companion to greek religion - 343
Ogden / Companion to Greek Religion 1405120541_4_020 Final Proof
page 320 16.11.2006 8:34pm
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Vinciane Pirenne-Delforge
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A fragment of Pindar (fr. 122 Snell–Maehler) – cited by Athenaeus following his mention of the 480 BC supplication – concerning the vow that Xenophon of Corinth made to the Aphrodite of his city, to bring her a hundred girls if he won the victory at Olympia. The famous passage of Strabo (C378–9) on the thousand sacred slave women controlled by the sanctuary of Aphrodite at Corinth, who helped to ruin the shipowners.
The 480 supplication
On the eve of the battle of Salamis the Greeks were in a desperate situation. In the hour of danger, the women of Corinth naturally fled for refuge to the sanctuary of Aphrodite on the Acrocorinth. Plutarch simply mentions the women ( gunaikes) praying to the goddess to inspire their husbands with the desire (eros) for combat. ¯ Athenaeus includes the supplication in a wider study of the ancient Corinthian custom (nomimon archaion) of appealing to as great a number of hetairai as possible to supplicate Aphrodite when the city was in danger: he accordingly mentions their intervention in 480 BC without breathing a word about gunaikes, and he cites the treatise On Pindar by Chameleon of Heraclea. However, the scholiast to Pindar speaks only of gunaikes, in terms close to those used by Plutarch, whilst deriving his information from Theopompus. All three texts cite the epigram composed on this occasion, but only the scholiast attributes it to Simonides, specifying that ‘‘the elegiac lines can still be seen today inscribed on the left-hand side as one enters the temple.’’ Plutarch and the scholiast construct a tight parallel between the warriors and their wives, whilst passing over the courtesans in silence. Athenaeus makes no mention of the Corinthian wives because the parallel he constructs is of another sort: the 480 supplication constitutes the counterpart at public level to the vow made by Xenophon of Corinth at private level, to which we will come. A fragment of Alexis, also preserved by Athenaeus (fr. 255 K-A ¼ Athenaeus 13.574b–c) stipulates that the free women and the courtesans each celebrated their own aphrodisia. One may, accordingly, suppose that the 480 supplication was undertaken by two groups of worshipers. Whatever the case, at no point is there mention of ‘‘sacred’’ prostitutes or courtesans.
The ‘‘fillies’’ of Xenophon of Corinth
In Athenaeus the narrative of the 480 supplication constitutes the first panel of a diptych, the second part of which is devoted to the private equivalent of this sort of ritual. Thus Xenophon of Corinth, before competing at Olympia, made the vow ‘‘to bring hetairai to the goddess should he be victorious.’’ The skolion that Pindar composed to celebrate the victor was sung at the time of the symposium in the company of hetairai. The song is addressed first to the goddess to whom ‘‘Xenophon led a herd of hundred fillies, for joy in having seen the realization of his prayers.’’ Then the poet addresses the young women: ‘‘Girls of numerous guests, servants of Peitho in wealthy Corinth, you who burn the golden-yellow drops of pale incense and whose thoughts often fly towards Aphrodite, the heavenly mother of Loves, it is to you in your blamelessness that she grants the right, my children, to garner the fruit of sweet youth on pleasant couches. . . . ’’ Athenaeus then cites another extract in which
