A GENERAL MODEL Of LONG-DISTANCE TRADE 307
the exclusion of the newly available substances from some established cults.^54
Already for Xenophanes, their use was an integral part of a symposion (fr. 21
B 1.7 D-K), while Pythagoreans as near-vegetarians evidently embraced their
use as an alternative to animal sacrifice with enthusiasm.^55 If Empedocles II of
Acragas linked them with Aphrodite in his vision of the Golden Age (fr. 31 B
128.4-7 D-K), his homonymous grandfather as victor at Olympia in 496 had
‘made an ox out of myrrh, frankincense and the most expensive spices and
divided it up among the people attending the festival’.^56 The anecdote is not
just piquant, for it shows that as in cult, so also in social use, already by the
early fifth century effective demand had generated a traffic that was substan-
tial enough for suppliers to be able to cater for such extravagances at minimal
notice. Not that the act of Empedocles I was unique, either, for six years later
at another sanctuary, in a comparable act of politico-cultic ostentation, Datis
as Persian admiral was able to sacrifice no less than 300 talents of frankincense
on the altar at Delos (Hdt. 6.97.2). True, that will hardly have been a spontane-
ous gesture, but it must reflect the scale of availability of the commodity, while
the two episodes together serve as further reminders of the primordial role of
sanctuaries, in Greece just as everywhere else, as the milieux of actions with
major economic impact.
Thereafter attestations multiply, reaching beyond the Aegean, Peloponnese,and Sicily even to Scythia if Herodotus’ report of frankincense being used
there as an ingredient in an overnight face-pack is to be believed.^57 The par-
ticular link with Aphrodite recurs with Xenophon’s gift of 100 prostitutes
to her sanctuary in Corinth in 464/3,^58 and soon afterwards Melanippides
of Melos had some of the Danaides ‘seeking out the sacred tears of libanos
and fragrant dates and kasia, soft Syrian seeds’,^59 but most of what follows
is Athenian, not least because of Athenaeus’ card-index-style knowledge of
Athenian comedy. By the 420s frankincense had become a well-known import
from ‘Syria’,^60 available from the part of the agora where the incense-sellers
congregated,^61 and had become a standard component of the ritual at the start
of various formal occasions, ranging from contests^62 through offerings to the
gods, perhaps especially at the new moon,^63 to (by the 380s) marriages.^64 By
the mid-fourth century if not earlier, with the shift of custom and terminology
from ‘symposion’ to ‘second table’, myrrh, cassia, and frankincense were being
seen as appropriate components for the later stages of a banquet.^65 Plainly,
too, by then frankincense had become comparatively inexpensive: even if
Antiphanes’ misanthropic Timon was exceptional in grudging an obol’s worth
for all the gods and goddesses,^66 nonetheless frankincense and various kinds of
honey-cakes were seen as appropriate examples for the moralising trope that
modest offerings made with real piety are more acceptable to the gods than
expensive ostentation.^67 If to this already wide range of uses and occasions
we add the uses of aromatics in perfumes and cosmetics, as materia medica, and