guarded by the Times, and ever-aging Tithonus living with Dawn, the Edge of Days
herself, on the oceanic circumference.
Human Time
Radical physiological change was a distinguishing characteristic of mortal man, as the
Sphinx’s riddle, which spoke of the ages of man as if they were three completely
different species of animal with their own forms of locomotion, made clear. This
characterization of mortals as quintessentially changeable over time meant that, like
wool to cloth, olive to oil, vine to wine, the processing of man from birth to
decrepitude via maturity, citizenship, and marriage could be used as a temporal
model in a formal, structured way. Athens, Sparta, and Crete, and probably most
poleis, were what anthropologists call ‘‘age-class societies,’’ i.e. each year’s batch of
new citizens was enrolleden masseinto an age-set (e.g. ‘‘ephebes of 380 BC’’) which
then progressed through a number of age grades which carried with them certain
(in)eligibilities and responsibilities. Age also qualified one for certain ritual roles: the
Arrhe ̄phoroi had to be between 7 and 11. The priest of Zeus at Achaean Aigion was
the most beautiful boy of all his coevals. As soon as hair appeared on his face he was,
apparently, discharged (Pausanias 7.24.2).
These grades were also associated with idealized images, recognizable above all by
height and beard: the ‘‘boy,’’ under-height, no beard; the ‘‘man,’’ full height,
bearded; and, halfway between them, the ‘‘ephebe,’’ full-grown, no beard, probably
representing the intermediate grade referred to in Athens asMeirakion,Neaniskos,or
Neanias, ‘‘18’’ and ‘‘19,’’ for puberty came late in antiquity. In this way the ephebic
image of a full-bodied, beardlesskouros, taking one step forwards, could represent
New Citizenship and therefore the new year. The greatest number of suchkouroiwas
discovered at the Boeotian Ptoion.
In Athens each new year-set was identified with one of forty-two eponymous year-
heroes endlessly recycled, the one surrendered by the retiring set of those turning 60.
These year-heroes remain mysterious, but we can safely assume that, like other
heroes, they had tombs and cults, and that the forty-two-year cycle therefore had a
cultic and topographical dimension. We can perhaps see reflections of these age-class
cycles in the inauguration of the Parthenon in 438, precisely forty-two years after the
Persian Sack (Philochorus,FGrH328 fr. 121), i.e., the year in which the set of
the hero initiated at the time of the Sack was socially reincarnated. The construction
of the temple of Zeus at Olympia, ca. 456, at the time of the start of the eighth
forty-year cycle since the foundation of the Games in 776, is also unlikely to be
coincidental.
Age-graded choruses performed at numerous festivals, and different grades seem to
have been associated with different times, maiden choruses, for instance, often
performing at night. Collectively these divisions by age grade could produce a
spectacular self-representation of the community in all its demographic splendor. At
the Hyacinthia for instance: ‘‘Boys [paides] with tunics hitched up play the lyre and
sing to the sound of oboes. They sing to the god [Apollo] in a high pitch .. .The
entire cohort ofneaniskoienter and sing one of the local [Amyclaean] songs. ... ’’
The hard, mechanical structure of the age-class cycle meant that physiological change
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