#boiotia

[lionofchaeronea]

Ancient Greek terracotta statuette of a pig. Artist unknown; early 5th cent. BCE. From Boeotia; now in the Walters Art Museum, Baltimore. Photo credit: Walters Art Museum.

[lost-and-found-in-greece]

Boeotia, Greece

[seamusicpoetry]

Dilesi,Boiotia,Greece

[theancientwayoflife]

~ Bowl with spout and three handles.

Place of origin: Boiotia, Greece

Medium: Ceramic, Black figure

• From the source: The myth of Perseus and Medusa. Side A: Two Poseidons, Gogons, headless Medusa, Pegasus. Side B: Two Perseuses, Athena. Athena with spear, crested helmet, and shield. The inscription "ASPIS" (shield), on shield. Modern incisions on heads of Poseidon and Perseus, their baskets, the head of Athena, and her shield. Base is missing.

[nehetisingsforhekate]

Obscure Gods: Trophonios

Trophonios was a Hero, and sometimes spoken of as a God, who lived in Boiotia, near Lebadeia. He was swallowed by the earth and became a daimon and an oracle. His father was either the King Erginus or Apollo. His brother, Agamedes, and he built the temple to Apollo at Delphi.

Herodotus speaks a few times of Trophonios, in sharing the stories of some of his prophecies. There we learn the Kroisos sought to test the oracle, and if it proved true, he would come to Trophonios to explore going to war against Persia. We also hear that a man named Mys bribed a man to seek the cave of Trophonios, but not what was asked, nor a clear reason why.

In Clouds, Aristophanes mentions honey-cake being offered to the oracle, for the sacred serpents who lived there.

Pausanias talks about Arisomene’s visiting the shrine, and dedicating a shield to Trophonios. He is also the one who tells us that it is Apollo who fathered the hero, and that he was most clever in building sanctuaries and palaces. With his brother, they built a treasury, with a stone that could be moved from the outside which was not easily spotted. Day by day the treasury seemed undisturbed, while the contents were slowly disappearing. So it was that Trophonios set up a trap, and caught his brother committing the theft. Trophonios killed his brother for the act, whereupon the earth in the grove at Lebadeia swallowed the Hero at the pit of Agamedes.

The cave is said to be the source of the local river, and has serpents coiled around scepters therein. Praxiteles is said to have made the icon of Trophonios, after the likeness of Asklepios (which has led some scholars to speculate that Trophonios also carried healing connotations). To reach the cavern, one must climb a mountain path to a place called Kore’s Hunting. Then one must stay for a certain number of days, in service to Agathos Daimonos and Tykhe, taking a ritual bath in the river, and making sacrifices to Trophonios and his descendants, to Apollo, Kronos, Zeus Basileus, Hera the Charioteer, and Demeter Europa (who was the nurse to Trophonios). A diviner performed haruspex (divination from the liver/entrails of the sacrifices) thus performed. Rams were most fortuitous for the rituals. The oracle is beyond the grove, and one must descend, honey-cakes in hand, in order to attain the insights. After ascending, the seeker would be set upon a special chair, the chair of Memory (Mnemosyne), and tell the priests of what they had seen and heard. Each supplicant would then dedicate a tablet to the shrine recording the oracle. Pausanias says that he himself underwent the rites of Trophonios. One wonders if the Mysteries of Trophonios’ initiation had a similar process.

Pausanias also tells us that sometimes Trophonios is Zeus Trophonios. A surviving inscription makes mention of a priest of Zeus Trophonios, and Strabo and Livy call the oracle at Lebadea in Boiotia that of Zeus Trophonios. The polis also hosted games called Trophonia, dedicated to Zeus and Hera.

Is Trophonios a God? A Hero? A spirit? We may never know, but we know that for the people of Boiotia, his oracle was important and drew many supplicants to participate in the local chthonic cultus. What it would have been like, to work through the process described by Pausanias, we may never know.

Will our community develop oracles some time in the future? I know there are some who claim to be such, but I remain reluctant to put much stock in them, for hubris seems a likely trap on that path.

Sources:

Theoi.com

Johnston, Sarah Iles. Ancient Greek Divination. Wiley & Sons, 2009. Ogden, Daniel. Aristomenes of Messene: Legends of Sparta’s Nemesis, Classical Press, 2004. Pausanias, Description of Greece, Vol. 5 Macmillan, 1913. Vandiver, Elizabeth. Heroes in Herodotus: the interaction of myth and history. Peter Lang, 1991. Weinberg, Florence M. The Cave: the Evolution of a Metaphoric Field from Homer to Ariosto. Lang, 1980.

Images:

Gandy, Joseph. “Colossal statue of Zeus in the ancient Greek city of Lebadeia (modern Livadeia).” 1819. Now in the Tate Gallery. Via wikicommons: https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Jupiter_Pluvius,_ancient_Greek_city_of_Lebadeia,_1819,_Joseph_Gandy.jpg

[theancientwayoflife]

~ Female mourner.

Culture: Greek

Period: Archaic Period

Date: ca. 575 B.C.

Place of origin: Greece, Boiotia

Medium: Terracotta, Painted

[lionofchaeronea]

Boeotian terracotta statue of a woman with a hat.  Artist unknown; 4th or 3rd cent. BCE.  Now in the Staatliche Antikensammlungen, Munich.  Photo credit: Matthias Kabel/Wikimedia Commons.

[aboutanancientenquiry]

Salvatore Tufano on Herodotus and the deux Béoties

In this talk from the Spring 2024 edition of the Herodotus Helpline seminar, Dr Salvatore Tufano (Liceo Classico Giulio Cesare, Roma) explores Herodotus' rich presentation of Boiotia, a region which faced considerable changes before, during and after the Greco-Persian Wars. In the latter part of the talk, Dr Tufano also considers how Herodotus' account can enrich our understanding of Thucydides' presentation of the region of Boiotia.

From the youtube channel of Herodotus Helpline.