Dignas, Beate, and Kai Trampedach, eds. 2008. Practitioners of the Divine: Greek Priests and Religious Figures from Homer to Heliodorus. Hellenic Studies Series 30. Washington, DC: Center for Hellenic Studies. http://nrs.harvard.edu/urn-3:hul.ebook:CHS_DignasB_and_TrampedachK_eds.Practitioners_of_the_Divine.2008.
Introduction. What Is a Greek Priest?*
Albert Henrichs
What is a Greek priest? It might seem redundant, if not preposterous, to raise such a question in a volume of essays devoted to this very topic. For more than two hundred years, students of antiquity and historians of Greek religion have been in the habit of designating some or even all Greek religious officials, functionaries, and agents of the divine indiscriminately as priests. The culprits include some of the most illustrious names in the modern study of Greek religion, from Nietzsche and Rohde to Wilamowitz and Walter Burkert. With rare exceptions, scholars have been all too comfortable in their tacit acceptance and use of this problematic term. As Mary Beard and John North pointed out fifteen years ago in their introduction to a collection of essays on the same subject, part of the problem lies in the fundamental discrepancy between the single word priest and its latter-day connotations of a personal religious vocation or sanctity and the wide range of cult-related public and private offices known from antiquity. [1] Despite their awareness of the problem, they did not abandon the controversial term and titled their book Pagan Priests, doubtless for lack of a more suitable modern substitute.
For similar reasons, the questionable designation is employed with varying degrees of discrimination in the majority of essays contained in this volume. This is hardly surprising in view of the fact that the term priest—like similar key words such as religion, ritual, cult, and sacrifice—is part and parcel of established scholarly parlance and of a conventional terminology that is more often than not derived from Latin and further compromised by two millennia of Christian usage. Indeed, priest and prêtre are ultimately derived from the Greek presbuteros (elder) by way of the Latin presbyter. [2] But its Greek origin does not make priest a more authentic term. Its Greekness is deceptive because the underlying presbuteros is a quintessentially Christian designation that has no place in Greek religion, where age and reverence accorded to age carried less weight. In fact children and adolescents could hold religious office, including certain priesthoods. [3] In the first two centuries of Christianity, the semantics of presbuteros shifted gradually from the initial emphasis on biological age to one on rank and seniority within the evolving Church hierarchy. According to Lampe’s Patristic Lexicon, presbuteros was used as a general honorific term for teachers, bishops, and “any respected member of the Church,” and more technically “to denote a member of a particular ministerial order.” [4] In its pristine form, Greek religion was distinctly less hierarchical. Outside Ptolemaic Egypt, for example, the title arkhiereus (chief priest) and similar designations for rank did not enjoy wide currency before the late Hellenistic and Roman imperial periods. [5] But age and hierarchy were not the only factors that separated pagan from Christian priests. To make matters worse, Christian presbyters were almost exclusively male; some texts explicitly exclude or marginalize women. [6] Such gender discrimination was alien to Greek religion, in which hiere(i)ai—conventionally rendered as women priests—were ubiquitous. [7] Against this background, it would be difficult to find significant common ground between the Christian notion of priesthood and pagan priests.
At first glance, the Romance derivations from the Latin sacerdos, as in French sacerdoce or Italian sacerdote, would seem to be slightly preferable, mainly because sacerdos appears to be etymologically analogous to hiereus, the principal Greek word for priest. As Fritz Graf puts it, “ein hiereus ist einer, der mit hiera umgeht . ” [8] It would be hard to argue with that definition from a linguistic point of view, but to describe a priest’s activity as “to concern himself with hiera” raises more questions than it answers. What exactly are these hiera? The sacred is a vast territory, in Greek cult as in any other religion, and hiera can refer to a variety of things, from ritual implements to animal sacrifice. One of the most fundamental functions of the hiereus/hiereia is his or her role in sacrificial ritual. [9] This explains why some ancient and modern interpreters understand the hiereus primarily as a sphageus (slaughterer) or performer of animal sacrifice. [10] But as this volume abundantly demonstrates, Greek priests are more than mere mageiroi (butchers); they play important roles outside animal sacrifice. [11]
In the case of sacerdos and its modern derivatives, the etymological parallel with hiereus is deceptive. Like priest and prêtre, sacerdos and its Romance cognates too have Christian roots which intrude into modern discussions of Greek cult. As Jan Bremmer has shown in his analysis of the reception history of key words such as religion and ritual, each of these words has a complex “terminological genealogy,” as he calls it, and their Christian ancestry translates into a host of tacit assumptions which it is nearly impossible to banish or to eradicate. [12] Priest definitely falls into this category of terms that should either be replaced by more suitable terminology in discussions of Greek religion or whose use should at least be closely scrutinized from the vantage point of a heightened self-awareness by those of us who continue to use them, as many doubtless will, for lack of more viable alternatives. I have searched the modern scholarship on Greek priests with little success for signs of such a critical awareness. One of the rare exceptions can be found in a dictionary entry on Greek and Roman priests by John North:
Greek and Latin have several terms referring to these positions—hiereis and sacerdotes are only the most common; in English, “priest” is used as a generic term for all of them, but implies a potentially misleading unity of conception and an analogy with the roles of priesthood in later religions. [13]
North has put his finger on what is arguably the most conspicuous shortcoming of the term priest as applied to Greek cult. Derived from a monotheistic religion with an exclusively male and hierarchical clergy, the very concept of priest suggests a uniformity of identity and function that contrasts sharply with the inherent diversity of Greek religion.
The defining characteristic of Greek polytheism, or any polytheistic system for that matter, is its pluralism, both as a belief system and as an organized conglomerate of cults and rituals. A plurality of gods invites and requires a corresponding diversity of cults, rituals, and cult officials, and that diversity is reflected in the richness of the religious vocabulary. To lump the entire spectrum of major and minor functionaries, officeholders, and representatives of Greek religion together as priests amounts to a reductionism that is tantamount to Herodotus’ approach to non-Greek religions. Constrained by his Greek heritage, Herodotus tends to see the religions and rituals of Persia, Egypt, and the Scythians through distinctly Greek eyes that make him virtually blind to the idiosyncrasies and the fundamental otherness of the religious beliefs and practices of non-Greek cultures. His usual procedure is to define and describe non-Greek religions in terms of what they are not or do not do from a Greek point of view. [14] Herodotus’ persistent interpretatio Graeca is analogous to a distinctive trend in the modern understanding of Greek priests. A widespread approach to the concept of Greek priests is the via negativa that defines them in terms of how the Greek evidence frustrates our Christianizing expectations of what priests and priesthoods should be. [15] For example, Ludwig Ziehen, one of the leading experts on Greek ritual in his time, insisted that the Greeks had “no priesthood in the proper sense of the word.” [16] Walter Burkert prefaces his discussion of Greek priests with a negative definition of Greek religion that goes even further:
Greek religion might almost be called a religion without priests: there is no priestly caste as a closed group with fixed tradition, education, initiation, and hierarchy, and even in the permanently established cults there is no disciplina, but only usage, nomos. [17]
It would seem absurd to characterize Greek religion with its omnipresence of priests as “a religion without priests,” and of course, Burkert qualifies his deliberately paradoxical statement with the telling caveat “almost.” He does not need to be reminded that the definitional standard that he applies to Greek religion—the notion of a “fixed tradition,” of a “hierarchy,” and of a consistent and invariable “disciplina” in doctrine and worship—imposes Christian categories on Greek religion and amounts to an interpretatio Christiana that is not essentially different from Herodotus’ Greek reading of non-Greek religions. We ought to do better than that, and we can, as Burkert and others have shown, and as this volume confirms. [18]
No single term, whether priest or sacerdos, can do justice to the plethora of words that designate cult officials in Greek polytheism. There is strength in numbers, and that goes not only for the divinities themselves but also for the mortals who serve them. For the past two hundred years, there has been a broad consensus that hiereus is the most common Greek designation for the nearest pagan equivalent of the Christian priest. But what is it that differentiates a hiereus from a hieropoios, hierothutēs, arētēr, theopropos, or, most importantly, a mantis? It is significant that in the two essays on seers (manteis) in this volume, Michael Flower and Kai Trampedach each explicitly differentiates a mantis from a hiereus, a term treated by both as the Greek equivalent for priest. If I may play the advocatus diaboli for a moment, I wonder on which grounds these two instructive and indeed admirable essays on manteis were included in a volume on Greek priests if it is indeed true that the Greeks themselves differentiate between hiereis and manteis and if therefore seers should not be called priests. Protean and ambiguous, priest clearly means different things to different people. Like numerous scholars before them, both Flower and Trampedach use the term in a marked sense as a modern synonym of hiereus, whereas the title of this volume presupposes a broader, unmarked usage by equating priests with practitioners of the divine in general.
Let me illustrate the need for proper distinctions in these matters by two examples from my own immediate experience as an academic teacher as well as a scholar with a vested interest in Greek religion. One of the two courses I taught in the 2003 Harvard Summer School was called Myth and Poetry in Greece and Rome. Designed for a general audience, it required neither Greek nor Latin. Among the tragedies read was Sophocles’ Oedipus Tyrannus, on which one of the students commented in an exam: “Oedipus in Sophokles refuses to listen to Teiresias, priest to Apollo.” When I read this comment, I asked myself whether Teiresias could be aptly described as a priest or not. In the end I decided, reluctantly, that he was a seer and not a priest. The distinction between priests (hiereis) and seers (manteis) has often been drawn in modern scholarship, and rightly so. [19] The difference between the two is usually explained in terms of their ritual expertise, their professional status, and their mobility. [20] The importance of the hiereus was largely determined by the prestige of the divinity and cult he served; by contrast, the authority of the mantis depended entirely on the “reliability of his prophecies.” [21] Priests were attached to particular sanctuaries; seers practiced their craft wherever their skills were needed—in different cities or demes, in public or in private, on the road, at sea, or on the battlefield. [22]
What exactly is the difference between a mantis and a hiereus in ritual terms, regardless of where their rituals take place? While both perform animal sacrifice, only a mantis possesses the ritual know-how that allows him to interpret the divine will from, among other things, the appearance and behavior of the inner organs of the sacrificial animal. [23] As a sacrificer of animals, a mantis must have been virtually indistinguishable from a hiereus, whereas most hiereis would have been hard put to do the work of a mantis. Is Teiresias not a priest because he was not attached to a particular temple or cult—even though some manteis were assigned to temples—or, if priest is equivalent to hiereus in this connection, is Teiresias more than a hiereus because he had technical skills that ordinary priests lacked? To put it differently, is the term hiereus ever applied to a mantis in the Greek record, and did it happen that the same person functioned as a hiereus as well as a mantis, either simultaneously or on separate ritual occasions? The priests colloquium from which these essays stem produced only partial answers to these questions.
My second example is more complex. In 1985 Richard Hamilton published an important article on the dramatic representation of various religious functionaries in five of Euripides’ later plays. Titled “Euripidean Priests,” it serves as a reminder that the portrayals of cult personnel in tragedy, epic, and other genres are literary constructs. He prefaced his own construct of Euripidean priests with the following disclaimer: “For lack of a better word I call them “priests,” although Euripides uses no one term to refer to all of them.” [24] Thanks to the author, I was given access to the article prior to its publication. In the spirit of “constructive disagreement,” [25] I queried the very concept of priests in Euripides in a letter to the author. I pointed out that Cassandra is a prophētis, Ion a khrusophulax and tamias, Theone a thespōdos, Dionysus in human disguise a goēs epōdos, and Iphigenia the only hiereia in that group; that all of these ritual functions are unrelated and not interchangeable; that modern students of Greek religion normally refer only to the hiereis as priests; and that the author was taking something for granted for which he ought to have made a case, regarding the alleged affinity between these various offices and their holders in Euripides. Not surprisingly, Hamilton did not reconsider his terminology or his approach, but acknowledged my concerns in a footnote in the published version.
Not much has changed in the twenty years since the publication of the “Euripidean Priests.” The questionable term continues to be used indiscriminately in works on Greek religion, while my doubts about its appropriateness are stronger than ever. They were fully confirmed when I examined the scholarship on Greek priests for the past two hundred years and found that generations of scholars have reiterated the same preconceptions and stereotypes in their attempts to explain what Greek priests were or were not. A representative sample of scholarly opinion is collected in the appendix to this essay. [26] Starting with Karl Otfried Müller’s Prolegomena (1825) and Christian August Lobeck’s Aglaophamus (1829), there is a distinct tendency to define the essence of the Greek priests in ritual rather than social or economic terms and to emphasize their special knowledge. Müller associates them with prayer and sacrifice, a definition echoed time and again between 1829 and 2001 (app. nos. 1–2, 4, 7, 9, 30). Other scholars speak more generally of their ritual competence (app. nos. 13–14, 25, 26). Nobody will find fault with a definition that equates the function of the priest with the performance of ritual, but the fact remains that the vagueness of the term priest vitiates most modern discussions.
It is beyond doubt that the majority of animal sacrifices in ancient Greece were performed by hiereis. While some scholars regard the connection with sacrifice as the hallmark of the hiereus (app. nos. 10, 12), others emphasize that most if not all of his ritual functions, including his sacrificial duties, could be performed by any citizen regardless of whether he held a priesthood or not (app. nos. 1, 15, 29). Both sides have a point. In the words of Burkert, “sacrifice can be performed by anyone” and “anyone can become a priest,” [27] but a private citizen would not be recognized as a hiereus merely by performing sacrifice. It follows that the performance of sacrifice, though an essential priestly function, cannot be the principal criterion that defines a hiereus.
A more speculative definition makes the priest a “mediator” between the human and the divine sphere (app. nos. 3, 9, 12, 25, 27, 29), a notion presumably inspired by a passage in Plato (Plato Symposium 202d–203a). Since no personal or collective sanctity attached to the hiereus, the alleged “mediation” must have resided in the ritual function rather than the persona of the priest. In fact I would argue that especially in the case of animal sacrifice, it was the ritual performance itself rather than the performer that mediated between gods and mortals.
The most daring and elusive approach to the Greek concept of priesthood assumes “the identification of priest/god.” [28] In Burkert, the same idea appears in a slightly mitigated form: “In a number of cases the priest seems almost to appear as a god.” [29] As early as 1894 Erwin Rohde entertained the notion of the cultic “Einigung von Mensch und Gott” which he defined as a form of ecstasy. [30] In his student days Rohde had been a close friend of Friedrich Nietzsche, who pushed the Romantic construct of a union of god and mortal to its most implausible extreme: “On the main day of the festival the priest is the representative of his god and enters into a mystical union with him.” [31] In the same lecture, Nietzsche insists that Greek priests were “originally” regarded “as a temporary incarnation of the divinity.” [32] In The Birth of Tragedy, Nietzsche argues along similar lines that tragic heroes like Prometheus and Oedipus are incarnations and surrogates of the suffering god Dionysus. [33] This is fascinating stuff that boggles the mind and that is ultimately more German than Greek. Clearly there are better ways of trying to understand how the heroes of tragedy and the priests of actual cults relate to the divinities whom they worship.
Some of the questions I have raised are addressed in the colloquium papers, but others remain open because there are no obvious or easy answers. The word priest may well be too convenient to do without, but when applied to things Greek it is demonstrably an anachronistic misnomer that needs to be queried and guarded against. In my view, it would be better for our understanding of the multifaceted complexity of Greek polytheism and of the distinctive specificity of its nomenclature if the misleading term could be banished altogether from the discussion. I do not expect to see the day when this happens. It is imperative, however, that we stay alert and that we remain mindful of the problematic nature of our conventional terminology. I hope that my remarks may encourage and facilitate this process.
Appendix. What Is a Greek Priest? Some Representative Answers, 1825–2000
1. Müller 1825:249. “Daß es aber in irgend einer Zeit einen eigentlichen Priesterstand, im Gegensatze von Laien, in Griechenland gegeben habe, halte ich für ganz unerweislich. Der Gegensatz hätte sich doch ohne Zweifel in Handlungen zeigen müssen, die dem einen Stande zukamen, dem andern untersagt waren. Nun sind die Geschäfte der Priester in Griechenland: bisweilen eine kurze, einfache Gebetformel zu sprechen; mehr oder minder feierliche Opfer zu verrichten, wobei viel auf Gewandtheit und Genauigkeit der Verrichtung gesehn wurde; allerlei Cäremonien, z. B. der Blutsühne, die indeß in Athen die Epheten, keine eigentlichen Priester, hatten; Absingung von Hymnen, obgleich diese gewöhnlich Sache öffentlicher Chöre war; hie und da Weissagung. Hierin ist Nichts, was die Priester von einem Laienstande trennte, da das Alles in allen Zeiten auch Nichtpriester verrichteten; wie ja selbst das Weissageamt ein Jeder, sein Leben zu fristen, wie eine andre Kunst, treiben konnte.”
2. Lobeck 1829:11. “Nullus est qui sacerdotibus plus quam vovendi, dedicandi, precandi et sacrificandi scientiam tribuat.”
3. Hermann 1858:204. “Wenn der griechische Cultus seinem Begriffe nach ein Wechselverhältnis zwischen dem Menschen und der Gottheit darstellte, so bedurfte er zu seiner Vermittelung wesentlich zweier Menschenclassen [Priester und Seher], die zwar im weiteren Sinne auch unter gemeinschaftlichen Kategorien zusammengefasst werden, im eigentlichen Sprachgebrauche und der ganzen Sphäre ihrer beiderseitigen Wirksamkeit aber viel schärfer getrennt werden müssen, als man es in alter und neuer Zeit häufig findet.”
4. Hermann 1858:214. “Worin die Geschäfte des Priesteramts bestanden, … findet sich auch in den näheren Bezeichnungen ausgedrückt, welche namentlich die Dichtersprache den Priestern als Betern und Opfere[r]n beilegt.”
5. Hermann 1858:215. “Manche Priester scheinen ausserdem bei festlichen Gelegenheiten in der typischen Tracht ihrer Gottheiten erschienen zu sein, wie es denn ohnehin im Wesen jener oben erwähnten mimetisch-symbolischen Aufführungen lag, dass dabei der Priester die eigene Person der Gottheit darstellte, ja selbst der Name der letzteren ging aus diesem Grunde mitunter auf den erstern über.”
6. Nietzsche 1875–1876:462. “Am Hauptfesttag ist der Priester der Repräsentant seines Gottes u. geht ein mystisches Eins-werden mit ihm ein. Hier hat man vor allem an das Hauptfest zu denken, dh. das Jahresfest der Stiftung, wo die Geschichte der Entstehung dargestellt wird, ist der Priester der Gott selbst. Er hat die Kleidung seines Gottes an. So sah man zu Pellene die Priesterin der Athene mit Waffen und einem Helm auf dem Haupte, die Priesterin der Artemis Λαφρία zu Paträ fuhr auf einem mit Hirschen bespannten Wagen” (followed by many more examples).
7. Nietzsche 1875–1876:464. “Aus allem ergiebt sich die ursprüngl. Auffassung des Priesters als einer zeitweiligen Inkarnation des Gottes … Jeder Priester ist das Mittel, die einmalige Geschichte des Gottes an jener Stelle zu verewigen, zu einer immer wieder geschehenden zu machen; es giebt im religiösen Leben kein Einmal. Man sieht, das Opfern u. Beten ist nicht die Hauptsache im Priesterthum, erst bei der späteren Verblassung des Verhältnisses: im Festjahr giebt es Tage, wo die urspr. Bedeutung deutlich hervortritt, andere Zeiten, wo sie zurücktritt. Der Priester ist ein Hauptgrund, weshalb die Götterbilder erst so spät sich entwickeln; eigentl. gehört zu ihm nur das Symbolon das Unterpfand, das er, als zeitweiliger Gott, selbst in Schutz nimmt: er vertritt, den Menschen gegenüber, die Anrechte des Gottes, in Opfergaben, in der Art der Verehrung.”
8. Rohde 1894:332–333. “Das deutlichste Beispiel der Einigung von Mensch und Gott bot in Delphi die Pythia, die wahrsagende Priesterin, die alles Verborgene in Vergangenheit und Zukunft schaute, wenn der Gott sie ergriff. Apollo selbst nahm, eben in Delphi, wo er der Nachbar schwärmerischen Dionysoscultus geworden war, diese Keime der Mystik in seinen Schutz.”
9. Stengel 1920:33. “Aber ein eigentlicher Priesterstand hat in Griechenland nie existiert. Es gab keinen Religionsunterricht, keine Predigt, und je mehr ängstlicher Aberglaube schwand, desto seltener bedurfte man eines Vermittlers zwischen sich und der Gottheit … In homerischer Zeit spielen die Priester, wenn sie auch hohes Ansehn genießen, keine bedeutende Rolle. Die Bezeichnungen ἱερεύς und ἀρητήρ zeigen, daß sie dem Gotte, dessen Heiligtum sie vorstehn, Opfertiere zu schlachten haben und Gebete zu sprechen, im Auftrage der Stadt oder einzelner.”
10. Kern 1926:161–162. “… wie sich aus dem einen Priester, der zunächst alles den Kult Betreffende besorgte und den Namen ἱερεύς erhielt, weil das Schlachten der Opfertiere oft seine Hauptbeschäftigung war, ein großes Personal entwickelte, wie wir es aus vielen Kulten kennen … Einen Priesterstand aber hat es in Griechenland nie gegeben, so also auch keine Priesterschulen … Auch von einem Priesterrecht oder gar einem Kirchenrecht kann nicht gesprochen werden.”
11. Wilamowitz 1931:39–40. “Ganz so stand es mit den Priestern; sie boten keine Lehre und beschränkten sich darauf, die feststehenden Formen ihrer Kultpraxis zu erfüllen und die Gläubigen zu derselben anzuhalten. Sie werden irgendwelche Begründungen für die einzelnen Zeremonien angegeben haben, aber diese Ätiologien haben kaum einen Wert, jedenfalls keinen religiösen. Es gibt Seher, von den Göttern mit der Fähigkeit begabt, Vorzeichen zu deuten, die Götterworte zu verstehen, die Zukunft vorauszuschauen. Auch dies wird eine Kunst, die sich vererbt, und der Seher wird oft ein landfahrender, durch seine Kunst geschützter Mann wie die anderen fahrenden Künstler oder Handwerker.”
12. Gernet 1932:205–206. “Religieusement qualifié, l’individu peut accomplir lui-même bien des opérations: il n’y a pas, entre laïcs et prêtres, une distinction absolue. Il n’y a pas de prêtre pour une bonne partie du culte: ni le culte domestique, ni le culte des morts n’en comportent … Néanmoins, là où le prêtre apparaît, c’est avec le sacrifice qu’il est le plus généralement en rapport. Il joue, bien entendu, un rôle d’intermédiaire. Mais il est remarquable que ce rôle ne soit pas expressément réglé: il est difficile de dire quelle est la fonction propre du prêtre dans le sacrifice. Le vocabulaire, qui apparente à ἱερεύς le verbe ἱερεύω (égorger une victime), ferait penser qu’elle est essentiellement de donner le coup mortel à l’animal sacrifié; mais ce n’est pas toujours le prêtre qui s’acquitte de ce soin, il peut seulement présider à l’immolation … Il est douteux que l’office caractéristique du prêtre soit l’objet d’une conception définie et ne varietur.”
13. Nilsson 1967:54–55 .“Mit der Entwicklung der Religion zu einer höheren Stufe, auf der Götter und ihr Kult vorherrschend sind, entwickelt sich der Zauberer zum Priester, bei dem das Psychopathische zwar nicht ganz schwindet, aber zurückgedrängt wird und das Wissen überwiegt. Vor allem muss der Priester wissen, wie die Götter verehrt werden wollen, er muss das Ritual kennen. Der religiöse Konservatismus macht die Priester zu Hütern der Tradition; in gewissen Religionen haben sie das ganze Leben in die Bande des Ritualismus geschlagen. Anderseits bewahren und entwickeln sie das erworbene Wissen; aus ihnen werden die Schreiber genommen, sie regeln den Kalender, damit die Feste der Götter an den richtigen Tagen begangen werden. All dieses Wissen steht im Dienst der hergebrachten Religion.”
14. Garland 1984:75–76. “The competence of the Greek priest extended no further than the enclosure wall of his sanctuary. He had no religious authority either elsewhere in Athens or in relation to any sacred ritual other than that which had to do with the particular god or goddess whom he individually served. His duties within his sanctuary were liturgical and administrative. Liturgically it was his task to ensure that correct cultic procedure was at all times rigidly adhered to, particularly in regard to sacrifices.”
15. Burkert 1985:95. “Sacrifice can be performed by anyone who is possessed of the desire and the means, including housewives and slaves. The tradition of rites and myths is easily learned through imitation and participation; much can even be acquired of the specialist arts of the seer simply through observation.”
16. Burkert 1985:95. “To ensure that everything is done in proper order, a responsible official is required—the priest, hiereus, or the priestess, hiereia. Priesthood is not a general status, but service for one specific god in one particular sanctuary. No one is a priest as such, but the Priest of Apollo Pythios or the Priestess of Athena Polias; several priesthoods can, of course, be united in one person.”
17. Burkert 1985:97. “In Greece the priesthood is not a way of life, but a part-time and honorary office; it may involve expense, but it brings great prestige.”
18. Burkert 1985:97. “In a number of cases the priest seems almost to appear as a god. In Thebes, the priest of Apollo Ismenios is a boy of noble family; at the Daphnephoria festival he follows behind the laurel pole, wearing a golden garland and a long festal robe and with his hair untied—the epitome of the youthful god with unshorn hair. At the Laphria festival in Patrai, the priestess of Artemis rides on a chariot drawn by deer; similarly, when the Hera priestess at Argos drives to the sanctuary on an ox-drawn cart, she is especially close to the cow-eyed goddess. At Pellene the priestess of Athena appears with helmet and shield, and in Athens the priestess of Athena wanders through the streets wearing the aegis. In mythology Iphigeneia is the victim, priestess, and double of Artemis.”
19. Hamilton 1985:55. “What do we find when looking at the plays? We find that there is a development toward the identification of priest and god, specifically that the priest from one play to the next becomes closer to the god; that his vision of the god becomes purer; that he becomes more permanently allied with the god; that he becomes more and more set apart; and that his religion becomes more subjective.”
20. Beard and North1990:3. “Two unargued assumptions underlie this general use of the term ‘priest’. First of all, it treats offices in many different periods and societies as if they were broadly equivalent; secondly it presupposes that these offices were specifically religious offices. But it is precisely these assumptions that need re-examination, if we are to gain any proper understanding of the nature of ancient priesthood … The risk is that the unargued decision to translate any given title by the word ‘priest’ not only involves imposing our own categories, but also may obscure from us the distinctive nature of that official’s role in his own society.”
21. Harris 1995:27. “The Priest was one who performed sacrifices on behalf of a group of people who formed a religious association … Priests and priestesses derived their prestige from the importance of the cults they administered … The seer was very different from a priest. The seer did not inherit his position, nor was he appointed or elected to it. Instead he learned the skill of prophecy … In contrast to the priest, … the seer owed his prestige to the success and reliability of his prophecies.”
22. Graf 1997:473. “Priester sind Spezialisten für den Umgang mit dem Göttlichen, wie die geläufigste griechische Bezeichung nahelegt: ein ἱερεύς ist einer, der mit ἱερά umgeht (wie der κεραμεύς mit κέραμα ‚Töpfen‘). Das Wort ist bereits in den mykenischen Linear B-Texten geläufig (ἱερεύς bzw. ἱέρεια ‚Priester‘ und ‚Priesterin‘) und bleibt von Homer ἱερεύς seit Il. 1,62; ἱέρεια seit 6,300) bis ans Ende der Antike die Normalbezeichung des Priesters.”
23. Graf 1997:474. “Nur ausnahmsweise und meist spät erscheinen Priester und Gottheit so eng verbunden, dass der Priester in einer Prozession im Kostüm des Gottes erscheint. Frühes Beispiel ist vielleicht Phye bei der Rückkehr des Peisistratos (Hdt. 1.60).”
24. Graf 1997:475–476. “Neben den Priestern stehen die Seher (μάντεις)… Auch sie sind bereits bei Homer auf derselben Stufe wie der Priester belegt: Achill will den Grund für den Götterzorn, der die Pest im Lager verursacht hatte, von einem ‘Priester, Seher oder Traumdeuter’ erfahren (Il. 1,62f. μάντιν … ἢ ἱερῆα, ἢ καὶ ὀνειροπόλον) Priester und Seher unterscheiden sich vor allem durch die institutionelle Einbindung: Priester sind an einzelne Poleis und ihre Heiligtümer gebunden, Manteis sind weniger institutionalisiert.”
25. Neumann 1998:342. “Priester ist der für eine bestimmte Gruppe (Stamm, Familie oder Gemeinde) oder einen bestimmten Ort (Tempel oder dergleichen) als Vermittler zur Gottheit bestellte Kultfunktionär, der in der Regel auch heiliges Wissen hütet (und lehrt) sowie Segen spendet. Sekundär können ihm auch administrative und judikative Aufgaben zukommen. Seine Autorität und Würde gründen im Charisma seines Amtes. Deshalb eignet ihm ein angemessener (hoher) sozialer Status, meist verbunden mit geistiger und politischer Macht.”
26. Bremmer 1999a:7. “Priests conducted larger rituals and supervised sanctuaries, but never developed into a class of their own because of the lack of an institutional framework. Consequently, they were unable to monopolize access to the divine or develop esoteric systems, as happened with the Brahmans in India or the Druids among the Celts. On the whole, priesthoods had no great influence except for those of certain important sanctuaries, such as the Eumolpides and Kerykes in Eleusis and the Branchidai at Apollo’s oracle at Didyma. Despite their modest status, priests must have played an important role in the transmission of local rituals and myths, and Hellanicus, one of the earliest historians, used priestesses of Hera in Argos as his most trustworthy chronological source.”
27. Bremmer 1999a:28. “As mediators between gods and worshippers, priests distinguished themselves through their white or purple clothing, and on vases priestesses are often pictured with metal keys, some of which have been excavated; in fact, temples were usually closed to worshippers and only opened on fixed and festive days; it was the altar not the temple which was the real centre of the sanctuary.”
28. Parker 1999:836. “Manteis (und chrêsmologoi) lebten als rel(igiöse) Spezialisten von der Religion, wie es ansonsten unüblich war.”
29. Sourvinou-Inwood 2000:39–40. “Not all sacrifices required a priest. Private sacrifice, even in a sanctuary, could usually be performed by the private individual himself … It appears that sacrifices for, and on behalf of, the polis are always performed by a priest … In his liturgical duties the priest was acting as a symbolic mediator between men and gods; it was the polis who placed him in that symbolic position.”
30. Gordon 2001:320. “Hauptaufgaben [der Priester] waren die Durchführung von Opfern … unter Einschluß von Gebeten … und die Aufsicht über die Tempelanlagen und -eigentümer.”
Footnotes
[ back ] * I am grateful to Beate Dignas and Sarah Nolan for various suggestions.
[ back ] 1. Beard and North 1990:3 (no. 20 in the appendix below).
[ back ] 2. More on the Wortgeschichte at Kluge 1975:565.
[ back ] 3. Burkert 1985:98.
[ back ] 4. Lampe 1961:1129–1131.
[ back ] 5. See DGE 3.537–545; LSJ 251–253; and the index in Poland 1909 for pagan cult titles of this type. Lampe 1961:237–240 details similar titles in the Christian hierarchy.
[ back ] 6. On the elusive evidence for women presbyters in early Christianity see Kramer 1992:178, 183–187.
[ back ] 7. No comprehensive study of women priests in Greek paganism exists, but much pertinent information from a variety of sources can be found in Holderman 1913; Turner 1983; Kron 1996:139–182; Dillon 2002:73–106; and Cole 2004:122–136. On the variant spellings hierea (the older form) and hiereia see Threatte 1980:315, 317.
[ back ] 8. Graf 1997:473 (app. no. 22). In the same vein Rudhardt 1958:291 (‘celui qui fait des hiera’) and Neumann 1998:342 (‘wer Heiliges treibt’), among others.
[ back ] 9. Gebauer 2002:471–478. The actual killing of the sacrificial animal and the handling of the inner organs (splankhna) were left to male sacrificers. While priestesses are widely attested, women performing sacrifice and slaughtering animals are the exception (Dillon 2001:245–246; Osborne 1993).
[ back ] 10. Stengel 1910:1; Kern 1926:161 (app. no. 10); Gernet 1932:205–206 (app. no. 12).
[ back ] 11. In purely sacrificial terms, however, the dividing line between the hiereus on the one hand and the sphageus or mageiros on the other is a fine one; see Berthiaume 1982 and van Straten 1995.
[ back ] 12. Bremmer 1998.
[ back ] 13. North 1996:1245. Similarly Dignas 2003:40: “Our term ‘priest’ does not translate into a single Greek word.”
[ back ] 14. Burkert 1990.
[ back ] 15. Representative examples are app. nos. 1, 9, 10–11, 14, 16–17, and 26. On this issue, see now the judicious remarks of Pirenne-Delforge 2005:3.
[ back ] 16. Ziehen 1913:1411.
[ back ] 17. Burkert 1985:95.
[ back ] 18. Burkert 1985:95–98; Sourvinou-Inwood 2000:38–42.
[ back ] 19. See Flower and Trampedach in this volume. Cf. app. nos. 3; 11; 15; 21; 24; and 28.
[ back ] 20. Expertise: app. nos. 15 and 28; status: no. 21; mobility: nos. 11 and 24.
[ back ] 21. Harris 1995:27 (app. no. 21), discussed by Flower in this volume.
[ back ] 22. Stengel 1920:54–66; Wachsmuth 1967:177–200; Burkert 1985:111–114; Flower in this volume.
[ back ] 23. Stengel 1920:63 claims, without sufficient evidence, that experienced hiereis must have had some mantic skills which allowed them to interpret the splankhna as well as other sacrificial signs.
[ back ] 24. Hamilton 1985:53.
[ back ] 25. Hamilton 1985:73n62.
[ back ] 26. The appendix was compiled with the assistance of Timothy Joseph. All emphases in the appendix are mine.
[ back ] 27. Burkert 1985:95 (app. no. 15) and 98.
[ back ] 28. Hamilton 1985:55 (app. no. 19).
[ back ] 29. Burkert 1985:97 (app. no. 18). Several of Burkert’s examples are identical with those adduced by Nietzsche 1875/76:462 (app. no. 6).
[ back ] 30. Rohde 1894:333 (app. no. 8).
[ back ] 31. Nietzsche 1875/76:462 (app. no. 6).
[ back ] 32. Nietzsche 1875/76:464 (app. no. 7).
[ back ] 33. Nietzsche 1872:67–71 (chapter 10). See Henrichs 2004:132–133; Henrichs 2005:454–455.