7 Domesticating Artemis at the margins The action of Euripides’ Iphigeneia among the Taurians is set far away from the Aegean, on the northern coast of the Black Sea.1 When Orestes arrives on a mission to fetch from this place a portable image of Artemis, a crisis is generated by the local Taurian custom requiring any stranger ar- riving on these shores to be sacrificed to Artemis. Unknown to Orestes, his sister Iphigeneia (whom he believes is dead) is living here in service to Artemis, and she is expected to officiate at her own brother’s death. This is avoided when each learns the true identity of the other, but the crisis (how to appease a goddess who demands the death of strangers) cannot be re- solved without the intervention of Athena. In a show-stopping epiphany towards the end of the play, Athena announces Athenian ritual as the so- lution, directing that Orestes install a statue of Artemis at one sanctuary of Attika (Halai) and that Iphigeneia take up service to Artemis at another (Brauron). In imitation of the Taurian rite, the sacrifice at Halai would re- quire not death but merely a show of human blood. Athena announces to Iphigeneia that, as priestess of Artemis at Brauron, she would one day have her tomb in the sanctuary “at the Brauranian steps,” where she would re- ceive the garments left behind by women who died in childbirth: . and they will dedicate as ornament for you the fine-webbed woven garments that women Copyright © 2004. University of California Press. All rights reserved. Press. All rights of California © 2004. University Copyright 1. Hall (1987) 422–38, for the geography. 198 Cole, Susan Guettel. Landscapes, Gender, and Ritual Space : The Ancient Greek Experience, University of California Press, 2004. ProQuest Ebook Central, http://ebookcentral.proquest.com/lib/washington/detail.action?docID=224760. Created from washington on 2019-01-09 15:25:31. Domesticating Artemis / 199 breathing out their last breath in childbirth leave behind in their homes.2 The Brauronian steps can be seen today, carved into the living rock—a de- tail Euripides knew his audience would recognize. Other conditions de- scribed here, however, are puzzling. For one thing, Iphigeneia’s mission to receive gifts made by those who have died has no ritual model. Death in childbirth would constitute ritual failure, an ominous occasion for making a gift in a sanctuary. Granted, Iphigeneia’s own death was a prerequisite for her achievement of heroic status, because dying is what heroes and hero- ines must do, but why here and why now? More precisely, why at this time should Athens be glorifying a Peloponnesian heroine, and why did Athens need a grave and heroine that other cities claimed? 3 Finally, why, in the penultimate decade of the fifth century,4 did Euripides talk about a xoanon (portable image) of Artemis in Attika? We know there were several statues of Artemis at Brauron, at one time even a special xoanon,5 but Pausanias denies that this particular xoanon was the one Iphigeneia had brought back from the Taurians.6 The Persians took this one back to Susa in 480.7 In fact, several cities claimed to have the “genuine” Taurian statue. Strabo locates one in the temple of Artemis at Halai,8 another in a temple of Diana at Ari- cia,9 still another in a temple of Ma in Cappadocia,10 and even reports a fourth among the people of Tyndaris in Sicily.11 For Pausanias, although he mentions a xoanon of the goddess at Hermione (where, he says, Artemis was called Iphigeneia), the wooden xoanon in the sanctuary of Artemis Or- thosia at Sparta was the only genuine article.12 2. Eur. IT 1462– 66: . ka‹ p°plvn êlgamã soi yÆsousin eÈpÆnouw Ífçw, ìw ìn guna›kew §n tÒkoiw cuxorrage›w l¤pvsÉ §n o‡koiw. 3. Namely, Megara; Paus. 1.43.1. 4. The date may be about 413 b.c.e., sometime after Sophokles’ Chryses (dated before 414) and before Euripides’ Helen (412). 5. Paus. 1.23.7. Euripides calls the statue bretas, agalma, and (once) xoanon. 6. Paus. 1.33.1. 7. Paus. 3.16.7– 8. 8. Strab. 9.1.22. Copyright © 2004. University of California Press. All rights reserved. of California © 2004. University Copyright 9. Strab. 5.3.12. 10. Strab. 12.2.3. Pausanias, 3.16.8, is aware of this tradition. 11. Graf (1979) 41 n. 4, and Pritchett (1998) 256 – 60, collect the evidence. 12. Paus. 2.35.1. Cole, Susan Guettel. Landscapes, Gender, and Ritual Space : The Ancient Greek Experience, University of California Press, 2004. ProQuest Ebook Central, http://ebookcentral.proquest.com/lib/washington/detail.action?docID=224760. Created from washington on 2019-01-09 15:25:31. 200 / Domesticating Artemis Many sanctuaries of Artemis must have had such a portable image of the goddess.13 The most powerful were treated with special respect, and some even required a place for safekeeping. For security, many temples of Artemis had an extra interior chamber,14 usually called the adyton, acces- sible only to the priestess. Adyta are found in other sanctuaries, especially those associated with oracles, mysteries, or the incubation connected with healing cults, and in such contexts they were places for special rituals re- stricted to only a few. Such chambers in temples of Artemis were different, however, in that they were not for ritual but for safe storage of sacred items. Entry was strictly controlled.15 A restricted-access chamber would have provided a secure place for an image considered dangerous in itself.16 Threatening images were kept out of sight and were brought out only rarely, under supervision and the protection of ritual.17 Artemis’s temple at Hyampolis was open only twice a year.18 The image of Artemis Eurynome at Phigalia was so hard to control that it was bound with golden chains, and her temple was opened only once a year.19 At Pellene, the xoanon of Artemis was such an object of dread when taken out on parade that no one would willingly look on it, for it could wither the fruit on a tree or stop an enemy in its tracks.20 Respect for the power and danger of an angry god encouraged myths of foreign origin that located violent divinities like Ares, Dionysos, and, in 13. At Messene, the young attendant of Artemis who carried the image (bretas) of Artemis Orthia in the ceremony was honored with a statue; IG V.1 1032; see Themelis (1994) 114 –15 for a summary, and fig. 18 for the statue base. Hierai parthenoi performed the xoanophoria for the mysteries at Andania; IG V. 1 1390.29. 14. Travlos (1976), for Brauron, Halai, and Aulis. The adyton at Mounichia is essential to the story of the sacrifice there. Hewitt (1909) 89–90 associates Artemis with adyta only when her function is exceptional. Hollinshead (1985) is critical of the Attic reconstructions of Travlos, but the pattern is well-established elsewhere. See Felsch et al. (1987) for Hyampolis, Seiler (1986) for Stymphalos, Sinn (1978) and (1981) for Kombothekra, Kuhn (1993) for Thermon, and Pernier (1931) for Kyrene. Recent work at Lousoi indicates that the early temple for Artemis had a separate chamber divided from the cella by a wall. Pottery goes back to the eighth century; Mitsopoulos-Leon (1992). 15. Hollinshead (1999), especially 196 –97, emphasizes security for valuable objects but does not even consider the possibility of danger from the objects them- selves. 16. Suggested by Graf (1985) 37 for Halai. 17. Hewitt (1909) 89–90. Copyright © 2004. University of California Press. All rights reserved. Press. All rights of California © 2004. University Copyright 18. Paus. 10.35.7. 19. Paus. 8.41.5. 20. Plut. Arat. 32; Faraone (1992) 138, for the fear aroused by these images. See Graf (1985) 81–98 for the type. Cole, Susan Guettel. Landscapes, Gender, and Ritual Space : The Ancient Greek Experience, University of California Press, 2004. ProQuest Ebook Central, http://ebookcentral.proquest.com/lib/washington/detail.action?docID=224760. Created from washington on 2019-01-09 15:25:31. Domesticating Artemis / 201 some forms, Artemis far away, at the fringes of the civilized world. Arte- mis, so often worshipped in border areas, could be explained in her most savage form only as a foreign goddess, imported from a distant and alien realm. Iphigeneia’s apprenticeship in the far north, then, is preparation for her service at Brauron. As a victim of violence who is loyal to Artemis, Iphigeneia is qualified to preside over the consequences of violent death in childbirth. Athena’s solution satisfies an angry Artemis and a needy Iphi- geneia. Both figures were called for at home in Attika, but only if they would protect as well as destroy. Euripides’ play was staged during a time of continuing crisis for the Athenians, when Brauron in eastern Attika was under the shadow of a Spartan threat. What better time for claiming the grave of a Peloponnesian heroine and appropriating a talisman of Artemis so strongly identified with Sparta? the anger of artemis Euripides presents Artemis in her savage form to illustrate that she was a divinity who had to be appeased. Her sanctuaries could be places of refuge in times of stress or conflict,21 but the protection Artemis offered her fe- male worshippers demanded loyalty in return. When rituals of Artemis excluded males, females had no protection except what the goddess herself could provide. Rural sanctuaries were vulnerable targets, whether they were located in mountain areas, the countryside,22 or where the land met the sea.