rather be the product of pure invention on the part of the poet. It is a curious feature of ancient Greek
civilization that poets are generally felt to possess the authority to mold myths and to explain the origins
of ritual practice, thereby in some instances actually transforming ritual practice or even generating new
rituals. We have seen that communal cults are intimately connected with the development of the polis in
the period in which Hesiod lived. There is nothing in Hesiod’s work that suggests that it is concerned
specifically with the local cults of his own polis of Ascra. Rather, he is addressing a Panhellenic
audience and his concern is with the wider Greek world. This is also clear from the form of Hesiod’s
language. We saw in chapter 2 that the Greeks were divided into regional groups of speakers of different
dialects of Greek. Hesiod tells us that his father came from the city of Cyme on the coast of Asia Minor, a
city where the Aeolic dialect was spoken, and migrated to the town of Ascra, where a related, Boeotian
dialect was spoken. Yet Hesiod’s poems are not in the Aeolic or the Boeotian dialect. In fact, they cannot
be said to belong to any one dialect. Hesiod composes his poetry in an artificial dialect that combines
features from a number of regions of Greece. By far the largest number of elements of this artificial,
poetic idiom are derived not from the Boeotian or Aeolic dialects but from Ionic. But Hesiod’s poetic
dialect is essentially Panhellenic in nature, so that he could travel to various Greek communities and
perform the Theogony and the Works and Days in the expectation that they would be readily understood
and appreciated.
“My father and yours, Perses, great fool that you are, used to sail on shipboard in need of a decent
livelihood. At some time he came here, making his way across the vast sea, departing from Aeolian
Cyme in a black ship. It wasn’t riches or wealth and prosperity that he was running away from but
dire poverty, which Zeus bestows on men. He settled down near Mount Helicon in a miserable
village, Ascra, bad in winter, unbearable in summer, never good.” (Hesiod, Works and Days 633–
40)The Development of Hero Cult
In fact, Hesiod tells us briefly in the Works and Days about one of those occasions on which he performed
in a neighboring community. He traveled, he says, to the city of Chalcis on the island of Euboea to
compete in a contest associated with the funeral rites for a prominent leader of Chalcis. There he
performed, perhaps reciting his Theogony, and was awarded a prize of a valuable tripod “with ears,” a
standard type of prize offered for victory in athletic or musical contests (see figure 20). This practice of
holding elaborate funeral rites, including the participation of Greeks from other communities, is a
standard feature of the developing polis. We noted in chapter 2 that the polis seems to have crystallized
during the eighth century BC around the sanctuary, but this was only part of the story. Also instrumental in
the creation of the polis was a change, or a series of changes, in funerary practice.
As we have seen, during the Mycenaean Period prominent individuals were buried in lavish style, a
practice that continued in the Dark Age, although generally on a much smaller scale because of severely
reduced prosperity. A chance discovery, however, has revealed that, on occasion, even during the Dark
Age some individual was able to rise to a level of prosperity that allowed him to emulate his Mycenaean
predecessors. In 1980, a citizen of the town of Lefkandi on the island of Euboea, less than 10 kilometers
as the crow flies from Chalcis, while using a bulldozer to clear some land, uncovered and partially
destroyed the remains of a large structure dating to the first half of the tenth century BC. The name of the
town looks different from the names of the other locations in Greece that we have been considering. The