![]() The hero also has an earlier connection with the mysteries on neighboring Lemnos, where Akusilaos, writing in the fifth century, identified Kadmilos as the father of the Kabeiroi, and a son of Hephaistos and the nymph Kabeiro.Ĭentury CE (IG XII 8 n. Beyond the commemoration of his marriage in the annual festival, he is cited as one of the gods of the cult, in the guise of Kadmilos, and he shares iconographic and narrative elements with Hermes, whose importance to the cult is attested in both textual and epigraphical sources. The hero has unusually strong ties to the rites. Kadmos the Phoenician appears in the traditions of Samothrace as early as the fifth century BCE.Įarly sources mention only his marriage to Harmonia the island’s mysteries appear first in the fourth century, when Ephoros notes that Kadmos caught his first glimpse of his bride while she was being initiated, carried her off, and so established the custom of searching for the girl in the island’s festivals. We will finally consider how the ritual dynamics particular to the Greek mysteries shape the functional relationship of these elements to each other. We will consider the heroes individually first, and then set their shared pattern against the background of Samothracian hapaxes, including the pre-Greek gods, the ritual installations on the site, its boundaryland location, and the language of the liturgy. The pattern they share is the type of the protocolonial, a hero of first contact who must achieve mediation between his culture and the indigenous inhabitants of the country to which he travels. Both men have an intimate connection with the island’s rites and gods: Kadmos figures in the liturgy itself, while Jason articulates its most famous promise. The heroes who guide this exploration are Kadmos and Jason. These concerns reflect a patten never irrelevant in Mediterranean history, and suggest a factor contributing to the cult's longevity beyond its history of wealthy patronage. The narrative dynamics of these heroes offer the background against which the elements that distinguish Samothrace from other cults appear not as a collection of hapaxes, but an articulate response to the historical demands of habitation and commerce in a region that was the boundaryland of Greek and non-Greek. The patterns of these heroic legends reflect the particular needs of an initiatory ritual based on the type of the Greek mysteries located in the far northeastern reach of the Greek Aegean. Travelers flocked to the island for initiation for centuries after the 6Ĭentury BCE floruit of the town was long past. The mysteries were Samothrace’s single greatest commodity. The myths thus reflect the structures, as well as the simple existence, of the institutions significant enough to trade in the market of cultural memory. ![]() Such patterns, Appadurai has argued, constitute cultural commodities, which may be used to support groups and institutions.īoth the historical elements the myths select, and the patterns into which they set them, are determined by the institutions they support. The myths are themselves, however, historical artifacts – cultural creations which impose pattern on the past. The prevailing critical approach to the legends identified elements of historical fact buried in the narrative – to read through the myths to the history hidden behind them. These hero initiates offer more intricate insight, however, into the nature of the cult and the gods than this simple explanation suggests. ![]() The promise, and the heroes, may thus be easily accounted for as a response to the cult’s location and the tendencies of Greek heroic legend. ![]() This would be significant aid for navigators, who relied on easily visible landmarks. Phengari, at 5,459 feet, visible from 100 miles away. That promise emerges naturally as well from the island’s location and geology – set in characteristically rough seas, and possessing but one poor harbor, Samothrace nevertheless offered the highest beacon of the northern Aegean – Mt. Their number seems, at the simplest level, a reflection of the cult’s most singular promise for its initiates, and one naturally suited to the needs of a hero. Far more numerous than in other cults, these legendary figures crowd into the island’s imagination of itself as the recipients of its greatest ritual treasure – divine protection for travel at sea. Sandra Blakely, Emory University, abounds in traditions of heroes who come to the island for initiation into the mysteries of the great gods. KADMOS, JASON, AND THE GREAT GODS OF SAMOTHRACE: INITIATION AS MEDIATION IN A NORTHERN AEGEAN CONTEXT ![]()
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |
AuthorWrite something about yourself. No need to be fancy, just an overview. ArchivesCategories |