light (see Cartledge 1998:46–7); admittedly, these are typically quite late, from the
Roman period. Several Laconian cups from the sixth century BC, which have some-
times been discovered outside Laconia itself, also provide insights into the Laconian
religious imagination (Pipili 1987; Stibbe 1972, 2004).
It seems that the figures of the Spartan pantheon and the cult practices of Laconia
did not differ in fundamentals from those familiar from elsewhere in the Greek world.
In this chapter we will first look at the ways in which the gods presided over and
intervened in the full range of human activities. Then we will consider the fashion in
which the whole structure of daily life was sacralized, and finally we will investigate
how the dead could be put to the service of the living.
The Principal Cults
In the Spartan mind, as in that of the Greeks of the archaic and classical periods more
generally, men lived in a world in which the manifestations of supernatural powers
were to be found everywhere. One had to secure the favor of such powers by
appropriate actions. This sort of thinking and behavior can be seen to have under-
pinned the entirety of the young Spartans’ education, and it can also be seen to have
informed the conduct of adults in war and peace alike.
Initiation and communal life under the care of the gods
According to Polemon of Ilium, an author whosefloruitwas ca. 190 BC, the nurses
(titthai) of young Spartan boys used to participate in a cult associated with their
nurturing function, as its name reveals: the festival of the Tithe ̄nidia was organized in
honor of Artemis Corythalia, and held before her image (FHGiii 142 fr. 86, at
Athenaeus 139a–b).
According to Herodotus, growing girls were placed under the protection of
Helen, wife of Menelaus (on Helen at Sparta see Calame 1977:1.333–50; 1981;
2001:191–202). The historian clearly implies that Helen was supposed to sponsor
their marriages. The historian gives us anaition, an explanatory tale, for the estab-
lishment of Helen’s cult in a temple at Therapne, above Phoibaion, to the east of
Sparta. He tells how a nurse presented the ugly girl baby in her charge to the statue
of Helen, and an unknown lady (Helen, we are to understand) glanced at the baby on
the way out. The girl became the most beautiful of all the women of Sparta (6.61; cf.
also Isocrates,Encomium of Helen63, where the fourth-century Athenian orator tells
that at Therapne Helen and Menelaus have the right to receive sacrifices not as heroes
but as gods; and Pausanias 3.19.9). Excavations at the Menelaion (for which see
R.W.V. Catling 1992) have produced two archaic objects with dedications, one to
Helen and Menelaus (the pair constitute Sparta’s royal couple in the Homeric poems,
as is well known), and the other to Helen alone (see Catling and Cavanagh 1976).
But other powers too watched over the transition to adult life. The significance of
Orthia’s cult can be gauged from the numbers of archaic period lead figurines found
in her sanctuary – in excess of 100,000. These figurines (for the dating of which see
Boardman 1963) are between 2.5 and 8 centimeters high and represent a winged
female figure (Orthia herself?), warriors, animals, etc. (Fitzhardinge 1980:118–21,
The Religious System at Sparta 237