Arts, Faculty of
Classical, Near Eastern and Religious Studies, Department of
DSpace
UBCV
Evans, Hampton
Master of Arts - MA
University of British Columbia
The hero-god Herakles was worshipped across the Mediterranean by the Greeks, from Spain in the west to Bactria in the east. The goal of this paper is to examine one specific facet and use of this figure, how he was utilized in order to justify appropriation of land and territory by the Greeks and legitimize their rule over non-Greek peoples. First, the wildly different versions of Herakles seen in several early sources, including Homer and Hesiod, are examined and discussed. Next, three case studies are examined in order to see how different groups of Greeks utilized and rewrote the story of Herakles to make irridentist claims to territory. The case studies are Sicily, focusing on the sites of Akragas and Agyrium, as well as the account of Diodoros of Sicily; Macedon, focusing first on how the Macedonian kings prior to Alexander used Herakles to claim Greek identity and justify their growing power, before turning to how Alexander himself utilized Herakles to justify his epoch-defining conquest of the Persian Empire and his rule over non-Greeks; and Bactria, focusing especially on the king Demetrios I and how he invoked Herakles and Alexander to justify his rule, building on centuries of narratives to secure their power at this far edge of the Greek world. Finally, the conclusions drawn from these case studies are summarized and tied together to see how Herakles was used to legitimize these claims and the relevance of this study for understanding both the ancient world and its utility for the modern one.
HERAKLES AT THE ENDS OF THE EARTH by Hampton Evans B.A., University of North Texas, 2020 A THESIS SUBMITTED IN PARTIAL FULFILLMENT OF THE REQUIREMENTS FOR THE DEGREE OF MASTER OF ARTS in THE FACULTY OF GRADUATE AND POSTDOCTORAL STUDIES (Ancient Culture, Religion and Ethnicity) THE UNIVERSITY OF BRITISH COLUMBIA (Vancouver) April 2022 © Hampton Evans 2022 ii The following individuals certify that they have read, and recommend to the Faculty of Graduate and Postdoctoral Studies for acceptance, the thesis entitled: Herakles at the Ends of the Earth submitted by Hampton Evans in partial fulfilment of the requirements for the degree of Master of Arts in Ancient Culture, Religion and Ethnicity Examining Committee: Megan Daniels, Associate Professor, Ancient Mediterranean and Near Eastern Studies, UBC Supervisor Franco De Angelis, Professor, Ancient Mediterranean and Near Eastern Studies, UBC Supervisory Committee Member iii Abstract The hero-god Herakles was worshipped across the Mediterranean by the Greeks, from Spain in the west to Bactria in the east. The goal of this paper is to examine one specific facet and use of this figure, how he was utilized in order to justify appropriation of land and territory by the Greeks and legitimize their rule over non-Greek peoples. First, the wildly different versions of Herakles seen in several early sources, including Homer and Hesiod, are examined and discussed. Next, three case studies are examined in order to see how different groups of Greeks utilized and rewrote the story of Herakles to make irridentist claims to territory. The case studies are Sicily, focusing on the sites of Akragas and Agyrium, as well as the account of Diodoros of Sicily; Macedon, focusing first on how the Macedonian kings prior to Alexander used Herakles to claim Greek identity and justify their growing power, before turning to how Alexander himself utilized Herakles to justify his epoch-defining conquest of the Persian Empire and his rule over non-Greeks; and Bactria, focusing especially on the king Demetrios I and how he invoked Herakles and Alexander to justify his rule, building on centuries of narratives to secure their power at this far edge of the Greek world. Finally, the conclusions drawn from these case studies are summarized and tied together to see how Herakles was used to legitimize these claims and the relevance of this study for understanding both the ancient world and its utility for the modern one. iv Lay Summary The hero and god Herakles, often known by his Roman name Hercules, was widely invoked across the Greek world in order to justify Greek colonization of land and territory, as well as Greek rule over Greeks and non-Greeks. This thesis looks at how this was justified, drawing on ancient literary accounts and archaeological evidence to discover how the Greeks thought about the figure of Herakles and how they used him in order to justify their colonization of the Mediterranean. This study focuses on three main regions, the island of Sicily; Macedon, the kingdom of Alexander the Great and his ancestors; and the region of Bactria in modern-day Afghanistan after the death of Alexander, focusing on two kings, Euthydemos and Demetrios. v Preface This thesis is the original, unpublished, independent work by the author, Hampton Evans. An earlier version of the Sicilian Case Study was written as the term paper for a course entitled Global Iron Age. vi Table of Contents Abstract ........................................................................................................................................................ iii Lay Summary ................................................................................................................................................ iv Preface .......................................................................................................................................................... v Table of Contents ......................................................................................................................................... vi List of Figures ............................................................................................................................................. viii Acknowledgements ...................................................................................................................................... ix Dedication ..................................................................................................................................................... x Introduction .................................................................................................................................................. 1 Methods and Sources ................................................................................................................................... 2 Explanation of Methods and Evidence ......................................................................................................... 6 Early Herakles................................................................................................................................................ 9 Homer, the Iliad, and the Odyssey ........................................................................................................ 9 Hesiod ................................................................................................................................................. 12 Master of Lions ................................................................................................................................... 14 Apollodoros of Athens ........................................................................................................................ 18 Herakles in Sicily.......................................................................................................................................... 22 Diodoros’ Account ............................................................................................................................... 22 Other Literary Accounts ...................................................................................................................... 30 Archaeological Evidence ..................................................................................................................... 34 vii Conclusions ......................................................................................................................................... 39 Herakles and Alexander .............................................................................................................................. 41 Introduction ........................................................................................................................................ 41 Herakles and Macedon Before Alexander .......................................................................................... 41 Alexander the Great and Herakles ...................................................................................................... 48 Conclusion ........................................................................................................................................... 52 Herakles in the Greek Far East .................................................................................................................... 54 Stories of Herakles in the East ............................................................................................................ 54 Euthydemos I and Demetrios I ............................................................................................................ 56 Conclusion ................................................................................................................................................... 62 Bibliography ................................................................................................................................................ 66 viii List of Figures Figure 1. Limestone statues depicting the Master of Lions imagery, from Idalion, Cyprus, ca. 560-550 BCE, 24 cm. height, British Museum, museum number 1873,0320.70 ........................................................................................... 16 Figure 2. Coin depicting Demetrios I (obverse) and Herakles (reverse), image courtesy of the British Museum, museum number 1923,1107.1 .................................................................................................................................... 60 ix Acknowledgements I would like to offer my deepest thanks for the incredible help provided by Megan Daniels and Franco De Angelis, my supervisor and second reader, respectively. Their comments and advice were crucial in shaping this study and in making it the best work it can be. I would especially like to thank Megan for her guidance on various aspects of Herakles, especially the Master of Lions imagery as well as guidance in tightening up my arguments. I would like to thank Franco for his invaluable assistance with regard to the Sicilian evidence, as well as pointing me in the direction of evidence I had missed. I would also like to thank fellow graduate student Lilly Hilcox for her help with an earlier version of the Sicily case study. Her comments were incredibly helpful in tightening that section of my argument! x Dedication I would like to dedicate this paper to all the people who have supported me throughout the years. To Christopher Fuhrmann at the University of North Texas for providing me with so much guidance and advice during my undergraduate career, putting me on the path to where I am today. To Cat Williams, also at UNT, for being such a great inspiration and friend for me during my time there. To my parents, Jim and Tamara, for always believing in me and what I could do. To my sister, Meredith, for always pushing me, whether I wanted the push or not, to do better and be better. To my grandparents, Nana and Papa. I would not be the man I am today without your guidance. Nana, I know you’re watching over me from up above. To my friends here in the department, the other grad students in AMNE. All of us got through this incredibly weird and unusual graduate career, with the pandemic and everything, together, through supporting each other. It’s been a ride, but we got through it together. To our excellent administrative staff here at UBC. Sheri, Odessa, you have been so helpful in putting not just me but all of us on the right track. And finally, to my boyfriend and the love of my life, Xan. You were there for me when I needed it most, when I was at my lowest, to help me get back on my feet and keep going. I would’ve completely fallen apart without your support, and I can never thank you enough for that. 1 Introduction The Pillars of Herakles was the ancient name for the Strait of Gibraltar. This strait, running between the modern-day nation-states of Morocco and Spain (with a small exclave of the United Kingdom holding onto the Rock of Gibraltar itself) marks the entrance to the Mediterranean Sea. This was the Mare Nostrum of the Romans, meaning “our sea.” The Mediterranean was the beating heart of the Greco-Roman oikoumene, and its edge was delineated by one of the defining deeds of the god-hero Herakles. While the Greeks are mainly associated with the Mediterranean, under the flag of Alexander III of Macedon, later called Alexander the Great, they conquered far to the east of their sea, reaching to the border of India. At this end of the world, the army of Alexander seemingly discovered that their god Herakles had beaten them to the punch all the way back during the age before the Trojan War. Ultimately, Alexander’s dream of conquering the world was cut short by both his army’s refusal to continue further from home and his own death in Babylon at the age of thirty-three. However, his conquests seem to have revealed something incredible. Herakles could be found at the ends of the Greek world. Wherever the Greeks went, Herakles seemed to have gone before them. He cleared the way for his descendants, both those claiming direct descent from Herakles like the Spartans or Alexander himself, and his spiritual descendants in the Greeks writ large, to go out and spread themselves across the face of the earth. As a bringer of culture and civilization, the Greeks thought that Herakles had laid the foundations for their later power and their claims on land far beyond the lands and islands hugging the coast of the Aegean Sea. The Greeks utilized Herakles in order to specifically claim territory and lands as well as to justify their rule over non-Greek peoples. Herakles became a wandering god who laid the foundations of Greek expansion in many different locales, from Sicily to the Greek Far East. 2 Methods and Sources How are we to understand this phenomenon, the ever-expanding area of the world through which the great hero Herakles was said to have traveled during his life on Earth, before his death and apotheosis? How are we to understand how the Greeks utilized Herakles in order to justify their claims to territory and to legitimize themselves as rulers over foreign peoples? Understanding and explaining this phenomenon is the goal of this paper. I will explain the developments of the ideologies of Herakles and how the Greeks utilized him in order to make irridentist claims on territory outside of the Greek mainland and to justify themselves as rulers over foreign peoples, from the time of Homer up to the Greek kings in the east post-Alexander. This is a process that I argue began in the Archaic period, during which the tales of Herakles’ wanderings were adapted and changed to meet the changing needs of the Greeks as they spread out across the known world. First, I examine what little we know about Herakles in the era prior to widespread Greek settlement outside of the Aegean. This will establish, as best as we can given the limited nature of our evidence for Greek mythology in general and the earliest stories in particular, what the story of Herakles was in the poems of Homer and Hesiod, as well other early tales, both preserved by later written accounts and the fragments of authors such as Tyrtaios. Keeping this base story in mind, next we will cover a series of three case studies of how Herakles was utilized by the Greeks as the expanded outwards from the Aegean basin. The first of these case studies that I will examine is the case of Sicily, the largest island in the Mediterranean and a hotbed of Greek settlement and of stories about Herakles. Greek settlement in Sicily was early and often involved ideological negotiation with and appropriation of local and non-Greek traditions, often via identification of Herakles with local gods such as the Phoenician 3 Melqart. I will look at the literary accounts of Herakles’ journeys in Sicily as well as how Herakles was utilized by Greek settlers, focusing in particular on the Greek colonies of Akragas and Agyrium. After looking at the literary context, I will turn to the archaeological and numismatic evidence for the cults of Herakles in Sicily, especially at the well-preserved site of Akragas and the coins and accounts of Agyrium, to see what these can tell us about the use of Herakles in Sicily. For this, I will also be utilizing some literary evidence, mainly the account of Cicero of the temple of Herakles at Akragas and Diodoros’ account of the various cults of Herakles at his hometown of Agyrium, in order to help further shine a light on what the archeological remains can tell us. I argue that Greeks in this period, when trying to make their land claims, often focused on the specific ideology of Herakles as a wandering god and a bringer of civilization, with civilization being synecdoche for Greek colonization. The Greeks appropriated earlier sites tied to specific gods, most commonly Melqart, and, drawing on these previous traditions, carved out a mythic history for themselves where Herakles had claimed these spaces in the distant past, justifying their own appropriation of these spaces. Next, I will look at how Alexander the Great utilized the myths of Herakles to justify his own power. First, I will discuss how the Macedonian monarchy utilized Herakles to make themselves Greek and to insert themselves into Greek politics, first by claiming Greek identity for the royal house by tracing their descent from Herakles and then by using that claim in order to claim territory and to assert themselves as the rightful leaders of Greece. Next, I will discuss how Alexander utilized Herakles during his conquests. This will involve looking almost exclusively at texts dealing with Alexander, with his Macedonian ancestors, and with the ideology he promoted through his conquests. Alexander followed in the footsteps of his Macedonian forebears, utilizing Herakles in order to justify his conquests of places such as Tyre 4 and India. He drew on the ideology of Herakles the wanderer and conqueror, which had been developing and evolving since the Archaic era, in order to craft an ideology where he, as a new Herakles, was the rightful inheritor of these spaces and the right to rule over these peoples. Finally, I will turn to the Greek Far East, Bactria and India, in order to see what the stories of Herakles at this far edge of the Greek world can tell us. This is an area where the literary evidence is quite scant and archaeology, and especially numismatics above all else, is vital to understanding the ancient world. There are some literary accounts of India and the Greek East, such as Arrian’s Indica, but these have their own issues that I will address when we get to them. Alexander will feature in this case study as well, as separating Alexander out from this part of the ancient Greek world is effectively impossible. His influence is too strong and too enduring to be discounted. However, I will also be looking at later Greek kings, especially Euthydemos I and his son Demetrius I of Bactria, and how they solidified their power through invoking both Alexander and Herakles. The evidence here is sketchy, but by drawing on the numismatic evidence, I argue that these Bactrian kings drew on figures of both Herakles and Alexander to secure their legitimacy and authority to rule. This they did by following in the footsteps of Alexander’s immediate successors, most especially the coin styles and ideology of Ptolemy I Soter and Seleucos I Nicator. Through their use of the ideology of Herakles, these kings were able to secure a dynasty that endured past their deaths, as a fascinating coin from one of their successors will show. They employed the various ideological tools in their toolbox to claim a space at the far eastern edge of the world known to the Greeks and to legitimize their rule over these distant peoples by divinely ordained right, as the successors to and descendants of Herakles. 5 Finally, I will take all these case studies and what we have learned from them and explain how this shows how the Greeks, from the Archaic era up through the Hellenistic era, were able to claim physical and ideological space far beyond the Aegean. Finally, I will briefly discuss what this malleability means for the modern day and our own understandings of power and legitimacy. The Greek development of Herakles as a vehicle for irridentist claims and political legitimization is vital to understanding one vital aspect of how this god functioned in the ancient world and how humans utilize myths in order to justify and shape the world around them. Understanding the process and means through which the Greeks utilized Herakles to make these irridentist and ideological claims is important for today’s world because, by having an ancient, emotionally distant case study, we can see new facets that we miss when examining more modern cases of colonialism, which are often highly emotionally charged and politically fraught. Having this distant, emotionally disconnected example of how mythology and traditional stories were reshaped and utilized in order to justify both irridentism and political rulership over foreign, different peoples offers a way to look at these issues in a different way. Very few people today worship Herakles; political legitimacy is not tied to being descended from a Greek god. However, by looking at how these myths were utilized in the ancient world, we can detect patterns that were utilized more recently, both in Canada and throughout the world, to justify colonization, land appropriation, and ideological conquest. 6 Explanation of Methods and Evidence The reason I picked these specific areas to cover deserves some elaboration. The choice of Sicily was made because of the wealth of literary and material evidence regarding the colonization of the island by the Greeks. Sicily was one of the great success stories of Greek colonization, with some Greek cities there such as Syracuse rivalling the older cities back on the Greek mainland in size and power. Other cities, most notably Akragas (Roman Agrigentum, modern Agrigento), have extensive archeological and material remains from the Greek period. One of our best sources on the various traditions about Herakles, the historian Diodoros of Sicily, was himself a Sicilian Greek from the town of Agyrium and provides priceless accounts of Sicilian Greek traditions about Herakles. Furthermore, Sicily itself has been fairly well-covered in terms of secondary scholarly research. Scholars such as Irad Malkin and J. A. de Waele have done extensive work with Sicily and its Greek populations. All these combined together lead to my decision to focus on Sicily as a central pillar of this study. Simply put, discussing Greek colonization without discussing Sicily is certainly possible, but it would be a very incomplete picture. As for the Greek East and India, I chose this region because I wanted to see how the use of Herakles was transformed by the Macedonians and their conquest of mainland Greece and to the edge of the, at the time, known world. The Greek conquest of Bactria came as part of Alexander the Great’s conquest of the Persian Empire in the late fourth century and Greek rule there lasted in some form or another for a few centuries, under both the Seleucid Empire, one of the successor kingdoms that arose after Alexander’s premature death, and under breakaway kingdoms afterwards, but the last Greek kingdom in the region, that of the Indo-Greeks, had been 7 conquered by 10 CE.1 Greek roots seem to have not penetrated as deeply into the area as back in Sicily, so the context of the invocation of Herakles was very different. We will briefly discuss how Greek kings in the east drew on preexisting figures such as Gilgamesh and Ninurta in order to support their ideological claims, connecting these gods with Herakles. It seems that the Greek population never became a majority out in Bactria, unlike in the areas of Greek control in Sicily where the Greek population was much greater. As such, these Greek rulers needed to justify why they had the right to rule here, and one of their tools for making this ideological claim was Herakles. The god was deployed quite differently out in the East compared to pre-Alexandrian Sicily, and a comparison of these different case studies will show how malleable a figure Herakles was, able to be adapted to fit these different conditions of colonization for trade and new lands to settle and imperial conquest and rule under the aegis of a king. There are several sources of evidence that need to be utilized to gain a full understanding of Herakles’ influence. The first and perhaps most important is the ancient textual sources. The words of the ancients themselves provide an invaluable window into the discourses ongoing at the time. Among the authors I will be examining are the historians Herodotos, Diodoros of Sicily, and Arrian, the poets Homer, Hesiod, and Tyrtaios, the mythographer Apollodoros of Athens, the Roman statesman Cicero, the Athenian orator Isocrates, and others. However, ancient texts cannot tell us everything. They are limited by the biases of the author and by what small fragments of ancient literature happen to have survived to the modern day. This is especially true in the case of the Greek Far East, where our written sources are quite scant. As such, I will be also relying on archaeological remains and evidence. This will provide vital evidence in both Sicily and in Bactria for this study. One particularly prominent bit of material 1 Aperghis, Gerassimos G., “The Greeks in the East in the Hellenistic Period.” In A Companion to Greeks Across the Ancient World, edited by Franco De Angelis, (New York: John Wiley & Sons, 2020), 459. 8 evidence I will be utilizing is coinage. Greek coins in both Sicily and the East often depicted Herakles. As these coins were the products of the state in that area, they can help demonstrate what messages the state and the elite were trying to communicate. All of this will also be combined with work done by scholars before me. Their interpretations shape my own. 9 Early Herakles Homer, the Iliad, and the Odyssey The Greek literary tradition begins with the two epic poems of Homer, the Iliad and the Odyssey. These two poems focus on the last generation of Greek heroes, the generation that fought under Agamemnon at Troy, sacked the city, enslaved or slaughtered its inhabitants, and then returned home. This is a later generation than Herakles himself, so he does not figure directly into the plots of these poems. However, he is mentioned in them at several points, usually in connection with his own brief conquest of Troy.2 One such example of this evocation is the back and forth between Tlepolemus, a son of Herakles, and Sarpedon, a son of Zeus, about Herakles’ sacking of Troy a generation before.3 As scholar H. G. Nesselrath points out, Herakles’ conquest of Troy served as a model for the Greeks at Troy in the Iliad to try and follow to conquer the city themselves.4 Already this early, Herakles is being presented as a model to follow in terms of conquest and war. However, the Herakles of the Iliad, again as persuasively argued by Nesselrath, is not a god, but a mortal who died and went down to Hades.5 This raises an issue, if we consider the Iliad and the Odyssey to be from the same author, a singular “Homer.” Herakles himself appears in the Odyssey as one of the shades Odysseus encounters in the underworld. Herakles appearing in the underworld would imply that he was viewed by Homer as simply a mortal hero. However, the Odyssey equivocates here. “I saw a phantom of great Herakles. / The man himself is with the deathless gods, / happy and feasting, 2 Nesselrath, H.-G, “Heracles in Homer.” In More than Homer Knew – Studies on Homer and His Ancient Commentators, edited by A. Rengakos, P.J. Fineglass, and B. Zimmerman, (Berlin: De Gruyter, 2020), 31. 3 Hom. Il. 5.633-51. 4 Nesselrath, “Heracles in Homer,” 29. 5 Nesselrath, “Heracles in Homer,” 30-1. 10 with fine-ankled Hebe, / the child of mighty Zeus and Golden Hera.”6 This passage presents an interesting snapshot of the development of Herakles, where he is both god and mortal. His true self is up on Olympus, deathless, immortal, married to the goddess of youth, while a shade of him takes his mortal side’s place in the underworld. What are we to make of this? The depictions of Herakles, especially in relation to his godhood, vary between the Iliad and the Odyssey. While this paper will not delve into the morass that is the Homeric Question, nor be staking a side on whether or not there was a Homer at all, whether the same person wrote both the Iliad and the Odyssey, and other such topics of endless scholarly debate, what is important for the purposes of this study is the fact that Herakles, even at this early date, has a malleable, shifting nature, one which changes depending on the needs of the author or the audience. This is by far the earliest version of Herakles we have and already the sources cannot agree on even the most basic facts about Herakles, such as whether he is mortal or divine, in Hades or on Olympus. One thing, however, is clear. The Herakles of Homer, whether or not he is a god or a mortal, was not a colonizer. While he did conquer Troy even here, there is no tradition of him setting himself or his descendants to rule the city. Instead, he leaves, and the city is re-established, only to be destroyed later in the Trojan War. Furthermore, there is zero claim on the territory of Troy by the Achaeans as their rightful land, as descendants of Herakles. Not even Tlepolemus, the literal son of Herakles, claims a right to Priam’s land on account of his father’s conquest. The ideology of Herakles the colonizer, the figure whom later Greeks would use to justify claiming distant lands and territory, is not present at the dawn of Greek literature. There is another aspect to the Homeric Herakles that needs to be discussed as well. This account of him comes from the Odyssey. Here, Herakles is shown at perhaps his very worst in all 6 Hom. Od. 11.601 (trans. Wilson) 11 Greek literature. Here, Homer writes that Iphitus, the previous owner of Odysseus’ famed bow, had gone to visit Herakles with twelve fine mares, each with a sturdy mule foal.7 Herakles welcomed Iphitus into his home as a guest-friend, but then murdered him in order to steal the horses.8 Homer interjects here to note that this was “betraying hospitality and heedless / about the watchful gods.”9 Herakles is here explicitly depicted as violating sacred hospitality for material gain in an insult to the gods themselves. This is quite a shocking depiction of Herakles in light of later depictions of him. Herakles here is violating the most sacred rules of Greek civilization. This shows that Herakles, in his earliest attested form, was already quite a complex figure, with conflicting stories and interpretations. Furthermore, an aspect of Herakles that will become central in the future, best seen in the account of Herakles by Diodoros of Sicily, is not just absent, but actively contradicted here, the idea of Herakles as a bringer of civilization and culture. Instead, in this incident, Herakles engages in some of the worst deeds possible according to normative Greek morals. Compare this instance of guest-friendship with another from Homer. In Book VI of the Iliad, the Achaean Diomedes and the Trojan Glaucus engaged each other on the field of battle outside Troy.10 The two exchanged words, Diomedes asking if Glaucus who he was, a man or a god11 and Glaucus giving a long account of his ancestry over sixty-seven lines of dactylic hexameter.12 After this, Diomedes sticks his spear in the earth and embraces Glaucus as a guest-friend, and the two refuse to fight.13 This episode provides a striking contrast to the Herakles 7 Hom. Od. 21.22-3. 8 Hom. Od. 21.26-7. 9 Hom. Od. 21.28-29. 10 Hom. Il. 6.119-20. 11 Hom. Il. 6.141-3. 12 Hom. Il. 6.144-211 13 Hom. Il. 6.212-31. 12 seen in the Odyssey. Here we have two enemies facing off outside Troy, after ten long years of fighting, putting aside the conflict because of an ancient guest-friendship between their families. That is how vital and important guest-friendship was in the Homeric world, that even a conflict as bitter as the Trojan War was immaterial next to this sacred bond. And yet, Homer has Herakles, the most famous and revered of all Greek heroes, violate it without a second thought out of greed. How did this Herakles, one who violates the bonds of guest-friendship and who conquered Troy, but left it without instituting a dynasty, become the great culture hero and bringer of civilization? When did Herakles become the great wanderer? Where can we see the seed of the figure whom generations of Greeks would claim descent from in order to justify their claims to territory across the known world? Hesiod To answer the second question, one must look briefly at the writings of Hesiod, who seems to have lived and written slightly after the composition of the Iliad and the Odyssey. In his poem recounting the births of the gods, the Theogony, Hesiod mentions Heracles briefly when describing the parentage and the birth of Geryon, whom Herakles killed as part of his Labors.14 He notes that Geryon was killed by Herakles in “sea-girt Erythea”15 and that Herakles also killed “Orthus and the cowherd Eurytion in the murky stable beyond Ocean.”16 The mention of Ocean is key here. The invocation of Ocean, the edge of the world, and Herakles traveling beyond Ocean fits with one of the forms of Herakles discussed by Antonio Ignacio Molina Marín, specifically his idea idea of Herakles as a Liminal Hero, a hero who traverses the edges of the 14 Hes. Th. 287-90. 15 Hes. Th. 290. (trans. Most) 16 Hes. Th. 292-4. (trans. Most) 13 world.17 He actually discusses this specific account in his article, noting that “Hesiod was the first to establish one of the hero’s Labors at the borders of Ocean.”18 Herakles going beyond the conventional boundaries of the world, going boldly where no Greek had gone before, will become key to the ideologies of Herakles invoked in our case studies. As we will see, the idea of Herakles going to these distant lands provided a precedent for the later Greeks to draw upon in order to justify claiming these spaces for themselves. However, just because Hesiod is the first to note this aspect does not mean that it did not predate Hesiod. All this means is that Hesiod is the earliest point in the surviving literary tradition at which we can be certain that going beyond the ends of the Earth was part of the mythical tradition encircling Herakles. In fact, I argue that we can know that this aspect predates Hesiod. The way he invokes Herakles here is just as a way of reminding his audience who this Geryon is and why he is important. He assumes that his audience was already familiar with the stories of Herakles and that they understand the reference to Erytheia, knowing at least the general idea of where this place is, as well as where and what Ocean is. As such, we can date the tradition of Herakles’ western journeys to at least the time just before the time of Hesiod. While we cannot be sure how far before Hesiod, especially since Homer makes no mention of this aspect, it must have been far enough back for Hesiod to be able to safely assume that his audience would understand the reference, that the tales had been in circulation among the Greeks for long enough that they would understand the reference. From this chain of logic, we can conclude the idea of Herakles at the ends of the earth probably does go back into the early Archaic period if not the Dark Age itself. A possible rationale for why Herakles as the wandering 17 Molina Marín, Antonio Ignacio, “Heracles and the Mastery of Geographical Space.” In The Oxford Handbook of Heracles, edited by Daniel Ogden, (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2021), 413. 18 Molina Marín, “Heracles and the Mastery of Geographical Space,” 413. 14 god emerges during this period is discussed below, with the spread of the Master of Lions imagery across the Mediterranean during the Dark Age and especially during the Archaic Age, especially through interactions between various peoples, including Greeks, on the island of Cyprus. While the figure of Herakles may be far older than the Dark Age, the specific aspects of Herakles relevant to this study were likely developed during the very tail end of the Dark Age and the early Archaic Age. Let us now turn to a discussion of the Master of Lions imagery and how it relates to Herakles. Master of Lions Iconography that incorporates aspects of Herakles, most notably his lion imagery, has been found on Cyprus and in other places around the Mediterranean, as discussed by Megan Daniels in her article “Heracles and Melqart.”19 A collection of three statues and one bust from sixth century BCE Cyprus is shown in Figure 1, with the statues showing the specific Master of Lions imagery: a male figure wearing a lion skin, holding a small lion in one hand and holding a club in its other hand, all reminiscent of the story of Herakles and the Nemean Lion, dating to the first half of the sixth century BCE.20 While we cannot definitively say that this is absolutely Herakles or Melqart, as there are no inscriptions specifically identifying this statue as Herakles or the Phoenician god Melqart, with whom the Greeks and Phoenicians equated Herakles, she persuasively argues that there are several reasons to link this specific imagery to Herakles.21 She points out that at roughly the same time as this statue was erected, of a “Master of Lions” was developing across the eastern Mediterranean, from Greek vase-painting more explicitly linked to Herakles to scenes engraved on scarab beetles found in Cyprus and as far west as Carthage and 19 Daniels, Megan. “Heracles and Melqart.” In The Oxford Handbook of Heracles, edited by Daniel Ogden, (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2021), 471. 20 Daniels, “Heracles and Melqart,” 471. 21 Daniels, “Heracles and Melqart,” 472. 15 Sardinia.22 Derek Counts in his article on the Master of Lions argues that the specific form of the iconography found in Cyprus was developed through the interplay between the various different cultures on the island, including Greek, Near Eastern, and Cypriote cultures.23 Furthermore, he argues that the specific imagery of the Master of Lions proved to be quite mutable, translating older meanings between the various cultures on the island while also creating new meanings specific to the ideological space on the island.24 The translation of iconography and differing, interacting cultures helped to strengthen the syncretism between divine figures, and especially with Herakles, that we will be discussing throughout this study. 22 Daniels, “Heracles and Melqart,” 473. 23 Counts, Derek B, “Master of the Lion: Representation and Hybridity in Cypriote Sanctuaries,” American Journal of Archaeology Vol. 112, No. 1 (Jan., 2008), 14. 24 Counts, “Master of the Lion,” 14. 16 (Figure 1. Limestone statues depicting the Master of Lions imagery, from Idalion, Cyprus, ca. 560-550 BCE, 24 cm. height, British Museum, museum number 1873,0320.70) Returning briefly to Daniels’ discussion, she argues that we should focus on the development of the iconography instead of trying to tie this early iconography to a specific deity.25 This iconography, both the Master of Lions and the specific pose seen in Figure 1, were used across the Mediterranean and the Near East as a symbol of royal power from as early as the 25 Daniels, “Heracles and Melqart,” 473. 17 fourth millennium BCE.26 Even Gilgamesh, at one point, donned a lion skin like Herakles, when he departed on his quest to meet Utnapishtim.27 The connection with Gilgamesh in particular will become very important when we move to the Greek Far East. This idea of the Master of Lions was clearly circulating throughout the eastern Mediterranean in sixth century BCE, drawing on earlier ideas and iconographies. These iconographies would be ones that people throughout the ancient Mediterranean would have recognized and understood, and served to provide legitimacy to those people who could claim connections with them. However, it is worth noting that these iconographic depictions from Cyprus and around the Mediterranean likely postdate the oral development if not the writing down of the Homeric epics themselves. It is impossible to be sure, given the lack of consensus over the dating of the Iliad and the Odyssey, that Homer knew of this iconography, but it is certainly possible that he did. Whatever version of the Herakles myths Homer and his contemporaries had heard, the specifics are forever lost in the mists of the oral tradition. We are left to work with the misty gleams of Herakles we see through the dark mirror of the past. We know that iconography, specifically the iconography of the “Master of Lions,” that was at some point tied to Herakles was being utilized in the sixth century at the latest. The widespread nature of the Master of Lions imagery across the Mediterranean would help to secure the idea of Herakles being a wandering god. A Greek sailor visiting Cyprus, Carthage, or Sardinia and seeing the iconography of the Master of Lions could very easily make the connection between it and Herakles, and therefore assume that this was confirmation that Herakles had wandered to these places, as there were images of him in these places. We know that the idea of Herakles being a particularly unusual 26 Counts, “Master of the Lion,” 11. 27 Anagnostou-Laoutides, Eva. In the Garden of the Gods: Models of Kingship from the Sumerians to the Seleucids (London: Routledge, 2016), 164. 18 hero and god was circulating amidst the oral poetry at the time of Homer, as seen with the differing depictions of Herakles in the Iliad and the Odyssey. We can see the seeds of the Herakles invoked to justify claiming distant territory and justifying rule over non-Greek peoples planted already, with the core idea of Herakles transgressing boundaries and going to lands where no Greek had previously set foot, but we can also see that the versions of Herakles in Homer were not being used to justify conquest at this early date. To see a later developed version of Herakles, we must turn to our final author of this section, Apollodoros of Athens. Apollodoros of Athens The text we are drawing from for this section is called the Library, sometimes called the Library of Greek Mythology in order to distinguish it from other texts titled the Library, ascribed to an Apollodoros of Athens.28 Smith and Trzaskoma argue that the Library can probably be dated to around the first century CE, at best.29 While this makes the text fairly late, it is based on important early mythographical sources that are now lost, likely including Pherecydes and Acousilaos, who lived around the time of the Persian Wars in the early 400’s BCE, as well as the great poets Homer and Hesiod discussed previously.30 As such, we can date the version of Herakles discussed by Apollodoros to the early fifth century, with some aspects drawn from even earlier. Given all of this, Apollodoros is in an interesting position as both a later source and an earlier source. While he likely lived after another writer whom we will discuss at length, Diodoros of Sicily, he used sources that well predate Diodoros and which give us earlier versions 28 There is a historical figure by that name, also known as Apollodoros the Grammarian, who lived in the second-century BCE and worked in Alexandria. The text we have cannot be by this Apollodoros. The Library makes a reference to the chronicler Castor of Rhodes, who wrote a chronology that stretched down to 61/60 BCE, well after the death of Apollodoros the Grammarian. While he is clearly not this Apollodoros, given that we do not know who the actual writer of the Library was, I will be referring to him as Apollodoros of Athens for the sake of convenience. 29 Smith and Trzaskoma, Apollodorus and Hyginus, xxix-xxx. 30 Smith and Trzaskoma, Apollodorus and Hyginus, xxxvii. 19 of these myths. With all that being said, let us now turn to what Apollodoros can tell us about one of the versions of Herakles circulating at this time. The Herakles of Apollodoros lacks many of the later traditions about the hero. For example, there are none of the Roman traditions about Hercules visiting Rome. This makes sense given that Apollodoros, while he was certainly living under Roman rule, was drawing on sources from a period when Rome was not a major player in Greek events. The version of the Herakles’ story we get in Apollodoros is much fuller than the brief mentions we get in Homer and Hesiod. We get a full account of Herakles’ life here, including his Twelve Labors. He does travel across the world for these Labors, showing that that aspect of the myth of his wanderings had fully developed by this point.31 One interesting continuity with the Homeric version of Herakles that we get in Apollodoros is his selfishness. Herakles is only interested in his own goals, not in establishing any sort of legacy for himself nor in claiming land and territory for his descendants, which is at the core of the irridentist use of Herakles we will discuss. In his Eleventh Labour, fetching the Golden Apples from the Garden of the Hesperides, Apollodoros describes fights with a Libyan named Antaios the Libyan and an Egyptian named Busiris. Herakles was forced to fight Antaios, ultimately killing him, after which he immediately leaves Libya, doing nothing else in the land.32 The aspect of Herakles as a spreader of civilization and tamer of the wilds to make the world more habitable for Greek-style settlement is completely absent here, Herakles is only fighting for himself. This contrast only becomes starker with the story of Busiris, King of Egypt. Apollodorus writes that Busiris sacrificed foreigners “on an altar of Zeus in accordance with a prophecy,” which said that a nine year barrenness in Egypt would only end if a foreigner 31 Apollod. Bibl. 32 Apollod. Bibl. 2.5.11. 20 were sacrificed to Zeus annually.33 This presents Busiris as acting as required by Zeus, even though he is committing a blatant violation of the laws of xenia. One would expect a hero, upon hearing about this violation of one of the most sacred laws of Greece, to set out to rectify this, to spread law and order. However, in Apollodoros’ version, Herakles only becomes involved because he himself was captured and brought to be sacrificed, at which point he broke the chains and killed Busiris and his son before leaving.34 There is no indication that, if he had been left alone by Busiris, that Herakles would have intervened at all. Once again, Herakles only acts out of his own self-interest here, not for any greater goal of driving out the lawless and spreading order, and certainly not to claim Egypt for his descendants. A later source, Diodoros of Sicily, adds a detail to his recounting of the story of Herakles and Busiris. He writes that, after slaying Busiris, Herakles founded a city, Hecatompylon, in the desert.35 This is wildly out of character for Herakles from the versions we have seen, as he has not so far been presented as a founder of cities nor a claimer of land, yet here he is doing precisely that. One interesting diversion from this form of the story of Herakles, one that fits in more with the version of Herakles as a civilizer and even a colonizer we discussed below, that ties in with the idea that that does appear briefly in Apollodoros is how he is responsible for the name of Italy. According to Apollodoros, the name “Italy” comes from one of the cattle Herakles was driving for his Tenth Labour. He writes that the Tyrrhenians36 named the territory Italy after one of these bulls, which in the Tyrrhenian language is “italos,” who escaped from the rest of the herd and ran through the land.37 This is the rare account in Apollodoros of Herakles being 33 Apollod. Bibl. 2.116. 34 Apollod. Bibl. 2.117. 35 Diod. 4.18.1. 36 Greek name for the Etruscans 37 Apollod. Bibl. 2.110. 21 responsible for the name of something and it was entirely by accident, rather than on purpose. He establishes a form of order, giving the name to a place, but it is not intentional on his part. The seeds of the version of Herakles discussed below, the figure who would be invoked time and again to justify Greek appropriation of lands through Herakles’ travels, can be seen in Apollodoros, but his version of Herakles is not that figure. Let us now see how these stories would be rewritten and expanded in order to justify the claiming of land and territory by turning to our case studies. 22 Herakles in Sicily Diodoros’ Account Diodoros of Sicily was born sometime in the early years of the first century CE and died in its dying years. His history was written during the final years of the Roman Republic, with the latest event he mentions being Augustus’ expulsion of the citizens of Tauromenium and their replacement with a colony of Roman citizens, which happened in the 30’s BCE.38 As mentioned previously, he wrote a massive history entitled the Library in forty books, stretching from the mythic age down to the year 60 BCE. Sadly, only fifteen books of his history survive intact, although we have many fragments of the others. Diodoros’ reputation has long been viewed very negatively, with the historian David Thomas, in his introduction to the Landmark edition of Xenophon’s Hellenika, writing that: although some recent scholars have discerned some signs of intelligence in Diodoros, it has long been recognized that he was a wretched historian, who created his narrative largely if not exclusively by paraphrasing chunks of his predecessors’ works in the most careless way.39 I tend to have a far higher view of Diodoros’ methods and intelligence than this overly negative condemnation, but it is important to point out what the reputation of Diodoros has been for many years. Diodoros’ history is still a vitally important source, especially for Sicilian history as Diodoros himself was a Sicilian Greek. Furthermore, his history provides a vital biography of Herakles, without which we would be even poorer for. Finally, the charge that Diodoros largely copied from earlier sources is relevant, but there are significant parts of his history of Herakles where Diodoros is drawing on his own knowledge and experience, especially in relation to 38 Diod. 16.7.1. 39 Thomas, David. “Introduction.” In The Landmark Xenophon’s Hellenika, edited by Robert B. Strassler. (New York: Anchor Books, 2009), xxix. 23 Herakles’ supposed contributions to his own hometown of Agyrium. With all this being said, let us now turn to what Diodoros, this supposed wretched historian, has to say about Herakles’ time in the western Mediterranean in general and Sicily in particular. Herakles arrives in Sicily, according to Diodoros, during his Tenth Labour, when he is sent to fetch the cattle of Geryon from Iberia.40 All along his travels across the western Mediterranean for this Labour, Herakles “civilized” each place he visited. First he landed in Libya, slew the barbaric giant Antaeus, drove out the wild animals, and put the entire land under cultivation, whereas previously Libya had been “uninhabitable because of the multitude of the wild beasts which infested the whole land.”41 He also brough to heel “such men as who defied the law or arrogant rulers and gave prosperity to the cities.”42 Already here, in the first stage of this Labour, we can see Herakles as a culture hero, bringing civilization and order to barbarian lands. This is a trend we see repeated over and over in Diodoros’ account of Herakles’ journeys, Herakles coming in and making the land more ‘civilized’ and suitable for mankind. When he is in Egypt, he kills the king Busiris, who was killing strangers,43 he “put an end to the lawlessness and murdering of strangers” across Celtica and founded the city of Alesia,44 and he made a highway through the Alps into Italy so that “it can now be crossed by armies and baggage-trains” and the barbarians there were subdued.45 Diodoros’ account here shows that, at the time he was writing, Herakles was viewed as bringing culture and civilization wherever he went. This comes to a climax in his account of Herakles’ adventures on his own home island, Sicily, the focus of this paper, to which we now turn. 40 Diod. 4.17, 23. 41 Diod. 4.17.4-5. 42 Diod. 4.17.5. 43 Diod. 4.18.1. (trans. Oldfather) 44 Diod. 4.19.2. 45 Diod. 4.19.3-4. (trans. Oldfather) 24 After making his way down the Italian peninsula, including visiting the future site of the city of Rome,46 Herakles finally crossed over into Sicily. As he makes his circuit around the island, Herakles comes to the land of Eryx, ruled over by a king of the same name.47 As with Antaeus in Libya, Herakles and Eryx wrestled with each other, but this time, there was a wager at stake; if Eryx won, he would receive the cattle Herakles was driving for his Labor (and thus his future immortality), if Herakles won, he would receive Eryx’s kingdom for his own.48 Naturally, Herakles was victorious, and so he killed Eryx and claimed the land for himself.49 However, Herakles does something very interesting here, something which will become very relevant over the course of this study. Herakles cannot stay and rule over his new kingdom, as he needs to finish his Labors, so he turns the land over to “the natives of the region” for them to farm and cultivate “until one of his descendants should appear among them and demand it back.”50 As Diodoros notes, this very claim was used in historical times by a Spartan prince, Dorieus, as a justification for him to claim land in the region to found a polis called Herakleia, as he was a descendant of Herakles.51 A more elaborate story of Dorieus is found in the Histories of Herodotos. According to him, Dorieus was informed of Herakles’ claim to the land of Eryx by Antichares, a man from Eleon, who based his idea on the “oracles of Laius.”52 However, there is a quite different tone between the two sources in how they viewed Dorieus and his colonization efforts. Diodoros describes Dorieus’ efforts as the fulfilment of ancient claims. After describing the story of 46 Diod. 4.21.1-4. 47 Diod. 4.23.2. 48 Diod. 4.23.2. 49 Diod, 4.23.2-3. 50 Diod. 4.23.3. (trans. Oldfather) 51 Diod. 4.23.3. 52 Herod. 5.43. 25 Herakles and Eryx, and Herakles returning the land to the local inhabitants to hold in trust for his descendants, Diodoros writes that “this actually came to pass” as a segue into a brief account of the Dorieus story.53 Sadly, however, while he writes that of “we shall discuss [Dorieus’ attempted colonization] in detail in connection with the period in which it falls,”54 such a discussion does not survive in any part of the Library. Regardless, the section we see is fully accepting of the idea that Dorieus’ actions were correct, and he was only foiled by the jealousy and fear of the Carthaginians.55 Herodotos, on the other hand, is decidedly more negative concerning Dorieus. He presents Dorieus as hotheaded and impulsive. Dorieus ignores the proper customs that go into establishing a new settlement, refusing to consult with the oracle at Delphi before setting out and, according to the Sybarite version of the story56, involving himself in the conflict between Sybaris and Croton, fighting on the side of Croton.57 After this war, Dorieus tried to establish his colony, but he and all but one of the Spartiates with him were wiped out by the Phoenicians and the Egestaeans.58 Herodotos attributes the failure to Dorieus’ spurning the oracle, writing that “his total ruin was the consequence of his ignoring the oracle.”59 It is worth noting that, while Herodotos looks negatively on Dorieus for his impiety and failure to consult the gods before taking action, nowhere does he discount Dorieus’ claim as a descendant of Herakles. In fact, he writes that if he had followed the proper procedures and rites at Delphi, then “the land of Eryx 53 Diod. 4.23.3. (trans. Oldfather) 54 Diod. 4.23.3. (trans. Oldfather) 55 Diod. 4.23.3. 56 Herodotos notes that the Crotoniates specifically denied any involvement on their side by ‘foreigners,’ (ξένοι) which is an interesting choice of word to use here as it undercuts the modern idea of the Greeks regarding other Greeks as their fellow countrymen even this early. Croton was a Greek settlement, yet they regarded Dorieus as a foreigner. 57 Hdt. 5.44. 58 Hdt. 5.46. 59 Hdt. 5.45. (trans. Holland) 26 would surely have been his; its conquest would have installed him and his army as occupiers.”60 In Herodotos’ view, the underlying claim to the land on the basis of the story of Herakles is legitimate, but Dorieus lost it as a result of his own foolish and impious actions. That is what caused his failure. Here we can see how the myth of Herakles was used by Greeks in historical times to make irridentist claims on foreign territory, to give themselves a legitimate claim on the basis of this mythic story. While Dorieus’ colony was unsuccessful, being razed to the ground by the Carthaginians, the very fact of the claim made here is important and worth examining in detail here. Neither Diodoros nor Herodotos view Dorieus’ irridentist claims as illegitimate. Irad Malkin discusses this event in an article entitled “Post-Colonial Concepts and Ancient Greek Colonization.”61 He argues that the Greek claims in Sicily were built on the basis of Phoenician Melqart, with whom Herakles was identified by both the Phoenicians and the Greeks. As both him and I have noted, the Herakles of earlier times in the likes of Homer was a nomad, not the kind of hero to settle down and claim territory, so he argues that this idea of him taking land was actually an aspect of Melqart that retroactively was applied to Herakles when Greeks and Phoenicians in western Sicily interacted.62 He notes that the sole survivor of Dorieus’ expedition, Euryleon, ended up founding a Herakleia on a formerly Phoenician site named Makara, the promontory of which was likely named rsmlqrt, meaning “Headland of Melqart.”63 This settlement shows how the groundwork laid by the Phoenicians in utilizing Melqart to claim land in Sicily was, through Melqart’s identification with Herakles, able to be used for Greek colonists to claim the same 60 Hdt. 5.45. (trans. Holland) 61 Malkin, Irad, “Postcolonial Concepts and Ancient Greek Colonization,” MLQ: Modern Language Quarterly 65, no. 3 (2004), 361. 62 Malkin, “Postcolonial Concepts,” 361. 63 Malkin, “Postcolonial Concepts,” 361. 27 territory themselves. Through the syncretism of Herakles and Melqart, the Greeks were able to appropriate the Phoenician Melqart’s claims to the land for themselves, as descendants of Herakles. As such, we can see now why Dorieus seems to have expected his claims to work and why later writers such as Herodotos and Diodoros accept his irredentist claims at face value. The groundwork for Greek irridentism in Sicily had been built for centuries before Dorieus was even born, through the Phoenicians and the interaction between the Phoenicians and the Greeks.64 Through the equation of Herakles and Melqart, lands claimed by Melqart became subject to irridentist claims of ownership from Greeks who claimed a descent from Herakles. After instituting a cult to Kore and Demeter at the future site of Syracuse,65 Diodoros wrties that Herakles moved on to fighting against the native Sicani, killing many of them including some “who receive the honours accorded to heroes even to this day.”66 Here we see Herakles fighting the ‘barbarians’ and even killing those that the ‘barbarians’ worshipped as heroes, in other words, as semi-divine figures in their own right. Here Diodoros is showing a Greek hero, who would later ascend to godhood, overcoming even the best that the ‘barbarians’ can throw at him. He is showing the superiority of Herakles, and through Herakles the Greeks, over the native population of Sicily. Even their best fighters all together were no match for the lone Herakles. When we compare the actions of the Sicani heroes with the men on the plain of Leontini, who so honored him that Herakles was compelled to build “imperishable memorials of his presence,” I come to one conclusion.67 This shows that the Greeks believed that, while some natives fought against Herakles and died, others recognized the greatness of the Greek hero-god and honored him. Both stories served to show the superiority of Herakles and the Greeks over 64 Malkin, “Postcolonial Concepts,” 362. 65 Diod. 4.23.4. 66 Diod. 4.23.5. (trans. Oldfather) 67 Diod. 4.24.1. 28 the previous inhabitants of the land. The Greeks, and especially the descendants of Herakles, had the right to rule over these people and take their land. In the view of Diodoros and, likely, many Greeks around him in Sicily, there were only two options for these non-Greeks: death by resisting Herakles or submission to him and honoring him as a superior. By submitting to Herakles, they were also submitting themselves and their land to the rule of his descendants. For perhaps the best example of the latter option, let us now turn to the section of this story probably best known to Diodoros, the myths of his own hometown, Agyrium. After briefly recounting Herakles’ trip through the plain of Leontini, Diodoros spends a fair bit of time listing Herakles’ exploits and lasting legacy in his hometown of Agyrium. While, as David Thomas mentioned above, much of Diodoros’ writings draws on earlier historians, I argue that this section instead draws on the local traditions of Agyrium with which Diodoros would be especially familiar, being a native son. As such, this section perhaps offers us one of the best glimpses into how Herakles was worshipped and remembered by the Greeks of an average Sicilian town in the last century before the Common Era, from an inhabitant of such a town. This section lacks the strong mythic narrative of earlier sections, such as the fights with Eryx or Antaeus. Instead, what Diodoros records is a list of various places and rituals established by Herakles or named after him. Diodoros writes that Agyrium was the first place where Herakles was offered sacrifice as a god, equal to the Olympians.68 Out of gratitude for the divine honors given to him by the people, Herakles built for them a large lake outside their city, which bore his name down to Diodoros’ own time.69 He also left his footprints in the stone, set up sacred precincts to Geryon, to his nephew (and lover) Iolaus, and to himself, all of which were 68 Diod. 4.24.1. 69 Diod. 4.24.3. 29 still in use in Diodoros own day.70 Finally, he established a tradition whereby “the inhabitants of this city let the hair of their heads grow from their birth in honor of Iolaus.”71 All of these are interesting because, while we do not know when Agyrium was founded as a Greek colony, it was doubtlessly after the so-called Heroic Age, the era of myth that most Hellenistic era historians left out of their universal histories, and Diodoros would have known this perfectly well. He puts Herakles’ travels before the founding of Rome by Romulus and before the Trojan War, which would have been before any Greek colonies were founded in Sicily. Given this fact, Diodoros must be implying that the people worshipping Herakles when he came to the region that would become Agyrium were not Greeks and that the later Greek colonists continued these traditions when Agyrium was founded. I suspect that this may hint that these sites were sacred to a local god on the site whom was then equated with Herakles, as we have seen with Melqart at Makara, but it is possible that Agyrintine Greeks invented these cults themselves and then claimed they were initially founded by Herakles. Whatever the actual origin is impossible to know; what matters for us is what the Agyrintines of Diodoros’ day believed had happened. What they believed is that Herakles had come to the site of their city and interacted with the pre-Greek inhabitants, established cults and named important sites, and that this land was later be appropriated by the Greeks of Agyrium. They believed that a Greek god-hero had established their rituals and place names, which were preserved by both the non-Greeks and then the Greeks themselves. They likely believed that Herakles, by naming these sites and establishing enduring cults, had crafted for them an inheritance to be claimed by them in the future. It seems like their view was that these non-Greeks clearly recognized the civilizing greatness of Herakles, as seen with Herakles other acts of bringing ‘civilization,’ and so accorded 70 Diod. 4.24.3-4. 71 Diod. 4.24.4. 30 him the divine honors he was due. They submitted to this Greek hero-god and then their land was claimed by later Greeks, the inheritors of Herakles. This is exactly the same claim that Dorieus and Euryleon used to justify their own claims to this land. Herakles made this non-Greek land Greek. Other Literary Accounts Diodoros is our best source for the version of the myth of Herakles told in Greek Sicily, but he is not the only source that can tell us how important Herakles was to the Greeks of Sicily. Another important source for the importance of the cult of Herakles in Greek Sicily, in this case in the city of Akragas, we must turn to the Roman orator, statesman, and, in this specific text, lawyer, Marcus Tullius Cicero. Cicero was roughly contemporary with Diodoros’ life, Diodoros writing during the reign of Augustus, shortly after Cicero’s murder at the hands of Marcus Antonius. In his second oration against the corrupt governor Verres, one of Cicero’s earliest surviving speeches dating to 70 BCE, he briefly discusses the Temple of Herakles in Akragas and how the people defended the temple from attack. This temple housed a very great bronze statue of Herakles which the citizens of Akragas were accustomed to kissing; kissing it so often that the mouth and chin are worn away.72 This gesture of supplication to the statue seems to have been fairly uncommon, given how Cicero draws attention to it and that he specifically notes this as a sign of just how deeply venerated the statue of Herakles and, presumably, the god himself was to the Akragans.73 As we can see, the cult of Herakles was important to the Akragans. This is further demonstrated, as Cicero continues, with the response of the citizens to an attempted theft of the statue, carried out by Verres during his governorship of Sicily.74 This roused the 72 Cic. Ver. 2.4.94. 73 Cic. Ver. 2.4.94. 74 Cic. Ver. 2.4.94. 31 entire city to fight to protect the statue and the temple, to protect the “deos patrios,” the god of their fatherland. This title which Cicero uses is of vital importance to understanding the cult of Herakles in Akragas. Herakles was not just any god, he was one of the gods of the fatherland, a god of the city itself. As we have seen with Diodoros, Herakles was often tied in with founding myths in Sicily by this period. He was credited with establishing many important rites and rituals at Agyrium. While we lack a first-hand account of these Heraklean rites and rituals like we have at Agyrium, we can assume that there was likely some sort of tradition of Herakles visiting the site, for several reasons. The first is that Herakles was held to have wandered around the island of Sicily. While Diodoros does not mention Akragas in particular, he does mention that Herakles had made a circuit around the island, which would enable a visit to the region of Akragas.75 Given his importance to Akragas, it would be expected that the Akragans had local stories about Herakles visiting Akragas, similar to the Agyrintine traditions recounted by Diodoros. The second, and far more important, is that the people of Akragas were Dorians. The Dorians were one of the major dialect groups of the Greeks, largely located in the Peloponnese, but they also were the primary Greek settlers of Sicily. The Dorians had a special relationship with the hero-god Herakles. Herakles, for them, was not just a hero to be revered or a god to be worshipped, but an ancestor to whom they could trace their family trees. They were the Herakleidai, the sons of Herakles. This idea of the Dorians claiming descent from Herakles is quite ancient. The Spartan poet Tyrtaios, writing in the mid-seventh century BCE during the Spartan conquest of Messenia, exhorts the Spartan soldiers to be courageous and fight on, as “your stock is from unconquered Herakles.”76 To connect this back to the leonine imagery we know was circulating at the time, 75 Diod. 4.23.1. 76 Stob. 4.9.16 (trans. Gerber) 32 Tyrtaios also specifically invokes imagery of the lion in one fragment, “with a tawny lion’s spirit in his (your) breast,” recorded by Galen in his work On the Doctrines of Hippocrates and Plato.77 While this fragment is not specifically invoking Herakles himself as far as we can tell, it does invoke the imagery of the lion as a symbol of strength and courage within warriors, which connects it with the Master of Lions imagery we discussed earlier. This imagery was connected with Herakles, so it seems likely that, by saying that the Dorian soldiers had the spirit of the lion in their breast, Tyrtaios was at least obliquely connecting them back to Herakles, the Master of Lions. The Dorian claim of descent from Herakles was also intimately tied in with the mythical history of the Dorians. Unlike the Athenians, who claimed to be autochthonous, to have sprung from the very land of Attika itself in ancient times, the Dorians and other Greeks believed that they had not always lived in the Peloponnese. In fact, mythically speaking, they were late-comers to the peninsula. They only conquered it after the Trojan War, at the very end of the aforementioned Heroic Age, when the Heraklidai defeated Tisamenus, the grandson of Agamemnon, and then divided it between themselves, with Temenos receiving the kingship of Argos, the two sons of Aristodemos, the brother of Temenos, receiving Laconia, and Cresphontes receiving Messenia.78 The story of the Return of the Herakleidai was, in a sense, the creation myth for the Dorians.79 It also served a vital propagandistic function, legitimizing the Dorians’ rule over the land of the Peloponnese.80 This may be the first instance in which a group 77 Gal. de plac. Hippocr. et Plat. 3.309 (trans. Gerber) 78 Patterson, Lee E. “Heracles as Ancestor.” In The Oxford Handbook of Heracles, edited by Daniel Ogden, (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2021), 420. 79 Patterson, “Heracles as Ancestor,” 420. 80 Patterson, “Heracles as Ancestor,” 420. 33 of Greeks used Herakles in order to justify their claim to territory, but, as we have seen with Dorieus and Euryleon, it was far from the last. This myth is also very old. Our earliest reference to the story comes in the work of the aforementioned Tyrtaios.81 Patterson notes that the fragments of Tyrtaios’ poetry encourage the Spartans to “draw on their Heraclid greatness, inherited from their ancestors, especially on the battlefield.”82 One must be cautious in applying the words of a seventh century Spartan poet to the Greek colony of Akragas in Sicily and especially to the Akragans of the era of Cicero, but some connections can be drawn. Namely, that Herakles was viewed as an ancestor figure by the Dorians, that the Akragans, as Dorians, almost certainly thought of themselves as descendants of Herakles, and that, like their forebears in the Peloponnese, they were likely utilizing this claim to justify their rule over the lands in which they had settled. Given our paucity of evidence for the specific traditions of many of Sicilian Greek cities like Akragas, we are forced to rely on comparison with other Dorian traditions in order to provide a glimpse of what their traditions may have been. These ancient stories constructed a narrative through which the colony was legitimized and stabilized. The Dorian foundation myths lent divine legitimacy to the colonization effort, as they were not setting out to some entirely foreign land but were returning to land that had been visited and conquered by their divine ancestor. They were reclaiming their birthright, their legitimate land won for them by a god. It was not a new venture, but a nostos, a return, one legitimized by the stories and traditions constructed around the god-hero Herakles. 81 Patterson, “Heracles as Ancestor,” 421. 82 Patterson, “Heracles as Ancestor,” 421. 34 Archaeological Evidence Turning to archaeology, in the interests of space, I will be focusing on the two previously discussed cities in Sicily, Akragas and Agyrium. I chose these sites for a simple reason, both have at least some archaeological record, specifically a record that can be connected with written sources. Trying to tease out ideology from archaeology alone, especially when it comes to identification of gods, is incredibly difficult, as the physical remains alone must rely on our interpretations, while reading them in accord with literary evidence can lead us to a further level of understanding than we could reach with just archaeology or just the texts on their own. As we have good written sources for Sicilian traditions from these cities, it is best to utilize writing and archaeology in accord to understand how the Sicilian Greeks thought about and used Herakles to justify themselves and their claims to these lands. Akragas is the modern Sicilian city of Agrigento, located on the southern coast of the island of Sicily. This ancient remains of the city are mainly represented the site of the famed Valley of the Temples, a collection of numerous Doric temples along a single ridge.83 These temples are some of the best-preserved Greek temples on Earth and thus provide an invaluable resource for understanding the Greek cults of the site, especially when read with the literary evidence we have already discussed, specifically Cicero’s account of the Temple of Herakles. This temple, standing just outside gate IV, may be the oldest surviving temple in Agrigento, built at the end of the sixth century BCE.84 This would put the cult of Herakles in Agrigento at a very early date, possibly dating even to the founding generation. However, as one of Braccesi’s footnotes mentions, there are arguments for downdating the temple to the reign of the tyrant 83 The writer of this study had the great pleasure of visiting Agrigento and the Valley in the summer of 2019. Pictures cannot do it justice. 84 Braccesi, L. and E. De Miro. Agrigento e la Sicilia greca: atti della settimana di studio. (Rome: l’erma di Bretschneider, 1992), 70. 35 Theron, which would make it part of his building program.85 Either argument would be quite interesting for our purposes, as both dates serve to offer very interesting possibilities for how the Akragans viewed Herakles and utilized him in their settlement of this site. If the temple is the earliest surviving temple of the valley, that tells us that the Akragans placed great importance on their cult of Herakles, as he was the god to whom they built their oldest grand temple. Obviously, if there were preceding cult sites buried either under the modern city of Agrigento or that were built using perishable materials, we have no evidence of them. However, we must work from the evidence we have, and as such, we will take the temple of Herakles as our earliest temple. Even if the temple of Herakles is not strictly the oldest temple of Akragas in reality, it is the oldest that survives, which places it in an incredibly early period. By building a temple to Herakles so early, when their presence on this site was still new and needed to be justified, the Akragans very well may have been invoking the idea, inherited from their Dorian ancestors in the Peloponnese, that they had the right to this land through their descent from Herakles. The Akragans may have even been following similar traditions to those we have seen in Agyrium and with Dorieus, where Herakles was tied to specific places and said to have visit the land and claimed it for his descendants. By erecting a massive temple to Herakles, the Akragans would be broadcasting this claim far and wide, to anyone who visited the city, that this was a city of Herakles. If the temple is dated to the reign of the tyrant Theron and his building program, however, then the temple quite a different statement. Greek tyrants often engaged in elaborate building programs, the most famous being that of Peisistratos of Athens and his sons in the sixth century BCE, who were taken as being “typical tyrant in their approach to public works.”86 85 Braccesi and De Miro, Agrigento e la Sicilia greca, 70. 86 Camp, John M. The Archaeology of Athens. (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2001), 30. 36 Peisistratos and his sons are credited with the construction of numerous religious cults and edifices, including a temple on the Acropolis, the establishment of a cult of Athena Nike, the restoration of the Panathenaia, the Altar of the Twelve Gods in the Agora, and the beginnings of a massive temple to Olympian Zeus which was only finished during the reign of the emperor Hadrian centuries later.87 While Peisistratos is not the subject of our study, he does offer a very well-documented example of the kind of building programs Greek tyrants would engage in. Theron was likely no different. By constructing these grand edifices, the tyrant was showing his piety to the god being honored and connecting himself with that god. Peisistratos connected himself with Athena, both in building her grand temples and in how he claimed tyranny over Athens by having a tall woman pretend to be Athena herself and demand the Athenians him back to the city.88 Through his building program and his propaganda, Peisistratos was reminding the Athenians of why he had the right to rule over the city, because he was chosen by Athena herself. He also may have aligned himself with Herakles as well, as John Boardman argues, based on imagery from Attic pottery at the time and some archaeological remains, including the idea that his club-wielding bodyguards were viewed as analogous to Herakles with his club, which was often carried for him by his nephew and beloved Iolaos.89 In either case, Peisistratos’ rule over Athens was legitimized through his connection to the gods, and this connection to the gods was demonstrated and highlighted by his building campaign. In a similar vein to how the Dorians and the Sicilian Greeks claimed land by invoking Herakles, Peisistratos was claiming legitimacy to rule over the people through his divine connections. 87 Camp, The Archaeology of Athens, 30-6. 88 Hdt. 1.60. 89 Boardman, John, “Herakles, Peisistratos, and Sons,” Revue Archéologique, no. 1 (1972), 62-3. 37 If the temple of Herakles dates to the reign of Theron as tyrant and was part of his building campaign in Akragas, it is easy to argue that he was likely associating himself with Herakles in a similar way. This transforms the initial cause for building the temple from a statement solely by the Akragans of their rights to this territory into both a statement by the city, but more immediately, a statement by Theron, of his specific right to rule Akragas due to his connection with Herakles. Herakles legitimized him, and this temple was his way of demonstrating to the Akragans that he was their rightful ruler, through his connection with their divine ancestor. The legitimacy of both the city and the tyrant is due to their connections with Herakles. The importance of Herakles to the city, and to the rulers of the city, is also seen in the fact that the head of Herakles was often depicted on coins issued by Akragas.90 Coins were a valuable ideological tool. First of all, coins were visible to everyone conducting commerce in a coined economy. Secondly, they were symbols of the state which issued the coins. The stamps on a coin were symbols of the authority issuing the coin.91 Given the ideological importance of the imagery on coins, the fact that Herakles is depicted on Akragan coinage shows that Herakles was taken as a symbol of the state and its legitimacy, like the owl of Athena for Athenian coinage or the emperor for later Roman coinage. On the one item issued by the polis that would travel across the Mediterranean and would identify the city in question, Akragas chose, among others, to include the image of Herakles. Herakles and the state of Akragas were intimately connected, from the temple dedicated to him to the beloved statue of him the Akragans would fight for to the coins they would trade for goods both within the city and as part of wider trade, 90 de Waele, J. A. Acragas Gaeca: Die historische Topographie des griechischen Akragas auf Sizilien. Vol. I, (s-Gravenhage: Staatsuitgeverij, 1971), 201. 91 Gabrielsen, Vincent. “Finance and Taxes.” In A Companion to Ancient Greek Government, edited by Hans Beck, (New York: Wiley-Blackwell, 2013), 347. 38 the image of Herakles was there. He was very clearly an intimate part of Akragan identity, and was doubtlessly part of the now lost traditions through which the Akragans justified their claims to this specific territory and through which their tyrant may have justified his rule over them. Herakles was the font of legitimacy for Akragas. The case of Agyrium, although sharing many similarities, is fairly different from Akragas in several key ways. There have been no in-depth excavations at Agyrium, no great temples to Herakles that endured until the present day. Agyrium was never a major player in Sicilian history and was never a major city. While it was obviously no Syracuse, it also was no Akragas. It was an inland, fairly small Greek colony. The only reason it has any prominence is because of its native son, Diodoros. While we have very little of Greek Agyrium left standing, the account of Diodoros looms large, and provides us with an invaluable account of the religious traditions of the Agyrintines, and most especially their connections to Herakles. He paints Herakles as an important founder for Agyrium, establishing numerous rituals and sacred precincts, as we have discussed. However, we have to take Diodoros at his word on this, given the lack of excavations and surviving material remains from Agyrium. The only material corroboration for Diodoros’ claims regarding the importance of Herakles to Agyrium are the coins the city left behind, as they are some of the only physical remains of the ancient city yet uncovered. Of the eleven coins from Agyrium held in the British Museum in 1911, as published in Barclay V. Head’s Historia Numorum, a compendium of the coinage held in the British Museum at the time of publication, three of them depict Herakles on the face, and two depict Iolaos, the nephew and lover of Herakles, on the reverse.92 The images depicted on coins were not chosen at random. As we have discussed, they were specifically picked symbols of the polis issuing them. This means that, 92 Head, Barclay V. Historia Numorum: A Manual of Greek Numismatics. (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1911), 125. 39 when Agyrium wanted to represent itself to both its own people and to outsiders, one of the images the polis chose to do this with was the image of Herakles or someone associated with Herakles. Furthermore, they specifically claimed, according to Diodoros, to be the very first people to worship Herakles as a god.93 This gave them and their traditions a claim of great antiquity in this place, dating back to the so-called Heroic Age. They had successfully appropriated the land on which their city sits through these myths, and further promoted their connections with Herakles via their coinage. They were not just claiming a patron god, but a founder figure that tied them to this specific land as their land. Land that had belonged to them since before Herakles had even become divine! Land that they had the right to take from whatever people were previously living there. Conclusions Herakles was clearly a god of immense importance to the Greeks of Akragas and Agyrium, as a founder figure and the figure from which their claims to the land and the right to rule were traced. He was credited with establishing cults at Agyrium, he was used as a symbol by both Akragas and Agyrium, and the stories of his exploits were adapted and molded to fit the new territorial claims various Greek groups were making to the land. The fact that most Greek colonists of Sicily were Dorians, who traced their own origins back to Herakles through the myth of the Return of the Herakleidai, helps to explain why Herakles was so prominent within Sicily. They were drawing on a pre-existing tradition of using Herakles to justify irridentist claims to territory and rule over said territory and the people in it. Furthermore, his wanderings and his ancient status as a liminal hero provided an explanation for why this Greek would have been in Sicily long before the first Greek colony. He 93 Diod. 4.24.1-2. 40 was credited with putting down lawbreakers like Eryx and claiming land for his descendants to claim later, providing a basis for land claims. He was syncretized with Melqart, thus allowing the Greeks to claim lands tied to Melqart and justify themselves to the people in these lands. This process also likely happened with now-unknown local gods, perhaps including the sites at Agyrium. The Greeks in Sicily were vital to reshaping Herakles into a god tied in with both Greek colonial expansion and the spread of Greek “civilization” as he drove out the barbarians and the monsters, the symbols of chaos. They did this in order to claim territory in Sicily and to justify their power over this land instead of its native inhabitants. Herakles established cult sites and won the land and now his descendants were retaking their rightful inheritance. Furthermore, we have seen how tyrants, including Peisistratos of Athens and possibly Theron of Akragas, were able to invoke the gods in general and Herakles in particular to justify their personal rule and power. This irredentism, justification of conquest and settlement, and justification of the rule of specific people over others through the invocation of Herakles would be taken to great heights by the Macedonians and by the most famous Macedonian of them all, Alexander the Great. 41 Herakles and Alexander Introduction The ancient world was forever changed by the conquests of Alexander III of Macedon. Within the span of a couple of years, he and his army conquered the entire Persian Empire and brought Greek rule from the Mediterranean to the Indus River. This was the single largest expansion of the Greek world in history, making Greeks the rulers of the Middle East, Egypt, the Iranian plateau, all the way to the Indus River and India. When discussing the Greek Far East and the Hellenistic world in general, it is impossible to ignore the very long shadow that Alexander and the Macedonians cast over everything. As such, I will be dedicating a section of this paper to discuss how Alexander and the Macedonians utilized Herakles as a way of justifying their own political power and legitimacy. First, we will discuss how Herakles was utilized by the Macedonian kings before Alexander in order to claim Greek identity, enter into the circle of Greek states, and legitimize themselves as rulers. Next, we will examine how Philip II utilized Herakles in order to claim territory and to justify his hegemony over the whole of mainland Greece. Finally, we will turn to Alexander’s own use of Herakles in order to justify his conquests and his claims on territory from Tyre all the way to the East. Herakles and Macedon Before Alexander Whether or not the Macedonians were Greek was a subject of fierce debate in the ancient world. Herodotos notes that there was a dispute when Alexander I of Macedon tried to participate in the Olympic Games and the other competitors “tried to have him disqualified, objecting that the games were open only to Greek contestants, and not to barbarians."94 94 Hdt. 5.22. (trans. Holland) 42 However, Herodotos argues that the Macedonian royal family, the “descendants of Perdiccas” as he calls them, were Greeks.95 In this dispute at the Olympics, Alexander I was able to prove that he was an Argive and was allowed to compete, and win, at the Olympic Games.96 Thucydides notes the same claim as well, writing that the royal family of Macedonia were “originally Temenids from Argos.”97 This Temenos from which the Macedonian royal family claimed to be descended is mentioned by Apollodoros as being one of the Herakleidai, part of the group that successfully conquered the Peloponnese and divided it amongst themselves.98 We briefly discussed him earlier, in the context of the Return of the Herakleidai and the so-called Dorian Invasion. The Macedonian claim is especially interesting as it shows the malleability of myth for political purposes. The story of the Heraklid conquest of the Peloponnese was quite old, connected with and possibly being invented by an Archaic Era ruling family who claimed descent from Temenos as well, named the Temenids as a result.99 We have seen that Tyrtaios made references to the myth in his poetry in the seventh century BCE. The Macedonian kings likely learned of this myth and then were able to adapt it for their own political purposes, to align themselves with the Hellenic world and legitimize themselves within it. Given that both Herodotos and Thucydides mention this specific claim by the Macedonian royal family, we can conclude that the Argead’s claimed connection with Herakles predates not just Alexander III but also his father, Philip II, and thus also predates the Macedonian hegemony over Greece. It was a claim that the Macedonians had been making for a very long time and one which many non-Macedonian Greeks as early as Herodotos were willing to accept as valid. Why would the 95 Hdt. 5.22. (trans. Holland) 96 Hdt. 5.22. 97 Thuc. 2.99. (trans. Hammond) 98 Apollod. Bibl. 2.8 99 Patterson, “Herakles as Ancestor,”420-1. 43 Macedonians, or at least the Argeads, want this connection? There are several reasons for this, which we shall discuss in detail below. The claim of Heraklid descent for the Argead dynasty originated in a period when Macedon was, in relation to the great Greek poleis to the south, a peripheral country on the northern edge of mainland Greece. However, despite this peripheral location, already they were adopting Greek styles and the ideology that would come to the fore of their claims to Greek identity. For instance, Herakles’ head, with the lion-skin, decorated Macedonian coins from an early date.100 Specially, coins with the head of Herakles Patroos (literally meaning Herakles the Ancestor), were introduced during the reign of Archelaus, grandson of Alexander I, who reigned from 413 to 399 BCE.101 The choice to place the head of a god on Macedonian coins was especially interesting because the heads of divine figures were never used on Macedonian, and only very rarely on northern Greek coinage in general, before the end of the fifth century BCE.102 Yet, rom almost the second they were putting emblems of the divine onto their coinage, Herakles was there, and he was there specifically being invoked as the divine ancestor of the Macedonian royal family. Clearly, Herakles presented a very valuable tool for the Macedonian royal family. They could claim descent from the great god-hero Herakles, boosting the prestige of their bloodline, and they specifically put Herakles the Ancestor on the very means of trade and exchange, broadcasting to both their own people and to the wider world their Heraklean bone fides. 100 Stoneman, Richard. The Greek Experience of India: From Alexander to the Indo-Greeks (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2019), 82. 101 Kremydi, Sophia. “Coinage and Finance.” In Brill’s Companion to Ancient Macedon: Studies in the Archaeology and History of Macedon, 650 BC – 300 AD, edited by Robin J. Lane Fox, (Leiden: Brill, 2011), 163-4. 102 Kremydi, “Coinage and Finance,” 163-4. 44 Another benefit to this claim was how it allowed them to make connections within the Greek world as well. A common ancestor opened up a very valuable avenue for diplomacy, so-called “kinship diplomacy.” Kinship diplomacy was a way to navigate around the normal hesitance of Greeks to open up citizenship and other associated rights to outsiders, as it allowed outsiders to make a claim of a common ancestry, of kinship, which opened up these previously closed avenues of contact and interaction.103 This allowed the Macedonian royal family to access privileges exclusive to Greeks, such as participation in the Olympic Games under Alexander I. Descent from Herakles conferred Greek identity on those who could claim it, and Greek identity provided vital legitimacy when interacting with other Greek states. Philip II would take this even further when, after the Third Sacred War, he was able to take the Phocian spot on the Delphic Amphictyony.104 This made the Macedonians one of the guardians of one of the greatest and most important panhellenic cult sights in the Greek world, the Oracle of Apollo at Delphi. This placed them among the company of ancient Greek tribes such as the Ionians, the Dorians, and the Thessalians, among others listed by Pausanias.105 This council was thought by the Greeks to be ancient, with Pausanias giving two possible origins, with one of them dating the formation of the council to as early as the generation after Deucalion, the Greek Noah.106 Regardless of its true origins, the council was viewed as both ancient and Greek, being populated solely by Greek tribes and cities. As neither Diodoros in his account of the Third Sacred War nor Pausanias in his discussion of the council draw attention to the issue of Philip’s assent to the council, namely the dispute over the ‘Greekness’ of the Macedonians, it shows that such a claim was likely not disputed either by Diodoros himself or by his sources for Book 16 nor by Pausanias and his 103 Patterson, “Herakles as Ancestor,” 427. 104 Diod. 16.60.1. 105 Paus. 10.8.2. 106 Paus. 10.8.1. 45 sources. It is worth noting that both Pausanias and Diodoros were writing centuries later, long after there had ceased to be any dispute over the Greek identity of the Macedonians, but given that neither of them even mention any objections to the claim, and that the Argeads had been accepted into the Olympic Games since the time of Alexander I a full century before Philip II’s reign, it seems likely that there was little dispute on the grounds of whether the Macedonian kings were Greek or not. It had become part and parcel of being the Macedonian King that they were considered Greek, and thus could participate in institutions limited to Greeks. Given how valuable participation in Greek institutions could be for an aspiring political power, as the Greek powers to Philip’s south were both wealthy and powerful, the importance of the descent from Herakles is clear. It conferred invaluable legitimacy on those who could make and support such a claim. It opened up valuable roads through which to conduct diplomacy and exert power. It transformed Philip and the Macedonians from being just another group of barbarians at the edges of the Greek world into being a fully integrated, legitimate Greek power. The claim of Heraklid descent put the Macedonians in the same company as the Spartan monarchies, which also counted Herakles as their ancestor. As Irad Malkin noted, both royal houses of Sparta claimed descent from Herakles and the story of the Return of the Herakleidai was utilized as a justification for Spartan power, especially in the case of Messenia.107 We discussed the usage of the story of the Return of the Herakleidai earlier, so we will not be elaborating too much on it here, just to note that it offered legitimacy to the land claims made by those supposedly descended from Herakles. Philip II, Alexander’s father, was in this sense no different from the Spartans. Like the Spartans, he utilized his family’s supposed descent from Herakles, and the various myths about Herakles’ adventures, in order to claim land himself. He 107 Malkin, Irad. Myth and Territory in the Spartan Mediterranean (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1994), 10. 46 specifically framed his conquest of land in Chalcidice as retaking land that rightfully belonged to him as a descendant of Herakles, since Herakles had conquered it before.108 Chalcidice was rightfully his property as a Heraklid, and it was far from the last territory he would try to claim using his descent from Herakles as a justification. Philip had a far grander conquest in mind, the conquest of Persia. Philip’s allies utilized the connection between Herakles and Macedonian royal family to justify their support of Philip II and both his hegemony over the Greek mainland and his planned campaign against the Persians. The great Athenian, and pro-Macedonian, orator Isocrates speaks on this at some length in a speech addressed to Philip himself. The section is worth quoting at length because of the succinct but thorough encapsulation of the ideology of Herakles as utilized by Philip II. When Heracles saw that Hellas was rife with wars and factions and many other afflictions, he first brought these troubles to an end and reconciled the cities with each other, and then showed by his example to coming generations with whom and against whom it was their duty to go to war. For he made an expedition against Troy, which was in those days the strongest power in Asia, and so far did he excel in generalship those who at a later time waged war against this same city, that, while they with the combined strength of Hellas found it difficult to take Troy after a siege which lasted ten years, he, on the other hand, in less than as many days, and with a small expedition, easily took the city by storm. … When he had done these things, he set up the Pillars of Heracles, as they are called, to be a trophy of victory over the barbarians, a monument to his own valor and the perils he had surmounted, and to mark the bounds of the territory of the Hellenes. My purpose in relating all this is that you may see that by my words I am exhorting you to a course of action which, in the light of their deeds, it is manifest that your ancestors chose as the noblest of all.109 Here we see several important ideas worth discussing. First is the reference to Herakles’ brief sack of Troy. This is presented not as simply a minor note as it was in the Homeric epics, but as an express action taken by Herakles on behalf of the entirety of Greece, which he is now 108 Bosworth, A.B. Alexander and the East: The Tragedy of Triumph (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1996), 164. 109 Isoc. 5.111-3. (trans. Norlin) 47 credited with having unified. There is very little reference to Herakles as a unifier of the Greeks against non-Greeks in any of the earlier texts we have discussed, showing how the ideology and the mythology of Herakles is developing in order to meet the needs of the present, more specifically, the needs of Philip’s campaign. Philip’s hegemony over Greece and his Persian campaign are justified and legitimized by retrojecting them back onto a mythologized past ancestor. Isocrates is drawing very explicit parallels between Herakles and Philip here. He casts Troy as the strongest power in Asia in the time of Herakles, exactly as the Persians were viewed by the Greeks of Isocrates’ time. Finally, Philip being the one to lead Greece and this anti-Persian campaign is legitimized because of his descent from Herakles. Like the tyrants in Sicily, Philip has a right to rule through his connection to Herakles, through his direct descent from him. Philip II was utilizing an old playbook; one we have already seen in Sicily with Dorieus and his attempted establishment of the colony of Herakleia at Eryx in Sicily, by Peisistratos and possibly Theron, as well as by the Dorians in general in their claims to ownership of the Peloponnese. He, mirroring these previous patterns, used an established claim of descent from Herakles to expand his rule to new lands, in his case Chalcidice and Persia. However, to this playbook was added new aspects, such as the unification of Greece supposedly under Herakles, as a mirror of what Philip II had already done. As we can see from this, Herakles was a very valuable tool for any aspiring conqueror or ruler who could find a way to claim descent from the god. Connection with and descent from Herakles offered a way to make irridentist land claims and to legitimize Philip’s rulership over Greece. This is a pattern which was followed by his son in his own conquests. 48 Alexander the Great and Herakles The conquests of Philip II of Macedon changed the face of Greece. The conquests of Alexander the Great changed the world. In the space of a decade, the Greeks went from controlling the Aegean, parts of Sicily, and southern Italy to ruling not just these areas but also all of Anatolia, the Levant, Egypt, Mesopotamia, the Iranian Plateau, and beyond, all the way to the Indus River. His hold this far out was weak, but he held it in name at the very least, and Greek rule continued in these areas for centuries afterwards. This massive expansion of the Greek world brought countless new peoples under Greek rule, all under the rule of one man and enforced by his massive army. Alexander needed to justify his conquest of the Persian Empire and his own expansions. Alexander took the Macedonian association with Herakles to an entirely new level, as he was often depicted as directly paralleling the hero-god to a far greater extent than even his father had dared. Alexander was said to have accosted the Pythia at Delphi when she refused to prophesy for him, for which she called him “ἀνίκητος.” invincible, an epithet shared by Herakles.110 Not only does Alexander in this story gain an epithet he shares with Herakles, the story itself parallels an act of Herakles, when he stole a tripod from the Oracle at Delphi.111 According to our old friend Diodoros, Alexander cited this story to boost his confidence ahead of the difficult campaign against the Gandaridae, as “he remembered that the Pythia had called him ‘unconquerable,’ (ἀνίκητον) and Ammon had given him the rule of the whole world.”112 By the time of the Alexander Romance, the story had so evolved to the point that the Pythia actually calls Alexander “Herakles Alexander,” directly connecting the two figures.113 This story, 110 Stoneman, The Greek Experience of India, 83. 111 Stoneman, The Greek Experience of India, 83. 112 Diod. 17.93.4. 113 Stoneman, The Greek Experience of India, 83. 49 according to Stoneman, may preserve an element of Alexander’s own propaganda and his efforts to connect himself with Herakles.114 Here, Alexander is presenting himself as mimicking the actions of his divine ancestor directly, making him not just a descendant of Herakles but almost a second coming of the god. Alexander’s parallels to Herakles continued in other ways as well, such as his dogged insistence on sacrificing to Tyrian Herakles115 which led to the most grueling siege of the entire campaign.116 This episode, as recounted in Arrian, is particularly interesting because of the growing direct identification between Alexander and Herakles. According to Arrian, on the night after he had persuaded his officers to besiege Tyre, Alexander dreamed that Herakles himself appeared to him and led him into the city.117 The god himself is seen here to be approving of Alexander’s actions, although Aristodemos, according to Arrian, interpreted this dream as meaning that the siege of Tyre would be particularly difficult.118 Once the city fell to him, Alexander granted amnesty to the Tyrians who had fled to the temple of Herakles, while he enslaved or killed everyone else in the city.119 After the conquest, Alexander sacrificed to Herakles and held parades and games for the god, as well as dedicating the siege engine which had finally pierced the walls of the city to the temple of Herakles within the city.120 This mercy and ostentatious pageantry, combined with his proclamations about dreams of the god appearing to him, served to show that Alexander was both respecting Herakles, even in his Tyrian form, and that he was striving to be associated with him. Herakles sanctioned his conquest of his own 114 Stoneman, The Greek Experience of India, 83. 115 The Greek identification of the Phoenician god Melqart. 116 Arr. Ana. 2.16.7. 117 Arr. Ana. 2.18.1. 118 Arr. Ana. 2.18.1. 119 Arr. Ana. 2.24.5. 120 Arr. Ana. 2.24.6. 50 city, Tyre, and Alexander memorialized that conquest by dedicating one of the instruments of the conquest to the god in the temple therein. Alexander’s conquest was explicitly being made the will of Herakles, and those resisting Alexander and not seeking the god’s protection were going against the will of Herakles himself. The goals Alexander and Herakles were one in the same, that the city should become Alexander’s, regardless of what the non-Greek inhabitants of the city thought about it. This association between Herakles and Alexander, and the justification of Alexander’s rule over non-Greeks through his connection with Herakles, only grew stronger the further Alexander conquered. Herakles’ stature loomed large over Alexander’s conquests, and it seems like Alexander became determined to outdo his ancestor.121 One particularly illuminating episode comes with the so-called Rock of Aornos. Arrian notes that a legend supposedly claimed that Herakles had tried and failed to capture this rock.122 Alexander, by conquering it, would be proving himself to be superior to his ancestor. Being superior to Herakles could only further legitimize Alexander, as he was now surpassing one of the immortal gods and his own ancestor. However, one very interesting note by Arrian needs to be addressed. He believed that Herakles’ name only became associated with this site as a boast, that not even Herakles could take it.123 This provides a truly fascinating insight into how the myth of Herakles evolved in order to meet the needs of the moment. In order to legitimize Alexander and heighten his profile, the Macedonians may have invented a deed which Herakles failed at in order to make Alexander’s success all the greater. A new page was added to the story of Herakles, solely for the short-term benefit of the king of Macedon. This shows just how flexible and malleable the Herakles story was, it could be warped 121 Stoneman, The Greek Experience of India, 84. 122 Arr. Ana. 4.28.1. 123 Arr. Ana. 4.28.2. 51 in order to magnify political leaders and causes and their need for legitimacy. If it happened in this case, we can assume it happened in other cases as well. This is an excellent demonstration of how the Greeks would add to or change their mythology to justify their goals, and in particular, to rewrite the story of Herakles in order to build up legitimacy around a current figure, in this case Alexander. Another instance in which Alexander invoked Herakles as justification for his conquests comes when Alexander is preparing to sail down the Hydaspes river, one of the branches of the Indus, in India. Arrian records that, before he and his army set sail, Alexander poured a libation to several gods, most notably for our purposes, Herakles.124 Arrian’s specific words here are important. He describes Alexander as sacrificing to Herakles as Ἡρακλεῖ τῷ προπάτορι.125 The noun προπάτορι means “the first founder of a family.” As we have seen previously, this is similar in wording to the version of Herakles Archelaus stamped on Macedonian coinage decades earlier, Herakles Patroos. Here, at the edge of the known world, Alexander went out of his way to specifically invoke Herakles as his ancestor, marking himself as the descendant of a god, and connecting himself with his family’s claims to divine heritage, and to the god who goes beyond the edges of the world to claim land for his descendants. Even here, he is still legitimizing himself and his actions through connections to the divine ancestor whose travels he has emulated. Through this libation, Alexander was staking a claim to what he perceived, or what he wanted others to perceive, as his divine inheritance. 124 Arr. Ana. 6.3.2. 125 Arr. Ana. 6.3.2. 52 Conclusion Herakles was a vital tool for the Macedonian kings before Alexander III and for Alexander himself. In the beginning, he was invoked as a way for the Argead dynasty to legitimize themselves in the eyes of the Greek cities to the south, to step onto the Greek political scene not as a barbarian, but as a fellow Greek, as an equal. Alexander I claimed descent from Herakles in order to participate in the panhellenic Olympic Games. Thanks to this connection, the Argeads were able to engage in kinship diplomacy with the various Greek cities, entering into the circle of Greek affairs. His grandson, Archelaus, invoked Herakles as his ancestor on his coinage, some of the first Macedonian coinage to depict a god. This served to legitimize his family’s rule and their Greek identity. Philip II fully utilized the connection with Herakles. Like the Dorians and others we have discussed, most notably Dorieus in Sicily, Philip used his claimed descent from Herakles in order to claim territory not as conquered lands won by force but as his rightful inheritance, owed to him by his ancestor Herakles centuries earlier, including both Chalcidice and Persia. He also used the same Greek identity won by his predecessors in order to enter the political playground of Greek politics fully, claiming a seat on the Amphictyonic Council of Delphi, replacing the Phocians, at the end of the Third Sacred War. His supporters in the south, most notably Isocrates, further utilized this claim to justify their support of the Macedonian king. The legitimacy gained through these claims, combined with Macedon’s military dominance, eventually allowed him and the Macedonians to become the hegemon of the entirety of mainland Greece. Finally, Philip’s son, Alexander the Great, went out of his way to emphasize his connections with Herakles during his epoch-defining conquest of the Persian Empire. He invoked Herakles early on, during the incident in Delphi in which he gained the epithet of 53 “unconquerable.” He invoked him during his siege of Tyre, in which the god was said to have appeared in his dreams and given divine sanction to his conquest of Tyre, a city sacred to Herakles due to the syncretism of Herakles and Melqart. This sanction also marked out the non-Greeks resisting him in Tyre as going against their own god, that their own god found Alexander to be their rightful ruler, just like how Euryleon was able to claim Makara, a place sacred to Melart, for himself as Herakleia through his connection with Herakles. Alexanser conquered a rock that supposedly defeated even Herakles, although Arrian reveals the incredible malleability of the Greek myth here by arguing that this claim was a mere boast in order to make the Macedonians look better by attributing to them a conquest that not even the mighty Herakles could accomplish. He sacrificed to Herakles at the edge of the known world, specifically invoking him as his ancestor just as Archelaus had done with his coinage. Just like Herakles, Alexander went beyond the edges of the world, a liminal hero in the vein his divine ancestor. These acts taken by Alexander demonstrate how Herakles was a potent, valuable political tool for the Macedonians, which Alexander exploited and manipulated during his conquests, following in the playbook laid out for centuries before him. Herakles served to legitimize Alexander as a ruler and as a conqueror, sanctioning his claiming lands far beyond the Greek world as Alexander’s natural birthright and justifying his rule over non-Greeks like the Tyrians. Just like Herakles, Alexander went beyond the Greek world and established himself as ruler over these distant, foreign peoples. Alexander would, in turn, pass this playbook on to the kings that ruled in the Greek Far East after him, the topic of the final case study of this paper. 54 Herakles in the Greek Far East Stories of Herakles in the East The literary evidence for Herakles’ journeys to India and Bactria is very scant. Arrian of Nicomedia wrote one of our best accounts of the conquests of Alexander, the Anabasis. More importantly for our purposes, however, he also wrote an Indica, an ethnography of India. He explicitly states he is drawing on earlier authors, listing in particular Eratosthenes of Cyrene126 and especially Megasthenes.127 Arrian was also not the first to write an Indica. Ctesias, a rough contemporary of Herodotos living under the Achaemenid Persian Empire, also wrote a now lost Indica. In his Indica, Arrian discusses two previous invasions of India by Greeks prior to Alexander, both belonging to the mythic age. The first is that of the god Dionysus and is thus irrelevant to our purposes.128 The other, and far more important for our purposes, is a purported invasion by Herakles.129 However, Arrian himself is skeptical of this claim, writing that “the similar tradition about Heracles is not so strong”130 and “there is little to suggest a visit by Heracles.”131 However, despite his skepticism of a visit by Herakles, Arrian does report that Herakles was “commonly said to have visited India” and that the Indians themselves claimed Herakles as a native son.132 While in India, Herakles did the typical bearer of civilization ideas we have seen before in Sicily. He traveled “through every land and every sea and ridding the earth of all that troubled it.”133 He founded a kingdom and established one of his children, 126 Arr. Ind. 3.1. 127 Arr. Ind. 3.7, 5.2, 5.4. 128 Arr. Ind. 5.8. 129 Arr. Ind. 5.9. 130 Arr. Ind. 5.9. (trans. Hammond) 131 Arr. Ind. 5.10 (trans. Hammond) 132 Arr. Ind. 8.4-5. (trans. Hammond) 133 Arr. Ind. 8.8. (trans. Hammond) 55 daughter named Pandaea, as its queen.134 He established customs and traditions, in this case of harvesting pearls from oysters to be used as jewelry.135 He established a lineage of rulers, in this case through incest with his daughter Pandaea, and thus established a supposed tradition that girls would be read for marriage at the age of seven as a result.136 It is also worth mentioning that Arrian claims all these stories about Herakles come not from Greeks, but from the Indians themselves.137 What can we make of this? First of all, the fact that Arrian claims these are stories told by the Indians could mean that these were stories about native Indian figures that were equated with Herakles, the way the Greeks and Phoenicians equated Herakles and Melqart. But could there be a better way to understand what is going on here with these stories? Stonemen argues in The Greek Experience of India that, while some of the examples of Herakles in India recounted by Megasthenes, as quoted by Arrian, may be genuine cases of syncretism, a much better explanation is that the identification was a product of the importance placed on Herakles by Macedonian ideology and by Alexander’s own mythologization of his conquests.138 As mentioned previously, Herakles was important to the Macedonian royal family for one very key reason: Herakles, under the title Herakles Patroos, was considered to be the ancestor of the Argead Dynasty and thus the ancestor of Alexander himself.139 As we saw earlier, the image of Herakles was being used on Macedonian coinage since the time of Archelaus at the turn of the century. This claim of descent from Herakles was vital to Macedonian legitimacy as it allowed at least the royal family to claim to be Greek.140 134 Arr. Ind. 8.7. 135 Arr. Ind. 8.8-10. 136 Arr. Ind. 9.1-4. 137 Arr. Ind. 8.4-5, 8.6, 8.8, 9.2. 138 Stoneman, The Greek Experience of India, 82. 139 Stoneman, The Greek Experience of India, 82. 140 Stoneman, The Greek Experience of India, 83. 56 Furthermore, during his conquests in the east, Alexander was able to claim that, as a descendant of Herakles, he was just reclaiming territory that rightfully belonged to him as a descendant of Herakles.141 As we have seen, the idea that the descendants of Herakles were entitled to lands supposedly conquered by Herakles was not an innovation of Alexander, nor of the Macedonians, but one that had centuries of precedent already. The Spartan prince Dorieus claimed the same thing when he tried to found the colony of Herakleia in Eryx in Sicily, basing his claim off the claim that Herakles had won this land and that the native population was holding it in trust for his descendants to return and “reclaim” it. We can see a continuously developing ideology, stretching from the 500’s BCE down to Alexander the Great in the 320’s and beyond, through which various Greeks rulers were able to justify their irridentism and claims on physical space by drawing on and expanding an ideological narrative that legitimized their rule. This constantly evolving Heraklean ideology was clearly a very powerful claim for the Greeks, given how it is repeated reused to justify conquest, colonization, and appropriation of land and physical space from the native inhabitants as well as their rule over them. The fruit of centuries of irridentist narratives based on Herakles can best be seen through examining in detail the efforts of the Greco-Bactrian kings Euthydemos I and his son Demetrios I. Euthydemos I and Demetrios I The Indo-Greek Kingdoms are perhaps the least documented of the Hellenistic kingdoms that followed Alexander. They are also incredibly understudied. Much of this section will by necessity rely on the dissertation of Frances Marcinkiewicz-Joseph, as they are one of the few to analyze in-depth the use of Herakles in Greek Bactria after the time of Alexander. The two king this section will be focusing on, Demetrios I and, to a lesser extent, his father Euthydemos I, are 141 Stoneman, The Greek Experience of India, 86. 57 figures about whom we know little.142 He was the second of the Euthydemid kings, a dynasty begun by his father, Euthydemos I. Euthydemons was recognized as king by the Seleucid king Antiochus III around 206 BCE, and that it was Demetrios whom he sent to negotiate with the Seleucid king.143 Polybius is the most extensive literary mention of either Euthydemos or Demetrios, in book eleven of his Histories, but the references are limited to one episode and, given how fragmentary the later books of Polybius are, we cannot know if there was a more in-depth discussion of these kings later on. As a result, we are forced to turn to archaeology to satisfy our curiosity. The excavation of the site of Ai Khanoum in modern day Afghanistan provided invaluable material evidence for Hellenistic Bactria in general and for Euthydemos I and Demetrios I in particular.144 Among the artifacts found there were many connected to both Demetrios and to Herakles, most notably a small bronze statue of the god in a pose that matches the pose of Herakles on all of Demetrios I’s silver coins.145 This particular pose, Herakles standing, holding a club and crowing himself with a wreath, Marcinkiewicz-Joseph argues, was intimately associated with Demetrios I and his reign, given how it decorated all of his coins.146 This is incredibly difficult to analyze the meaning of, given the lack of any collaborating, in-depth, literary descriptions of Demetrios I’s reign. What we can conclude is that Herakles was intimately connected with and served to legitimized the kingship of Demetrios I and that he was clearly trying to communicate a message, given the incredibly consistent proliferation of this specific image and pose of Herakles. This message, given how Alexander, Philip, and others 142 Marcinkiewicz-Joseph, Frances, "Demetrius I of Bactria: An Analysis of Hellenistic Royal Power through Numismatic Evidence,” 3. 143 Poly. 11.34. 144 Marcinkiewicz-Joseph, “Demetrius I of Bactria,” 4. 145 Marcinkiewicz-Joseph, “Demetrius I of Bactria,” 5. 146 Marcinkiewicz-Joseph, “Demetrius I of Bactria,” 5. 58 going back centuries have utilized Herakles in frontier contexts, was likely one of legitimization, serving to justify Greek rule in the region and, like Peisistratos and possibly Theron, to legitimize the specific rule of Demetrios over Bactria. In addition to the statue uncovered at Ai Khanoum, a hoard of coins was uncovered in the 1970’s provides invaluable evidence. These coins are among our best evidence for this kingdom, given that they come from a number of different kings and provide priceless glimpses into who these kings were.147 In this hoard were eighty-one coins of Euthydemos I, and these coins all bore the image of a seated Herakles on the reverse.148 These coins show that the dynasty was consciously invoking Herakles from the beginning of their rule over Bactria, very likely to legitimize themselves. Given all that we have seen previously, one conclusion that does seem easy to draw is that at least part of why Demetrios I and his father invoked Herakles was to secure his own legitimacy. In his case, however, it was likely not just a connection with Herakles in general, but also with Alexander the Great. Alexander, as we have seen, intimately connected himself with Herakles in his own propaganda. After his death, many Hellenistic kings sought to legitimize themselves as rulers by connecting themselves with both Alexander and Herakles. Ptolemy I of Egypt, one of the direct successors of Alexander, issued coins depicting Alexander wearing an elephant’s skin, which both likened Alexander to Herakles and the lion’s skin, but also symbolized his conquest of India.149 This imagery served to remind the audience both of the widespread Master of Lions imagery that had been circulating since the early Archaic period as well as the specific conquest at the edge of the earth, India. The Seleucids exploited the syncretism between Herakles and 147 Holt, Frank. “The Euthydemid Coinage of Bactria: Further Hoard Evidence from Aï Khanoum,” Revue Numismatique 23 (1981), 7. 148 Holt, “The Euthydemid Coinage,” 21. 149 Marcinkiewicz-Joseph, “Demetrius I of Bactria,” 183-4. 59 various Near Eastern king figures such as Ninurta, about whom tales were still being told during the Seleucid period, to paint their rule and conquest as a return to divinely awarded lands.150 Similar to the case of Sicily with Herakles and Melqart, Herakles was syncretized with various pre-existing deities and figures. The Seleucids justified their rule through connection with Herakles, and that justification was strengthened by connecting Herakles to pre-existing figures in the region such as Ninurta and Gilgamesh whom the local population was already widely familiar with. Through that syncretism and the preexisting ideology of Herakles the ancestor, these kings were able to justify their rule over their often largely non-Greek populations by claiming to be descended from these ancient figures who had been the subject of stories and worship for centuries. Their rule over these non-Greeks was justified to their subjects by this ancestral connection to local divine figures and was presented as being the will of the gods themselves, as seen with Alexander’s conquest of Tyre being the will of Herakles. Furthermore, these kings also were modeling themselves with Alexander, just as Alexander modeled himself on Herakles. In these coins, we see a confluence of different ideological narratives. Herakles had conquered India, Alexander had conquered India following in the path of Herakles, and the king issuing this coin the successor of both Alexander and Herakles. Herakles was syncretized with various local gods and heroes, and so these new Greek rulers were presented as the descendants of these figures. Centuries later, Demetrios I took territory in India and also issued coins connecting him to Herakles, as well as copying the style of the Ptolemaic coins, with Demetrios wearing the elephant skin that Alexander wore in the older coins.151 The Indian imagery with the elephant skin was all the more potent in Bactria, as it now symbolized his own conquest of the region. Demetrios was linking himself strongly with 150 Anagnostou-Laoutides, In the Garden of the Gods, 161. 151 Marcinkiewicz-Joseph, “Demetrius I of Bactria,” 184. 60 various Macedonian kings, going all the way back as far as Alexander I, utilizing the same ideological imagery they used in order to justify his own power and his own rule over these non-Greek peoples at the edge of the world. Just as Alexander was the successor to Herakles, Demetrios I was the successor to both Alexander and Herakles. We can see the success of Demetrios’ ideological program, his invocation of Alexandrian and Heraklean imagery to legitimize his rule, starkly in one specially in one specific coin. The coin itself is from the reign of Agathokles, a successor of Demetrios I ruling about a decade after his death. However, the face on the coin is not Agathokles, but Demetrios I, and it is his name of engraved on the coin. (Figure 2. Coin depicting Demetrios I (obverse) and Herakles (reverse), image courtesy of the British Museum, museum number 1923,1107.1) On the reverse of the coin, we see the standard Demetrian depiction of Herakles, with club and crowning himself. The aspect that makes this particular coin so interesting is the epithet with which Demtrios is credited on the obverse, ΑΝΙΚΗΤΟΥ, “unconquerable.” This is the exact same epithet Herakles is often identified with and the epithet Alexander is said to have been 61 granted by Pythia by Diodoros.152 Combined with the other aspects of Alexandrian and Heraklean imagery we have seen from Demetrios, the invocation of this specific epithet is no accident. It is explicitly portraying Demetrios as a new Alexander on the obverse, with their divine ancestor Herakles on the reverse. This coin was not issued by Demetrios, however, but by a later king likely related to him, Agathokles. This shows that later kings had reason to invoke the image of the predecessors to strengthen their own legitimacy. Since later rulers after both Euthydemus and Demetrios were dead continued to invoke them and their Heraklean imagery, we can conclude that the propaganda efforts of Demetrios I and his father were successful. As Marcinkiewicz pointed out, by putting the same image on all his silver coins, Demetrios was creating an automatic connection between him and Herakles in the minds of his people.153 They were made legitimate by connection to Alexander and to Herakles, and their rule over the largely non-Greek people of Bactria had been successfully justified and endured after their deaths. 152 Diod. 17.93.4. 153 Marcinkiewicz-Joseph, “Demetrius I of Bactria,” 185. 62 Conclusion What can we say from all of this? The sheer variety of uses of Herakles across Greek history and across the Greek world are staggering. His figure shifts from a shadowy figure lurking in the background of Homer’s epics to a method for the kings after Alexander the Great to justify their rule and claim a connection with the great conqueror. Each group of Greeks utilized Herakles in different ways, always adapting him to fit their own needs. We have traced one specific usage of Herakles, as a way to claim territory We have traced the changing development of this figure, but what does it all mean? Legitimacy is a fickle thing. The Greeks in Sicily needed a way to legitimize their founding of colonies on the island and they turned to Herakles. They associated rites and rituals with him, but it seems like those rites and rituals may have preceded the connection with Herakles, being tied to other, older gods. They adapted the myth of the Twelve Labors, expanding on the areas where the older traditions were quiet in order to fit Sicily and themselves into the story. They and the Phoenicians equated Herakles with Melqart, building a middle ground between themselves, the Phoenicians, and the native Elymians. Euryleon, after the failure of Dorieus, was able to successfully found a colony at Makara, renamed Herakleia, which was deeply connected with Melqart. The Greeks appropriated the pre-existing claims on the land to justify their claim to it. All of this allowed the Sicilian Greeks to make and enforce their irridentist claims on the land of Sicily and to justify their ownership of these far-flung places. The appropriation of pre-existing cult sites served to make the claims of Dorieus and others more legitimate, both in the eyes of the Greeks themselves and also, perhaps, in the eyes of those already living on the island. They adapted the figure of Herakles to justify their settlement of cities such as Agyrium and Akragas and maintained these traditions up through the Roman period. Furthermore, Herakles proved to be very useful to 63 tyrants, notably Peisistratos in Athens and, potentially, Theron in Akragas, who established their legitimacy through connections to the god, and who broadcasted this legitimacy through elaborate building campaigns dedicated to said god. Herakles provided legitimacy for both the colonists and for their would-be tyrants. The Macedonians also utilized Herakles to justify themselves in a Greek world, fitting themselves into the pre-existing story of the Return of the Herakleidai by claiming descent from Temenos. By claiming to be descendants of one of the Herakleidai, they were able to claim a Greek identity for themselves and justify their participation in Greek rites, such as the Olympic Games, and engaged in Greek diplomacy as equals. Archelaus expressed these Heraklean claims by placing the image of Herakles the Ancestor on his coins, linking Argead royal authority to Herakles and broadcasting this far and wide. Philip II went further, utilizing his claim of Heraklid descent to justify seizing lands in Chalcidice and his planned invasion of Persia. His allies, such as Isocrates of Athens, further used this claim in order to support his leadership of a panhellenic campaign against the Persians and his hegemony over Greece. All legitimized by his claims of descent from Herakles. Alexander added new aspects to Herakles’ myth the further and further afield he conquered, building upon the preexisting ideology to justify his conquests. Herakles was utilized at every step of Macedonian growth from a debatably non-Greek kingdom on the edge of the Greek world to a Greek empire that stretched from the Adriatic to the Indus. Finally, Demetrius and Euthydemus both drew on the Macedonian ideology of Herakles to justify their rule over the largely non-Greek region of Bactria. Herakles was already attributed conquests in India, as seen with Arrian. Demetrios and his father went out of their way to model themselves and their coinage on Herakles and Alexander. They drew on the tactics employed by Ptolemy and Seleucos, connecting Herakles with local figures, spreading the image of Herakles 64 on their coins, and doing all they could to make an explicit connection in the minds of their non-Greek subjects between them and Herakles, as well as with Alexander. The Greeks were drawing on centuries of built-up traditions and myths, adapting them to fit their irridentist claims and to justify their political leadership of foreign peoples. The ideology of Herakles the wandering god was employed over and over again, shaped and reshaped to justify the territorial and political needs of the current leadership. Why does this matter? It matters because these sorts of patterns of political legitimization may still be utilized today. No one is tracing descent from Herakles, but Canada, for instance, is officially ruled over by the Queen, who draws her legitimacy, ultimately, from the Christian God. She is, by the Grace of God, Queen. We are still telling these sorts of legitimizing myths today, and such myths were used extensively to justify the European colonization of the Americas, Africa, and Asia. Understanding how the ancients legitimized themselves in their own eyes may provide a way to understand how these later empires legitimized themselves and their rule over foreign peoples, and how we today legitimized ourselves and our states. The past is a mirror through which we can think about these larger issues, divorced from the emotional political concerns of the present day. Thinking critically about how modern states legitimize themselves is difficult because we often buy into these stories without even realizing that that is what we are doing. Few people today think a connection with Herakles confers legitimacy, but what about a connection with some important figure of our more recent past? These are the kinds of issues which understanding the ancient world can prepare us to consider in our own time. That is why understanding how the Greeks rewrote over and over their own myths to adapt to their changing circumstances is so important, because we do the exact same thing today. That is why 65 we need to know about Herakles at the ends of the Earth, so we can better understand our own myths, our own versions of Herakles. 66 Bibliography Aperghis, Gerassimos G. “The Greeks in the East in the Hellenistic Period.” In A Companion to Greeks Across the Ancient World, edited by Franco De Angelis, 459-479. New York: John Wiley & Sons, 2020. Anagnostou-Laoutides, Eva. In the Garden of the Gods: Models of Kingship from the Sumerians to the Seleucids. London: Routledge, 2016. Arrian. Alexander the Great: The Anabasis and the Indica. 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Acragas Gaeca: Die historische Topographie des griechischen Akragas auf Sizilien. Vol. I. s-Gravenhage: Staatsuitgeverij, 1971. 67 Gabrielson, Vincent. “Finance and Taxes.” In A Companion to Ancient Greek Government, edited by Hans Beck, 332-348. New York: Wiley-Blackwell, 2013. Greek Elegiac Poetry: From the Seventh to the Fifth Centuries BC. Translated and edited by Douglas E. Gerber. Loeb Classical Library 258. Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1999. Head, Barclay V. Historia Numorum: A Manual of Greek Numismatics. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1911. Herodotus. The Histories. Translated by Tom Holland. New York: Penguin Books, 2013. Holt, Frank. “The Euthydemid Coinage of Bactria: Further Hoard Evidence from Aï Khanoum.” Revue Numismatique 23 (1981): 7-44. Homer. The Odyssey. Translated by Emily Wilson. New York: W. W. Norton & Company, Inc., 2018. Isocrates. Translated by George Norlin. 3 vols. Loeb Classical Library 209. Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1928. Kremydi, Sophia. “Coinage and Finance.” In Brill’s Companion to Ancient Macedon: Studies in the Archaeology and History of Macedon, 650 BC – 300 AD, edited by Robin J. Lane Fox, 159-178. Leiden: Brill, 2011. Marcinkiewicz-Joseph, Frances. "Demetrius I of Bactria: An Analysis of Hellenistic Royal Power through Numismatic Evidence." Unpublished Dissertation, University of Houston, 2016. Malkin, Irad. Myth and territory in the Spartan Mediterranean. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1994. 68 ______. “Postcolonial Concepts and Ancient Greek Colonization.” MLQ: Modern Language Quarterly 65, no. 3 (2004), 341-364. Project MUSE. ______. A Small Greek World: Networks in the Ancient Mediterranean. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2011. Molina Marín, Antonio Ignacio. “Heracles and the Mastery of Geographical Space.” In The Oxford Handbook of Heracles, edited by Daniel Ogden, 410-8. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2021. Nesselrath, H.-G. “Heracles in Homer.” In More than Homer Knew – Studies on Homer and His Ancient Commentators, edited by A. Rengakos, P.J. Fineglass, and B. Zimmerman, 27-36. Berlin: De Gruyter, 2020. Patterson, Lee E. “Heracles as Ancestor.” In The Oxford Handbook of Heravles, edited by Daniel Ogden, 418-31. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2021. Smith, R. Scott and Stephen M. Trzaskoma. Apollodorus’ Library and Hyginus’ Fabulae: Two Handbooks of Greek Mythology. Indianapolis: Hackett Publishing, 2007. Stoneman, Richard. The Greek Experience of India: From Alexander to the Indo-Greeks. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2019. Thomas, David. “Introduction.” In The Landmark Xenophon’s Hellenika, edited by Robert B. Strassler, ix-lxvi. New York: Anchor Books, 2009. Thucydides. The Peloponnesian War. Translated by Martin Hammond. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2009.
Thesis/Dissertation
eng
Ancient Culture, Religion and Ethnicity
Vancouver : University of British Columbia Library
Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International
Graduate
Daniels, Megan
Herakles at the ends of the Earth
Text