Endnotes, Part 3 EN3.1 (Endnote to n3.16) {486|487} Cults of Damia and Auxesia had elements in common with cults of Demeter and Kore; Pausanias, who saw and sacrificed to the images of Damia and Auxesia in Aegina, says that their sacrifice was like that in Eleusis (εἶδόν τε τὰ ἀγάλματα καὶ ἔθυσά σφισι κατὰ <τὰ> αὐτὰ καθὰ δὴ καὶ Ἐλευσῖνι θύειν νομίζουσιν, Pausanias 2.30.4). Herodotus too… Read more
Chapter 9. The City Goddess of Athens {391|393} §3.39 The Phaeacian king and queen are the key to the relationship between Athena Polias and Erechtheus as it once was. Aspects of this relationship, like Athena’s change from virgin goddess to mother goddess in the context of the Plynteria, can be reconstructed only indirectly from the Phaeacian parallel and must therefore remain obscure; other aspects of the relationship… Read more
Part 3. Athens Chapter 8. Arete and Nausicaa {338|341} §3.1 Odyssey 3 brings together two figures, Nestor and Athena, whose functions are related in the story of Odysseus’s return: Nestor is the “homebringer” who ten years earlier failed to bring Odysseus back from Troy; Athena is the goddess who has now undertaken to free Odysseus from Calypso’s island and bring about his long delayed return home. Read more
Endnotes, Part 2 EN2.1 (Endnote to n2.62) {329|331} The terms mē̂tis and bíē, denoting “intelligence” and “strength,” are explicitly opposed to each other only once in Homer (μήτι τοι δρυτόμος μέγ’ ἀμείνων ἠὲ βίηφι, “by intelligence the woodcutter is much better than by strength,” Iliad 23.315), but the opposition between them matches up well with a contrast between the two heroes of the Iliad and the… Read more
Chapter 7. Odyssey 11 and the Phaeacians {225|227} §2.100 Nestor is mentioned twice more in the Odyssey, in Odyssey 11 and Odyssey 24. [128] In Odyssey 11, as discussed already, only his name occurs: when Odysseus meets the ghost of Nestor’s mother Chloris in the underworld, Nestor is named as one of three sons she bore to Neleus (Odyssey 11.281–286): … Read more
Chapter 6. Odyssey 3 and Iliad 8 {172|173} §2.56 In the Odyssey Nestor is the same figure as in the Iliad except that he is now at home in Pylos ten years after the war. In the Iliad he is said to have outlived two generations of men and to rule in yet a third; in the Odyssey much the same is said of him. [… Read more
Chapter 5. Iliad 23 {130|131} §2.19 We have so far looked only for similarities between Nestor and Patroclus in their respective bids to become horsemen. There is also a glaring difference between the two, namely that Nestor survived his battle with the Epeians and lived to reach old age, but in his battle with the Trojans Patroclus is slain. It is thus very significant that at the… Read more
Part 2. Nestor’s Homeric Role Chapter 4. Iliad 11 {102|105} §2.1 The basic text for Nestor’s myth is his story in Iliad 11.670–761. [1] I have already suggested that the essence of Nestor’s myth is that he is a twin who has lost his brother and who therefore must take his brother’s place. What points to this is the etymological correspondence… Read more
Endnotes, Part 1 EN1.1 (Endnote to n1.181) {94|95} If the Dioskouroi were thought of as buried beneath the earth at Therapne, their cult must, one assumes, have included the principal feature of hero cults, namely a grave. Unfortunately nothing is known of the twins’ cult at Therapne, which after Pindar is never mentioned again. Bölte RE ‘Therapne’ 2365 suggests that after Pindar’s time the twins’ cult… Read more
Chapter 3. Vedic {58|59} §1.42 The twin gods of the Rig-Veda have two dual names: they are not only Aśvínā, “horse-possessors,” a name that occurs 398 times in the Rig-Veda, but also Nā́satyā, a name that occurs 99 times in the Rig-Veda. [117] The name Nā́satyā is old. It has an exact cognate in Avestan Nā̊ŋhaiθya, the name of a demon in… Read more
