a figure which the ancient audience would have taken more seriously. When Euripides’
Cyclops declares that ‘‘Wealth is the only god for the wise’’ (Cyclops316), we
may be right to laugh at his cynicism, but there is a little evidence that Wealth
(Ploutos) had a place in the Athenian cult of Demeter. Conversely, Pindar’s address
to Quiet (Hesychia) – ‘‘Kindly Quiet, daughter of Justice who makes cities very great,
you who hold the sovereign keys of councils and of wars. .. ’’ (Pythian8.1–4) –
exhibits several formal features of the hymn genre, suggestive of real cult status, and
yet the fact that Quiet appears nowhere else in literature or art gives grounds for
suspecting that she is here the product of poetic license. The most important
development in classical literature as far as personification is concerned, however, is
drama. Personifications feature in the dialogue of both tragedy and comedy, but most
significantly a number actually appear as characters on stage. In surviving tragedy we
see just three – Might and Force in thePrometheus Boundand Madness in Euripides’
Madness of Heracles– but many more must have had a part in lost plays. Several are
included in Pollux’s list of tragic characters requiring ‘‘special masks’’ (4.141–2): a
river, a mountain, Justice, Death, Madness, Frenzy, Arrogance, the Indos river, City,
Persuasion, Muses, Seasons, Deceit, Drunkenness, Sloth, Envy. In comedy personi-
fied characters play an even more important part. Aristophanes has Just and Unjust
Arguments debating at length in theClouds, while a character called The People has a
central role in theKnights, as does Wealth in theWealth, which also features Poverty;
in thePeace, Peace is attended by Vintage and Festival, and the silent Sovereignty and
Reconciliation appear inBirdsandLysistrata respectively. Several lost comedies
humorously elaborated on the old idea of the poet’s relationship with his Muse:
‘‘Cratinus created the fiction that Comedy was his wife and wished to leave the
marital home and bring a suit against him for ill-treatment...’’ (scholium onKnights
400; see Sommerstein 2005). Such characters may be purely inventions of the
playwright to suit the dramatic circumstances of the moment, but the fact that
personifications were presented in physical form must have helped to give them
substance in the popular imagination, as must the increased range of personified
figures to be found in fifth-century vase-painting. These enjoy a particular vogue in
the work of the Meidias Painter and his circle around 420–400 BC, which is busy
with female figures accompanying Aphrodite with names like Happiness, Play, Law-
fulness, Harmony, Persuasion, Good Fortune, Fair Fame, Health, Freedom-from-
Toil; to these we might add the youthful winged males, duplicates of Eros, labeled as
Desire, Yearning, and even Sweet-Talk. These figures have often been dismissed as
superficial decorative devices, contributing to a general ‘‘feel-good’’ atmosphere, but
close study reveals that they are carefully chosen and arranged to convey sophisticated
messages, playing an important part in the development of allegory in Greek art
(Borg 2005; Shapiro 1986). Personifications also begin to appear in free-standing
sculpture, as we already seen in Agorakritos’ Nemesis and Naukydes’ Youth, although
they are only identifiable where a specific cult context is known.
In three cases of cults which are first attested in the fifth century the personification
is closely associated with an Olympian deity. The first also has some small mytho-
logical pedigree of her own: Persuasion (Peitho) appears briefly in Hesiod (Works and
Days73–5) alongside the Graces as Aphrodite’s assistants in the creation of Pandora,
whom they endow with the power of seduction. Inscriptions attest that Persuasion
and the Graces were worshiped together on the islands of Paros and Thasos in the
Ogden / Companion to Greek Religion 1405120541_4_004 Revise Proof page 78 30.10.2006 4:25pm78 Emma Stafford