Hierophant Self Discovery. Portrait of a Priestess. Women and Ritual in Ancient Greece. The Lost Knowledge. Joan Breton Connelly

Alchemy lll (Artwork) 

Hierophant Self Discovery. Portrait of a Priestess. Women and Ritual in Ancient Greece. The Lost Knowledge. Joan Breton Connelly 

Portrait of a Priestess. Joan Breton Connelly 

On Portrait of a Priestess and Joan Breton Connelly 

Joan Connelly….has produced a fascinating book on the central role of priestesses in ancient Greek society. Her survey is fully documented and beautifully illustrated.  One cannot but admire her enthusiasm for the subject and her deft handling of the evidence. 

Colin Austin. University of Cambridge. Co editor of Aristophanes Thesmophoriazusae 

There was a great need for a book of this kind. Through direct observation of artifacts, the author offers many original ideas, and even manages to correct some long-held erroneous readings of ancient texts. Her emphasis on the important role played by some women in classical antiquity is a welcome corrective to the stereotype of the subordinate female in the Greek world. The remarkably wide-ranging material will be of great interest not only to archaeologists but also to scholars in various fields. 

Brunilde S Ridgway, Professor Emerita, Bryn Mawr College, author of Prayers in Stone: Greek Architectural Sculpture (c. 600 – 1000 B.C.E) 

This is the first full presentation in English or in any language of the female priest in the ancient Greek world. Connelly adduces evidence that women all over the Greek world had, as priestesses, positions of great public influence in their communities. I predict this study will have a wide readership by general classicists as well as those interested in ancient religion, ancient society, and women in ancient Greece, not to mention by art historians. This promises to be a landmark study. 

Stephen V. Tracy, American School of Classical Studies at Athens, author of Athens and Macedon: Attic Letter-Cutters of 300 to 229 B.C. 

There has long been a need for a book devoted to the role of the priestess in ancient Greece. After reading Connelly, no one could fail to be persuaded that priestesses could play an important role in society or that they were given significant honours. This book will do much to improve and extend our understanding of the role of Greek women both in religion and in society. 

Mary Lefkowitz, Wellesley College, author of Greek Gods, Human Lives: What We Can Learn from Myths 

In this sumptuously illustrated book, Joan Breton Connelly gives us the first comprehensive cultural history of priestesses in the ancient Greek world. Connelly presents the fullest and most vivid picture yet of how priestesses lived and worked, from the most famous and sacred of them--the Delphic Oracle and the priestess of Athena Polias--to basket bearers and handmaidens. Along the way, she challenges long-held beliefs to show that priestesses played far more significant public roles in ancient Greece than previously acknowledged.

Connelly builds this history through a pioneering examination of archaeological evidence in the broader context of literary sources, inscriptions, sculpture, and vase painting. Ranging from southern Italy to Asia Minor, and from the late Bronze Age to the fifth century A.D., she brings the priestesses to life--their social origins, how they progressed through many sacred roles on the path to priesthood, and even how they dressed. She sheds light on the rituals they performed, the political power they wielded, their systems of patronage and compensation, and how they were honored, including in death. Connelly shows that understanding the complexity of priestesses' lives requires us to look past the simple lines we draw today between public and private, sacred and secular.

The remarkable picture that emerges reveals that women in religious office were not as secluded and marginalized as we have thought--that religious office was one arena in ancient Greece where women enjoyed privileges and authority comparable to that of men. Connelly concludes by examining women's roles in early Christianity, taking on the larger issue of the exclusion of women from the Christian priesthood. This paperback edition includes additional maps and a glossary for student use.

Online Review 

"In this sphere of polis life the priestess clearly played a leading and fundamental role. This makes it all the more astonishing that Joan Breton Connely's Portrait of a Priestess is, as she rightly claims, the first full-length work to take the Greek priestess specifically as its subject. . . . Connelly has run down inscriptions--honorific, funerary, financial, or cult-related--all over the Mediterranean. She has studied a plethora of statues and vase paintings in collections from Samos to St. Petersburg, from Messene to Munich, from Thebes to Toledo. Her indexes of monuments and inscriptions testify to the prodigious amount of work that has gone into this volume. . . . Portrait of a Priestess is a remarkable triumph against heavy odds."

Peter Green, New York Review of Books

"Eye opening...well-documented, meticulously assembled....Greek religion is a vast and complex subject, and Portrait of a Priestess, by concentrating on one of its most concretely human aspects, offers an engrossing point of entry. . . . Connelly's style is clear, often elegant and occasionally stirring."

Steve Coates, New York Times Book Review

"Joan Breton Connelly's Portrait of a Priestess: Women and Ritual in Ancient Greece is the biggest, fullest and most up-to-date study of these important women from the time of Homer through to the early years of Christianity. Beautifully illustrated and substantially documented, it is also highly argumentative and . . . ambitious."

James Davidson, Times Literary Supplement

Lion (Artwork) 

Portrait of a Priestess: Women and Ritual in Ancient Greece, by Joan Breton Connelly, uses photographs of artifacts and written texts to challenge the assumption that women in ancient Greece were truly as secluded and repressed as Victorian and feminist scholarship have suggested. Connelly's material covers a wide geographic area and a long period of time.

The book does not require much prior background, but is not light reading. It's still a must-read for anyone interested in the role of women or religion in ancient Greece.

The following is a summary of each of the 10 chapters of Connelly's Portrait of a Priestess.

The first chapter of Connelly's book says that there is an abundance of evidence especially from archaeology and epigraphy, but also from epic and lyric poetry, histories, comedies, tragedies, political speeches, legal documents, commentaries, and public decrees to support a challenge to the existing paradigms about the role of women in ancient Greek public life and the separation of sacred and civil laws. In the area of the priesthood, women were the equals of men.

Online Review 

Books on ancient Greek women usually begin from the premise that they were marginal for most of what counted in Greek society, where they led lives of quiet desperation or exercised power by manipulation and subterfuge (the power of the oppressed). Connelly’s book is a refreshing change. She has synthesized a considerable number of disparate sources—archaeological remains, inscriptions, visual representations of religious behavior, and texts—in what she calls a “multi-methodological approach” derived from recent feminist theory and social archaeology (she is a field archaeologist). The result is a fascinating and readable picture of women in ancient Greek cults. Some of her conclusions run counter to received wisdom. For one, we should not infer from Athens being a “democratic” state that religion and politics were separable in the life of the Greek cities. The two were continuously intertwined; therefore, the sheer number and social distinction of women who served as priestesses for prominent cults undercut the standard view that women were not important social actors. Connelly ends her study with a fascinating claim that the centrality of women in Greek cult contributed a model of action for early Christian women, who often lived in households in which pagan and Christian family members coexisted. It is well documented that, over time, an increasingly centralized male Christian authority suppressed these roles for women; Connelly gives us a historical trajectory for understanding the process.

Susan Stephens 

Susan Stephens, professor of classics at Stanford University, is the author of Seeing Double: Intercultural Poetics in Ptolemaic Alexandria. As a papyrologist, she has published literary and documentary texts belonging to the Oxyrhynchus and Yale collections, and is coeditor of Ancient Greek Novels: The Fragments.

Joan Connelly's new book on Greek priestesses joins a field crowded with studies of the role of women in ancient Greek religion; indeed, Connelly's subtitle invites comparison (largely favorable) with recent books by Susan Cole, Barbara Goff, and Matthew Dillon.

Connelly's brave effort is a long time in the making and deserves to be taken seriously. For one thing, the book is substantial in length and assembles a rich body of documentation, much of it epigraphical and unfamiliar to many archaeologists and art historians. It is also lavishly produced. There are illustrations to burn, with some examples of the same objects illustrated by both black-and-white and color photographs. 

Unlike the competition, Connelly's book focuses on women in official cult roles and seeks to make a case for the importance of archaeological evidence, in particular images of priestesses and lesser female sacred servants in Greek art. Why priestesses? They are a noteworthy exception to the exclusion of ancient Greek women from public life, and their proliferation in the Greek world seems remarkable enough in the ancient Mediterranean context to warrant the conclusion that priestesses were central to the Greek religious experience.

Chapter 1 outlines possible approaches, both theoretical and pragmatic, to the role of women in Greek religion. In the end (16-17), the methodology of Christiane Sourvinou-Inwood is adopted, in practice a kind of thick description of every possible source of evidence, without unduly privileging some forms of evidence over others. A heavy dose of good, old-fashioned prosopography is also called for. The title Portrait of a Priestess alludes, we are told, to the 150 or so named individuals profiled here. It also presages the alliterative chapter titles to follow.

Chapter 2 surveys the full range of sacred offices open to women at all stages of life, and the modes of acquisition for Greek priesthoods: inheritance, allotment, and (in Hellenistic Asia Minor) sale to the highest bidder. A lifetime of virginity for priestesses was not the norm in any place or period. One is struck immediately by how much of the available evidence is Athenian, and by how late in date most of it is. Apart from the familiar recital of female religious roles in Aristophanes's Lysistrata (ll. 641-647) and a few stray fourth-century portraits of kanephoroi (female basket-bearers), nearly all attestations of sub-priestly offices for girls and women date to the second century B.C. or later. Athens in the late Hellenistic and Roman imperial periods emerges as a place where status-conscious citizens chose to commemorate female sacred service in ways it had never been commemorated before. Explicit indications that priestesses rose to their office as a result of an unofficial cursus honorum of sacred services date to the first century B.C., though Connelly would clearly like us to accept that attitudes remained consistent from the fifth century B.C. onward.

Chapter 3 deals with four "priesthoods of prominence": those of Athena Polias on the Athenian Acropolis, Demeter and Kore at Eleusis, Hera at Argos, and the Pythia at Delphi. The approximately 25 priestesses of Athena Polias whose names we know from literary and epigraphical sources begin with Lysimache, who served for a remarkable 64 years, received a portrait statue on the Acropolis, and probably inspired the character of Lysistrata. Despite Hellanikos's famous list of priestesses of Hera at Argos, few of their names survive apart from that of Chrysis, who accidentally burned down the temple in 423 B.C. (Thuc. 2.2 and 4.133); she is one of the very few women that Thucydides mentions at all. Connelly summarizes the prosopography of these and the priestesses at Eleusis competently. The Pythia is the odd woman out here, and elsewhere in the book too. Despite her historical importance (fully half of the many mentions of priestly women by Herodotus concern Pythias), there is only one possible portrait of a Pythia, and the evidence for it is somewhat dubious, consisting of a statue base with the signature of the fifth-century Greek sculptor Phradmon, found not at Delphi but in Roman Ostia. A search through Anne Jacquemin's study of dedications at Delphi  turns up a host of portraits of other subjects at Delphi, many of them set up by the Delphians or by the Amphictyony, but not a single Pythia. Connelly does not mention this anomaly either here or in her treatment of priestess portraits in 

Chapter 5. Oddly enough, the only objects illustrated in this chapter are vase paintings that might or might not represent priestesses, which Connelly interprets as illustrations of mythological priestesses rather than real women.

The question at stake in Chapter 4 is the following: did priestesses wear special clothing, or dress up as the goddesses they served? The example with which the chapter opens is that of Anthia, a priestess of Artemis at Ephesos in Xenophon of Ephesos's novel of the second century A.D. Though Connelly inveighs against "those who deny the existence of priestly garb", the more spectacular examples of "dressing the part" are either literary or epigraphical, and they are all late in date. The reality of the Classical and early Hellenistic periods was more mundane. Following the lead of Alexander Mantis in his important study of representations of priestesses in Greek art, Connelly identifies the temple key as the most distinctive identifying attribute of priestesses in sculpture and vase painting. She collects and discusses examples of kleidouchoi in document reliefs, votive reliefs, and portraits in the round, saving the gravestones for Chapter 8. Far more problematically, Connelly attempts here to argue that libating women shown in Greek vase painting, holding scepters or wearing crowns and accompanied by painted name labels naming these goddesses in the genitive, should be re-identified as priestesses.

Chapters 5 and 8, dealing with portraits of priestesses in sanctuaries and on gravestones, are central to Connelly's archaeological project. Though Pausanias seldom chose to mention priestess portraits in the sanctuaries he visited, inscribed statue bases and surviving marble portraits show that the practice of commemorating priestesses and lesser sacred servants in this fashion was widespread, at least in the Hellenistic period. The group of priestesses and young girls whose portraits quite literally surrounded the cult statue of Artemis Orthia at Messene merits the extensive attention it receives here, as do isolated examples from Priene, Samos, Rhamnous, and Aulis. (Contrary to what Connelly implies on page 140, however, the group of statuettes dedicated by a priestly family at Kyparissi on Kos in the early Hellenistic period were not portraits: they represented Demeter, Persephone, and Hades). 

What I find more difficult to explain is the amount of space Connelly spends in Chapter 5 trying to identify priestess portraits that might predate Lysimache's mid-fourth century portrait on the Acropolis. The following statement is typical: "Since religious tradition was one of the most conservative aspects of Greek culture, we might surmise that this practice began much earlier". Some of these attempts at identification are more far-fetched than others, but arguably none advances our understanding of ancient Greek priestesses. It seems not unreasonable to suppose that the female figures carved in relief on Archaic column drums at Ephesos, Didyma, and Kyzikos in Asia Minor represented "young cult attendants". 

Connelly's suggestion, however, that the Archaic marble kore statues from the Athenian Acropolis were kanephoroi who originally supported gold and silver baskets on their heads is another matter. A strictly practical objection is that precious metal objects were invariably stored inside locked buildings, on the Acropolis and elsewhere, and with good reason: they were prone to theft and breakage. Connelly is on far more secure ground in Chapter 8 when she lays out the evidence for funerary monuments commemorating priestesses. The Athenian series begins with an inscribed epigram for Myrrhine, the first priestess of Athena Nike to be chosen by lot 4. There follow several fourth-century stelai from Athens showing priestesses holding their temple keys; once the more elaborate Classical stelai were replaced by the austere kioniskoi of Hellenistic Athens, the symbol of the key alone was sufficient to signify the burial of a priestess.

How we get from here to the lavish public burials for priestesses of the Greek East in the Roman imperial period is really not clear, but surely the intervening Hellenistic tradition of female euergetism (a term Connelly doesn't use until the conclusion) had something to do with the amplification of public display by priests, priestesses, and their families. Chapters 6 and 7 deal with the role of priestesses in performing religious rituals (prayer, libations, and sacrifice), and the perquisites they in turn received. The latter ranged from the skins of sacrificial animals to the portrait statues, gold crowns, inscribed theater seats, and funerals at public expense of the Hellenistic and Roman periods. Here the yawning gap between the practices attested in the fifth century B.C. and the elaborate public honors of later periods becomes particularly apparent. 

Connelly rightly spends far more time on late honors for priestesses, with a long and carefully researched section on the seats in the Theater of Dionysos in Athens inscribed in the Roman imperial period with the names and titles of priestesses. All the same, the gushing statement that "celebrity seating catapulted priestly women to a level of visibility that identified them as chief players within their home cities" gives the impression that Connelly thinks this was already the case in the fifth century B.C. A different form of overreaching emerges in Connelly's treatment of the iconography of prayer and libation. Connelly suggests that we can see clearly what priestesses looked like when they prayed from two red-figure vases, each showing a woman holding both hands upward at about the same height with palms flat, a precursor of the orans pose in early Christian art. Yet hundreds of votive reliefs show worshippers approaching the gods in prayer while raising the right hand only. Maybe two hands really were better than one, but the available evidence gives no reason to suppose continuity in the prayer gesture from paganism into Christianity. Later on, in Chapter 8, Connelly refers to priestess figures on Attic gravestones that hold temple keys in their right hands while "raising their left hands in a fistlike gesture that is commonly seen on Greek votive reliefs showing devotees approaching a divinity". In a footnote , she compares this gesture to that of Hellenistic Cypriot statues of votaries holding incense boxes, and concludes that the gesture itself, even without the incense box, reinforces the "sacral status" of the Athenian priestesses so depicted. We need look no farther than Athenian votive reliefs of the Classical period to find examples of votaries and gods alike making this gesture because they were depicted holding objects (spears, staffs, branches) once added in paint, but now lost.

In Chapter 9, "The End of the Line," Connelly concludes with a brief, but eloquent and thoroughly researched, consideration of the fate of female sacred servants in early Christianity and late antique Judaism. This is also the end of the line for the illustrations, which stop with Chapter 8.

It is difficult, if not impossible, to prove that the artistic representations of women collected here, apart from marble portrait statues and gravestones, really represent priestesses. Though Connelly acknowledges this problem more than once, she still stakes the significance of her study on the archaeological evidence. The broader classification "female cult agents" allows more evidence in, some of it clearly relevant to female priesthood, but important distinctions are lost in the process. For example, the typical pattern we see in Greek religion is that goddesses were served by priestesses rather than male priests; indeed, the exceptional nature of this pattern in the Mediterranean context is what motivates the writing of this study in the first place. Still, though the rule itself was exceptional, there were many exceptions to the rule, and at times Connelly seems unwilling to acknowledge them. The cult of Artemis at Ephesos is a case in point. 

In Xenophon of Ephesos's novel mentioned above, the heroine Anthia was priestess of Artemis. Yet sources earlier than the second century A.D. (some of them cited by Connelly on page 121) imply that Artemis was served in the fourth century B.C. by a eunuch neokoros called Megabyzos, and not a female priestess. The Athenian historian Xenophon (Anab. 5.3.6-7) entrusted his money to one of these Megabyzi for safe keeping, and there are two early Hellenistic attestations of portraits of Megabyzi at Priene (I. Priene nos. 3 and 231). Thus it would appear from the literary and epigraphical evidence that Artemis's eunuch priest was replaced at some point with a more normal female priestess. This problem becomes important in Chapter 5 when Connelly discusses two Archaic ivory figures, originally attached to libation vessels, found in the foundation deposit of the temple of Artemis at Ephesos . One of these (fig. 5.3) has long been identified as a eunuch neokoros, but the second (not illustrated here) is clearly female. Connelly identifies both as representations of female "cult agents," and later on decries the "subtle bias" of those who would argue that Artemis at Ephesos did not have female cult agents before the second century A.D. The real problem is one of evidence, not bias; it may well be, as some scholars have suggested, that the Archaic ivories represent the goddess Artemis herself.

And what of the missing Pythia portraits? The Delphic Pythia was not a civic figure in the sense that the priestess of Athena Polias in Athens was; more importantly, her family did not acquire status and prominence as a result of her sacred service. Neither of these considerations implies that the Pythia herself was not important. The great majority of the portraits and gravestones for priestesses considered in this book were erected not by the priestesses themselves, but by members of their families. To say that Greek priestesses tended to be honored in public and commemorated for posterity because of their family ties does not diminish their accomplishment as individuals. In my opinion, Connelly's scholarly accomplishment in this book would emerge with greater clarity if she were willing to concede this point, and to accept the primacy of the epigraphical evidence in the book she has written: after all, how many of the 150 priestesses mentioned here would we know by name without inscriptions? 

Catherine M. Keesling, Georgetown University  

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EXCERPT FROM PORTRAIT OF A PRIESTESS 

Portrait of a Priestess. Joan Breton Connelly

CHAPTER ONE & CHAPTER THREE 

Introduction

Time, Space, Source Material, and Methods

At the end of the second century B.C., Athenian worshippers set out in procession, marching from Athens to the sanctuary of Apollo at Delphi to celebrate the Pythais festival. The pageant was held in a grand manner “worthy of the god and his particular excellence.” One individual stood out among the participants: Chrysis, priestess of Athena Polias. For her role in making the occasion one that befitted both Athens and Delphi, the people of Delphi bestowed upon Chrysis the crown of Apollo. The city also voted to grant her, as well as all her descendants, an impressive series of rights and privileges: status as a special representative of Athens to Delphi ( proxenos), the right to consult the oracle, priority of trial, inviolability (asylia), freedom from taxes, a front seat at all competitions held by the city, the right to own land and houses, and all other honors customary for proxenoi and benefactors of the city.

Back in Athens, Chrysis’s cousins, Dionysios, Niketes, and Philylla, set up a statue of their famous relative on the Acropolis. They themselves were prominent Athenians from a family distinguished by its numerous cult officials. Chrysis had a great-great-grandfather who was a sacred supervisor (epimeletes) of the Eleusinian Mysteries and a grandfather who was a priest of Asklepios.

The decree set up by the people of Delphi and the statue base from the Athenian Acropolis provide a tantalizing glimpse into the life of an exceptional woman. While scores of inscriptions survive to honor men in this way, Chrysis stands out as one of the few women who received special privileges by decree.

Her public record brought substantial rights for her and all her descendants. She further enjoyed the honor of having her statue set up on the Athenian Acropolis, ensuring that she would be remembered always in her priestly status.

Despite wide contemporary interest in the role of women in world religions, the story of the Greek priestess remains elusive. Scattered references, fragmentary records, and ambiguous representations confound attempts to form a coherent view of women who held sacred offices in ancient Greece. Yet the scope of surviving evidence is vast and takes us through every stage on the path through priesthood. It informs us about eligibility and acquisition of office, costume and attributes, representations, responsibilities, ritual actions, compensation for service, authority and privileges, and the commemoration of priestesses at death. Only by gathering far-flung evidence from the epigraphic, literary, and archaeological records can we recognize larger patterns that reveal the realities of the women who held office. This evidence provides firm, securely dated documentation from which we can bring to life the vibrant story of the Greek priestess.

This narrative is particularly important because religious office presented the one arena in which Greek women assumed roles equal and comparable to those of men. Central to this phenomenon is the fact that the Greek pantheon includes both gods and goddesses and that, with some notable exceptions, the cults of male divinities were overseen by male officials and those of female divinities by female officials. The demand for close identification between divinity and cult attendant made for a class of female sacred servants directly comparable to that of men overseeing the cults of gods. Indeed, it was this demand that eventually led to a central argument over the Christian priesthood, exclusively granted to male priests in the image of a male god. As Simon Price has stressed, the equality of men and women as priests and priestesses in ancient Greece was nothing short of remarkable. 

In a world in which only men could hold civic office and enjoy full political rights, it would have been easy enough for cities to organize their priesthoods on the model of magistracies. But the power of gender in the analogy between sacred servant and deity was so strong that it warranted a category of female cult agents who functioned virtually as public-office holders. Price has challenged us to consider the deeper question of why the Greeks so emphasized both genders for their gods. We will take up this line of inquiry in chapter 2.

Evidence for priestesses can be found in nearly all categories of Greek texts, from Linear B tablets to epic and lyric poetry, histories, tragedies, comedies, political speeches, legal documents, public decrees, and antiquarian commentaries. Inscribed dedications attest to the generosity of priestesses in making benefactions to cities and sanctuaries, their pride in setting up images of themselves, and their authority in upholding sanctuary laws. Inscriptions also provide evidence that these women were publicly honored with gold crowns, portrait statues, and reserved theater seats. Priestesses are represented in nearly every category of visual culture, including architectural sculpture, votive statues and reliefs, funerary monuments, vases, painted shields, wooden plaques, and bronze and ivory implements. In the face of this abundant evidence it is hard to understand how the prominent role of the Greek priestess has, until recently, been ignored by modern commentators or, worse yet, denied.

Never before has the archaeological evidence for priestesses been systematically examined within the broader context of what is known from the epigraphic and literary spheres. From the late nineteenth century, inscriptions have been the primary source for our understanding of ancient priesthoods.9 In her dissertation of 1983, Judy Ann Turner brought together wide-ranging epigraphic evidence for feminine priesthoods, focusing largely on the acquisition of sacred offices. In 1987, Brunilde Ridgway pioneered the study of material evidence for women in ancient Greece, including images of female cult agents. Alexander Mantis’s comprehensive monograph on the iconography of priesthood, male and female alike, followed in 1990. This groundbreaking work brought together a wide corpus of images, many of which had been unknown. In the years that have followed, additional monuments representing priestesses have been published, and broader studies on women and religion have made some limited use of visual material. In her important study of priesthoods, dedications, and euergitism, Uta Kron has called for the viewing of archaeological and epigraphic data together with and in contrast to what we know from literary sources.

Shaman XV (Artwork) 

A central contribution of Portrait of a Priestess is the recognition of the authority of the archaeological record and its integration into our broader understanding of the women who served Greek cults. In this, I follow Anthony Snodgrass, Gloria Ferrari, Christiane Sourvinou-Inwood, and others who have emphasized the independent existence of the archaeological record from the textual tradition that has, in so many ways, subordinated it. As the long-neglected visual material has its own history, its own “language,” motivations, and influences, we should not expect it to illustrate facts recorded in texts. Instead, it will be seen to reflect aspects of priestly service not preserved elsewhere, significantly broadening our understanding of sacred-office holding. In many cases, it contributes evidence for periods and regions that do not have the benefit of a surviving textual heritage. Beyond this, archaeological and epigraphic evidence sometimes can be seen to contradict the picture given in literary sources. It thus provides an important correction to the distorting effects of the voice, intent, and context of the author, as well as the accidents of survival and the benefits of privilege that have focused our attention on only a fraction of the original corpus of texts.

Two important developments in scholarly thinking have made conditions ripe for a seasoned and comprehensive review of the evidence for Greek priestesses. One is a reassessment of the alleged seclusion of women in classical Athens and the implications of this for our understanding of their public roles. The other is a new questioning of the validity of the category of regulations called “sacred laws,”long viewed as distinct and separate from the larger body of legislation within the Greek polis. This opens the way for understanding female cult agents as public-office holders with a much broader civic engagement than was previously recognized. These two paradigm shifts make for a fresh and forward-looking environment in which we can evaluate the evidence, one that allows for a new understanding of the ancient realities of priestly women.

First, let us track developments on the question of the “invisibility” of women. Over the past thirty years, it has become a broadly accepted commonplace that Athenian women held wholly second-class status as silent and submissive figures restricted to the confines of the household where they obediently tended to domestic chores and child rearing. 

This has largely been based on the reading of certain well-known and privileged texts, including those from Xenophon, Plato, and Thucydides, and from certain images of women portrayed in Greek drama. The consensus posture of this view has, to a certain extent, been shaped by the project of feminism and its work in recovering the history of gender oppression.

While there have been some voices of dissent from early on, the chorus of opponents to this oversimplified position has grown steadily over the years, gathering strength from the economic, political, and social/historical arenas. Already in the 1980s, David Cohen stressed the importance of distinguishing between “separation” and “seclusion,” and pointed out serious contradictions between cultural ideals and real-life social practices. Edward Harris has now elucidated the active role of women in the economic sphere, where they exercised informal, but highly effective, methods for influencing decisions about money. 

Lin Foxall has shown that women had considerable control over property within their households, particularly those women who brought large dowries, and took initiatives in economic matters in which they held a vested interest. Examining archaeological remains from domestic contexts, Lisa Nevett and Marilyn Goldberg have offered a new understanding of gendered space and the regulation of social relations within the Greek household. Josine Blok has shown that women’s public speech in Athens had everything to do with where they were and when they were there.

Jeffrey Henderson and Christiane Sourvinou-Inwood have made compelling cases for the presence of women at dramatic performances in Greek theaters, despite a modern reluctance to accept it. Early on in the debate, Cynthia Patterson considered the possibility of citizen identity for women described as hai Attikai. Josine Blok has now argued on linguistic grounds that Athenian women of citizen families were, in fact, recognized as citizens. Importantly, she has shown that their leadership roles in matters of cult were, in effect, political offices that directly engaged women with the broader enterprise of politeia.

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Even those who persist in maintaining an “invisibility” for Athenian women recognize that cult worship offered the single stage on which women could enjoy some measure of prominence. But this religious stage has too often been dismissed as secondary and peripheral to the political and economic nucleus of the polis. This attitude is clearly a product of our own contemporary cultural biases and has nothing to do with the realities of the ancient city. By marginalizing the importance of sacred-office holding, interpreters persist in presenting a pessimistic picture of the possibilities for Athenian women, subjected to utterly passive roles in an entirely secondary status.

This is why new developments in our understanding of so-called sacred laws are so important. Each sanctuary had its own rules and regulations to direct the behavior of worshippers and the functioning of cult. Often, these were inscribed on stone stelai set up for all to see. Such regulations were first designated as “sacred laws” more than a hundred years ago; the validity of grouping them together as a fixed category of thought has now come under review. Robert Parker has demonstrated that these sacred laws differ in no way from other laws and decrees issued by ancient communities. Most meetings of the citizen Assembly at Athens had split agendas that first took up decisions on religious matters, followed by discussion of secular issues. Religious matters took up a large proportion of the Assembly’s time, and the city spent great sums of money in financing cult affairs. Parker clarifies for us that sacred laws are simply laws of the state concerned with religious action, no different except in subject matter from any other laws.

The implications of Parker's insights are profound, particularly for our understanding of female officeholders.If the Greeks did not distinguish between “church”and “state,”then the long-standing binary model of “sacred”and “secular”is an erroneous construct that has outlived its usefulness. If things religious were not considered separate from things secular, then the positions of leadership held by priestly women were primary, not peripheral, to the centers of power and influence.

Just as the sacred/secular binary model is under review, so the construct of public/private will be revisited at several points in this study. To be sure, we can recognize cases in which the public/private model provides a valid and useful lens through which the Greek experience can be considered. Still, there are ways of understanding a more complex reality than this construct allows. When it comes to ancient women, it may be not only impossible but also inappropriate to make hard-and-fast distinctions between public and private life. Josine Blok has shown that public space and private space are relative concepts whose meanings are determined by use and, therefore, by time.

She tracks the mobility of Athenian women through their city and on their own schedules, in which time dictates their experience of public space. Lin Foxall has long questioned the privileging of power in the public sphere over that of the “less important” power of the domestic realm.She has shown that“use”is just as important as “possession”when it comes to household property. By shifting away from the public/private binary construct and the “subordination theory” way of managing these terms, we can appreciate the more complex realities that characterized ancient life.

A central theme of this book is directly related to the public/private quandary. This is the correlation between domestic ritual, in the care of the house, and public ritual, in the care of the temple. The agency of the women who circulated between these two spaces is paramount in this. Some interpreters view women’s work in the ritual sphere as a mere “rehearsal” for the conventionally sanctioned female role of subservience within the Greek household. But a case can be made that things actually worked the other way around. Since the temple was effectively the “house” of the cult statue, it needed to be cared for just like a private domestic space. Much of this care involved the traditional household work of ancient women: cleaning, decorating, weaving, and cooking. Social behavior experienced at home was thus codified in public ritual performed within the formal setting of the sanctuary. This process of codification will be examined in chapter 2.

Reconstructing the life experience of ancient priestesses from fragmentary texts and images is a daunting task. The job is made more difficult because, by its very nature, Greek priesthood does not lend itself to generalization. Our clearly defined modern Western view of Christian priesthood denies the plurality inherent in the ancient religious offices required by the existence of so many gods. Unlike what exists for our modern institutions, Greek religion had no sacred book that set down a universal system of beliefs and laws; no single, unified church with central authority; and no clergy to instruct in beliefs. Instead, religion was embedded in every aspect of life and was intensely local, highly dependent on regional tradition. The Greeks did not even have a separate word for religion, since there was no area of life that lacked a religious aspect.38 We are faced with what Angelos Chaniotis has called a “bewildering plurality” of terms given in the sources, not just for the cult associations that he has focused upon, but for virtually all aspects of Greek worship.

I am deliberately adopting a broad and encompassing view to embrace this“bewildering plurality” and the full range of possibilities for women’s agency that it reflects. I shall include examples of girls, maidens, and women who are not, strictly speaking, priestesses, but whose engagement in cult activity sheds light on the broader system within which priestesses functioned. The Greek priestess is best understood within the context of this system, which allows for more flexibility in the identification of sacred women than modern interpreters may like. I include cult agents of varying ages and ranks, not because I shy away from clearly defining my subject, but because I do not find the binary model priestess/nonpriestess a useful one in understanding the contradictions and complexities of the lived experience of Greek women.

Priesthood was, in most cases, a temporary status and women could move in and out of a number of priesthoods over the course of a lifetime. 

Methodologies drawn from anthropology and social archaeology are especially helpful here, as they focus on the ways in which life cycle, age, and gender structure social identities. Much more will be said about the methodological framework of this study at the end of this chapter. But for now, let it be said that I will combine a variety of approaches and examine the widest range of material in order to gain the fullest understanding of the lived experience of Greek priestesses.

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Chronological and Geographical Scope

I shall also adopt a broadly inclusive chronological scope with an aim to present the best-preserved evidence from the widest range of sources. This will include documentation for priesthoods from the Archaic through the Hellenistic periods and even into Roman Imperial times when I see useful points for comparison. I understand and accept the risks of this approach and the methodological difficulties that it invites. The long chronological view is by no means meant to create the impression of an unbroken continuity in practice from the Archaic through the Roman period. Quite the contrary, it illustrates that real change happened, often carefully designed as a return to tradition. We have benefited from a number of careful studies with well-defined chronological and regional limits.

But the long and broad view enables us to see what is not so apparent in narrowly focused studies. Rarely has the evidence from classical Athens been viewed within the larger context of later material from the wider Hellenized world. Never has the sculptural type of the standing draped female figure been viewed diachronically from its early appearance, for example, on the Archaic Athenian Acropolis through the later examples in Hellenistic and Roman sanctuaries of Asia Minor. This long view allows us to call into question whether the Archaic and classical periods, in fact, represent the golden age of ancient Greek religion. The abundance of cults, and opportunities to serve, that proliferated during the Hellenistic period may suggest otherwise. The profound changes in the organization of private worship, including the wide diffusion of voluntary cult associations, attest to a shift in focus to individuality and personal piety that is unattested in earlier periods.

The uneven nature of the evidence makes for a situation in which we know a great deal about certain priesthoods and very little about others. In chapter 3, we will take an in-depth look at a few priesthoods of prominence for which the surviving source material is great: Athena Polias at Athens, Demeter and Kore at Eleusis, Hera at Argos, and the Pythia at Delphi. In the chapters that follow, we will take a broader view, tracking the experience of priestesses from across the Greek world. In this, we will look at the collective evidence for priestly costume, votive statuary, ritual duties, perquisites, privileges, authority, and funerary memorials. This dual approach, which combines a focused examination of a few priesthoods from the Greek mainland with a broader overview of disparate material from the greater Mediterranean basin, is meant to make best use of the strengths of the surviving evidence. Specific in-depth investigations of a few detailed cases is methodologically interesting when related to long-term processes. We shall thus combine the microanalysis prescribed by Bourdieu and Adorno with the longue durée of Braudel, in an effort to examine the ways in which the general can be found to lie hidden in the particular.

Language and Definitions

A primary obstacle to our understanding of ancient priesthood is the problem of language, particularly that of finding adequate English equivalents for ancient Greek terms. The Greek words that we generally translate as “priest” and “priestess” are based on the root hieros, which means “holy.” Hiereus in the masculine and hiereia in the feminine are literally translated “those who are in charge of”or “those who take care of the holy things.”These “holy things”can include ritual objects, sacred rites and liturgies, and even religious festivals as a whole. Attested as early as Linear B tablets of the late Bronze Age, the words hiereia (written in Linear B as “i-je-re-ja”), and hiereus (i-je-re-jo), are found in the Iliad and Odyssey and in Greek texts right through the Roman period. These words meant different things in different regions for different cults over more than a millennium. In contrast, our word priest derives from a contraction of presbyter, from the Greek presbuteros, meaning “elder.” In view of the broad range of responsibilities encompassed by the Greek titles hiereus and hiereia, the English translations “priest” and “priestess” are wholly inadequate.

Following the practice of women being ordained as ministers in certain Christian churches over the past quarter century, some contemporary writers choose to drop the gender-specific suffix -ess when referring to Greek priestesses and call both male and female sacred servants priests. This can lead to real confusion.46 Since priests usually served the cults of male divinities, and priestesses the cults of female divinities, use of the term priest for both genders obscures the highly interesting cases in which divinities were served by officials of the opposite sex. I shall maintain the use of the word priestess, as it more closely reflects the Greek use of feminine endings and because gender differentiation had real meaning in the ancient society in which these women functioned.

Modern Western theories of priesthood generally define a priest as one who mediates between gods and human beings. But in ancient Greece, all individuals had direct access to their gods. Private people could offer prayers, requests, thanks, and gifts and even perform sacrifice directly to divinities without the intervention of a priest. The historian Herodotos, writing as an outsider looking at Persian religious practices, found it strange that Persians required the presence of a priest (magus) for every sacrifice. This is not to say, however, that sacrifices offered by priests and priestesses may not have had a special status of their own.

Cult hierarchy included a host of religious officials, some of whom had specific duties and others who assumed more general responsibilities. In setting out his “ideal state,” Plato (Laws 6.7) saw the need for temple attendants (neokoroi) as well as priests and priestesses. Aristotle (Politics 6.11) distinguished sacred officials who were members of the priesthood from those who were not. The latter group included hieropoioi, the “doers of holy things”; naophylakes, or “temple guardians”; and tamiai, or “stewards of the sacred funds.” Hieropoioi have been further distinguished from priests and priestesses in terms of their differing relationship to god and state. Hieropoioi represented the state in religious affairs, while priests and priestesses acted as servants of the gods.

Titles of cult agents who looked after sanctuaries were often expropriated from household care. This can be observed in our very earliest documentation of sacred offices preserved in the Linear B tablets from Pylos. Here we have thirty women’s occupations listed among the workers in service of the goddess. We hear of the wool carders,“pe-ki-ti-ra” (pektriai); spinners, “a-ra-ka-te-ja” (alakateiai); and weavers, “i-te-ja-a” (histeiai). We also have grain grinders or flour makers,“me-re-ti-ri-ja” (meletriai), and baking women or grain pourers,“si-to-ko-wo” (sitokhowoi). There are also sanctuary sweepers, “ka-ru-ti-je-ja-o,” and key bearers, “ka-wa-ri-po-ro.” Many of these occupations can be found mirrored in cult titles from the historical period, including key bearers (kleidouchoi), worker-weavers (ergastinai), and grain grinders (aletrides). This is not to argue for continuity in religious practice from the Bronze Age into the Iron Age, but merely to suggest that, over time, much of the activity taking place in and around the sacred precinct was similar to that of household care. Cleaning, weaving, washing, dressing, decorating, grinding, cooking, and feeding can all be seen as the work of women in both house and sanctuary across the ages. It is this powerful analogy between house and temple that provides a critical foundation for female agency in Greek religion.

One of the most characteristic aspects of cult titles is that they reflect the ritual action performed by the attendant. From the sixth century onward, the prefix hiero-, or “holy,” could be joined to a noun describing a specific function to form a compound title. We find that hieragogoi led sacrifice, hierophoroi carried sacrifice, hierarchai presided over sacred rites, hieronostoi searched for holy things, hierakomoi took charge of temples, hieronomoi were temple managers, hieroparektes attended priests, and hieroskopoi observed sacrifices and read omens. Some titles reflect specific functions: hierogrammateis (sacred scribes), hierophylakes (sacred guards), hierotamiai (sacred money collectors), and hieropsaltai (sacred harpists or singers). Cults could thus create whatever office suited local needs simply by fixing the word holy to the action that the agent performed. Emily Kearns has demonstrated how the “language of the sacred” reflects the ways in which Greeks thought about their relations with their gods and gives insight into a two-way process through which words and connotations can direct modes of thought. The sacred language does not merely reflect an objective reality of how things are, but reveals the concepts behind the words and the experience of the society that created and used them.

Religious titles also made use of the -phoros ending, combining it with the name of the implement that the sacred servant carried within the ritual. Kanephoroi carried the kana (baskets), arrephoroi brought the arreta (secret things), hydrophoroi carried the water, and anthesphoroi brought flowers. Other titles focus on the action of the servant in tending the cult statue. Loutrides washed the statue, while kosmeteriai decorated it. The author Harpokration, quoting the fourth-century orator Lykourgos, records that the priestess of Athena Polias at Athens was attended by two helpers called kosmo and trapezophoros. These words may reflect the roles of the “decorator” and the “table carrier” in performing specific duties within Athena’s rites.

The ease with which titles could be invented to suit local needs demonstrates the extraordinary flexibility of Greek religious offices. Some titles are site specific, incorporating the name of the divinity or the location of the shrine: Deliades (handmaidens of Apollo on Delos), Dionysiades (maidens who ran a race for Dionysos at Sparta), Leukippides (virgin priestesses of the daughters of Leukippos at Sparta), and Lykiades (thirty young women who carried water to Lykeion at Sparta). For other cults, groups of girls and women went by names descriptive of the local ritual: arktoi (bears of Artemis at Brauron), melissai (bees of Demeter at Delphi, Eleusis, and elsewhere), poloi (foals of the Leukippides at Sparta).

It has been estimated that there were some two thousand cults operating in Attica during the classical period. With roughly 170 festival days a year in its sacred calendar, Athens hosted a religious hierarchy that was a very crowded arena. The organization and performance of cult activities was a widely shared experience within the citizen body, and a good part of one’s life would have been spent preparing for and participating in religious festivals. As cult practice was locally ordained, the number and names used for sacred-service titles across the Greek world were vast and varied. A broad view is, therefore, essential to our full understanding of the dynamics of time and place in shaping ritual practice.

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Source Material

Literary Evidence

Literary texts are particularly helpful in reconstructing the religious sentiments behind the practice of service of the gods. This is because they offer longer narratives than do other sources. People served gods because they expected something from them in return. Gods also wanted something from mortals, and usually, this was honor. Women were particularly conscientious in their attention to ritual practice. For priestesses, failure to observe cult requirements represented not just a lapse in duty but a serious crime. It could arouse the wrath of the divinity and cause disorder in the harmonious functioning of the community. It is from Greek literature that we learn much of this in lively accounts of priestly women, their exploits, and experiences.

Homer gives us our first image of a Greek priestess in Iliad book 6 (297–310) where the women of Troy go to the priestess Theano to elicit Athena’s support against the invading Greeks. Theano opens the doors of Athena’s temple, places a beautifully woven robe on the knees of the cult statue, and leads the women in a supplication ritual asking for the death of Diomedes. She then prepares to offer twelve perfect cows in sacrifice to the goddess. Theano’s actions can be matched in later historical sources that attest to the role of the priestess as key bearer of the temple, caretaker of the cult statue, leader of prayers, and initiator of sacrifice.

Theano comes to represent the archetype for priestly women. Indeed, her name, based on the very word for “goddess,” thea, is attested for priestesses in both literary and historical sources. Plutarch tells of a priestess of Demeter and Kore named Theano who famously refused to curse \Alkibiades during his trial for profanation of the Mysteries in 415 b.c. (Alkibiades 22.5).58 We hear of a mythical priestess at Argos named Theano, whose dutiful sons Kleobis and Biton pulled her in a cart to Hera’s temple on the festival day.59 The mother of the Spartan king Pausanias was named Theano and served as priestess of Athena Chalkioikos (Polyainos 8.51). During the Roman period, we hear of a little girl named Theano who served in the special cult role of arrephoros at Athens.60 Tradition may have led her family to presume that she would hold religious office one day and the girl may have been named with this in mind.

Greek tragedy presents compelling images of sacred women, but it is not always easy to tell if they reflect the realities of historical priesthood. Aeschylus wrote a tragedy titled Hiereiai (The Priestesses), for which only a few fragments survive. One can only wonder what an impact this production may have had on the visual arts, particularly on costuming and stage properties used to communicate priestly status. Aeschylus opens his Eumenides (lines 1–33) with the Pythia speaking about her role as priestess of Apollo’s temple. Dramatic characterizations owe much to the special interests of individual authors. Euripides shows a lively interest in priesthood and focuses on the sacral aspects of his characters Iphigeneia (Iphigeneia at Tauris), Kassandra (The Trojan Women), and Theonoe (Helen). The fragments of Euripides’ Captive Melanippe will be considered at the opening of chapter 6. In them, he makes clear that it is women who hold the central role in things religious. Euripides is preoccupied with etiological and topographical issues and is a valuable resource for our understanding of foundation myths and the rituals that commemorated them.

Perhaps the most celebrated female character in all of Greek literature is Aristophanes’ Lysistrata. Fifty years ago, David Lewis thoughtfully suggested that her character was drawn from the model of a historical priestess named Lysimache. This Lysimache served as priestess of Athena Polias on the Athenian Acropolis for sixty-four years, spanning the late fifth and early fourth centuries. The association of the historical Lysimache with the heroine of Aristophanes’ comedy has significant implications for our understanding of name recognition for Greek priestesses, a topic that will be examined in chapter 3. Our corpus of priestly personalities in Greek comedy has recently been augmented by the discovery of a new papyrus preserving the opening scene of Menander’s Leukadia. This preserves a dialogue between a girl coming to fetch water and the zakoros who looks after the temple of Apollo on Cape Leukas.

In historical sources, priestly women are present but not described in great detail. Herodotos’s Histories is particularly valuable as it includes some sixty-two references to priestesses, roughly half of which concern the Pythia at Delphi. Since Herodotos’s accounts were gathered largely from oral sources and assembled from all across the Mediterranean world, some scholars have seen them as relatively free from the prejudices of any one particular state or literary convention. For this reason, Herodotos has been viewed as a particularly valuable source for local traditions.

Herodotos’s historical successors are less obliging. Thucydides never mentions priestesses except when he dates the beginning of the Peloponnesian War (Thucydides 2.2.1) to the forty-eighth year of the priesthood of Chrysis at Argos. In this, he employs the historical chronology structured by Hellanikos upon the consecutive priesthoods of Hera at Argos. Plato is more forthcoming and discusses priests and priestesses in the functioning of his “ideal state” (Laws 6.759a–c). The fourth-century orator Lykourgos had special insight into priestly offices, having served as priest of Poseidon-Erechtheus at Athens. He was a member of the Eteoboutad clan that controlled the hereditary priesthoods of Poseidon-Erechtheus and Athena Polias. Surely, Lykourgos relied on his firsthand experience when writing his treatise On the Priestesses (frag. B 5). Unfortunately, this speech does not survive and is mentioned only in the most general way by antiquarian critics. Both Demosthenes and Plutarch, who served as priest of Apollo at Delphi for some thirty years, provide valuable anecdotal references to priestesses. Among our most informative sources is the second-century-a.d. traveler Pausanias, who gives us a wealth of information on the activities of priestesses at sanctuaries throughout Greece. From him we learn a great deal about local rituals and the role that priestly women played in them.

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Epigraphic Evidence

Inscriptions are our richest source of information on ancient priesthoods, providing us with narrowly focused views into the realities of cult organization. How could we have imagined a world in which priesthoods were bought and sold like commodities, bid for at auction, and bequeathed to children? Certainly not from the sketches of Homer’s Theano, Aeschylus’s Pythia, or Euripides’ Iphigeneia at Tauris. Primed with the expectation of seeing women in wholly subordinate positions, readers may be surprised to find inscriptions attesting to the financial compensation of women for their service, the erection of portrait statues in their honor, and their agency in enforcing sanctuary laws. We may never have suspected the broad network of women who passed jealously guarded priesthoods through their family lines generation upon generation, or the benefactions that they proudly lavished on the sanctuaries they served.

Epigraphic evidence thus gives insight into realities unattested in literary texts and focuses on the micrology of the lived experience. It reminds us of the dangers of privileging texts written largely by, for, and about men living in and around Athens during just a few hundred years’ time. Above all, inscriptions provide us with the names of historical women who actually held office, allowing us to pursue important prosopographical work. This enables us to reconstruct the roles of inheritance, pedigree, and preparation in the securing and transferring of priesthoods through family lines.

Much work remains to be done in the collection of epigraphic documentation for priestesses across the Greek world. The evidence is uneven, dependent on accidents of survival and the varying epigraphic habits of local institutions. We have relied heavily on a few general collections, as well as on some narrowly focused studies of individual inscriptions. It is not the ambition of this book to provide a corpus of all epigraphic evidence for feminine priesthoods, but rather to present a sampling that helps us make the widest range of points.

Although the late Bronze Age is well outside the parameters of this study, it should be noted that the first attestation of a Greek priestess is found in Linear B texts dating back to the fourteenth century b.c. A tablet from the Mycenaean palace at Pylos preserves for us the name of E-ri-ta, who served as priestess at the local sanctuary. Although the meaning of the text is not entirely clear, it seems that E-ri-ta was a woman in charge of considerable lands and property, that she had legal standing within her community, and that she was assisted in her work by sacred servants.73 We are certainly not arguing for continuity here, but it must be said that what little we know of E-ri-ta does seem to prefigure the agency of priestesses in the historical period.

Archaeological Evidence

The material culture gathered in this study comes from different sources, technologies, and traditions, reflecting a variety of intentions and serving very different functions. Each category of object has its own distinct language that must be read independently from other source material. Reading these objects and images, internally as a group and externally with regard to local myth, cult, and ritual, enables us to approach an “archaeology of cult” within the broader context of Greek cultural history. Ivory implements, buried deep in foundation deposits at Ephesos, were the very tools used by cult agents in their rituals. 

In a sense, these instruments can be understood to be extensions of the sacred servants themselves. For this reason, their ornamentation often mirrors the image of the cult attendant, incorporating her face, hand, or whole body into the decorative program (see figs. 5.1, 5.3). The choice of ivory may reflect a communality with sacred servant as well. As we shall see in chapter 5, ivory is a material long associated with the female gender, owing to the quality of its white color and smooth texture. Portrait statues of priestesses erected before and within temples functioned quite differently (see figs. 5.12–14, 5.22–24, 5.26–29 pls. 16–18). These were highly visible, permanent testaments to the prestige of local priestesses across generations of service. 

The statues became part of the sacred landscape, witnesses to the intimacy of goddess and priestess who shared the ritual space. Funerary markers similarly ensured that priestesses would be remembered always for their agency and give us rare, specific records of the “occupation” that these women undertook in life (see figs. 8.1–2, 8.4–23pls. 20–25). While inscribed names identify historical women on votive and funerary sculptures, images on cult utensils and in vase painting may be better placed in a mythical past where they depict characters whose actions inspired the rituals observed in historical times.

Iconographic studies of gods and goddesses or heroes and heroines generally rely on attributes, costumes, poses, and narrative contexts to establish identity. But how are we to distinguish images of priestesses from among the many representations of women who moved in and out of priestly status over the course of a lifetime? Everyday life in Greece was full of ritual. Nuptial preparations, funerals, the tending of a loved one’s grave, and the departure of a soldier for war—all engaged women in ritual acts that duplicated those performed by sacred officials in public sanctuary settings. 

As practitioners of household worship and the host of rituals occasioned by domestic life,Greek women assumed the role of“priestess”within their own families.They trained their daughters to perform these rites along with other household duties expected of a good wife and mother. This is why it is so difficult to be certain about identifications of priestly women in the visual repertory, and why we must live with more ambiguity than we may like.

One attribute serves as the preeminent iconographic signifier of priestly status: the temple key. From the late Archaic period on, sculpture and vase paintings show women carrying large, rodlike keys, signifying the function of the kleidouchos in communicating priestly status. So powerful is this attribute that, on its own, it can confirm sacral identity for women who appear otherwise unremarkable. The placing of a key in the hand of a young woman, shown on a skyphos in London, endows the generic maiden with priestly status (fig 1.1). It is because of the image of a young man on the reverse side of the vase that the girl has been identified as Iphigeneia, shown in tandem with her brother Orestes in her role as priestess of Artemis at Tauris.

A full repertory of ritual paraphernalia can be manipulated in vase painting to communicate cult activity: libation bowls, wine jugs, baskets, offering trays, lustral branches, and ribbons. Each of these figural elements, what Claude Bérard has called “minimal syntagmata,” and Gloria Ferrari has termed “sign-components,” can be combined to yield complex configurations through which signification takes place. The ways in which these signs are juxtaposed, combined, and even omitted can be read like a language that transmits the essential acts of procession, libation, sacrifice, and feasting. Setting elements, such as columns, temple facades, altars, lustral basins, and incense burners, can be further employed to communicate the context in which the action takes place: city sanctuary, rural shrine, or household.

A woman depicted on a cup in Toledo, Ohio, neatly illustrates the problems of signification that confront us (fig 1.2). She stands before an altar, manipulating a number of ritual implements, including a sacrificial basket and a large oinochoe from which she pours a libation. Behind her, an incense burner further establishes the sanctuary setting. The combination of sign-components would appear to convey her special agency within the cult action. Can we call her a priestess? We have recognized the maiden on the London skyphos (see fig. 1.1) as a priestess, solely through the presence of a temple key and despite the fact that there are no other ritual indicators to support this identification. 

In contrast, the woman on the Toledo cup is surrounded by a host of sacred signifiers, yet, for modern interpreters, she is of uncertain status, because of the absence of the key. The challenge of this study lies in setting parameters within which we can read the signifiers and interpret their meanings. We must guard against narrowing the criteria by which we associate attributes with identity, and allow for some flexibility in our readings. Narrative intent, function of the image, and function of the object that carries the image are but a few of the variables at play in the selection of signs for the communication of meaning. Beyond this, it is likely that there are codes that we simply do not recognize. In addition to searching for patterns among schemata known to us, we must be open to signifiers that have gone previously unrecognized.

Methodological Framework

The diversity of the source material requires a diversity of strategies for coming to grips with it. Therefore, I shall draw upon a number of approaches and modes of analysis to examine multiple aspects of the problems presented. I articulated this multimethodological approach in 1993 in a study focused on narrative intent in Attic vase painting.80 In this I was, and continue to be, influenced by the contributions of Christiane Sourvinou-Inwood, who has called for the use of “many different approaches and methods as tools...to diminish the risk of distortion and illuminate as many aspects as possible.” Josine Blok has similarly emphasized the importance of a “pluriformity in methodology” for dealing with the subject of ancient Greek women, as this increases the tensions between traditional and new analytical approaches, yielding optimal results.

The breadth of Sourvinou-Inwood’s work, which touches on so many issues of concern to this book—gender, life cycles, ritual, tragedy, visual culture, and theory—has provided a welcome road map for navigating the challenges of disparate sources. Our work is inescapably one of reconstruction, the task of shaping a view into what is fundamentally an alien culture. In meeting this challenge, Sourvinou-Inwood has advised independent lines of inquiry for the discreet bodies of evidence—literary, epigraphic, and visual. She urges neutrality in the examination process in order to avoid prejudices caused by the contamination of one line of inquiry by another. Sourvinou-Inwood’s second major methodological guideline is one that encourages the establishment of parameters within which the source material is considered, eliminating, as much as is possible, biases that result from viewing ancient evidence through culturally determined filters. 

Of course, the process of filtering is complex, and one can never fully escape the perspectives embedded in one’s own experience. Nonetheless, the effort to remove filters repays itself and makes us conscious of the forces that shape our questions and, thus, our answers. Before we continue, let us confront some of the most common culturally determined biases that bedevil our view of the Greek priestess and prevent us from seeing her through “ancient eyes.”

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Gender, Agency, and Identity

One goal of this study is to collect and evaluate evidence for ancient women so that they can be reinstated into a long-term cultural history. This effort finds its roots in what some have called “second wave” feminism, of the 1970s and 1980s, when women’s studies, gender studies, and other newly established fields sought out long-neglected source material. In classical studies, it was philologists, including Mary Lefkowitz, Maureen Fant, Ross Kraemer, and others, who led the way in compiling comprehensive sourcebooks, and Sarah Pomeroy who first put this material into a historical framework. Certain scholars then pushed the boundaries of traditional classical studies, taking up issues of the family, otherness, sexuality, death, time, the household, ownership, and other topics.

We can recognize something of a divide between classicists and classical archaeologists at this point, as archaeologists did not engage with developments in the study of gender until somewhat later on. To be sure, the task of gathering archaeological evidence is slower, since the material culture is so widespread, both geographically and in terms of publication, requiring searches through excavation reports, databases, museum storerooms, and other locations. But the crux of the problem lies with a basic restructuring of the questions asked of the data, approaching an “archaeology of gender.” 

Most archaeological material was not excavated with these new lines of inquiry in mind and requires restudy, from first field reports on. New World and prehistoric archaeologists have been quicker to adopt innovative theoretical frameworks than have classical archaeologists, and many of the strategies that I employ in this book have been borrowed from the former’s groundbreaking work.

Lynn Meskell has laid out a useful framework for the phases of feminist analysis that have been experienced within the discipline of archaeology. Separating contemporary feminism from the suffragist movement (1860–1930), Meskell starts with what she calls “first wave”feminism of the 1960s, which focused on women’s political, social, and economic liberation from and equality with men. A second wave developed in its wake during the 1970s, bringing new emphasis on the “inherent”difference between men and women and the special bond between women and Nature. The second wave, which continues to this day, tends to view women as a homogeneous, nomothetic group. Meskell defines a third-wave deconstructive feminism, arising in the 1980s and continuing to the present, that has focused its energies on difference, plurality, ambiguity, embodiment, the transitory, and the disruptive.

The approach of this book is influenced by the third wave, insofar as it concentrates on the complexity of the lived experience and the difference, contradiction, and individuality attested in the ancient record. I shall look at the broad structures of organization within the Greek polis, as well as the micrology of lived relations within this system. Central to this work is consideration of the circulation of power within the bureaucracies of cult, the polis, and the “culture industry,” as defined by Adorno.Taking his cue, I shall endeavor to move beyond binary constructs and consider a multiplicity of factors, particularly in approaching the long-standing commonplace of visible/invisible for male/female within Greek culture. 

Adorno’s model of “constellation,” as appropriated from Benjamin, serves as a guiding framework within which to understand the relationships of the particular to the universal, of the “actor” to the structure. Following Bourdieu, I shall consider the ways in which priestesses used social, cultural, and symbolic capital to propel their agency and to work as effective players within the micropolitics of the Greek city.

It must be said that we stand at an unsettled moment at which there is little consensus as to which phases of which feminisms will survive poststructuralist transformation and critique. The strategies of traditional feminism have been found to lead in directions that are at odds with theoretical movements that have followed in its wake. Judith Butler’s questioning of “woman” as a fixed category, in her Gender Trouble: Feminism and the Subversion of Identity,of 1990, signaled a fork in the road. She exposed the ways in which traditional feminist constructs decontextualize individuals from their historical, political, and cultural settings and identities. The intervening fifteen years have witnessed a further fracturing of the project into many different feminisms and the rise of theoretical movements focused on difference, multiplicity, performance, and alterity. Writing from the perspective of contemporary human rights law, Janet Halley has now made a case for “taking a break from feminism.”

A related methodological force that has contributed to this study is agency theory, developed in the 1990s and still in its early stages as applied to archaeology. While the definition of what is meant by social agent varies and, in many cases, still needs to be worked out, this approach is mapping new directions for our understanding of the ancient past. Irene Winter has demonstrated, for example, that the agent/patient model is far better suited to understanding relationships recorded through the lens of Sumerian grammar than is the subject/object construct.

So, too, in art history, the precept of female agency is directing new lines of inquiry into the culturally manipulated circulation of power and ways in which women have claimed it as artists, viewers, patrons, and shapers of aesthetic sensibilities. It was the possibility of female agency, Norma Broude and Mary Garrard tell us, that inflicted the first casuality in poststructuralist gender studies. The idea of a history “consisting of monolithic patriarchal control over women as passive victims, interrupted by sporadic feminist interventions,” has been discredited. It must be said, however, that agency theory is not without troubles of its own. Joan Gero has argued against its adoption into feminist dialogue because of its inherent masculinist bias, which implicitly links social action to male agency. Her “Troubled Travels in Agency and Feminism”may mark one more fork in a road that has now spawned a whole network of side streets and deviations.

How does agency theory effect this study? Let us consider the ways in which language colors our understanding of women engaged in cult activity. The designation sacred servants conveys an image of dedicated helpers, caretakers of rites and sanctuaries. When we call these same women cult agents, a very different image comes to mind, that of active players within the administration of a bureaucracy, invested with power to act and to effect results. This represents not merely a shift in vocabulary but a change in the thinking behind the words and the ways in which we can understand ancient realities. I will use both these designations, in recognition of the fact that there is agency in service and service in agency. The complexity of the lived experience of ancient women leaves room for both truths.

As Henk Versnel has emphasized, ancient women were not an undifferentiated group. The women considered in this book were individuals of privilege, distinguished from others by their class, economic status, or both. Ancient sources tend to be more abundant for the top strata of society than for elsewhere and, in the case of Greek priesthoods, pedigree, wealth, or both were basic requirements for attaining office. Our priestesses may have had more in common with men of the same social and economic standing than they had with women from the lower ranks. We must bear this in mind as we consider the forces that defined their identities and propelled their agency.

These forces can be found in their social, cultural, and symbolic capital, as defined by Bourdieu. Priestly women had significant resources based on group membership, relationships, and networks of influence and support. Kinship, including genos, and family unit, as well as collective groupings, including choruses and ritual age-bands, all equipped Greek women with social capital that served them well. Knowledge of ritual practice, local myths, and ancestral traditions invested priestly women with a cultural capital that made them invaluable to their communities. Finally, the accumulated prestige of priestesses, in leading public processions, overseeing polis festivals, sitting in reserved seats at the theater, and having their images erected in sanctuaries, guaranteed them a symbolic capital that must not be underestimated in a world in which status carried long-lasting power. As Bourdieu recognized, it is economic capital that lies at the root of all these other forms of capital. Within the ancient habitus, past experience, tradition, and habit joined together with the forces of pedigree and wealth to create the opportunities and constraints that produced Greek priestesses as we know them.

Time, Locality, and Complexity

This study is about time. First and foremost, it is about time in the distant past to which we have access only through fragments left behind. We collect, identify, and attempt to interpret these fragments by searching for patterns and relationships from which we can extract meaning. But it still remains that the fragments are left from a culture that is, in so many ways, foreign to us. Meskell has emphasized the “fundamental difference between women past and present, and between issues which interest us today and which were operative in the past.” This is why it is so important to evaluate the evidence on its own terms and within the parameters of the ancient realities in which it was created. Second, this study is about the specific years during which these women lived, their shared histories within a “common time” specific to a unique period, place, and community.The third time to be considered is the “personal time”through which these individuals passed in their life experiences as girls, maidens, women, and old women. As life cycle profoundly affects the ways in which time is experienced, it is a critical lens through which the evidence should be evaluated.

When we turn to locality and the place-specific nature of myth and ritual, the inherent complexity of Greek religion is revealed. Landscape and local geography direct the myth-creation process through which human beings attempt to explain how things came to be. Scores of ancient Greek communities developed their own myths out of their landscapes, along with their own gods, temples, rituals, festivals, and hierarchies of cult personnel to look after them. This complex system of localized cults, flourishing in the absence of a unified “church,” made for a vast network of independent constructs. Locality-based worship bound individuals with their landscapes and shared histories under a tightly knit common identity. Multiply this phenomenon thousands of times over, then spread it across a millennium, and the complexity of the Greek religious system begins to emerge. Complexity theory has much to offer the study of Greek worship, just as it has benefited such diverse fields as literary analysis, the social sciences, and architecture. Where things happen is central to how things happen, and examination of the complex system of localities within Greek worship allows for a fuller understanding of the ways in which cults functioned.

The Greeks themselves had diverse and sometimes contradictory ways of looking at their own religion. But one thing is clear. Theirs was a system in which myth, cult, ritual, and visual images were utterly interdependent and mutually supportive. The process of representation through words and images cannot be separated from the rituals that gave expression to the underlying systemic structure. Ritual fueled the visibility of Greek women within this system. It sent them on daily paths, traversing their cities, as they made their way up to sanctuaries and out to cemeteries. Requirements for the regular visitation of family tombs and the desire for frequent worship in shrines and temples made for a reality in which scores of women crossed their towns daily. If we add to this mix the highly visible roles of women on festival days, the emerging picture is one of far-ranging mobility for women across the polis landscape. Within this landscape, visual culture supported and reflected the dynamic of myth, cult, and ritual agency. It placed images of priestesses in sanctuaries and cemeteries, on painted vases, sculptured reliefs, sacred implements, and statue bases, populating the polis with the mirrored reflections of the women who served.

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The title Portrait of a Priestess is not meant to convey a belief that there is any single image that can be painted for Greek feminine priesthood. As we have seen, the intensely local character of priesthood over such a broad sweep of geography and chronology defies generalization. Instead, the title reflects my focus on visual culture and my desire to respond to a complaint sometimes directed at archaeological research for having produced a history of “genderless, faceless blobs.” It is my intention to restore some measure of humanity to the women behind the evidence and to sketch portraits of actual lives lived. I shall bring forward by name the contributions of more than 150 historical women whose lives have been long neglected, slipped between the cracks of the more regularly chronicled accounts of ancient history, politics, and warfare.

A further inspiration for the title is my wish to underscore the narrative quality of the material presented. The fragments of sculpture, paintings, inscriptions, and texts gathered here preserve stories of lived experience. They are not just distant data onto which we can project the concerns and agendas of our own times, but are robust survivors of authentic ancient narratives to which we should, instead, listen. These fragments preserve a rich cultural history of women and status, money and marriage, property and patronage, household and community, that teaches us about what mattered most in the ancient past. They enable us to see the ways in which age, class, gender, family, social institutions, and economic resources shaped the lives of women and affected the circulation of power among and around them. Let us follow these women along the path of priesthood from birth to death and experience the responsibilities, privileges, and agency that distinguished their lives.

Joan Bretton Connelly

Hetaera Snake Woman lll (Artwork) 

Chapter 3

Priesthoods of Prominence

Athena Polias at Athens, Demeter and Kore at Eleusis, Hera at Argos, and Apollo at Delphi

The record has left a concentration of evidence for a few mainland Greek priesthoods, in contrast to a paucity of information for the majority of religious offices across the Greek world. In-depth investigation of a few case studies illuminates the localized character of Greek cult service and the diversity of the source material. For the priesthood of Athena Polias at Athens we have a wealth of epigraphic evidence that allows for extensive prosopographical work in naming historical priestesses and reconstructing their family trees. Attic vase painting supplies a wealth of images showing women engaged in cult activity.

The priesthood of Demeter and Kore at Eleusis, in contrast, has left few visual images but a considerable corpus of inscriptions concerning the financial and legal aspects of the office. The priesthood of Hera at Argos is notable for its rich repertory of stories from myth. The most famous of all Greek priesthoods, that of the Pythia at Delphi, has left hardly any names of women who held the post and few images to reflect what the prophetess might have looked like. Instead, we have the oracles themselves, the very words that the priestesses are said to have spoken.

Three of the priesthoods examined in this chapter carried the extraordinary privilege of eponymy. The priesthoods of Athena Polias at Athens and of Demeter and Kore at Eleusis were invested with a cultic eponymy by which events were dated according to the personal names and tenures of the women who held the highest post. At Argos, the priestess of Hera enjoyed an even more broadly reaching civic eponymy. The tenure of her service was used to date not only matters of cult but also historical events of the day. In this, the priestess’s position was comparable to that of the male archons whose tenures provided dates for historical chronologies at Athens and other cities. Thucydides used the forty-eighth year of Chrysis’s service as priestess at Argos, along with the tenures of the ephorate at Sparta and the archonship at Athens, to date the beginning of the Peloponnesian war.

The names of priestesses were thus among the most widely shared elements of common knowledge across the Greek world. This is striking, in view of the widely held belief that the names of well-born women could not even be spoken aloud in classical Athens. In this, we see a contradiction between what we are told in literature and what we learn from epigraphic sources. The names of priestesses were inscribed on their statue bases and dedications as well as on the statue bases and dedications of individuals who served their cults during their tenures. The practise of sacred and civic eponymy ensured that priestly women, and their contributions, would never be forgotten. As we shall see in chapter 8, the names of priestesses were also inscribed on their funerary memorials. In chapter 7, we shall see the names of late Hellenistic and Roman priestesses inscribed upon their reserved seats within the Theatre of Dionysos.

In the face of this evidence it may be time to reconsider the consensus view that the names of respectable women were to be avoided. While this may have been true for certain orators and in some settings, such as the law courts, the case for muting the names of citien women has, perhaps, been overstated. A privileging of certain text fuels this view, such as the funeral speech attributed to Perikles by Thucydides in which the Athenian war widows are told that the less said about them, the better. As we shall see in what follows, names of respectable and influential women were, in fact, known throughout Athens and elsewhere. We shall return to this subject in chapter 10, but , for now, let us consider four priesthoods of prominence and some of the well-known women who held them.

Athena Polias at Athens

The priestess of Athena Polias held one of the most distinguished offices in the Greek world. Evidence shows that the post was hereditary and exclusively held by members of the Eteoboutad clan. The priesthood was open to married women, and its tenure was for life. It was among the oldest feminine priesthoods at Athens, though we do not know how early the Eteoboutad’s claim to it was established. The fact that one branch of the genos controlled the priesthood of Athena Polias and the other held the priesthood of Poseidon-Erechtheus is significant.

By 508 B.C., these two branches were geographically separated, residing in different demes (Bate and Boutadai) and belonging to different tribes (Aigeis and Oineis). The central involvement of the Eteoboutad genos in the cults of the two competing deities from the Athenian foundation myth suggests that the connection between clan and cult was quite ancient. According to Herodotus, Athena and Poseidon competed for patronage of the city and Athena’s gift of the olive tree won out over Poseidon’s sea spring. This contest stands at the heart of the city’s charter myth and is celebrated in the sculptural programme of the Parthenon’s west pediment. The ancestor of the Boutadai was Boutes, who, according to Apollodoros was the brother of Erechtheus. When Pandion, the father of these two heroes, died, the kingship went to Erechtheus and the priesthoods of Athena Polias and Poseidon-Erechtheus went to Boutes.

Epigraphic evidence allows for the identification of at least twenty-five priestesses of Athena Polias dating from the end of the fifth century B.C. to the end of the second century A.D. The stemmata proposed by Lewis, and more recently by Turner and Aleshire, for these priestesses and their families show a great deal of intermarriage. In all, priestesses of Athena are known to have come from seven tribes and thirteen demes, indicating that the office was not restricted geographically.

It is significant that the priesthood was always held by a woman from Bate (the home deme of the Eteroboutadai) until Penteteris of Phyla in the third century B.C. From then on, the geographical origin of the priestesses is diverse.

The large number of surviving names of women who held the office allows for reconstruction of the network of families and system of intermarriage that enabled the Eteoboutadai to control this priesthood for some seven centuries. It has been speculated that, in early days, the priesthood passed patrilineally through the eldest Eteoboutad male to his eldest daughter.

This may be true, though there is no hard evidence for it. The first identifiable priestess of Athena Polias, Lysimache, daughter of Drakontides, had a brother, Lysikles, who was secretary of the treasurers in 416/415. Clearly, this brother-sister team enjoyed particular power and influence on the Acropolis during the late fifth century, one as treasurer and the other as priestess. It has been speculated that Lysikles’ eldest son’s eldest daughter was the Phanostrate who served as priestess of Athena in 341/340 B. C.

Judy Ann Turner reconstructs a stemma through which Lysimache’s nephew’s son’s daughter, Lysimache ll (presumably named for her great-great-aunt), served as priestess of Athena Polias circa 300-290 B.C. Again, this is speculation. We do know that Lysimache’s father, Lysistratos, son of Polyeuktes l, was a prytanis in 341/340. Her niece, named as (Lysistra)te in an inscription, succeeded her as priestess and married into the very wealthy family of Archestratos ll of Amphitrope.

Marrying well was something of a tradition for these Eteoboutad heiresses of the priesthood. So attractive was the prestige of the office that influential families were eager to have eligible women enter into their bloodlines. In time, the patrilineal line of succession seems to have worn thin and the priesthood was passed on matrilineally. Such was the case for Penteteris in the third century, Theodote in the second, and a number of later priestesses. It is possible that the old system was changed out of necessity, because of the absence of eligible candidates from the patrilineal line.

An inscribed base for a statue of Philtera, priestess circa 130-110 B.C., boasts of her famous ancestry, including her maternal grandfather. Diogenes, liberator of Athens, and the orator Lykourgos. Turner points out the significance of Philtera’s claim that she is of ‘true Boatad blood’ and suggests that the Oineid branch of the family, from which Philtera is descended, may have been considered more authentic than the Aigeid branch, which had supplied many earlier priestesses. Turner also observes that it is likely Philtera was descended from both branches of the family, which seem to have intermarried by her day.

The most stunning example of the staying power of illustrious families in cult affairs is that of Philippe ll, daughter of Medeios l, who served as priestess during the late second/early first century B.C. As the great-great-great-great-great-great-granddaughter of Lykourgos, Philippe could boast of an ancestry that, like Philtera’s included blood from both branches of the Eteoboutad clan. We have noted in chapter 2 that Philippe served as kanephoros at the Delia and as subpriestess of Artemis on Delos before becoming priestess of Athena Polias. Her brother, called Medeios after his father, served as Deliast (a member of the Athenian embassy sent every four years to Delos) and as priest of Poseidon-Erechtheus.

Philippe and Medeois are the first known brother-sister pair to hold the two most prestigious priesthoods on the Athenian Acropolis. Like Lysimache and Lysikles of the late fifth century, theyh held considerable economic, social and cultural capital in executing their duties and affecting the life of their community.

Sources provide a glimpse of the busy sacred calendar and obligations incumbent on the priestesses who served. At the festival called the Chalkeia, the priestess of Athena Polias was among those who set the warp for the weaving of Athena’s new peplos. At the Arrephoria, it was her job to hand the arrephoroi the ‘secret things’ that they carried upon their heads. She probably supervised the Plynteria and the Kallynteria, festivals during which Athena’s statue was washed and decorated. At the Skira festival, the priestess walked beside the priest of Poseidon-Erechteus and the priest of Helios in a procession to Skiron on the road to Eleusis.

Inscriptions attest to the authority of the priestess of Athena Polias. A second-century-A.D. decree stipulates that an Eleusinian official called the phaidyntes must inform her of the arrival of the ‘holy things’ at the start of the Eleusinian Mysteries. This special courtesy, which alerted her that the Eleusinian officials had entered Athens, underscores a protocol by which the priestess of Athena Polias held the top position. Her seniority is, in fact, attested much earlier on. Herodotus gives us a vivid account of a priestess of Athena who ejected the Spartan king Keomenes from the Acropolis in 508 B. C. Before the king even got a foot in the door of Athena’s temple, the priestess leapt up from her throne and ordered him out. Addressing him as ‘stranger from Lakedaimon,’ she cautioned Kleomenes that it was unlawful for a Dorian to enter the holy place. Despite the fact that this account is probably fictitious, a core truth reflects the authority of the priestess in enforcing sanctuary law.

The power of the priestess’s voice within her community is emphasized in Herodotus’s account of the evacuation of Athens prior to the battle of Salamis in 480 B.C. The Athenians had consulted the Delphic oracle in the face of the Persian advance. The oracle’s response was characteristically obscure: the Athenians must take refuge behind the wooden walls. The citizenry were divided between those who took ‘the walls’ to mean the ramparts of the Acropolis and those who understood them to be the ships of the Athenian fleet. Themistokles urged the Athenians to take to the ships, but evacuation did not take place without the priestess’s help. Herodotus gives significant credit to her public announcement that the sacred snake had failed to eat its honey cake. This was taken as a sign that Athena herself had left the city, and the populace was thus evacuated more willingly. The power of the priestess to persuade the citizenry to act in accordance with Themistokles’ wishes illustrates a collusion between the political and religious spheres of the city and the agency of the priestess in affecting community action.

We learn of rules for the behaviour of priestesses, some of which are difficult to comprehend. Strabo tells us that the priestess was forbidden to eat fresh cheese produced in Attica. Two centuries later, Athenaeus reiterates this regulation and adds that the priestess is also prohibited from sacrificing ewe-lambs. No rule is more elusive than that inscribed in the so-called Hekatompedon decree, dated to 485/484 B.C. though probably representing a copy of regulations composed under Kleisthenes around 508. This set out directions for conduct on the Acropolis. ‘Sacrificers’ were forbidden to set up pots or to kindle fires indoors. The priestesses and the zakoroi were not to build storerooms and could not ----- (script). If they did, they would be fined one hundred drachmas as well. This is a heavy penalty when considered against the general fines for the laity of just up to three obols. It is two hundred times as much as the penalty for worshippers and twice the annual salary of the priestess of Athena Nike. The severity of the penalty suggests that the prohibited acts represented serious transgressions. The meaning of ----(script) remains unclear. Proposed translations include ‘bake bread’, ‘prepare meals,’ ‘roast on a brazier’, ‘defecate’, and ‘make love’. We cannot know exactly what the violation entailed, but it probably had to do with lighting fires for personal use rather than for authorized ritual activity. 

One priestess stands out as a distinct personality among the many women who served. This is Lysimache, the first identifiable priestess of Athena Polias, whose tenure has been placed circa 430-365 B. C. In chapter 5, we will look at the base of her statue found near the south wall of the Acropolis. Its inscribed dedication informs us that she was the daughter of Drakontides of Bate and that she raised four children. Restoration of gaps in the damaged inscription allows us to understand that she died at age eighty-eight having served as a priestess for sixty four years, a number also given by Pliny (On Natural History) writing some four hundred years later. 

In 1955, David Lewis boldly suggested that this historical Lysimache served as the model for the leading character in Aristophanes’ Lysistrata. In this, Lewis followed Papadimitriou, who had earlier associated another character in the play, Myrrhine, with the historical Myrrhine who served as priestess of Athena Nike at the end of the fifth century. Both Myrrhine and Lysimache were priestesses on the Acropolis in 411 B.C., the year in which Aristophanes’ play was first performed. We have already met Myrrhine in chapter 2 where we considered sortition in the selection of the priestess of Athena Nike. 

Myrrhine’s grave marker records that she was chosen ‘by allotment from all’. Papadimitriou’s association of this Myrrhine with the Myrrhine of Aristophanes’s play is most attractive. When Myrrhine meets her husband at the Acropolis gates (Lysistrata 920-50) she produces bedding, which would have been close to hand if she was, indeed, the priestess of Athena Nike, who had special access to the adjacent sanctuary. In associating the character Lysistrata with the historical Lysimache, Lewis had to cope with the change in names. He pointed to the similarity in form and meaning between Lysistrata, “Dissolver (or Disbander) of Armies,” and Lysimache, “Dissolver (or Disbander) of Battle (or Strife).” He cited Lysistrata 554 as an outright admission of the Lysistrata/Lysimache association. Here, Lysistrata proclaims: “I believe that one day we will be known among the Greeks as Lysimachai (Dissolvers of Battle)”. Lewish maintained that the ancient audience would have immediately recognised the play on the names. 

Over the past fifty years the double association of Lysistrata/Myrrhine has been much debated. The discussion has rarely gone beyond whether or not Lewis was right, and has seldom explored the rich implications of his suggestion for our understanding of the public status of priestly women. Characters from Aristophanes’ Lysistrata can be seen to embody two models for priesthood current in late fifth-century Athens. The old, inherited, lifelong priesthoods, associated with the gentilician class, were typified by the priesthood of Athena Polias as held by Lysismache. The newly hewn, democratic priesthoods, selected by lot from all, were typified by the priesthood of Athena Nike, as held by Myrrhine. The play intentionally contrasts these two models to great comic effect. When Myrrhine eagerly announces that she wants to be the first to swear the oath, Kalonike stops her, saying: “No, you don’t, by Aphrodite not unless you draw the first lot.” This reference to Myrrhine and the lottery seems hardly accidental. Not far away is the lucky Myrrhine of the grave epitaph “chosen by allotment from all,” and favoured “by divine good fortune.” 

Aristophanes’ use of historical figures for his dramatic characters has long been recognized. Perikles Alkibiades, Kleon, Socrates, Euripides, and Kinesias are among the many celebrity citizens whom Aristophanes lampooned. If it can be shown that the Lysistrata similarly draws upon the lives of historical Athenians, in this case priestesses our view of the public role of women and their name recognition within the polis can be greatly enriched. Indeed, we might even understand these women to be insiders, part of the ‘men’s club’, so to speak, and thus fair game for public comedy. As we have seen above, eponymy ensured that priestesses would have the greatest name recognition, not only among women, but among all citizens. I do not mean to suggest that the characters Myrrhine and Lysistrata were slavishly drawn from their historical counterparts. Instead, I suggest that by invoking the names of two well-known priestesses. Aristophanes supplied a central ingredient for successful comedy: the inside joke. 

Centuries later, Plutarch (Moralia) recounted an anecdote involving a priestess named Lysismache as an example of how to use a joke to deflect unwanted requests from inferior persons. Although we cannot know for certain whether Plutarch was referring to the fifth century Lysismache, or to a priestess of the same name who served during the fourth century, it is tempting to see this Lysismache as the fifth-century priestess who inspired the character Lysistrata. 

When the tired muleteers who had brought the ‘holy things’ up to the Acropolis asked the priestess if they could have a drink, she jested that she was afraid to oblige them, lest her action become part of the ritual. Plutarch thus paints a picture of a clever, fun, wisecracking Lysimache. The personality of an individual woman may thus emerge from the sources to provide insight into the impact of an individual priestess within her public arena. So central were priestesses to Athenian society that their names were household words and they were fair game for jokes and for portrayal in theatre. Perhaps no greater testimony can be paid to the centrality of priestesses in the society that celebrated them. 

Shaman Vlll Pt ll (Artwork) 

Warrior V Pt ll (Artwork) 

Demeter and Kore at Eleusis 

The priestess of Demeter and Kore held a unique position, one that bound her to two distinct sanctuaries. In September of every year, she would set out from the great sanctuary at Eleusis and march in procession some eighteen miles to the centre of Athens. Accompanied by other priestesses, she carried the hiera (holy things). By at least the second century A.D. a corps of ephebes is known to have escorted this procession. The image of the priestess arriving at Athens to signal the start of the Eleusinian Mysteries was a sensational visual event that occurred annually for nearly a thousand years. This spectacle powerfully imprinted itself upon the collective memory of generations of Athenians. Its highly associative symbolism bound initiates and sacred officials together in an intense group experience. 

Having arrived at Athens, the hiera were housed in the local sanctuary of Demeter, known as the City Eleusinion, at the northwest foot of the Acropolis. Here, they were kept for four days, during which the start of the Mysteries was announced to the general public. Those to be initiated bathed in the sea off Phaleron and washed piglets for the sacrifices that followed. New initiates spent the fourth day secluded indoors and, on the fifth day, processed to Eleusis for induction into the Mysteries. The priestess of Demeter and Kore marched side by side with the priestess of Athena Polias, escorting the holy thing safely back home. 

The cult of Demeter and Kore was ministered by a host of officials, including men, women and children. Men held the offices of HIEROPHANTOS (revealer of sacred objects), DADOUCHOS (torch bearers), KERYX (sacred herald), EXEGETES (expounder) of the Eumolpidai, PYRPHOROS (fire carrier), PHAIDYNTES (cleanser), altar priest, and others. Boys and girls were hearth initiates. Women served in the posts of the two HIEROPHANTIDES,  the priestess of Plouton, and the priestess of Demeter and Kore alone who had the names of both goddesses in her title. She alone participated in the largest number of Eleusinian festivals, including the Mysteries, the Eleusinia, the Thesmophoria, the Kalamaia, and the Haloa. It was HER name that was used eponymously to date the years in which other cult officials served. For these reasons, her office has been viewed as among the oldest in the Eleusinian hierarchy; one that brought with it very great prestige. 

It should also be said that this office brought significant financial rewards. Epigraphic evidence suggests that this was the most lucrative of all sacred offices open to Attic women. Payments to priestesses of Demeter and Kore will be examined in chapter 7 but, for now, let us say that we have more than half a dozen inscriptions, dating from the mid-fifth century through the Roman period, that attest to their compensation. These include cash payments made for each initiate inducted into the Mysteries, for carrying out duties at the Eleusinia, and for favourable sacrifices performed. The priestess also received in-kind payments from the harvest of the Rarian field. 

The special relationship of the sanctuary of Demeter at Eleusis and the City Eleusinian at Athens has been seen to reflect a bipolar model that connected periphery with centre, articulating the relationship of the Eleusinian cult to Athenian state religion. This would support the view that Eleusis and its cult were part of the Athenian polis from the very beginning, rather than having been introduced through annexation later on. The ritual procession of the priestess of Demeter and Kore provided an important visual link between these two locations and reflected the age-old relationship that the two sites shared. 

Our earliest explicit evidence for the priestess of Demeter and Kore at Athens dates to circa 510-500 B.C. An inscription, carved on what appears to be an altar of Pentelic marble set up near the Eleusinion, mentions ‘the priestess’ in a law regulating the Mysteries. Fifty years later, Lysistrate, the first priestess of Demeter and Kore whose name is preserved, set up a inscribed base in the entrance porch of the Eleusinion. This shows a rectangular cutting on top to receive a pillar, or possibly, a herm. In the dedicatory inscription carved on front. Lysistrate is referred to as the propolos, or ‘servant’, of the ‘sacred rites of Deo and her daughter.’ 

The priestess of Demeter and Kore had responsibility for a variety of festivals. Evidence attests to her role in the Kalamaia, an agrarian feast celebrated in early summer. A decree dated 164/163 B.C. honours the DEMARCH of Eleusis, who ‘completed the sacrifice of the Kalamaia and organized the procession according to tradition together with the hierophant and the priestesses. The priestess also presided at a festival known as the Haloa, a women’s ritual that took place during the season for cutting grapevines and tasting wine. The worship of Dionysos joined that of Demeter for a raucous women’s festival in which worshippers enjoyed plentiful food and drink, traded ribald jokes, and spoke freely in a way that women generally did not. It seems that the priestess of Demeter and Kore had the exclusive right to sacrifice at the Haloa, which, by the fourth century, had become a festival chiefly associated with HETAIRAI. 

Of course, the priestess of Demeter and Kore played a central role in the great women’s festival of the Thesmophoria. In Aristophanes’ Thesmophoriazusai, the choral leader, sometimes labelled ‘Herald’ or ‘Woman Imitating Herald,’ and sometimes regarded as the priestess Krityllla, takes a commanding role in overseeing the preliminary ceremonies. She delivers the prose proclamation, the ritual curse, and the motion of the day (295-379). Colin Austen has suggested that this choral leader may have been inspired by the model of a historical priestess of Demeter and Kore. This would provide a parallel case for an Aristophanic character drawn from an actual priestess, just as we have seen for Lysimache and Myrrhine in the Lysistrata. Although this scene is usually read as a parody of the opening of the Athenian Assembly, Austin’s closer look at its sacral references may point in a different direction. 

Visual images of the priestess of Demeter and Kore are few. A black-figure Siana cup found at Kamiros on Rhodes, dated to the second quarter of the sixth century, seems to show a priestess at a harvest festival. She stands behind a flaming altar, holding a winnowing basket (liknon), an instrument from which the grain was thrown into the air to separate wheat from chaff. At the far left, the goddess Demeter is enthroned. A line of five dancing women and one man move from the goddess toward the priestess at the altar. Her placement within the composition, counterbalancing the image of Demeter; her proximity to the flaming altar; and her manipulation of the instrument of ritual, the LIKNON, all argue for her identification as the presiding cult agent. Bernard Ashmole interpreted the scene as one showing the Kalligeneia, the third day of the Thesmophoria. Erika Simon has viewed it, instead, as a representation of the Chloia or the Haloa. This cup, to which we shall to at the end of the chapter, preserves one of our very earliest representations of the priestess of Demeter. 

The personal names of some twenty historical priestesses of Demeter and Kore survive, dating from the mid-fifth century B.C. to the Roman period. The office was open to married women with children, a fact that may suggest life tenure, though this is by no means certain. Photios tells us that the GENOS of the Philleidai provided women for the post. Whether or not the Philleidai had an exclusive right to the priesthood has been debated. The fragmentary nature of the evidence does not lend itself to a clear answer. 

By the Roman period, intermarriage among various GENE produced a situation in which women eligible for the post belonged to more than one clan. We have seen similar developments for the priesthood of Athena Polias during its latter centuries. But unlike the priestesses of Athena, no direct relationships are attested among women who served as priestesses of Demeter and Kore. This would suggest that the office was not passed through direct inheritance but, perhaps, through election or lottery off a short list of eligible candidates. 

Several priestesses are known from their inscribed statue bases. Sometime before the middle of the fourth century B.C., a priestess whose name does not survive erected her statue on a base of Pentelic marble in the City Eleusinion. She is identified as the mother of Epigenes from Acharnai. A base found east of the Aeropagus Hill attests to a statue for another priestess of Demeter and Kore, set up during the third or second century. Her name does not survive. Recently, the exciting discovery of an inscribed base for a statue of Chairippe by the master sculptor Praxiteles has added to the corpus of statues known for priestesses of Demeter and Kore. The fame of the artist chosen to carve this commission attests to the importance of the portrait and of the priestess. 

Her family is well known from a number of other inscriptions. The find spot of the base, some two hundred meters from the City Eleusinion, suggests that it originally stood in the sanctuary where Chairippe served. Mention of an eponymous priestess appears on a small altar dedicated in the second or first century at the City Eleusinion. It shows an incense bowl carved in low relief, a signifier of sacred service. 

Habryllis served as priestess of Demeter and Kore around 150-130 B.C. She is known from a base of Hymettian marble found in the west wall of the Church of the Hypapanti near the Eleusinion. The inscription records honours for a girl whose service as hearth initiate is dated to the Eleusinion. The inscription records honours for a girl whose service as hearth initiate is dated to the years of Habryllis’s priesthood. The girl went on to serve as kanephoros both at the Pythais festival and at the Panathenaia. Habryllis is known from a second inscription carved on her grave column. We will consider this momument in chapter 8. Neither the grave column nor the horrific inscription specifies the cult that Habryllis served. She was long assumed to be a priestess of Athena Polias, because of the fact that the girl honoured on the inscribed base served as a kanephoros at the Panathenaia. This, combined with the fact that Habryllis’s grave market shows a key adorned with ribbons, symbols that Sara Aleshire associated with the priesthood of Athena Polias, was seen to confirm Habryllis’s association with the cult of Athena. 

Our understanding of Habryllis has changed in recent years thanks to the discovery of a third inscription, one that specifically names her as the priestess of Demeter and Kore and removed from the roster of priestesses of Athena Polias. This would make sense from the GENOS perspective, as Habryllis was not from the Eteoboutad clan that provided Athena’s priestesses. 

Habryllis was descended from a very distinguished Athenian family. Her paternal great-great-grandfather, Eurykleides I and his brother Mikion ll, dominated Athenian politics throughout the second half of the third century. Eurykleides served as treasurer of the military fund (244/243 B.C.) and later as eponymous archon (240/239 B.C.). 

While Mikion served as AGONOTHETHES of the Panatheniaia (ca 230 B.C.). In 229 B.C. the brothers orchestrated the liberation of Athens from Macedonian rule and persuaded the Macedonian commander Diogenes to withdraw his troops from Athens. This period saw something of a religious revival at Athens, perhaps in grateful response to the restoration of democract. Eurykleides and Mikion instituted a new cult of Demos and the Graces, the priesthood of which was passed down through their family line. 

Eurykleides himself may have served as the first priest of this cult, followed by his son Mikion. The family has been further associated with priesthoods of the cult of Ptolemy Euergetes and Berenike. We know that Habryllis made a significant marriage and, as the wife of Kichesias, gained access to a huge reservoir of social and symbolic capital, buoyed by the economic resources of the families into which she was born and married. 

A century later, Glauke, daughter of Menedernos of Kydathenaeon, served in the post. Her family tree shows the same intersection of wealth and influence that we have seen for others who held sacred office. Glauke’s great-grandfather Menedemos l was treasurer of the PRYTANEIS at the end of the third century and her grandfather Archon may have served as eponymous archon. Glauke was preceded, or perhaps followed, in her priesthood by Ameinokleia, daughter of Philanthes from Phyle. Ameinokleia’s two sons and daughter erected her statue in the sanctuary at Eleusis. Theirs was a distinguished family that could boast an aunt Gorgo who was kanephoros, an uncle Xenon (lll) who was archon in 130 B.C. and EPIMELETES at Delos in 118/187, and another uncle Xenon (lV) who was THEOROS to Delphi in 128/127 B.C. The tradition for interfamily officeholding is attested right through the Hellenistic period. Kleokratea, who served as priestess in the mid-first century was the daughter of Oinophilos from Aphidna, who served as ARCHON BASILEUS in 88/87 B.C. 

We have the names of nine priestesses who served during the Roman period and whose lives reflect the same interweaving of economic and social capital. Flavia Laodameia, daughter of Keitos from Phyla was from a distinguished branch of the Keryx clan. Her husband, M. Annius Pythodoros, was priest of Delian Apollo in A.D. 113/114-125/126. He was the grandson of the philosopher Ammonios, the teacher of Plutarch. We know Laodameia from a number of inscriptions including one that carved on a statue base that held the image of her great-granddaughter, Junia Melitine. This was erected by Laodameia and her granddaughter, Annia Aristokleia (Melitine’s mother), to commemorate the girl’s service as a hearth initiate. We know that Melitine went on to serve as a HIEROPHANTID. 

Ailia Epilampsis, daughter of Ailius Gelus of Phaleron, was a well-connected priestess who served to a ripe old age. At the end of the second century A.D. her grandson, the archon Pomponius Hegias, and his sister Pomponia Epilampsis erected a statue of Ailia at Eleusis. Ailia’s father had been STRATEGOS and priest of Olympian Zeus. Her paternal grandfather, one paternal uncle, four male first cousins, her son, and her grandson all held the office of eponymous archon. 

This broad network of well-placed male relatives reflects the potency of Aelia’s social capital, a force that sustained her agency within the system, just as it had done for priestesses of Demeter and Kore over some centuries of officeholding. 

Soul Self Pt ll (Artwork) 

Hera at Argos

The priestess of Hera at Argos are known through lively narratives that come down to us from both myth and history. The most famous of these is Chrysis, who, on a summer evening in 423 B.C., set down her torch within the sanctuary and fell asleep. She awoke to a raging fire, ignited by the flame that she had placed too close to the garlands left for the goddess. Terrified of retaliation for her carelessness, Chrysis fled that night to Phlios. We can only imagine the panic of the aged priestess as she ran from the burning temple where she had served for fifty-six and a half years. This was not just an unfortunate accident but a grave dereliction of duty. Such transgressions constituted serious crimes that could unleash the wrath of the goddess on the entire community. 

This account comes from Thucydides, whom, we have seen, uised the forty eighth year of Chrysis’s priesthood to date the beginning of the Peloponnesian War. Although the historicity of the Chrysis story is unclear, archaeological evidence shows that the archaic temple of Hera at Argos was, indeed destroyed by fire. Pausanias was aware of this fire more than five hundred years later when he chronicled his visit to the Heraion. Above the terrace of the temple that stood in his day were the remains of an older temple that had been destroyed by conflagration. Indeed, archaeological remains show temple foundations dating circa 650-625 B.C. preserved on the upper terrace. The remains of a second temple, dated to the late fifth century, appear, on the level below. Pausanius retells the story of Chrysis, but in his version, the priestess flees to the temple of Athena Alea at Tegea rather than to Phlios. Pausanias claims to have seen a statue of Chrysis standing in front of the burned temple, where, he tells us, her image was set up despite the calamity she caused. 

Pausanias also saw statues of priestesses standing before the entrance of the new temple. The women commemorated here may have been members of the long succession of priestesses used by Hellanikos to reconstruct his historical chronology, a list that went back into the second millennium. Assembling the names of priestesses and the number of years that each woman served. Hellanikos presented this list in his ‘Priestesses of Hera at Argos’, written sometimes at the end of the fifth century. 

The name of the only one person, Alkyone, is actually preserved in the fragments of Hellanikos. In his commentary on the fragments, Jacoby has reconstructed a list of twelve Argive priestesses. This catalogue is by no means complete and there are large gaps between the names of early priestesses. We are told that, in the beginning, the sanctuary of Hera was hotly contested by Argos and Tiryns. The Tirynthian version of the story holds that the first priestess was Kallithyia, daughter of King Peiras. Argive tradition, however, names Io as the first priestess. 

At one time, these two women were combined into ‘Io Kallithyia,’ but subsequently they were separated into two successive priestesses. We also hear of Hypermestra (daughter of Danaos), Eurydike (daughter of Lakedaimon and wife of Akrisios), and Alkyone (daughter of Sthenelos) who served in the office, as did Eurystheus’s daughter Admete, who later fled to Samos. We hear of Kallisto who is said to have lived at the time of the Trojan war and Themisto, who succeeded her. Then comes Kydippe and Theano. Finally, we have the infamous Chrysis, who served in the first quarter of the fifth century. 

Varying accounts of the tale of Kleobis and Biton name their mother as Theano or as Kydippe. The fact that this priestess had sons suggests that the office was open to married women. Herodotus recounts the priestess’s dilemma on festival day, when the oxen meant to pull her cart to the sanctuary were delayed in their plowing. Kleobis and Biton came to the rescue yoked themselves to the cart, and pulled their mother some six miles to the temple. Upon arrival at the sanctuary, mother and sons received the adulation of those gathered for the festival. The priestess then offered a prayer before the image of Hera, asked that the goddess give her boys that which is best for men to have. The goddess complied. After the sacrifice and feasting, when the sons fell asleep in the temple, Hera gave them the best gift of all: death. 

Hellanikos lists Io as the second priestess to serve Hera. Versions of Io’s story are many, spanning a great number of centuries. Her father is sometimes identified as Inachos, King of Argos, and other times as Peiras, King of Tiryns, who is said to have consecrated the cult statue at the Argive Heraion. Io conforms to the prototype of the virgin princess-priestess who attracts the amorous attentions of a god or hero, in this case, Zeus himself. In order to hide his adulterous intentions from his wife, Zeus disguised Io as a white cow. But Hera was not fooled and tricked Zeus into placing the cow under her care. When Hera assigned the watchful eyes of Argos to guard the cow, Zeus sent Hermes to kill Argos and free his beloved Io. The hapless priestess escaped, only to be tormented by an annoying gadfly sent, in turn, by the jealous Hera. 

This tale is represented on a red-figure hydria in Boston. In the centre of the composition we see a running cow, the transformed Io herself. In front of her we see the guard, Argos, with multiple eyes spread across his body, heavily armed with club and sword. He is fleeing from Hermes, who has been sent to kill him. Altar and column set the scene with Hera’s temple, and a frightened male and a female bystander run off to the wings at either side. The identity of the female figure standing before the cow is somewhat ambiguous. At first glance, she would seem to be the goddess Hera, identified by her queenly sceptre and the setting of the scene within her temple. But what of the temple key that she holds in her hand? Could this indicate that the woman is, instead a priestess? We shall return to this question at the end of the chapter. 

The cult of Hera at Argos has left a wealth of stories from myth but little hard evidence for historical priestesses. A second-century A.D. gives a dedication by a priestess (HIEROPOLOS) of Hera named Thaleia. A late grave relief, recovered from the staircase of the Church of Saint Constantine in Argos, shows a temple key carved in low relief together with a sceptre. It bears a simple inscription ---- (ancient text). As ‘foundress’ and carrier of some sort of ‘signs’, Myrtia seems to have had a leadership role in what was most likely the cult of Hera, though this is not confirmed. She may well join the long list of names associated with this highly symbolic and distinguished priesthood that can be traced far back into the mythical past. 

Goddess lll (Artwork) 

Pythia at Delphi 

We stand at a transitional moment in Delphic studies, when many long-held assumptions regarding the ancient sources for the Pythia are under review. The revisionist approach comes from both the scientific and the literary/historical spheres and calls into question many broadly held beliefs resulting from modern scepticism about the veracity of the ancient source material. From the time of the first excavations at the site, begun by the French in 1892, archaeologists have failed to find evidence for the chasm in the rocks that ancient authors claim to be the source of Delphi’s oracular power. Without physical evidence to support ancient claims, modern interpreters have rejected eyewitness accounts of experiences at the sanctuary. But a recent geological survey has revealed that two faults do, indeed, collide at a spot directly beneath the temple of Apollo. This fracture breaks through a bituminous limestone formation from which hydrocarbon gases, including ethylene, could have escaped in antiquity. According to ancient sources, these gases caused hallucinogenic effects first observed in the behaviour of goats. Later, shepherds were affected and eventually, a priestess was set up on a tripod above the chasm from which she breathed in the vapours entered a trancelike state, and pronounced prophecies. Long dismissed as the stuff of legend the existence and efforts of hydrocarbon gases must be reconsidered thanks to modern geological investigation. 

In addition, the agency of the prophetess herself is under new scrutiny. It has long been assumed that ancient authors exaggerated or wholly invented, the role of the priestess as the primary agent of oracular pronouncements at Delphi. How could a simple woman from the local peasantry have provided the authoritative voice that answered clients from far and wide. In consequential political affairs, including colonization, tyranny, and war, queries surely were submitted in writing to educated male priests who composed answers and gave them to the Pythia for delivery. Lisa Maurizio has now called this consensus view into question, maintaining that ‘to deny the Pythia her agency in this religious rite is to render the spectacle of consulting Apollo incomprehensible. 

Priests were, of course, at all times absolutely essential to the functioning of the Delphi oracle. Indeed, the foundation myth recounted in the ‘Homeric Hymn to Pythian Apollo’ does not even mention a priestess. The oldest surviving attestation of the Pythia is found in the sixth-century poet Theognis, who refers to her as the priestess (HIEREIA) at Pytho (807-808). The temple hierarchy of male officials at Delphi was large and included the priests of Apollo (HIEREIS); the PROPHETAI (prophets or oracle-interpreters); the HOSIOI (holy ones); and in the tradition of Euripides’ ION, a temple boy. Epigraphic evidence suggests that, at least after 200 B.C., there were two priests of Apollo who were appointed for life. 

It is possible that they were one and the same as those whom the ancient authors call PROPHETAI, since the title PROPHETES does not appear in Delphic inscriptions. We learn that there were five holy men called HOSIOI who came from reputable local families, said to be descendants of the legendary Deukalion (Plutarch ‘Moralia’).

Maurizio has shown that there is much overlap in language used to describe the priestess and the male attendants who surrounded her. The word MANTIS (seer), comes from the root word MEN and describes one who is in a special mental state, what we might call inspiration. The title PROPHETES, by contrast, is based on the root for ‘to say’ or ‘to speak’ and conveys the role of one who proclaims publicly. The prophets have traditionally been viewed as those who wrote down the Pythia’s responses. The old model has the Pythia serving as MANTIS, uttering inspired words in an altered mental state, while PROPHETAI transformed her babble into intelligence prose. But in reality, things were not so simple. The Pythia is referred to equally in the sources as MANTIS, PROPHETIS, and even PROMANTIS, or ‘fore-seer.’ Her active agency within the ritual deserves careful consideration. 

The office of prophetess at Delphi is atypical of Greek feminine priesthoods in that the Pythia was chosen from among women who were neither well born nor rich, and who were subject to the extraordinary requirement of perpetual celibacy. In addition, her prophecies were directly inspired by the god rather than indirectly through lots, signs or incubation, as was the norm at most oracular sites. Early on, the Pythia was chosen from among maidens of the local peasantry, but in time and on account of the rape of one such maiden priestess, the post came to be filled by older women who had passed the age of fifty. Although advanced in years, the women dressed in maiden costume in remembrance of the youthful priestesses from days gone by. The Pythia could have been married and had children, but from the time she took up her post, she was required to remain chaste and live apart from her husband. She held the office until death. 

The Pythia was active for just nine months a year, as the oracle closed down for the three winter months, when Apollo was understood to have departed for the land of the Hyperboreans. She gave prophecies only on the seventh day after each new moon. One can only imagine the great queue of questioners on the nine days of the year when the oracle was functioning. It is understandable that, during the classical period when the shrine was especially busy, there were as many as three Pythias working at once on a shift system. Two Pythias would alternate I the mantic sessions and one would serve as an understudy. 

Even with these provisions, some inquirers were frustrated by the limited schedule of times for consultation. It was very inauspicious for the priestess to give prophecies on days that were not designated by law. The young Alexander the Great was eager for a consultation before he set out for Asia but had the bad luck to arrive at Delphi on a day when oracles were not being given (Plutarch Alexander). When his request for a session with the priestess was rejected, the brash young king tried to drag the Pythia into the temple himself, demanding that she work. Impressed by his passion, the priestess exclaimed, ‘You are invincible, my son!’ and Alexander went away happy with the very words that he had hoped to hear. 

When Appius Claudius Pulcher aggressively pressed the priestess Phemonoe for a mantic session, she first tried to put him off (Lucan ‘The Civil War’). Later, she relented and prophesied that he would have no part in war but find peace in Euboia. Appius was pleased, understanding this to mean that he would win an easy victory. But Phemenoe was, instead, predicting his imminent death. We hear of another impatient male leader, Philomelos, the Phokian commander during the Third Sacred War (Diodorus Siculus). After he seized control of Delphi in 356, he demanded that the Pythia mount the tripod according to ancestral custom. 

When she refused, saying that it was NOT the custom, he threatened her. The Pythia coolly replied, ‘It is in your power to do as you please.’ Philomelos was delighted, understanding that he could carry on with his military plans. He, of course, did not forsee his defeat at the battle of Neon just two years later. On the basis of these stories, one could say that we have a tradition in which calm and composed Delphic priestesses handled impertinent male inquirers with a certain diplomatic aplomb. 

Shaman Vll Pt lll (Artwork) 

We know the personal names of very few women who held the post, and most of these are attested in myth rather than in historical sources. In Aeschylus’s ‘Eumenides’, the prophetess gives a genealogy for the women who held oracular powers. First it was Earth (Ge) who had the prophetic gift. She passed it onto her daughter, the goddess Themis, who consented for it to be passed onto her sister, the Titan Phoibe. Phoibe, in turn, handed over the oracular seat to Phoibus (Apollo) as a birth gift, also giving him her name. Pausanias similarly credits Ge with the original prophetic powers, but in his version of the story, Earth passes the gift on to Daphnis, one of the nymphs residing on Mount Parnassos. 

There is a widespread tradition that Apollo’s first prophetess was named Phemonoe. She is famous for being the first Pythia to have sung in hexameter verse. Phemonoe, which means ‘Speaker of Thoughts’ or ‘Thinker of Oracular Speech’, became the archetypal name for the Pythia, just as Theano was for priestesses of Athena. When Lucan tells the story of Appius Claudius Pulcher’s visit to Delphi in 48 B.C., he named the presiding priestess Phemonoe, though she is a long way off in time from the first Pythia. His Phemonoe is portrayed as wandering aimlessly around the grove near the Castalian spring, free from her duties, since by then the oracle had fallen silent and the temple was locked shut. (The Civil War 123 – 127). 

Herodotus gives us the names of a few prophetesses who served at critical points in his ‘Histories’. We hear of a disgraced priestess named Perialla, who was corrupted by Kobon, son of Aristophanes, and dismissed from her office (Histories). When Kleomenes tried to usurp power from Demaratos, he first cast into doubt the legitimacy of Demaratos’s succession. Consulting the Pythia on this question, Kleomenes made sure that she had been bribed in advance to give the answer he wanted to hear. “Is Demaratos the son of King Ariston?” Kleomenes asked. Perialla gave the prearranged response: “No”. For engineering this false charge of illegitimacy, Kobon was banned from Delphi and Perialla was dismissed from office. 

Herodotus tells us that a priestess named Aristonike was consulted by the Athenians prior to the battle of Salamis in 480 B.C. She emphatically urged the Athenians to leave their city: ‘Why sit, you doomed ones, fly to the ends of the earth!’ Pythagoras is said to have studied under a Delphic priestess, Themistokleia, whose name reflects the root ‘Themis’, the goddess who held the oracular powers in early days. We hear of a prophetess named Xenokleia, who refused to give a consultation to Herakles because he was guilty of the murder of Iphitos (Pausanias). Angered by her refusal, Herakles took the tripod out of the temple and carried it away. When he returned the tripod, Xenokleia obliged him, telling him all that he wanted to know. 

Epigraphic sources have preserved the name of only one historical priestess of Apollo who served very late in the history of Delphi. Theoneike is referred to as ‘Pythia of the god’ in a third-century-A.D. inscription found on a block built into a Byzantine church. This stone once held a memorial for the priestess’s granddaughter, who was also named Theoneike. Her grandfather Hippokrates, husband of her grandmother Theoneike, is named as priest of Apollo. The younger Theonike married her uncle Phoibianos, who also served as priest. This inscription bears witness to the fact that priestesses of Apollo at Delphi included women who had been married and had children prior to their service. It also suggests that, at least by the Roman period, the privilege of priestly holding at Delphi may have been concentrated in a few prominent families. 

A wide variety of sources inform us on the experience of the Pythia during her mantic sessions. From the third century B.C., authors locate the setting for oracular response at a spot above a crevice in the rocks from which rising vapours escaped. As noted above, the temple of Apollo was carefully positioned atop this geological formation, with its ADYTON, or inner sanctum, placed directly above the fissure. The nearby spring of Kassotis held special powers and its waters plunged underground, reappearing within the adyton of Apollo’s temple (‘Pausanias’). The Pythia drank from this spring in preparation for her mantic sessions. In the opening scene of the ‘Euminides’, the Pythia offers a prayer honouring the Delphic divinities before she enters the temple. 

Plutarch (‘Moralia’) tells us that she burned laurel leaves and barley meal upon the altar before mounting the tripod. While giving oracular pronouncements, she wore a crown of bay leaf on her head and held a sprig of bay in her hand, a description consistent with what we see on a red-figure cup in Berlin. 

Consultation took place within the adyton of the temple, where the stone OMPHALOS, or ‘navel’, marked the centre of the earth (Pindar PAEAN). By several accounts, this is the spot where Zeus’s eagles met when they set off in flight in search of the centre of the earth. A laurel tree is said to have grown within the adyton, which also housed a gold statue of Apollo and Apollo’s lyre. The most distinctive feature of the inner sanctum was the great bronze tripod set above the crevice. Diodorus Siculus claims that the tripod was actually invented at Delphi for the purpose of holding the Pythia above the escaping gases. The Codrus Painter’s cup, dated to circa 440-430 B.C., gives us a rare images of a priestess seated upon the tripod in precisely the manner that the sources describe. 

She holds a libation bowl in one hand and looks intently into it, as if she were divining some information from its contents. In her other hand she holds a laurel branch, evoking the god Apollo and the laurel tree that grew within the sacred space. 

The cup shows the Pythia as we imagine she would have looked performing her mantic duties. Her placement within an architectural setting, complete with Doric column and triglyph/metope frieze, locates the scene within the temple of Apollo. An inquirer stands before her, crowned with laurel and heavily draped in a himation. But this is no generic priestess and no average pilgrim. Painted inscriptions tell us that this Pythia is actually the goddess Themis and the inquirer is King Aigeus of Athens. Without these identifying inscriptions, we surely would have assumed that the images represented a contemporary scene rather than an episode from the mythical past. 

We lack sources that describe what normal mantic sessions were like. It is the extraordinary cases that attracted the ancient authors, and such was the motivation for Plutarch’s summary (‘Moralia’) of an eyewitness account from Nikandros, priest of Apollo. Plutarch himself served as a priest at Delphi and must have been close to Nikandros, to whom he dedicated his essay ‘On Listening To Lectures.’. Plutarch describes Nikandros both as a PROPHETES and as an HIEREUS (‘Moralia’). He recounts that Nikandros was present with some holy men, HOSIOI, when a certain Pythia was forced against her will to give a prophecy. An embassy had arrived from abroad for consultation. Things went terribly wrong at the preliminary sacrifice when the animal victim failed to respond to the first libations. The priests were eager to please the visitors and so further encouraged the animal to respond by giving it a very heavy dousing of liquid offerings. The Pythia disapproved of this intervention and understood the animal’s reluctance to be inauspicious. Forced into the adyton for prophecy, she was suddenly filled with an evil spirit. She soon became hysterical and with a terrifying scream ran toward the exit and threw herself down. A few days later she died. 

Lucan gives an even more extreme account of a forced prophecy and its disastrous consequences (‘The Civil War’). We have already touched briefly on the story of Phemonoe’s encounter with Appius Claudius. 

Having forced the priestess into the closed temple, Appius witnessed a startling sequence of events. He pressed Phemonoe to tell him about the outcome of the civil war and threatened to punish her if she refused to answer. At first, she only pretended to be inspired but soon she was overtaken by Apollo. She raged madly about the cave, with the ribbons and garlands falling loose in her hair. With her head shaking she circled about the temple, scattering tripods in her way, raging with the god inside her. ‘First the wild frenzy overflowed through her foaming lips; she groaned and uttered loud inarticulate cries with panting breath; next, a dismal wailing filled the vast cave; and at last when she was mastered, came the sound of articulate speech. (‘The Civil War’). 

Phemonoe did not recover from her possession and died soon thereafter. Just as we have seen in Plutarch’s account, forced prophecy could be deadly for a priestess. 

These stories have had a lasting effect on the prevailing view of the Pythia as a frenzied, babbling voice box of the god. Simon Price has argued that we should understand these accounts as exceptional rather than as typical. In fact, the Pythia exerted considerable control over the oracle that she delivered. Price points out that for the occasional instances of corruption attested at Delphi, it is the priestess alone who is bribed, not the male priests around her. 

In addition to Kobon’s corruption of Perialla discussed above, we hear that Kleisthenes bribed a Pythia (Herodotus) as did the Spartan king Pleisonax and his brother (Thucydides). 

These cases suggest that the Pythia was the one who held chief responsibility for the oracles, supporting Maurizio’s claim for her primary agency within the ritual. 

Ancient sources are also very informative on the experience of the inquirer. Although we are told that the Pythia was interrogated by male clients alone, the reality appears to have been more complex. Plutarch cites a law forbidding women from approaching the temple (‘Moralia’). But this contradicts Euripides’ ‘Ion’, in which the chorus of Athentian maidservants ask the temple boy whether it is lawful for them to enter the sanctuary. Ion first answers no, but then adds: ‘If you have sacrificed the holy cake before the temple and wish to ask a question of Phoibos, go to the shrine. Do not go into the inmost recess without sacrificing a sheep’. (‘Ion).

The decree cited at the opening of this book, granting Chrysis priority of consultation at Delphi, suggests that she had direct access to the oracle, despite her female gender. This could be the result of her special status as priestess of Athena Polias or as PROXENOS of Delphi. It is possible that male kin carried the questions of female family members into the adyton. Certainly, there were different times over the course of the thousand years of activity at the shrine. The fact that many of the surviving questions put to the Pythia pertain to fertility and childbirth argues for the active participation of women in Delphi consultation, even if through male emissaries. 

Those seeking an audience with the Pythia had first to perform rites including purification by bathing in holy water and offering a PELANOS (cake of barley, honey and meal) upon the altar in front of Apollo’s temple. A preliminary sacrifice was offered by the Delphic priests on behalf of all inquirers on regular consultation days. The behaviour of the victim, a goat, was carefully watched for signs. If the animal shook itself sufficiently, it was inferred that Apollo approved, and the sacrifice proceeded. 

The inquirer would then pay a fee and enter the temple, where a final sacrifice was required upon the inner hearth. The local representative of his home city (Proxenos) would accompany him into the inner chamber. Plutarch (‘Moralia’) tells us that those waiting to consult the oracle sat in a room that, at times, was filled with a delightful fragrance floating on air from the adyton “as if from a spring”. He likens this fragrance to the aroma of a fine perfume. When the time came for consultation the client would put his question to the priestess either orally or written upon a tablet. 

Just more than six hundred oracular responses survive. These are, allegedly, words spoken by the Pythia. Some texts record authentic, historical responses, while others are clearly drawn from legend, fabrication, or a combination of both. In some cases, oracles seem to be hexameter verse. There is much discussion of the role of the PROPHETAI and poets in putting the Pythia’s words into verse. About one third of the oracles are ambiguous. Categories of inquiry include the personal, the religious, and the political. Plutarch (‘Moralia’) gives a wide ranging list of questions put to the oracle. Will the inquirer be victorious? Will the inquirer marry? Would it be more profitable and better to do this or that? Nearly three-quarters of the historical responses deal with questions of cult, their foundations, festivals, temples, sacrificers, and laws. The majority of the nonreligious responses have to do with public affairs concerning leaders, legislation, the founding of cities and colonies, foreign relations, and war. 

Some responses deal directly with the questions concerning priestesses. The Parians brought a request to Delphi, asking whether they should execute Timo, HYPOAKOROS of Demeter and Persephone (Herodotus). She had aided Miltiades in his attempt to take Paros and had revealed to him sacred mysteries that were forbidden to men. The oracle responded that the priestess should not be punished, since she had merely contributed to, and not caused, Miltiades’ final undoing. A related response concerns the Athenian proposal for a war with Syracuse in 416/415 B.C. Although the question does not survive, the oracle’s response does. It advised the Athenians to bring the priestess of Athena from Erythrai or Klazomenai (Plutarch ‘Moralia’; ‘Nikias’). 

The model of the Delphic Pythia influenced oracular priesthoods elsewhere. The temple of Apollo Pythios at Argos was supposed to have been founded directly from Delphi. Here, a priestess gave prophecies just as the mother shrine (Pausanias). At the sanctuary of Apollo at Patara, the prophetess was locked in the temple on nights when responses were required (Herodotus). At the sanctuary of Apollo in Epiros, a virgin priestess oversaw an annual ceremony that included the hand-feeding of snakes (Aelian, ‘On Animals’). The Epirotes belived that the snakes were directly descended from the Delphic Python. Pilgrims came from far and wide to watch the spectacle. If the snakes readily ate the food that the priestess offered, the omen was understood to be favourable. 

While the virgin priestess of Epiros was not strictly speaking a prophetess, her actions did result in signs that portended the future, Herodotus informs us that, at the shrine of Dionysus among the Satric Bessoi in Thrace, a woman PROMANTIS delivered oracles “as at Delphi, and nothing more intricate”. This observation may reflect the fact that the Pythian model was one in which the prophetess received direct inspiration from the god, rather than through the more widely attested oracular vehicles of lots, signs or incubation. 

Across the Aegean at the sanctuary of Apollo at Didyma, male prophets had given oracles from the early Archaic days of the Branchidai. But by the Hellenistic period, priestesses took over the work of prophecy, presumably uner the influence of the Delphic model. An inscription from Didyma dating to the first century A.D. was composed by a HYDROPHOROS named Tryphosa, daughter of Melas. Her grandmother, also named Tyrphosa, is said to be “the prophetess whom the god appointed in an oracle, when Claudius Charmus the younger was prophet.”

A second inscription, dating to the first century B.C or A.D. suggests the presence of female seers at Didyma. It reads:”Gaius, I thank the pretty little prophetess.” A third inscription may refer to a prophetess named Kleopatra who served during the second half of the second century A.D., though this depends on extensive restoration of the text.   

Sixty-one responses survive for Didmya and show characteristics similar to those from Delphi. Some directly concern priestesses. An inscription carved on the front face of an anta block, dated to the second century A.D., records a response given to Alexandra priestess of Demeter Thesmophoros. Alexandra was concerned by the fact that since the time she took office, the gods had never been so manifest in their appearances through maidens and women, men, and children. 

In response, Apollo assures Alexandra that the manifestations are favourable and advises her that “Immortals accompany mortal men….and make their will known.” The same block preserves an incomplete but related response inscribed on its left side. The text is also addressed to Alexandra. It acknowledges her good service as priestess, praising her for the honour with which she has been “a seeker of the goal of a principled course of life.” 

From Italy to Egypt and beyond, most oracles were dependent on signs, lots and dreams rather than on direct inspiration from the god. At Dodona, divination was manifested in the rustling of leaves and the twittering of doves in Zeus’s oak tree. We are told that the oracle was established here when two black doves flew out of Thebes in Egypt (Herodotus). One travelled to Dodona and settled in the oak tree, from which it declared, in human speech, that this was a place of divination for Zeus. The other dove flew to Libya, where the oracle of Zeus Ammon was founded. The priestess of these establishments were called doves, because they spoke a strange language that sounded like the twitter of birds. Herodotus himself visited Dodona and spoke with the presiding priestesses, the eldest named Promeneia the second Timarete, and the youngest Nikandra. He clearly regarded these women as trustees of sacred knowledge from whom he was eager to learn all he could regarding the origins of the establishment. 

The spectre of the Pythia loomed large in the ancient world. We learn from Iamblichos, in what is almost certainly an anachronistic invention that the birth of Pythagoras was predicted by the prophetess herself. When Pythagoras’s father consulted the priestess, he was told that his wife would bear an extraordinary son. This is why the boy was named Pythagoros, which means “spoken by the Pythia.” When did the priestess of Apollo stop speaking at Delphi? In the fourth century A.D.,, when the envoy Oribasios was sent to Delphi by the emperor Julian the Apostate, he reported that the spring had fallen still and the Pythia spoke no more. 

In A.D. 391, the emperor Theodosios issued the famous edict that effectively banned divination and closed all oracular shrines (Theodosian Code). With this, a grand tradition of some one thousand years of prophetic proclamations and the women who spoke them came to a firm and final end. 

In closing, let us examine the varied visual evidence for these priesthoods of prominence and acknowledge just how uncertain our readings of ancient images can be. The four vases considered in this chapter span some 130 years, show black-figure and red-figure technique, and represent shapes that include cups, an amphora, and a hydria. Any comparisons made within this group invite methodological difficulties stemming from chronological, technical, and formal differences. Nonetheless, this exercise usefully engages us with the fundamental problem of the relationship of myth and realia in the image-creation process. 

The composition of the scene on the London cup emphasizes the communality between Demeter and her priestess as they face one another from either end of the picture field. The priestess is surrounded by a combination of sign-components that reinforce her presiding role within the ritual. These include the flaming altar of sacrifice and the winnowing basket, a symbol of the harvest. When this scene is read together with the image on the reverse side of the cup, its meaning is enhanced. Here, a stout man is depicted in the act of plowing, while a younger man follows behind, sowing seeds in the freshly tilled earth. The plowing man has been identified as Bouzyges, the first to yoke an ox an introduce cultivation at Athens. In commemoration of Bourzyges and his important contribution, an annual festival was observed at the foot of the Acropolis called the HIEROS AROTOS, or ‘sacred plowing’. It fell to the Bouzygai, a clan named for this famous ancestor, to undertake the ritual cultivation each year. If we read the plowing scene as one drawn from legend, that is, as the charter myth upon which the historical ritual was based, should we not then understand the sacrificial scene to show a mythical narrative as well? On this view we can read round the cup, from Bouzyges’ first plowing on one side to the city’s first harvest festival on the other. The woman at the altar would then represent a legendary, perhaps first, priestess of Demeter shown presiding over rites that include dancing and sacrifice in thanksgiving to the goddess. 

We have touched upon the iconographic challenges presented by the red-figure hydria in Boston that shows a scene set in Hera’s temple at Argos. Here, the mythological character of the narrative is clear, and we can identify with ease the figures of Argos. Hermes, and Io, who has been transformed into a cow. The identity of the woman who stands before the cow is certain. She is usually recognised as Hera, holding her sceptre as queen of the gods. But what about the symbol of priesthood that she carries, the temple key? 

Alexander Mantis maintains that this is Hera, citing a number of sources that refer to goddesses as KLEIDOUCHOI, and pointing to images in which Hera holds a key. Erika Simon would disagree, and identifies the woman as a priestess, the successor of Io. There may be a further possibility. Could we, in fact, be looking at Io shown twice within the composition, once as a cow and again as a priestess? This would compress the story of her transformation into a single image in what has been called simultaneous or synoptic narrative. Io is, after all, immortalized as the KLEIDOUCHOI, and pointing to images in which Hera holds a key. 

Erika Simon would disagree, and identifies the woman as a priestess, the successor of Io. There may be a further possibility. Could we, in fact, be looking at Io shown twice within the composition, once as a cow and again as a priestess? This would compress the story of her transformation into a single image in what has been called simultaneous or synoptic narrative. Io is, after all, immortalized as the KLEIDOUCHOS of Hera in Aescylus’s ‘Suppliants’ where the chorus asks, “Is there a story told here in Argos that once Io was keeper of the keys of Hera’s temple? Or, perhaps, goddess and priestess are so strongly identified that their images merge into one. This scene beautifully illustrates the difficulties we face in extracting meaning from ancient images. 

When we turn to the Codrus Painter’s cup, on which a woman is shown seated in the tripod of Apollo, we are surprised to find that our assumptions are not those of the ancient artist. The sacred signifiers, including tripod, laurel branch, libation bowl, architectural setting, and inquirer, tell us that we are looking at the Pythia at Delphi. But added inscriptions inform us otherwise. This is no mortal priestess but the goddess Themis. The inquirer is no earthly pilgrim but the mythical King Aegeus. Without the painted labels we would never have guessed these identifications. 

Gloria Ferrari has examined a number of images that similarly appear to show scenes from ‘everyday life,’ but, in fact, show narratives from myth. Their identifications are confirmed by the painted inscriptions that label the figures. What looks like a generic symposium scene on a red-figure rhyton in Richmond, in fact, shows mythical kings of early Athens banqueting together. A bell krater by the Dinos Painter seems to present an ‘everyday’ scene of a departing warrior but in fact shows the eponymous heroes Pandion, Akamas, and Oineus. A pyxis in London presents a ‘domestic scene’ with a woman working wool, and others holding an alabastron, basket and chest. Painted labels tell us that these are no ordinary women but Helen, Klytaimnestra, Kassandra, and Danae. Alain Schnapp and Francois Lissarrague have encountered a similar phenomenon in their analysis of scenes showing dead heroes. When unlabeled, the images are interpreted as generic battle scenes, but when inscriptions are added, we learnt that they portray Ajax carrying the corpse of Achilles off the battlefield at Troy. These case studies caution us to be wary of our assumptions when reading images as snapshots of reality. We must allow for the possibility that they show an imagined world of the past. 

Let us conclude with the amphora that shows a woman pouring a libation for Athena, to illustrate the breadth of possible interpretations for its images. The woman wears no jewellery and is shown barefoot. She carries no temple key and wears no fancy dress that might communicate her priestly status. Can her libation bowl and jug, used together as a set, signify her special agency within the ritual? Following the paradigm presented by the Codrus Painter’s cup, should we first look for a meaning in the mythical past? Could this woman be Queen Praxithea, first priestess of Athena Polias, shown serving the goddess who appointed her to office (Euripides ‘Erechteus, Pap, Sorbonne’). 

When we turn to the image of Athena, a range of possible interpretations presents itself. Athena wears her aegis atop what appears to be a chiton, peplos and himation, rather than over her traditional costume of a peplos worn alone. She holds a helmet in one hand and, in the other, a sceptre rather than her traditional spear. What motivated the selection of the signifiers whereby Athena’s standard attributes have been exchanged for chiton, himation, and sceptre? The dark-trimmed himation falls somewhat improbably from beneath her aegis. Could we be looking at a woman dressed in an ‘Athena costume’ rather than the goddess herself? Is this image influenced by the visual dynamic of ritual theatre, in which priestesses took on the likeness of the goddesses they served? 

This line of inquiry will be pursued in the following chapter, in which we shall consider priestly costume and ritual theatre. Our efforts to comprehend the roles of myth and realia in the image-creation process are further complicated by the function of mimesis. As we shall see, ancient women engaged in cultic dramas, processions, and feasts dressed in the costumes of goddesses. The vases examined in this review of ‘priesthoods of prominence’ alert us to the obstacles that stand between us and a full understanding of the mentality in which the images were created and received. The challenges that they present repay the efforts of examination, as they engage us so directly with the fundamental dynamics of image and meaning. 

Joan Breton Connelly 

Priesthoods of Prominence. Portrait of a Priestess. Women and Ritual in ancient Greece 

Joan Breton Connelly 

Joan Breton Connelly is an American classical archaeologist and Professor of Classics and Art History at New York University. She is Director of the Yeronisos Island Excavations and Field School in Cyprus. Connelly was awarded a MacArthur Fellowship in 1996. She received the Archaeological Institute of America Excellence in Undergraduate Teaching Award in 2007 and held the Lillian Vernon Chair for Teaching Excellence at New York University from 2002-2004. She is an Honorary Citizen of the Municipality of Peyia, Republic of Cyprus. She is a Trustee of Bryn Mawr College. 

Connelly’s scholarship focuses on Greek art, myth, and religion, and includes a groundbreaking reinterpretation of the Parthenon Frieze. A cultural historian, she has examined topics ranging from female agency, to ritual space, landscape, life cycles, identity, reception, and complexity. In Portrait of a Priestess: Women and Ritual in Ancient Greece, Connelly challenges long held beliefs concerning the “invisibility” of women in ancient Greece and brings together far-flung archaeological evidence for women’s leadership roles in the religious life of the city. 

Portrait of a Priestess was named as one of the 100 Notable Books of the Year for 2007 by the New York Times Book Review, and the Association of American Publishers named it the best book in Classics and Ancient History for 2007. In 2009, Portrait of a Priestess won the Archaeological Institute of America’s James R. Wiseman Book Award.

A field archaeologist, Connelly has worked at Corinth, Athens, and Nemea in Greece, at Paphos, Kourion, and Ancient Marion in Cyprus, and on the island of Failaka off the coast of Kuwait. Since 1990, she has directed the Yeronisos Island Excavation and Field School just off western Cyprus. Here, she has pioneered eco-archaeology, undertaking floral and faunal surveys, annual bird counts, and establishing guidelines sensitive to the ways in which archaeological intervention impacts the natural environment. Her fieldwork has focused on cross-cultural exchange in the Hellenized East during the centuries following the death of Alexander the Great.

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This is a programme, based on my scholarly and non scholarly work over 15 years (so far), if not for my whole life, and my extensive and intense, visceral experiences of self transformation from resignation, cynicism and despair to a state of relative bliss, and above all, the right to be. The programme and the courses and my speaking and indeed my forthcoming book, will cover the method of change. The psychological, sociological, spiritual, cultural, political, emotional and physical and even anthropological methods of change. Why we are here. Who the Sacred Whore High Priestess™ is and why she is here. And who the Sacred Whore High Priest™ is. Why we are here. Who we are and what we are and why we are. The beauty and glory of the truth. The meaning of life, no less. This will be on offer in the future.

My first book of consciousness, my first book of the spiritual politics of humanity, of authentic power and of self love and strength. A comprehensive series of online courses, live events and audio and visual material. Books, live events, CDs and DVDs. And one on one personal empowerment consultations. The Amera Ziganii Rao Method of Change™. The right to be and the way to have the right to be. And indeed, how to maintain the will to live without love. How to BE unconditional, self sufficient, self caring, self love. The right to be and the will to be and the unparalleled success that comes with that. The Lost Knowledge™. HOW to live. And how to heal others, the profane and the sick and the soulless. The others. My Business and that of any Sacred Whore High Priestess™ and Sacred Whore High Priest™, is Human Rights, The Right to a Sexual Society, Self Actualisation and Freedom.

My Business is To Overthrow Fascism, in the Home and in the Country. My business is also mastering destiny. Overthrowing the ultimate 'fascism'. Our journey on Earth and The Return To The Source. Our healing, our ascension and our redemption. Fate. The daily crucifixions of a true life, the challenges and the fury of being healers and people of love on a planet like Earth.

Submitting to the journey to liberate and evolve oneself, through following one's heart, however much heartbreak and devastation it leads to on the long long long journey to freedom and then the longer journey to happiness. 'Long Road to Freedom', as Nelson Mandela says. My business is always taking risks, never giving up and making the endless sacrifices it takes to become whole. Enlightenment, Nirvana and then Parinirvana and beyond. My business is pain. My business is bliss.

My business is seeing the truly glory of Spirit on Earth. The Sacred Whore High Priestess Society™ and all that it is. Spirit, humanity, sex and love again at last. And the end of our legacy as either servants or witches or unpaid carers or indeed, ignored mistresses, other women, other men even, and the weirdos that are at the bottom of society. This is our world and it is time to take it back and I can show you how. And that makes my life, truly, worth living.

I want you to feel the way I do. Alive, with the right to be and the belligerence to exist in this profane and male ‘God’ led world of male supremacy, female supremacy, domestic, casual fascism, tribe rules from hell, with beautiful and kind, love intelligence laden, female and male Cinderella warriors at the bottom, caring for everyone else and getting nothing but hatred, ridicule and isolation for it. The meek are already inheriting the Earth and I can show you how.

Amera Ziganii Rao © 2012

I am THE High Priestess Monarch of the ancient past and I forgive you for becoming enslaved and taken over by the machines of the alien reptile force that invaded and took over Earth 8000 years ago. They taught you to hate me and my kind and you believed them. They told you I and my kind were dictators and that you were slaves, when all we had done was love you, honour you as companions and above all, we had let you just live.

We were the holy communers, the ones who gave birth to human beings, the leaders of society, the creators of society, the vehicles of Divinity on Earth and the channels of wisdom. The ones who looked after everything and the ones who built everything and ran everything, because we could. And because we loved it. We are and were the force of creation. And you loved us and you lived.

But they told you that you ‘deserved’ power too and that we were the ones standing in your way. And you believed them. The oldest ‘divide and rule’ strategy of hate in history and it worked. They used it and you bought it, hook, line and sinker. You had to give up sex, love, magic and your own spiritual gifts and you burnt, destroyed and violated me for 8000 years.

The world calls that male supremacy. And indeed, family supremacy, Matriarchal supremacy and supremacy of the material world and all who believe in it. Men and women like you. When all that you are are slaves to a reptile force to generate hate energy for them to live and thrive and vampire the human race. The puppets of a hate force, that chose to destroy women and men like me, for hate to grow, so they could live. You bought it and it worked. The greatest fraud in the history of the world.

I am THE High Priestess Monarch of the ancient past and I forgive you for becoming enslaved and taken over by the machines of the alien reptile force that invaded and took over Earth 8000 years ago. They taught you to hate me and my kind and you believed them. They taught you that my mind was evil. My mind, my sex, my body and my ways of life.

The humanity, the glory of sexuality and the glory of creation and creativity and the glory of Divinity in each and every one of us. Our souls. They taught you that human beings are separate from Divinity, that sex was wrong and that women who have minds of their own are uppity slaves. They vilified us but much much worse than that, they destroyed your relationship with all that is unseen, all that we honour and love.

They taught you to hate what is really God. By teaching you to hate us, you hated all that is good in yourselves. They taught you to hate the light. They taught you to kill us. The daughters of The Universe. The High Priestesses of God. The Spiritual Mothers. The Sacred Whore High Priestess Avatars of The Universe™. The Sacred Army of Love on Earth.

The Shamans, the Mystics and the Communers. The Hierophants.

They called me Eve and blamed me for the downfall of the human race and created the awesome profanity that is religion. Of men, by men and from men. Of reptiles, by reptiles and from reptiles. Christianity, Islam and Judaism and every other philosophy around the world was poisoned. There are no female spiritual leaders left. It is all profanity. They chose you to represent them because they wanted to divide us and they did. They told you to hate me. And you believed them. Now I am back and I forgive you.

I forgive you because I can. Because I came here to save your soul. And because I finally know who I am. I am THE High Priestess Monarch of the ancient past. I came here to return your soul to The Source. God, The Mother, The Universe. To return you to what is really God. Because I love you. And because She loves you and your kind, whatever you have done.

Whatever you have done to me and whatever you have done to Her. And most of all, whatever you have done to yourself. We forgive you. This is your redemption. Your freedom and your ascension. We are here to save your soul.

Amera Ziganii Rao © 2012

You bought the Sacred Whore like a piece of meat and you called that a wife. Your trophy wives. Your dancing girls. Your chattel and serving girls. Your piece of beauty. You bought us like you would cattle. Then you called it wives. Now you call it prostitution. The High Priestesses of the real God. You bought us to buy God, The Mother, The Universe and you caged us, separated us from our Divine gifts and skills in the Temple and drove us mad and then lost interest in us, because we had no gifts left, no excitement, no hunter in ourselves and no hope or joy left. Then you just called us mad and discarded us. You called us evil and you call love obedience, even though it had already killed us. You moved into our Temples and you played with the divination tools and thought you communed. The destruction of Atlantis was your gift.

You stole us from God, The Mother, The Universe and you tried to usurp us. You vilified us, enslaved us and you still envy us today. You call it intuition. You might want to think about this when you hate us out of your jealousy. The mystic gene means physical tortuous pain and taking on the empathy of the human race. All their pains, evils and dark thoughts. We see and feel everything. We make crucial sacrifices to be near Spirit and the unseen and we go without for years. To be shaman is not glamour. I make it glamour. To be shaman is a specific Samurai existence, ascetic and harsh. We commune to be guides. And you take that and you shame yourselves because you just want the meat. You didn’t just want the meat. You wanted our beauty of spirit, our personalities and our love and kindness. And you destroyed them, because you caged us and called us wife.

Amera Ziganii Rao © 2012

The High Priestess Sacred Whores, the High Priests and the true protectors. Those who do not have the gift like either the High Priests or especially like the highest of all, the High Priestess Sacred Whores but who honour, protect and facilitate them to the world. Who honour the Shaman Sacred Whores of this world most of all, and who know who they are and who they are not. Who know the difference, who do not envy and who protect and love the representatives of Spirit, GOD, THE MOTHER, THE UNIVERSE, on Earth. Who honour their wisdom and who honour the latent Shaman in themselves too and who honour the communing ability of the High Priestess Sacred Whores. The non violators. Our only friends. The New Society exists. It is called Enlightenment. It is called Love. It is The Holy Grail.

Amera Ziganii Rao © 2012

The master race. It's all a lie. You are brought up to be a despot king and it is only your sister who ever tells you that you have become a pratt. The master race is all a lie. There are no kings in an equal world. Your father was misinformed. What he brought you up to be was a killer. Pure and simple. A misogynist. A modern misogynist. A polite killer.

Amera Ziganii Rao © 2011

I enter the magical hours of pure feeling, pure thought, pure imagination and I think and I write and I 'mysticise' the Universe. I escape at will, the truth of my humanless, Samurai solitude, and I pursue the truth of love in myself and in everyone else. I am philosopher. I am shaman. I am alone. I frontier the Soul to be spirit on Earth.

Amera Ziganii Rao © 2011

Amera Ziganii Rao is a former hard news journalist who is now turning professional with her art forms and indeed, her healing forms, after a long journey of inner searching, self teaching and exploring many layers and areas of both craft and wisdom. She is now working on her first book of philosophy and esoteric thought, and social, cultural and spiritual commentary. She is also showing her first photography collections. And last but most definitely not least, she is building a business to share her Sacred Whore High Priestess Society consciousness and empowering explorations to reach as many people as possible across the world. She is in her forties and lives in London.

Amera Ziganii Rao © 2011

In the meantime, please enjoy this website. I have included many of the subjects I am covering, areas of experience and insight that I will be exploring to the fullest in my book, the courses and all the other work that is to come as a dramatist, novelist and essayist. I also of course, include many of the wise people on this planet, who have come long before me; authors, screen dramatists, playwrights, film makers, artists, and other enlighteners and grand carriers of the wisdom I have found the most helpful on my journey, to find peace and become enlightened. The seemingly impossible journey, in the face of oneself and one’s circumstances. People who have contributed massively to my healing on this mad journey called life, in this insane existence called The Universe. People who have helped to make me as good a carrier of wisdom as I in turn, can be. Thank you.

Amera Ziganii Rao © 2011

Copyright and intellectual property rights are serious issues. And legally protected. Please do not reproduce my work anywhere without due credit and obviously, never for financial gain. 'Big Sister' is watching you! Other than that, please continue to enjoy my original work and the work of (credited) others, for free, while I work on using my material in further professional formats. Thank you for your interest and support.

Amera Ziganii Rao © 2012

Thank you to outside source for photographs. Darkroomed by Amera Ziganii Rao