In recent years, the topic of ancient Greek hero cult has been the focus of considerable discussion among classicists. Little attention, however, has been paid to female heroized figures. Here Deborah Lyons argues for the heroine as a distinct category in ancient Greek religious ideology and daily practice. The heroine, she believes, must be located within a network of relations between male and female, mortal and immortal. Using evidence ranging from Homeric epic to Attic vase painting to ancient travel writing, she attempts to re-integrate the feminine into our picture of Greek notions of the hero. According to Lyons, heroines differ from male heroes in several crucial ways, among which is the ability to cross the boundaries between mortal and immortal. She further shows that attention to heroines clarifies fundamental Greek ideas of mortal/immortal relationships.The book first discusses heroines both in relation to heroes and as a separate religious and mythic phenomenon. It examines the cultural meanings of heroines in ritual and representation, their use as examples for mortals, and their typical "biographies." The model of "ritual antagonism, " in which two mythic figures represented as hostile share a cult, is ultimately modified through an exploration of the mythic correspondences between the god Dionysos and the heroines surrounding him, and through a rethinking of the relationship between Iphigeneia and Artemis. An appendix, which identifies more than five hundred heroines, rounds out this lively work.
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7 of 7 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars
Useful, thorough, intelligent, often surprising,
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This review is from: Gender and Immortality (Hardcover)
Lyons succeeds in making the first really useful and penetrating attack on the subject of Greek heroines, and in doing so makes an important contribution to the subjects of women in Greek myth and in Greek religion. Her scholarship and thoroughness are persuasive and make this book useful not only to the general reader but also as a reference work - the only one devoted to the subject. Her catalogue of heroines (in an appendix) is particularly useful.There do remain issues to be addressed, to which this book has nevertheless made a useful contribution. Just how do the Greek mythico-literary and religious traditions relate to one another? Lyons rightly emphasises the local traditions represented in what we know of Greek cults, rather than the Panhellenic myths that we all know and read as children; her approach therefore works in tandem with work on ancient Panhellenic trends from the literary angle (e.g. Gregory Nagy). The relationships between the local cult that Lyons emphasises, and the Panhellenic mythical traditions that have come down to us, is a dark and difficult area. Lyons sheds new light on the topic by examining closely (among other things) the Hesiodic Catalogue of Women, what it has to say about local traditions, about immortality, etc. This is the first time that anyone has devoted any space to this important and influential text in a book on women in antiquity or on heroine cults. It is a good start; though the fact that only a few heroines in the Hesiodic Catalogue, and very few indeed in the rest of Archaic literature, are represented in what we know of Greek cultic practice poses questions that still need mulling over. Lyons, who tends to take such problems on a case-by-case basis rather than offering any general answers, will be essential reading for anyone who has an interest in them, or in Greek religion, gender, or of course (im)mortality in Greek myth.
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