Relations with early Megara

Although in later times the Heraion was very clearly a Korinthian sanctuary, de Polignac believed that it had a Megarian origin, and he was not the only one who did so. The occasion to assume that Megara originally controlled the area of the Perachora Heraion lies in a passage in Ploutarchos’ Quaestiones Graecae 17:

What is the ‘spear-friend’?

In days of old the Megarid used to be settled in village communities with the citizens divided into five groups. They were called Heraeïs, Piraeïs, Megareis, Cynosureis, and Tripodiscioi. …181

According to many scholars, this passage referred to an early period of Megarian history, when the polis was in the making, and moreover they assume that it reveals that Megara in

that early period included the promontory where modern Perachora is situated.182 Neatly in

accord with Aristotle’s model, the passage evokes a group of scattered communities that gradually grew closer together. Eventually one urban core developed which became the polis of Megara, whereas the remaining villages became dependencies in the territory.

In reading this passage, scholars for convenience have conflated the two statements Plutarch made in the first line. As a result, they assume that originally, the Megarian territory consisted of five villages. The people would have been divided into five sections corresponding to their

location in the area of one of those villages.183 Megara, where the Megareis lived, turned out

to be dominant and became the urban centre of the polis. The village of the Tripodiskioi, Tripodiskos, has occurred in several other contexts and since long has been identified to the

north-west of Megara.184 In a textual fragment the 6th-century BC poet Sousarion is indeed

mentioned as a Megarian from Tripodiskos, indicating the dependent status of the village

179

Payne, Perachora I, Preface by T.J. Dunbabin.

180

T.J. Dunbabin (ed.), Perachora, The sanctuaries of Hera Akraia and Limenia II: Pottery, ivories, scarabs and other

objects (Oxford 1962).

181

Translation by F.C. Babbitt, Plutarch’s Moralia (London 1936).

182

Among others: W.R. Halliday, The Greek questions of Plutarch (Oxford 1928), 95-102; K. Hanell, Megarische

Studien (Lund 1934), 76; N.G.L. Hammond, “The Heraeum at Perachora and Corinthian encroachment”, BSA 49

(1954), 93-102, 95; J.B. Salmon, “The Heraeum at Perachora and the early history of Corinth and Megara”, BSA 67 (1972), 159-204 and plate 38, 193-194; R.P. Legon, Megara. The political history of a Greek city-state to 336 B.C. (Ithaca and London 1981), 49-50; P.J. Smith, The archaeology and epigraphy of Hellenistic and Roman Megaris (Oxford 2008), 97.

183

A. Robu, La cité de Mégare et les établissements mégariens de Sicile, de la Propontide et du Pont-Euxin. Histoire

et institutions (unpublished dissertation, University of Neuchâtel 2008), 18.

184

from Megara.185 For the Heraeis, Piraeis and Kynosoureis however, no certifiable location can be determined. Of these three, the Heraeis for the present discussion are the most interesting. It is inferenced that the Heraeis lived in the village of Heraia. Its name would have been

derived from the predominance of the worship of Hera in the area of that village.186

However, in the entire Megarid as we know it historically, no cult or sanctuary of Hera is attested, neither archeologically nor in literature. The abundance of theophoric personal

names derived from Hera in funerary inscriptions from Megara187, and the fact that Hera’s

worship was popular in Megara’s colonies188, on the other hand do suggest that an important

cult for Hera existed in the metropolis, at least at the time when the colonies were founded. One solution to this problem is to look for important Hera-cults in the vicinity, and this is the point where the Heraion at Perachora enters the discussion. On the single mention of the Heraeis as a subdivision of the Megarian population by Plutarch, it has been argued that their village must have been situated in the Perachora peninsula, around the Heraion. Consequently the entire peninsula had to have been part of the Megarid before Megara became a polis

through synoikismos.189

Several arguments have been subsequently adduced to support this rather speculative conclusion, and to prove that Plutarch was trustworthy as a source in this case. That the five villages were indeed the constituent elements of the polis is to be confirmed by the persistence of a fivefold division of the body of citizens, expressed in yearly colleges of five members for both stratègoi and damiourgoi attested in several inscriptions from Megara

itself.190 Additionally, a late inscription from Epidauros mentions a certain Megarian

Dionysios who was a member of the hekatostys of Kynosoura191, hekatostyes being widely

attested as civic subdivisions of poleis in service of military recruitment.192 Perhaps the

original villages or komai had lost their sense of locality by the Hellenistic period and had developed into subdivisions of the polis along lines of civic membership. Nonetheless, these very few scraps of information might be the reminiscence of an original composition of the

Megarid of five parts.193

Additionally, supposing that the promontory indeed belonged to Megara, the early ceramic that has been found at the Heraion might be taken to confirm Megarian control of it in the early Archaic period. First it must be conceded that no evidence exists of a typically Megarian

style of pottery for the Geometric period.194 Either the polis did not produce her own pottery,

and used imported wares instead, or she meticulously imitated the style of another region, making it unrecognizable as typically Megarian. Both possibilities have been explored for a way to prove the dominance of Megara in the Heraion at an early stage of its existence. One possibility is that Megara used Korinthian ware, which has been found in abundance at the Heraion. This possibility is very much conceivable, as we know that Korinthian pottery was

indeed popular in Megara in earlier and later periods.195 The second possibility is that Megara

imitated the pottery style of Argos. Some Argive ceramic has been found at the Heraion,

185

Robu, La cité de Mégare, 20.

186

Legon, Megara, 49.

187

Hanell, Megarische Studien, 76.

188

Idem, 207-218; Hammond, “The Heraeum at Perachora”, 96 and n.12, 98 and n. 24; Salmon, “The Heraeum at Perachora”, 194 n. 213.

189

See n. 180 supra.

190

5 Strategoi: IG VII 8-14 and R.M Heath, “Proxeny decrees from Megara”, BSA 19 (1912-1913), 82-88, no’s 1 and 2. 5 Damiourgoi: IG VII 41.

191

IG IV2 42.

192

Smith, Hellenistic and Roman Megaris, 115.

193

Hammond, “The Heraeum at Perachora”, 95.

194

Idem, 99.

195

including several temple models for which the model found at the Heraion in Argos is seen as

archetypal.196 Hanell already perceived a strong influence from Argos in Megara, judging

from the similarity of several of their cults and myths, and this influence might as well have

included pottery styles.197 Finds from Syracuse, near the earliest Megarian colony on Sicily,

Megara Hyblaia, which also looked rather Argive, might confirm this influence. Thus the Argive ware at the Heraion may actually be Megarian imitations, and as such it would attest

to the early Megarian presence at the sanctuary.198