Herakles, Peisistratos and Eleusis

Abstract

In RA 1972, 57–72 (‘Herakles, Peisistratos and Sons’) I tried to demonstrate that the exceptional popularity of Herakles in Athenian art of the Peisistratan period was due to some degree of deliberate identification between tyrant and hero, both appearing as special protégés of the goddess Athena, and that this association was mirrored by certain changes and innovations in the iconographic tradition of Herakles as represented on Athenian, and only Athenian, works of art of those years. The most explicit association was expressed in Peisistratos' return to Athens after his second exile, in a chariot accompanied by a mock Athena (Hdt. i, 60). This episode was mirrored by or inspired a change in the usual iconography of Herakles' Introduction to Olympus by Athena, on foot, to a version in which the hero is shown with the goddess in a chariot. Taken with other evidence of Athenian interest in the hero, their priority in accepting him as a god and promotion of his worship, which can plausibly be attributed to this same time, and a number of other scenes which seemed likely to reflect some political rather than purely narrative interest, the case appeared to the writer strong, though circumstantial, and in the total absence of any indications in surviving literary sources it was not possible to judge, except in the light of common sense, which parts of the case were strongest, which better discarded.