Between justice, fertility, and the Underworld: problems with the chthonians revisited^*

The Olympian versus Chthonian dichotomy is a pervasive paradigm for approaching Greek gods, and since the nineteenth century it has provided a model for scholarly understanding of Greek perception of the divine.¹ Three main strands have become important in this debate: (1) a dualistic, almost Manichean, view of the divine,² nowadays mostly contested,³ since even though the idea of the polarity of the divine is still present in modern scholarship, it does not appear in relation to the development of Greek religious practices;⁴ (2) distinct sacrificial practices and rituals, the natures of which are still debated;⁵ and (3) creation of an overarching category of ‘chthonians’, assigned to some deities regardless of whether they were labelled as such by the ancients.⁶ The application of this label is an arbitrary scholarly choice: it is true that the ‘category’ existed,⁷ but given the ambiguity of contexts, it is hard to say which deities were considered by the ancients as ‘chthonians’ and where, and, as Robert Parker put it, ‘there is little profit in applying the label “chthonian” where the ancients did not’.⁸ Indeed, the distinction between Olympian and Chthonian categories of the divine was not clear-cut, and some ‘chthonians’ were even worshipped occasionally as ‘Olympians’, as the evidence demonstrates.⁹ Thus, chthonios cannot be a rigid category, assigned by default to those with ‘displeasing names’ (δυσχερεστέρας τὰς ἐπωνυμίας ἔχοντας), to borrow Isocrates’ ambiguous phrase;¹⁰ it rather constitutes a specification of the divine sphere of activity.

In this context, it seems necessary to examine the category of chthonians in full in order to understand the profile of the divinities so labelled,¹¹ especially given the fact that among eighty attestations of chthonios in extant Greek literature from Homer to Apollonius Rhodius, forty-three apply to the divine; in inscriptions chthonios occurs fifty-four times and it is exclusively used as an epithet of gods.¹² In what follows, I first look at the contexts and semantics of chthonios and examine the nuances of its meaning, and the range of its usage, in order to understand in the second part of this chapter the reasons for its application to deities. To my knowledge, this is the first attempt to collect and systematically analyze the testimonies related to chthonios. My contention is that the deities with the epithet chthonios are not only closely connected to earth, as the meaning of chthonios indicates, but also linked through her to concepts of fertility and justice, as well as to the Underworld.

1. CHTHONIOS IN CONTEXT(S)

Etymologically, chthonios (χθόνιος) derives from a very old name of the earth itself, Chthon (χθών), retained in most Indo-European languages; its basic meaning is ‘belonging to (the) earth’.¹³ Dictionaries further specify this meaning as ‘the Underworld, indigenous’.¹⁴ A thorough analysis of the contexts, however, proves that these nuances render the basic idea of ‘belonging to or being part of (the) earth’.

‘Belonging to (the) earth’ can be nuanced as follows: (1) ‘born from (the) earth’, given that it (a) displays genealogical characteristics: of the Titanes,¹⁵ the race of Erechtheus,¹⁶ Echion and his race (Pentheus),¹⁷ the children of Inachos,¹⁸ Typhon,¹⁹ Gorgon,²⁰ snakes,²¹ and mountains;²² and that it (b) indicates a place of origin of natural phenomena, such as tornados²³ and thunder.²⁴ These phenomena are labelled as chthonian because they either ‘originate’ in the earth, like a tornado, or cause the earth to resound with ‘chthonian rumbling’,²⁵ like thunder. The earth is the source in both these cases—of the tornado, and of rumbling as a product of thunder.²⁶ Similarly, the ‘chthonian sound of bronze’ in Euripides’ Helen seems to refer to the sound with which earth resonates.²⁷

Further nuance of (1a) can be possibly seen in ‘indigenous’, a meaning applied to chthonios by the Greek–English Lexicon in four passages.²⁸ Chantraine limited this meaning to the passages of Sophocles, unfortunately, without any further explanation.²⁹ We have just seen that in the passage from Sophocles’ Ajax, the ‘chthonian race of Erechtheus’ points to their genealogy as those ‘born from the earth’ (1a)—thus chthonios can be rendered as ‘indigenous to the soil of Athens’.

A passage from Sophocles’ Oedipus at Colonus, however, complicates the ascription of the meaning ‘indigenous’ to chthonios. Kreon tells Oedipus that those who wander as a result of some sinful past—patricides, impure men, and those in whose company are found children of unholy marriages—are not welcome in Athens. ‘I know’, he says, ‘that such is the wise Rock of Ares to them, which is chthonian, that it would not allow such wanderers to live together in this city.’³⁰ A translation of chthonios as ‘native’ or ‘indigenous’, or more literally as ‘earth-born’, in this context is again not impossible, given that mythologically mountains were born from the Earth³¹ and rocks were considered to be her bones;³² but it seems that again the meaning of chthonios may be more nuanced.

First of all, as Kreon says, the Areopagus guards the citizens from pollution, which is also confirmed by the crimes in which the court of the Areopagus specialized. As listed by Demosthenes and Aristotle, they can be gathered under the category of capital crimes, including homicide.³³ The court of the Areopagus also protected the city’s ‘secret deposits or tombs’, which were believed to keep the city safe.³⁴ Furthermore, Pausanias states that those acquitted in the Areopagus sacrificed by the statues of Plouton, Hermes, and Earth (Ge) in the sanctuary of the Semnai Theai,³⁵ which was located on the north-eastern slope of the Areopagus, probably in a rocky fracture (no remains of this precinct have yet been identified).³⁶ And finally, in Sophocles’ Oedipus at Colonus the Semnai Theai are rendered as Eumenides and the ‘dread goddesses’, ‘daughters of Earth and Darkness’ (ἔμφοβοι | θεαί σφ’ ἔχουσι, Γῆς τε καὶ Σκότου κόραι).³⁷ All these deities display strong connections to the world of the dead. Therefore, the meaning of chthonios must bear more solemn connotations than just ‘native’ in this case, perhaps rendering the reverent fear about which Athena speaks in Aeschylus’ Eumenides.³⁸ We will come back to this point as well as to the remaining two passages in which chthonios refers exclusively to deities.³⁹ It is important to notice at this point that chthonios is never used to indicate people as indigenous inhabitants of a given place. This meaning is always rendered by autochthōn in Greek.⁴⁰

The basic meaning of chthonios, ‘belonging to (the) earth’, encompasses a second nuance: (2) ‘being part of (the) earth’, which can be understood either (a) literally, as something that is rooted in the earth⁴¹ or belongs to Earth, the goddess;⁴² or (b) metaphorically, as characteristic of Earth, the goddess, for instance her wrath.⁴³ The passages in which chthonios refers to the Underworld should be seen as belonging to (2a),⁴⁴ given the conceptual co-extensiveness of the earth and the Underworld.⁴⁵ The Underworld element further nuanced the meaning of chthonios by lending it its own properties, as some contexts suggest. For example, one of the surviving fragments of Alcman’s poetry mentions a ‘chthonian prodigy (teras)’.⁴⁶ The Suda explains that this phrase refers to Eris, and that some people interpret chthonios in this case as ‘hateful’ (stygnos), others as ‘great’ (mega).⁴⁷Eris could be interpreted here as either a goddess or as abstract strife: the lack of context prevents a firm identification. Eris in Hesiod’s Theogony is called stygerē (‘hateful’, ‘frightful’),⁴⁸ and she is the last daughter of the terrifying offspring of Night.⁴⁹ Although, in his Works and Days, Hesiod tells Perses that there are two Erides on earth, the good and the bad one,⁵⁰ given that in the Iliad Eris, sent by Zeus, is carrying a sign of war,⁵¹ and Achilles wishes that Eris may perish from among gods and mortals,⁵² and given Hesiod’s ‘didactic’ motivation,⁵³ it is more probable that in Alcman’s case we are dealing with Eris that is stygerē, ‘hateful’ or ‘frightful’; chthonios, thus, probably means stygnos here.

This is the meaning which chthonios acquired through metonymy, that is through acquisition of the characteristics of the Underworld, which is ‘hateful’ to mortals and immortals alike.⁵⁴ The same Suda entry which gives Alcman’s fragment also explains the meaning of chthonios in a passage from Plato’s Republic as ‘dark’ (skoteinē),⁵⁵ obviously referring to the darkness of the Underworld.⁵⁶ According to the myth of Er, a person who lived a philosophic life will experience the journey to the ‘afterlife’ and back again as heavenly (ourania, that is lampra or ‘bright’, according to the Suda) and ‘smooth’ (leia), whereas for a person who lived a non-philosophic life such a journey will be dark (chthonia, meaning skoteinē here, according to the Suda) and ‘rough’ or ‘harsh’ (tracheia).⁵⁷ One of the unattributed tragic fragments mentions chthonian lōbē (‘outrage’, or ‘dishonour’). Hesychius explains this phrase as ‘great’ (megalē) hybris,⁵⁸ thus rendering chthonios as something ‘terrible’ and ‘grave’.

Chthonios displays further metonymic features. Anacreon says that he carried himself in a chthonian fashion,⁵⁹ and in another fragment we read that he hates people who have chthonian and ‘difficult’ (chalepos) dispositions.⁶⁰ Given that chthonios characterizes here a disposition, it could metonymically mean ‘grim’, ‘gloomy’, or even ‘sullen’, as Hades is generally described as smile-less and immersed in wailing.⁶¹ It could also mean ‘silent’, as death ‘robs of voice’,⁶² but this is less probable.⁶³ As we have seen, the wrath of the Earth is also labelled as chthonian in Euripides’ Iphigenia in Tauris,⁶⁴ and it is possible that chthonios could mean both in this context: the ‘earthly’ wrath (the goddess is not mentioned by name in the play, but referred to as thea) and the ‘great’, ‘awesome’, ‘frightful’ wrath. I would suggest the latter, as chthonios’ metonymic features seem to align with emotions, dispositions, and immaterial characteristics.

The meaning of chthonios, therefore, covers many aspects of what we can label as ‘belonging to’ and/or ‘being part of’ (the) earth, understood both as the ground and the divine. The transitions between the nuances of the meaning are fluid, and in some cases chthonios eludes specific interpretation. Thus, the chthonian Areopagus is both ‘earth-born’ as a rock and ‘reverend’/‘awe-inspiring’ because of its function/role and the deities associated with it. The chthonian wrath of Earth can be interpreted as both ‘earthly’ (because it is her emotion, ‘born out of/produced by her’) and ‘terrifying’ (because it is a negative emotion). ‘Earth-born’ can occasionally, depending on context, connote ‘indigenous’, but it does not constitute a specialized, separate, and discrete meaning; chthonios, after all, does not indicate any particular place, but generally ‘what is in the earth’. Most importantly, chthonios is never used in this sense in reference to human beings. A particular revelation is, however, the meaning which chthonios acquired through the absorption of characteristics of the Underworld, when denoting abstract concepts such as emotional states, dispositions (e.g. fear and awe). This draws attention to the semantic capacity of chthonios; it comes as no surprise that it was almost a purely poetic word. In the next section, I examine the semantic range of chthonios when applied to deities, exploring how many of the traits indicated by literary sources are discernible in the cult environment, and whether the meaning of chthonios can be helpful in understanding and defining cult characteristics of chthonian deities.

2. CHTHONIOS AND THE DIVINE

Chthonios occurs forty-three times in literary sources as a divine epithet,⁶⁵ especially of Hades,⁶⁶ Demeter,⁶⁷ Erinyes,⁶⁸ Arai,⁶⁹ Zeus,⁷⁰ Hermes,⁷¹ Hekate,⁷² Brimo (Hekate),⁷³ Deo (Demeter),⁷⁴theos (sc. Hades),⁷⁵theai/kourai (sc. Demeter and Kore-Persephone),⁷⁶ gods of the Underworld,⁷⁷ rulers of the Underworld (sc. Hades and Persephone),⁷⁸theai (Libyan heroines),⁷⁹ and daimones (the Underworld deities).⁸⁰ In inscriptions, the fifty-four instances all refer to a deity.⁸¹ The main context of the epigraphic examples is funerary (epitaphs and curse tablets): Hermes Chthonios,⁸² Hekate Chthonia,⁸³chthonioi theoi,⁸⁴ Demeter Chthonia,⁸⁵ Persephone as Chthonian Queen and Kore Chthonia,⁸⁶chthonioi, over whom Persephone rules.⁸⁷ Ge Chthonia⁸⁸ and Zeus Chthonios⁸⁹ are the only deities who do not feature in funerary contexts in extant inscriptions. There are not many deities labelled as chthonioi in archaic and classical Greece, and the same divine figures occur in both literary and epigraphic sources. All these gods belong to a category directly connected to earth, with a prevailing emphasis on the Underworld. Let us now turn to the functions and cult contexts of the deities labelled as chthonioi and their conceptual links to earth.

It has been suggested that in the case of the Libyan heroines in the Argonautica, chthonios should render their nativeness,⁹⁰ but there are good reasons to think that their connection to earth might have been more nuanced, as we shall see. Apollonius Rhodius uses chthonios to denote beings which appear to Jason in the Libyan desert, and who refer to themselves as ‘solitary […] chthonian goddesses with human voice, heroines who are protectors and daughters of Libya’ (οἰοπόλοι […] χθόνιαι θεαὶ αὐδήεσσαι | ἡρῶσσαι Λιβύης τιμήοροι ἠδὲ θύγατρες);⁹¹ they are also referred to as ‘chthonian nymphs or maidens’, daimones and ‘famous goddesses haunting the wilds’ (χθονίαι νύμφαι, δαίμονες, and ἐρημονόμοι κυδραὶ θεαί).⁹² The phrase ‘protectors and daughters of Libya’ indicates typical features of a hero cult.⁹³ ‘Goddesses haunting the wilds’, however, suits nymphs more than heroes.⁹⁴Daimones could be understood in many ways, sometimes even as equivalents to theoi,⁹⁵ but as protectors of humans, daimones appear explicitly only in Hesiod.⁹⁶

Libyan heroines seem to be quite well-known divine beings, with a cult attested at least from the Hellenistic period; Apollonius Rhodius may be referring to them in the passage in question.⁹⁷ Since nymphai can be understood here in its primary meaning as ‘maidens’,⁹⁸ it is difficult to assess whether these beings received cult as heroized mortal women, or as goddesses, or as nymphs.⁹⁹ But it is quite possible that chthonios has a double meaning in this case: as daughters of Libya, and as her heroines, these chthoniai theai could be understood both as ‘native goddesses’, in the sense of being born from the soil of Libya, and as goddesses connected to the soil of Libya.¹⁰⁰ An epigram by Nicaenetus, however, reveals that the Libyan heroines received a first-fruit sacrifice (ἱερὰ ταῦτα δράγματα) accompanied by pale-green wreaths made of straw tithed from winnowing (χλωροὺς ἐκ καλάμης στεφάνους, | ἅσσ’ ἀπὸ λικμητοῦ δεκατεύεται), which indicates their agricultural role.¹⁰¹ This is confirmed by an inscription on an altar from Thera,¹⁰² which mentions heroines (if Wilamowitz’s supplementation is correct) as bringers of the new harvest, and asks them to accomplish even greater things in Thera. Given that the Therans were the first Greeks to colonize Libya,¹⁰³ it seems possible that the heroines mentioned in the inscription are the Libyan ones in question. If this is true, the connection of the Libyan heroines to harvest modifies the meaning of chthonios. Their connection to the soil is very specific: it is agricultural.

The ‘indigenous’ meaning of chthonios is ascribed by scholars¹⁰⁴ to a passage from Euripides’ Hecuba.¹⁰⁵ The titular protagonist prays to the chthonioi theoi to spare her son Polydoros (already dead), whose ghost in the prologue says that he ‘begged from those who rule below (chthonioi theoi) to allow him to fall into his mother’s hands and to obtain the grave (or burial)’.¹⁰⁶ It is doubtful that any indigenous heroes are involved here; such permission is sought from the gods of the Underworld, Hades and Persephone.

Among the other deities labelled as chthonian, Hermes Chthonios may seem the easiest to explain, as mentions in Greek tragedy prove. In a fragment of Aeschylus’ Psychagogoi, Hermes Chthonios is called the ‘escort of the departed’ (πομπὸς φθιμένων) and is summoned together with Chthon and Zeus Chthonios to send up the swarm (of souls).¹⁰⁷ The chorus of Euripides’ Alcestis asks Hades and Hermes Chthonios to receive her.¹⁰⁸ Orestes prays to Hermes Chthonios as the one who watches over his father’s might or power and asks him to become his saviour and ally in the Choephoroi.¹⁰⁹ Later in this play, Electra addresses him as ‘the great herald of those above and below’ and asks him to deliver her prayers to those beneath the earth, who watch over her father’s house, and to Earth herself.¹¹⁰ Furthermore, he is chthonios and nychios (‘of the night’) in the Chorus’ prayer to Earth and Agamemnon’s tomb for aid to Orestes in killing Aegisthus; Hermes Chthonios is here again in his role as ‘a watcher’, this time of the deadly contest.¹¹¹ Sophocles has Electra pray to Hermes Chthonios alongside the house of Hades and Persephone, Curse, and Erinyes to avenge the death of Agamemnon and bring Orestes back to her.¹¹² Ajax calls upon Hermes Chthonios and pompaios.¹¹³Pompaios means ‘escorter’, and Ajax asks the god to put him to sleep, which would suggest that Hermes Chthonios acts as the ‘escorter of souls’ here. It seems, however, that chthonios in this case modifies the meaning of pompaios, because in Aeschylus’ Eumenides Hermes pompaios is asked by Apollo to guide Orestes to Athens.¹¹⁴

In all these testimonies, given their contexts, Hermes Chthonios is connected to tombs and the Underworld, and associated with Earth, Erinyes, and the rulers of the beyond. His role as chthonios, however, is not to escort the souls of the dead to the Underworld,¹¹⁵ but rather, as in Orestes’ words above, to protect and watch over the ‘might’ or ‘power’ of the dead. This idea also seems to be expressed in the dedicatory formula in which Hermes Chthonios occurs in Thessalian and Macedonian epitaphs; it is possible that the tomb, through its dedication to him, at the same time entrusted the deceased to his protection.¹¹⁶

Hekate Chthonia also has strong connections with the dead, and tombs,¹¹⁷ and she seems to be credited with the ability to channel the powers of the dead;¹¹⁸ sometimes she is even called their ruler (ἐνέροισιν ἄνασσα).¹¹⁹ That may be why she occurs frequently in curse tablets with Hermes Chthonios.¹²⁰ She does not appear, however, in the contexts of summoning the dead, whereas Hermes Chthonios does. In such cases, he occurs in the company of Chthon (Earth) and Zeus Chthonios, as in Aeschylus’ Psychagogoi,¹²¹ or Ge (Earth) and the king of those below (Aidoneus) in Aeschylus’ Persians.¹²² These two passages are parallel,¹²³ and independently confirm the identity of Zeus Chthonios as an equivalent of Hades.¹²⁴ It seems, however, that Hermes Chthonios may be modifying the sphere of activity and function of the combination Zeus Chthonios and Ge/Demeter,¹²⁵ otherwise frequently occurring together in a cult context, as without Hermes Chthonios they appear only in an agricultural context.

This can be seen in Works and Days, where Hesiod advises prayer to Zeus Chthonios and Demeter Hagnē (‘reverend’)¹²⁶ for good crops before sowing and ploughing.¹²⁷ In the sacrificial regulation from Mykonos, Zeus Chthonios features alongside Ge Chthonia; again, the sacrifice is for crops.¹²⁸ This time the victims are specified: they have to be skinned, black, and a year old. This choice strikingly resembles the victims offered by Odysseus to Hades and Persephone in book 11 of the Odyssey;¹²⁹ to my knowledge, these are the only other attested black and skinned victims.¹³⁰ It may seem bizarre that deities supposed to secure crops should be presented with a similar sacrifice to that offered to the rulers of the Underworld before summoning the dead. The black colour of the victims should not surprise, as it is commonly associated with the earth and the deities related to it.¹³¹ The crucial difference here seems to lie in the age of the victims. The Odyssey does not mention the age, while in the case of Mykonos it is clearly specified (one year). Since young victims are often offered to Demeter, marking the fertility aspect of her cult,¹³² we can suppose that Zeus Chthonios and Ge Chthonia appear here in a similar character.

Ge Chthonia is named once more in the extant sources in an inscription from Apollonia Pontica, which marks her megaron.¹³³ Given that a megaron is specifically connected to fertility cults,¹³⁴ and considering all the above, it seems that in Ge’s cult in Apollonia Pontica the fertility aspect was also significant, as it was at Mykonos.¹³⁵ But without further context, whether she was an oracular deity in Apollonia Pontica or a goddess connected to the dead remains an open question. A combination of properties may be possible: Demeter Chthonia’s cult at Hermione was connected to both fertility and the dead.¹³⁶ Demeter Chthonia is mentioned also on one of the so-called ‘Orphic’ gold leaves from Pherai,¹³⁷ but it is impossible to say what character her ‘initiations’ (τέλη) had, as she had no cult attested at Pherai.¹³⁸ Nor it is possible to determine whether it had any connection to Demeter’s cult in Hermione, even though the latter was at times seen by the ancients as competing with Eleusis, or mystic in character.¹³⁹ It seems, however, that whatever the origins of the rites may be, it was important to bury information about them with the deceased, in whose grave the inscription was found; thus, some kind of protection after death by Demeter Chthonia, and her connection to that world, are confirmed. All other cults of Demeter Chthonia are either late or uncertain, given the extant sources.¹⁴⁰

As we have seen, the profile of the deities worshipped as ‘chthonians’ is unfortunately fragmented, and, like their epithet, eludes single definition. It emerges as a complex cluster of interlinked properties encoded in the meaning of chthonios as explored in the first part of this essay. It shows connection to Earth and the Underworld, with a possible focus on one or more of the three main areas: fertility, protection, and justice. Various combinations of these divinities result in their different specialization as a group. But how fertility, justice, and protection are brought together under the umbrella term chthonios remains unclear. Given that its basic meaning refers to ‘belonging to/being part of (the) earth’, it seems logical to examine the earth herself next.

Earth had a variety of names. Under the name Chthon, from which chthonios derives, as observed earlier, she has no attested cult; however, it seems that one must have existed at some point. Chthon’s divine quality is highlighted already in Homer, where several generic words were used synonymously to refer to earth or land (such as chthon, gaia, aroura, aia, epeiros),¹⁴¹ but only chthon gets the epithet dia (‘heavenly’; sc. divine quality), twice.¹⁴² Otherwise, she is invoked by Hecuba as a lady (potnia) and mother of black-winged dreams,¹⁴³ and in a choral prayer in Aeschylus’ Psychagogoi, mentioned above,¹⁴⁴ where she is additionally referred to as primeval (ogygia).¹⁴⁵ All other evidence shows that Chthon was used interchangeably with Ge/Gaia,¹⁴⁶ and this synonymity is supported by the etymology: Andreas Willi has shown that both Ge/Gaia and Chthon derive from the root *(s)teg- meaning ‘to cover’.¹⁴⁷ The interchangeability is also independently suggested by the existence of parallel epithets: gaios/geos (‘belonging to Ge’) and damatrios (‘belonging to Demeter’), applied to Hades/Zeus or the dead.¹⁴⁸

Divine qualities of Earth (referred to as Chthon or Ge) are connected to oracular properties and oath-taking in the earliest sources.¹⁴⁹ Earth as witness of oaths is an obvious choice as an ‘omnipresent’ deity; her oracular properties are connected with what is ‘within’ her.¹⁵⁰ Her connection with the judicial sphere is marked by her presence in the temple of the Semnai Theai near the Athenian Areopagus,¹⁵¹ as we have seen, and by the fact that she is the mother of avenging spirits, the Erinyes.¹⁵² Fertility and protection are further obvious characteristics of Earth, visible in her epithets karpophoros and kourotrophos.¹⁵³ All deities labelled with the epithet chthonios participate in all these qualities characteristic of Earth, even though, as the evidence discussed shows, they may have a special focus. Thus, even deities particularly connected to the world beyond and justice, such as Hades, Hekate, Hermes, or the Erinyes/Arai, participate in fertility broadly understood.¹⁵⁴

Chthonios encompasses the sphere of exchange between this and the other world. This idea is metaphorically expressed in Electra’s prayer to Hermes in Aeschylus’ Choephoroi, in which she describes Earth as giving birth to all things, rearing them, and then taking them back.¹⁵⁵ The analyses of Demeter Chthonia and Zeus Chthonios, and aspects of the analysis of Ge Chthonia, each independently reflect the persistence of the notion of the co-extensiveness of the earth and the Underworld mentioned above.

3. CONCLUSIONS

On the basis of this analysis, I conclude that chthonios occurs most frequently as an epithet of gods and daimones, and as an alternative, poetic way of denoting the dead (115 occurrences in total). The semantic range of chthonios is contained between the Earth and the Underworld, with the caveat that these two spheres are co-extensive; the Underworld and the dead are literally part of the Earth. Thus, most of the occurrences of chthonios are in one way or another related to the Underworld. In the case of deities, this conceptual (and literal) embeddedness of the Underworld in the Earth is especially clear. The deities labelled as chthonioi, however, cannot be regarded as exclusively connected to the world beyond and death, because they are first and foremost connected to the Earth. She, as a ‘bearer of fruits’ and a ‘tomb’ at the same time, lends them these overlapping characteristics; the essence of these characteristics stays the same, even though the function of the deity may vary, as we have seen in the examples discussed above, focusing on fertility, justice, or protection.

The cult context of the deities labelled as chthonian is insufficient to define their particular characteristics, at least in the current state of knowledge. It is clear, however, that combinations of these deities result in different cult features. Hermes Chthonios alone protects the deceased, but when combined with Hades/Zeus Chthonios and Ge/Chthon, he facilitates contact with the dead. When combined with Hekate Chthonia, he serves as messenger for a curse tablet and the execution of justice. The same is visible in the cult combination at the temple of Semnai Theai/Erinyes near the Areopagus, who are complemented by Ge, Plouton, and Hermes in receiving sacrifice for acquittal. Zeus Chthonios/Hades and Demeter/Ge Chthonia are connected with crops. The Chthonian Libyan heroines protect the land and oversee the harvest.

The semantic and contextual analysis of this essay has shown that the epithet chthonios should be regarded as a specification of the sphere of activity, rooted in the earth. This epithet is predominantly associated with the other world, which impacted its meaning most significantly by lending the word its own properties. This Underworld hue is particularly prominent when chthonios is applied to characterize emotions or dispositions. Chthonios as a divine epithet cannot be classified as a ‘category’ of the divine, contrary to prevailing scholarly assumptions, not only because such categories do not seem to be clear-cut, but also because chthonios eludes a single definition due to the complex conceptual nuances embedded already in its basic reference as ‘belonging to/being part of (the) earth’.

The above analysis may serve as a model for future research concerning ancient gods. It proves that a thorough semantic analysis of divine epithets and the contexts of their occurrence in literary and epigraphic sources combined with a study of archaeological material is a way forward to nuanced understanding of the concepts underlying particular divine beings within their local cult environment. Furthermore, it shows that combinations of deities provide different cult qualities in different contexts: the spheres of activity of the combined deities are reciprocal (fertility–justice), sometimes in a mirroring way (earth–underworld: fertility–death). These cult combinations need to be squarely confronted in order to avoid ad hoc categorizations which prove misleading in the long run.

REFERENCES

Footnotes