011), 69.
nature of god.
44
It speaks of the god as admitting no name, having many names,
, .
V. LYKOPHRONS CULT EPITHETS: FIRST MENTIONS
AND LITERARY FUNCTION
I now turn to Lykophron in particular. The Alexandra is a 1474-line iambic poem
ascribed to a known tragic poet Lykophron of Euboian Chalkis, a member of the
Pleiad, who lived in the early third century B.C., in the first part of the reign of
Ptolemy II Philadelphos, who was sole ruler from 282246 B.C. But and this has
been perceived as a problem since antiquity the Alexandra, the main part of which
is one long prediction after the event, foretells in a famous passage Roman sceptre
and monarchy over land and sea (1229). This, unless with some modern scholars we
dilute it to the status of vague compliment,
45
is impossible at the date at which
Lykophron of Chalkis was active, because Rome then had no overseas province. So
we must posit either an early second-century B.C. deutero-Lykophron (so that the
Alexandra becomes pseudonymous or wrongly attributed); or else large-scale interpol-
ation. I prefer the first of these two solutions, a second-century poem. The date problem
can, however, be largely ignored here, because even if we think in terms of interpol-
ation, the candidate sections (towards the end of the poem) contain little or no material
relevant to our topic. But in one way the date might be relevant: if we regard cult
epithets as proliferating in the course of the Hellenistic age, the likelier a later date
for the poem becomes. Not many cult epithets in Lykophron are inconceivable before
200 B.C. But we shall consider one possible example later (below, p. 113 for Komyros).
Now for the poem itself. It culminates in an extended prophecy of east-west conflict,
put into the mouth of Priams most beautiful daughter,
46
Kassandra, who is called in the
poem by her Spartan epiklesis Alexandra; hence the poems title. The poem begins with
a short narrative introduction by the guard who has been set by Priam to watch over
Kassandra in her stone cell. He describes how she emerged and prophesied. First, she
predicts the fall of Troy to the Greeks, culminating in Lokrian Ajaxs attempted rape
of herself, Kassandra. The second, very long, section tells of the unhappy homecomings,
nostoi, of the Greeks; it also recounts their pan-Mediterranean wanderings and founding
of new cities when they cannot get home. This is pan-Mediterranean, because some
heroes go to Asia Minor or Cyprus. There is a strong western (Italian and Sicilian)
slant to the longest of the nostoi: Odysseus adventures are retold at length from this
viewpoint. Another sub-narrative locates Diomedes, Odysseus accomplice in the
Palladion theft, in SE Italy and the Adriatic. The woes of all returning or non-returning
Greeks are presented as collective punishment for the crime of Kassandras assault by
44
SEG 27.933 line 2, with A. Henrichs, What is a Greek god?, in J. Bremmer and A. Erskine
(edd.), The Gods of Ancient Greece (Edinburgh, 2010), 1939, at 1920.
45
In this para., I forbear to give references to modern discussions of the problem of the poems
date. See the works cited at Fraser (n. 5), who himself eventually opted for an early second-century
B.C. date. Add A.S. Hollis, Some poetic connexions of Lycophrons Alexandra, in P.J. Finglass, C.
Collard and N.J. Richardson (edd.), Hesperos: Studies in Ancient Greek Poetry Presented to
M. L. West on his Seventieth Birthday (Oxford, 2007), 27693 (not, however, conclusive for a third-
century date). To Holliss examples of Lykophrons debt to Kallimachos add 9301 etc.
(Epeios), cf. Callim. fr. 197 = Ia. 7 an extraordinarily close cluster of similarities.
46
Only in Homer (Il. 13.365), not in Lykophron.
one man, Ajax (see most explicitly 365, in requital for the sin of one man,
). Her speech closes with a Herodotean reprise of the entire east-west con-
flict in myth and history, including prehistoric Greek colonization of Asia Minor.
The piled-up, asyndetic, multiple cult epithets, which are such a characteristic feature
of the poem (above, p. 91), have been little studied in recent years.
47
The latest study,
while full of subtle literary insights, does not concern itself with the evidence of epig-
raphy (and thus with the cultic realities); and it restricts itself almost entirely to Apollo,
Athena and Aphrodite.
48
Many epithets in the poem are not specially euphonious,
49
so
that a merely decorative explanation seems implausible. I deal first with a reductivist
dismissal of my problem. It might run: Lykophron is full of riddles, especially riddles
involving names, and this is just another such riddle, and not worth stopping over. I do
not dispute the riddles, which are indeed everywhere (thus the name of the priapic god
Orthanes at 538 refers to Priams son Paris, because of his sexual excesses); but my sub-
group is a specially formed set of name clusters, and it is the contention of this article
that some at least of the information they conceal is of religious interest, even import-
ance, and can be checked against documentary sources.
We first need to ask if the gods are the only entities so treated in the poem.
Hellenistic poets were fond of making lists, a practice known as pinakography, and spe-
cially associated with Kallimachos. Lykophron arguably uses the device in one other
way, namely for geographical specification. Four neighbouring regions, Euboia,
Boiotia, Thessaly and Lokroi, are alluded to by named enumeration of cities, rivers,
mountains and other local landmarks (3735, 6447, 9007 and 11469). Euboia and
Lokroi are specially important in the poem, because returning Greeks were shipwrecked
off Euboia, and because the tribute of the Lokrian maidens is presented as punishment
for Kassandras assault by Lokrian Ajax: all the Lokrian towns will mourn their daugh-
ters. But this is not the same as strings of divine epithets, because it is standard rhetorical
amplification, parts serving for a whole. Nor are the places listed asyndetically, but are
linked with normal expressions, in the manner of Hesiods list of Okeanids in
the Theogony;
50
and that is also true of the various named sibyls and sirens with
which the guard compares Kassandra at the poems end (14636). So from now on
I concentrate on multiple cult epithets. The numerical prize goes to Athena: there are
six at 3559, an emotional passage describing Kassandras assault by Ajax, when she
appealed to Athenas statue the Palladion, which turned away in horror without helping.
47
Of older works, K. Zieglers outstanding RE entry Lykophron (1927) briefly discussed the phe-
nomenon at col. 2345; Holzingers index under each god listed epithets at the end of the entry, with
line nos.; Wentzel 5.33 gave a useful list of epikletic places in Lycoph., and his whole important ch.
5 is about Lycoph. M.G. Ciani, Scritto con mistero (Osservazioni sulloscurit di Licofrone),
Giornale Italiano di Filologia 25 (1973), 13248, at 1425 usefully sorted Lykophrons divine
epithets into their various categories (those drawn from cult places, those derived from characteristic
elements of the relevant god, and so on), but did not seek to relate them to historical realities.
48
Cusset and Kolde. The restriction to those three gods is not explained, but evidently has to do
with Kassandras hostility to Apollo (who wanted sex with her) and to Aphrodite (goddess of sex),
and with her hope for help from Athena.
49
Indeed Cusset and Kolde 9 audaciously suggest that Apollos epithet (from the Boiotian
Ptoion) is intended to be spat out (-) as an expression of Kassandras mockery of the god. On
at 265 (Hektor as son of [Apollo] Ptoios) see A. Hurst, Les Botiens de Lycophron, in P.
Roesch and G. Argoud (edd.), La Botie antique (Paris, 1985), 193209, at 204, revised version in
Sur Lycophron (Geneva, 2012), 878: Apollo is Kassandras enemy but also father of her beloved
brother. For Hektors future cult at nearby Thebes, see 121213, cf. below, n. 129.
50
Hes. Theog. 34661.
The second prize goes to Demeter, who as we have seen has five epithets at 1523;
but this is equalled by Athena again at 51920.
A system of sorts is discernible in Lykophrons use of cult epithets. If this is a game,
it is a game with rules. Only occasionally does the cluster include the most usual divine
name, and the approximate system seems to be as follows. At the first occurrence of a
god or goddess, the first name in the first-occurring list is often (though by no means
always) closest to being a standard title, and is the least enigmatic. The limiting case
of this is where the first appearance of a god in the poem uses the standard name
with no obfuscation at all; this happens with Zeus, Hades and Ares. About half of
the canonical Olympian twelve, and one or two others, can be accounted for in this
way. Let us now consider Lykophrons treatment of the Olympians and some others
(not all: for reasons of space, not every minor deity can be treated); we may begin
with the three who are given their regular names.
Zeus gets special treatment (naturally): he is father of Herakles at 42, his first but
indirect appearance, then Zeus without mystification at 80, where he is bringer of tor-
rential rain, cf. the full Rainy Zeus, , at 160 (for this title see below VI),
and 622 where he is again associated with irrigation () and referred to straight-
forwardly: . He is apostrophized by Kassandra as Saviour Zeus, , at
512. (But note that Zeus is sometimes Agamemnon and conversely; see below VIII.)
Hades is mentioned early in the poem as a god (fought by Herakles as in the Iliad)
not as a place, and with his regular name , 51. But Hades is thereafter used for the
place: 197, 404, etc. He is designated by the epithet Plouton near the poems end (1420).
Ares is just that, , at 24950, where he is personified (and now Ares, the dan-
cer, sets fire to the land, leading the song with a bloody tune on his trumpet shell,
though it might be objected that those lines are just a fancy way of saying war breaks
out); and also at 518. But he will receive three out-of-the way epithets at 9378; for one
of them () see n. 116. The specially blunt treatment of Ares in the earlier pas-
sages may be due to the violence which marks so much of the poem; or it may have
something to do with the rarity of epikleseis for Ares generally.
51
Now we may consider gods who are not actually named on their first occurrence, but
are nevertheless referred to transparently. First, Dionysos. The familiar Bacchus at 206
(compare already Bacchic mouth, , at 28, and , madly in
love with a stranger, at 175) ushers in four much more obscure epithets at 20712,
including He who trips, (207), a reference to the myth of Telephos (see
below, VI). The other three are (212), Potent one
[lit. uncastrated],
52
Phigaleian, Torch-god.
Athena. The equally familiar Pallas at 355 (the goddess first appearance) precedes
no fewer than five much harder epithets for Athena at 357 and 359 (
, the Ox-binder, the Seagull goddess, the Maiden), including one
which normally denotes another goddess, Persephone. This is six, the highest score
(above). Lists later than the first make no concessions. At 519, Thrice-born goddess
( ) is the first in a list, but this time the title is by no means
perspicuous.
53
51
Brul (n. 17 [1998]), 30.
52
Or possibly dancing, and to be connected with mystery cult in Arkadia; see Jost 431, cf. 85.
53
The meaning of the epithet, and its relation to the more usual , is uncertain, and will
be discussed in my commentary, like other epithets in this article whose elucidation is not now
attempted. For Athena Boudeia, see VI.
Apollo. The very familiar , associated particularly with Miletos where
there was an important Apolline sanctuary, the Delphinion, is Apollos epithet at 208.
That is his first mention in the poem unless we count the two implied references at
6, , laurel-eating, she Phoibized (i.e. prophesied), in which
case Phoibos will be the first epithet, and is also very familiar; indeed, like Bacchos/
Dionysos, it is almost another name for Apollo rather than an epithet. Lykophron
never calls him by his two best-known epithets or , his ethnics at
Delphi and Delos; but for Boiotian see 265.
54
Hekate is obviously the dog-slaying goddess at 77, her first mention. Perhaps
because she is not an Olympian in any sense (chthonian, and not one of the big twelve)
and thus out of the mainstream already, her disguises are never hard to penetrate. She
will be Brimo and she of the three shapes () at 1176, and Pheraian at
1180. These are all familiar designations:
55
under the name Enodia, Hekate was the
patron divinity of Thessalian Pherai.
Aphrodite is a halfway case. Arguably, her first mention is as the Homerically famil-
iar , 112, but there it means marriage, and so approximates to a category which
will be considered below: non-riddling non-periphrastic divine names for natural
entities. But it does not quite fit that category because it is strictly an ethnic not a
name, and so mildly periphrastic. If Kypris be disallowed, her first mention is as the
Kastnian, 403, which is not obscure by Lykophrons standards (we saw at n. 13 that
it also makes appearances in Kallimachos and a post-classical Pamphylian inscription)
but is not common currency either, as are for example Kythereian or Kyprian.
Other gods do not fit the suggested scheme nearly so well. Artemis does not feature
explicitly until very late in the poem, though she hovers in the background of the
Iphigeneia narrative which begins at 187. At 1331, she is unmistakably present in the
description of the Amazon Antiope as she who subdues with the bow, Orthosia (a
hint at her patron Artemis under the epithet Orthia, see below), even before the next
line, where Antiopes fellow Amazons are sisters, virgins of Nepounis (= Artemis of
Etruscan Nepe).
Poseidon is introduced as Proteus father at 125 (cf. Zeus as father of Herakles, a
much better-known paternal relationship). Then he is Aigaion at 135 and
Naumedon at 157.
Hera is second mother, i.e. stepmother to Herakles, at her first mention: 39.
Hermes first mention is as Kadmilos (162, cf. 219, Kadmos), a Samothracian
epithet, well enough attested for Hermes, but hardly transparent (see further below,
VI). Thereafter he has several epithets, all out-of-the-way. See below, VI for
Boiotian White Hermes, at 680, an epithet which is combined with Nonakrian,
Three-headed. The first of these is Arkadian
56
and no doubt conjures up Styx and
Hermes chthonian role; the other is said by Philochoros to relate to Hermes role as
showing the way, i.e he stood at a road junction.
57
The line in question immediately
and appropriately precedes Lykophrons narrative of Odysseus visit to the Underworld.
54
F. Graf, Apollo Delphinios, MH 36 (1979), 222. A. Philippe, Lpithte ,
Nommer les Dieux, 25561 adds little (and appears to be unaware of Graf [1979]). See also A.
Herda, Der Apollon Delphinios Kult in Milet und die Neujahrsprozession nach Didyma (Mainz,
2006). For the Apolline connotations of , see J.D.P. Bolton, Aristeas of Proconnesus
(Oxford, 1962), 1345.
55
See A. H[enrichs], OCD
4
, Hecate for refs. Patron divinity: IACP no. 414 at p. 705.
56
Jost 36. But she treats White Hermes as Arkadian also, and this neglects .
57
FGrH 328 F 22 a and b with Jacobys comm.
Hephaistos features only once in the poem, and that doubtfully, as Kandaon, 328.
This is certainly obscure, so much so that the name may in fact refer to Ares, or even
to Orion. The name Hephaistos occurs en clair at 1158, but as a synonym for fire;
see below for this category.
Hestia nowhere features in the poem. Like Ares, she has few epikleseis anywhere in
the Greek world (she shares Boulaia and its equivalents with one or two other gods and
goddesses, notably Zeus, see VI).
Herakles is the lion begotten [by Zeus from Alkmene] in three nights,
, at 33, Kassandras very first sentence. At 801, Herakles en clair is not the
god/hero at all, but Herakles son of Alexander the Great and Barsine, a young man
who was treacherously killed by Polyperchon of Tymphaia in 309 B.C. (Diod. Sic.
20.28.23). This, incidentally, is Lykophrons only mention by name of a historical
individual.
In a separate category are divine names such as for Dawn (who at 1619 is per-
sonified as leaving Tithonos, so that this means at daybreak, compare above on
Ares), cf. the similar connotation of at 941; Thetis for the sea (22); and
Hephaistos for fire (1158). These names are given in non-periphrastic form, but are
already periphrastic in a different way. (See above for .)
We should next ask whether these accumulated epithets perform a particular literary
function in the poem; in particular, whether we can detect what Homeric scholars call
significant denomination.
58
One section in particular stands out, the highly charged
auto-narrative of Kassandras sexual assualt by Ajax (34872), and it has been convin-
cingly argued that the gods are here designated in deliberately pointed ways.
59
The first
of Athenas epithets is neutral and indicative, as we saw: it is Pallas, 355. The next line
(356) raises the emotional temperature: . Of these the
first is not quite a divine epiklesis, but it almost functions as one (cf. at 359):
marriage-hater, , at 356 refers both to Athenas own origin from the
head of Zeus rather than by normal female birth,
60
and to the role she played in the
trial scene of Aeschylus Eumenides. There she upheld the rights of the male against
the female (I praise the male in all respects, , Eum. 737,
where however she adds except for joining in marriage, , perhaps
a reference to her narrow avoidance of rape by Hephaistos). , goddess of spoils/
booty, indicates Athenas role as war goddess (also used of her at 985 and 1416).
is one of several words for booty, spoils taken from the living, as opposed
to , taken from the dead. (Compare Artemis and Apollo Laphria/ios at
Kalydon in Aitolia, a notorious piratical centre.
61
) Athena was as guardian
of city gates. So the three epithets of 356 are not chosen arbitrarily; they all call atten-
tion to crucial points of the scene:
62
Kassandra herself as marriage-avoiding virgin and
as living booty; Athena as protectress. Much further on in the poem (1207), Apollos
medical epithets and (below, 111 and n. 93) are very apt in their
context the Apolline oracle which ordered the fetching of Hektors bones to Thebes
58
See I.J.F. de Jong, Studies in Homeric denomination, Mnemosyne 46 (1993), 289306.
59
E. Sistakou, Breaking the name codes in Lycophrons Alexandra, clats 23757, 245, arguing
for the suitability to their context of Athenas epithets at 3559 and 520. See also Cusset and Kolde
(below) for much sophisticated literary analysis of detail.
60
Aesch. Eum. 736.
61
IACP no. 148.
62
Sistakou (n. 59).
for the avoidance of plague (1205, and for the bones and Theban cult of Hektor see nn.
49 and 129).
In the same section, Apollos three epithets at 352 have also, but less compellingly,
been seen as marked: the gods sexual appetite is held to be alluded to by , on
the hypothesis that that obscure epithet is derived from , semen; and ,
god of the seasons, is held to hint paradoxically at the unseasonable nature of his
attempt to have sex with Kassandra.
63
For the third epithet, , see above, n. 49.
Again, consider the sequence , at 520 (Athena
again); the context is the fight between the Spartan Dioskouroi and the Messenian
Apharetidai. The cult epithets have been held to be specially appropriate here because
of the last in particular, , which combines Athena with Ares and Enyo (named at
51819) so as to indicate the violence which characterizes the episode. Boarmia is
said by the scholiast to be Boiotian, and may be something to do with the yoking of
oxen.
64
But perhaps it should rather compare above for the Ajax section be taken
in a passive and apotropaic sense: the goddess who does not wish to be yoked in mar-
riage.
65
This would be thematically appropriate, given that the fight between the two
pairs of brothers broke out (on one version of the myth) over the nubile Leukkipides.
Longatis is, however, not easily amenable to any such interpretation. The scholiast
again connects it with Boiotia, but the name may rather derive from a poorly attested
Sicilian city called something like Longane.
66
And generally, we must acknowledge
that Lykophrons divine epithets are not always so well fitted to their literary contexts
as are those discussed above. Kassandras agony at 34872 seems to have called for spe-
cially resonant treatment of Athena and Apollo. Other individual occurences of cult
epithets can be explained contextually, to be sure;
67
but there were more than three
Olympians, and many puzzles remain.
The conclusion of this section is that Lykophron can often be shown to have devoted
care and thought to the manner in which the cult epithets are introduced (easy first-time
mentions); and that sometimes but only sometimes the poet chooses and positions
cult epithets with sensitive regard to their narrative context. They are, then, not all
63
Cusset and Kolde 78. But may be a variant form of , god of the beast; see
Schachter, Cults 1.434. Though Hesychios says it is a Lakonian epiklesis, it is likelier to be
Boiotian. There was a temple of Apollo Thourios at Boiotian Chaironeia: Plut. Sull. 17.4, who
gives one explanation in terms of a mythical female oikist of Chaironeia called Thouro, and another
which identified the beast with the cow which showed Kadmos where to found Thebes.
64
Schachter, Cults 1.134. corresponds to a familiar Boiotian and central Greek epithet of
Zeus, namely , for which see n. 83.
65
So Decourt (n. 91), 3856. Hurst (n. 49 [2012]), 74 thinks the reference is to the Apharetidai, a
pair of mighty warriors. G. Lambin, LAlexandra de Lycophron (Paris, 2005), 226 says that these four
divine epithets have a force quasi-incantatoire, and he remarks on the play of different vowels in the
line.
66
IACP no. 35 (various spellings), cf. Lycoph. 1032. For a possible Boiotian cult of Athene
Longatis see the very conjectural restorations of Athena [ in two Tanagraian dedications
(IG 7.553 and 2463, c. 300 B.C.): Schachter, Cults 1.129 (cf. IACP p. 453, entry no. 220, Tanagra).
But there is much doubt about these readings (cf. SEG 31.497), and this epithet will therefore not
be adduced in VI.
67
The approach adopted in the present paper is different from that of Cusset and Kolde, whose
arguments are of unequal force. The suggestion that at 403, Aphrodites epithets Kastnian and
Melinaian (i.e. Pamphylian and Argive respectively) are intended to convey the vast extent of the
goddesss influence (Cusset and Kolde 26) is attractive; add that Pamphylia was an area of Argive
colonization. By contrast, the observation that Apollos three epithets at 352 are in alphabetical
order (Cusset and Kolde 8) is not illuminating. Lycoph.s chains of epithets are mostly not
alphabetical.
randomly enigmatic. This conclusion encourages a further stage of inquiry: into their
historical authenticity.
VI. THE EVIDENCE OF EPIGRAPHY
68
Historians should be curious to know whether all, or some, or any, of these Lykophronic
cult epithets are rooted in reality. The main control is, as always with ancient Greek reli-
gion, epigraphy.
69
But inscriptions have in general (not just in the matter of cult
epithets) been virtually ignored by all modern commentaries on Lykophron. To list
omissions every time would be tedious polemic; it may be assumed that none of the epi-
graphic material cited below, or anywhere in the present article, is to be found in the
existing commentaries unless I say so explicitly. I now look at some relevant examples.
Let us start with Linear B, and with , an epiklesis of Apollo at 522 (Apollo
and Poseidon built the walls of the first Troy) and said by Tzetzes to be Milesian,
, . A gold vase from Pylos (Tn 316) has the name Drimios,
di-ri-mi-jo, who is son of Zeus. This is thought by Mycenaean specialists to be
Apollo (who may also have been designated in Linear B by some form of the name
Paion). Rougemont, in a very full recent discussion of cult epithets in Linear B, does
not seek to explain or derive it.
70
The vowels and are not identical, but Linear B
experts
71
nevertheless offer etymologies for di-ri-mi-jo from either , sharp,
piercing; or else , copse, thicket (compare below for Hylates).
72
Lykophron has, however, played virtually no part in the argument hitherto, though
see n. 74. (In regard to spelling, we should recall see p. 94 above on Kastnia that
Lykophron sometimes gives epithets in slightly eccentric forms.) There is a slight
link between Miletos and Messenian Pylos, because Neileus son of Kodros, a younger
68
In what follows, I use epigraphy mainly to mean inscribed documentary texts such as dedica-
tions, decrees, sacred laws and so on. But no sharp divide separates literature from epigraphy: after
all, some poems are known only from inscriptions, such as the curious 33-line Hellenistic fragment
about Endymion, PMG 1037, which mentions (sic, paroxytone; i.e. Athena) in line 1;
cf. above and n. 53 for at Alex. 519. The same is true of a number of paians and areta-
logies; and cf. nn. 42 and 95 (inscribed hymns and paians, whose purpose was cultic).
69
It might have been hoped that the great Louis Robert would have illuminated Lykophron more
suo, but references are few. At Documents dAsie mineure (Paris, 1987), 296321, Lycophron et le
marais dEchidna, Strabon et le lac de Kolo, esp. 2967, he discussed 13515 (Tyrrhenos) in con-
nection with the topography of lake Echidna/Gygaia in Lydia. His study of Aphrodite Kastnietis
(n. 13) discussed the relevant Kallimachos frag., but did not mention Lykophron. At BE 1943 no.
30, reporting the Dionysos Sphaleotas inscription from Delphi (n. 95 below), Jeanne and Louis
Robert briefly noted its relevance to Lykophron. At Villes dAsie Mineure: tudes de gographie
ancienne (Paris, 1962
2
), 314, Robert briefly noted the Lydian village Kimpsos at Lycoph. 1352, in
connection with Nonnus, Dion. 13.465. There are no doubt other such minor items, but I do not
think that Robert ever gave a passage of Lykophron the full treatment.
70
F. Rougemont, Les noms des dieux dans les tablettes inscrites en linaire B, Nommer les Dieux
32588, 3389 and 375.
71
J.L. Garcia Ramon, Mycenaean onomastics, in Y. Duhoux and A. Morpurgo, Companion to
Linear B: Mycenaean Greek Texts and their World, vol. 2 (Louvain, 2011), 21351, 230;
cf. F. Aura Jorro, Diccionario Micnico, vol. 1 (Madrid, 1985), entry under di-ri-mi-jo. I am grateful
to Stephen Colvin for these references.
72
R.A.B. Mynors, Virgil. Georgics (Oxford, 1990), 303 wondered if there was a connection
between Cyrenes woodland nymph Drymo at Verg. G. 3.336 and Apollos epithet in the present pas-
sage of Lykophron. Oddly enough, the noun first occurs in prose in the Molpoi inscription
from Miletos (5th cent. B.C.), A. Rehm, Milet III: Das Delphinion in Milet (Berlin, 1914), 162
406, Die Inschriften no. 133 line 28.
kinsman of Pylian Nestor, founded Miletos, according to a myth treated in detail by
Lykophron (1379; see also Hdt. 9.97). So Lykophron, when narrating an episode of
vast antiquity (a episode from long before the main Trojan War), seems to have chosen
a venerable epithet indeed. In the same line, however (522), Poseidon is Prophantos,
lord of Kromna; these designations are not noticeably ancient.
73
A different (but even more speculative) approach to the epithet might start
from the Phokian place name Drymos. An inscribed Hellenistic agreement about finan-
cial matters, between Drymos and the Oitaian federation, is best interpreted as having an
amphiktionic aspect. This would bring us to Apollo by another route, because one of the
creditors was his sanctuary at Delphi. There is no reason why this approach should
exclude the other, Mycenaean, explanation: in Lykophron, things are often neither
settled nor stable. Indeed, the Phokian city has featured in explanations of the
Mycenaean word di-ri-mi-jo.
74
Demeter was Erinys in Lykophron, as we saw in I
(152, cf. 1040, where she is Telphousia, a reference to the cult of Demeter Erinys
at Arkadian Telphousa, and 1225, where Onkaian pit is a further reference to this
Demeter, named from another Arkadian city, Onkai or Onkeion). It is thought that a
Mycenean goddess e-ri-nu, named on Linear B tablets from Knossos on Krete, preceded
Demeter, and was eventually assimilated to her.
75
This example, however, does not
unlike Drimios/Drymas provide new and unexpected evidence for a cult title in
Lykophron which was otherwise puzzling.
I now turn to Greek epigraphy as conventionally understood, that is, inscriptions in
the alphabetical Greek script. (For some syllabic Cypriot texts, see n. 92.) In the most
rewarding cases, inscriptions not only confirm the historical existence of a cult epithet,
but show that it was at home in the geographical area to which Lykophrons
scholiast assigns it; in other cases they confirm existence only. A good number of the
better-known cult epithets used by Lykophron, but as always unaccompanied by the
actual name of the god, are naturally epigraphically attested, some of them many
times over: [Apollo] Delphinios (208) at Miletos and its numerous colonies,
76
[Apollo] Zoster or Zosterios (1278) in Attica and elsewhere,
77
[Apollo] Ptoios
(265, 352) at the Ptoion in Boiotia,
78
[Dionysos] Bacchos (206, 273) at Knidos in
73
Prophantos is said by to be a cult of Poseidon at Italian Thourioi; there is no other evidence.
The name suggests an oracular deity (for cf. Hdt. 5.63.2 and 9.93.4), and thus more suited
to Apollo than to Poseidon; but the run of the line precludes this. King of Kromnos is also Poseidon.
identifies this Kromnos as the Paphlagonian city (IACP no. 734) and says there was a temple of
Poseidon there; but also cites Kallimachos (fr. 384 Pf., see Pf. 1.312, on line 12) for a Korinthian
Kromnos. This place (not a polis) is now epigraphically attested at Korinth, see SEG 22.219 (late
fourth/early third cent. B.C.); cf. IACP p. 466, part of no. 227 (Korinth), citing Lycoph. Poseidon
was well established at Korinth, see esp. Pind. Ol. 13 and the Korinthian-controlled sanctuary of
Poseidon at the Isthmia; but that does not prove s first suggestion wrong.
74
For Drymos see IACP no. 178; for the agreement, see IG 9.1.22630 (after 167 B.C.), with SEG
53.491. Cf. A.L. Stella, La religione greca nei testi Micenei, Numen 5 (1958), 267 and n. 27,
explaining Mycenean di-ri-mi-jo on these lines (and citing Tzetzes on Lycoph. 533).
75
Linear B attestation: Jost 3034 and Quelques piclses divines en Arcadie, Nommer les Dieux
389400, 395; Rougemont (n. 70), 332, 333 n. 36, 367. For the two Arkadian places, see IACP no.
300 (Thelphousa) and p. 407 (Onkeion).
76
See e.g. Rehm (n. 72 ), no. 31 line 11 (525500 B.C.); SEG 27.439 (Olbia, cup, 550500 B.C., but
inscription may be later).
77
See e.g. SEG 38.124 (c. 265 B.C., epithet restored, but very probably), from the excavated site at
Halai Aixonides in S. Attica. See Graf 53 n. 33; Parker (2003), 177 (Zosterios as one of a group of
epithets derived from headlands). Steph. Byz. says that Athena Zosteria was worshipped by
the Epiknemidian Lokrians.
78
Schachter, Cults 1.55 (the gods ethnic varies slightly from period to period).
Karia,
79
[Poseidon] Erechtheus at Athens,
80
[Zeus] Ombrios, the Rainy one (160) at
Athens,
81
[Zeus] Boulaios, of the Council (435) at many places,
82
Zeus Phyxios,
of fugitives or exiles (288) at Thessaly and elsewhere (above, n. 12). I shall not linger
over these, because they help to solve no puzzles. My concern is with the light thrown
by inscriptions on the more obscure epithets in the poem, of which there are many.
More relevant for this purpose are those inscriptions which attest a cult title which
Lykophron attributes to a different god from the inscriptions; indeed, the surprising
Zeus Erechtheus may fall into this category, see n. 80. For example (and this whole
VI is intended to be illustrative not complete), Homolois (520) is Athena among
the Thebans (Tzetzes; incorrectly says Athenians), but that epithet was usually
applied, mutatis mutandis, to Athenas father Zeus.
83
At 1331, the name Orthosia
(attested epigraphically as an epithet of Artemis at several places, such as Athens and
Rhodes) is transferred to her follower, the Amazon Antiope.
84
Hoplosmios (armed)
is attested epigraphically as an epithet of Zeus. But Hoplosmia is clearly Zeus consort
Hera at 858 and less clearly at 614. (We are told by the scholiast on 614 that this was a
cult title of Athena at Elis, but this may be an error for Hera.
85
) Hera Hoplosmia features
in the modern epigraphic literature in connection with a short and partly unintelligible
Archaic Greek inscription from Paestum (Posidonia) in S. Italy. But the epithet, as
opposed to the name Hera, is not present, and the connection seems to be a mere modern
guess. So I do not claim it as corroboration of Lykophron.
86
79
Syll.
3
978 (c. 250 B.C.).
80
IG 1
3
873 (Athens, mid fifth cent. B.C.). It is not certain that Lykophron ever mentions this
Poseidon. At 431, Erechtheus is certainly Zeus, and perhaps at 158 also, though this is less clear.
Zeus Erechtheus is very odd. Tzetzes and the scholiast say that this Zeus was so called in Athens
and Arkadia, but there is no support of any sort in either region. solution might just conceivably
lie along some such lines as, that Athenians and Arkadians both claimed to be autochthonous, and
Erechtheus was earth-born.
81
The seventh-cent. B.C. dedications to Zeus on the graffiti at the sanctuary on Mt Hymettos do not
actually call him Ombrios, though that is certainly what he was (M. Langdon, Hesp. Suppl. 16 [1978]
with Paus. 1.32.2); but see A. Raubitschek, Hesp. 12 (1943), 723 nos. 1921 for altars in the
Athenian agora inscribed , c. A.D. 100. The dedication Corinth 8.1 Greek
Inscriptions 102 is also Roman.
82
Schwabl, 291: or . If () at 1370 is regarded as a cult epithet
and though edd. do not capitalize, and the word can be an adjective of normal type (cf. 91, 382, and
Eur. Bacch. 1361), it is a broad hint, since the passage is about thunderbolts then Zeus who des-
cends i.e. as thunderbolt is well attested epigraphically: Schwabl 322 and Parker (2003), 180. Here,
Zeus Lapersios (1369) is actually Agamemnon, cf. VIII. At Plut. Demetr. 10.5 (Athenian flattery of
Demetrios Poliorketes) the original sense is lost, and the epithet assimilates him to Zeus.
83
Cf. Lycoph. 520. For Zeus Homoloios see L. Robert (n. 13), 238 n. 6 (discussing Boiotian
names in -, cf. already Usener 354), and Schachter, Cults 3.1202, 148 and n. 3 (for the
fifth-cent. B.C. dedication IG 7.2456, and cf. SEG 26.585). For as a Boitian month
name, derived from Zeus Homoloios, see L. Moretti, Iscrizioni storiche ellenistiche (Florence,
1967), no. 64 line 2 (Oropos, 190180 B.C.) Demeter, also, was perhaps called Homolois
(Schachter, Cults 1.168). See now R.L. Fowler, Early Greek Mythography II: Commentary
(Oxford, 2013), 802.
84
Artemis Orthosia: see IG 1
3
1083 (fifth cent. B.C., Athens), 12(5) 913 (second cent. B.C.,
Rhodes); etc.
85
Zeus Hoplosmios is mentioned in an inscription from Methydrion in Arkadia: Syll.
3
490 line 18
(c. 233 B.C.); cf. L. Robert, Noms Indignes dans lAsie mineure Grco-romaine (Paris, 1963), 189
n. 2. See also Jost, 2778, who at 277 and n. 4 cites (for Hera Hoplosmia) Lykophron and the scholia.
A warlike goddess (whether Hera or Athena) at Elis is curious: Llide nest pas une terre de soldats:
M. Launey, Recherches sur les armes hellnistiques (Paris, 1949), 130.
86
R. Arena, Iscrizioni greche arcaiche di Sicilia e Magna Grecia IV: Iscrizioni delle colonie Achee
(Milan, 1996) no. 19 = L. Dubois, Inscriptions grecques dialectales de Grande Grce, vol. 2. Colonies
Again, Lykophron does not always confer divine epithets in a straightforward way.
At 856 the recesses of Lakinia means the grove at Kroton in S. Italy which Thetis gave
as a present to Hera, whose well-established epithet Lakinia occurs epigraphically but
also in other types of evidence. The rare word (mice or rats) at Lycoph.
1306, the first foundation of Troy, inevitably evokes the aetiology of Apollo
Smintheus (cf. Hom. Il. 1.39), epigraphically attested at the excavated temple site
near Alexandreia Troas.
87
In the poem, we sometimes meet unrecognizably different forms of familiar, or at
least attested, cult epithets. This may be because they were genuine local variants.
Poseidon Amphibaios of Kyrene illustrates this, if he is really a doubly disguised ver-
sion of Gaieochos, in which case cultic evidence, corroborating the literary sources,
is provided by an inscription from Sparta, the grandmother city of Kyrene (see above
n. 25). But sometimes the reason for selecting the different form is opaque to us.
Thus Tzetzes tells us that Keramyntes (663) is Herakles Alexikakos, driver-away of
harm,
88
and that he was an apotropaic Herakles who drove away the Keres (the epithet
Alexikakos was more usually applied to Apollo or even Zeus). Mythographers knew of
a cult of Herakles Alexikakos, and there is epigraphic evidence for it from Athens,
Chaironeia in Boiotia, and probably also from Epidauros.
89
But it can hardly be claimed
that these inscriptions shed much direct light on the epithet Keromyntes, and it is to
examples of such direct corroboration that I now turn. The gods are treated in
(English) alphabetical order.
I begin with Aphrodite. We have already (above p. 94 and n. 13) discussed her epi-
thet Kastnia or Kastnietis, attested by Lykophron (403, 1234), Kallimachos and, spec-
tacularly, by a Pamphylian inscription in Greek, of Roman date. Frustratingly, there
is no mention of Pamphylia or any other region in the scholiastic tradition here, although
Zeuss epithet Drymnian at 536 is there said to be Pamphylian (so that that part of
S. Asia Minor was within the scholiasts range of knowledge); this last epithet has so
far resisted explanation.
90
achennes (Geneva, 2002), no. 18. This seemingly chimerical attestation of Hera Hoplosmia is
hesitantly entered in the Rennes database, but Lykophrons two mentions of Eleian (Hera)
Hoplosmia are not. On Hera Hoplosmia, see G. Maddoli, Culti di Crotone, AttiMagna Grecia
23 (1983), 313360.
87
LSAG 257 and 261 n. 21 with SEG 34.997 (and cf. no. 998), 550500 B.C.; IACP p. 269. Apollo
Smintheus: M. Ricl, The Inscriptions of Alexandreia Troas (Bonn, 1997) nos. 43 and 638 (all
approx. 1
st
cent. A.D.), and see no. 5 (mid 2
nd
cent B.C.).
88
.
89
FGrH 4 F 104 (cited by the on Lycoph. 469), cf. SEG 28.232 (Athens, c. 350 B.C.), with Parker
(n. 3 [2005]), 414 n. 104; IG 7.3416 (Apalexikakos) with Schachter, Cults 2.2 (stone lost, date
uncertain); IG 4
2
1.531 (Epidauros; partly restored, probably of Roman date), with Schade 70
(n. on 663). SEG 17.451 (Rome) is late, second or third cent. A.D. The cult is attested in
Hellenistic Skythia (Kallatis on the Black Sea, IACP no. 686): SEG 49.1013 for refs.
90
Schwabl, col. 301. Aphrodites epithet at 832 is very difficult. One suggestion
(Holzinger, in his comm.) is that it is related to the unexplained goddess in the Damonon
inscription (n. 95), line 24; for this goddess see Wide 1412. But that identification is a long shot.
So is Holzingers identification of (Aphrodite again, 867) with the Attic Aphrodite
, epigraphically attested by IG 2
2
5119 (theatre seat, precise date uncertain, but surely
Roman). on 867 says that Kolotis was Aphrodite in Cyprus. At 589, Aphrodite is Queen of
Golgoi (on Cyprus), ; cf. e.g. Theoc. Id. 15.100. For the epigraphically attested
Queen (Wanassa) of Golgoi see M. Egetmeyer, Sprechen sie Golgisch? Anmerkungen zu
einer bersehenen Sprache, in P. Carlier, C. de Lamberterie, M. Egetmeyer et al., tudes
Mycniennes 2010: Actes du colloque international sur les textes gens (Pisa and Rome, 2012),
42734.
Apollo is referred to as at 208. This cult of Apollo is epigraphically very
well attested in Thessaly and nowhere else. But no region is mentioned in connection
with it, by either scholiast or Tzetzes. It is now thought that the meaning of the epiklesis
is not god of gain as has usually been assumed (beginning with Tzetzes), but le Rus,
from an adjective for cunning, applied to foxes.
91
Apollo is very appropriately called (from a place called near Cypriot
Kourion according to the scholiast, but perhaps really God of the Grove, Silvanus) at
448, in the course of the opening sentence of the long Cypriot section of the poem (447
591). The important sanctuary of Apollo Hylates at Kourion on the south coast of the
island has yielded many Greek dedicatory inscriptions dating from the middle of the
second century B.C. to the Roman Imperial period.
92
There were three other sanctuaries
to Apollo Hylates on Cyprus (at Paphos, at Dhrymou near Paphos and at Chytroi near
modern Nikosia), and relevant Cypriot syllabic dedications from these places date from
as early as the fourth century B.C. They have the epithet in the form u-la-ta.
Apollo is at 1207 and at 1454; these are ethnics of the Aegean
island of Lepsia, W. of Karia. An inscription found on the island, and supplemented
with virtual certainty, enables the identification of the sanctuary of Apollo Lepsieus.
Also at 1207, (again Apollo) represents terebinth Apollo (named after a
healing drug, cf. Doctor, , at the beginning of the same line, 1207) whose tem-
ple features in an important Milesian inscription: .
93
Athena is at 359, as we have seen. The mention of a month in an
inscribed sale list from fourth-century B.C. Kyzikos in Asia Minor has led to a conjecture
that behind this lurks the Boudeia of Lykophron, and of Stephanus of Byzantion, who
says that Athena Boudeia was a Thessalian cult. At 1261, is the Athena wor-
shipped in the Attic deme Pallene; she is well attested in fifth-century B.C. Attic epig-
raphy. The League of Athena Pallenis is known to us, not from a surviving
inscription on stone, but from one quoted by Athenaeus, probably drawing on the
Hellenistic epigrapher Polemon of Ilion.
94
The cult was of lasting importance.
91
See J.-C. Decourt, Les cultes thessaliens dans lAlexandra de Lycophron, clats 37791
(esp. 390, un culte purement thessalien), and list of inscriptions at p. 389 (these include the replies
by the city of Thessalian Larisa to letters from Philip V of Macedon, Syll.
3
543 lines 22 and 44, 217
and 215 B.C.); see Decourt p. 391 for the meaning of the epiklesis.
92
Greek dedications: T.B. Mitford, The Inscriptions of Kourion (Philadelphia, 1971) nos. 4950
(second cent. B.C.) and 10526 (Imperial); P.M. Fraser, Lycophron on Cyprus, Report of the
Department of Antiquities, Cyprus (1979), 32843, at 333 n. 4; D. Buitron-Oliver (ed.), The
Sanctuary of Apollo Hylates at Kourion: Excavations in the Archaic Precinct. SIMA 109 (1996);
J.-B. Cayla, Nommer les Dieux, 2325.
Cypriot syllabic dedications: O. Masson, Les Inscriptions chypriotes syllabiques
2
(Paris, 1983)
nos. 3 (Paphos: Apollo Hylates, fourth cent. B.C.); 856 (Dhrymou: Hylates, no mention of
Apollo); 1849 (Kourion: Apollo or the god, but no mention of Hylates); 250 and 250a
(Chytroi: Hylates). See further Egetmeyer (n. 90) 429, noting that Lycoph. uses the local form of
the name with long alpha.
93
SEG 18.386 (second cent. B.C.) line 6: [ (?)] [ etc.; cf. lines 89,
] | [ ]. See G.E. Bean and J.M. Cook, The Carian coast III, ABSA 52
(1957), 58146, at 137 (republishing the inscription, whence SEG), and 136 (location of sanctuary).
Lepsia: IACP p. 733. Apollo Terbintheus attested at Miletos: Syll.
3
633 (c. 180 B.C.), line 79. The tem-
ple was at nearby Myous, by that time subject to Miletos. For the medical appropriateness of
and to their context in the poem, see above, p. 105.
94
Athena Boudeia Thessalian: Steph. Byz. 136 Billerbeck. See C. Trmpy, Athena Boudeia,
ZPE 100 (1994), 40712, prompted by SEG 36.1116.7. For Boudeia see also Decourt (n. 91),
3848. Athena Pallenis: IG 1
3
383 lines 1212, cf. 32830 (429/8 B.C.) and 369 lines 71 and 88
(423/2 B.C.); Ath. 234F with D.M. Lewis (ed. P.J. Rhodes), Selected Papers in Greek and Near
Dionysos is hidden behind the epithet at 207. This refers to the myth of
Telephos of Mysia (NW Asia Minor), who was tripped up (from ) by
Dionysos on the occasion of the first and misdirected Greek expedition against
Troy. Lykophron says that this tripping up happened not because of divine anger
against Telephos the usual story but because Agamemnon had prayed to
Zeus, who therefore helped the Greeks. A mid second-century B.C. inscription
from Delphi, a dedication of a stoa, purports to give the hexameter text of an oracle
of Apollo (Loxias) telling Agamemnon to sacrifice to the ,
king, where the specification of sacrifice means that looks like a cultic
title. (The common Apolline epithet Loxias is suggested at the start and close of the
poem, at 14 and 1467, but the correspondence hardly amounts to significant epi-
graphic corroboration.) This remarkable inscription shows that the mythological
tradition, as recorded at length in the scholia and by Tzetzes, was correct to associ-
ate the epithet with Telephos of Mysia (correct in the sense that this association
was taken for granted in the Hellenistic period, i.e. Lykophrons own time).
Dionysos , the Bull, is similarly attested both in Lykophron (209) and in
a verse inscription from Delphi: the cult paian of Philodamos (340 B.C.).
(Dionysos as Wine-god, see Lycoph. 1247) is not yet attested epigraphically, but
the related Attic genos of the Theoinidai is so attested, in a late Hellenistic
inscription.
95
Eastern History (Cambridge, 1997), 91 and 98. The interesting but complex question of the relation of
at 1150 to Athena , epigraphically attested at Physkeis in W. (i.e. Ozolian) Lokris (see
esp. the manumissions IG 9.1
2
67184, and now a further set, SEG 56.5708) is discussed in the
Lokrian Maidens section of the commentary announced in n. 1.
95
SEG 19.399 (see G. Daux and J. Bousquet, Agamemnon, Tlphe, Dionysos Sphaletas et les
Attalides, RA 19 [1942/3], 11325 and 20 [1942/3], 1940); cf. T. Scheer (n. 7), 1323 and
B. Dignas, Rituals and the construction of identity in Attalid Pergamon, in B. Dignas and R.R.R.
Smith, Historical and Religious Memory in the Ancient World (Oxford, 2012), 11943, at 135. For
the date of the dedicated building, see SEG 53.490. For Dionysos in Lycoph. see not only
209 but 1238, , with : the maenads wear horns because they are imitating
Dionysos, ; see Rohde (n. 8), 269 n. 19,
and 258 with 2723 nn. 33 and 35. Dionysos Tauros in Philodamos paian: SEG 32.552 (= Furley/
Bremer no. 2.5), lines 23: [, ]| etc. As can be seen, is entirely restored,
but for metrical and other reasons the restoration is convincing. It may be objected that although the
paian as a whole is cultic (Furley/Bremer, 1.128), this particular word, never repeated in the otherwise
repetitive poem, is merely literary and poetic (cf. Eur. Bacch. 920, already quoted by ), like the
accompanying epithet ivy-tressed. But there is other evidence. In PMG 871 (from Plut. Mor.
299B) = Furley/Bremer no. 12. 1, lines 67, the women of Elis invoke Dionysos with the repeated
cry worthy bull, . This text is thought to be very ancient. Discussing Philodamos
paian, A. Jacquemin, Panthon et epiclses delphiques: Apollon et les autres dieux, Nommer les
dieux 24153, at 250 and n. 71, says that the cult of Dionysos Tauros had a particular role at Elis.
This is not obviously supported by the study she cites (C. Calame in J.-M. Adam et al., Le discours
anthropologique [Paris, 1990], 227250). Presumably she has in mind not only PMG 871 (above), but
also the intriguing archaeological evidence set out at Furley/Bremer 1.371 (bovine skulls found at Elis
in a theatre next to a temple of Dionysos; they also cite the bull in the Delphic amphiktionic law
inscribed at Athens in 380 B.C., Syll.
3
145 = CID 1 no. 10, line 32, but this is wholly mysterious,
see Rougemonts CID comm., 114). If Dionysos were the of IG 7.1787 (Roman,
Boiotian Thespiai), as Nilsson (n. 20), 571 and n. 7 confidently believed, that would be a simple epi-
graphic attestation to set beside Lycoph. But this and several similar inscriptions are now thought to be
evidence for the deification of a member of the Roman family of the Statilii Tauri! See Schachter,
Cults 3.534, Theos Tauros (Thespiai), and F. Marchand, The Statilii Tauri and the Cult of
Theos Tauros at Thespiai, JAH 1 (2013), 14569. Ignore, therefore, the final sentence of Furley/
Bremer 1.372 n. 7. For the Theoinidai see E. Vanderpool, AJPh 100 (1979), 21316 with
R. Parker, Athenian Religion: a History (Oxford, 1996), 299.
Herakles is called Palaimon at 663. The epithet is epigraphically attested for
Herakles at Boiotian Koroneia.
96
The scholia and Tzetzes do not mention Boiotia,
but merely explain it by reference to the root for wrestling, -.
Next in the alphabet comes Hermes. The shining god, , at 680 is said
by the scholiast to be honoured as White Hermes among the Boiotians,
. One attractive possibility is that this is an ephebic cult at
Tanagra, in which case Tanagraian ephebic inscriptions, influenced by Athenian institu-
tions, might become relevant.
97
But there is no hard epigraphic evidence for such a cult,
and we can only hope that some will appear. We have seen in V that Hermes is called
Kadmilos by Lykophron (162). The restoration ] at SEG 32.1077, Velia in
Italy, date unclear, is very optimistic.
I will come later (VIII) to the important epigraphic evidence for Kassandras
Spartan cult under the epiklesis Alexandra, and to the related cult of [Zeus]
Agamemnon there. Lykophron mentions the second specifically, and was (it will be
argued) well aware of the first.
Poseidon is teasingly alluded to in 767 by the name , and though Poseidon
Hippios is familiar, and he is known by other - titles, this is an otherwise unattested
cult epithet. It is said by the scholiast and Tzetzes to denote Poseidon among the
Delians. There is very slight epigraphic support from Delos for this Poseidon the
Horse-driver (or Horse-begetter, perhaps referring to his mating with Demeter and
fathering of Arion): a very fragmentary inscription, perhaps naming Poseidon, has
been found on a mosaic near what may (or may not) have been the site of the
hippodrome.
98
Komyros, i.e. Zeus (459), is one of the most epigraphically rewarding of the cult
epithets in Lykophron. Its elucidation will take us to inland Karia in Asia Minor. In a
section about Telamonian Ajax, Herakles (the lion) sacrifices and prays successfully
to his father Zeus, |
(45960). The scholiast on 459 says that Zeus was honoured as
Komyros at Halikarnassos,
, and all modern commentators rightly repeat this, in modern lan-
guage. But it is not enough. We have here a satisfying case where epigraphy confirms
the information in the scholiast. Halikarnassos stands for Karia as part for whole,
because a festival of the Komyrion or Komyria (, , sanctuary
) is well attested epigraphically in inland Karia, at Panamara,
99
a sanctuary
site. The evidence is a series of inscriptions published in the late nineteenth and
early twentieth centuries by G. Deschamps and G. Cousin in the Bulletin de
Correspondance Hellnique. The first editors of the inscriptions immediately (1888)
made the connection with Lykophron, and called Panamara a place of pilgrimage.
Holzinger (1895) and Ciaceri (1902), in their commentaries on the poem, were therefore
96
IG 7.2874 (partly supplemented, date uncertain, probably Roman), with Schachter, Cults 2.9 and
n. 4 (Schachter, Cults 2.10 notes that at Athens, Herakles and Palaimon shared cult in the sanctuary of
Pankrates). Unusually, this inscription is registered in A. Hurst and A. Kolde, Lycophron (Bud ed.,
Paris, 2008), 195, with acknowledgment to Schade.
97
Schachter, Cults 2.49 with nn. 2 and 4b.
98
See P. Bruneau, Recherches sur les cultes de Dlos lpoque hellnistique et lpoque
impriale (Paris, 1970), 265 (citing Lycoph. 767), with 260 for the inscription: ] | ]. The
date can hardly be fixed precisely; Hellenistic or Roman, surely.
99
Barrington Atlas of the Greek and Roman World (Princeton, 2000), map 61 G3; Bargylia is at F3
and Halikarnassos at E3.
in a position to know this evidence, but did not mention it, and their successors have
followed suit.
100
Note the spelling at Bargylia, N. of Halikarnassos. (This
inscription may indicate that the Panamaran cult was indeed Karia-wide, and did indeed
attract pilgrims from the Halikarnassos region.) It is thought that Komyros was origin-
ally a Karian god who was gradually assimilated to Zeus. The Komyria was/were a
long-lived mystery (initiatory) festival.
101
The female festival was the Heraia, the
male the Komyria, but the priest of Zeus Panamaros officiated at both. The inscriptions
are of Imperial Roman date, but Lykophron entitles us to push the cult back into the
Hellenistic period.
The local Karian epigraphic spelling of this non-Greek name is usually with -,
not -, but this seems to have fluctuated (see above for - at Bargylia). In any
case, the lengthening of omicron to omega may be due to Lykophron, who needed a
long syllable at that point in the line. Compare the lengthened iota of (1029,
contrast Callim. Hymn 3.57. A partial model for Lykophron was Hom. Od. 24.307,
); or the fluctuation within the poem itself between and
(583, 1357, cf. LSJ).
102
In all these examples, choice was dictated by metre.
The Karian epiklesis might be used as an argument (like the poems lengthy attention
to Cyprus) in favour of an Alexandrian milieu for the poet, because of extensive
Ptolemaic Egyptian links with Karia, and actual Ptolemaic control of Stratonikeia itself
in the early third century.
103
There are two other cult epithets in the poem which can
loosely be called Karian: [Athena] Myndia at 950 and 1261, the ethnic of Myndos
near Halikarnassos (IACP no. 914), and [Apollo] or at 1207 and
1454, from the island of Lepsia to the west of Karia (above, with n. 93).
I will stay with Komyros a moment longer in order to return to the poems date (cf.
above, p. 101). It can perhaps be argued that Greek knowledge of Komyros, an obscure
inland Karian god fused with Zeus over a period of time, is more likely to feature in a
Greek poem at the end of the third century B.C. than the beginning, given that
Stratonikeia was not founded until the 270s. Hellenism came to inland Karia in a big
way under Rhodian influence in the mid third. But as we saw, there was a Ptolemaic
presence in the Stratonikeia region in the early third, so the argument cannot be pressed.
100
For the Karian god Zeus Komyros and the Komyria festival, see G. Cousin and G. Deschamps,
Inscriptions du temple de Zeus Panamaros, BCH 11 (1887), 37391; 12 (1888), 24973; and other
vols. of BCH up to 1922 and BCH 13 (1889) no. 62 [= I. Iasos no. 632], line 4 for the spelling
at Bargylia, N. of Halikarnassos, a . This gets into the Rennes data-
base as an epithet of Zeus, as does Lykophrons , but the connection between the two
epithets is not made. The many relevant Panamaran inscriptions were republished, with meagre com-
mentaries and no mention of Lykophron, by . Sahin, Inschriften von Stratonikeia (198190) and I do
not cite by this. For the Komyria, a mystery cult, see M. Nilsson, Griechische Feste (Leipzig, 1906),
2731; RE 11.13047 (Scherling); A. Laumonier, Les cultes indignes en Carie (Paris, 1958), 311
12, 635. For Stratonikeia, see G. Cohen, The Hellenistic Settlements in Europe, the Islands and Asia
Minor (Princeton, 1995), 2689 and 270 n. 2; P.M. Fraser, Greek Ethnic Terminology (Oxford, 2009),
3712. For Cousin and Deschamps on the connection with Lykophron and Tzetzes see BCH 12
(1988), 249: the Komyrion tait probablement le temple particulier de Zeus , anciennement
ador Halicarnasse, with a ref. to Lykophron and at n. 4. See also J. Crampa, I. Labraunda 1.63
n. 29 for a possible connection with place name at no. 8 (soon after 240 B.C.) line 28, .
I leave the name unaccented.
101
BCH 12, 37981 no. 2 lines 1617.
102
R. Coleman, Vergil. Eclogues (Cambridge, 1977), 292 (n. on 10.66, Sithoniasque nives) says
that Latin poets regularly follow Lycophron (Alex. 1357) in shortening the o of the second syllable,
but this is too simple, as far as Lykophron is concerned.
103
I. Stratonikeia: no. 1002, J. and L. Robert, Fouilles dAmyzon en Carie, vol. 1 (Paris, 1983),
nos. 36 for Karian Amyzon; I. Labraunda: no. 43 for Labraunda.
Zeus in the form (435) is a particularly difficult epiklesis. The epithet is
said (LSJ, following the scholia and Tzetzes) to mean hurling balls of fire, from
, round. That is, perhaps, the god of the thunderbolt.
104
A first-century
A.D. inscription from Thessaloniki attests a possibly Thracian god Zeus Dionysos
Gongylos.
105
This does not solve the problem of the epithets meaning or etymology,
nor is the context of 435 obviously Thracian, but it might indicate that Lykophron did
not pluck the epithet out of the air.
A sceptic might say, we grant you Komyros and those others, but how many diffi-
cult cult epithets in Lykophron can be so paralleled? Obviously, I have chosen some of
the more satisfying cases. Many, it must be conceded, remain impenetrable. Tzetzes
says that Aithiops and Gyrapsios (5367) are epithets of Zeus at Chios. Graf
106
draws a blank, merely citing Lykophron and A.B. Cook for Gyrapsios. Zeuss epithet
Promantheus at 537 is supposed to be related to a Sanskrit word for fire.
107
For these
and others there is no epigraphic corroboration. But we can hope and expect that
the discovery of new inscriptions, and further work on existing ones, will allow more
progress.
Another challenge is to find pattern to or significance in the geographical locations of
the epithets, assuming that our information is reliable. The Zeus chain at 5367 runs
Drymnios Promantheus Aithiops Gyrapsios, and Tzetzes says that these are
Pamphylian, Thourian, Chian and Chian. It is not obvious what links these places; or
why Apollo is Derainos (n. 15), i.e Abderite, in the Mopsos episode, which is located
in Kilikia. But we should not despair. We have seen that Hylates is Apollo, and the epi-
thet is used about Cyprus where there are (n. 92) several sanctuaries with dedications to
Apollo Hylates. At 589, Golgos Queen is Aphrodite. Golgian, from another Cypriot
city, is an accepted epithet for her, even in Latin poetry (Theoc. Id. 15.100; Catull.
36.14; 64.96). More subtle is the designation of Odysseus as thief of the Phoenician
goddess, that is, of the Palladion (658). The scholiast and Tzetzes say this was an epi-
thet of Athena at Korinth (a city famously open to eastern cultural penetration through
its harbour at Kenchreai). Perhaps this is an oblique reminder of the role played by an
invented Phoenician in Odysseus lying story, told soon after his arrival in disguise at
Ithaka (Od. 14.28791). The poets own acquaintance with Alexandria may be relevant
to some epithets. At 449 and 958 Zerynthia is Aphrodite on Samothrace (cf. 1178,
where Zerynthia denotes Hekate), which was a Ptolemaic overseas possession like
Cyprus, and indeed parts of Karia.
VII. THE SOURCES OF THE CULTIC INFORMATION IN POEM AND SCHOLIA
I hope to have shown that at least some of the cultic information in the scholia is impres-
sively corroborated by epigraphy, and we must now ask where this information actually
104
The same result is achieved if we take the word to indicate twisting, as in the throw of a sling.
Schwabl 295 suggests that Lykophron here alludes to at Ar. Lys. 9745.
105
IG 10(1) 259 lines 12, cf. SEG 30.622. Too recently published to have been known to
Schwabl, but see H. Versnel, Inconsistencies in Greek Religion 1. Ter Unus: Isis, Dionysos,
Hermes. Three Studies in Henotheism (Leiden and New York, 1990), 237 with n. 151, discussing
the difficulties (one god, or two, or three?) but cautiously concluding that the epithet refers to Zeus.
106
Graf 37 n. 149.
107
See M.L. West (n. 3), 273; cf. the name Prometheus.
came from. Wentzels thesis was that the paroemiographer Diogenianus, Athenaeus,
Clement of Alexandria, the scholia to Lykophron and Pausanias all drew on a single
lost source, a Hellenistic collection or sylloge of cult epithets. Methodologically, this
resembles Frasers ingenious theory that the various lists of Alexander the Greats
city foundations all go back to a single lost treatise of Ptolemaic Alexandrian origin,
an anti-Seleukid liber de urbibus Alexandri magni.
108
But Wentzel was thinking, not
of political propaganda, but of scholarly short cuts. Pseudo-learned and (no doubt)
genuinely learned folk made frequent use of such mythological handbooks, but sought
to conceal this shameful dependence.
109
Wentzel thought that the hypothetical sylloge
dated to the first century B.C. Theon of Alexandria
110
was perhaps the earliest to use
it, also in the first century B.C.; he wrote commentaries on several Hellenistic poets,
including Lykophron. Some of Wentzels parallels between his extant ancient author-
ities are too well known to be probative; some do not quite work. An example of the
latter: Enorches at 212 (above, n. 52) is said by the scholiast on Lykophron to be an
epithet of Dionysos on Lesbos, but Hesychios says it was Samos. Nevertheless,
Wentzels main idea is attractive and was closely and well argued.
Let us, then, provisionally accept the hypothesis of a sylloge. Might the poet
Lykophron, rather than the poets scholiasts, have used some such compilation?
Wentzel does not consider this radical possibility. If this were so and it is not obvious
how one might go about proving it that would reduce the poems originality, but not
the value of its epikletic material, or the interest of the way in which the poet exploited,
deployed and arranged it. But we do not have to imagine the poet taking a mindlessly
short cut, nor (at the other extreme) possessing exhaustive first-hand knowledge of doz-
ens of cult places. The poet could have drawn on a range of scholarly material; and it
was not necessary to travel to every polis in the Greek world to discover what cult epi-
thet was used where. We know that, for example, the chronographer Apollodoros (sec-
ond century B.C.), studied divine epithets.
111
And many of the local historians of the
Hellenistic period were keen to advertise the achievements of their local gods, for
instance by collecting lists of epiphanies; today, we know about these historians
above all from inscriptions praising them.
112
But vast amounts of such (now mostly
lost) erudition were once available in full and in detail on papyrus rolls, whether in
great libraries like those at Alexandria, Antioch or Pergamon, or on Hiero IIs giant
book-barge at Syracuse,
113
or in the smaller libraries at Rhodes or Sicilian
Tauromenion,
114
or even perhaps in the temple archives at Italian Lokroi. A final
thought: Lobel once suggested that Euphorion wrote a commentary on one of his
108
P.M. Fraser, Cities of Alexander the Great (Oxford, 1996).
109
A. Cameron, Greek Mythography in the Roman World (Oxford, 2004).
110
See N.G. W[ilson], OCD
4
Theon (1).
111
FGrH 244 (Apollodoros) F 11753. Note also Philochoros mention of a cult epithet on Tenos
(n. 20). We do not know which of his works this came from.
112
See A. Chaniotis, Historie und Historiker in den griechischen Inschriften: epigraphische
Beitrge zur griechischen Historiographie (Stuttgart, 1988), 3089, no. E 16, Leon of Samos, hon-
oured for his local history which collected the epiphanies of Hera, the patron deity of the island;
cf. also 300, no. E 7, Syriskos of Chersonesos. The Lindian anagraphe of 99 B.C. (FGrH 532;
Chaniotis 527 no. T 13) is only the best-known example: detailed narratives of epiphanies of
Athena Lindia on Rhodes. Note also Rehm (n. 72), 3978 no. 178 for a fragmentary Archaic inscrip-
tion from the Delphinion at Miletos, which seems to record a nocturnal epiphany of Apollo.
113
Ath. 207E.
114
For which see SEG 26.1123 (second cent. B.C.); cf. P.J. P[arsons], OCD
4
libraries.
own poems,
115
rather like T.S. Eliot supplying notes on The Waste Land. Lykophron
might have done the same.
VIII. LOCAL AND PANHELLENIC RELIGION
Finally, I turn to the relation between local and Panhellenic religion, and ask how far
Lykophrons epikleseis help with this topic. By Panhellenic I mean the Mediterranean
and Black Sea regions. As we saw above (p. 95), the epikleseis do not reflect the
newer eastern Hellenistic colonial world. To be sure, Lykophron uses epithets said by
the scholia to be at home in the east: Phoenicia, Cyprus, Pamphylia, Cilicia; add
Egypt: Osiris is the Memphite leader at 1294. But these regions were known to
Herodotus and indeed Homer. Nevertheless I hope to have shown that, although this
poem was composed in a particular area (S. Italy, I think),
116
some of the information
tying Lykophrons names to various and far-flung cult places is high-grade religious evi-
dence. In Lykophron the gods are Panhellenic, the epikleseis often local, even where
they do not actually take the form of ethnics.
A classic study by Sourvinou-Inwood explored the tension between Panhellenic and
local religion in S. Italian Lokroi.
117
She showed that in Lokroi, Persephones rape by
Hades caused her to exercise a marital function normally exercised by Aphrodite. How
do epikleseis in Lykophron throw light on or exemplify local versus Panhellenic reli-
gion? I end with Kassandra herself and her spouse, as she calls him, Agamemnon; in
what follows I am indebted to an important PhD dissertation by Giulia Biffis.
118
It
115
See P Oxy. 2528 and comm., with acknowledgment to Ed. Fraenkel. For the poem see Suppl.
Hell. 432 and Euphorion fr. 111 Lightfoot.
116
Epithets are said by to be domiciled in Magna Graecia (Loggatis from Sicily, Prophantos from
Thourioi) and Etruria. At 938 and 1410, a remarkable epithet to find in a Hellenistic
Greek poet is Ares (Tzetzes and Diod. 21.18.1); cf. also 1417 for Athena , and see
Lambin (n. 65), 269. The name derives from Oscan Mamers, i.e. Mars, who in the form
gave his name to the Mamertines, most famous in their incarnation as Campanian mercen-
aries, for whom see Diod. Sic. as above, and Pol. 1.8.1: 264 B.C. (The difficult question, whether
Lycoph. and Diod. drew on the same source here, and whether that source was Timaios, cannot be
gone into here. For Timaios as underlying Lycoph.s and see J. Geffcken,
Timaios Geographie des Westens [Berlin, 1892], 19 and 150, but without discussion of Diod. and
the wider Mamertine tradition.) The Mamertines made a nuisance of themselves in Sicily, and so pre-
cipitated the First Punic War. B. Caven, The Punic Wars (London, 1980), 9 calls them Martians. But
the Mamertines were older than this. In the sixth cent. B.C., the patronym of the poet Stesichoros of
Sicilian Himera a source surely used by Lycoph. was , according to the Suda ( 1095
Adler; other testimonia give variants of the same name). See D. Knoepfler, Was there an anthropo-
nymy of Euboian origin in the Chalkido-Eretrian colonies of the west and of Thrace?, in E. Matthews
(ed.), Old and New Worlds in Greek Onomastics (Oxford, 2007), 87119, at 100; also M. Davies and
P.J. Finglass, forthcoming ed. of and comm. on Stesichoros, kindly shown me by Prof. Finglass. The
at SEG 30.1121.278 (Sicilian Entella, early third cent. B.C.), is
equally interesting, whether is a personal name or a descriptor; see LGPN IIIA under
the name, and F. Costabile, Istituzioni e forme costituzionali nelle citt del Bruzio in et Romana
(Naples, 1984), 64, 66. A third-cent. B.C. Oscan inscription in Greek letters from Sicilian Messina
mentions the , which seems to be the citizen body of the Mamertines who took
over the city and perhaps renamed it: C. Cichorius, Rmische Studien (Leipzig, 1922), 601;
Costabile (above), 37, 52; J.H.W. Penney, CAH 4
2
, 733.
117
C. Sourvinou-Inwood, Persephone at Locri: a model for personality definitions in Greek reli-
gion, JHS 98 (1978), 10121 (revised version in Reading Greek Culture [Oxford, 1991], 14788).
118
G. Biffis, Cassandra and the female perspective in Lycophrons Alexandra (Diss., University
College, London, 2012, and soon, I hope, to be published as a monograph).
seems that what Sourvinou-Inwood argued for Persephone was also true of the cult paid,
on the evidence of 112640, to Kassandra herself in S. Italy, in Daunia (modern
N. Puglia); this episode is connected thematically to the Lokrian Maidens section
which immediately follows it. Lykophron never says explicitly that Kassandra received
cult in Sparta/Amyklai, but is surely well aware of the fact. The connection between
Daunia and Sparta runs via Taras/Tarentum, Spartas most famous historical colony.
Daunia is not far north of Taras, and contacts between Daunia and Taras were particu-
larly close;
119
in Lykophron, Kassandras Daunian cult is described straight after the
prophecy that Agamemnon will be called Zeus by crafty Spartans.
120
Alexandra is the only name the poet ever gives to Kassandra, 30 (the last line of the
guards preamble). Alex-andra, she who wards off men, is originally a military name,
the female equivalent of Alexandros, her brother Paris.
121
But it also evokes
Kassandras sexual rejection of Apollo, and Tzetzes explains it in terms of her virginity:
. Pausanias and Hesychios tell us that
Alexandra is an epiklesis of Kassandra at Sparta, in fact at nearby Amyklai. It is rightly
entered as such in Wentzels Appendix of epikleseis. Since Wentzel wrote, inscribed
sherds and plaques, found in excavations from the 1960s at Amyklai, confirm this:
- and -. There was, in fact, joint cult of Kassandra and Agamemnon.
122
The
cult was possibly chthonian.
123
Now, as we just saw, Kassandras spouse (,
1123), Agamemnon, was called Zeus at Sparta. He was perhaps divinized there only
as a function or adjunct of Kassandra, who seems interestingly to be the senior partner
in the joint cult. Kassandra was, in fact, heroized.
124
So the problem of Zeus
Agamemnon should not, as is usual, be treated separately from the heroine status of
Kassandra/Alexandra. Agamemnon is like Enyo, Eilythuia, Komyros or Derainos: a
minor local figure merged with a major one, in this case Zeus.
125
We have, then, an
adaptation of Panhellenic deities to local cultic purposes, compare Sourvinou-Inwood
119
See D.W. R[idgway], OCD
4
Daunia; E. Herring, Daunians, Peucetians and Messapians?
Societies and settlements in south-east Italy, in G. Bradley and E. Isager (edd.), Ancient Italy
(Exeter, 2007), 26894.
120
Agamemnon= Zeus: Lycoph. 335. Kassandras Agamemnon will be called Zeus by
Spartans, , 1124, cf. FGrH 269 Staphylos (Hellenistic?) F
8, quoted by Clement of Alexandria. [Arist.] Mir. ausc. 106 attests cult for the Atreidai (i.e.
Agamemnon and Menelaos, king of Sparta) at S. Italian Taras. See also Lycoph. 136970 for
Agamemnon as Zeus Lapersios, who comes down like a thunderbolt (n. 82). The epithet Lapersios
is difficult, but must indicate Sparta (not Attica, as says), cf. 511 for the Dioskouroi as
. See Wentzel 5.32.
121
A scholiast on Pind. Nem. 9.30 (= FGrH 131 Menaichmos of Sikyon F 10) has been taken to
indicate the existence of a Hera Alexandros, i.e. protector of men (see e.g. Usener 1767), but the text
is unsound; the goddess should be Hera Alea, see Drachmanns ed., citing A. Mommsen.
122
Kassandra = Alexandra (Lycoph. 30) in Sparta: Hesych.; Paus. 3.19.6; 3.26.5. Temple of
Alexandra at Amyklai: Syll.
3
632 lines 1415 (second or first cent. B.C.); BCH 85 (1961) 688, fifth
cent. B.C. sherds with -; G. Salapata, Myth into cult: Alexandra/Kassandra in Lakonia, in
V. Gorman and E.W. Robinson (edd.), Oikistes: Studies in Constitutions, Colonies and Military
Power in the Ancient World offered in Honor of A. J. Graham (Leiden, 2002), 13155, esp. 1412
(reporting finds in the 1950s and 1960s, and again in 1998).
123
G. Salapata, Female triads on Laconian terracotta plaques, ABSA 104 (2009), 32540 for pla-
ques with snakes on (late sixth to early fourth cents. B.C.).
124
See J. Larson, Greek Heroine Cults (Madison, WI, 1995), 834. Compare the situation of Helen
and Menelaos at Therapne near Sparta, where the older dedications (for which see SEG 26.4579, 28.
407) are to Helen; cf. M. West, The Hesiodic Catalogue of Women (Oxford, 1985), 157 and n. 69.
125
Compare Poseidon Erechtheus or Zeus Aristaios Ikmios on Keos, for whom see Callim. fr.
75.334 Pf. with Harder (n. 39), 2.61516, cf. 687 for Artemis Neleis (?) at fr. 80.1617 Pf.
on Lokrian Persephone; and the adaptation is expressed in epikleseis for which
Lykophron and scholia are the chief, but not the only, literary sources (n. 120 for
Staphylos). For the Amyklaian location, Lykophron seems to have followed Pindar,
Pythian 11. In Pindar, who was himself perhaps following Stesichoros, the killing of
Agamemnon and Kassandra by Klytemnestra happened at Amyklai, not at Mykenai
as in Homer, or Argos as in Aeschylus Agamemnon.
But there is a further and Italian aspect to the cult of Kassandra. It is in this Italian,
but (via Taras) Spartan-influenced, aspect that the marriage rejector Alexandra comes
into her own: Lykophron makes Kassandra predict that she herself will be given pre-
marital cult by girls in Daunia who wish to avoid marriage because of some blemish
in their suitors (112641, esp. 11314). But their repugnance is surely temporary and
simulated. In other words, Kassandra is initiatory in both Sparta where she wards
off men and in Italy: by a familiar sort of reversal, the mythical female who rejects
marriage becomes its patron.
126
IX. CONCLUSION
We must finally try to understand why these place-specific epikleseis are there in such
quantities. Only a few clusters can be explained contextually as borrowing the idiom of
prayers; and hymns are not relevant to our sombre poem. I suggest that, for the erudite
listeners who grasped even some of the allusions, they gave the poem a truly
Mediterranean-wide flavour, and that this was the poets intention. They emphasize
the exuberant variety of local Greek cults alongside the Panhellenic. The Alexandra
is essentially a colonial poem (a poem about colonization, and surely also a poem com-
posed in a Greek colonial setting), and is rich in historically authentic cultic material
across a wide geographical extension; such at any rate has been the main thesis of
this paper. Like the cults in Apollonios Rhodios (see e.g. 4.1770, ),
the cults are often explicitly said to survive to the poets day. Thus Lykophron predicts
cult of Diomedes at 630, and of the Siren Parthenope at 720; a torch race, also for
Parthenope, founded by an Athenian general at Naples at 734 (his name was
Diotimos, and the foundation is confirmed by the pre-eminent early Hellenistic historian
of the west, Timaios);
127
oracular cult of Odysseus in Aitolian Eurytania at 799 (com-
pare Arist. fr. 508 Rose); funerary cult of Philoktetes at 9279; an oracular and healing
cult of Podaleirios at 10512;
128
cult at Hekabes cenotaph in Sicily (11814); and
Theban cult of Hektor at 121213.
129
For the enduring cults of Kassandra and
126
See M. Mari, Cassandra e le altre: riti di donne nell Alessandra di Licofrone, in clats, 405
40, at 4212; Biffis (n. 118).
127
FGrH 566 F 98. For Diotimos in the west, see Thuc. 1.45.2 with ML 61 line 9: he is son of
Strombichos, and an Athenian commander of reinforcements sent to Kerkyra in the late 430s B.C.
His Neapolitan activity may have taken place somewhat earlier. Cf. above, p. 93. For Odysseus in
Eurytania see Rohde (n. 8), 133 and n. 97.
128
Some of these western cult sites can be traced archaeologically: I.E.M. Edlund, The sacred
geography of southern Italy in Lycophrons Alexandra, Op.Rom. 16 (1987), 439. But that is the sub-
ject for a different inquiry; cf. n. 8 for Anios at Delos.
129
Above, n. 49. This cult is intriguing; as far as we can see, it featured in no Attic tragedy, or in
Pindar, and it has been ingeniously suggested (Schachter, Cults 1.234) that it is connected with
Kassandros refoundation of Thebes in 316 B.C. (Diod. Sic. 19.534 and Syll.
3
337). If so, we
might recall that Kassandros hated Alexander the Great, who had sacked the city in 335 B.C., and
that Alexander emulated Hektors killer Achilles another sacker of cities, including Thebe, home
Agamemnon, see above. But whereas Apollonios excuse or narrative device for includ-
ing this far-flung cultic material is the epic voyage of the one ship, the Argo,
Lykophrons main organizing principle is provided by a long series of individual nostoi
or failed nostoi. Modern experts on myths of colonial identity, who seek to apply net-
work theory to the Mediterranean world, might make still further progress by exploring
and exploiting, in detail, Lykophrons splendid collection of epikleseis. At all events,
the poem uses ascertainably real divine epithets, because the poet was describing a
real and endlessly varied and interconnected Mediterranean world of cult and
myth.
130
The Alexandra deserves to be treated as much more than a literary puzzle.
All Souls College, Oxford SIMON HORNBLOWER
simon.hornblower@all-souls.ox.ac.uk
city of Hektors wife Andromache (Il. 6.41516). Is there a clue in the city names? For Homer,
Boiotian Thebes is also Thebe, singular. Only Egyptian Thebes is plural. Perhaps a kinship link,
between the two places called Thebe, was devised as justification for the transfer.
130
See Eidinow (n. 21) for Greek religion as a network.

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