“Muse,
sing of Artemis, sister of the Far-Shooter, the virgin who delights in arrows…”
(Homeric Hymn IX)
It was early January in Attica, Greece, a
few years ago, and I remember it clearly. I drove out of Athens on a grey day that
could dampen anyone’s post-holiday spirits.
The New Year had come and gone, copious
amounts of food and wine having been consumed. A new adventure was needed.
My destination on that rainy day? - The
Sanctuary of Artemis at Brauron.
I drove the forty two kilometres from
Athens to Brauron, passing dark, rocky mountains and hills covered in deep
green foliage. Greece is a very different place in the winter. This was another
one of those journeys in which I didn’t know what to expect.
I had never heard of Brauron or of an Attic
sanctuary of Artemis, Goddess of the Hunt, protector of young girls and women
in childbirth.
The car splashed its way over tiny roads
and through villages lost to the outside world. As I drove past, the few heads
that poked out of windows followed my progress like in some eerie back-woods
movie setting.
Finally, I came to my destination. I parked
the car on the side of the road and stopped for a moment to listen to the
pattering of the rain on the roof. I wiped my foggy window and could just make
out a set of grey columns standing sentry in the rain. I put on my rain gear
and jumped out.
The gate to the site was open and no one
was at the booth. So I walked into the sanctuary.
My initial reaction was one of sadness. I
don’t know why, but the rain seemed fitting then, as though the gods wept for
something.
This is a place of great antiquity.
Supposedly, Brauron has been inhabited
since the early Mycenaean age. Legend has it that the sanctuary of Artemis was
established by none other than Iphegeneia, the daughter of Agamemnon, King of
Mycenae.
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| Iphegeneia is brought to Aulis in this painting: 'The Anger of Achilles' by Jacques-Louis David (1819) |
Here is a brief summary for those of you
who do not know her story. The Greek army, led by Agamemnon, was stuck at Aulis
because of bad weather which prevented them from setting out for Troy.
This was
said to be due to an offense done to Artemis. Calchas, the high king’s seer,
told Agamemnon that the only way for the goddess to be appeased and for the
winds to abate was for him to sacrifice his own daughter, Iphigeneia, to the
goddess.
The young girl was brought to Aulis under
the pretence that she was to marry the hero Achilles, and when she arrived,
Agamemnon did the unthinkable.
Euripides opens his play Ipheigeneia in Tauris. Iphegeneia
speaks:
“Child of the man of
torment and of pride
Tantalid Pelops bore a
royal bride
On flying steeds from Pisa.
Thence did spring
Atreus: from Atreus, linked
king with king,
Menelaus, Agamemnon. His am
I
And Clytemnestra’s child:
whom cruelly
At Aulis, where the strait
of the shifting blue
Frets with quick winds, for
Helen’s sake he slew,
Or thinks to have slain;
such sacrifice he swore
To Artemis on that
deep-bosomed shore.
For there Lord Agamemnon,
hot with joy
To win for Greece the crown
of conquered Troy,
For Menelaus’ sake through
all distress
Pursuing Helen’s vanished
loveliness,
Gathered his thousand ships
from every coast
Of Hellas: when there fell
on that great host
Storms and despair of
sailing. Then the King
Sought signs of fire, and
Calchas answering
Spake thus: “O Lord of
Hellas, from this shore
No ship of thine may move
for evermore,
Till Artemis receive in
gift of blood
Thy child, Iphegeneia. Long
hath stood
Thy vow, to pay to Her that
bringeth light
Whatever birth most fair by
day or night
The year should bring. That
year thy queen did
Bear
A child – whom here I name
of all most fair.
See that she die.”
So from my mother’s side
By lies Odysseus won me, to
be bride
In Aulis to Achilles. When
I came,
They took me and above the
altar flame
Held, and the sword was
swinging to the gash,
When, lo, out of their
vision in a flash
Artemis rapt me, leaving in
my place
A deer to bleed; and on
through a great space
Of shining sky upbore and
in this town
Of Tauris the Unfriended
set me down;
Where o’er a savage people
savagely
King Thoas rules. This is
her sanctuary
And I her priestess.
Therefore, by the rite
Of worship here, wherein
she hath delight –
Though fair in naught but
name. …But Artemis
Is near; I speak no
further…”
(Iphegeneia in Tauris; Euripides;
c.413 B.C)
Even in translation, the words Euripides
gives to this tragic girl are powerful, moving.
Thankfully, the goddess Artemis is said to
have substituted another sacrifice for the girl Iphegeneia and taken her far
away to be a priestess in her temple at Tauris, in the Crimea. She spent years
there away from her mother, Clytemnestra, and her brother, Orestes. She also
lived knowing her own father had been ready to end her life.
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| Orestes meets Electra at the tomb of their father |
The Trojan War played itself out and
Agamemnon made his way home to be murdered by Clytemnestra and her lover
Aegisthus. About seven years later, Orestes, the son of Agamemnon, returns from
Athens and with encouragement from his sister, Electra, kills his mother and
her lover.
Orestes is pursued by the Furies for his
deeds but then Apollo orders him to go to Tauris in order to take the wooden
cult statue of Artemis and bring it back to Athens. Euripides tells how Orestes
goes to Tauris and eventually sees his sister Iphegeneia there. They are reunited
and she helps him to take the statue and together they return to Attica where
she establishes the Sanctuary of Artemis.
Here, the Goddess Athena speaks to
Iphegeneia before she leaves Tauris:
“…Iphegeneia, by the stair
Of Brauron in the rocks,
the Key shalt bear
Of Artemis. There shalt
thou live and die,
And there have burial. And
a gift shall lie
Above thy shrine, fair
raiment undefiled
Left upon earth by mothers
dead with child.”
(Iphegeneia in Tauris;
Euripides)
Iphegeheia is said to have spent the remainder
of her days at Brauron.
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| Apollo blesses Orestes and tells him to go to Tauris Clytemnestra's shade and a Fury look on |
The cult of Artemis at Brauron died out
after the Mycenaean age but was re-established from the 9th century
B.C. on. Eventually, the cult of Artemis was brought to Athens. After that,
there was a procession every four years from the Temple of Artemis Brauronia on
the Athenian Acropolis to Brauron, in honour of the goddess and her priestess,
Iphegeneia.
But what was the purpose of the sanctuary
besides the honour of the goddess?
It seems that the sanctuary also functioned
as a sort of orphanage or fostering place for young girls who served the
goddess from about five to ten years of age. They performed rituals which
included sacred dances in which they acted like bears. In fact, the girls were
called ‘arktoi’, or ‘the bears’. This odd tradition of the bears is said to
commemorate the slaying of one of Artemis’ sacred bears by one of the girls’
brothers. The ‘Arkteia’ was a service to the goddess in which young girls would
transition from childhood to puberty and marriageable age.
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| Votive statues of children from the site at Brauron museum |
At Brauron, Artemis was worshipped as a
protector of girls and women in childbirth. Women who survived childbirth
dedicated a set of clothes to the goddess. The clothes of women who died in
childbirth were, in turn, dedicated to Iphegeneia.
I imagine a lot of hope springing up in
this place, but also much sadness.
Once you cross the 5th century
bridge into the sanctuary you come to the unusual p-shaped stoa which has what
are thought to be dining rooms or, more likely, rooms for the girls living
within the sanctuary. Inside, you can still see places where their sleeping
pallets might have been and the doors posts carved into the marble.
The stoa is known as the ‘Stoa of Bears’.
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| View of the remains of Artemis' temple |
I walked along the paving slabs on that
rainy day, peeking into the small rooms and wondering at the children who would
have been there. Were they peasants or nobility? Were their parents killed by
war or plague? Were they sent there in fulfillment of a vow? Who did they have
left in the world?
It must have been a frightening prospect to
leave the safety of the sanctuary as well. What must a young girl have thought
when she turned ten and knew that her time had come to perform the sacred dance
one last time before going out into the world. Ancient Greece was not so kind a
place for women. They were seen as vessels to be kept indoors.
A good thing they had Artemis to look over
them, and to see them through childbirth.
The stoa courtyard was overgrown with
sodden grass when I was there, and the ruins of the small Temple of Artemis
were minimal.
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| View of the 'Stoa of Bears' |
As I made my way through the site, I
eventually came to a small cave-like recess that was supposed to be a shrine to
Iphegeneia, that sad daughter of Agamemnon.
The rain stopped here, and the skin
prickled on the back of my neck.
For how long had this first priestess of
Brauron been honoured here? Ages, it seemed.
I let my imagination go in the sanctuary
and could hear the laughter of little girls playing, or their lonely cries upon
their straw pallets. I could see them mimicking the bears for which they were
named and hear the sound of their voices raised in song to Artemis, their
protectress.
From Brauron’s beginnings as a sacred site,
each of those little girls likely stood where I was standing and remembered
Iphegeneia and her plight. I thought of how they must have wept at her sad
story and perhaps felt better about their own lives that led them to that place
in the green hills of Attica.
The Sanctuary of Artemis at Brauron is a
very special place.
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| Votive statue of a young girl |
When I crossed back over that classical
bridge and made out way back to the car, I turned at the gate and looked back
through the driving rain one last time.
Usually, when I leave an ancient site or
sanctuary, I feel uplifted and at peace. Not so with Brauron.
Upon leaving Brauron, my heart was in a bit
of turmoil, and still is when I think back on it.
It is place of conflicting emotions wrapped
in myth and legend.
It is a great comfort in some ways to know
that this was a place where young girls were protected, watched over by their
patron goddess who saved the first priestess; this, in an ancient,
male-dominated world of war and superstition.
On the other hand, as I turned my back on
the dark columns and sodden earth of the sanctuary, my sole, sad thought was
for Iphegeneia whose father was so determined to sail for Troy that he was
willing to perform such a heinous and tragic act.
Thus do myth, legend and history combine to
shape our view of the places of the past.
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| This is a nicely done site map of the Brauron sanctuary by J.M. Harrington (map source: Wikipedia) |
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