고대 그리스의 헤라클레스 영웅숭배

Abstract

This article is to examine the political role of the hero cults of Heracles in Sparta, Pisistratus’ Athens, and Macedonia, and to find out its historical roots. If we try to approach the hero cult of Heracles, first of all we should distinguish it from the cult of Heracles as a god, according to Herodotus(ii.44.5): “And furthermore, those Greeks, I think, are most in the right, who have established and practise two worships of Heracles, sacrificing to one Heracles as to an immortal, and calling him the Olympian, but to the other bringing offerings as to a dead hero.” The hero cult of Heracles was to worship the man who was born of human parents, Amphitryon and Alcmene. The hero cult of Heracles in Sparta and Macedoniawas not fabricated for political purposes, but Heracles was taken for truth as the real originator of two dynasties. How about in Pisistratus’ Athens? At that time, there were many vase paintings which depicted both Athena and Heracles. Boardman tried to explain such a phenomenon: “it is in the sixth-century that we can see this anomaly being put right in Athens with the involvement of the hero in the aition for the new Lesser Mysteries, which also succeeded… in the tradition which has Athens the city that first worshipped him as a god.” It, however, is unreasonable that the tyrant worshipped Heracles the hero, the originator of Spartan royal families, as a god. According to ancient Greek writers, Heracles the hero was involved in the institution of the Lesser Mysteries in Eleusis. If Athens had been in charge of the Lesser Mysteries in the tyranny of Pistratus and his sons, it would be more reasonable to say that the vase paintings depicting both Athena and Heracles were related to the Mysteries rather than to the political ideology for Pistratus' coup d’etat. The hero cult of Herackles in the Hellenistic Age must have been Pan-Hellenistic, because the eastern Mediterranean world was dominated by the Macedonians who worshipped Heracles the hero as the progenitor of the Macedonian dynasty. But the hero cult of Heracles in the Classical time should not be regarded as Pan-Hellenic.