The Fourth Century and After

The range of figures found in literature and art expands still further in the fourth and third centuries. Orators make particular use of personification to embellish their points - as Aeschines cites ‘‘the great goddess’’ Rumor as a witness to the iniquities of Timarchus (Against Timarchus 1.28-30) - and the technique becomes a standard of later rhetorical handbooks (see Stafford 2000:5-8). In the everyday world of New Comedy the gods in general have a lower profile than on the classical stage, but we find Ignorance, Fortune, and Proof speaking the prologues of Menander’s Rape of the Locks, the Shield, and another play. Third-century poetry is less innovative with its personifications, but rather elaborates on figures found earlier - as Callimachus addresses an entire hymn to the island of Delos, Apollo’s birthplace, who had had just a small speaking part in the archaic Homeric Hymn to Apollo (lines 50-88). Personified places are also used in fourth-century south Italian vase-painting to indicate the location of a scene - as Nemea watches Heracles wrestling with the lion - alongside a selection of personified natural phenomena and yet more abstract ideas, such as Force, Folly, Madness, Frenzy, Envy, and Punishment. At Athens, meanwhile, in addition to votive reliefs the fourth century is notable for a category of ‘‘document reliefs,’’ stelae with inscriptions recording decrees of the Athenian Council and Assembly accompanied by images of such figures as The People, The Council, Democracy, Discipline, and Victory (see A. C. Smith 1997). All of these may of course be no more substantial in status than the rhetorical devices of literature, but they do once again contribute to making the figures generally familiar.

A particular feature of fourth-century cult is the introduction of a number of political personifications. Representing political entities and concepts in human form is of course far from being a new idea - we have already noted Victory, Justice, Lawfulness, and Peace in archaic literature and art (and see A. C. Smith 1999 on early classical developments) - but the fourth century sees a great expansion in the number of concepts and their prominence. There is room here for only the briefest of overviews of the phenomenon, but Theriault (1996) shows how rewarding a closer study of an individual cult can be. Concord (Homonoia) is first definitely attested as a goddess in the 330s BC, in the ‘‘Decree on Concord’’ from Mytilene (SEG 36.750), where she is mentioned alongside Zeus of Concord and Justice as receiving public prayers. At around the same date Concord makes her only appearance in extant vasepainting, on an Apulian pelike attributed to the Darius Painter (Malibu 86.AE.23), in a scene where Kassiopeia seems to be begging her daughter Andromeda’s forgiveness. Also contemporary are the earliest coins to feature a female figure inscribed OMO-NOIA, struck by the Greek city of Kimissa in Sicily, the reverse showing an altar with flames on top, which has been reasonably interpreted as a sign of Concord’s cult status. From these beginnings, Theriault demonstrates how the cult of Concord spread from end to end of the Greek world during the hellenistic period, the goddess being invoked occasionally in a private context as embodiment of family harmony, but most often as patron of concord within and between cities, the popularity of this public figure making perfect sense in the politically turbulent hellenistic world. Particularly striking is the cult of a ‘‘Concord of the Hellenes’’ at Plataea, first mentioned in an honorific decree of the mid-third century BC (Etienne and Pierart 1975). It seems to have been integrated into the older cult of Zeus the Liberator, established in 479 BC to celebrate the final defeat of the Persians, and is plausibly explained as promoting the ideal of Greek unity by reference to this paradigmatic instance of cooperation between Greek states.

At Athens, three political personifications appear in an important inscription of the late 330s, which records income from the sale of skins of animals sacrificed at various state festivals (IG ii2 1496; Parker 1996:227-37). The skins from the sacrifices to Peace (Eirene) fetched between 713 and 874 drachmas in different years, which puts her festival on a par with the City Dionysia and means that, at a very rough estimate, at least eighty oxen were slaughtered in Peace’s honor. By the same estimate Democracy (Demokratia) received at least forty oxen, and Good Fortune (Agathe Tyche) at least ten. Peace was already a familiar figure in literature and art (see, e. g., Figure 4.1), and in 421 BC the idea of instituting a cult in her honor had provided the central plot of Aristophanes’ Peace, but we have a fair amount of evidence to suggest that the official cult was actually established in the mid-370s, with an annual festival celebrated on 16 Hecatombaeon (Stafford 2000:173-97). The statue-group of Peace holding the child Wealth by Kephisodotos, ca. 375-360 BC, seen in the Athenian agora by Pausanias (1.8.2) and much copied in the Roman imperial period, is usually associated with the cult, but in the simple message which it conveys - that peace nurtures wealth - it also represents an important step in the development of visual allegory on a monumental scale. Democracy has some small pedigree as a personification in late fifth - and fourth-century art, but the skin-sale record is the first certain attestation of her cult. It specifies that the sacrifice was in the month Boedromion (August/September), possibly commemorating the anniversary of a ‘‘thanksgiving for freedom’’ first celebrated on the restoration of democracy on 12 Boedromion 403 BC (Plutarch, The Glory of Athens 7 = Moralia 349f). Inscriptions of the late third century further attest a priest of Democracy and a procession in her honor (IG ii2 5029a; SEG 29.116). We have the base of a statue of Democracy which stood in the agora, dedicated by the Council in 333/2 BC (IG ii2 2791); this has sometimes been associated with the large-scale female torso Agora S2370, though the identification is problematic (Palagia 1994, 1982). The earliest extant image of Democracy shows the goddess crowning The People (Demos) on the relief which accompanies Eukrates’ anti-tyranny decree of 337/6 BC (SEG 12.87), and the two figures are obviously closely related. Mikalson (1998:172-8) argues that it is indeed the idea of democracy that is expressed by the cult of the divine Demos and the Graces which was established in the late third century in a prominent position in the northwest corner the agora, not far from the Dipylon Gate, where the family of Eurykleides and his son Mikion served as priests.

The last of the three, Good Fortune, certainly had a public aspect, as the skin-sale record itself attests. In addition, the fourth-century political leader Lycurgus mentions a temple of Good Fortune in a speech about his administration, there is reference to the sanctuary’s refurbishment in a contemporary inscription of 335/4 BC {IG ii2 333), and a statue of Good Fortune by Praxiteles is supposed to have stood outside the Prytaneion, center of Athens’ political life {Aelian, Varia Historia 9.39). Good Fortune also appears, however, to have been invoked in private contexts, such as a fourth-century votive relief dedicated by a family to a rather idiosyncratic group: ‘‘to Zeus Fulfiller and of Friendship, to the god’s mother Friendship, and to the god’s wife Good Luck’’ {Copenhagen 1558; IG ii2 4627). The cult of Good Fortune does appear outside Athens too, but in many cities the figure who would rise to prominence in the hellenistic period was the potentially ambivalent Fortune (Tyche). Inscriptions offer evidence for her cult already in the fourth century on Thera, Amorgos, and Rhodes and at Mylasa, and Pausanias mentions a number of sanctuaries of Fortune which appear to be prehellenistic; his information is often unspecific - at Argos the temple is of the ‘‘very ancient Fortune’’ (2.20.3), and at Pharai the statue is ‘‘ancient’’ (4.30.3) - but he indicates a date by naming fourth-century sculptors as responsible for statues at Megara (1.43.6) and Thebes (9.16.1). The increasing popularity of the cult in the hellenistic period is reflected in contemporary literature and art (Matheson 1994), and plausibly explained as due to the significance of personal luck in the uncertain post-Alexander world. At a state level, too, the idea of the city’s Fortune was especially useful to newly founded cities in Asia Minor which had no traditional patron deity to call upon. The concept is first given physical form in Eutychides’ Tyche of Antioch statue ca. 300 BC, a seated female figure wearing a crown representing the city’s fortifications, while a youth swimming at her feet represents the river Orontes; according to Pausanias (6.2.7) the statue was ‘‘greatly honored by the local people.’’ Another hellenistic statue type shows Fortune holding a cornucopia, and sometimes a plump child, symbolic of the material well-being she has the power to bestow on individual worshipers.

Fortune’s attributes bring us to a final example which is not a new figure, but rather a hellenistic development of the earlier cult of Nemesis. The city of Smyrna, which had been destroyed by the Lydians in the early sixth century, was refounded in the early years of the third century by Alexander’s generals Antigonos and Lysimachos (Strabo C464). Pausanias’ account of this refoundation (7.5.2) is problematic, and fails to shed much light on why the people of Smyrna ‘‘now believe in two Nemeseis instead of one,’’ but it does locate the goddesses’ sanctuary on the slopes of Mount Pagos, exactly where the new city was situated. A number of inscriptions from the Roman imperial period indicate more precisely that the sanctuary stood on the south side of the new Smyrna’s agora, and we have useful evidence for the appearance of the hellenistic cult statues from later coins (Figure 4.2). The Nemeseis are shown holding a measuring-rod and a bridle, which remain their two most constant attributes in later art, and which are conveniently explained by an epigram in the Greek Anthology (16.223): ‘‘we must do nothing beyond measure nor be unbridled in our speech.’’ Another epigram (12.229) suggests that the way the goddesses pull at a fold of the peplos might reflect an apotropaic gesture of ‘‘spitting under the fold’’ to avert Nemesis’ attentions. These features are all absent from the fifth-century statue of Nemesis at Rhamnous, which, like personifications in contemporary vase-painting, is indistinguishable from any other female figure. The concept which the Smyrna statues represent has not necessarily changed, but the way in which it is expressed is typically hellenistic (Stafford 2000:97-103, 2005c).

Figure 4.2a and b The two Nemeseis of Smyrna, inside their temple (left) and with their attributes, the measuring rod and bridle. Drawings by Sheila Bewley from bronze coins of Smyrna, minted in the reign of Hadrian