planted, and tells how the nymphs made him an overseer of the place. He lists the
resident gods: the nymphs, Pan, and Hermes are mentioned first, then a number of
gods concerned with the health and nurture of youths: Apollo, Heracles, Chiron,
Asclepius, and Hygieia. Archedamus’ and Pantalces’ shared conception of the proper
way to honor the nymphs includes the idea that their dwelling is not a temple but a
cave, a natural shelter with certain analogies to human structures, but distinct from
them. It is permissible, even necessary, for the human worshiper to improve on the
natural contours of the cave. Outside the cave, there must be vegetation. Since the
appropriate, aesthetically desirable plants will not domesticate themselves, as they did
for Calypso, the worshipers of the nymphs plant and tend the garden. In one sense,
the nympholept strives to approximate the literary ideal of the nymph’s garden. Yet
Archedamus and Pantalces diverged significantly from the ideal in their insistence on
announcing their own agency in the creation and maintenance of the gardens. Far
from representing the gardens as self-domesticating, they filled them with inscriptions
describing their own labors and how these were undertaken at the bidding of the
nymphs. Greek votive religion, which assumes that the gods require or at least expect
material expressions of worship in the form of dedications and sanctuaries, clashes
with the theological and poetic ideal of divine autonomy and bliss.
Worshiping the Nymphs
Archedemus and Pantalces were not representative of the average Greek, but indi-
viduals whose extraordinary piety led them to devote their lives to maintaining
intense relationships with specific gods. Yet most classical Greeks would have been
Figure 3.1 The cave of Archedamus at Vari, Attica. Photo by Elmar Gehnen. Courtesy
Deutsches Archa ̈ologisches Institut, Athens
60 Jennifer Larson