#hyakinthus

[sapocipo]

Nobody really talks about it but it is really funny how there is a version of the myth where Hyakinthus only exists because Aphrodite was mad at Kleio for showing disaproval towards her choice of boyfriend

[katerinaaqu]

Honestly the Lucian Dialogs of Gods (Dialogi Deorum) are so lively and so direct!

For instance here is the clip of the dialog between Hermes and Apollo! Apollo is grieving over the death of Hyakinthus!

Hermes: Why are you sad, Apollo? Apollo: Oh Hermes! I am so devastated! My beloved! Hermes: Ah that is worthy of sorrow indeed but whom are you grieving for? Are you sad about Daphne? Apollo: Not at all. I grieve for my lover (eromenos), the Laconian son of Oeballus Hermes: Don't tell me Hyakinthus died! Apollo: Very much so! Hermes: But who, Apollo, who could be so incapable of love so that to kill that beautiful boy?! Apollo: It was by my own hand! Hermes: Undoubtedly you must have gone mad, Apollo! Apollo: No I wasn't, it was an accident that happened without my will! Hermes: How? I want to hear the way! Apollo: He was learning how to throw the discus and I was throwing with him however Zephyr also loved him and he (Hyakinthus) was not interested and because Zephyr couldn't stand the insult when I threw, like we were used to, upwards he (Zephyr) blew over the mount Taygetos and it (the discus) flew towards the boy's head and so much blood flowed from the wound, immediately killing the boy! I attacked immediately Zephyr with my arrows and he ran away back to the mountains. However the boy I buried in a grave in Amyclae where the discus killed him and from his blood, oh Hermes, from his blood I made a beloved flower come out of the earth, the most beautiful flower of all and I wrote on it letters to mourn for the dead! Do you think now that I mourn unjustly? Hermes: Ah, Apollo you already knew you had chosen a mortal for your lover! Do not grieve now that he died!

(Translation by me)

I love how you can literally play the scene so simply! You just need two people. Apollo is crying devastated, Hermes notices and asks him what is going on wishing to hear the story. We also hear that the events with Daphne have passed now but also we see that Apollo grieves for his "eromenos". Hermes originally wonders who would do such a thing and then when Apollo reveals the truth Hermes assumes he was mad or something because who would dare to harm him?! (here again the concept of καλός καγαθός "beautiful and pure)

However after Apollo tells his sad story Hermes seems to drop the "logic bomb" here that Apollo made the choice of loving a mortal man that was destined to die anyways. Somehow not showing as much sympathy at the end of the story! In one way that seems to be the final punchline that in the end of the day the gods that wish to love mortals are already up for sorrows because mortals are destined to die anyways

However the way that we see in such a small piece of dialog how Hermes and Apollo interact; how Hermes is more insensitive while Apollo is grieving and taken over by emotion, we hear their "roles" in the relationship (erastes and eromenos), we hear the story of Zephyr being jealous of Hyakinthus for not returning his feelings, we see the immediate enraged reaction by Apollo and the way he buries the boy back at the place he was hit and also the dramatic details about the child's fate... And finally the Hyakinth flower that says to have the letters of YA (Υάκυνθος ) forming on the leaves I remember mentioning this to my Achilles and Patroclus analysis (I also mentioned it more to my reblogs with @likethexan ) and the way the clip seems to be influenced by the same pattern of rage and grief is really beautifully written!

The Lucian Dialogs are generally so great but the dialogs of gods have some great elements in them such as Zeus and Ganymedes or Hera to Zeus about Ganymedes!

[ophidian-whispers]

Hyakinthia

The Procession, it’s political influence in the spartan-athenian relationship and later academic interpretations of the festival

A lightly edited text taken from the book Cults of Apollo at Sparta.

According to Polykrates, the Lakonians celebrated the Hyakinthia for three days, certain prohibitions were imposed on the participants concerning the wearing of wreaths, the eating of bread and cakes and singing the paean because of the mourning of Hyakinthos. A sacrifice of a chthonic character was made to Hyakinthos within the altar of the sanctuary. In the middle of the celebration of the cult, however, the cult would change into a great spectacle with the participation of adolescents of both sexes. Choirs of boys and young men, sang and played the flute and the kithara. There were performances of dances of an archaic style, and some boys were riding horses. Girls were carried in specific chariots, and they also took part in horse-races. The whole city, i.e. Sparta was empty during the celebration and apart from the citizens, their acquaintances, and slaves, were entertained at the meals. A great number of sacrifices were made during this part of the cult.

Another notice in Athenaios of interest for the Hyakinthia is the mention of a road called 'Υάκινθος οδός (Hyakinthos Street). This road was probably used during the Hyakinthia for processions going from Sparta to Amyklai.

The second testimonium is Pausanias' description of the sanctuary of Apollo at Amyklai, where the Hyakinthia was celebrated. The sanctuary was shaped like a throne (or an enormous chair) in the middle of which was an altar that served as the base, for the column-shaped, semi-iconic image of Apollo.

Hyakinthos was said to be buried in the altar and Pausanias mentions a sacrifice that was made to Hyakinthos through a bronze door on the left side of the altar during the Hyakinthia. This altar was covered with reliefs depicting divine and heroic figures, among whom Hyakinthos and his sister, Polyboea, were represented.

Pausanias says that the women wove a chiton for Apollo every year. He does not explicitly mention the Hyakinthia in this passage, but it is generally accepted that the presentation of the cloth was made during the Hyakinthia. and that it was carried in a procession on the sacred road called Hyakinthis.

Historians mention the Hyakinthia in connection with warfare. Herodotos tells about the Athenians asking the Spartans for help in 479 BC and that the Spartans received the plea when they were celebrating the Hyakinthia. According to Thucydides a truce between the Athenians and the Spartans in 421 BC would be renewed every year, in Athens during the cult of Dionysia and in Sparta during the Hyakinthia. This notice together with a passage in Strabo, saying that the people's representatives were attending the Hyakinthia, confirms the official character of the cult in Sparta. In the biography of Agesilaus, Xenophon tells that the king, after a military expedition against the Argives, returned to Sparta to participate in the Hyakinthia and sing the paean to Apollo. In his Hellenika, Xenophon once again mentions the paean in connection with the Hyakinthia.

There is, then, a contradiction in the testimonia concerning the singing of the paean during the Hyakinthia, since Polykrates, in the above-mentioned passage in Athenaios, states that the paean was forbidden during the cult. A contradiction of a similar nature concerns the wearing of wreaths. According to Macrobius the Spartans wore wreaths of ivy during the Hyakinthia. These contradictions in the testimonia are due to the structure of the cult, as the author argues later on.

The earliest discussions of the Hyakinthia treat the cult in the light of the myth about young Hyakinthos being killed by a discus throw. The myth is explained by german scholar Georg Friedrich Schömann in his Griechische Alterthümer where the death of Hyakinthos is used as a nature allegory in which Hyakinthos impersonates the sprouting vegetation in spring, 'killed' by the heat of the summer. Apollo being the sender of this heat and the discus symbolizing the Sun. The rituals of sorrow during the first part of the Hyakinthia are interpreted as the sorrow felt for Hyakinthos as a symbol of the 'dying' vegetation. This pattern of interpretation is repeated in Unger's treatment of the cult, the first fairly detailed one. Unger's view of Apollo is of him being a sun-god, the god of daylight and the strong heat of the summer. Hyakinthos was a weakened aspect of Apollo, and his death symbolized the end of spring and the beginning of summer.

A recent discussion of the Hyakinthia by Dietrich, published in 1975, interprets Hyakinthos as a Divine Child. In Dietrich's view, the Hyakinthia was an apotropaic cult of the dead connected with Apollo in his aspect of Apotropaios and Alexikakos, averter of evils. Dietrich discerns three stages in the development of the cult, a pre-Dorian Minoan-Mycenaean stage, a Dorian, and an Apolline stage. The most important aspect of Dietrich's article is that he points out the occurrence of the month Hyakinthios in specifically Dorian regions of Greece, and thus indicates that Hyakinthos must have been a Dorian god whose cult began in Amyklai and was spread by the Dorians before the end of the Bronze Age. Dietrich moreover characterizes the cult as a 'juxtaposition of incongruous elements', due to the intrusion of Apollo in an older cult devoted solely to Hyakinthos.

A different line of interpretation is represented by Jeanmaire. In his work Couroi et Couretes, 1939, the three Spartan cults Hyakinthia, Gymnopaidiai and Karneia are interpreted as rites of initiation. The Hyakinthia was, in Jeanmaire's view, the final phase in a cycle of initiations of Spartan adolescents, and the young Hyakinthos was a symbol for every male initiand, whose death in the myth very well suited the theme of death and rebirth associated with rites of initiation. The theme of initiation in Greek religion earned its second major treatment in Brelich's study Paides e Parthenoi, in which Brelich, like Jeanmaire , considers the three cults as parts of the educational system in Sparta, the agoge. In Brelich's opinion, the Hyakinthia was a New Year's festival, symbolized by the presentation of the new chiton for Apollo.

Chirassi discusses the Hyakinthia in her work Elementi di Culture Precereali nei Miti e Riti Greci, published in 1968. She considers the Hyakinthia as originally a proto-agrarian cult, which is still expressed through the prohibitions against bread during the first part of the cult. These prohibitions, according to Chirassi, point to a cultural level where the use of fire and thus baking and cooking were unknown skills. With the taboos, the participants created a primitive level of culture*, preceding that of an agrarian society. The participation of adolescents, both boys and girls, indicates the role of initiation.

In the work Les Chœurs de Jeunes Filles en Grèce Archaïque, published in 1977, Calame regards the Hyakinthia as the final stage in a tribal initiation. The destruction of the old order is expressed by a period with symbols of death and sorrow, followed by the revival of order, a kind of resurrection. In Calame's opinion this ritual pattern is reflected in the myth about Hyakinthos. He dies, killed by Apollo, and enters heaven where he puts on the status of hero. After a while he is reborn and, together with his sister Polyboea, starts a new life. The cult is regarded as an enactment of the myth, a ritual drama.

*The word primitive might be controversial in certain situations. I chose to keep the usage of the word because it seems to be speaking of a specific time where certain technologies were not available, however naming any culture or cultural manifestation in modern-day anthropology “primitive” is generally considered incorrect or disrespectful.

For the full, unedited text, please consider buying the book Cults of Apollo at Sparta if you're able to afford it, supporting academic research and furthering your own personal research. If you're not able to purchase the book now, here's a PDF link.