The Death and Afterlife of Achilles

8 Tomb and Cult of Achilles

c h a p t e r 8 Tomb and Cult of Achilles After focusing in earlier chapters on mythopoetic accounts of Achilles, we now consider other perspectives. Whereas the preceding chapter discussed Achilles’ burial mound and his translation to Leuke, this chapter focuses on the real-world locations associated with his tumulus and translation, the Troad and the Black Sea. The death and afterlife of Achilles were of interest outside of early Greek epic and long after the Archaic Age. Cult worship of Achilles in the Black Sea area continued throughout Greco-Roman antiquity, as did visitation of tumuli identified as Achilles’ in the Troad. In the modern era explorers and archaeologists still argue over the exact location of the tumulus of Achilles. One might say that the hero’s mythological afterlife has had a material world afterlife,for there have been constant attempts to localize Achilles’ burial spot and otherworld existence. Beyond the rather nebulous world of early Greek myth and epic existed sociopolitical realities that inspired continuing interest in the hero. Hero cult in antiquity consisted of rituals performed in honor of a mortal who was believed to have achieved some special status in the afterlife.1 It dates back to at least the eighth century, when a marked increase of interest in the material remains of the Bronze Age is evident. Ritual activity at these locations often seems to be motivated by a belief that purported ancestors or legendary heroes are buried there,though the lack of early inscriptional evidence makes interpretation difficult. Hero cult soon became common in the Archaic Age and thereafter. It was a local phenomenon, often but not always centered on a purported grave site, with worshipers engaging in ritual attention to a hero believed to have supernatural powers to affect an area, whether for good or ill. There are obvious links between Black Sea and Troad cult interest in Achilles and the mythopoetic accounts that we have surveyed, but in recent years scholars have rejected the view that hero cult was simply motivated by the influence of epic.2 Epic and cult sometimes focus on the same heroes (though epic heroes constitute just a subset of hero cult), but they are independent phenomena with different concerns. Sociopolitical interpretations have recently stressed the func- tion of cult in the context of a community. For instance, Polignac has argued that hero cult could provide a sense of the identity to a polis, especially when it is established on outer boundaries. Hero cult played an important role in the expansion of Greek colonization during the early Archaic Age (Malkin ), and many have argued that hero cult could serve claims of certain classes for territorial or political legitimacy.3 Though it cannot explain all hero cult phenomena, a sociopolitical approach to hero cult has been applied effectively to the cult worship of Achilles,notably by Ukrainian scholars.Just as it is obvious that there are many points of contact between the myth and the cult of Achilles, it is also clear that different people in different places constantly reconceived traditional conceptions of Achilles’ burial and afterlife. Tumuli of Achilles The preceding chapter examined epic accounts of the burial of Achilles, including the raising of a tumulus (burial mound) over his burial site. Outside of epic poetry, the tumulus of Achilles was regarded as a real piece of topography in the landscape of the Troad.Epic narrative performed throughout the Greek world far from the Troad described the tomb of Achilles, but ritual actions were performed at the specific physical location of the tomb.4 Many famous visitors, such as Alexander the Great, visited the burial place of Achilles to pay their respects. Over the past few centuries, a number of visitors have also sought out the tomb of Achilles, as have, more recently, archaeologists. There has been much disagreement about the location of Achilles’ burial mound, which was curiously mobile. The tumulus of Achilles has been a fluid conceptual motif that had various functions as it was manipulated by different media, audiences, and time periods. First,it should be demonstrated that the grave site of Achilles was featured extensively in mythological traditions, and not just in a few early epics. In the Iliad the shade of Patroklos instructedAchilles to build a tumulus to contain both his bones and those of Achilles,the Aithiopis narrated its construction,and the shade of Agamemnon in the Odyssey confirmed that it was built (motif G...