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chapter 8 Transcultural chorality Iphigenia in Tauris and Athenian imperial economics in a polytheistic world Barbara Kowalzig

1. Introduction ‘The most distinctive feature of Greek tragedy is . . . the chorus’ writes Simon Goldhill emphatically in his short introduction to the staging of Greek tragedy.1 That the chorus is something very characteristically Greek is a widespread, unspoken assumption within the discipline of Classics and beyond. As so often, this view has been conceptualised, and brought into focus, for us by the writers of the Second Sophistic. Ewen Bowie, in a recent discussion on imperial perceptions of classical chorality, calls the chorus ‘a cultural form perceived as essentially Hellenic’: ‘Choroi were perceived as an important component of being Greek, ...displayingaGreekintwo capacities that distinguished him or her from barbaroi: as an orderly and participatory member of a Greek polis, and as a worshipper of Greek gods’.2 The chorus features as an emblem of, and medium for communicating, Hellenicity, here defined firstly by civic identity, and secondly by religious practice. I shall attempt to argue quite a different case in this paper: I shall look at the chorus as mediating between cultures, and at the tragic chorus in particular as mediating between different religious traditions in the wider Mediterranean – in other words, at the tragic chorus operating in a world of interactive polytheisms. I draw attention to the plural -s in the word polytheism, for the ancient Mediterranean consists of a set of interconnected polytheistic systems, with very significant overlaps, and

This essay is slightly revised from versions delivered fully or in parts at Barcelona, Northwestern University, NYU, Brown, London and Abu-Dhabi. I am indebted to the many suggestions and ideas from these audiences. In particular, I thank Philomen Probert, Tim Rood, Ian Rutherford, Oliver Taplin and Froma Zeitlin for their comments on earlier drafts, and David Braund for his guidance on the Russian and Ukrainian bibliography. I am pursuing separately the two broader topics touched upon here, of interacting Mediterranean choralities and of religion and cross-cultural trade in antiquity, and am grateful to the editors for making possible this initial foray into both by treating them jointly here. 1 2 Goldhill 2007: 45, italics mine. Bowie 2006: 65. 178 Tr i m : 228mm × 152mm Top: 11.774 mm Gutter: 18.98 mm CUUK2183-08 CUUK2183/GagneISBN:´ 978 1 107 03328 3 January 18, 2013 10:20

Transcultural chorality 179 ultimately elusive boundaries between them. The ‘power’ of chorality lies in its ability to integrate diversity, to pool into the common dance, people and values that are not normally the same. The tragic chorus peculiarly floats between fiction and reality, past and present, myth and ritual, spectacle and audience, the local and the Panhellenic. It is in this constant mediation between discrete cultural reference systems that the special experience of Greek drama, often assimilated to ritual, lies.3 My test case for this study of the chorus in the world of transcultural religions will be Euripides’ Iphigenia in Tauris. Conventionally dated to 414 bc, the play’s mythic storyline builds up to a transfer of TaurianArtemis and her choral rites from the Crimea on the Black Sea to Attica. My central point is that this play’s chorus mediates, and ultimately integrates, discrete cultic traditions into religious hybridity, which constitutes a highly profitable, cultural middle ground in which religious imagination and contemporary economic interests of the Athenian Empire in the Black Sea converge. Recent research into the mechanisms of cross-cultural trade engages with the interdependence between the organisation of trade and cultural beliefs as a basis for a relationship of trust and obligation between business partners.4 I argue that the IT and the way it relates mythical narrative to the contemporary cultic world were central to the cognitive processes underly- ing the establishment of economic ties to the Pontos in the context of the late fifth-century Athenian empire. The play, and perhaps classical tragedy at large, played a key role in the conceptualisation of the transcultural economic encounter between Greeks and others. Local Greek song-culture such as that of the slightly earlier Pindar, Bacchylides or Simonides had an active share in social and historical processes within and between the cities of archaic and classical Greece;5 we shall see that tragedy may be understood as its imperial successor. Here, chorality operates as an integrating power not just within Greece but on a ‘global’ level and in a system of interacting polytheisms – hence ‘transcultural chorality’. Tomake this case I shall first look briefly at the associations that chorality held for the Greeks, especially in the context of other Mediterranean cul- tures (section 2); then I shall unravel how the IT’s plot construes a maritime Artemis concerned with travel, trade and the cross-cultural encounter by sea (section 3); in a further part I investigate the figure and cult of Artemis

3 For the relationship of drama and ritual see the contributions in Csapo and Miller 2007. 4 Greif 2006; refined by Trivellato 2008; both build on earlier work by Curtin 1984 and approaches of New Institutional Economics made popular by North 1990. For the concept of the ‘middle ground’ see White 1991, put to work by Malkin 2011,ch.5;indexs.v. 5 Kowalzig 2007b. Tr i m : 228mm × 152mm Top: 11.774 mm Gutter: 18.98 mm CUUK2183-08 CUUK2183/GagneISBN:´ 978 1 107 03328 3 January 18, 2013 10:20

180 Barbara Kowalzig Tauropolos in particular, proposing ‘transcultural integration’ as her spe- cial power (section 4). The final section (5) will show how Artemis’ chorus over the course of the play deploys her powers of transcultural mediation in drawing together ritual and contemporary patterns of trade with the Euxine.

2. The Greek chorus in a Mediterranean context What are the choruses’ qualities, as perceived by the Greeks? ‘Citizenship’ and ‘worshipping Greek gods’ were the two things singled out by Ewen Bowie as associated with them by writers of the Second Sophistic. It is certainly true that dancing in the chorus marked you as a citizen of a given polis; chorality and civic community were close associates, topped by civic cohesion and integration. Chorality and civilisation is another popular pair of mutual associations: we find the link from Plato’s trenchant assertion that choral training and culture of the Athenian citizen are deeply intertwined, to Polybius’ remarks about the environmental determinism of the Arkadians, who turned from rustic highlanders into an integrated society through choral education. Strikingly perhaps, Alexander the Great, among the more conspicuous enthusiasts of Greek civilisation, celebrates his triumphs in the choral voice: on his return from the East Alexander was feasting with sacrifice, procession, choral contests (kyklioi choroi)and tragedy. Or, pointedly, when re-enacting Dionysos’ mythical journey on the way to conquering India he supposedly exclaimed ‘I want victorious Greeks to dance (again) in India’. Alexander’s trip to the East is of course the reverse journey of Dionysos’ himself returning – ex oriente lux – from the East to ‘civilise’ the Greeks with his choruses; represented not only in Euripides’ Bacchae but in many other local aetiologies of Dionysiac cult: with dance comes civilisation.6 So chorality is in good company with its several civic associates – even and perhaps particularly, in transcultural contexts, for the example of Alexander already hints that it is not clear in which direction the civilising goes. The second assertion, that choral dancing ‘displays a Greek as a worship- per of’ specifically ‘Greek gods’, is much more difficult to pin down in the

6 Chorality and its civic associates: citizenship – community – cohesion – civilisation: e.g. Pl. Leg. 654a: oÉkoÓn ¾ m•n ˆpa©deutov ˆc»reutov ¡m±n ›stai, t¼n d• pepaideum”non ¬kanäv kecoreuk»ta qet”on; ‘Shall we assume that the uneducated man is without chorus-training and the educated man fully chorus-trained?’; ‘no chorus no culture’ is Goldhill’s shorthand soundbite (2007: 48). Polyb. 4.20–1: rustic Arkadian highlanders turn into civilians through choral education. Alexander the Great: Plut. Alex. 29.1–2 (cf. 67.7–8); De Alex. Fort. 1.332b. Tr i m : 228mm × 152mm Top: 11.774 mm Gutter: 18.98 mm CUUK2183-08 CUUK2183/GagneISBN:´ 978 1 107 03328 3 January 18, 2013 10:20

Transcultural chorality 181 world of polytheisms that I invoked above. For a start, the Greeks were not the only choralised ancient Mediterranean culture. Choruses were standard in ancient ritual and worship in Bronze Age and Iron Age civilisations, in Minoan and Mycenaean religion, among the Phoenicians and in Anatolia and Egypt. The Hittites, for example, known for a high degree of precision and detail in their documentary religious records, had differentiated ritu- als featuring closely circumscribed forms of choral dance. Some festivals featured multilingual rituals, in Hattic, Hittite, Luwian, suggesting that liturgical cosmopolitanism was the norm and not the exception in these multicultural societies. Iconographically, we know quite a bit about the Egyptians, for whom choreographic hieroglyphs survive.7 Though the wider world of Mediterranean chorality has barely been researched, it is still worth pointing out that the Greeks’ notion that there was something special about their civic choral culture is not entirely a construct of the Second Sophistic. In a curious, well-known passage, Herodotus, discussing the rituals for an Egyptian Dionysos, talking about phalloi and all kinds of other things familiar to the Greek religious historian, also says (Hdt. 2.48.5): TŸn d• Šllhn ˆn†gousi ¾rtŸn t DionÅs o¬ A«gÅptioi plŸn corän kat‡ taÉt‡ sced¼n p†nta íEllhsi. In other ways the Egyptian way of celebrating the festival of Dionysos is much the same as the Greek, except that the Egyptians have no choruses. Let us leave aside the full complexity of the Herodotean interpretatio Graeca for the time being. But I do not think it a coincidence that it is the choroi that distinguish the Egyptian Dionysos from the Greek. There is a notion here, on the one hand, of Dionysos as a transcultural divinity, worshipped in some form by Egyptians, Greeks and other Mediterranean peoples, and on the other, of local social structures shaping specific traits of his cult. In the Greek world choruses for Dionysos are arguably the ones most profoundly tied to matters of civic identity and community;8 and this passage suggests a perception that the civic character of Dionysos is not maintained in Egypt, or at least is not communicated through the chorus. Indeed, more generally,although there is evidence that singing and dancing were taught in Egypt, there is no sign that the Egyptians attributed an educative function to music and dance or associated them with specific moral qualities in

7 For the Hittites see e.g. Schuol 2004;Rutherford2008: 73–83; for Egyptian and Greek perceptions of the Egyptian chorus, Rutherford forthcoming. For ritual drama in Bronze Age Egypt, Anatolia and Greece see Nielsen 2002. 8 See e.g. Wilson 2000; Kowalzig and Wilson forthcoming; Goldhill 1990. Tr i m : 228mm × 152mm Top: 11.774 mm Gutter: 18.98 mm CUUK2183-08 CUUK2183/GagneISBN:´ 978 1 107 03328 3 January 18, 2013 10:20

182 Barbara Kowalzig the service of social cohesion. Rather, in Egyptian religion the performers of song-dance were specialised, professional troupes attached to temples. These were evidently not citizen-choruses, where participation defined membership of the civic community. Ancient Egypt did not have the same kind of public, notionally all-participatory song-culture that we assume for ancient Greece.9 By contrast, in Greece such professional standing choruses are few and far between (though there are more than one thinks). When they do occur, though, it tends to be in connection with sanctuaries of some ‘oriental’ colour: e.g. the chorus of Lydian korai, subject of Autokrates’ play Tympanistai, in the temple of Artemis at Ephesos – an ‘orientalising’ goddess whose cult was thought to have been set up by the Amazons. There is also the archaic chorus of the Molpoi of Apollo at Didyma, associated with ancient Lydia. The best-known such ‘standing chorus’ are of course the Deliades singing for Apollo and Artemis on the island of Delos. But the Deliades too are traditionally associated with Asia Minor and Artemis at Ephesos, though as we shall later see, the Deliades become closely linked to choral Hellenicity.10 It is these two notions, the Hellenicity of the civic or citizen chorus on the one hand, and the perceived non-Greekness of the standing, professional chorus belonging to a temple on the other, that are important for the mechanisms of what I shall call ‘transcultural chorality’ in tragedy. But such transcultural chorality does not work flatly in order to differentiate Greeks from barbarians, nor does it aim to reveal Greek superiority over non-Greeks, but rather to establish connections between cultures. In the case of the Iphigenia in Tauris these connections have a maritime character and are specifically carried by the sea. I anticipate this point here since the motif of seaborne travel of the worshipping chorus is a crucial, third factor in the process of religious integration that ‘transcultural chorality’ enables. For Greek choruses have a naturally integrative, transcultural role even just within Greece, in the context of theoria¯ , misleadingly translated as ‘pilgrimage’. Choral theoria¯ , the practice of poleis sending choruses to regional or Panhellenic cult centres, is a significant factor in Greek inter- state relations. Such travelling choruses fleshing out the links between communities and pooling them into a larger worshipping group are taken extremely seriously: specifically singled out are cases where such a mission

9 Kinney 2008;cf.n.7 and Emerit 2002. 10 Autokrates Tympanistai PCG 1 for the Lydian korai (cf. Ar. Nub. 598–600 etc., with Calame 1997: 93–4); the Molpoi: Milet.I.3133; the Deliades and Artemis on Delos, related to Artemis of Ephesos: Kowalzig 2007b: 118–24. On the social dynamics within the Deliades chorus see Nagy, this volume. Tr i m : 228mm × 152mm Top: 11.774 mm Gutter: 18.98 mm CUUK2183-08 CUUK2183/GagneISBN:´ 978 1 107 03328 3 January 18, 2013 10:20

Transcultural chorality 183 fails and hence the inter-state bonds are broken.11 The most conspicuous case of choral polis-theoria¯ is that of island delegations trekking to and from the island of Delos in the first half of the fifth century; here singing myth in choral ritual served to tie a great many island states into a sort of religious community within the larger Athenian empire. This community is entirely based on the incessant forging of a network of myth and ritual performed in song, spanning the entire Aegean; it is continuously forged and re-forged by the choruses who travel between their local sanctuaries of Apollo and Artemis to the central shrine at Delos. So, the chorus’ journeying between cult places, creating a system of relations imagined in myth and practiced in ritual, is relevant for its integrative role, linking up communities.12 All three ideas about chorality just discussed, the perceived Hellenicity of the Greek chorus, the perceived non-Greekness of the standing chorus in a sanctuary, and the image of the mobile chorus in the context of polis- theoria¯ , will be put to work in instances of transcultural chorality in the Iphigenia in Tauris.

3. Maritime Artemis and cultural differentiation in the Iphigenia in Tauris So let me now turn to the Iphigenia in Tauris itself. As hinted above, I shall broadly argue that the cross-cultural voyages of Taurian Artemis and her choral rites in which the story culminates, carrying her myths and rituals from the Pontos into the Mediterranean, open up and flesh out a novel middle ground between the Taurid and imperial Athens, of high economic potential in the later fifth century when the Iphigenia in Tauris was performed. Artemis can do this job not only because she is the choral goddess par excellence (as we know from Calame’s landmark studies onArtemisOrthiainSparta);13 but as we shall see she is also by nature transcultural and mediating between diverse social groups; this is one of her special spheres of power. In this particular play she assumes a characteristic, but neglected, role as a goddess of the sea, protecting maritime routes and those who are traveling them, sailors, especially merchants. Let me quickly survey the plot in the terms relevant for my argument. The play is set in the shrine of Artemis on the far-flung Taurian peninsula,

11 Hdt. 6.27: a theoric chorus of 100 boys from the island of Chios drowns during its journey to Delphi; Paus. 5.25.2–4: a theoric chorus of thirty-five boys drowns in the Strait of Messina on its way from Messene (Sicily) to its mother city Rhegion. See Kowalzig 2005 on the importance of choral polis-theoria¯ in inter-state relations; cf. further Rutherford 2004. 12 13 Kowalzig 2007b, ch. 2 on choral polis-theoria¯ to Delos. Calame 2001 [1977], 1997. Tr i m : 228mm × 152mm Top: 11.774 mm Gutter: 18.98 mm CUUK2183-08 CUUK2183/GagneISBN:´ 978 1 107 03328 3 January 18, 2013 10:20

184 Barbara Kowalzig

OlbiaOlbia PantikapaionPantikapaion PhanagoriaPhanagoria Theodosia Chersonesos

SinopeSinope AmisosAmisos

ByzantionByzantion HerakleiaHerakleia PPontikaontika

HalaiHalai AraphenidesAraphenides BrauronBrauron Delos

Fig. 1 The Aegean and the Black Sea.

the modern Crimea (fig. 1). This is where Artemis has dropped Iphigenia after snatching her away from Agamemnon’s sacrifice to Artemis at Aulis in the Euboian Gulf. We remember that this sacrifice was conducted with a view to obtaining opportune winds to sail the Greeks to Troy. Iphigenia – guarded by the Taurian king Thoas – tends to the ‘barbarian’ goddess, together with a group of fellow Greek parthenoi, taken into slavery (how did they actually come to the Crimea?). All attention goes to the goddess’s gourmand sacrificial demands: her preferred victims are Greek seafarers and shipwrecked Greeks. Sent by Apollo, Iphigenia’s brother Orestes arrives with his loyal cousin Pylades, hoping to return the cult image, the xoanon of Artemis, back to Greece and obtain release from the Erinyes hunting him ever since his murder of Klytemnestra. The two heroes arrive, but at the moment of their presumed sacrifice to Artemis there follows instead a touching recognition scene, and the three devise a cunning plan of escape involving a ritual by sea (leaving behind the chorus). The ploy almost fails, but quickly Athenian Athena appears ex machina and lends her protection to travel, while instructing on a set of cultic resolutions for the contemporary Attic religious landscape: Artemis is not to return to Aulis or to Argos, but to two cult sites in Attica, to Brauron with Tr i m : 228mm × 152mm Top: 11.774 mm Gutter: 18.98 mm CUUK2183-08 CUUK2183/GagneISBN:´ 978 1 107 03328 3 January 18, 2013 10:20

Transcultural chorality 185 Iphigenia as priestess and choroi in her honour, and a little further north, to Halai Araphenides. Here, to compensate for the failed human sacrifice of Orestes, at her festival a young man’s neck is cut and the altar stained with blood in Artemis’ honour, to the accompaniment of choral singing (Eur. IT 1449–69): Âtan dì %qžnav t‡v qeodmžtouv m»lv, cär»v tiv ›stin %tq©dov pr¼v –sc†toiv 1450 Âroisi, ge©twn deir†dov Karust©av, ¬er»vá &l†v nin oËm¼v ½nom†zei leÛv. –ntaÓqa teÅxav na¼n ¯drusai br”tav, –pÛnumon gv Taurikv p»nwn te sän, oÍv –xem»cqeiv peripolän kaqì ëEll†da 1455 o­stroiv ìErinÅwn. *rtemin d” nin brotoª t¼ loip¼n Ëmnžsousi Taurop»lon qe†n. n»mon te q•v t»ndìá Âtan —ort†z leÛv, tvsv sfagvŠpoinì –pisc”tw x©fov d”r pr¼v ˆndr¼v a³m† tì –xani”tw, 1460 ¾s©av ™kati qe† qì Âpwv tim‡v ›c. se dì ˆmfª semn†v, ìIfig”neia, le©makav Braurwn©av de± tde kldouce±n qeá oÕ kaª teq†y katqanoÓsa, kaª p”plwn Šgalm† soi qžsousin eÉpžnouv Ëf†v, 1465 v ‹n guna±kev –n t»koiv yucorrage±v l©pwsì –n o­koiv. t†sde dì –kp”mpein cqon¼v ëEllhn©dav guna±kav –xef©emai gnÛmhv dika©av oÌnek.ì

When you come to god-built Athens, there is a place near the borders of Attica, neighbouring the cliff of Karystos, a sacred place: my people call it Halai. There build a temple and set up the statue: it will be called after the Taurian land and your woes, the ones you suffered as you fared over Greece goaded on by the Erinyes. For all time to come mortals will sing hymns in honour of Artemis the Taurian-faring goddess. This is the custom you must establish: when the people keep the feast, to atone for your sacrifice, let them hold a sword to the neck of a man and draw blood: thus will piety be satisfied and the goddess receive honour. And you, Iphigenia, in the holy meadows of Brauron die, you will lie buried here, and they will dedicate for your delight the finely woven garments which women who die in childbirth leave behind in their homes. As for these Greek women my orders are to escort them from the country because of the uprightness of their hearts. (trans. here and elsewhere from Kovacs, sometimes adapted) Needless to say, the play is among the most-mined texts for the Athe- nians’ well-worn conceptualisations of ‘the other’. The motif of the savage goddess with the gruesome human sacrifices pervades Greek ethnography Tr i m : 228mm × 152mm Top: 11.774 mm Gutter: 18.98 mm CUUK2183-08 CUUK2183/GagneISBN:´ 978 1 107 03328 3 January 18, 2013 10:20

186 Barbara Kowalzig ever since Herodotus (4.99–103, cited below). But rather than furthering cultural differentiation, we shall see that the Greek–barbarian opposition played up in the tragedy is a cognitive strategy; the dichotomy is actu- ally productive in breaking down that same dichotomy into an interactive middle ground, where transcultural religious practice and, I maintain, eco- nomic mobility meet. In particular, we shall see that the nexus between religion and economy in the IT is resolved chorally; it is the chorus that manages to collapse the opposing cultural categories. The key to this interpretation lies in Artemis herself as she assimilates travel by sea and exploration, trade and settlement abroad in the play. Despite the central episode at Aulis, where Artemis can calm and hold off sailing winds, this feature of Artemis has barely been studied, but once one starts looking it becomes clear very quickly that her cult is full of maritime relevance.14 Significantly, much of the tragic narrative is shaped by the notion of this maritime Artemis. Throughout the play she retains her close connection to, and control of, the sea; her nautical dimension characterises choices and emphasis in the narrative and wording. The prologue dwells on the ‘terrible aploia’ sent by Artemis, causing Iphigenia’s sacrifice in the first place; her sanctuary in Tauris is high up on a cliff above the sea; her lusting after Greek seafarers is reiterated again and again. The fake purification ritual during the flight scene entails her image taking a bath in the sea. She is recurrently invoked as steering ships; notably Iphigenia calls upon her to bless their flight by sea with words of sot¯ ¯eria (‘saving’, ‘rescue’), playing on the ambiguity of the word used likewise in maritime and religious contexts (1082–8).15

å p»tni,ì ¤per mì AÉl©dov kat‡ ptuc‡v deinv ›swsav –k patrokt»nou cer»v, säs»n me kaª nÓn toÅsde tìá£t¼Lox©ou oÉk”ti broto±si di‡ sì –tžtumon st»ma. 1085 ˆllì eÉmenŸv ›kbhqi barb†rou cqon¼v –v t‡v %qžnavá kaª g‡r –nq†dì oÉ pr”pei na©ein, p†ron soi p»lin ›cein eÉda©mona.

14 But see most recently Ellinger’s popular book on Artemis, 2009: esp. 22–6; Farnell 1896–1909, 2: 428–31. Popular maritime epithets of Artemis are Euporia (‘of safe travels’), Neosoos (‘rescuer at sea’), Eunostos (‘of the safe return’), Ekbateria (‘of the disembarkment’), Limenoskopos (‘guardian of the harbour’); see RE s.v. Artemis. 15 Lines 15–16: ‘but sailing was bad (dein ˆplo©) and he did not get the right winds’; her sanctuary is by the sea or on a cliff 69–70; 1196; 1451–2 (‘Halai’); sacrifice of Greek seafarers: 39–40; 224–8; 243–4; 276–8; 1081 (cf. 53–5, 336–7, 456–66, 775–6, 1021); fake sea-rituals 1039–42; 1191–5; conveying a safe journey: 746–8; flight by sea 1289–92. Tr i m : 228mm × 152mm Top: 11.774 mm Gutter: 18.98 mm CUUK2183-08 CUUK2183/GagneISBN:´ 978 1 107 03328 3 January 18, 2013 10:20

Transcultural chorality 187 O lady who in the glens of Aulis saved me from the murderous hand of my father, save me now as well, and these men too! Otherwise it will be our fault that mortals no longer regard Loxias as true prophet. So in kindness depart from this barbarian land and go to Athens. It is not fitting that you should dwell here when you can live in a blessed city. The concept of sot¯ ¯eria pervades the play, and it would be interesting to investigate the ambiguity in greater detail, not least since many gods termed sot¯ ¯eres have a close connection to seafaring.16 Furthermore, this Artemis seems to be looking after the sot¯ ¯eria specifically of merchants. Orestes and Pylades, her future victims, are thought merchants venturing into the Black Sea for profit, ‘favoured’ by the maritime gods (422–38). At their arrival, a whole choral ode is dedicated to the nature of opportunistic sea travel, with its spirit of adventurism and the ever-driving hope for profit from the encounter with foreign territories (408–21). § çoq©oiv e«lat©nav dikr»toisi kÛpav †›pleusan –pª p»ntia kÅmata† n†ion Àchma linop»roiv aÎraiv, fil»plouton Œmillan aÎxontev mel†qroisin; f©la g‡r –lpªv †g”netì –pª pžmasi brotän† Šplhstov ˆnqrÛpoiv, Àlbou b†rov o° f”rontai pl†nhtev –pì o²dma p»leiv te barb†rouv peräntev koin d»xá gnÛma dì o³v m•n Škairov Àl- bou, to±v dì –v m”son ¤kei. Have they with plashing of pine oars on either side driven over the sea wave their ship chariot accompanied by linen-wafting breezes in eager quest of growing wealth for their houses? Hope is enticing, and for their hurt it comes insatiable to men who strive to win a weight of riches by wandering over the sea to barbarian cities, pursuing a common fancy. To some the thought of wealth proves untimely, while for others it hits the mark of moderation. Language pertaining to this ‘contest of the eager pursuit of wealth’ (fil»- plouton Œmillan, 411) subtly recurs on several occasions, when Orestes claims that there is no ‘profit’ (k”rdov, 506) in revealing his name; when

16 E.g. 679, 695, 751, 757, 765, 1005, 1022, 1062, 1067–8, 1389, 1413, 1489. Athena Soteira and Zeus Soter in the Piraeus are similarly connected with seafaring: Ar. Plut. 1178–84; on the cult see Parker 1996: 3 238–41. IG I 130.2–6 (Schlaifer) = SEG 21.37 (432/1 bc) with Garland 1987: 137–8 is sometimes thought to contain a due to be paid by the naukl¯eros.Seealson.0000 below. Tr i m : 228mm × 152mm Top: 11.774 mm Gutter: 18.98 mm CUUK2183-08 CUUK2183/GagneISBN:´ 978 1 107 03328 3 January 18, 2013 10:20

188 Barbara Kowalzig Iphigenia speaks of a symbolic ‘payment’ for the service of carrying her letter to Argos (misq»v, 593), when musing about the cržmata (‘riches’) that might drown with a shipwreck (756), or the ‘cargo of calamity’ that Orestes conveys (f»rton kakän, 1306) – but most prominently when Orestes himself is ‘trading a cargo of misfortunes’ (¾ naustolän g†r e«mì –gÜ t‡v sumfor†v, 599).17 What fortunes or misfortunes the sea can convey clearly takes a prominent part in the broader discourse of the play. The minute description of how the Greek ship eventually sets sail is also part of the play’s concern with how the sea works and how to get a grip on it (1345–57). It is significant that the herdsmen earlier, just as the chorus when musing about the identity of the two young men, evoke an array of sea-gods, all concerned with the navigation, such as the Dioskouroi, and especially, in a commercial context, Ino-Leukothea.18 It is part of this same set of cultural associations that Iphigenia keeps pointing to her failed marriage with Achilles. While this has little bearing on the plot itself, repeatedly reference is made to his dwelling on the island Leuke, the White Island in the western Pontos, from where he protects and navigates sailors and traders from all sorts of places through the Black Sea.19 Maritime language pervades the play throughout; there are many seemingly gratuitous references to the sea and the shore, which keep re-establishing the maritime setting whenever the action drifts away from the shore: the story is quickly refocused, as if to remind the audience that the sea is always close.20 The sea, how to travel it, how to control it, and how to use it to one’s advantage is without a question a central theme of the play. It is in keeping with Artemis’ power over waves and winds that through- out the play relishes in dwelling on the difficulty of sailing into the Black Sea for the Greek heroes (who, I repeat, are seen as merchants when they arrive). The sea itself is overwhelmingly represented as dark and threaten- ing, near-impossible to overcome. There are numerous references to the

17 naustol”w, the word typically (though not exclusively) used for merchant activity, describes their journey: e.g. 103, 599;cf.1487. 18 IT 270–4. 19 For the failed marriage with Achilles, see e.g. IT 24–5; 856–7;cf.Andr. 1259–62; El. 1020–3; IA 98–105. Achilles in the Black Sea, on White Island (IT 436–8;cf.Aethiopis,Procl.p.69.21–22 Bernabe;´ Alkaios fr. 354 LP ‘Achilles, lord of the Skythians’ land’; Pind. Nem. 4.49), and in the entire northwestern Pontos: Olbia, Borysthenes, Achilleos Dromos, Hylaia, Cape Hippolaos, Cape Bejkus: Hupe 2006 and e.g. Tunkina 2007 on new finds and the ‘international’ character of Achilles’ cult on the Tendra spit. On the cult of Achilles in the Black Sea see now Parker 2011: 244–6; Burgess 2009: 126–31. 20 For example, Eur. IT 7, 103; 213–16; 236–7; 260–3; note also the peculiar bathing by the herdsmen of their cattle, 260. Tr i m : 228mm × 152mm Top: 11.774 mm Gutter: 18.98 mm CUUK2183-08 CUUK2183/GagneISBN:´ 978 1 107 03328 3 January 18, 2013 10:20

Transcultural chorality 189 fatal Symplegades or Kyaneiai: two rocks sitting at the exit of the Bosporos androutinelycrushingships:sothechorusinvokes‘o...allwhodwellby the clashing rocks of the Hostile Sea’ (å p»ntou diss‡v sugcwroÅsav p”trav ˆxe©nou na©ontev, 123–5), and Orestes and Pylades explicitly feature as ‘two young men, escaping the dark Symplegades in their ship’ (241–2). We should note that these Symplegades are nowhere near the Crimea, which sits many sea miles away on the opposite shore of the Pontos – there is some telepathic geographical imaginary at work here, whereby the Symplegades are metonymic for the entirety of the dangers in the Black Sea.21 Most conspicuously, the Symplegades feature as the breaking point between Greece and the foreign land, and more dramatically, between Europe and Asia (393–406): [Co.] ku†neai kuan”av sÅnodoi qal†ssav, ¯nì o²strov †¾ pet»menov %rg»qen† Šxenon –pì o²dma diep”rasen 395 %sižtida ga±an EÉrÛpav diame©yav. t©nev potì Šra t¼n eÎudron donak»cloon lip»ntev EÉrÛtan £ çeÅmata semn‡ D©rkav ›basan ›basan Šmeikton a²an, ›nqa koÅr D© t”ggei bwmoÆv kaª perik©onav naoÆv a³ma br»teion; Dark confluences of the dark sea, where the gadfly that flew from Argos passed over the wave of the Hostile Sea to Asia’s land, leaving Europe behind: who can they be then who left the reeds and plentiful water of the Eurotas or the august streams of Dirce and came, came to the savage land where for the maiden daughter of Zeus the altars and colonnaded temples are drenched in human blood? The redundant dwelling on the rocky sailing and difficult journey into a Hostile Sea, conflated with the notion of a hostile land, intensely

21 Tricky Symplegades (or Kyaneiai), guarding the exit from the Bosporos, notoriously sinking ships: 123–5; 241–2; 260; 355; 422; 746; 886–91; 1388–91;cf.alsoEur.Med. 1264.SeeCropp2000:adloc. On the Symplegades more widely see Cropp ad 124–5; for Euripides’ ‘geography’ in this play see Hall 1987;Swift2009 has some interesting remarks on the symbolism of geography in Euripides’ escape odes. Tr i m : 228mm × 152mm Top: 11.774 mm Gutter: 18.98 mm CUUK2183-08 CUUK2183/GagneISBN:´ 978 1 107 03328 3 January 18, 2013 10:20

190 Barbara Kowalzig characterises the transcultural encounter throughout the play. In fact, the tragedy is full of references to estrangedness: there are numerous mentions to the axeinos pontos or g¯e, the ‘inhospitable sea’, ‘inhospitable land’, and no occasion is missed to point out that the Greeks who have arrived are xenoi.22 Iphigenia lives ‘as a stranger in a house that borders on the Hos- tile Sea’ (218–19: nÓn dì ˆxe©nou p»ntou xe©na dusc»rtouv o­kouv na©w); Orestes comes ‘from the Greek land to the Hostile Sea’ (340–1: Âstiv pot• íEllhnov –k gv p»nton §lqen Šxenon), the return journey is through the inhospitable straits (1388–9: Šxenon p»ron Sumplhg†dwn). A rough count of words relating to the stem xen-/xein yields over sixty occurrences, an intense acoustic exposure to patterns of estrangedness for any audi- ence. The play rejoices in the culture clash, in the mutual perception of ‘foreignness’, Greeks to the Taurians, and Taurians to the Greeks.

4. Artemis Tauropolos as a transcultural goddess It is these cultural boundaries that Euripidean Artemis eventually collapses with her choral rituals and across the sea. The play constitutes a large-scale aetiology for an instance of religious integration between the Athenians and the Taurians – which I think is ultimately geared towards a degree of economic integration in the service of Athens’ imperial economic relations to the Pontos.23 To make this case, we need to look carefully into the echoes of Artemis’ real-life cult in the play. Euripides no doubt has in mind the cult described, in slightly different terms, by Herodotus in his lengthy account of the Taurian peninsula, whose topography and social geography he conspicuously compares with those of Attica (4.99). The divinity in question is that of the Taurian Maiden, the Parthenos of Taurian Chersonesos, a central civic cult of the city (Hdt. 4.103): Of these peoples, the Taurians have the following customs. They sacrifice to Parthenos such shipwrecked folk and those of the Greeks they take by putting out to sea against them [toÅv te nauhgoÆv kaª toÆv ‹n l†bwsi ëEllžnwn –panacq”ntev]. They make the preliminary rites of the sacrifice, and then they smash the victim’s head with a club. Some say that they push the body down from the cliff (for the sanctuary is located on a cliff), and

22 For example, 94: Šgnwstov –v gn Šxenon (‘as a stranger to hostile land’), 124–5, 253: Škraiv –pª çhgm±sin ˆx”nou p»rou (‘where the surf of the Hostile Sea breaks’), 438: Achilles’ shrine is Šxeinon kat‡ p»nton and so on – the list is very long. Cf. Eur. Hypsipyle TrGF v.2,fr.752b; Medea 2, 1264. 23 I use the word ‘economic integration’ here loosely, in no way implying the technical sense of the term in economic theory, where it is often used with the meaning of market integration. Tr i m : 228mm × 152mm Top: 11.774 mm Gutter: 18.98 mm CUUK2183-08 CUUK2183/GagneISBN:´ 978 1 107 03328 3 January 18, 2013 10:20

Transcultural chorality 191 set up the head on a pole. Others agree about what is done to the head, but say that the body is not thrust from the cliff but buried in the ground. And the deity to which they sacrifice the Taurians themselves say is Iphigenia, daughter of Agamemnon. As for enemies whom they worst, this is what they do: each man cuts off his enemy’s head and takes it home, where he sets it on top of a great pole, which projects far above the roof of his house – for the most part, above the chimney. They say that these heads hang aloft there as guards of the whole house. These people live from plunder and war. (trans. Grene, modified) The cult is well attested by inscriptions from the fourth century onwards, though none of its archaeology survives. It is generally assumed that there was a Parthenos in the city itself, and an extra-urban sanctuary, located close to the sea on a cliff as in Euripides and Herodotus; a recently discovered, unidentified shrine high up on a ridge on the Taurian mountain range at 1434 m, with sight over to Chersonesos and Taurian Neapolis, has been considered a candidate, sitting at a crossing point of key trading routes between the sea and the mountainous inland.24 Ancient and modern authors tend to think of this divinity as Artemis Tauropolos, though it may be relevant that the Chersonitans themselves stuck to her name as Parthenos.25 Chersonesos (figs. 2aandb,fig.3)was probably founded by Herakleia Pontike and is a mixed Greek–non-Greek settlement, according to recent views possibly in existence from the sixth century onwards.26 Little more is known about the nature of the goddess’s rituals beyond the notorious human sacrifice. But what is known is that this cult was always engaged in cultural contact and mediation on the one hand, while sharply delineating a mixed worshipping group against outsiders on the other. Later sources, for example, tell us how vitally Parthenos protected the city against foreign intruders. In a long list of epiphanies, she regularly jumped to help in critical situations; most conspicuously, in the times

24 On the recent discovery of this ‘cliff’ sanctuary see Novichenkova 2002. A fourth-century sequence of amphorai from Thasos, Rhodes, Kos, Knidos, Herakleia Pontike, Sinope and Chersonesos has been found here, attesting the sanctuary’s broad connectivity. The identity of the divinity remains unconfirmed. For a summary see Braund 2007b: 193. 25 See e.g. Diod. Sic. 4.44–5;Paus.3.16.7–11;cf.Str.7.4.2; 5.3.12; 12.2.3;Pomp.MelaPerieg. 2.1.3;Eust. Il.Ip.395.5 van der Valk etc. For the equation, among other things through her iconography and her appearance as a huntress, see esp. Braund 2007a: 195–6, quoting a parallel cult of the Thracian city of Neapolis; for further attestations of the identification of Parthenos and Artemis see Wernicke, RE ii (1896), col. 1396, s.v. Artemis; for the Lerian Parthenos-Artemis see n. 33 below. Central reading on the cult of Taurian Parthenos includes Rusiaeva and Rusiaeva 1999,Rusiaeva1999 and Braund 2007a, all with very ample bibliography, much of which is in Russian or Ukrainian. 26 Braund 2007a: 192 and 197–8, citing Vinogradov and Zolotarev 1990a; Braund 2009, with relevant bibliography. The first literary reference in Ps.-Skylax 68 calls Chersonesos an emporion.Onthe traditional date of the 420s see Avram et al. 2004: 942. Tr i m : 228mm × 152mm Top: 11.774 mm Gutter: 18.98 mm CUUK2183-08 CUUK2183/GagneISBN:´ 978 1 107 03328 3 January 18, 2013 10:20

192 Barbara Kowalzig

Figs. 2a and b Chersonesos on the Crimea. Remains of the Roman and Byzantine City. The Greek city was on the other side of the peninsula. Tr i m : 228mm × 152mm Top: 11.774 mm Gutter: 18.98 mm CUUK2183-08 CUUK2183/GagneISBN:´ 978 1 107 03328 3 January 18, 2013 10:20

Transcultural chorality 193

Fig. 3 The ancient theatre at Chersonesos.

of Mithridates Eupator she protected the place and its mixed population against invading tribes from the north.27 If in Euripides the ancient statue of the goddess was a p”shma from the sky, tomb´ee du ciel, this was the first in a long series of epiphanies sheltering the city.28 It is important to note, then, that the goddess was apparently not an ethnically restricted goddess: Chersonesos’ Hellenistic civic oath mentions rites not to be divulged to either Greeks or barbarians – implying that both might be her regular worshippers, tied together by civic rather than ethnic denomination.29 The identification of this transcultural divinity of Chersonesos with a sort of ‘original’ Artemis Tauropolos is significant: a quick look at the many

27 2 IOSPE I , 352, 21–6 (end second century): Parthenos, the protectress of the Chersonitans (prostatousa) helps Diophantos, general of Mithridates Eupator, in defense against the Skythians and others; Diophantos later in the decree is honoured with a statue in the temple next to Parthenos herself. 28 Eur. IT 1384; 985–6. 29 2 IOSPE I , 401, ll. 1–5; 22–8 (third century). ‘I swear by Zeus, Earth, Sun, Parthenos, the Olympian gods and Olympian goddesses and the heroes who hold the city and territory and strongpoints of the Chersonitans . . . And I shall work for the people and give the best and most just counsel for the city and the citizens, and I will keep the sast¯er for the people, and I will not spread word at all of the secret rites neither to Greek nor to barbarian, which would damage the affairs of the city’ (transl. Braund 2007a). Tr i m : 228mm × 152mm Top: 11.774 mm Gutter: 18.98 mm CUUK2183-08 CUUK2183/GagneISBN:´ 978 1 107 03328 3 January 18, 2013 10:20

194 Barbara Kowalzig other attestations of an Artemis Tauropolos gives a tantalising – largely seaborne – map of contexts of ethnic diversity. Pausanias, for example, doubts the goddess’ arrival in Attica altogether and lists Kappadokians and Lydians as her owners, and also tells of Persian interest in her image (Paus. 3.16.7–8): ...ButwhywouldIphigeniahaveleftthestatueatBrauron?...Evennow the Taurian goddess has retained such a fame that Kappadokians, even those who dwell on the Euxine, claim in dispute that the statue is among them; so too do those Lydians who have the hieron of Artemis Anaitis. And the Athenians, we are told, left it to be taken as booty by the Persians! For the statue was taken from Brauron to Susa and then Seleukos gave it to the people of Laodikeia in Syria who have it in our own time. In particular, however, the goddess is widespread in coastal Asia Minor, from Pergamon to Mylasa, and on the north Aegean islands.30 Instantia- tions from a regional maritime context stand at either end of the longevity of Artemis Tauropolos’ involvement in sailing matters and her relationship to the myth of Iphigenia. Every traveller to the island of Ikaria will have come across the beautiful temple at Nas on the north-western coast, facing the Ikarian Sea, considered dangerous (fig. 4). This site has yielded mate- rials from the late seventh to the mid fifth centuries, among which a kylix fragment dated to the first half of the fifth century inscribed with the name T]AUROP[.31 At the other end of the chronological spectrum, there is a conspicuous imperial epigram of a hydrophore named Vera in honour of Artemis Skythie, whom Orestes brought to the island of Patmos.32 Taken together with nearby Leros’ patron deity Parthenos, similarly identified with Artemis – whose sanctuary was supposedly in the area of the modern village Partheni (!) – and with a (later?) cult of hers on Samos, we can

30 Phokaia: Pythokles of Samos FGrH 833 F 2=Clem. Al. Protr. 3.42.6 (mentioning human sacrifice); Ilion: IGSK 3,no.45.31 (second century); Metropolis (Phrygia) MAMA 4.121 (third century); Pergamon IvP 1.13 (263 bc); Smyrna IGSK 24.1,no.573, ll. 60, 70 (third century); Iasos IGSK 28, nos. 2 (36, 43, 49, 54); 3 (12, 23) (late fourth century); Mylasa IGSK 36,no.710 (imperial); no. 404. Theangela McCabe, Theangela 8.23 (late fourth century); note a series of ‘inland’ cults, including a fourth-century attestation at Herakleia under Latmos SEG 47.1563 (fourth century): Guldager Bilde 2003: 166–7 and n. 35 below. 31 On this cult Str. 14.1.19; Clem. Alex. Protr. 4.46.3;Arnob.Adv. Nat. 6.11 mention a wooden image. For the archaeology of the temple, in a marshy area (see figs. 2 and 3), see Papalas 1983; 1992: 27–31. Building materials date from the sixth century; potsherds from seventh and sixth century onwards; a fifth-century female statue (Polites, PAE 1939, 124–38, 148–55; 137 fig. 11d for the inscribed sherd). Cf. also SEG 42.779 no. 10. In Call. Hymns (3) 187 the cult features in a list of Artemis’ favourite places, together with her ‘port’ cult at Aulis. Perilous Ikarian Sea: Papalas 1983: 27. 32 Patmos 4; SEG 39.855 (third/fourth century ad); a re-edition of the text and discussion of the cult is offered by Grull¨ 1987.HordenandPurcell2000: 440 briefly allude to this cult in the context of navigation. Tr i m : 228mm × 152mm Top: 11.774 mm Gutter: 18.98 mm CUUK2183-08 CUUK2183/GagneISBN:´ 978 1 107 03328 3 January 18, 2013 10:20

Transcultural chorality 195

Fig. 4 The temple of Artemis Tauropolos at Nas, on the island of Ikaria.

certainly make out a role for this goddess as a protectress in sailing and navigation (fig. 5).33 Indelibly intertwined with the goddess’ power over sailing seems her role in cross-cultural mediation. To name just the most conspicuous instance, Alexander – we remember the choral enthusiast of the beginning of this chapter – legendarily invests in the cult of Artemis Tauropolos at Amphipo- lis in Thrace, to ‘unite Europe and Asia’; and furthermore picks up on the curious find at Nas by setting up for her a shrine on the island of Failaka in the Persian Gulf just off modern Kuwait on the maritime route to India, which he named Ikaros after Ikaria. A classical dedication found there is addressed to Zeus Soter (!), Poseidon and Artemis Soteira, all looking after

33 The temple of Parthenos on Leros is held to be located in the area of the ancient remains (including an ancient tower) at the bay of Partheni in the north of the island, where also an inscription referring to the sanctuary has been found: Manganaro 1963–4: 301–2;Burchner¨ 1898: esp. 14–15; Benson 1963: 16–19, with earlier bibliography. Inscriptions: Leros 1985:nos.2, 4–7; cf. Manganaro 1963–4: 306–8, no. 3.22–23 (third/second bc); 308–9 no. 4.9 (second century bc). Aetiology of the shrine: Klytos of Miletus FGrH 490 F 1= Ath. 14.655b–e; Anton. Lib. Met. 2.6;Ael.NA 4.42; 5.27;Sudas.v. Meleagrides. A Parthenos Leria is mentioned in IG xii.3 440 (Thera). Pherekydes of Leros (later to be ‘of Athens’) wrote a treatise ‘On Leros’ and one ‘On Iphigenia’ (Sud. s.v. Pherekydes). Samos: McCabe, Samos 330 (Roman). Steph. Byz. s.v. Tr i m : 228mm × 152mm Top: 11.774 mm Gutter: 18.98 mm CUUK2183-08 CUUK2183/GagneISBN:´ 978 1 107 03328 3 January 18, 2013 10:20

196 Barbara Kowalzig

Samos

ArtemisArtemis TauropolosTauropolos Artemis Tauropolos (Nas)

Ikaria ArtemisArtemis SkythieSkythie Patmos Artemis-ParthenosArtemis-Parthenos ((Partheni)Partheni) Leros

Fig. 5 Regional maritime network of cults of Artemis linked to the legend of Iphigenia: Artemis Tauropolos at Nas, Ikaria; Artemis Skythie on Patmos; Artemis-Parthenos at the modern location Partheni on Leros; there is also a cult of Artemis Tauropolos on Samos (Roman?).

travel by sea.34 Even just these few examples suggest that the precise role of Artemis Tauropolos in her many local and global, transcultural and maritime contexts definitely deserves a study to itself.35 For the moment, though, let us simply focus on the transcultural aspect of the Taurian Artemis where she promotes the integration of Greeks and

34 Amphipolis: Diod. Sic. 18.4.5 (part of Alexander’s ‘plans’); Liv. 44.44.4; Macedonian kings at this shrine: SEG 38.534, 536; 31.614–15; 33.499. Failaka/Ikaros and Artemis in the Persian Gulf: Str. 16.3.2; Arr. Anab. 7.20.3–6 (Alexander’s cult foundation); Dionys. Per. 608–11;Ael.NA 11.9. SEG 38.1547 with Roueche´ and Sherwin-White 1995: 4–6 (late fourth/early third cent. dedication to Zeus, Poseidon, Artemis); Caubet and Salles 1984:no.201,pp.96, 125, 149, figs. 44, 64 (second-century stone altar with inscription to Artemis). Cf. SEG 40.1384 (third century), a dedication to Poseidon Asphaleios, clearly also to do with sea-travel, and Roueche´ and Sherwin-White 1995: 13–29 for cults of the sot¯ ¯eres. Cults on Failaka: Gachet and Salles 1990; Connelly 1989; for a collection of testimonia see Calvet 1984. 35 Artemis Tauropolos is generally not studied in this perspective: Graf 1979; Guldager Bilde 2003; briefly Kowalzig 2006: 95–6 and nn. 69–73. Lists of her spreading cults can be found in Graf 1983: 410–15; Ehrhardt 1983: 148–55; and Guldager Bilde 2003, esp. nn. 20–4; also RE 1 (1884), p. 558 ff, s.v. Artemis (Schreiber) but none of these are complete. The goddess also had cults in mainland Greece, Italy and Sicily: Guldager Bilde 2003: 166–7; especially as Diana Nemorensis at Aricia: Str. 5.3.12. Mainland Greece: Paus. 1.23.7 Athens; 33.1 Argos; 3.16.7 Sparta; 1.43.1 Megara; 2.35.1 Hermione; 7.26.5 Aigeira in Achaia. Tr i m : 228mm × 152mm Top: 11.774 mm Gutter: 18.98 mm CUUK2183-08 CUUK2183/GagneISBN:´ 978 1 107 03328 3 January 18, 2013 10:20

Transcultural chorality 197 non-Greeks. For this squares with a much better-studied aspect of Artemis. In the by now orthodox interpretation by Jean-Pierre Vernant, Artemis has the powers to integrate the wild and civilised within the Greek city.36 This is the civic Artemis we know well, a characteristically choral deity, who drives a group of parthenoi into the wild in order to then welcome them back in a structured, civilised chorus as responsible members of the polis. Prominent examples are the rituals of Artemis Orthia at Sparta, or the ritual of the arkteia at Brauron in Attica. But, as we are beginning to see, it would be a mistake to reduce this power of hers to purely civic contexts. Indeed, Artemis-Parthenos from Chersonesos is not alone in engaging in transcultural mediation, especially in maritime contexts. It was with Artemis as h¯egemon¯e, for example, that settlers from Athens crossed the Aegean and founded cities in Ionia; and it was under the aegis of Artemis Ephesia, who had a sanctuary originally built by the Amazons, that the Phokaians travelled all the way westwards to Massilia in southern France and later to Spain. Here Ephesian Artemis along with her ‘Greek rite’ offered a suitable context of acculturation and the creation of a ‘middle ground’ between Greeks and local peoples. Tellingly, it is from one of Massilia’s apoikiai that we have one of the few choregic inscriptions in the West.37 We might conclude that to ‘know the other’ is not a polis concern alone, it is an important condition in ethnic interaction. Artemis not only unites the Greeks but also facilitates agreement with ‘barbarians’.38 In a civic context, she famously turns ‘the other’ into the familiar – put into a transcultural context, she renders the axeinos xeinos, makes the foreign familiar, the stranger a trusted guest-friend. While the broader patterns of Artemis’ powers abroad may need to be studied in greater detail, as Tauropolos in the IT she is clearly engaged precisely in the turning of the foreign into the familiar. However, rather than eliminating the Taurian cult’s ‘barbarous’ traits, these are foregrounded by making the human sacrifice part of a shared cultural reference system. This is clear from what we learn about her ‘new’ cult at the end of the play, at Halai Araphenides in Attica (1449–61). The little we know historically about this shrine still

36 Artemis and ‘the other’, integrating outside and inside, wild and civilised in the civic community of the polis: most easily accessed in Vernant 1991,chs.11–12; a central, early article on Artemis is Frontisi-Ducroux 1981. For a short summary of this view see Parker 2011: 90–1. 37 Artemis leading Ionian colonisation: e.g. Callim. Hymn 3 (Artemis) 225–7; Artemis Ephesia and the Phokaians on their way to Massilia and Spain: Str. 4.1.4–5. For Artemis Ephesia and the ‘middle ground’ in the West see Malkin 2011:ch.6, esp. 182–9; 199–204; also now Ellinger 2009:esp.ch.6. Choregic inscription: Wilson 2000: 310 speculates on a connection with Artemis. 38 Ellinger 2009,ch.6,and207. Tr i m : 228mm × 152mm Top: 11.774 mm Gutter: 18.98 mm CUUK2183-08 CUUK2183/GagneISBN:´ 978 1 107 03328 3 January 18, 2013 10:20

198 Barbara Kowalzig suggests major importance to classical Athens. The site was a ‘border cult’, at the extreme limits of Attica, as also stressed by Euripides (1450– 2). Activity at the site goes back earlier, but a temple was built there apparently in the late sixth or early fifth century (fig. 7, below). While it is unclear how much the state was involved in the organisation of the cult, it certainly attracted a clientele from throughout Attica. Euripides’ aition mentions song (1457); a fourth-century inscription lists choral contests and suggests a theatre. Archaeological finds of the area include krateriskoi just as at Brauron and Mounychia, hinting at initiation rites for the young, including choral song-dance.39 The most intriguing practice devoted to this Artemis is surely Athena’s instruction in the play (1458–61, text above): when ‘the people’ celebrate the cult, they will draw blood from a male victim’s throat in compensation for the unfulfilled sacrifice of Orestes – in supposedly choral orchestration. This is not an outright human sacrifice; yet it explicitly picks up on the practice: why? Why not just ‘Hellenise’ the rite completely, why does the memory of the Taurian custom need to be kept up? It seems that this (as perhaps also at her cult at Phokaia) is a consciously transcultural ritual mode, which allows the Athenians to draw, even to labour, the link to the goddess and customs on the Taurian peninsula. The recognition of a level of mutual acculturation in the Attic rite forges and maintains the ritual tie back to the Crimea. Artemis’ power of turning the ‘other’ into the familiar is here in the service of cross-cultural assimilation, even integration, where thegoddesscanturntheaxeinon into something xeinon, something foreign into something familiar. If the cult is to be explicitly located at the extreme limits of Attica (1450–1) this is not a marginal but a central position in the limbo of culture-contact.

5. Transcultural chorality and the routing of Pontic trade The forging of such a ritual link, I believe, stands in a much broader context, that of establishing, controlling and maintaining maritime routes into the Pontos. It appears that the cultivation of connections into the Black Sea was important within the Athenian empire during the second half of the fifth century – and particularly during the last fifteen years

39 The fourth-century Tauropolia included a pyrrich¯e; honouring of local benefactors SEG 34.103; Men. Epitrep. 27–34; 445–520; 863; 1118–20 knows of a pannychis with women’s song and dance. The most recent detailed discussions of this cult and festival is Parker 2005: 59; 241–2 and now McInerney (forthcoming), referring to a brief accurate summary of the archaeological remains at www.archetai.gr/site/content.php?artid=124. The standard account is Travlos 1988: 211–15. Tr i m : 228mm × 152mm Top: 11.774 mm Gutter: 18.98 mm CUUK2183-08 CUUK2183/GagneISBN:´ 978 1 107 03328 3 January 18, 2013 10:20

Transcultural chorality 199 of the century, when the Iphigenia in Tauris was supposedly performed. This must be seen against the background of a highly volatile maritime experience in an environment whose natural fragmentation may not have lent itself to, and even resisted the formation of, steady trade routes as they are often associated with Mediterranean high commerce.40 Myth and cult play a vital role in counteracting such an environment and creating these connections, as does Athenian tragedy in conceptualising them for an Athenian audience, and perhaps the Mediterranean world more widely. Religious links routinely played a significant, yet neglected role in economic behaviour and perhaps even transactions, creating trusted networks of communication over long distances of time and space. As we shall see, the chorus in the Iphigenia in Tauris performs the role of joining up and materialising these ties in its travel at the interface of cultic reality and tragic imagination. That the Greeks had a long-standing, economic interest in the Black Sea does not need arguing. At least in part this was related to what was going to become large-scale grain-trade from the Pontos, but for the ear- lier period until the mid to late fifth century it is not clear what was exchanged between whom and what role the grain in particular played.41 Archaic Greek settlements on the northern shore of the Black Sea were chiefly initiated by cities of Asia Minor, such as Miletus at Olbia, while Megarians had gone to Byzantium and Herakleia Pontike in the south. Athenians, though, were not so daring early on. Rather, since the seventh century and up to the mid fifth there is a persistent tradition of forging apparent trade routes through the Aegean and the Hellespont, though not beyond the fatal Symplegades.42 It is only Perikles in the early 430swho first establishes cleruchies in the Black Sea itself, at Sinope and possibly

40 For this view and the problematic concept of fixed maritime routes see Horden and Purcell 2000: 89, 90, 123 and passim, commented on by Malkin 2011: 154; 216. 41 How much grain and how regularly it started coming when to the Aegean, and to Athens in particular, continues to be a hot debate which I cannot affront here. For the sixth century see Hdt. 6.5; 26. Histiaios of Miletus capturing merchant ships from Hellespont; 7.147 Xerxes watching grain-ships going to Aigina and the Peloponnese; 4.17 Skythians cultivating grain for sale. Bresson 2007: 54 and esp. 56 argues for some Black Sea grain for Greece from at least the late sixth century, while Moreno 2007: 161–3, discussing archaeological evidence, only thinks of occasional and small shiploads and rather specialised economies along the northern Black Sea coast (both list some of the vast bibliography on the subject). A helpful, systematic survey of all literary sources on the Pontic grain trade is Braund 2007b, with Russian bibliography. Cf. Keen 2000 on the importance of the ‘Hellespontine route’ in the seventh and sixth centuries, with all earlier western bibliography. 42 Athenian tradition of establishing cleruchies and maritime ‘stations’ towards the Hellespont: seventh century: Sigeion and Elaious (Alkaios fr. 428 LP; Hdt. 5.94–5;Str.13.1.38; Diog. Laert. 1.74; Elaious: Scymn. 707–8 (‘Attic colony’); first black-figure pottery, at Berezan, Istria, Apollonia: Keen 2000: 67). Sixth century: Peisistratos and Hippias at Sigeion: Hdt. 5.94.1; at Lampsakos: Thuc. 6.59.3–4. Miltiades the Elder in the Thracian Chersonese: Hdt. 6.34–8; followed by younger Miltiades: Hdt. Tr i m : 228mm × 152mm Top: 11.774 mm Gutter: 18.98 mm CUUK2183-08 CUUK2183/GagneISBN:´ 978 1 107 03328 3 January 18, 2013 10:20

200 Barbara Kowalzig Amasis along the south coast.43 But even throughout the height of the empire, the concern seems above all with the shaping and securing of maritime connections to the cities of the Euxine. Lesbians in 428/7 bc, for example, expected ships from the Hellespont carrying grain and other supplies to be controlled by Athenians. The tribute lists of 425 bc featured over forty cities in the Pontus; Apollonia and Herakleia are reasonably securely restored, and a group of cities on the Kimmerian Bosporos seems plausible.44 Further south, phrouroi (‘watchers’) guarded the Hellespont at Kyzikos and Byzantion, and there were the famed Hellespontophylakes, both in the 420s. Athenians clearly had an eye on trade routes to, and eventually beyond, the Hellespont.45 In particular, however, the 420s seem to have been a tumultuous period of Athenian interest in the Euxine, with turmoil also surrounding Tau- ric Chersonesos. In 424/3 bc, Athenians raided the territory of its alleged mother-city, Herakleia Pontike, purportedly to exact tribute.46 Though evidence is scarce, allusions to Athens’ relations with Herakleia in con- temporary comedy suggest that this only partially successful episode was a major theme for the Athenian public. Indeed, numerous products from the Black Sea appear in comic plays such as Aristophanes’ tellingly entitled Merchant Ships, as if the Pontos was firmly part of the Athenian economic map at this time.47 The incident at Herakleia used to be linked to a peculiar

3 6.140, also at Lemnos (cf. note to IG I 948 mentions Athenian tribes); possibly Imbros: Hdt. 6.40. Chalkis on Euboia is seized by Athenians, c. 506: Hdt. 5.77.1. Early sixth century: e.g. Xanthippos at the Hellespont and Sestos in 479 bc: Hdt. 9.101; 114–18;Diod.Sic.11.37.4–5;Plut.Cim. 9.3; revolt of Byzantion in 440 bc (Thuc. 1.115.5; 117.3). Aristeides allegedly dies in the Black Sea while on public duty: Plut. Arist. 26.1. 43 Plut. Per. 20.1–2 with Braund 2005, discussing in detail the wide reach of this expedition to include cities such as Apollonia and Olbia, Pantikapaion at the Kimmerian Bosporos and even Kolchis, though see already Hind 1994: 491–3. Further cleruchies or colonies might have been Amisos and Astakos in the Propontis (Str. 12.3.14; 12.4.2). See Mattingly 1996; Tsetskhladze 1997: 461–6; Burstein 2006: 143 for the full earlier debate. 44 3 Lesbians: Thuc. 3.2. IG i 71.IV.127; 128; 164–70 for the possible Bosporan cities. Of these, Nymphaion had a Garrison: Aeschin. 3.171–2; Krateros FGrH 342 F 8 (mentioning one talent of tribute). 45 Phrouroi at Byzantium and Kyzikos before 424/3 bc, at Chalkedon 405 bc: Arist. Vesp. 235–7;Eupol. 3 PCG 247; Hellespontophylakes: IG I 61 (430–26/5 bc). 46 Thuc. 4.75–6;Iust.16.3.9–12, according to which the Athenian general Lamachos lost his fleet and made his way over land back to Chalkedon, escorted by troops from the Herakleots; see Braund’s detailed discussion (2005: 87–9). 47 Eupolis’ Cities (c. 422 bc) PCG 235 names a Simon stealing money from the Herakleots; the surrounding Mariandynoi feature in the Golden Race PCG 302. The responsible general Lamachos is prominent in Aristophanes’ earlier Acharnians (425 bc). Arist. Merchant Ships (420s bc): PCG 431 on the Mossynoikian barley-cakes; 443 names a person from Phasis in Kolchis; 424 discusses a Euathlos and his Skythian manners. See also Carusi 2008: 70–9; esp. n. 83 on the Pontic fish production and trade; Braund 2005: 90–8 on a much broader Athenian awareness and interest in the Black Sea cities suggested by tragedy and comedy. Tr i m : 228mm × 152mm Top: 11.774 mm Gutter: 18.98 mm CUUK2183-08 CUUK2183/GagneISBN:´ 978 1 107 03328 3 January 18, 2013 10:20

Transcultural chorality 201 account of Chersonesos’ supposed foundation a year or so later (c. 422/1 bc) by Herakleia Pontike together with citizens from Delos, according to an oracle, recorded by [Skymnos] 822–30: So-called Tauric Chersonesos is adjacent to this area (i.e. dromos of Achilles), a Greek city founded by the Herakleots and the Delians after the prophecy given to the Herakleots, who live on either side of the Kyaneiai, that they should found Chersonesos together with the Delians. Substantial late sixth and early fifth century archaeological layers now known at the site make it unlikely that Chersonesos first became a city as late as the 420s bc.48 But the idea of (some?) Herakleots and Delians jointly evading the Athenian grip and (re-)settling at Chersonesos need not necessarily be dismissed. The Delians, famously, at this time had been expelled from their island by imperial Athens (422 bc), while Chersonesos’ strong link to Delos in the Hellenistic period suggests a level of historicity of this founding tradition.49 The Athenians, in turn, had just renewed the great theoric festival for Apollo and Artemis on Delos (426/5 bc)and re-instituted the grand ‘Ionian’ gathering as depicted in the Homeric Hymn to Apollo, involving ‘hiera and choruses’ being sent there as part of the state-delegations dispatched on theoria¯ to Delos. This reformed choral festival was very much in the limelight during the 420s, as one instance in which the Athenian Empire exploited blurred boundaries of religious and political communities.50 What has been less noted, however, is that this festival may also have carried an economic dimension neatly tied into the Black Sea matters discussed here. I have argued elsewhere that Eupolis’ Cities,of422 bc offers an economic inter- pretation of choral polis-theoria¯ : here a chorus of individual cities appeared on stage parading the resources they contributed to the empire.51 Krati- nos’ contemporary Deliades, evidently a commentary on Athenian choral practices on Delos, mentions outdoor rituals of the Hyperboreans, those mythical people from beyond the Black Sea. Their (agricultural?) offerings to Apollo and Artemis on Delos, according to Herodotus in the 430s bc,

48 The interpretation of Vinogradov and Zoloayev 1990aandb,whosefindingsincludesomeearlyfifth- century ostraka, has now been widely accepted, but see the resistance to this recent interpretation by Saprykin 1996. 49 Cf. Marcotte 2002: 247 (with previous bibliography); that dispersed Delians would settle elsewhere is known from Thucydides (Thuc. 5.1, with Hornblower ad loc. (Adramyttium)); the Delians were restored later (Thuc. 5.32). Chersonesos’ link to Delos in the Hellenistic period: Chankowski 2008: 108. 50 Thuc. 3.104, on the renewal of the festival and Athens’ ‘choral strategies’ see Kowalzig 2007b: ch. 2, esp. 69–72; 110–18. 51 See preceding note. Tr i m : 228mm × 152mm Top: 11.774 mm Gutter: 18.98 mm CUUK2183-08 CUUK2183/GagneISBN:´ 978 1 107 03328 3 January 18, 2013 10:20

202 Barbara Kowalzig famously travelled via the Skythians on a long route south to the island, where later inscriptions actually attest the ‘reality’ of this tribute.52 From Pausanias we know that the Athenians came to fudge this journey – in the 420s? – and had the offerings travel to Athens’ cleruchy at Sinope, and further to the Attic harbour at Prasiai, before they continued into the Aegean (1.31.2). The imaginaire of Delian choral polis-theoria¯ at this time clearly had an economic profile, also, to incorporate contemporary events in the Black Sea, including the alleged settling of Chersonesos in a joint enterprise by the recently ousted Herakleots and Delians. It may or may not be coincidence that there seem to be pointed allusions to this set of circumstances in the Iphigenia in Tauris. And this is where the play’s chorus finally returns in its own right! For in two of their odes the chorus evokes the Delian festival, and in particular the choroi on the island they are longing to enjoy (1094–1105): –gÛ soi parab†llomai qrhnoÓsì Špterov Àrniv, 1095 poqoÓsì ëEll†nwn ˆg»rouv, poqoÓsì *rtemin loc©an,  par‡ KÅnqion Àcqon o«- ke± fo©nik† qì ‰brok»man d†fnan tì eÉern”a kaª 1100 glauk v qall¼n ¬er¼n –la©- av, LatoÓv Ýd±ni f©lon, l©mnan qì e¬l©ssousan Ìdwr kÅklion, ›nqa kÅknov melwi- d¼v MoÅsav qerapeÅei. 1105 I, a bird with no wings, vie with you in lamentation, longing for the Greeks’ gathering places, longing for Artemis, goddess of childbed, who dwells by the Cynthian hill, and the date palm with its tender tresses and the lovely slip of laurel and the sacred shoot of the gray-green olive, dear to Leto’s offspring, and the lake that swirls its water, in a circle, where the melodious swan renders his service to the Muses.

52 Crat. Deliades PCG; Hdt. 4.35 (cf. Call. Del.(4)) and ID 100.49; 104 (3)A8; via Sinope and Prasiai: Paus. 1.32.2. On the Hyperborean tribute see Parker 2005: 225. Tr i m : 228mm × 152mm Top: 11.774 mm Gutter: 18.98 mm CUUK2183-08 CUUK2183/GagneISBN:´ 978 1 107 03328 3 January 18, 2013 10:20

Transcultural chorality 203 This is a remarkably precise evocation of Delian religious topography and its central ritual imagery known from the paeans dancing the choral theoria¯ , re-enacting the birth of Apollo and Artemis on the slopes of Mount Kyn- thos, by the lake with the palm tree.53 Note also that Artemis only is alluded to here, not Apollo, whose birth on Delos stands at the beginning of the next choral ode.54 It is of especial consequence that the Delian festival is chosen here as the quintessential cultic arena for the ‘Hellenic gather- ings’ (ëEll†nwn ˆg»rouv, 1096–7). As mentioned, the imperial festival on Delos, especially after the reform of the Delia in 426/5 bc,wasoneofthe most conspicuous showpieces of Athenian power, where choral and impe- rial policy were inextricably intertwined. The fact alone that the chorus of Taurian Artemis projects itself here into the choruses for Apollo and Artemis on Delos hints at how highly culturally integrative ritual chorality was within Greece, exploited perhaps especially by the Athenian empire. At stake in this ode is no less than a Hellenic identity, expressed through shared choral rituals on Delos. I already hinted above that it remains unclear who Iphigenia’s fellow parthenoi attending to Taurian Artemis-Parthenos were, and how and why they got to the Crimea. I wonder whether the IT’s chorus, pining for the Hellenic dances on Delos, is not somehow resonating the Delians expelled by the Athenians in 422 bc, or is even imagined to be those Delians themselves, a subtle hint at imperial practices beautifully integrated into the mythical imagination. Without pressing this historicising tangent too far, it is clear that the chorus are women dispersed and enslaved after the Trojan War. Indeed, there is a very fine ambiguity pervading the play between them being war captives and palace slaves, and being temple attendants, temple slaves – and, ultimately, we might say a standing chorus! –, echoing the choroi attached to ‘oriental’ or orientalising shrines that I singled out above. The girls’ notion of slavery deserves more scrutiny than it can be given here, but in their first ode, for example, the word doÅla nicely elides the boundaries between being captives, household slaves and hierodouloi of the barbarian goddess (123–38): eÉfame±t,ì å p»ntou diss‡v sugcwroÅsav p”trav ˆxe©nou na©ontev. 125

53 The birth story, by allusion or full explicit narrative, with its evocation of several geographical features on Delos itself, was part of most, possibly all paeans sung at Delos: Kowalzig 2007b: 59–68. For the topography of the twin birth see also the visual tradition: LIMC s.v. Delos. 54 IT 1234–83, which after Apollo’s Delian birth moves away from the island; on this ‘dithyrambic stasimon’ see also Zeitlin 2006. Tr i m : 228mm × 152mm Top: 11.774 mm Gutter: 18.98 mm CUUK2183-08 CUUK2183/GagneISBN:´ 978 1 107 03328 3 January 18, 2013 10:20

204 Barbara Kowalzig å pa± t v LatoÓv, D©ktunnì oÉre©a, pr¼v s‡n aÉl†n, eÉstÅlwn naän crusžreiv qrigkoÅv, ¾s©av Âsion p»da parq”nion 130 kldoÅcou doÅla p”mpw, ëEll†dov eÉ©ppou pÅrgouv kaª te©ch c»rtwn tì eÉd”ndrwn –xall†xasì EÉrÛpan, 135 patr wn o­kwn ™drav. ›moloná t© n”on; t©na front©dì ›ceiv; t© me pr¼v naoÆv Šgagev Šgagev Keep holy silence all who dwell by the clashing rocks of the Hostile Sea! Daughter of Leto, Dictynna of the mountains, to your court with its lovely pillars and gilded cornice I walk in holy procession on maiden feet, servant of your holy temple warder, I who have left behind the towers and ramparts of Hellas land of lovely horses, and Europe with its fields well wooded, where stands my ancestral home. I am here: what is amiss? What worries you? Why have you brought me, brought me to the temple Similar ambiguity can be found elsewhere in the tragedy.55 In the course of the play, however, the chorus turn from the temple slave chorus into a civic chorus. This too is thematised throughout the choral odes, e.g. when the chorus dream of being freed from their slavery (doule©av, 450)and of dancing again in ‘their home and cities’, relishing the ‘shared grace of blessedness’ that only the chorus affords (453–5). Here the chorus project themselves into their civic roles. Most dramatically, the opposition and subsequent transition is played out when at the moment of Iphigenia and Orestes’ flight, it looks as if the chorus are to be left behind, and their loss of hope ever to change their destiny turns into a highly elaborate portrayal of their civic lives in their homeland. The chorus strikingly dwell on their social roles as parthenoi, as daughters of their mothers, emphasising their

55 Cf. 63, 638, 798, 1205 pr»spoloi (temple attendants); 1115–16 latreÅw ‘to be enslaved to’, or ‘to render service to a god’; 143 dmwa©. Tr i m : 228mm × 152mm Top: 11.774 mm Gutter: 18.98 mm CUUK2183-08 CUUK2183/GagneISBN:´ 978 1 107 03328 3 January 18, 2013 10:20

Transcultural chorality 205 belonging to a particular age-group, evoking the image of an ideal chorus in all its glittering beauty and luxury, as we know it most impressively from Alkman. It is to their accustomed role in the polis that they long to return (1143–52). coro±v dì –nsta©hn, Âqi kaª parq”nov eÉdok©mwn d»mwn par‡ p»dì e¬l©ssousa f©lav matr»v ¡l©kwn qi†soiv –v ‰m©llav car©twn ‰broploÅtou d• clid v e«v ›rin ½rnum”na polupo©kila f†rea kaª plok†mouv periballom”na g”nusin –sk©azon. May I take my place in the choruses where once as maiden of illustrious family near my dear mother I whirled in dance, and competing in grace with the throng of my agemates and vying with them in the luxury born of soft-living wealth I put on aveilofmanyhuesandletdownmytresses to shade my cheek. Froma Zeitlin has argued that the chorus’ next ode, the invocation of the birth of Apollo Delios and his subsequent establishment at Delphi, is a symbolic ‘rebirth’, a heralding of return to the beginning, and a vital transformation.56 It is perhaps no coincidence then that shortly after, the temple-chorus re-emerges as a real-life cultic chorus, having eventually turned into the civic chorus of Artemis Tauropolos at Halai Araphenides, as instructed in its aition (1449–61, as above). Here, after the establishment ofthetempleitself‘forallthetimewillmortalssinghymnsinhonour of Artemis Tauropolos’. As in many other Euripidean plays, here too the cultic aetiologies present the culmination of a gradual process from myth to ritual, from the narrative of the past to the practice of the present, through which, in a process similar to that attested for earlier religious song, they reconfigure the sacred landscape of Attica.57 It is at this conclusion of the play, in the cultic aetiologies and the cult foundations in the real world, that the chorus turns transcultural and its

56 Zeitlin 2006. 57 I explore cultic aetiologies of Sophoclean and Euripidean tragedy in the context of Athenian religious change during the empire in greater detail in Kowalzig 2006: 81; 95–6 on the IT. Tr i m : 228mm × 152mm Top: 11.774 mm Gutter: 18.98 mm CUUK2183-08 CUUK2183/GagneISBN:´ 978 1 107 03328 3 January 18, 2013 10:20

206 Barbara Kowalzig

Taurian Chersonesos

AmarynthosAmarynthos Aulis MegaraMegara HalaiHalai Brauron Athens-MounychiaAthens-Mounychia

Fig. 6 Cults of Artemis in Attica, the Euboian and the Saronic Gulf, in the majority linked to the legend of Iphigenia.

integrating faculties come into full effect, as it becomes a travelling chorus, journeying between Taurian Chersonesos and Halai, between slave and citizen chorus, a subliminal mediator between the cult on the Crimea and in the Attic deme. At this point the chorus floats most effectively between the telling of myth in the play and the ritual chorality at the real-life sanctuaries. It is the chorus, through its multiple mediations, who ultimately manages to tie the ‘Artemis’ amongst the Taurians firmly into a network of myths and rituals spanning the northern Aegean and the Black Sea. At this point, too, we see the productivity of the pervading image of Artemis as a goddess patrolling maritime communications and control- ling shipping lanes throughout the play. For the cult foundation at Halai Araphenides seems to have played a role in making Artemis guarantee the route to the Black Sea, which became especially significant in the later stages of the Peloponnesian War. Artemis of Halai Araphenides is one of a string, or rather a network, of cults of Artemis located around the Saronic and particularly the Euboian Gulf, including Megara, Mounychia, Tr i m : 228mm × 152mm Top: 11.774 mm Gutter: 18.98 mm CUUK2183-08 CUUK2183/GagneISBN:´ 978 1 107 03328 3 January 18, 2013 10:20

Transcultural chorality 207

Fig. 7 View of the tip of Euboia, where Karystos was located, from the shrine of Artemis Tauropolos at Halai Araphenides.

Myrrhinous, Brauron, Halai Araphenides, Aulis, Amarynthos on Euboia (fig. 6). All these cults of Artemis were coastal, and in one way or another mythologically tied into the myth of Iphigenia.58 The Iphigenia in Tauris is usually dated to around 414–412 bc,though only on formal grounds. It may or may not be relevant that much of the Peloponnesian War after the Sicilian expedition was fought around the Hellespont and revolved around access to the Black Sea. That access must have been vital for among other things, but not necessarily exclusively, the grain-supply when not only the Western Mediterranean ceased to be a reliable resource but also other allies, such as Euboia, seceded. It has repeatedly been argued that with the Spartans in 410 blocking Dekeleia and the land-route to Euboia, Attica’s northern ports suddenly became very important.59 Intriguingly, Euripides specifically says that the cult at Halai should be founded ‘neighbouring the cliff of Karystos’ (1451;fig.7), as if

58 Brule´ 1987: 186–95 for a discussion of these cults. 59 E.g. Braund 2007b: 51–2, though it is also clear from Xen. Hell. 1.1.35 – Agis watching from Dekeleia merchants coming into the Piraeus – that the Piraeus continued to be a major hub. For Spartan control of the Hellespont as a way to evict Athens: Hell. 2.1.17;cf.5.1.28–9; for strategies of blocking the Piraeus and make Athens starve: 2.2.9; 11; 16. Tr i m : 228mm × 152mm Top: 11.774 mm Gutter: 18.98 mm CUUK2183-08 CUUK2183/GagneISBN:´ 978 1 107 03328 3 January 18, 2013 10:20

208 Barbara Kowalzig emphasising the importance of the crossing at this stage. Karystos on the southern tip of Euboia, of course, is the site of an Athenian cleruchy along the so-called ‘grain route’ to the Hellespont going from Karystos to Skyros, Lemnos, Imbros, and all the way up to the Bosporos. An intensification and elaboration of the cluster of connections in the Euboian Gulf, and the fos- tering of the route to the Hellespont and beyond, could well be profitable – for both Athenians and the unusual Dorian-Taurian community of Cher- sonesos who, one might think, in light of the 420s turmoil sketched above, had not necessarily belonged to the immediate Athenian Pontic orbit previ- ously. We know that later Chersonesos was known for its prolific stretches of agricultural land. It is often remarked upon that individuals of Herakleia Pontike, Chersonesos’ supposed mother city, were active carrying grain in late classical Athens.60 Broadly speaking, then, what seems to be forged with this unlikely branching out into the Crimea is a ‘small world’ – a term from network analysis that here designates a tight network of interrelated cults with their interrelated myths, whose efficacy and intensity is determined by the strength of their links and not the geographical distance of their participat- ing members. This is one of many examples where the Athenian empire strategically forged these ‘small worlds’, and it seems an important means of familiarising the unfamiliar in a two-directional way, making the foreign accessible but also giving the foreign access to themselves, exploiting and diffusing myths and cults as systems of knowledge and information in times of need. It is in this context, perhaps, that we can begin to understand the prominence of a maritime Artemis Tauropolos and her transcultural chorus both in the play and in the cultic and economic realities of the Athenian empire: this is a divinity forging a network of relations between Attica, the Euboian Gulf and the Euxine, in keeping with the Athenian tradition of working maritime routes up into the Hellespont; hence the many allusions to seafaring and travel in the play. The astonishing degree of economic language, and the musing about the fate of the seaborne merchant briefly alluded to above, supports this interpretation. It is of particular interest that ‘maritime routes’ seem to be so central to the processes analysed here: the decentralised world of the Corrupting Sea, with its multiplicity of possible alternatives offered by opportunities and risks of a precarious

60 2 Braund 2007b: 53, with bibliography; Herakleots honoured at Athens: IG II 408;cf.Tracy1995, 34. Tr i m : 228mm × 152mm Top: 11.774 mm Gutter: 18.98 mm CUUK2183-08 CUUK2183/GagneISBN:´ 978 1 107 03328 3 January 18, 2013 10:20

Transcultural chorality 209 environment, must be seen in constant interaction with the continuous attempt at structuring those journeys.61 On a broader level, we may have here an intriguing example of how the flexible nature of ancient polytheisms allows for the creation of cultural networks and the organisation of knowledge that are intimately intertwined with forging patterns of cross-cultural trade. The forging of religious ties and the ritualisation of economic relations are cultural mechanisms sup- porting trust, credibility and reliable social bonds lasting across time and space in a precarious Mediterranean ecology. The assimilation of foreign rites and the creation of a transcultural religious imaginary suggest a critical role for religion in the ‘transnational economic encounter’ in a world of interacting polytheisms of the ancient world. Euripides’ tragedy, it seems, offers fascinating insights into how this process might have been conceptualised in imperial Athens; it delivers the story through which religious and economic imaginary can converge, as if cultivating the cognitive foundations for trusting and lasting bonds – it is perhaps not least due to the tragic process that for the Athenians the axeinos pontos eventually turned euxeinos. The language of xenia,so very prominent in the play, leads in the same direction: contrary to what is usually thought, the Greek institution of xenia may not, or not only, be operative in an aristocratic not-for-profit exchange, but quite possibly constitute a cultural framework of trusted relations within which much larger, commercial exchanges may have been conducted.62 The chorus plays a crucial, intermediary role in the way it joins notions of both Greek and non-Greek choralities, and collapses cultural dichotomies and boundaries. How tragic choroi map out and conceptualise economic relations between Athenian and the rest of the Greek or non-Greek Mediter- ranean in the early fifth century can be seen in the case of early dramatic performances in Sicily.63 It would be interesting to examine two further contemporary Euripidean plays of the later fifth century, such as the Helen or the Phoenissae, in the same joint cultural and economic perspective; these strikingly have similarly ‘foreign’, partly travelling choruses stationed in areas central to Athenian economic concerns. As we have seen, in the case of the Iphigenia, we have observed that several overlapping associa- tions are operative for the chorus to perform this function: its dancing for 61 See n. 40 above. 62 I tentatively argue this point in Kowalzig 2010, but a full study is outstanding. Herman’s key work on xenia (1986) argues for an explicitly non-mercantile character. Note that at IT 1205 Iphigenia evokes Greece as not trustworthy (pist¼n ëEll‡v o²den oÉd”n) in her negotiations over Orestes and Pylades in her faked preoccupation for Thoas. 63 Kowalzig 2008. Tr i m : 228mm × 152mm Top: 11.774 mm Gutter: 18.98 mm CUUK2183-08 CUUK2183/GagneISBN:´ 978 1 107 03328 3 January 18, 2013 10:20

210 Barbara Kowalzig Artemis, who notoriously integrates the other and the self; its meander- ing between slave and civic, between barbarian and Greek, and not least the traditionally integrating role of the travelling, theoric chorus, bringing different religious worlds together in their dance. All these amount to the tragedy as one big choros, a large-scale aetiology, mediating the transcultural economic encounter. The chorus can do what it does because of its conno- tations with Hellenicity (the civic, the freeborn etc.); but the Hellenicity it produces is a cultural hybrid comprising the religious imaginary of the entire Mediterranean, including the Black Sea.