#argive heraion

[amiigrowsinbrooklyn]

Greece - 2017

[deathlessathanasia]

View of Chapter 7 Following the Local Traces of the (Argive?) Games in Honor of Hera

[deathlessathanasia]

“Despite Homer’s Panhellenizing tendencies, he recognizes Hera’s regional character as goddess of the Argive peninsula, giving her the epithet Hera Argeia (e.g. Il. 4.8). In historical times she became the city-goddess of Argos itself, and her Argive sanctuary was the most venerable and famed center of her worship. Her festival there, known as the Heraia or Hekatombaia (Sacrifice of one hundred Oxen), was held in the first month of the year. A grand procession escorted the priestess, who rode in an ox-drawn wagon from the city to the sanctuary several miles distant. The youth recognized as most virtuous carried a sacred shield in the procession, marking his and his age-mates’ transition to adulthood and warrior status. After the procession, there were athletic competitions for which the prize was, again, a bronze shield. Hera’s cult at Argos shows a preoccupation with two aspects of the Argolid’s prosperity: the herds of cattle on which its wealth was based, and its military might. Terracotta figurines from the Heraion indicate that Hera was also viewed as a kourotrophic deity, one who nourished and protected the young. Often she is shown holding a child in her lap. Sometimes she holds not a child but a horse, an emblem of aristocratic privilege. Hera’s cult seems to have been closely bound up with the efforts of the early Archaic Argives to define their relationship with the heroic past.

The Argive Heraion was constructed over the remains of a Mycenaean settlement, but there is no clear evidence of continuity of cult from the Bronze Age to the ninth century, when activity at the Heraion becomes archaeologically visible. Around 700, a terrace was built using huge “Cyclopean” blocks in imitation of the Bronze Age architectural style, and shortly thereafter a temple of stone and wood with a colonnade was added. This Archaic structure was not superseded by a newer temple until the fifth century, when the sanctuary was transformed from a rallying center for the towns in the region to a symbol of the power of Argos, by then the dominant city. . . . It possessed sculptures depicting not myths of Hera herself, but subjects of interest to the Argives: the birth of Zeus, the battle of the gods and giants, the Trojan war, and the saga of Orestes. In Pausanias’ time, one entered the temple after walking through a series of statues of the former priestesses (styled kleidouchoi or Keyholders), whose tenures provided a chronological framework for the city’s history. The list of priestesses was already ancient in the fifth century, when Hellanicus (FGrH4 F 74–82) used it as the basis for an account of the Greeks from the Trojan war to his own day.

The cult image of the Classical period was a famous one by Polykleitos, fashioned of gold and ivory over a wood core. The seated goddess held a scepter and a pomegranate, symbols of temporal power and fertility. A more ancient wooden image must have existed, but presumably was destroyed when the Archaic temple burned in 423/2. When Pausanias (2.17.3) visited the temple, he saw a venerable image of pearwood taken from nearby Tiryns, another ancient Heraian cult center, which the Argives had installed on a pillar beside Polykleitos’ statue. The pillar itself may have held special significance, for a fragment of the Argive epic Phoronis (fr. 3 Davies, EGF) describes Hera’s priestess adorning “the high column of the Olympian queen, Hera Argeia” with fillets and tassels. Another item of interest in the temple was the “couch of Hera,” a symbol of Hera’s status as the bride of Zeus.

The Asterion river near the Heraion was regarded as the father of Hera’s three nurses, the nymphs Akraia, Prosymna and Euboia, who were named after features of the sanctuary’s topography. Local tradition, therefore, held that Argos was Hera’s birthplace. Women conducted secret rituals at the Heraion, involving purifications, sacrifices, and the offering of garlands twined from a local herb also called asterion. The women wove a robe for Hera, as they did at Olympia, first taking a ritual bath in the waters of the spring or well called Amymone. The hundreds of miniature water vessels (hudriai) from the excavations further attest the importance of water in these activities. Perhaps the ritual involved a bath for Hera’s image; a legend describing how Hera took an annual bath to restore her virginity was attached to the spring Kanathos in nearby Nauplia. The “water of freedom” of the stream Eleutherion, near the Heraion, was used for the women’s secret rites, and was also drunk by slaves and prisoners about to be emancipated.”

 - Ancient Greek Cults: A Guide by Jennifer Larson 

[deathlessathanasia]

“In the Classical period, at least after 460 BC, when Argos regained regional hegemony, the Argive Heraion is incontestably one of the clearest examples of a great rural sanctuary where the sovereignty of a city, Argos, is made manifest, through the monumental buildings and the most solemn celebration of civic festivals accompanied by famous games. The political situation is clear: Argos has forcibly subjugated Mycenae, Tiryns, and Nauplion, and rules over an undivided region. The axis, or at least symbolic axis (for the material traces remain uncertain), described by joining the sanctuary and the dominant city, the political centre of the region, traces a diagonal line across the plain which forms the heart of Argive territory, and the city on one side with its acropolis, and the Heraion on the other, like a beacon hung on the rising ground, flank and overlook the plain. But this schema cannot be applied just like that to the Geometric era, when the hierarchy of settlement sites was very different and during which their relations cannot be analysed in terms as abrupt as confrontation or submission, sovereignty or exclusion. Indeed, in the ninth century, Argos, for all that it was probably already a little more populous and its aristocracy a little more wealthy and more powerful than that of other small towns in the plain, was far from having gained the position of leadership which it would have in the Archaic period. The first traces of cult which can be detected at the Heraion perhaps go back to this period, but this rural, even rustic, cult place (no settlement of any importance seems to have been established there or in the vicinity at that time), which had no notable building, cannot be considered to be exclusively or even principally Argive at that time. Its 'half-way house' position suggests, on the contrary, that it should be seen as a meeting point, a place where the communities which surrounded it gathered, and might even suggest a particular link with Mycenae, which is connected to the site of Prosymna by a Bronze Age paved road.”

 - François de Polignac, Mediation, Competition, and Sovereignty: The Evolution of Rural Sanctuaries in Geometric Greece (Placing the Gods: Sanctuaries and Sacred Space in Ancient Greece)

[archaicwonder]

New Temple, Argive Heraion, Argos, Greece

The Argive Heraion or Heraion of Argos was part of the greatest sanctuary in the Argolid, dedicated to Hera, whose epithet "Argive Hera" appears in Homer's works. Hera herself claims to be the protector of Argos in Iliad (IV, 50–52): "The three towns I love best are Argos, Sparta and Mycenae of the broad streets." According to a legend recorded by Dictys of Crete, Agamemnon was chosen at the Heraion to lead the Argives against Troy. Earliest finds at the site date to the Geometric period (900-700 BC), during which the Iliad was composed.

The entire sanctuary occupies 3 artificial terraces below Mt. Euboea and has a commanding view of the Argive plain. The New Temple, on the middle terrace, was built by Eupolemos of Argos after the Old Temple was burned down in 423 BC.

The ruins of the Heraion lie northeast of Argos between the archaeological sites of Mycenae and Midea, two important Mycenaean cities.

[archaicwonder]

Argive Heraion: Cyclopean Terrace by diffendale on Flickr.

Cyclopean masonry is a term used to describe a type of megalithic architecture entailing the working of unusually large blocks of stone, often for the construction of fortifications. The term was coined by Greeks in the Classical Age, reflecting the belief that only the Cyclops, gigantic, one-eyed creatures of myth, could have been strong enough to manipulate stones so immense.

This is best demonstrated by the Cyclopean Terrace (900 – 700 BCE) at the Argive Heraion, one of many temples constructed at the edge of a Greek city-state, possibly as a means of defining its territory. This terrace is unlike any other architecture from this period. It is Cyclopean, constructed from blocks of stone two meters tall and more quarried from a large stone outcrop behind the terrace, and could be seen from Larissa in Argos.