fundamental problem because in classical antiquity there was no differentiation
between upper- and lower-case letters, so there is no scope for the convention of
personifying a concept simply by giving it an initial capital; neither does Greek use
gender to differentiate between animate (he or she) and inanimate (it). The only way
to distinguish a personification, therefore, is by looking at the context. At one end of
the scale this might be something as slight as the presence of a qualifying verb or
adjective indicating human action or feeling – ‘‘loving Peace wrapped her arms
around him’’ – the kind of statement which may be no more than a poetic flourish.
More substantially, a figure may be linked with others by means of a genealogy, as we
shall see especially in Hesiod’sTheogony, or even be explicitly labeled as divine –
‘‘recognizing one’s friends is a god’’ (Euripides,Helen560). It will always remain
debatable, however, whether a figure given this kind of literary treatment would have
been understood as metaphorical or as a fully personalized divine power. The same
‘‘artistic license’’ problem applies to the many personifications found in Greek vase-
painting and (to a lesser extent) sculpture. Here there can at least be no doubt that a
figure is personified; the question is rather how we can recognize individual person-
ifications. The practice of representing personifications with attributes which are
expressive of the concept’s meaning only becomes standard in the hellenistic period.
Before this the great majority of personifications in Greek art are represented in the
form of idealized young women, indistinguishable one from another and only iden-
tifiable if an inscription is present. They may even masquerade as another kind of
mythological figure altogether (A.C. Smith 2005): in Figure 4.1, for example, the
central female figure is reclining in the company of Dionysus and his satyrs, wearing a
Dionysiac ivy wreath and holding a drinking-horn, while the torch resting on her left
shoulder indicates the night-time setting of the revels. Without an inscription we
would take her to be a maenad, but above her head we can just make out the letters
EIRENE, which label her as the personified ‘‘Peace.’’
In short, literature and art present us with a great number of personifications, but
leave us uncertain of their status; in order to demonstrate that any figure was
recognized as a full-blown deity we need to find evidence for practical cult obser-
vance. Very few personifications seem to have been important enough to merit an
entire sanctuary of their own, but they might rather share a temple with a major deity,
as or simply have an altar. We hear about such locations of worship in the works of
writers of the first and second centuries AD such as Plutarch and Pausanias, but only
rarely do these provide us with precise information which can be matched up with
archaeological evidence from a particular site. More consistently useful is the evidence
of inscriptions, which can attest a personification’s cult status unequivocally by
recording dedications, financial details relating to a sanctuary’s accounts, regulations
for a festival, or the names of cult personnel. Where evidence such as this is available,
there can be no doubt that the personification in question was recognized, at least in
the particular locality, as a power worth cultivating.
Epic Poetry and Archaic Personification
We cannot trace the history of personification in Greece before the advent of epic
poetry in the late eighth century BC, but there is precedent for the phenomenon in
Ogden / Companion to Greek Religion 1405120541_4_004 Revise Proof page 72 30.10.2006 4:25pm72 Emma Stafford