He was engaged in the Theban war, and after the disaster, when pursued by his enemies, Zeus saved him from disgrace by opening the earth, which swallowed him with his charioteer, chariot, and horses (ib., IX, viii, 3). Because of his valorous deeds Zeus made him immortal, and he arose as a god from the spring at Oropos (ib., I, xxxiv, 4), where the people worshipped him as a deity, while all Greece counted him as such (ib., VIII, ii, 4).

Amphiaraos was skilled in divination, he became renowned as a healing deity, and his dream-oracle at Oropos was held in high esteem. According to inscriptions, the Amphiareion at Oropos was founded at the end of the fifth century B.C. (Frazer, op. cit., v, 31). The temple, which stood in an ample temenos, was ninety-five feet long by forty-three feet wide, and had a broad portico with six columns on the east side. The cella had three aisles separated by columns with a colossal statue of Amphiaraos in white stone in the center. In front of the temple was an altar of limestone twenty-eight feet long and fourteen wide, divided into five compartments, each dedicated to several divinities. One was consecrated to Zeus, Paian, Apollo, and Herakles; another to heroes and the wives of heroes; a third to Hestia, Hermes, Amphiaraos, and the children of Amphilochos; a fourth to Athena Paionia (Kerameikos), Aphrodite, Hygieia, Iaso, Panakeia, and Iason; and the fifth to Pan, the Nymphs, and the rivers Acheloos and Kephisos. Near by was a spring from which the god had arisen. Northeast of the temple was an abaton, an open Doric colonnade with forty-nine columns, three hundred and sixty feet long by thirty-six wide. There was a central line of Ionic columns dividing the stoa into two aisles, and along the inner stuccoed wall, which was decorated with paintings and inscriptions, there was a long stone bench. Adjacent to the abaton was a building dating from the third century

B.C. containing ten bathrooms. Near the great altar was a low semicircle of rising seats. Behind the abaton on the hillside was a theater with a stage forty by twenty feet, and a chorus space forty feet wide (Pausanias, I, xxxiv).

At the Amphiareion healing was effected through dreams rather than by predictions of an oracle (ib.). An air of sanctity pervaded the hieron; and if anyone misbehaved, he was subject to a fine. A neokoros took down the name and address, and collected not less than nine obols from each patient (IG vii, 235). All suppliants bathed, and after purification partook of a special diet from which beans were excluded. Before incubation each one fasted, without wine for three days and without food for one day, "in order to receive the oracle with a clear soul" (Philostratos, op. cit., ii, 37), and made sacrifice to Amphiaraos and the other deities. The suppliants who could do so then killed a black ram, and wrapping themselves in the skin, passed the night in the abaton, the men at the eastern, the women at the western end, while a few slept on the seats before the altar (IG vii, 4255). Those who received the desired vision or dream and were healed were the subjects of congratulations amid general rejoicings. They threw pieces of gold and silver into the sacred spring and made the usual offerings, models of diseased parts, sometimes in gold or silver, and other gifts (IG vii, 303, 67 ff., 3498). The daughter of the god, Alexida, and Hestia assisted the suppliants and exercised healing functions. The medical practices at the Amphiareion were the subject of bitter satire by Aristophanes in his Amphiaraos, produced in 414 B.C.

Amphiaraos was held in great respect, his name apparently meaning 'doubly holy.' A festival which was largely attended was held at the sanctuary every fourth year (CIGGS, 4253). The god was always more particularly identified with Oropos, but had other shrines at

Rhamnous, Argos, Sparta, Thebes, and Athens. In origin he seems to have been a chthonic daimon.

APHRODITE

APHRODITE, originally a sea-divinity, was the goddess of love and the reproductive powers of nature, as well as the deity of bridal and married life in the highest sense. Her cult was generally austere and pure, and she was bidden by Zeus to confine herself to the offices of marriage (Il., vi, 429). She was equated with 'Astart and other cognate Semitic goddesses of love and reproduction, and with Venus of the Roman pantheon. Sometimes she was called Mylitta ('she who brings forth children'), the Assyrian name of the goddess Ishtar (Herodotos, i, 131, 199; Frazer, op. cit., ii, 130).

She was a cherisher of children. In the cult of Aphrodite Ctesylla in Keos and its legend there is an allusion to her as a child-birth goddess, especially as she is related closely in this worship to Artemis Hekaerge,135 and in her worship under the title of Aphrodite Kolias, on the coast of Attika, she may have been regarded as bearing the same aspect. It is possible she was invoked under the name Genetyllis (q.v.). Her association with healing is further attested by the fact that she shared an altar at Oropos with Athena the Healer and the daughters of Asklepios (CIA vii, 136), while in the form of a dove she visited Aspasia and cured an ulcer on her chin (Ailianos, Historia Varia, XII, i).1

136

APOLLO

APOLLO, the deity of light, music, poetry, archery, prophecy, and healing (Plato, Cratylus, 47), was one of the

135 Farnell, Cults, ii, 655-656.

136 Hercher, ed. Leipzig, 1866 (1870), p. 117.

great divinities of the Greek pantheon, though seemingly "originally the leading god of a people who migrated into Greece from the north in prehistoric times. '"137 He was the son of Zeus and Leto, was the twin brother of Artemis, and was born on the island of Delos. In Greek religion Apollo represented mental enlightenment and civilizing knowledge rather than physical light; but he also typified physical health, manly vigor, and beauty of form; and as Phoibos Apollo he stood for truth, the sanctity of the oath, and moral purity. Farnell calls him the brightest and most complex character of polytheism, and his cult was both ancient and widespread in Greece.138

Apollo was renowned for prophecy, and his oracle, the greatest in Greece, was located in a cleft of the rocks at Delphoi in Phokis, near Mount Parnassos (Pausanias, X, ix, 1; Strabo, IX, iii, 12 = pp. 422-423 C). It was consulted on general matters, but it was most esteemed for guidance in political affairs, and individuals and deputations came from cities and states, far and near, to present their problems for solution. The authority of the oracle was so great that it was believed the inspiration came from Zeus himself (Aischylos, op. cit., 575). At Hysiai was a fountain sacred to Apollo where the hydromanteia was practiced, those who drank the water became ecstatic and prophesied in the name of the god; a practice and a belief that prevailed also at Klaros.139

140

Apollo was both a bringer and an averter of disease." In his anger the "far-darter" sent pestilence and death among men with his arrows (Il., i, 45), and in this character he was worshipped at Lindos and called Pestilential (Loimios) Apollo, and persons who were consumed by

=

disease were 'Apollo-struck,' or 'sun-struck' (Macrobius, Saturnalia, I, xvii, 15). In his favorable moods he averted disease (Pausanias, I, iii, 4), and as a stayer of pestilence, curing disease and dispensing health, he was worshipped as Oulios by the Milesians and Delians (Strabo, XIV, i, 6 p. 635 C). Music, of which he was the inventor, was used to overcome disease. Grecian youths sang sacred hymns and 'songs that sweetly please' to Apollo, and stopped a noisome pestilence, and the Cretan Thaletas, by music, freed the city of the Lacedaimonians from a raging pestilence (Plutarch, de Musica, 14, 10). It is not clear, however, that healing was a part of his early cult. Apollo, though often regarded as identical with Paian, was not so designated by Homer or Hesiod, and it is believed that they were distinct personalities, until in the sixth century B.C. an alliance was effected with Asklepios and he received the epithet Paian, and thereafter, as Apollo Maleates, was associated at Epidauros as the supreme healer of the pantheon, although the active healing was delegated to his son, Asklepios. A temple on Mount Kynortion overlooking the hieron of Epidauros, was dedicated to Apollo Maleates ('Apollo of Malea') and held a fine statue of the god. It is said that the old god whose temple was on Mount Kynortion (meaning 'the dog-altar') was concealed under the Epidaurian Apollo Maleates. It is assumed that the dog was originally peculiar to this god (IG ii, 1651; SIG2, 631), and that from this circumstance the dog appears first and most frequently in Epidauros as a companion of Asklepios.141 Apollo Maleates was also worshipped at Tegea, Sparta, and Athens. Aischylos gives Apollo the epithet Loxias (of obscure meaning) and calls him an iatro

141 Nilsson, op. cit., p. 409, note 7; cf. Fraender, Asklepios, pp. 22 ff.; Thrämer, in ERE vi, 547.