July
14
/ 2018
When we use the term “hero” today while discussing Greek mythological figures, it usually designates a man whose superhuman exploits and semi-divine parentage make him a person of legend. But in real-life ancient Greece, heroes were venerated at their own shrines, and deceased men figured in popular imagination somewhere between divine gods and Average Joes. Adult superheroes weren’t the only ones honored; deceased young ones, highlighted by Prince Opheltes and the children of Heracles and Medea, sometimes had their own hero cults too. In her important An Archaeology of Ancestors, Duke University classicist Carla Antonaccio discusses the difficulty of defining a “hero” who deserves his own cult. She ties the idea into ancestor worship. Some hero cults honored mythological figures
