The Leukippides
In an effort to generate more interest in the Dioskouroi devotional, I've copied a portion of Jennifer Larson's "Greek Heroine Cults" with respect to the Leukippides, the wives of the Dioskouroi (pages 64-69 of the book). This is a long entry but has a lot of information in it. Besides the Leukippides and the Dioskouroi, there are discussions and mentions the fathers (Leukippos and Tyndarius), their sons, Leda, Helen, Dionysos, the Asvins, Asklepios, and others. Worth a read.
The Dioskouroi had a very widespread cult in which they were usually worshipped without female companions. However, in the home of their cult, Lakonia, they were associated with a corresponding pair of sisters, the Leukippides. According to the myths, Leukippos and Tyndareos, the human father of Kastor and Polydeukes, were half-brothers. The daughters of Leukippos, Hilaeira and Phoibe, were betrothed to their cousins Idas and Lynkeus, but Kastor and Polydeuces stole them from the wedding feast itself. In vase paintings of the rape, the cult image of a goddess is sometimes depicted nearby, which led S. Wide to believe that the rape took place from a sanctuary of Artemis. This would be quite consistent with other folkloric stories of the rape of maidens, especially that of the Maidens at the temple of Artemis of Limnai in Messenia, which was said to be a cause of the First Messenian War. Aphareus (the father of Idas and Lynkeus) and Leukippos were said to be Messenians as well, so that the story of the rape of the Leukippides also illustrates the rivalry between Lakonia and Messenia.
The idea of twin or dual offspring is very prominent in the myths of the Lakonian family descended from Gorgophone, the daughter of Perseus. Gorgophone had two husbands, who each fathered a pair of sons: Apareus and Leukippos; Tyndareos and Ikarios. Aphareus fathered Ida and Lynkeus; Leukippos fathered Hilaeira and Phibe’ and Tyndareos’ wife, Leda, was the mother of the pairs Kastor/Polydeukes and Helen/Klytaimnestra. The importance of the dual siblings was also manifested in both cult and political organization in Lakonia. There were two royal families, descended from the twin sons of Aristodemos. The dual kings were closely associated with the Dioskouroi, who were said to accompany the kings in battle. But if one king stayed home, one of the Dioskouroi would remain with him. Thus a close connection was forged between the pre-Dorian figures of the Dioskouroi and the kings, descendants of the Herakleidai.
The progenitors of the Spartan kings, the twin sons of Aristodemos, had a pair of brides named Lathria and Anaxandra. They were daughters of King Thersander, also a descendant of the Herakleidai. It is unclear whether they were twins or merely sisters, but they lay together in a single tomb, perpetuating the pattern of double siblings honored together. It is interesting to speculate that just as the twin sons of Aristodemos and their descendants were symbolic counterparts of the Dioskouroi, their wives may have been identified with the Leukippides. This is another possible explanation of their burial as a pair. Pausanias does not mention hero tombs of Aristodemos’ sons, but they were probably the first occupants, according to legend, of the royal family tombs of the Agiads and Eurypontids.
The Leukippides are part of an old debate about whether the Dioskouroi are in origin Indo-European celestial figures. As early as 1921 Farnell was objecting to this view, but it is still orthodox because of the striking resemblances between the Dioskouroi and the Vedic brothers called the Asvins, horsemen who woo the daughter of the Sun. On this view, Helen and the Leukippides are Greek versions of the Sun-maiden, and their rape stories are parallel. Helen could not be the wife of the Dioskouroi, since she too was the daughter of Zeus, so she became their sister, whom they rescued after her abduction by Theseus. Then they stole wives of their own, Hilaeira and Phoibe, whose names certainly are suggestive of celestial bodies (Hilaeira as an epithet is sometimes attached to the moon). However, the depiction of the Dioskouroi with a star symbol is late, and their katasterism can only be traced back as far as Euripides. This is the major flaw in the theory of their Indo-European origins, but they still bear a strong resemblance to the Asvins. Helen actually has a better claim to having originally been the “daughter of the Sun” than the sisters Hilaeira and Phoibe, since she is associated with tree worship and was hatched from an egg, features shared by the Sun-maiden. Moreover, Helen’s cult is wide-spread compared with the strictly local cult of the Leukippides.
What is the nature of the relationship between the Dioskouroi and the Leukippides? Though we are dealing with much more ancient cults and a rather different context, the lesson of Asklepios and Hygieia might lead us to some of the same questions: did the Leukippides function as adjuncts to the Dioskouroi, as the Indo-European theory might lead us to believe, or did they have a separate existence?
The answer appears to be that the Leukippides, or at the very least Phoibe, once had a cult unconnected with the Tyndaridai. The Leukippides had their own temple, with two priestesses also called Leukippides. This allocation of separate cult space to heroines identified as wives is very unusual, even in the Spartan context. Helen’s temple at Therapne was shared with Menelaos, and Alexandra at Amyklai shared her space with Agamemnon. However, the cults were not entirely separate. Within the temple was a large egg tied with ribbon, which was said to be the egg of Leda (Paus. 3.16.1). This egg might be a link either to the Dioskouroi or to Helen, all of whom were supposed to have hatched from an egg. Certainly it suggests Leda herself, though the mother of the Tyndaridai has no known cult. In any case it links the Leukippides with the Tyndaridai. On an archaic relief from Sparta, the Dioskouroi face each other, and above them two snakes approach a large egg. The egg has been variously explained as a sun symbol and the usual food of the dead, as well as the symbol of the twin’s birth.
Near Therapne, where the shrine of Helen and Menelaos was located, also lay a shrine of Polydeukes and a structure called the Phoibaion (Paus. 3.20.1-2). Here the ephebes sacrificed a puppy and staged a boar-fight before their own contests of strength, decreed by Lykourgos (Paus. 3.14.8-10). The Phoibaion was almost certainly dedicated to Phoibe herself (or possibly to the sisters together), who plays a role not unlike that of Aglauros at Athens, in whose temenos the ephebes swore their oath. Within the Phoibaion was a shrine of the Dioskouroi (Paus. 3.20.2), again emphasizing the link between the Leukippides and Tyndaridai. Moreover, the proximity of the Phoibaion to the shrine of Polydeukes supports the testimony of Apollodorus (Bibl. 3.11.2) that Polydeukes’ wife was Phoibe. The Phoibaion seems to play a role in the admission of boys to the adult status of warriors, just as the shrine of Helen and Menelaos is significant for girls approaching marriage.
Apparently, the cult of the Leukippides is not closely focused upon their husbands. The following summarizes what we know about their cult:
1). The priestesses were maidens (parthenoi) who were known as “colts,” poloi. There were two of them.
2). The priestesses were associated with the shrine of Hilaeira and Phoibe and shared their name “Leukippides” with the heroines. Within their shrine were two cult images, one of which looked contemporary and one ancient. There was also the egg of Leda (Paus. 3.16.1).
3). The priestesses, in associatin with another guild of priestesses called the Dionysaides, sacrificed first to an unnamed here who had shown Dionysos the way to Sparta, then to Dionysos Kolonates himself (Paus. 3.13.7).
4). There was a temple called the Phoibaion, containing a shrine of the Dioskouroi and associated with the ephebes.
Claude Calame’s exposition of the cult emphasized the importance of the Leukippides for girls of marriageable age; their rape by the Dioskouroi represents entry into adult status, and their ambiguity as both maidens and wives is thus explained. Calame explained the connection with Dionysos as a reflection of the adult woman’s concern with the god “une divinité de la féminité adulte.” But the role of initiatory heroine for marriageable girls in Sparta is already filled much better by Helen, as Calame documents, and it is unclear why the Spartan girls would need two heroine cults of an initiatory character. Helen’s claim to be directly concerned with marriageable girls is much stronger. For instance, there is Theocritus’ wedding song for Helen (Theoc. Id. 18, esp. 43-48), and the story in Herodotus about her gift of beauty to an ugly girl, who eventually married the king (Hdt. 6.61).
Thus we cannot clearly ascertain the “function” of the Leukippides’ cult. There is no strong connection with the cult of the Dioskouroi or evidence of the hieros gamos (“sacred marriage”) imagined by Farnell. The only evidence of an initiatory character connects Phoibe or the Leukippides with young men, not women. The major cult act described by Pausanias, the sacrifice to the hero and Dionysos Kolonatas, does not reflect any known myth about the Leukippides. If there was such a myth, it was unlikely to be connected to the Dioskouroi. Finally, the maidenhood of the Leukippides’ priestesses suggests that perhaps at one time the sisters were not wives but virgins with an independent cult.
There has been speculation among scholars as to whether the celebrated Partheneion of Alcman could have some connection to the Leukippides, especially since Hesychius says that the priestesses were known as poloi. On this view, the recurrence of horse imagery in the Partheneion reflects the ritual significance of the word polos. C.M. Bowra thought that the two leaders of the chorus, Agido and Hagesichora, were the priestesses themselves, while the mysterious dawn goddess Aotis was Helen. A.F. Garvie sensibly suggested that if the chorus leaders were the priestesses of the Leukippides, they mysterious goddess for whom they sang may have been one of the Leukippides, probably Phoibe. This idea fits well with the Indo-European.solar theory about their origin, especially since Leukippos himself is sometimes identified with Helios and the dawn is often said to have “white steeds.” However, there are many competing theories about the identity of Aotis, and she may simply be what her name suggests, a dawn goddess.
The Leukippides do not have an independent cult presence outside Lakonia, though they occasionally are honored through representations in the temples of the Dioskouroi. At Argos their statues stood by the Dioskouroi in the temple, along with images of their sons Anaxis and Mnasinous. These statues were made of ebony and ivory by Dipoinos and Skyllis and must have dated to the sixth century. Thus the Dioskouroi were honored in the context of their family, just as Asklepios was, and despite the difference in relative ages of the cults, the effect on the viewer must have been similar.
The evidence suggests that concrete connections were made between two (originally separate?) cults of the Tyndaridai and the Leukippides in order to emphasize their conjugal relationship. If the Dioskouroi had their origin in Indo-European mythology, the story of the Sun-maiden probably caused the indigenous Leukippides to be identified as their wives. The egg in the shrine of Hilaeira and Phoibe and the shrine of the Dioskouroi within the Phoibaion show how the cult of the wives accommodated that of the husbands. Outside Lakonia, the Leukippides appear only as adjuncts of the Dioskouroi (their cults are analogous to those o Hygieia or Epione), and their motherhood is emphasized at Argos.
Editor, Megaloi Theoi, a devotional to the Dioskouroi.
Please consider a submission to the devotional!
E-mail: dioscuridevotional@gmail.com
More information at: http://www.neosalexandria.org/dioskouroi_devotional.htm
The Dioskouroi had a very widespread cult in which they were usually worshipped without female companions. However, in the home of their cult, Lakonia, they were associated with a corresponding pair of sisters, the Leukippides. According to the myths, Leukippos and Tyndareos, the human father of Kastor and Polydeukes, were half-brothers. The daughters of Leukippos, Hilaeira and Phoibe, were betrothed to their cousins Idas and Lynkeus, but Kastor and Polydeuces stole them from the wedding feast itself. In vase paintings of the rape, the cult image of a goddess is sometimes depicted nearby, which led S. Wide to believe that the rape took place from a sanctuary of Artemis. This would be quite consistent with other folkloric stories of the rape of maidens, especially that of the Maidens at the temple of Artemis of Limnai in Messenia, which was said to be a cause of the First Messenian War. Aphareus (the father of Idas and Lynkeus) and Leukippos were said to be Messenians as well, so that the story of the rape of the Leukippides also illustrates the rivalry between Lakonia and Messenia.
The idea of twin or dual offspring is very prominent in the myths of the Lakonian family descended from Gorgophone, the daughter of Perseus. Gorgophone had two husbands, who each fathered a pair of sons: Apareus and Leukippos; Tyndareos and Ikarios. Aphareus fathered Ida and Lynkeus; Leukippos fathered Hilaeira and Phibe’ and Tyndareos’ wife, Leda, was the mother of the pairs Kastor/Polydeukes and Helen/Klytaimnestra. The importance of the dual siblings was also manifested in both cult and political organization in Lakonia. There were two royal families, descended from the twin sons of Aristodemos. The dual kings were closely associated with the Dioskouroi, who were said to accompany the kings in battle. But if one king stayed home, one of the Dioskouroi would remain with him. Thus a close connection was forged between the pre-Dorian figures of the Dioskouroi and the kings, descendants of the Herakleidai.
The progenitors of the Spartan kings, the twin sons of Aristodemos, had a pair of brides named Lathria and Anaxandra. They were daughters of King Thersander, also a descendant of the Herakleidai. It is unclear whether they were twins or merely sisters, but they lay together in a single tomb, perpetuating the pattern of double siblings honored together. It is interesting to speculate that just as the twin sons of Aristodemos and their descendants were symbolic counterparts of the Dioskouroi, their wives may have been identified with the Leukippides. This is another possible explanation of their burial as a pair. Pausanias does not mention hero tombs of Aristodemos’ sons, but they were probably the first occupants, according to legend, of the royal family tombs of the Agiads and Eurypontids.
The Leukippides are part of an old debate about whether the Dioskouroi are in origin Indo-European celestial figures. As early as 1921 Farnell was objecting to this view, but it is still orthodox because of the striking resemblances between the Dioskouroi and the Vedic brothers called the Asvins, horsemen who woo the daughter of the Sun. On this view, Helen and the Leukippides are Greek versions of the Sun-maiden, and their rape stories are parallel. Helen could not be the wife of the Dioskouroi, since she too was the daughter of Zeus, so she became their sister, whom they rescued after her abduction by Theseus. Then they stole wives of their own, Hilaeira and Phoibe, whose names certainly are suggestive of celestial bodies (Hilaeira as an epithet is sometimes attached to the moon). However, the depiction of the Dioskouroi with a star symbol is late, and their katasterism can only be traced back as far as Euripides. This is the major flaw in the theory of their Indo-European origins, but they still bear a strong resemblance to the Asvins. Helen actually has a better claim to having originally been the “daughter of the Sun” than the sisters Hilaeira and Phoibe, since she is associated with tree worship and was hatched from an egg, features shared by the Sun-maiden. Moreover, Helen’s cult is wide-spread compared with the strictly local cult of the Leukippides.
What is the nature of the relationship between the Dioskouroi and the Leukippides? Though we are dealing with much more ancient cults and a rather different context, the lesson of Asklepios and Hygieia might lead us to some of the same questions: did the Leukippides function as adjuncts to the Dioskouroi, as the Indo-European theory might lead us to believe, or did they have a separate existence?
The answer appears to be that the Leukippides, or at the very least Phoibe, once had a cult unconnected with the Tyndaridai. The Leukippides had their own temple, with two priestesses also called Leukippides. This allocation of separate cult space to heroines identified as wives is very unusual, even in the Spartan context. Helen’s temple at Therapne was shared with Menelaos, and Alexandra at Amyklai shared her space with Agamemnon. However, the cults were not entirely separate. Within the temple was a large egg tied with ribbon, which was said to be the egg of Leda (Paus. 3.16.1). This egg might be a link either to the Dioskouroi or to Helen, all of whom were supposed to have hatched from an egg. Certainly it suggests Leda herself, though the mother of the Tyndaridai has no known cult. In any case it links the Leukippides with the Tyndaridai. On an archaic relief from Sparta, the Dioskouroi face each other, and above them two snakes approach a large egg. The egg has been variously explained as a sun symbol and the usual food of the dead, as well as the symbol of the twin’s birth.
Near Therapne, where the shrine of Helen and Menelaos was located, also lay a shrine of Polydeukes and a structure called the Phoibaion (Paus. 3.20.1-2). Here the ephebes sacrificed a puppy and staged a boar-fight before their own contests of strength, decreed by Lykourgos (Paus. 3.14.8-10). The Phoibaion was almost certainly dedicated to Phoibe herself (or possibly to the sisters together), who plays a role not unlike that of Aglauros at Athens, in whose temenos the ephebes swore their oath. Within the Phoibaion was a shrine of the Dioskouroi (Paus. 3.20.2), again emphasizing the link between the Leukippides and Tyndaridai. Moreover, the proximity of the Phoibaion to the shrine of Polydeukes supports the testimony of Apollodorus (Bibl. 3.11.2) that Polydeukes’ wife was Phoibe. The Phoibaion seems to play a role in the admission of boys to the adult status of warriors, just as the shrine of Helen and Menelaos is significant for girls approaching marriage.
Apparently, the cult of the Leukippides is not closely focused upon their husbands. The following summarizes what we know about their cult:
1). The priestesses were maidens (parthenoi) who were known as “colts,” poloi. There were two of them.
2). The priestesses were associated with the shrine of Hilaeira and Phoibe and shared their name “Leukippides” with the heroines. Within their shrine were two cult images, one of which looked contemporary and one ancient. There was also the egg of Leda (Paus. 3.16.1).
3). The priestesses, in associatin with another guild of priestesses called the Dionysaides, sacrificed first to an unnamed here who had shown Dionysos the way to Sparta, then to Dionysos Kolonates himself (Paus. 3.13.7).
4). There was a temple called the Phoibaion, containing a shrine of the Dioskouroi and associated with the ephebes.
Claude Calame’s exposition of the cult emphasized the importance of the Leukippides for girls of marriageable age; their rape by the Dioskouroi represents entry into adult status, and their ambiguity as both maidens and wives is thus explained. Calame explained the connection with Dionysos as a reflection of the adult woman’s concern with the god “une divinité de la féminité adulte.” But the role of initiatory heroine for marriageable girls in Sparta is already filled much better by Helen, as Calame documents, and it is unclear why the Spartan girls would need two heroine cults of an initiatory character. Helen’s claim to be directly concerned with marriageable girls is much stronger. For instance, there is Theocritus’ wedding song for Helen (Theoc. Id. 18, esp. 43-48), and the story in Herodotus about her gift of beauty to an ugly girl, who eventually married the king (Hdt. 6.61).
Thus we cannot clearly ascertain the “function” of the Leukippides’ cult. There is no strong connection with the cult of the Dioskouroi or evidence of the hieros gamos (“sacred marriage”) imagined by Farnell. The only evidence of an initiatory character connects Phoibe or the Leukippides with young men, not women. The major cult act described by Pausanias, the sacrifice to the hero and Dionysos Kolonatas, does not reflect any known myth about the Leukippides. If there was such a myth, it was unlikely to be connected to the Dioskouroi. Finally, the maidenhood of the Leukippides’ priestesses suggests that perhaps at one time the sisters were not wives but virgins with an independent cult.
There has been speculation among scholars as to whether the celebrated Partheneion of Alcman could have some connection to the Leukippides, especially since Hesychius says that the priestesses were known as poloi. On this view, the recurrence of horse imagery in the Partheneion reflects the ritual significance of the word polos. C.M. Bowra thought that the two leaders of the chorus, Agido and Hagesichora, were the priestesses themselves, while the mysterious dawn goddess Aotis was Helen. A.F. Garvie sensibly suggested that if the chorus leaders were the priestesses of the Leukippides, they mysterious goddess for whom they sang may have been one of the Leukippides, probably Phoibe. This idea fits well with the Indo-European.solar theory about their origin, especially since Leukippos himself is sometimes identified with Helios and the dawn is often said to have “white steeds.” However, there are many competing theories about the identity of Aotis, and she may simply be what her name suggests, a dawn goddess.
The Leukippides do not have an independent cult presence outside Lakonia, though they occasionally are honored through representations in the temples of the Dioskouroi. At Argos their statues stood by the Dioskouroi in the temple, along with images of their sons Anaxis and Mnasinous. These statues were made of ebony and ivory by Dipoinos and Skyllis and must have dated to the sixth century. Thus the Dioskouroi were honored in the context of their family, just as Asklepios was, and despite the difference in relative ages of the cults, the effect on the viewer must have been similar.
The evidence suggests that concrete connections were made between two (originally separate?) cults of the Tyndaridai and the Leukippides in order to emphasize their conjugal relationship. If the Dioskouroi had their origin in Indo-European mythology, the story of the Sun-maiden probably caused the indigenous Leukippides to be identified as their wives. The egg in the shrine of Hilaeira and Phoibe and the shrine of the Dioskouroi within the Phoibaion show how the cult of the wives accommodated that of the husbands. Outside Lakonia, the Leukippides appear only as adjuncts of the Dioskouroi (their cults are analogous to those o Hygieia or Epione), and their motherhood is emphasized at Argos.
Editor, Megaloi Theoi, a devotional to the Dioskouroi.
Please consider a submission to the devotional!
E-mail: dioscuridevotional@gmail.com
More information at: http://www.neosalexandria.org/dioskouroi_devotional.htm