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‘Have you noticed how it’s only bad news that can’t wait? Your son gets crowned as victor in the games, or wins the prize for poetry, and still people wait until the next morning before they tell you. If someone pounds on your door when the Harp is still high, then – even before you’ve pulled your head out of the blankets – you know it’s bad news.’
Phoikos the doctor squints over the rooftops at the bluish Harp star. According to myth, the stars in its constellation make up the fabled lyre of Orpheus, the singer whose music charmed the birds from the trees. Even the gods were moved to tears when Orpheus played his harp to console himself for the untimely death of his wife.
This won’t be the first, nor the last time that Phoikos has been dragged from his bed, but this is the first time he has been rousted by guards from the Temple of Athena on the Acropolis. A priestess of Athena Polias (Athena of the City) has been unexpectedly taken ill, and Phoikos is dreading what he might find. The death of any priestess is a terrible event, but this particular death would be all the more devastating because the priestess is only eleven years old.
She is one of the Arrephoroi, a ‘bearer of the secret things’. Depending on how you look at it, there are two or four of these mini-priestesses, aged anywhere between seven and eleven. There’s the serving pair, of which Phoikos’ yet unmet patient is one, and there’s the training pair, who will replace them at the end of the four-year cycle.
The girls are from the most aristocratic families in Athens. Once selected to serve Athena they leave their homes to live with the goddess. Their new homes are on the Acropolis in a select area called the Erechtheion. In the ancient days, when all Athenians lived in the High City – ‘high city’ is what ‘Acropolis’ actually means – the Erechtheion was a functional little residential area. Now only city guards and the priestesses are there at night. The Persians destroyed the original buildings when they captured Athens two generations ago, so now the priestesses live in new custom-built quarters, complete with their own playground.
The Arrephorion
This building has been excavated in modern times. The priestesses lived in a small square hall with a four-column colonnade fronted by a rectangular courtyard. Because of the fragile nature of the site and the ease with which the limestone foundations are corroded by rain, it was decided in 2006 that the Arrephorion should once again be carefully buried under the earth that has preserved it for the past 2,000 years.
Phoikos wonders if it’s a good idea to separate girls from their parents while they are still children. Of course, aristocratic girls leave home anyway at age fourteen to become wives in their own households, but at age seven? He thinks of his three-year-old daughter slumbering in her cot at home and shudders at the thought of parting from her while she is still so young.
That, however, is what the goddess Athena requires. The girls have to be aged seven because they need two years of training before they take up their duties. Each girl must complete her final two years of service by the age of eleven in case she is a premature developer. If a priestess starts menstruation early, she might sabotage the city’s entire religious calendar, for the Arrephoroi of Athena have to be not only virgins but infertile. Prepubescent girls are the only way to guarantee a female who is both.
That’s the other reason for the training pair. If a priestess is unable to serve, then her trainee steps up into her station, while the religious authorities take a deep breath and pray that nothing will go wrong while the newcomer finds her way into the job.
The doctor’s little group moves along the road between the looming shadows of the Acropolis to the right and the hill of the Areopagus to the left. Where their road meets with the broad highway of the Panathenaic Way another group awaits, cloaked and shadowed in the torchlight; more watchmen, and the parents of the sick child.
Would the parents be there, wonders Phoikos, if the girl were not a sacred priestess who brings so much honour to her family? Each candidate for the job is handpicked by the Archon Basileus, ‘the King’s magistrate’. (No matter that Athens hasn’t had a king for centuries. The royal magistrate is still highly influential in religious matters, murder cases and other civic functions.) Once chosen by the Archon, potential Arrephoroi are exempt from Pericles’ stricture that ‘a virtuous woman is never mentioned, whether in praise or condemnation’. Instead the entire Athenian Assembly discusses the merits of each girl before voting for the sacred two. An Arrephoros in the family is a very big deal.
Panarista daughter of Mantias of Marathon; her father and her mother, Theodote daughter of Dositheos [of Myrrhinoutta], and her brothers, Kleomenes and [name unclear] dedicated [this statue], when she had been arrephoros for Athena Polias.
INSCRIPTION BENEATH A STATUE COMMEMORATING THE SERVICE OF AN ARREPHOROS, IG 2(2) 3488
On the other hand, for a family, a very sick priestess is even worse than her not being chosen in the first place, for her illness means that she has been rejected by the goddess herself. No wonder the parents are alarmed. Yet as he comes closer, Phoikos is ashamed of his cynicism. The mother’s face shows shining tear tracks in the torchlight, and her husband holds her tenderly and protectively.
‘What do we know?’ the father asks the doctor, his voice low but urgent.
‘I’ve yet to see her. Some delirium, the guards tell me, but nothing indicative of infection. She was incoherent when they found her, and unconscious soon afterwards. The attack was sudden, for she was playing a ballgame with her companions in the afternoon. They are tending to her now.’
‘I cannot rule that out. We need to see how fast the illness is progressing, and whether it approaches a crisis. Should that happen, we have a runner standing by. I have a guest from the island of Kos, the man called Hippocrates. If the case is severe I shall summon him for a consultation. First though, I need to make my own observations.’
PALPATING THE ABDOMEN OF A YOUNG PATIENT
‘Just four months,’ the mother sobs. ‘In four months she would carry her basket and come home to me. She was the sweetest of little girls.’ Phoikos silently notes the use of the past tense.
The basket to which the mother refers contains the ‘mysterious things’, the arreta. One mystery of the Arrephoroi is that no one in Athens speaks of their sacred ceremony, yet everyone knows what is involved. Every four years, in the dark of night the young priestesses dress in garments of purest white which they themselves have woven for this occasion. In silence they proceed to the altar of the goddess, where two covered baskets are waiting. The contents of the baskets are known only to Athena herself.
Taking the baskets, the pair proceed. They have practised their route so often that darkness is no obstacle. The baskets are heavy, but the girls balance the burden on their heads, in the manner of women carrying water from the fountains. In silence they walk towards the north slope of the Acropolis, where they vanish as if the earth has swallowed them up. Which it has. The girls have stepped into an underground passage, and are carefully making their way down the worn stone steps. The steps are worn because the passage is old – older than anyone can remember. In fact, the passage, adapted from a natural cave, has been in continuous use for around a thousand years. Perhaps the original inhabitants of the Acropolis used it to fetch water, for there is a disused well near the exit where the passage opens into the gardens of the Sanctuary of Aphrodite. According to legend, the spring that supplied water for the well dried up after an earthquake 700 years ago.
At the end of the passage two other baskets wait. Silently the girls remove the burdens from their heads. They set these down and take up these other baskets instead. Then comes the tricky journey through the dark passage back up to the altar of Athena Polias. There the new baskets are placed on the altar, and adult priests step forward to complete the ceremony. Their vital task accomplished, the Arrephoroi have completed their duties and are now discharged from their role.
The Sacred Rite
The most detailed description of this rite comes from Pausanias’ Guide to Greece (1.27.3). The ritual and other events are as described in this chapter.
One might reasonably ask what this mysterious ritual has accomplished. To understand, we must look at the first Arrephoroi, sisters called Herse and Aglauros. In mythological times when Athens was young, the two girls were given charge of a mysterious basket by Athena herself. They were told never to look inside but to care for the basket kept near the sacred olive tree of Athena – a tree that still grows beside her shrine.
Herse and Aglauros became overwhelmed with curiosity about the basket’s contents. They took the basket deep inside the underground cave, so that they could check the contents out of the sight of Athena. Whatever the pair saw in the basket drove them insane, for the girls rushed up the stairs and on attaining the heights of the Acropolis they leapt to their deaths.
It is generally assumed that the basket contained the baby Erichthonius, who later became the first king of Athens. After one of the gods had tried unsuccessfully to rape her, Athena threw down a cloth stained with her attacker’s semen. So fertile was the divine sperm that a child was conceived from contact with the earth. It may be that owing to the bizarre circumstances of his birth, Erichthonius took a while to assume an acceptable shape. Until then, well, it was best that he remained concealed in a basket.
Athena was deeply annoyed by Herse and Aglauros’ breach of promise. Since the gods are never very discriminating in their displays of ill temper, Athena threatened her revenge on the whole of Athens. Which is where the current Arrephoroi come in. They embody a solemn proof that the daughters of Athens can carry the sacred baskets of Athena, and never, ever peek at the contents. In return, Athena stays her wrath and allows dew to fall on the sacred olive tree. Thereafter the tree will bloom, along with all the olives of Attica.
The olive is central to Athenian life. Olives are eaten with almost every meal, and the oil used in cooking, cleaning, washing, medicine and lighting. It is desperately important that Athena bless the tree with a soaking dewfall – hence the vital role of the Arrephoroi, whose name literally means ‘dew-bearers’.
Athena called on Cecrops to witness that she was taking possession of the city, and she planted that olive tree which still grows in the Pandrosion … The land was adjudged to belong to Athena because she was the first to bestow the olive.
PSEUDO-APOLLODORUS BIBLIOTHECA 3.14
Of course, the girls can spend only so long rehearsing the most crucial night of their lives. They are also involved in weaving the sacred robe presented to Athena during the festival of the Chalkeia, and they prepare sacred cakes used in sacrifice. The priestesses receive the usual education of Athenian girls, and in their free time they scamper all over the Acropolis and also the Agora (although there they are heavily veiled and accompanied by serious bodyguards). Any gold jewellery the girls might buy on such visits is considered sacred.
Having proven themselves in the service of the goddess, some Arrephoroi might go on to other sacred duties. Some take a starring role at the great festival of Athena as the Kanephoros, who carries the basket symbolic of the bounty Athena has bestowed upon her people. Altogether, these little priestesses are an essential component of Athenian life, so when one falls suddenly and severely ill, it bodes calamity for the entire city. No wonder the guards wasted no time in getting Phoikos from his bed.
‘Leave us for a moment,’ the doctor orders as he stands at the doorway of the small bedroom, barely able to see his patient through the press of concerned people clustered around her bed.
Phoikos waits for the room to empty. Then he steps inside and gently puts an arm around the unconscious girl and cautiously sits her up. The flesh is warm beneath her shift and her face is slightly flushed. Breathing, heavy yet even. Suddenly and without the slightest warning, the unconscious girl throws up, copiously. Quickly, Phoikos turns his patient, lying her across his knee and patting her back to clear her airways. Then he looks at his vomit-sodden tunic. ‘Ah,’ he says, making one of the speediest diagnoses of his career.
Several minutes later Phoikos confronts the small crowd gathered outside the room. Apart from a tunic wadded up in one hand he is completely naked. This causes him no embarrassment whatsoever, as public nudity is no uncommon state for an Athenian male. He gestures with the tunic. ‘She is now in no danger and should be fully recovered in a day or two. Until then I prescribe water and bed rest, with a little porridge when she can handle it. The girl has purged herself, and the crisis has passed.’
The mother gives a wail of relief, and timidly asks, ‘Purged? Was it an evil spirit?’
Phoikos pauses for several seconds, then nods curtly. ‘That is what I shall be reporting to the priests. There is now much to discuss.’ None of which, Phoikos reflects privately, will be good for the priestess. She is in for an unpleasant few days of purification.
The doctor nods at the commander of the temple guard. ‘A word, if I may?’
The two walk into the porch of the Erechtheion and stand in the shadows. The bulk of the Parthenon is on their left, and the Altar of Athena before them. ‘It would be best if word of the girl’s sickness did not get out,’ Phoikos murmurs. ‘And you need to talk to your men.’
‘Of course,’ replies the officer. ‘You want a search of the Acropolis in case the sorcerer still lurks about?’
‘Sorcerer?’
‘The one who caused the possession of the girl.’
‘No’, says the doctor. ‘I want you to find out how she got hold of this.’ He holds up by the strap a little wine flask made of rawhide, of the type that soldiers carry.
