Winged and horned gods

1So far the deities discussed in this section have been represented with what might be termed ‘integral mixanthropy’ – that is, their animal elements replace parts of the anthropomorphic anatomy, or at least substantially alter it. Other deities, however, are superficially mixanthropic: animal parts are added on to a complete anthropomorphic form in a way which augments but does not substantially compromise it. The superficial mixanthropic elements which occur repeatedly in Greek religion are wings and horns. Of course, these have been touched on already, because the Sirens are winged, and Pan is horned (and Dionysos can be also). However, the Sirens, Pan and Dionysos also have integral mixanthropy. This chapter focuses rather on deities for whom wings or horns are the full extent of their attested mixanthropy.

2If mixanthropy is defined in the strictest sense as the replacement of some anthropomorphic parts with their theriomorphic equivalents, winged and horned gods do not really belong in the canon. However, they still involve anatomical fusions of the two states, and as will be seen the characters of winged and horned gods register contributions from their non-human ele­ments; for this reason, their inclusion is merited. Moreover, as will be seen in Chapter 8, there is a strong relationship in ancient depictions between integral mixanthropy and the imagery of costumes and accessories. Horns especially will reappear in this later discussion, and it will be argued that the extent to which they are organically connected to a deity may be varied significantly in repre­sentation, suggesting an ancient interest in the integral/superficial dichotomy which should discourage a too rigid definition of the mixanthropic type. Wings are, by contrast with horns, always organically connected where present at all, but their presence is extremely variable in the depiction of mythical beings; their inclusion is often a matter of artistic choice rather than fixed convention. For example, Eos is typically shown winged, but sometimes she is wingless but in a chariot drawn by winged horses. Wings facilitate her airborne activity, but it does not always have to be she who wears them; they can be transferred to her equipment, her immediate surroundings. This flexibility in the application of mixanthropic features is an important trend in the iconography of mixanthropic deities.

3Wings are widely applied to mythical forms in ancient art. Winged cult-receiving deities, by contrast, are rather rare, and what we find are sporadic instances of worship dwarfed by a far more substantial body of material in which mythological activities and artistic popularity are of far more importance than ritual tendance. A good example of this is Boreas, the god of the north wind, whose winged form, usually carrying off Oreithyia, emblazons many vases. Boreas was also accorded cult in a few locations, but these instances are represented by ancient authors as responses to special aid rendered by the god to a community (usually against their enemies) and are certainly secondary in development to mythological career.1 Most winged personalities are best considered as non-cult-receiving daimones. This is not, however, to say that ritual observance is not significant when and where it occurs.

4The few winged beings that receive cult participate in two main themes discernible among the class of winged beings generally: on the one hand, flight, on the other, attack. The most famous case of the former – indeed the most famous winged deity by any measurement – is Nike. Nike is generally a rather generic character, in line with her personification of a contingency: a longed-for contingency, victory. This generic quality is reflected in the fact that she is a frequent decorative element in statuary and architecture, often in the plural (two or more Nikai);² also frequently Nikai function as votive dedications.³ However, a singular Nike does emerge occasionally as a cult figure. In Athens this is the case; there she is very closely related to, but not indistinguishable from, Athene, who has Nike among her epikleseis.⁴

5The famous Nike Apteron, the wingless wooden xoanon of the goddess which stood on the Athenian acropolis, is compared by Pausanias with the fettered Enyalios of Sparta.⁵ Just as, says the Periegete, the fetters of Enyalios prevent the war-god deserting his human dependants, so her lack of wings will stop Nike leaving the Athenians. It is not surprising to find wings presented in this way, as expressing the potential for flight, for escape, for departure. Like Enyalios, Nike represents a commodity (military success) which the community is desperate to maintain.⁶

Fig. 28

6The explicit wings = escape equation, however, is rather rare among winged gods; more often the attribute signals the potential for active aggression. The characterisation of this aggression reveals a striking divergence between cult-receiving and non-cult-receiving entities. Among the former, the aggression usually has a punitive function, this being (to choose the most famous example) the speciality of the Erinyes (also called the Eumenides or Semnai Theai), who were quite widely wor­shipped in the Greek world, at Athens and elsewhere.7 It has already been noted that Arkadian Demeters Erinys and Melaina are similar to the Erinyes in character (vengeful anger); there is also iconographic convergence. Demeter Melaina was apparently depicted with snakes emerging from her hair, a stock feature of Erinyes as shown on vase-paintings, along with wings. Interestingly, literary depictions make more of the snakes than of the wings;⁸ perhaps art relies more heavily than text on showing the wings to convey speed of attack. Across the board, the Erinyes’ wings are one of a number of non-human elements which combine for frightening effect. The juxtaposition of wings and hair-snakes is also of course reminiscent of Demeter Melaina’s/Erinys’ other close relation, Medusa. What the Erinyes do not have is any noticeable association with the horse.

7Aggression among non-cult-receiving winged beings tends by contrast to be acquisitive and (especially among female characters) erotic. The full range of the theme of erotic acquisition is displayed by Eos, the winged goddess of the dawn.⁹ On vases Eos is most often shown either pursuing or abducting a youth, named in accordance with myth (Orion, Kephalos, Tithonos and others) or anonymous. (See fig. 28.) Her rôle as lover and snatcher of handsome young mortals is strongly represented in literature¹⁰ as well as art. But this motif is more than just erotic rapacity. As the myths of Tithonos and of the death of Memnon show, Eos is also someone who takes men away from, and beyond, death.¹¹

8Though not herself a recipient of cult, Eos belongs to a group of beings which includes both winged women and bird-mixanthropes; thus avian identity is plainly in the picture. It has been shown that the Sirens, like their Egyptian Ba-bird cousins, are conductresses of the souls of the dead, and this funerary function connects them with Eos and her mortality-transcending powers.¹² Wings facilitate flight, wind-swift pursuit, the sweeping up and off of desired young men; but bird identity is in the mixture too, caught up somehow in the theme of death and the afterlife. This places the Sirens within a broader context in which they are highly unusual in their receipt of cult. It also reinforces the need to look beyond integral avian mixanthropy and to perceive the full palette of visual forms in which it operated. The exclusion of winged deities would render this perception impossible.

9Horns too have some symbolic qualities which we may sometimes see contributing to the characters of their divine wearers; it has been argued, for example, that they can indicate both power¹³ and fertility.¹⁴ At the same time, in Greek culture they evoke even more explicitly than wings the non-human animal, and they almost always designate a particular species and its significance.

10The phenomenon of the horned god appears to exist, in a sense, beyond individual names, characters and cults; this is reflected in the number of figures whose name actually means ‘horned’ or a variant of that.¹⁵ Horned gods are also unusually widespread between cultures, as is revealed for example by the material collected by Bober in her lengthy article on the iconography of the Celtic horned god Cernunnos.¹⁶ The material record abounds in anonymous horned figures, such as the ram-headed terracottas of Lykosoura, or the various horned figures from Cyprus.17 These representations, however, cannot reliably be identified, and tell us next to nothing about particular named divinities or their cults. It has therefore been decided to focus discussion here on Apollo Karneios and Zeus Ammon, the only instances of Greek horned gods for whom some evidence is available concerning iconography and divine function. This evidence is simply not available in many other cases. For example, Cook makes an ingenious attempt to link several forms of Zeus (especially Zeus Sabazios, Laphystios, Akraios/Aktaios, Meilichios and Ktesios) with the ram, and uses this to argue for the erstwhile existence of a ram-god.¹⁸ However, it is indisputably true that only Zeus Ammon is actually and unambiguously depicted with ram parts. He is therefore the only form of Zeus included in this discussion.

11In addition to their horns, Apollo Karneios and Zeus Ammon had a historical connection. Apollo Karneios was a Peloponnesian deity, Zeus Ammon a Libyan one, but they were connected by a process of colonisation linking Sparta, Thera and Cyrene.19

12Apollo Karneios’ worship is largely but not exclusively centred on the Peloponnese; we have evidence, for example, for worship in Kos, Knidos, Argos, Messenia and Sikyon.²⁰ He was, however, of by far the most importance as a deity in Lakonia, and particularly Sparta. Although his mixanthropy is of the superficial type, the myths about his identity and origins tie him in with a number of animal, and horn, associations. The fullest treatment is to be found in Pausanias’ third book, though other sources appear largely to accord with the substance of his account.²¹ Pausanias tells us about a figure whom he simply calls Karneios, with the title Oiketas (‘Of the House’), who was worshipped in Sparta before the return of the Herakleidai, and whose cult was based in the house of a seer called Krios (‘Ram’). To the cult of Apollo Karneios Pausanias gives a slightly different pedigree. Its inception, he says, followed the murder of an Akarnanian seer called Karnos, for which Apollo punished the Dorians. The purpose of Apollo’s cult is thus ‘to propitiate the Akarnanian seer’, giving the figure of Karnos such prominence in the narrative that it is little wonder that some have, in the past, posited that he originally enjoyed a separate identity as a (nature) deity in his own right, which was then usurped by Apollo.²² Whether or not one gives any credence to this notion, there is no doubt that by the time all our sources were writing, Apollo was thoroughly embedded in the complex of ram-related figures in the myths. How the various entities – Apollo Karneios, Karneios, Karnos, Krios – related to each other exactly one cannot say. Some familiar motifs are discernible in the tangle, however, most notably the combination of animal features with prophecy found also in the cases of Pan, Cheiron, Proteus and others.

13If Apollo Karneios comes from a complex background of animal associations, however, this is in contrast with his rôle as a god of manifest civic importance in Lakonia, who gave his name to both a month and a festival.²³ Is his animal element of any importance at all to this very public dimension of the god? Malkin argues interestingly that it is, seeing Apollo Karneios’ ram element as continuing to play a rôle in his characterisation as a deity. He is the ‘lead ram’ of the herd, of the community, a rôle pertaining both to a past life of nomadic pastoralism, and – importantly for Malkin’s thesis – to his political rôle as spearhead of colonisation.²⁴ It is interesting to compare and contrast this use of his ram element by the community with the depiction of Pan’s goat persona in and outside Arkadia. They are in some ways similar, with both embodying at the same time an animal and the way of human life associated with its care; both also are associated with a past way of life and with the community’s own social history. But Pan’s character is typically presented in a much more light-hearted way, for all his importance to Arkadian self-representation.

14Despite the prevalence of animal motifs in his surrounding mythology, Apollo Karneios’ own mixanthropy is an understated affair.25 A horned Apollo Karneios does appear on coins, but from outside his Peloponnesian heartland, mainly from Kyrene.²⁶ From Lakonia itself we have an emblem of horns carved on a dedicatory relief,²⁷ and a ram-headed herm which may well have been meant to represent Apollo Karneios.²⁸ Also significant is the fact that we find an ‘Apollo Kereatas’ (‘Horned’) worshipped beside the river Karnion, at the meeting-point of Messenia, Lakonia and Arkadia.²⁹

15We should not let the prominence of Pythian Apollo blind us to the existence of other, more rustic forms of the god, especially in the Peloponnese. Mixanthropy is rare, but many of the god’s Peloponnesian cult titles reveal his pastoral connections. For example, in some parts of Arkadia he shares with Pan the epiklesis ‘Nomios’,³⁰ a title with particularly interesting associations, not only via Pan but also as revealed in a passage of Clement of Alexandria.³¹ The author lists five different Apollos, of which the fourth is called Nomios by the Arkadians; he is the son of Silenos, and thus very much caught up in the world of rustic mixanthropy though not himself described as mixanthropic. Other titles which recall the same milieu are Tragios and Poimnios, attested (albeit in late sources) for his worship on Naxos.³²

16Apollo Karneios’ identity as a horned god in Greece is to a large extent subtly and indirectly expressed, but for all that is undeniable. And what emerges is the paramount importance of the horns, such that on the carved inscription they can act alone as emblem of the god. Both titles, Karneios and Kereatas, echo the horn motif,³³ as does the river’s name, Karnion; Pausanias’ alternative etymology³⁴ involving cornel-trees is clearly a late invention.

17Zeus Ammon takes us into territory far removed from these pastoral gods of southern Greece, despite the fact that he shares the element of the ram’s horns. He was an important god of Kyrene, being by far the most frequently depicted deity on the coins of the region (with Apollo Karneios in second place).35 In his case those horns have a very different cultural pedigree, though it is likely that the existence of horned gods within Greece itself facilitated his popularity as in import. His worship in Greece was widespread and enthusiastic up until the fourth century BC,³⁶ and strangely marked, for us, by the celebrity of the poet Pindar, who dedicated a statue in his temple in Boiotian Thebes;³⁷ other shrines were located, for example, in Gytheion,³⁸ Sparta,³⁹ Athens and Piraeus.⁴⁰ As with Apollo Karneios, popularity is greatest in the Peloponnese, but is not limited to it.⁴¹

18However, one striking feature of Zeus Ammon’s cult is the continued importance, concurrent with the establishment of local shrines in Greece, of his Libyan oracle at the Siwah oasis as a place to which people would travel huge distances and which they would take pains to consult, sometimes on matters of great moment.⁴² The earliest known instance of a consultation is that of Kroisos of Lydia,⁴³ and the visits continued, up to and beyond the most famous, that of Alexander the Great in 331.⁴⁴ Throughout this section we repeatedly find mixanthropy and prophecy going hand in hand; but only Zeus Ammon prosecutes the combination so successfully and in such a public and official context.

19Unlike that of Apollo Karneios, the mixanthropy of Zeus Ammon is clear and persistent. It receives several literary mentions,45 and we have no shortage of images. The horns are his persistent identifying feature, but other patterns are discernible: he tends to be bearded, is often shown enthroned;⁴⁶ he can also be shown simply as a mask.⁴⁷

20As with Apollo Karneios, in visual representation his mixanthropy is almost always limited to the horns, which in the case of Zeus Ammon is especially interesting because it may indicate that an original non-Greek model was adapted to lessen the animal element (the Egyptian Amun, for example, is ram-headed),⁴⁸ an intriguing possibility but one which rests on the vexed issue of the origin of the god’s form.49 This adaptation may be because horns do not really compromise the anthropomorphism of the Greek Zeus; and yet the mythological accounts – most of them post-Classical – concerning Zeus Ammon tend to adopt an explanatory tone. This suggests that even horns could not go without comment; and the manner in which authors attempt to excuse them is highly revealing.

21The narratives tend to be euhemeristic; in a number of cases, Zeus Ammon is presented as a Libyan king. For Silius Italicus, for example, he was a mortal ruler accustomed to wearing horns on his helmet; after his deification, these external accessories became integral elements of iconography.⁵⁰ Another consistent feature is the involvement of Dionysos in some way. It could well be argued that Dionysos is included in the stories simply because he was already thought of as having spent time campaigning in the East, as was Herakles, who also crops up in one variant.⁵¹ But an account by Diodoros⁵² suggests that there is further significance in the Dionysos/Zeus Ammon connection. His version tells how Dionysos’ parents were Zeus Ammon (once more a king of Libya) and a girl named Amaltheia; Zeus Ammon hides his illegitimate offspring on the banks of the river Triton.⁵³ Amaltheia is here presented as a normal human, but we cannot but connect the name with the divine goat who in one myth nursed Pan, and whose horn was the cornucopia. Add to this the presence of a river Triton, and we find we have one of the small tangles or clusters of mixanthropy with which Greek myth abounds, as usual a cross-species affair. More specifically, it is a story full of goat, ram and horn motifs, and this sug­gests that the inclusion of Dionysos may have owed something to his identity as a horned god, a form which in one account at least he took while prosecuting his Eastern campaign.⁵⁴

22Another frequent topos in this series of accounts has Dionysos, himself this time the Libyan ruler, saved from death by thirst in the desert by the appearance of a miraculous ram who leads him to water. Dionysos sets up a shrine to Zeus and gives the god ram’s horns as a tribute to the saviour-animal.⁵⁵ This touches on a crucial element of Zeus Ammon’s character – his connection with water in a largely waterless landscape. As god of the oasis, this is not surprising. But there may be more here than a response to particular local circumstances; some form of dialogue with existing Greek religious ideas may have been at work. In Greece, Zeus was frequently worshipped as a weather-related deity with a special power over rain, and ability to supply it if properly treated;⁵⁶ this fact may have been partly responsible for the original association of the non-Greek Ammon with Zeus, out of all available Greek deities. But there are perhaps faint echoes of Acheloos, also. He is a god of streams and rivers, and his horn is central to that persona. More generally, horns of all kinds have fertility significance, and this is surely so with Zeus Ammon. The cluster formed by Zeus Ammon, Dionysos (with his horns- and fertility-associations) and the water-name Triton combine with the fact that the dominant theme of many of the myths describing both the origin of Zeus Ammon’s horns and the foundation of his Siwah shrine are chiefly about the finding and securing of a vital natural resource.

23A separate type of ancient explanation of Zeus Ammon’s horns is to be found first appearing rather earlier, and this one centres round the theme of evasion, disguise and metamorphosis. Herodotos tells how Zeus, not wanting to be seen by Herakles, covers himself in the pelt of a ram, after which, in commemoration, the Egyptians depict Zeus with a ram’s head, a form taken on by the people of Ammonia (Siwah).⁵⁷ In later versions, disguise becomes metamorphosis, with Zeus, along with the other gods, this time escaping from Typhon, and turning himself into a ram for the purpose.⁵⁸ This story, almost always in association with Egypt, has various other forms in which the ram-elements of Zeus are not included;⁵⁹ our ‘branch’ was clearly developed to fit Zeus Ammon’s particular form and the necessity of explaining it. These myths, then, make mixanthropy the ‘souvenir’ of an episode of disguise or transformation, in a way which is reminiscent of the Arkadian myth of the mating of Demeter Melaina in mare form, which is then – according to the cult aition – commemorated by her mixanthropic statue. This myth is an early one, so this pattern, of deriving mixanthropy from one brief event in the deity’s career, has a long pedigree. There is no mistaking its effect: to designate the animal element, whatever it is, as a symbolic attachment rather than an inherent and original part of the god’s identity. That said, in the case of Zeus Ammon, reference to his horns is made in literature with a frequency which reveals their deep importance.⁶⁰ Less easy to determine is the possible significance of the species, the ram. It chimes with Peloponnesian figures, such as Apollo Karneios and the pastoral Hermes,⁶¹ and reminds us that a vital relationship existed in antiquity between Dorian Lakonia and Kyrene; but in terms of origins it probably owes most to whatever non-Greek influences were at work in the early stages of the cult.