The Temple of Athena Alea was a sanctuary at Tegea in Ancient Greece, dedicated to Athena under the epithet Athena Alea; a syncretization between the Olympian goddess Athena and the local deity Alea. It was a significant Greek temple, and played a crucial part as an identity marker for the ancient Tegeans. It served as the focal point of a significant area already from tenth century BCE, [1] and has provided evidence of contact with several nearby regions such as the Argolid and Laconia. [2]
According to the Greek travel writer Pausanias, the temple was said to have been built by the local hero Aleus, the son of Apheidas. [3] The name of this hero is etymologically associated with the goddess Alea, and may be a genealogical retrojection to explain the origin of the temple in later history. [4] This would then indicate that the traditions of the local goddess by the time of Pausanias was almost forgotten, and a new heroic character had been invented to fill her place.
The first temple at the site likely dates to the early Archaic period of Greek history; the memory of this temple survived, and is included in the account of Pausanias. [5] According to Herodotus, the temple contained chains associated with a failed Spartan attack on Tegea in the sixth century. [6] Pausanias states that this temple burned down 394 BCE, and a second temple was built by the famous Parian architect Scopas; Pausanias also states that this temple was among the most beautiful in the Peloponnese. [7] [8]
The temple of Athena Alea at Tegea was an ancient and revered asylum, and the names of many persons are recorded who saved themselves by seeking refuge in it. [9] Among the famous people seeking asylum at the temple, Pausanias recounts Chryseis, [10] the Spartan Leotychides, and the Spartan general Pausanias. [11]
The second sanctuary was a temple of the Doric order which in size and splendour was said to surpass all other temples in the Peloponnese, and was surrounded by a triple row of columns of different orders. [12] Pausanias description of this temple states that the first row is pillars were of the Doric order, with the next one being Corinthian order, and the outside the temple was pillars of the Ionic order. He goes onto mention iconographical representations of the Calydonian boar hunt and the local hero Telephos' fighting against Achilles on the plain of the Caycus. [13]
The cult statue of the Athena Alea was made by Endoeus in ivory. It was described as "... made throughout of ivory, the work of Endoeus. Those in charge of the curiosities say that one of the boar's tusks has broken off; the remaining one is kept in the gardens of the emperor, in a sanctuary of Dionysus, and is about half a fathom long." [14] The cult statue was subsequently carried to Rome by Augustus to adorn the Forum of Augustus. [15]
The combination of myths on the exterior of the temple is interesting, and speaks of both local Tegean and Panhellenic importance, for example, the representation of the Calydonian Boar Hunt on the east pediment. This myth is associated with Tegea through the role of the Arkadian heroine Atalanta and a set of additional Tegean heroes listed by Pausanias. [16] The inclusion of this glorified the role of Atalanta, speaking to a Panhellenic audience. [17] According to Pausanias, the tusks of the boar were located within the temple until Augustus removed them, [18] and the decayed hide of the animal remained in the sanctuary until his days. [19]
The scene of the local hero Telephos fighting Achilles connected the Tegeans further to larger more famous myths, Telephos was the son of Heracles and Auge, the first priestess of Athena Alea in mythical stories. A male head with lionskin cap found here may be associated with Telephos, promoting the association between this local hero and Heracles. His fight with Achilles puts him on par with this brave Trojan War hero, once more emphasising Tegea's local heroes on a Panhellenic level through the iconography at this temple. [20]
Also the interior of the temple was described by Pausanias, who refers to a combination of myths of local significance. He begins by mentioning the present image of Athena at Tegea, which he states was from the district of the Manthurenses; among them she had surname of Hippia (Horse Goddess). The Manthurenses claimed that during the battle between the gods and giants the goddess drove her chariot and horses against Enkelados. Pausanias then further claims that said goddess became known as Alea amongst the Greeks, highlighting especially the Peloponnesians.
In addition to the cult of Athena within the temple, there was a statue of the healing god Asclepius on one side of the cult image of Athena, and on the other side, a statue of Hygieia, goddess of health and cleanliness, both further works of Skopas of Paros. [21] [22]
Pausanias says that according to the local tradition, the altar of Athena Alea was made by the mythical hero Melampus, the son of Amythaon. On the altar itself there was on one side representations of Rhea, the local nymph Oinoe, who was the nurse of Zeus and the mother of Pan in Tegean traditions. [23] On the other was another four mythical characters Glauke, Neda, Theisoa and Anthrakia; another side included Ide, Hagno, Alkinoe and Phrixa. Finally, there were iconographical representations of the Muses and of Mnemosyne, goddess of memory. [24]
In addition to cult images, there were several representations of key local heroic characters such as Thelephos and Atlanta, but also the shield of Marpessa, who rallied the women of Tegea to defence of the city against the Spartans, leading to the foundation of the cult of Ares Gynaecothoenas in Tegean territory. [25]
There were two festivals celebrated at the sanctuary; the Aleaia and the Halotia, the first celebration of Alea, and the latter in celebration of a victory over the Spartans. [26]
Pausanias also states that the priest of the temple of Athena Alea at Tegea was a boy, who held office only until reaching the age of puberty. [27]
The archaeological site has a long history of archaeological exploration, dating back to 1806 when the Irish painter and author Edward Dodwell found the temple using the work of Pausanias. [28] Even with the temple being recognised by this time, it would take several decades before the first excavations of the site, which first took place in the 1870s; this first excavation was done by a German team and their results were published in Mitteilungen des Archäologisches Institutes in Athen in 1880. [29] After the Germans, the site was taken over by the French, who had led some excavating missions to Tegea in the early 1900s. [30] [31] Similarly, Greek teams excavated the sanctuary in 1908 [32] and in 1976-1977. [33]
Since the 1990s the site has been under the control of the Norwegian Institute at Athens, after the Norwegian archaeologist Erik Østby discovered the remains of the earlier sanctuary, which had been proposed to be a Early Christian or Byzantine church in the French publications of the site. [34] Since then the Norwegian teams have led excavations at the sanctuary (the last one to date finished in 2004), as well as in the larger territory of the ancient city of Tegea.
Athena or Athene, often given the epithet Pallas, is an ancient Greek goddess associated with wisdom, warfare, and handicraft who was later syncretized with the Roman goddess Minerva. Athena was regarded as the patron and protectress of various cities across Greece, particularly the city of Athens, from which she most likely received her name. The Parthenon on the Acropolis of Athens is dedicated to her. Her major symbols include owls, olive trees, snakes, and the Gorgoneion. In art, she is generally depicted wearing a helmet and holding a spear.
Ares is the Greek god of war and courage. He is one of the Twelve Olympians, and the son of Zeus and Hera. The Greeks were ambivalent towards him. He embodies the physical valor necessary for success in war but can also personify sheer brutality and bloodlust, in contrast to his sister Athena, whose martial functions include military strategy and generalship. An association with Ares endows places, objects, and other deities with a savage, dangerous, or militarized quality.
In ancient Greek religion and mythology, Artemis is the goddess of the hunt, the wilderness, wild animals, nature, vegetation, childbirth, care of children, and chastity. In later times, she was identified with Selene, the personification of the Moon. She was often said to roam the forests and mountains, attended by her entourage of nymphs. The goddess Diana is her Roman equivalent.
Britomartis was a Greek goddess of mountains and hunting, who was primarily worshipped on the island of Crete. She was sometimes believed to be an oread, or a mountain nymph, but she was often conflated or syncretized with Artemis and Aphaea, the "invisible" patroness of Aegina. She is also known as Dictynna or as a daughter of Dictynna (Δίκτυννα).
Hygieia is a goddess from Greek mythology. Hygieia is a goddess of health, cleanliness and hygiene. Her name is the source for the word "hygiene".
In Greek mythology, Marpessa may refer to the following figures:
The Calydonian boar hunt is one of the great heroic adventures in Greek legend. It occurred in the generation prior to that of the Trojan War, and stands alongside the other great heroic adventure of that generation, the voyage of the Argonauts, which preceded it. The purpose of the hunt was to kill the Calydonian boar, which had been sent by Artemis to ravage the region of Calydon in Aetolia, because its king Oeneus had failed to honour her in his rites to the gods. The hunters, led by the hero Meleager, included many of the foremost heroes of Greece. In most accounts it is also concluded that a great heroine, Atalanta, won its hide by first wounding it with an arrow. This outraged many of the men, leading to a tragic dispute.
In Greek mythology, Echemus was the Tegean king of Arcadia who succeeded Lycurgus.
Tegea was a settlement in ancient Arcadia, and it is also a former municipality in Arcadia, Peloponnese, Greece. Since the 2011 local government reform it is part of the Tripoli municipality, of which it is a municipal unit with an area of 118.350 km2. It is near the modern villages of Alea and Episkopi.
Lycosura was a city in the ancient Parrhasia region of south Arcadia said by Pausanias to be the oldest city in the world, although there is no evidence for its existence before the fourth century BCE. Its current significance is chiefly associated with the sanctuary of the goddess Despoina, which contained a colossal sculptural group that Pausanias wrote was made by Damophon of Messene. This group comprises acrolithic-technique statues of Despoina and Demeter seated on a throne, with statues of Artemis and the Titan Anytos standing on either side of them – all in Pentelic marble. The dates of both the temple and the sculptural group have occasioned some dispute. Remains of a stoa, altars, and other structures have been found at the site as well. The Sanctuary of Despoina at Lycosoura is located 9 km WSW of Megalopolis, 6.9 km SSE of Mount Lykaion, and 160 km SW of Athens. There is a small museum at the archaeological site housing small finds as well as part of the cult group, while the remains of the cult statues of Despoina and Demeter are displayed at the National Archaeological Museum of Athens.
A heroön or heroon, also latinized as heroum, is a shrine dedicated to an ancient Greek or Roman hero and used for the commemoration or cult worship of the hero. They were often erected over his or her supposed tomb or cenotaph. They were erected from the time of archaic Greece to the Augustan Roman period, and as far afield as Ai-Khanoum in Afghanistan.
Stymfalia is a village and a former municipality in Corinthia, Peloponnese, Greece. Since the 2011 local government reform, it has formed part of the municipality of Sikyona, of which it is a municipal unit. The municipal unit has an area of 205.07 km2, while its population as of 2021 was 1,898. The seat of the municipality was in Kalianoi, 41 km southwest of the town of Kiato. The municipal unit occupies a mountain valley with an average altitude of 600 metres. Mount Kyllene dominates it to the NW, rising to a height of c. 2,400 metres. The largest village is Kaisari, but the principal antiquities are just south of the modern village of Stymfalia, a hamlet of about 150 inhabitants.
In Greek mythology, Auge was the daughter of Aleus the king of Tegea in Arcadia, and the virgin priestess of Athena Alea. She was also the mother of the hero Telephus by Heracles.
The Battle of the Fetters was an engagement between the Spartans and their neighbors to the north, the Tegeans. It came about when Sparta, in search of new land, sought to conquer the people of Arcadia in the central Peloponnese. The story comes from Herodotus and he gave no date for it, except to say that it took place shortly after Lycurgus the lawgiver had reengineered Spartan society to set it on the military footing for which it was famous throughout the Archaic and Classical periods of Greek history. His rendering is short enough to quote in full:
With these changes [Lycurgan reforms], they attained good government, and after Lycurgus died, they build a shrine in his honor and worshipped him with great reverence. And as their land was fertile and their population large, they soon thrived and became a flourishing people. Indeed, they were no longer content with peace, and because they assumed that they could prove themselves superior to the Arcadians, they consulted the oracle at Delphi about all the land in Arcadia. The Pythia replied:
For Arcadia you ask me; you ask for much; I refuse to give it. Eaters of acorns, and many of them, dwell in Arcadia, and they will stop you. But not all will I grudge you; Tegea I will give you, a dance floor to tread, a beautiful plain to measure out with a line.
When these verses were reported to the Lacedaemonians, their reaction was to forgo the rest of Arcadia and march on Tegea. Overlooking the ambiguity of the oracle, they brought shackles along with them, confident that they would enslave the Tegeans. In the battle that took place, however, the Spartans were defeated, and all of them who were taken alive were made to work the plain of Tegea, measuring it out with a line and wearing the very shackles they had brought along with them. Those shackles are still, even in my day, hanging safe in Tegea, around the temple of Athena Alea.
In Greek mythology and ancient religion, Nike is the goddess who personifies victory in any field including art, music, war, and athletics. She is often portrayed in Greek art as "Winged Victory" in the motion of flight; however, she can also appear without wings as "Wingless Victory" when she is being portrayed as an attribute of another deity such as Athena.
In Greek mythology, Aleus was the king of Arcadia, eponym of Alea, and founder of the cult of Athena Alea. He was the grandson of Arcas. His daughter Auge was the mother of the hero Telephus, by Heracles. Aleus' sons Amphidamas and Cepheus, and his grandson Ancaeus were Argonauts. Ancaeus was killed by the Calydonian boar.
Gynaecothoenas, "the god feasted by women", was an epithet of the Ancient Greek war god Ares in the ancient city of Tegea in Arcadia. According to the tradition found in the account of Pausanias, during a war between the Tegeans and the Spartans, the women of Tegea defended the city from an invasion led by the Spartan king Charilaus. The women were led by Marpessa and, after arming themselves, defeated the Spartans following an ambush. Among the prisoners was the Spartan king himself. Gynaecothoenas as an epithet of Ares arose following these events; Pausanias states that it was these events that led to the new epithet and a feast of Ares in which only women partook.
Alea was an epithet of the Greek goddess Athena, prominent in Arcadian mythology, under which she was worshiped at Alea, Mantineia and Tegea. Alea was initially an independent goddess, but was eventually assimilated with Athena. A statue of Athena Alea existed on the road from Sparta to Therapne. Her most important sanctuary was the famous Temple of Athena Alea at Tegea.
In Greek mythology, Gaia, also spelled Gaea, is the personification of Earth. Gaia is the ancestral mother—sometimes parthenogenic—of all life. She is the mother of Uranus (Sky), from whose sexual union she bore the Titans, the Cyclopes, and the Giants; as well as of Pontus (Sea), from whose union she bore the primordial sea gods. Her equivalent in the Roman pantheon was Terra.
Ancient Greek literary sources claim that among the many deities worshipped by a typical Greek city-state, one consistently held unique status as founding patron and protector of the polis, its citizens, governance and territories, as evidenced by the city's founding myth, and by high levels of investment in the deity's temple and civic cult. The temple of the deity involved was usually founded on the highest ground (acropolis) within the city walls, or elsewhere within the central public assembly space, the agora. Conversely, a city's possession of a patron deity was thought to be a mark of the city's status as polis.
Dodwell, E. (1819) A Classical and Topographical Tour through Greece, during the years 1801, 1805 and 1806., 2 vols. (II; London: Thomas Davidson).
Dugas, C.(1921), 'Le sanctuaire d'Aléa Athéna à Tégée avant le IVe siècle', Bulletin de Correspondance Hellénique, 45, 335-435.
Larson, J. (2001) Greek Nymphs: Myth, Cult, Lore, Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Leger, R. (2015) Artemis and Her Cult, PhD Thesis: The University of Birmingham.
McInerney, J. (2013) "The Gods of (Con)fusion: Athena Alea, Apollo Maleatas and Athena Aphaia." Classica et Mediaevalia, 64, 49-80.
Mendel, G. (1901), 'Fouilles de Tégée: rapport sommaire sur la campagne de 1900-1901', Bulletin de Correspondance Hellénique, 25, 241-81.
Meyer, H. (1824) Geschichte der bildenden Künste bei den Griechen: von ihrem Ursprunge bis zum höchsten Flor, Dresden: Whalter.
Milchhӧfer, A. (1880), 'Untersuchungsausgrabungen in Tegea', Mitteilungen des Archäologischen Institutes in Athen, 5, 52-69, Plate II-IV.
Mostratos, G. (2019) "The Manipulation of Panhellenic and Local Myth in the Pedimental Compostions of the Century Pelonnesian Temples", in E. Koulakiotis and C. Dunn. (eds.) Political Religion in the Greco-Roman World: Discourses, Practives and Images, Cambridge Scholars Publishing: Newcastle, 225-263.
Norman, N. (1986) "Askelpios and Hygieia and the Cult Statue at Tegea", American Journal of Archaeology, 90.4, 425-430.
Østby, E. (2010) "Early Tegea, Sparta, and the Sanctuary of Athena Alea", in Being Peloponnesian, https://www.nottingham.ac.uk/csps/resources/peloponnese-2007.aspx
Østby, E. (2014a) "The Norwegian Excavation Project in the Sanctuary of Athena Alea at Tegea: An Introduction", in E. Østby (ed.). Tegea I: Investigations in the Temple of Athena Alea 1991-94, Athens: The Norwegian Institute at Athens, 1-10.
Østby, E. (2014b) "The sanctuary of Alea at Tegea in the pre-Classical period" in E. Østby (ed.). Tegea I: Investigations in the Temple of Athena Alea 1991-94, Athens: The Norwegian Institute at Athens, 10-56.
Pretzler, M. (1999) "Myth and History at Tegea - Local History and Community Identity", in T.H. Nielsen and J. Roy. (eds.) Defining Ancient Arcadia, Munksgaard: Copenhagen, 89-129.
Pretzler, M. (2008). "Tegea and its Neighbours in the Archaic Period." In Y. A.. Pikoulas (ed.), Ιστορίες για την αρχαία Αρκαδία. Athens: Stemnitsa: 145-162.
Rhomaios, K. (1909), ''Eργασίαι ἐν Τεγέα', Praktika, 303-16.
Voyatzis, M. (1999) "The Role of Temple Building in Consolidating Arkadian Communities", in T.H. Nielsen and J. Roy. (eds.) Defining Ancient Arcadia, Munksgaard: Copenhagen, 130-168.