UMKC Ancient Greek Initiatory Rites Compelling Social Conformity Essay The paper should be 3 pages, double-spaced, 11- or 12-point font, with default margi

UMKC Ancient Greek Initiatory Rites Compelling Social Conformity Essay The paper should be 3 pages, double-spaced, 11- or 12-point font, with default margins.Your paper must have a clear and specific thesis statement and argue for that thesis statement in a step-by-step, paragraph by paragraph fashion. Follow the guidance in the attached 3-page paper checklist.Your argument should be supported with at least 4 quotations and/or citations from the text, although you may of course cite the text more often (as often as is necessary). Following your quotation, use a parenthetical citation with the page number, like so: (25). If the quotation is not from Maurizio’s own language, indicate the original author, like so: (Bascom 25). If available, please cite by line number. For instance, you can cite the Homeric Hymn to Apollo by line number as follows: (HHAp.123).The paper revolves around this question: “”Do you think that initiatory rites and myths connected with Artemis and Apollo in ancient Greece compelled social conformity? Why or why not?” 09-Maurizio-Chap08.indd 334
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CHAPTER
8
Artemis and Apollo
[In 1304] A certain boy in the region of Hesse was seized. This boy, as was
known afterwards, and just as the boy told it himself, was taken by wolves
when he was three years old and raised up wondrously. For, whatever prey
the wolves snatched for food, they would take the better part and allot it to
him to eat as they lay around a tree. In the time of winter and cold, they
made a pit, and they put the leaves of trees and other plants in it, and
placed them on the boy, surrounding him to protect him from the cold;
they also compelled him to creep on hands and feet and to run with them
for a long time. . . . When he was seized, he was bound with wood to
compel him to go erect in a human likeness.
—From The Chronicle of the Benedictine
Monastery of Saint Peter of Erfurt
T
he haunting tale of the boy from Hesse, found in an anonymous chronicle (c. fourteenth century ce) from a German monastery, is an early
European example of the almost universal lore about “feral” children—nearly
wild children who were said to have lived among animals in woods, forests,
and jungles. The story of the Hessian boy recalls a well-known ancient myth
about wild children: that of the brothers Romulus and Remus, the founders
of Rome, who, like the boy from Hesse, were raised by a she-wolf. Such stories
have been shared, collected, and studied since ancient times because of the
< 8.1 (OPPOSITE): Apollo holds a lyre as Artemis draws her bow. Red-figure lekythos. Villa Giulia Painter, c. 540 bce. Ashmolean Museum / The Art Archive at Art Resource, NY, AA566708. 09-Maurizio-Chap08.indd 335 08/10/15 3:01 PM 336 CHAPTER 8 Artemis and Apollo THE ESSENTIALS ARTEMIS AND APOLLO ARTEMIS (Diana), Ἄρτεμις APOLLO (Apollo), Ἀπόλλων PARENTAGE Zeus and the goddess Leto PARENTAGE Zeus and the goddess Leto OFFSPRING None OFFSPRING Asclepius (with Coronis); Linus and ­Orpheus (with Calliope, a Muse); and many others ATTRIBUTES Bow, quiver, wild animals (especially deer) SIGNIFICANT CULT TITLES • Lochia (Protector of Women in Labor) • Potnia Theron (Mistress of Animals) • Agrotera (Of the Wilds) SIGNIFICANT RITUALS AND SANCTUARIES • The Brauronia An initiation ritual for young girls before marriage that took place in Brauron, a region east of Athens. • Ephesus The provincial capital of the Roman Empire on the coast of Anatolia, where the Ephesian Artemis was patron goddess. • Sanctuary of Artemis Orthia The location of initiations for adolescent boys, near Sparta. ATTRIBUTES Beardless, long-haired, bow, quiver, lyre, laurel branch SIGNIFICANT CULT TITLES • Catharsius (Purifier) • Musagetes (Leader of the Muses) • Paean (Healer) • Pythian (Pythian) SIGNIFICANT RITUALS AND SANCTUARIES • Delos The island where Leto gave birth to Apollo and Artemis; there Apollo had a sanctuary and an annual festival in his honor. • Delphi An oracular shrine in central Greece where Apollo, through his priestesses the Pythias, dispensed oracles. • The Hyacinthia An initiation ritual for young boys near Sparta and a neighboring town, Amyclae. questions they raise about human nature. Are human children so pliable that their bodies and minds may be molded by whomever—or whatever—rears them? Does nature or nurture shape human development? Are affinities between human beings and animals deeper and more abiding than “civilized” culture acknowledges? Ancient myths and modern tales of feral children alike address, albeit in different ways, the shifting boundaries between nature and culture, between animals and humans, in the process of defining human identity. Anxieties about these boundaries can be detected in the adolescent initiation ceremonies of ancient Greece, in particular those ceremonies connected with Artemis and Apollo. 8.1 HISTORY FROM ADOLESCENCE TO ADULTHOOD The gods, of course, were imagined as ageless. But Apollo and Artemis, as the children of Zeus and the goddess Leto, were seen as especially youthful. They do not mature but rather maintain their youthful identity as siblings; 09-Maurizio-Chap08.indd 336 08/10/15 3:01 PM 8.1 history: From Adolescence to Adulthood as such, they are charged with helping young Greeks make the fraught transition from childhood to maturity. In this chapter, we first examine the spheres of influence of each sibling, apart from his or her role in initiation rituals. We focus on Artemis’s association with wild animals, young girls, and childbirth; turning to Apollo, we examine his association with music, poetry, medicine, and prophecy. Regarding their roles as initiatory deities, we consider how initiations associated with Artemis were designed to tame (or eradicate) what were believed to be the wild or even animal-like tendencies of girls, whereas initiations of boys under Apollo’s auspices more often were designed to cultivate the skills necessary for Greek adult males. Initiation rituals and observances convey Greek ideas about the differences between boys and girls in their relation to human culture and nature. Artemis and Apollo, in all their aspects, epitomize these differences. 337 8.2 Sacrifice of Iphigenia. Calchas, the priest, stands behind the altar next to Iphigenia, while Apollo (upper left, seated and holding a laurel branch) and Artemis (upper right, holding her bow), watch the proceedings. Detail from an Apuleian red-figure volute krater. Kinship with the Iliupersis Painter, c. fourth century bce. © The Trustees of the British Museum / Art Resource, NY, ART497993. ARTEMIS Among the Olympian goddesses, three were eternal virgins: Athena, Hestia, and Artemis. The character of Artemis’s virginity, however, is different from that of Athena and Hestia. Hestia, the goddess of the hearth, is associated with domestic space or city centers. She stands for the integrity of the household in which she resides, and more specifically of the wife of the household. Athena’s virginity marks her distance from the domestic sphere of women, allowing her the freedom to associate with men and involve herself with masculine concerns. An urban goddess, Athena has no connection with nature or the outdoors. Artemis’s virginity, on the other hand, forges a connection between her and the nymphs with whom she is frequently depicted. These nymphs are the mythical counterparts to the mortal young girls who worshipped Artemis in rituals devoted to her. Artemis’s virginity associates her closely with the life cycle of young women. Finally, Artemis, unlike Athena and Hestia, haunts the forests and open spaces outside cities, houses, and cultivated fields. She keeps company with wild and undomesticated animals. Wild Animals, Young Girls, and Childbirth In his epics, Homer refers to Artemis as Potnia Theron (Mistress of Animals) and Agrotera (Of the Wilds). 09-Maurizio-Chap08.indd 337 08/10/15 3:01 PM 338 CHAPTER 8 Artemis and Apollo Both titles describe Artemis’s connection to wild animals (not domesticated animals or livestock) who dwell in the forests and the mountains where she roams. Among wild animals, bears often appear in myths and rituals associated with Artemis, whereas deer are most precious to her. Yet, paradoxically, Artemis is also often depicted with a bow in her hand or a quiver of arrows on her back (Figure 8.2). Her bow is not a weapon of war but a tool of the hunt. Thus Artemis is represented as both protecting and hunting animals in the wild. Artemis is often portrayed as leading groups of nymphs in song or dance, and protecting their virginity as well as her own. In one of the more famous stories of Artemis’s fierce protection of herself and her nymphs, the hunter Actaeon, in pursuit of game, accidentally sees Artemis and her female followers bathing together in the woods. Angered that she has been violated by ­Actaeon’s gaze, Artemis turns him into a stag, and he is then attacked and killed by his own pack of hunting dogs. Whereas written accounts emphasize that Artemis makes Actaeon’s own dogs unwittingly kill their beloved master, many depictions equate Actaeon’s dogs with Artemis’s arrows: both animals and arrows are at her disposal, and both are equally lethal (Figure 8.12). When a hunter, Orion, attempts to rape Artemis (or, in some accounts, her companion Opis), Artemis kills him directly with her arrows. In other versions, however, Orion is a beloved hunting companion of Artemis who carelessly provokes Hera or Gaia with his boasts about his abilities to hunt and bring down all the earth’s animals. As punishment for his pride, Hera (or Gaia, depending on the telling) sends a scorpion to kill him. In these stories, a grieving Artemis (or Zeus at her behest) transforms Orion into a constellation of stars set in the heavens near the constellation Scorpio. In a variation on this group of myths, an attempted act of sexual violence against a nymph provokes Artemis to punish the female victim, not her attacker. For example, when Zeus impregnates Callisto, a female follower of Artemis, Artemis observes that Callisto is pregnant and turns Callisto into a bear. In some versions, Hera transforms Callisto into a bear out of jealous anger; in other versions, Zeus transforms Callisto to protect her from Hera’s wrath. When Callisto’s son Arcas goes hunting in the woods and is about to kill Callisto (who, as a bear, is unrecognizable to him), Zeus transforms her into the constellation Ursa Major (Latin for “big bear”). In some versions, ­Artemis kills Callisto deliberately with her arrows, whereas in others ­Callisto’s death at Artemis’s hands is accidental. Artemis, grieving, then transforms Callisto into the constellation Ursa Major, just as she had transformed (or caused the transformation of) Orion. Taken together, these conflicting versions suggest the difficulties of determining whether Artemis’s actions are offered as protection or punishment. Artemis appears both benevolent and cruel to the young girls in 09-Maurizio-Chap08.indd 338 08/10/15 3:01 PM 8.1 history: From Adolescence to Adulthood 339 her retinue, just as she seems to the wild animals that surround her. The meaning of Artemis’s actions in myth becomes more apparent from the perspective of Artemis’s oversight of transitional moments in women’s lives: the initiation of girls, rituals before marriage, and childbirth. Artemis is called Lochia (Protector of Women in Labor), and her own birth illustrates this feature of her character. Angry with Zeus for philandering, Hera would not let any land receive Leto when she was pregnant with Apollo and Artemis. Eventually the small island of Delos in the Aegean allowed Leto to deliver her children on its land. Born first, Artemis then helped Leto give birth to Apollo. All three had temples on the island. Archaeologists have found a cache of especially precious offerings in Artemis’s Delian sanctuary; Apollo was worshipped there in an annual festival that involved athletic competitions and choral performances for young boys and girls. As helpful as Artemis was imagined to be in her role as Lochia, she was also said to shoot women in labor with her “gentle arrows,” wounding or even killing them. In the Iliad, Hera says that Zeus made Artemis a “lion among women” and allows her to kill whomever of them she pleases (21.483). These gentle arrows of Artemis may have been used to explain the high mortality rate in childbirth (of mother and baby alike) in antiquity. This gentle yet lethal role is reflected in her attentions to nymphs, who represent the young women whom Artemis stands beside during other transitional moments. Even if these moments were not as dangerous as childbirth, Artemis, striking her charges with her gentle arrows, nonetheless appears to have two aspects, benevolent and cruel. Such is the case in the myth of Hippolytus and his associated ritual for brides before their marriage. 8.3 Hippolytus attacked by Poseidon. As Hippolytus (accompanied by an elderly servant) drives his chariot, Poseidon’s bull and a Fury attack, causing the horses to rear up and kill Hippolytus. Detail from a redfigured volute-krater. Darius Painter, c. 340 bce. © The Trustees of the British Museum / Art Resource, NY, ART375622. 09-Maurizio-Chap08.indd 339 08/10/15 3:01 PM 340 CHAPTER 8 Artemis and Apollo Hippolytus in Myth and Ritual A myth concerning Hippolytus—one of ­Artemis’s adolescent male worshippers—and a ritual for brides that Artemis establishes in his honor offers a way to understand how Artemis attends to her devotees. In his play Hippolytus (c. 428 bce), Euripides depicts Hippolytus as a young man, a virgin and a hunter who prefers the woods and the company of other young men to the city and the demands of adulthood. Hippolytus hoped to remain forever under the auspices of Artemis and never mature into a married man and warrior. But Aphrodite, angered by his refusal to acknowledge her spheres of love and marriage, causes Hippolytus’s stepmother Phaedra to fall in love with him. When Phaedra tells Hippolytus that she loves him, her confession forces him to acknowledge the power of love and thereby abandon his youthful devotion to Artemis. After being rejected by Hippolytus, Phaedra falsely accuses him of rape, provoking her husband, Theseus (Hippolytus’s father), to curse his son and cause his violent death: he is torn apart and trampled by his own horses when they are spooked by a bull sent by Poseidon (Figure 8.3). At the close of the play, Artemis promises Hippolytus that young women in his hometown of Map 8.1 Artemis and Apollo 0 miles 300 150 300 SCYTHIA ne s 150 nis pa Hy 0 km ys B or the Ta MAEOTIS a Hyp nis ube Dan Ax i BLACK SEA us COLCHIS P ha THRACE s Hal y P Samos Crete Cyprus 09-Maurizio-Chap08.indd 340 m us ANATOLIA xes y ra an ra Orontes d er Me sis A Lesbos Delphi Aulis Athens Epidauros Brauron Delos Sparta Troezen Amcylae is na LEVANT MESOPOTAMIA 08/10/15 3:01 PM 8.1 history: From Adolescence to Adulthood Troezen will cut their hair and sing laments for him before they marry. (In other versions of this myth, Artemis rescues Hippolytus and installs him as a king or as a temple servant in Aricia, in Italy.) At first glance, this wedding ritual seems paradoxical because it requires young brides to commemorate Hippolytus’s virginal devotion to Artemis (and, perhaps, his rejection of Aphrodite) and to mourn his death. Yet, if ­Hippolytus represents the youthful virginity and devotion to Artemis that young girls must relinquish on marriage, then lamenting his death could be seen as a way for girls to recognize and ritually mourn the end of their own youth and virginity. Moreover, the violence and sorrow attached to Hippolytus’s death allows a young bride to address her conflicting emotions on her marriage: once she is transferred from her father’s household to her husband’s, she forever leaves behind her natal family. Hippolytus’s myth and the Troezen ritual, then, connect mythic transformation and death with the losses that adolescents experience when they must enter into a new stage of their lives. Artemis oversees this moment that is both joyful and sorrowful; thereby she herself appears both cruel and benevolent, and her roles as protector and punisher seem to overlap. Such is the case in all initiation rites under Artemis’s tutelage. 341 8.4 Young girl running at Brauron. Fragment of an Attic krater. Greece, fifth century bce. Archaeological Museum of Brauron, Brauron, Greece. Gianni DagliOrti/The Art Archive at Art Resource, NY, AA389360. Girls’ Initiations: The Brauronia The most important initiation that Artemis oversaw was at Brauron, a region due east of Athens on the Aegean coast. When girls were initiated at Brauron, they were described as “playing the bear” for Artemis in a ritual variously called the Brauronia, a title emphasizing the ritual’s location, or the Arcteia, a title that emphasizes the importance of bears in the worship of Artemis (arctos is Greek for “bear”). A foundation myth associated with Brauron describes how a tamed she-bear scratches a young girl with whom she is playing and then is killed by the girl’s brothers. Afterward, the Athenians become ill until an oracle advises them that in order to be cured they must make young girls “play the bear” for Artemis, who was angered over the death of the she-bear. This story not only explains why playing the bear was part of a ritual required of girls in Brauron but also equates the young girl with the she-bear: they play together until the she-bear draws blood from the girl (possibly representing menarche), at which point the bear is killed and also made to bleed. 09-Maurizio-Chap08.indd 341 08/10/15 3:01 PM 342 CHAPTER 8 Artemis and Apollo Archaeological evidence from the site at Brauron offers information about how girls played the bear for Artemis. A building structure with small rooms for sleeping suggests that girls stayed in Brauron, away from their families, during the festival. Small votive statues and vase paintings of young girls found at Brauron indicate that the age range of girls who played the bear was quite wide—perhaps from five to sixteen years, most certainly before they married (estimated to take place after the age of twelve and ideally between fourteen and sixteen years). Vases from Brauron also suggest what sorts of activities constituted playing the bear: girls ran, danced, and even offered their toys to the goddess (Figure 8.4). These actions prepared them in some essential way to become brides once they had departed from Brauron. Finally, a wall not open to public viewing in the dormitory had depressions in it where clothing might have been dedicated. This wall was most likely used for clothing worn during childbirth. These private dedications indicate Artemis’s oversight of childbirth and show that Brauron served f­ emales at other pivotal moments throughout their lives. In addition to the dormitory at Brauron, a small temple dedicated to ­Iphigenia was located at the site. Her story is most likely related to the Brauronia (Chapter 13.1). When Iphigenia’s father, Agamemnon, the great king of Mycenae who led the Greeks in the Trojan War, kills a deer sacred to Artemis on the shores of Aulis en route to Troy, Artemis refuses to let the winds blow, thus stranding Agamemnon’s fleet. The goddess demands that Agamemnon sacrifice his daughter to her before she will release the winds and the ships. There are many versions of what happens to Iphigenia at the altar: in some, she is slaughtered; in most versions, Artemis substitutes a deer and whisks Iphigenia to the land of the Taurians to become her priestess or even makes the girl immortal. In Iphigenia’s tale, then, she and the deer that substitutes for her are made symbolically equivalent (Figure 8.2). When girls played the bear at Brauron, they ritually enacted a similar equivalence. The suggestion, then, of these myths and their associated rituals is that girls (even if raised by their human parents) were still believed by the Greeks to be somehow animal-like: wild, undomesticated, and separate from the adult world, with its social responsibilities. They are in Artemis’s realm. The goddess accompanies them to their initiations, which are necessary to “tame” them and make them suitable members of human society. She protects them as they ritually enact the loss of their youth: the girls playing the bear symbolically die. In other words, the goal of Artemis’s initiation at Brauron is to help initiates give up (or kill off) that which is “wild” (free from adult restrictions) in their youthful selves. The mythical deaths or transformations (into a star or an animal) of young girls, then, capture the experience of an initiate who mu... Purchase answer to see full attachment