Heroes and Hero Cults

Heroes & hero cults: Oedipus revisited

"Heroes" = often "demigods": between gods and men
What is special about Greek heroes: cult (cf. Gilgamesh)
The worship (!) of Agamemnon (e.g.) near Mycene (and Sparta)
Mortals - graves - worship - unparalleled - Hesiod: 5 ages of man
Polytheism can become very messy with the injection of heroes
Mixing of gods: at Eleusis in the same sacred precinct Themis, Zeus Ktesios, Demeter, 7 heroes, Hestia, Athena, Hermes, Graces, Hera, Zeus (!), Poseidon, Artemis: only Pos. & Art. have their own, separate sanctuary and temple
Apollo Helios, Zeus Xenios (Zeus Boulaios, Zeus Ktesios), Aphrodite Ishtar
Zeus Agamemnon (!): local cult at Mycene

power of Zeus actualized on earth in the form of the glorious victory of his forces over the Trojans
but this merging of immortal and moral remains astonishing, and bothered ancient thinkers as well
clarity of Homer: the poet, the mythmaker makes gods and heroes separate, distinct: the gods live on Olympus (or in the sea or under the earth), the heroes walk the earth, fight the battles, pay the price of mortality.
for Homer, and the poets and thinkers generally, no god is a hero, and no hero (with 1 exception! who?) a god: an ordered world
but in local cult, Zeus Agamemnon! (known from the archaeological record): polytheism among elite vs. polytheism among the masses
multiple graves (Agamemnon in Mycene & Sparta; Orestes and the dispute between Tegea and Sparta)

singing procession :: lamentation at procession,
raised altar with fire :: pit dug in the earth,
(circle,water, silence, prayer, grain, hair, sacrificial scream: common to both kinds of sacrifice)
neck of animal victim upwards :: neck downwards,
sunrise :: evening or night

heavenly gods :: those who belong to the earth
gods are remote, heroes local, interested in purely local concerns like plagues, battles. The bond of the hero is dissolved by distance.
cf. Rabbis, Saints: miracles. But not merit, rather power counts. Divine parentage helpful, but not necessary. Example of the criminal at Temesa.

Corcyra = Phaeacians, thus cult to King Alcinous; Athens and the "bones of Theseus"
importance of family ancestors diminishes in favor of a hero or heroes common to the interests of all the citizens: worship of the hero (unlike worship of Zeus) becomes then an expression of group solidarity, identification with the locality (city)

The example of Oedipus: Oedipus at Colonus (Sophocles' last play)

Eteocles (Creon), Polynices: why do they want Oedipus?
Oedipus as servant of the state (Thebes, Creon, sons= the bad state, Athens, Theseus, the good state)
Performed where? only a year or two before the Athenian cavalry had defeated a Theban force in Colonus, & contemporaries felt that Oedipus' grave had a strong role in the victory (!)
Contrast with Antigone (another, earlier play by Sophocles), where the family rites of the dead (burial of Polynices) are opposed to the tyranny of the government authority (Creon)

Hero cults & politics: Theseus revisited

Theseus: the invention of an Athenian national hero

Directly after the great Greek (and esp. Athenian) defeat of the Persians in 480/479 B.C., Apollo's voice at Delphi instructed the Athenians to "seek the bones of Theseus" in Skyros (476 B.C.)
Theseus' repatriation as a mythological metaphor for the sudden naval supremacy of Athens. Theseus, ridding Attica of bandits & monsters :: Athens, ridding the Greek seas of foreign aggressors and pirates.
But in archaic Attica, Theseus was a minor figure:

stories of Crete & Minotaur, Ariadne;
stories of his rape of under-age girls (!): Helen, daughters of Cercyon & Sinis

classical invention: reorganizer of the ranks of society (synoecism), Panathenaic festival, fighter of bandits, etc.: a more statesmanlike image
more classical invention: Poseidon introduced as an alternative father (to Aegeus) probably around 500-490 B.C.
classical indoctrination: various festivals were inaugurated to celebrate Theseus' glorious deeds

The result: Theseus, hardly known in the sixth century, becomes one of the most popular figures on vase paintings by the end of the 5th century, and a well-known, well-loved national hero for Athens

Theseus as hero, Theseus as legend, Theseus as historical figure

Not even the hypercritical Thucydides doubted Theseus' historicity
Example: households of those descended from the "twice seven" furnished the animal victims for sacrifice at the primary festival for Theseus
And in general, Oedipus, Agamemnon, etc. were considered historical figures from the remote past, and they all had households -- powerful households in the aristocracy -- who claimed these heroes as ancestors