Kinship Myth in Ancient Greece

Chapter One. KINSHIP AND CONSTRUCTED IDENTITIES: KINSHIP MYTH AND CREDULITY

Kinship and Constructed Identities Kinship Myth and Credulity In 221 Bce, the city of Magnesia on the river Maeander in Asia Minor made its first attempt to enhance the prestige of its festival for its archēgetis, a sort of patron goddess and founder, Artemis Leucophryene. Earlier the Magnesians had consulted the oracle at Delphi to inquire about the meaning of a manifestation of Artemis in their city. Apollo, speaking through the oracle, required the Magnesians to honor him and Artemis and suggested that the Greeks should treat Magnesian territory as “sacred and inviolable” (ἱερὰν καὶ ἄσυλον). The Magnesians decided that they should hold games with stephanitic prizes in her honor to fulfill this obligation.1 However, they apparently did an inadequate job advertizing the oracle and may have limited the scope of their invitations to Greek cities closer to them in Asia Minor, so that when the Magnesians sent out announcements of the games and calls for the city’s consequent inviolability, the festival attracted little attention.This must have been a severe disappointment to the Magnesians, whose hope was for their games to achieve “isopythic” status, that is, equal in prestige to the Pythian Games at Delphi itself, enhancing their standing among the city-states of the hellenistic world, with special attention to nearby rivals Miletus, Ephesus, and Didyma. So, in 208, Magnesia tried again with much greaterexpenditure and resources, sending embassies to cities and kings across the Greek world. This time, as we know from dozens of documents originally inscribed on the walls of the agora and that now reside in the Pergamon Museum in Berlin, the embassies were much more successful. The documents are essentially the responses of those states and kings who acknowledged the sanctity of the festival and the inviolability , or asylia, of Magnesia.2 The Magnesians used a wide variety of arguments to justify the recognition of their asylia, including a claim of kinship with several states. The link was based on a shared ancestor who, certainly in one case, was mythical: Aeolus, one KinshiP Myth in ancient Greece 2 from whom were descended the respective founders of Magnesia and of Same on Cephallenia.The response of the Samaeans indicates that they agreed with the Magnesians that their respective charter myths, though independent of each other, both referred to Aeolus as the father or grandfather of the city founder and that, on this basis, they could respect the inviolability of a kindred people.3 Two of Aeolus’ sons were Magnes, the eponymous founder of Magnesia-on-the-Maeander, and Deion, father of Cephalus, the eponym of Cephallenia.4 The inscription that records the Samaeans’ response clearly spells out this Pella Aegae Ephesus Phygela Magnesia-onthe -Maeander Xanthus Heraclea-at-Latmus Mylasa Pergamum Ilium Abdera Larissa Athens Thebes Priene Cytenium Delphi Argos Sparta Tegea Same Corinth Miletus Didym a Megara Samos Tenos Salamis Crete M A C E D O N I A EPIRUS ELIS MESSENIA AETOLIA PHOCIS THESSALY THRACE A S I A M I N O R Mediterranean Sea Sea of Crete Aegean Sea Ionian Sea Black Sea Ma e a n der R. N S E W 100 100 mi 0 km 0 MaP 1.1. The Greek World 3 KinshiP and constrUcted identities genealogy and so gives us direct evidence of a belief in myth as history and of the embrace of myth as a tool for political gain. This may seem like an odd way to conduct business, but it was quite common in ancient Greece. Aeolus and his immediate family were not as famous as the more flamboyant Heracles ; there is not much personality in the scant accounts of these figures. But as eponymous ancestors, they served a very useful function in some Greeks’ construction and articulation of their identity and place in the modern political landscape— “modern” meaning the sixth to the second centuries Bce, the range of the evidence we shall consider. To us, these figures never existed, but the Greeks embraced them as earnestly as they did Pericles or Alexander the Great. Alexander, larger than life and almost quasi-legendary himself, employed myth in the same way that the Magnesians and Samaeans would later. While many people found his insistence on his own divinity rather odd,5 some of his humbler claims were easier to swallow, including descent from Heracles on his father’s side and Achilles on his mother’s. After all, these latter claims...