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The Goddess Artemis, and the Dedication of Bears in Sanctuaries

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  27 September 2013

Abstract

Images of bears are found as dedications in only five sanctuaries. The article considers the circumstances of this; particularly the belief that this animal was an emblem and pattern of motherhood.

Type
Research Article
Copyright
Copyright © The Council, British School at Athens 1987

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References

1 Sanctuaries which have produced more than a few representation of animals.

Sanctuaries of Artemis: Artemis Orthia, Sparta; Artemision of Ephesos; Artemision of Delos; Delion of Pares; Artemis Hemerasia, Lousoi; Artemis Laphria, Kalydon; Artemis Polo, Thasos; Brauron; Artemis Knakeatis, Tegea; Altar of Artemis, Olympia; Artemis Limnatis, Kombothreka; Kanoni deposit, Corcyra; Temple of Artemis in the sanctuary of Apollo at Cyrene; Artemision at Scala Greca, Sicily; Kalapodi (Artemis Elaphebolia); Pherai (Artemis Pheraia).

Sanctuaries of Apollo: Delphi; Apollo Epikourios, Bassai; Apollo Maleatas, Epidaurus; Ptoion; Amyclaion; Apollo Tyritos, Kynouria; Apollo Korinthos, Korone; Halieis; Ther-mon; Delos; Kato Phana, Chios; Dreros; Naukratis.

Sanctuaries of Athena: Lindos; Acropolis of Athens; Athena Pronaia, Delphi; Athena Alea, Tegea; Sounion; Athena Chal-kioikos, Sparta; Athena Itonia, Philia; Halai; Athena Craneia, Elateia; Athena Soteira, Asea; Emporio, Chios; Gortyn, Crete.

Santuaries of Hera: Hera Akraia/Limenia, Perachora; Samos; Argive Heraion; Tiryns; Heraion of Delos.

Sanctuaries of Demeter: Acrocorinth; Eleusis; Cnidus; Hali-carnassus; Knossos; Cyrene.

Sanctuaries of Zeus: Olympia; Dodona; Nemea.

Sanctuaries of Poseidon: Isthmia; Sounion; Kalauria; Penteskouphia.

Sanctuary of Aphaia, Aegina.

Sanctuary at Lato, Crete.

2 Acropolis of Athens. Marble. Fourth century BC. One statuette of bear. (Antk 20 (1977) 94 pl. 21.6 and 7.)

Terracotta. Roman. One back and hindquarters of bear. (Hesperia 4 (1935) 212 fig. 155.)

Argive Heraion. Terracotta. Undated. One bear's head. (Waldstein, C., The Argive Heraeum (Boston and New York 1905) ii. 41.)Google Scholar

Thasos. Terracotta. Archaic or E. Classical Bears, undescribed, unenumerated. (BCH 82 (1958) 810.)

Artemis Orthia. Terracotta. Archaic. One bear. (Dawkins, R. M., Artemis Orthia. (London 1929) 158 fig. 13.)Google Scholar

Ivory. Archaic. One couchant bear. (Ibid. 232 pl. 153.)

Limestone plaque, c. 600 BC. One with rough relief, ‘possibly a bear’. (Ibid. 193 no. 58.)

Tegea. Bronze. Seventh century BC. One bear-headed human figure. (BCH 45 (1921) 356 no. 55 fig. 17.)

Lousoi. Teeth. Bears' teeth ‘in numbers’. (Öjh 4 (1901) 37.)

3 A few of the Dedicatory Epigrams comment on such small offerings, e.g. the winner of a music competition offered a bronze cicada to Lycorean Apollo; because the insect had replaced his broken lyre-string with its own song. (APL vi. 54, cf. Clement of Alexandria, , Protrepticus, i. 2P).Google Scholar

4 e.g. the Corcyrans dedicated bronze statues of bulls both at Olympia and at Delphi, to commemorate the sacrifice of a bull which they had made to Poseidon, in return for a good catch of fish. (Pausanias x. 9.2.)

5 Ibid. vii. 18.7.

6 Euripides, Iphigeneia at Aulis 1587.

7 Scholia Graeca in Lysistratam 645.

9 Eustathius, , Commentarii ad Homeri Iliadem ii. 732.Google Scholar

10 Kahil, Lilly, ‘Quelques vases du sanctuaire d'Artémis à Brauron’, AntK, Beiheft i (1963) 530Google Scholar; ‘Autour de l'Artémis Attique’, AntK 8 (1965) 20; ‘L'Artémis de Brauron: rites et mystère’, AntK 20 (1977) 86; ‘La déesse Artémis. Mythologie et inconographie’, Greece and Italy in the Classical World. Acta of the XI International Congress of Classical Archaeology, Coldstream, J. N. and Colledge, M. A. R. (eds.) (London 1979) 7386.Google Scholar

11 AntK 20 (1977) 90 pl. 19; Greece and Italy in the Classical World …, 81 pl. 34a.

12 Ibid. 81 pl. 34b; AntK 20 (1977) 90 pl. 20.

13 Pausanias viii. 3. 6; Hesiod, Astronomia 3 (Loeb. Hesiod, p. 69). In Hesiod's version she is not shot, but changed by Zeus into the constellation of the bear.

14 Pausanias viii. 35.8.

15 Callimachus, Hymn to Artemis 215–17.

16 Apollodorus, Bibliotheca iii. 9. 2. Atalanta is included in Hesiod's Catalogue of Women (14), where she is described as swift-footed and virginal. The bear episode is not mentioned.

17 BCH 51 (1927) 157–69. Esp. fig. 4 (p. 160), and pl. 8 (p. 162).

18 ‘Iphigenia’ means ‘strong-born’ (LSJ).

19 Euripides, Iphigeneia in Tauris 1464–7.

20 Bachoffen, J. J., Der Bär in den Religionen des Altertums (Basel 1863) (esp. pp. 4–5).Google Scholar

21 See Plutarch, Moralia 494 (on affection for offspring): ‘And the she-bear, the most savage and sullen of beasts, brings forth her young formless and without visible joints, and with her tongue, as with a tool, she moulds into shape their skin; and thus she is thought, not only to bear, but to fashion her cub’ (Loeb Plutarch vi. 338–9). Cf. Ovid, , Metamorphoses xv. 379–81Google Scholar; Pliny, , Natural History viii. 126.Google Scholar

22 Bachoffen, op. cit. 27–8.

23 Apollodorus, op. cit. iii. 12.5.

24 Philostratus, Imagines i. 28. 6.

25 PAE 1906, p. 96 pls. C·2 and D.1 (Epidaurus). Wood, J. T., Discoveries at Ephesus (London 1887) 260.Google Scholar

26 The fragmentary terracotta bear from the north slope of the Acropolis is one of about 500 figurines and fragments, most of which were in all probability ‘dedicated to the divinities which were enshrined on the top of the hill’(Hesperia 4 (1935) 189).

27 Öjh 15 (1912) 57 fig. 26.

28 Picard, Charles, Ephèse et Claros (Paris 1922) 455.Google Scholar

29 AntK 20 (1977) 94.

30 Pausanias iii. 24. 2.

31 Id. iii. 17. 1.

32 The commentators on Pindar's third Olympic Ode (1·54) explain Artemis' similar title of Orthosia in terms of her care for women in childbirth and new-born babies. It is perhaps relevant to this topic that they note the presence of a sanctuary of Artemis Orthosia in the Kerameikos of Athens; since this may probably be identified with the Artemis Kalliste shrine referred to above (see n. 17 above) (Boeckhius ii. 101–2).

33 Pausanias i. 23. 9; i. 33. 1; iii. 7. 1.

34 Id. viii. 45. 6.

35 Animal-headed deities seem to have been a feature of Arcadian cults: Demeter, having once changed herself into a mare, was represented at Phigalia with a horse's head (Pausanias viii. 25. 5; viii. 42. 4). The decorative reliefs on the veil of Despoina's Hellenistic cult-statue at Lykosoura depict both a horse-headed and a bear-headed figure; and these may also reflect the local transformation-myths, and the cults and beliefs which lie behind them (BSA 13 (1906–7) 367 pl. 16).