Hostname: page-component-8448b6f56d-mp689 Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-04-23T09:48:27.468Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

The chariot rite at Onchestos: Homeric Hymn to Apollo 229-38*

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  23 February 2012

Annette Teffeteller
Annette Teffeteller
Affiliation:
Concordia University
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Abstract

The Onchestos passage in the Homeric Hymn to Apollo (229-38) has been discussed extensively, most usefully by A. Schachter (BICS 23 (1976) 102-14) and G. Roux (REG 77 (1964) 1-22). Further consideration of the disputed verbal forms in lines 235 and 236 and the plurals of 233-6 suggests that the plurals do indeed indicate a two-horse chariot team but that the presence of a team is not incompatible with the test of a single colt, and that if a chariot is wrecked by the unguided horses, it is righted and left in situ (with the horses removed) while prayers of supplication are made to Poseidon. The events referred to are interpreted as elements of a religious ritual with explicit military implications, dating from the Mycenaean period. It is, however, noted that a Babylonian ritual parallel might suggest a Near Eastern (and possibly non-military) origin.

Type
Shorter Contributions
Information
The Journal of Hellenic Studies , Volume 121 , November 2001 , pp. 159 - 166
Copyright
Copyright © The Society for the Promotion of Hellenic Studies 2001

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

1 ‘Homeric Hymn to Apollo, lines 231-8 (The Onchestos Episode): another interpretation’, BICS 23 (1976) 102–14Google Scholar, amplified in Cults of Boiotia, 2: Herakles to Poseidon (BICS Suppl. 38.2, London 1986) 219Google Scholar.

2 Schachter (1976) (n.1) 100.

3 ‘Sur deux passages de l'Hymne homérique à Apollon’, REG 11 (1964) 1–22Google Scholar.

4 Schachter (1976) (n.1) 112.

5 Schachter (1986) (n.1) 219 and n.1, taking note of Burkert's criticism (Structure and History in Greek Mythology and Ritual (Berkeley 1979) 119 n.19Google Scholar; cf. Förstel, K., Untersuchungen zum Homerischen Apollonhymnus (Bochum 1979) 465 n.650)Google Scholar that ‘a broken chariot (v.235) cannot be “set to rights” by turning it (v.236)’, proposes instead of ‘breaks down’ ‘goes astray’.

6 Roux (n.3) 1-22; Schachter (1976) (n.1) 106.

7 Schachter (1986) (n.1) 219.

8 Schachter (1976) (n.1) 109.

9 Roux (n.3) 14.

10 Schachter (1976) (n.1) 110-11.

11 Schachter (1976) (n.1) 113.

12 Xen. De re eq.; Virg. Georg. 3; Hittite: Kammenhuber, A, Hippologia Hethitica (Wiesbaden 1961)Google Scholar; Hurrian: Kendall, T., Warfare and Military Matters in the Nuzi Tablets (diss., Brandeis University 1974)Google Scholar.

13 Walrond, S., Breaking a Horse to Harness (London 1981) 103Google Scholar.

14 As recounted in numerous Iliadic passages; see esp. Il.. 15.453, the horses reared, κείν' ὄχεα καροτέοντες. (One is reminded of the skills of the apobates but this feat evidently never involved the charioteer descending.)

15 For a modern parallel, compare Western films and the cowboy in dire straits whistling for his horse; cf. Il.. 5.229-38: Pandaros declines to take the reins of Aeneas' horses for fear they would not respond to a voice other than that of their accustomed charioteer.

16 Imported from Anatolia (Schachermeyr, F., Poseidon und die Entstehung des griechischen Götterglaubens (Salzburg 1950) 148–55Google Scholar) or the Levant (via Crete) (Crouwel, J.H., Chariots and Other Means of Land Transport in Bronze Age Greece (Amsterdam 1981) 148–9Google Scholar); cf. Littauer, M.A., ‘The military use of the chariot in the Aegean in the Late Bronze Age’, AJA 76 (1972) 145–7CrossRefGoogle Scholar. (And we hear echoes of Mycenaean Greek (e.g. wo-ka) in the passage (ὄχεα 234).)

17 104-5, ταύρεος 'Εννσίγαιος/ὄς Θήβης κρήδεμνον ἔχει ῥύεται πόληα, ‘the bull-like Earthshaker, who holds the citadel of Thebes and guards the city’. I have suggested elsewhere, on political and religious grounds, that this passage reflects the Mycenaean situation (‘The guardian of Thebes’, unpublished ms., presented to the Boiotian Symposium, McGill University, Montreal, 17 March 1991).

18 Cf. Bugh, G.R., The Horsemen of Athens (Princeton 1988) 28 and n.103Google Scholar. There are, moreover, compelling indications that, in his military and political aspects, as well as in his role as Quellöffner, Poseidon is to be connected with the Anatolian Stormgod, chief deity of the Hittite pantheon in the Empire period and principal war-god, in concert with the Sungoddess of Arinna, of the Hittite chariot-warriors. I have explored these connections elsewhere: ‘Poseidon's Indo-European heritage’, presented at the Thirty-Sixth Annual Conference of the International Linguistic Association, New York, April 1991; ‘The Knossos Linear B Tablet KN V52’, presented at the Annual Meeting of the Classical Association of Canada, The University of Prince Edward Island, May 1992. See also my ‘Greek Athena and the Hittite Sungoddess of Arinna’, in Deacy, S. and Villing, A. (eds.), Athena in the Classical World (Leiden 2001)Google Scholar. Cf. Haas, V., Geschichte der hethitischen Religion (Leiden 1994)CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

19 Schachter (1976) (n.1) 113.

20 Schachter (1986) (n.1) 211 and n.2; he notes further that our first attestation of a connection between Onchestos and Poseidon is the Homeric Catalogue of Ships, in which the Boiotoi are said to occupy 'Ογχηστόν θ' ἱερόν, Ποσιδήïον ἀγλαὸν ἄλσος, 2.506; see further 213-14 on the question of the antiquity of Poseidon at Onchestos. (In this context one wonders about the site approximately 800 metres west of the Pass which appears to have been part of the later sanctuary. Schachter (208) notes that this site ‘covers a very large area (upwards of 75 metres in each direction) and consists of the foundations of a series of rectangular buildings… around an open space’. The foundations are dated from the fourth century BC to the Roman period but might have replaced earlier buildings on the same site.)

21 Schachter (1986) (n.1) 208 n.1 remarks that the foundations of the buildings to the west of the pass ‘are not so easy to notice during the summer, when most foreigners visit Greece, the vegetation being higher then’.

22 For chariot-racing at Onchestos, see Pind. fr. 94b.44-6 and Isth. 1.52-4; cf. 32-3 and 4.19-29.

23 Cobet's emendation (ἀγῆισιν) of the manuscript reading ἄγησιν is accepted by Schachter (1976) (n.1) 111, but written ἀγῆσιν ‘on the analogy of on ‘Nestor's cup’”; cf. Allen, T.W., Halliday, W.R. and Sikes, E.E., The Homeric Hymns (2nd edn, Oxford 1963)Google Scholarad v. Cf. E. Schwyzer, Griechische Grammatik 1.661, 791.

24 ἀγῆισιν has passive or, better, stative force (cf. ἄγη Il. 3.367, 16.801; ἐάγηι, Il. 11.559): cf. Sihler, A.L., New Comparative Grammar of Greek and Latin (New York and Oxford 1995) 563–4 (§508)Google Scholar.

25 Il.. 6.306, 13.162, 16.801, 21.178; 11.559; 16.769; Od. 10.213; 5.316; 3.298, 10.123; Il.. 3.367.

26 Cf. Il.. Parv. 23 ≅ Certamen 100-1.

27 Zeus: Il.. 8.403; Adrastus: Il.. 6.40; Nestor: Il.. 18.341; Athena: Il.. 22.392; trench: Il.. 16.371; fallen charioteer: Il.. 23.467.

28 Cf. Walrond (n.13) 94 and 102.

29 Od. 22.121; Il.. 23.510, 21.18.

30 Cf. Il.. 8.68-74.

31 Il.. 2.777-8, 5.194-5, 722-3, 8.441, and Kirk ad vv.; cf. the Linear B chariot tablets and ideograms, Ventris, M. and Chadwick, J., Documents in Mycenaean Greek (2nd edn, Cambridge 1973) 361–9Google Scholar.

32 Littauer, M.A. and Crouwel, J.H., ‘Chariots in Late Bronze Age Greece’, Antiquity 57 (1983) 188–9CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Ventris and Chadwick (n.31) 361, 368; Il.. 5.729 and Kirk ad v.

33 As Littauer (n.16) 154 (and ill. 8) notes, Mycenaean depictions show variations of axle placement from central to full rear; her discussion (154-5) of the respective advantages and disadvantages of the different types is particularly useful.

34 Cf. Roux (n.3) 17: ‘soit que le timon prenne appui sur le sol, soit que le poids de la caisse, basculant sur l'essieu, le maintienne en position haute, obliquement dirigé vers le ciel’.

35 Il.. 10.503-5 and Hainsworth ad v. 505; Spruytte, J., Études experimentales sur l'attelage (Paris 1977) 93Google Scholar; cf. Crouwel (n.16) 150; Littauer (n.32) 187-92.

36 Il.. 23.392. The Homeric descriptions in this passage and elsewhere attest to accurate knowledge on the part of the poet(s), at least at second-hand if not first, of the workings and the vulnerabilities of chariots; cf. Crouwel (n.16) 150-7.

37 I take the clause of 238, paratactically introduced by δέ, to express the object of the prayer (and γάρ in 237 to indicate that the events involving the chariot and horses are part of the ὁσίη).

38 Ventris and Chadwick (n.31) 361-75; cf. Crouwel (n.16) 150.

39 See n.32 above.

40 Ventris and Chadwick (n.31) 373 (285).

41 Although some texts indicate that the festival was also celebrated, perhaps variously in various historical periods, in the autumn; see Pallis, S.A., The Babylonian Akîtu Festival (Copenhagen 1926)Google Scholar.

42 Livingstone, A., Mystical and Mythological Explanatory Works of Assyrian and Babylonian Scholars (Oxford 1986) 221Google Scholar (90); cf. 243 (66), 249 (13). (In his Commentary (230 (90)) Livingstone offers no explanation of the passage.)

43 For religious and other parallels between Greece and the Near East (especially in the first millennium BC but also to some extent in the second), see Burkert, W., The Orientalizing Revolution: Near Eastern Influence on Greek Culture in the Early Archaic Age (Cambridge, MA 1992)Google Scholar and West, M.L., The East Face of Helicon: West Asiatic Elements in Greek Poetry and Myth (Oxford 1997)Google Scholar, especially 609, Mycenaean cult idols at Ugarit, and 621, Asian shrines at Mycenae and Phylakopi; for various connections between Bronze Age Anatolia and the Aegean, see my ‘Greek Athena and the Hittite Sungoddess of Arinna’ (n.18), with references. For possible Eastern influences specifically in Bronze Age Thebes, see Edwards, R.B., Kadmos the Phoenician: A Study in Greek Legends and the Mycenaean Age (Amsterdam 1979)Google Scholar.

44 See Littauer, M.A. and Crouwel, J.H., Wheeled Vehicles and Ridden Animals in the Ancient Near East (Leiden 1979) 95Google Scholar. A Babylonian hymn of praise to the divine chariot, partially preserved in a bilingual Sumero-Akkadian fragment of what appears to be a cultic text dating to the reign of Nebuchadnezzar I, begins,

Chariot of the king of the gods, fashioned by Enlil […

Wagon of great Marduk, which, among the gods […

and goes on to mention and extol the various component parts (Lambert, W.G., ‘A new fragment from a list of antediluvian kings and Marduk's chariot’, in Beek, M. A., Kampman, A. A., Nijland, C. and Rijckmanns, J. (eds.), Symbolae Biblicae et Mesopotamicae F. M. Th. de Liagre Böhl Dedicatae (Leiden 1973) 277Google Scholar). We are reminded of the elaborate description of the divine chariot at Il.. 5.72032. Among the Hittites as well, the chariot figures prominently in cultic contexts and the motif of the charioteer relinquishing the reins (in this case to another individual) is found in both Hittite and Babylonian documents (see Dalley, S. (ed. and transl.), Myths from Mesopotamia (Oxford 1989) 257Google Scholar, and Gurney, O.R., Some Aspects of Hittite Religion (Oxford 1977) 36Google Scholar). West (n.43) 589 notes that various features of Hittite cult usage, prayer formulas and funerary ritual appear to have found their way into Greek texts, and (446-7) that the title Bēl(u), ‘lord’, ‘master’ (Semitic Baal), which was used especially of Marduk, the patron god of Babylon, is also the name of a son of Poseidon (Belos) by Libye of the Theban divine lineage; the title in Greek translation forms the first part of Poseidon's name (Potei-).

45 Crouwel (n.16) 145.

46 Such as that at Eretria, recorded by Strabo (10.1.10), which included sixty chariots as well as six hundred riders and three thousand foot soldiers. (I am indebted for this reference to the anonymous reader for the Journal.) Cf. Crouwel, J.H., Chariots and Other Wheeled Vehicles in Iron Age Greece (Amsterdam 1992) 60Google Scholar; cf. also Bevan, E., Representations of Animals in Sanctuaries of Artemis and Other Olympian Deities (BAR International Series 315 (i), Oxford 1986) 194-219 and 428–31Google Scholar.

47 Dietrich, B.C., Tradition in Greek Religion (Berlin 1986) 174, 151Google Scholar; see further Crouwel (n.16) 150-1 on the continuity with the Mycenaean past represented by the chariot.