The festival of Demeter at Eleusis: the complexity of a festival network in the sixth and fifth centuries BC
Research concerning the ancient world has recently been influenced by theories posed in the social sciences. These theories deal with connectivity and relations between people and groups. These relations revolve around information, or more precise around the things that bind people together in a network through shared culture, language, religion, etc. It has been known for a long time that religion has played a major part in the ancient world in creating and maintaining social, economic and political ties between poleis and within poleis. Social Network Analysis (SNA) provides scholars with a means to map and illustrate these specific ties. However, there are some downsides to using SNA with the ancient world, simply because we lack certain data and because the networks created with SNA don't show hierarchies within the network, making it hard, or impossible even, to show which ties were forced upon people or city-states and which were freely made. Nevertheless, SNA is a valuable tool for researchers of the ancient world, as we can now map ties between and within city-states.
Introduction
Now, let us turn to the focus of this blog and my research: the festival of Demeter at Eleusis. The festival of Demeter (also known as the Eleusinian Mysteries) probably dates back to the 8th century, based on archaeological finds.
The mythological reason for the creation of the festival is given in the Homeric Hymns 2: to Demeter. According to this story the goddess Demeter came to Eleusis after her daughter was kidnapped by Hades. Demeter became nanny to a young boy and she grew fond of him and decided to make him immortal. This process required her to put the child in the burning hearth every evening for a week. On the last day the mother came storming in and saved her child from the flames as she thought the new nanny was trying to burn the child to death. Demeter became enraged by the accusation and the thwarting of her plan and punished the townspeople by letting their crops die. Then she forced the Eleusinians to build her a temple. After a while Zeus decided to step in and fix the problem because the people couldn't bring dedications to the gods anymore as they had no grain to give. Zeus made Hades return Persephone (although the god of the underworld concocted a plan so the lovely maiden couldn't leave the underworld permanently making sure she had to come back to him once a year). Demeter was so happy to get her daughter back that she decided to teach the people of Eleusis how to cultivate their crops better and to educate them in the mysteries of the afterlife.1 In the sixth century Eleusis officially became a deme of the Athenian polis and the festival became part of the religious calendar of the Athenians. At first the festival remained a local celebration but from the middle of the sixth century onwards the Athenians tried to make the festival Panhellenic. To see how the festival bound people together within the polis I analyzed an intra-polis festival network and to see how the Athenians created ties with other poleis through this festival I analyzed an inter-polis festival network.
1[Homer], The Homeric Hymns 2: to Demeter, 1-487.
The intra-polis festival network in the sixth century
From ancient sources we know that the festival of Demeter was very widely accessible. Men, women, slaves, free, young and old could all participate. For a couple of days all barriers between groups and classes within the polis disappeared. Before the festival started the priests and priestesses of the Sanctuary of Demeter came to Athens to perform rites and when all the participants were cleansed and properly prepared the grand procession to the temple began.1 Now we can begin to draw a network based on this information. First, we need the nodes and hubs (points in our network). The nodes are formed by the demes and the hubs are Athens and the sanctuary in Eleusis. Second, we need ties that connect all of the nodes to the hubs. In this case the roads that were created and maintained by the polis to accommodate political, economic and religious travel are the ties. A map that illustrates where the main roads were in ancient Athens was made by Sylvian Fachard and can be found in the chapter “Routes out of Attica” in the book Autopsy in Athens: Recent Archaeological Research on Athens and Attica. Third, we need the flows (people, goods or information) that traveled across these ties. In this network these flows are people who go to the festival. Drawn out our intra-polis festival network looks a bit like a radiating sun with a smaller planet next to it that's connected to the sun with one thick cord. The intra-polis festival network is a centralized network with one big centre and one smaller centre next to it. Multiple flows are tied to the big central hub (Athens) and one huge flow is tied to the second, smaller centre (Eleusis). This last big tie is the official procession that flowed across the Sacred Way, the nicest and best maintained road in ancient Athens. 1Sara M. Wijma, “Toetreden tot de Atheense gemeenschap: de deelname van metoiken aan de Atheense polis religie in de vijfde en vierde eeuw v. Chr.” (Dissertatie, Universiteit van Utrecht, 2010), 155. Nancy Evans, Civic Rites, Democracy and Religion in Ancient Athens (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2010), 118 and 129. Jan Bremmer, Initiation into the Mysteries of the Ancient World (Berlin, De Gruyter, 2014), 2-3. |
Map with leastcost paths between Athens and other ancient localities outside Attica. Made by Sylvian Fachard and taken from: Sylvian Fachard and Daniele Pirisino "Routes out of Attica," in Autopsy in Athens: Recent Archaeological Research on Athens and Attica, ed. Margaret Miles (Oxbow Books, 2015). In the second image I mapped out the intra-polis festivalnetwork on this map.
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The inter-polis festival network in the fifth century
Image 1 is a map of ancient Greece. Image 2 is the spondophoroi network. Image 3 is the reciprocity network of spondophoroi and official delegations. Image 4 is the complex inter-polis festivalnetwork with spondophoroi, official delegations and people who participated in the festival on their own.
Networks of actors
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As mentioned before, the Athenians tried to make the festival of Demeter at Eleusis a Panhellenic festival in the mid sixth century. They did so by issuing two formal decrees. One of the decrees (IG I3 6) announced a Sacred Truce (spondai) to protect travelers. People who wanted to go to the festival were promised safe passage through Hellas. The announcers of this truce were spondophoroi and were sent to different poleis across the Greek world. These people didn't only announce the truce, but also asked city-states to send official delegations to the festival and they held a speech in which they reminded everyone what great deeds the Athenians had done for the Greek world.1 The second decree was a new tax that the Athenians imposed on the members of the Delian League in 435. This First-Fruits Decree (IG I3 78) stipulated that all members of the League had to pay a yearly tribute to the Sanctuary of Demeter in grain. These two decrees could give us information about the new nodes that were added to the festival network as it seems logical that the poleis that received the spondophoroi and that had to pay tribute were the ones that sent official delegations to the festival. But here there are two problems: one, the Athenians never seem to have recorded which city-states sent delegations and two, the city-states that payed taxes seem to differ from year to year. So, we are left to sort of guess which poleis participated. It seems logical that the Ionian poleis were the ones that received an invitation to attend the festival, while they were also the ones that paid taxes since the Delian League was established to defend the Greeks against the Persians after the Persian Wars and these wars broke out because the Ionians revolted against the Persians. If we draw out the routes of the spondophoroi on a map, basing their routes on this assumption our network looks like image 2. But this is not all of the network as we need to take the official delegations that were sent in response to the invitation into account too. Then our network looks like image 3. However, there were also people that attended the festival by choice and for themselves making the network even more complicated as image 4 shows. In this complicated network we can't see actors though. Apart from the spondophoroi, the official delegations and the 'volunteers' there were also mystagogos, people that accompanied the volunteers in their preparations for the festival.2 Then there were also officials in Athens that accompanied the official delegations during these preparations (a bit like foreign ambassadors who are guided around by officials of the country they are visiting). All these different people would also be nodes in a network of actors that is part of our inter-polis festival network. However, this network would become too complicated and messy if we add not only nodes that represent poleis like in the images, but also nodes that represent people. Our ties would, then too, become complicated, because some would represent roads or water and others bonds between people. And even the flows would become jumbled, because some would be people traveling, while others would become friendship or political bonds. This is why we need to separate the inter-polis festival network in a network that resembles the intra-polis festival network and an actor network. The first is shown in the images and the second will look a bit like this in a schematic form.
The inter-polis festival network does remain a centralized network with Athens as main hub and Eleusis as smaller hub. The ties still connect to Athens first and by way of the official procession to Eleusis. Making this network appear just like the intra-polis festival network as a radiating sun, with a small planet attached to it. 1Sara M. Wijma, 155. Ian Rutherford, State pilgrims and sacred observers in ancient Greece: a study of Theôria and Theôroi (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2013), 72. Civic Rites, Democracy and Religion in Ancient Athens, 120-121. Nancy Evans, “Sanctuaries, sacrifices and the Eleusinian Mysteries,” Numen 49, no. 3 (2002): 239. 2“Sanctuaries, sacrifices and the Eleusinian Mysteries,” 240-241. Civic Rites, Democracy and Religion in Ancient Athens, 122-126. |
Conclusion
As shown above festival networks are really complex. They can be split into intra- and inter-polis networks and, then, split again into actor networks and city-state networks. They have flows that go in multiple directions, some reciprocal and some one-way. They are all centralized, although the festival network of the festival of Demeter is special because Athens is the main centre instead of the Sanctuary of Demeter at Eleusis. As said in the introduction SNA is also difficult to use on the ancient world as networks are based on assumptions and little data and because the networks can't show hierarchy. Nevertheless, we can see how a particular festival connected many people across the Greek World together for a couple of days a year, maybe resulting in bonds that lasted for a long time after that.
Credits for images
Photo in header: https://en.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:General_view_of_sanctuary_of_Demeter_and_Kore_and_the_Telesterion_(Initiation_Hall)_center_for_the_Eleusinian_Mysteries,_Eleusis_(8191841684).jpg
Painting by Leo von Klenze: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_Athens#/media/File:Akropolis_by_Leo_von_Klenze.jpg
Painting by Joseph Michael Gandy: www.clavielle.com
Map with roads: Sylvian Fachard and Daniele Pisirino, "Routes out of Attica," in Autopsy in Athens: Recent Archaeological Research on Athens and Attica, ed. Margaret Miles. Oxbow Books, 2015.
Map of ancient Greece: www.usu.edu
Painting by Leo von Klenze: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_Athens#/media/File:Akropolis_by_Leo_von_Klenze.jpg
Painting by Joseph Michael Gandy: www.clavielle.com
Map with roads: Sylvian Fachard and Daniele Pisirino, "Routes out of Attica," in Autopsy in Athens: Recent Archaeological Research on Athens and Attica, ed. Margaret Miles. Oxbow Books, 2015.
Map of ancient Greece: www.usu.edu
Bibliography
Bremmer, Jan. Initiation into the Mysteries of the Ancient World. Berlijn: De Gruyter, 2014.
Clinton, K. ‘The sanctuary of Demeter and Kore at Eleusis.’ In Greek sanctuaries; new approaches, eds. N. Marinatos en R. Hägg, 110-124. Londen: Routledge, 1993.
Evans, Nancy E. Civic Rites, Democracy and Religion in Ancient Athens. Berkeley: University of California Press, 2010.
Evans, Nancy E. “Sanctuaries, sacrifices and the Eleusinian mysteries.” Numen 49, no. 3 (2002): 227-254.
Fachard, Sylvian en Daniele Pisirino. “Routes out of Attica.” In Autopsy in Athens: Recent Archaeological Research on Athens and Attica, ed. Margaret M. Miles, 139-153. Oxbow Books, 2015.
[Homer] Homeric Hymns 2: to Demeter.
Rutherford, Ian. “Network Theory and Theoric Networks.” Mediterranean Historical Review 22, no. 1 (juni 2007): 23-37.
Rutherford, Ian. State pilgrims and sacred observers in Ancient Greece: a study of Theôriâ and Theôroi. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2013.
Van der Leeuw, Sander. “Archaeology, networks, information processing, and beyond,” in Network analysis in archaeology: new approaches to regional interaction, ed. Carl Knappett, 335-246. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2013.
Wijma, Sara M. “Toetreden tot de Atheense gemeenschap: de deelname van de metoiken aan de Atheense polis religie in de vijfde en vierde eeuw v. Chr.” Dissertatie, Universiteit van Utrecht, 2010.
Clinton, K. ‘The sanctuary of Demeter and Kore at Eleusis.’ In Greek sanctuaries; new approaches, eds. N. Marinatos en R. Hägg, 110-124. Londen: Routledge, 1993.
Evans, Nancy E. Civic Rites, Democracy and Religion in Ancient Athens. Berkeley: University of California Press, 2010.
Evans, Nancy E. “Sanctuaries, sacrifices and the Eleusinian mysteries.” Numen 49, no. 3 (2002): 227-254.
Fachard, Sylvian en Daniele Pisirino. “Routes out of Attica.” In Autopsy in Athens: Recent Archaeological Research on Athens and Attica, ed. Margaret M. Miles, 139-153. Oxbow Books, 2015.
[Homer] Homeric Hymns 2: to Demeter.
Rutherford, Ian. “Network Theory and Theoric Networks.” Mediterranean Historical Review 22, no. 1 (juni 2007): 23-37.
Rutherford, Ian. State pilgrims and sacred observers in Ancient Greece: a study of Theôriâ and Theôroi. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2013.
Van der Leeuw, Sander. “Archaeology, networks, information processing, and beyond,” in Network analysis in archaeology: new approaches to regional interaction, ed. Carl Knappett, 335-246. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2013.
Wijma, Sara M. “Toetreden tot de Atheense gemeenschap: de deelname van de metoiken aan de Atheense polis religie in de vijfde en vierde eeuw v. Chr.” Dissertatie, Universiteit van Utrecht, 2010.
Written by DMP on 03-06-2016