Sanctuary of Athena Alea at Mantinea

Athena and Poseidon from Mantinea
Mantinea, Arkadia, AE16 Dichalkon, ca 300-250 BCE. 1.95 g. Helmeted head of Athena right / MAN, Poseidon seated left on rock, holding dolphin and trident. BMC 19; BCD Pelop. 1487-1488; SNG Cop 252.
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At Mantinea, near Tripolis, there was a Sanctuary and an image of Athena Alea.

Pausanias reports: They also worship Athena Alea, of whom they have a sanctuary and an image. (Paus. 8.9.6)

Athena Alea of Mantinea Reconstruction
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Athena Alea

The following text is an excerpt from Gustave Fougères’ landmark study, Mantinée et l'Arcadie orientale (Paris, 1898, pp. 287–294). In this passage, Fougères examines the complex evolution of the Arcadian deity Alea—originally an autonomous, local goddess associated with refuge, protection, and sanctuary—and her eventual syncretism with the Panhellenic goddess Athena.

By contrasting the brief, somewhat dry account of the traveler Pausanias with epigraphic, numismatic, and historical evidence, Fougères reconstructs how local cults in Mantinea, Tegea, and the city of Alea preserved indigenous religious identity before gradually assimilating into broader Classical Greek theology.

«ATHENA ALEA

This deity is one of the oldest and most respected after Poseidon Hippios. Pausanias' text hardly hints at its true importance. Moreover, except for the temple of Poseidon, this author is sparing with details about the Mantinean sanctuaries. He confines himself to a rather dry and somewhat confused enumeration. "The Mantineans," he says, "also worship Athena Alea; she has a temple and a statue among them." On the other hand, inscriptions and coins compensate for the inadequacy of this brief mention. First, there is the name ἐπ᾿ Αλέας borne by one of the urban tribes, the equivalent of the Tegean ἐπ᾿ Αθαναίαν, then the fragment of an archaic inscription that regulates the compensation due to the goddess for violating her sanctuary following a murder, and finally the coins where the head of Athena is opposed to Dionysus, or to Poseidon, or to Callisto. Although overshadowed by Poseidon, Alea is nonetheless one of the most important and ancient divine figures in Mantinea.

The name of the Mantinean tribe and the title of our inscription (οφλέασι οἶδε ἐν ᾿Αλέαν) agree in giving us the true name of the goddess in the first half of the 5th century. At that time, she was simply called Alea in Mantinea. She is the goddess Alea, ὁ θεὸς ὁ ᾿Αλέα, free from any assimilation with a foreign deity. In the same inscription, she is designated: the goddess, & θεός. Evidently, the identification of this native deity with Athena occurred later, under an influence that remains to be determined Arcadian by birth, she became Hellenized later, at least in Mantinea, following the same pattern that led to the merging of several local deities with other, more important or famous figures. This is how the ancient Hagemone Asea became Artemis Hegemone, Hymnia of Maenalus was transformed into Artemis Hymnia, Callisto into Artemis Calliste, and Alalcomenia into Athena Alalcomeneis. The origin of these isolated names must be sought in the invocations originally addressed to a divine being, if not a single being, then at least conceived as embodying a number of qualities, such as Beauty, Harmony, Sovereignty, and Protective Virtue. Special epithets led to the autonomous personification of these different aspects of the anonymous divinity (θεός). The All-Beautiful One was distinguished from the Harmonious One, the Sovereign One, and the Protectress. The Arcadian cantons wholeheartedly applied the adage nomina numina and created numerous divine personalities with moral attributes or physical qualities. When the Hellenic gods penetrated the rugged province, they gradually absorbed these local deities, powerless to defend their individuality and their names. This metamorphosis must often have had the complicity of local priests and exegetes who sought to enhance the prestige of the native idols by attributing to them, through more or less well-founded analogies, the attributes and names of more famous gods. It is the result of this now distant work that Pausanias, imbued with modern ideas, recorded in his book. Beneath his learnedly banal assimilations, it is often impossible to trace the original lineage of the ancient deities. Thus, in the passages relating to Athena Alea of Tegea, Mantinea, and Alea, nothing alerts us that we are dealing with a figure foreign in origin and character to the classical Pallas. And yet Alea was neither a reflection nor an emanation of it. It is fortunate that, locally, ancient ideas sometimes resisted the centralizing attempts of mythographers, and that we find the authentic trace of these ideas in certain figurative or epigraphic monuments.

Alea closely resembles the Alalcomenia of the Tilphousion. She is a Protectress. Her name means both shelter, refuge, sanctuary and distance, rescue. She welcomes fugitives and keeps enemies at bay. At Tegea, her temple is a famous sanctuary; people flock there from Argos and Sparta. She is also the city's bulwark. She assumes the role of patron deity and receives as votive offerings the shackles of captives or the spoils of enemies. Her name having a double meaning, she must necessarily have benefited from the ambiguity. At Mantinea, in the first half of the 5th century, as our archaic inscription proves, it was above all the idea of refuge that was associated with the name of Alea.

The cult of Alea is native to Arcadia. It is not found elsewhere than in Laconia, where he descended from Tegea. He was born from the creation of an Arcadian sanctuary. During the troubled period that followed the Dorians' settlement in the Peloponnese, the High Plain offered itself as a neutral territory where fugitive bands and dispossessed families found refuge. In legend, Orestes, the Peliades, Penelope, Apheidas and his band, find asylum in Tegea or Mantinea. Later, Apheidas, although from Argolis, was linked to Arcas. His son Aleus was considered to be the founder of the cult of Alea, which undoubtedly means that Apheidas opened a sanctuary to refugees of his race. It was, in fact, the Argive Melampus who erected the altar to the goddess. The same Aleus was the guardian of the city of Alea, meaning that another asylum was opened in that city. Furthermore, Aleus's son, Cepheus, settled in a neighboring district, welcomed Attic supplicants driven out by Aegeus. Mantinea also became a place of refuge. Of these three asylums—Alea, Mantinea, and Tegea—placed under the protection of the goddess Alea, which was the oldest? The name of the asylum, which in the first became the very name of the city, and the importance of its sacred enclosure, attested by a religious regulation from the first half of the 4th century and deposited at Tegea, seem to create a presumption in favor of Alea. Its territory borders that of Argos. It is merely a small, enclosed valley, isolated on all sides. It was hardly destined for brilliant futures, but rather doomed to dependence on Stymphalus or Argos.

By the time of Pausanias, it had returned to the Argolid. Very early on, this region must have served as a hiding place for fugitives whom crime or political reasons drove from the Argolid. It is therefore possible that the Apheidantes first settled there, before spreading out into the prosperous plains of Mantinica and Tegea, where, reinforced by recruits arriving from their homeland, they would soon have found themselves in a good position. Tegea, with its nine demes, then became the power of eastern Arcadia, the center of commercial and religious exchanges between the Argolid and the interior of the Peloponnese. The renown and importance of its sanctuary increased to the point of overshadowing those of Alea and Mantinea. It was then that Argive Athena settled in Tegea. She initially came there independently. Traces of her cult remain in the name of the tribe ἐπ' ᾿Αθαναίαν, in the cult of Athena Poliatis, and in the sanctuary of the Ἔρυμα, where the city's talisman, a hair of the Gorgon given to Cepheus by the goddess, was kept. But this independent cult failed to develop; the priest entered Athena's temple only once a year, according to Pausanias. This was because, early on, Athena had merged with the all-powerful Alea. The Protectress goddess first became the Protectress like Athena (᾿Αλέα ᾿Αθανά), and finally, as Alea shifted from a noun to an adjective, Athena the Protectress (᾿Αλέα). The two personalities of the Protectress and the Poliatis combined in an intimate union. The goddess resulting from this fusion retained from the ancient Alea the right of sanctuary and added to it the warlike attributes of Athena Polias of Athens, who became the model for most of the patron goddesses.

The religious regulations of Tegea suggest the existence, before 371, of an Arcadian amphictyony whose religious link was the cult of Alea and whose center was Tegea. It united the ancient asylums placed under the protection of the Protectress, that is to say, the sanctuaries of Alea, Mantinea, and Tegea, perhaps also that of Kaphyai, ​​linked by Cepheus to the legend of Aleus. The starting point of this association, following Mr. Meister, it would have been, in primitive times, the city of Alea. Tegea, at the height of its powers, supplanted it, but Alea retained for its sacred enclosure privileges, the details of which are specified in the inscription. The Amphictyonic cities were represented by hieromnemones who collected, for the benefit of the common treasury, half of certain fines. They met at Tegea at the time of the Tripana-gorsis or triple panegyric, undoubtedly so named because the festival in honor of Alea took place simultaneously in the three cities, centers of the cult of this goddess. This solemnity was accompanied by great sacrifices, banquets, and games. At Tegea, in a special stadium near the temple, the ᾿Αλεαία were celebrated.

The assimilation of Alea and Athena, which began at Tegea and was illustrated by the popularity of the richest sanctuary in Arcadia, entered common parlance. The historical role of Tegea contributed to the spread of the name Alea-Athena or Athena-Alea, applied by Pausanias to all sanctuaries of Alea. But at Mantinea, and probably also at Alea, the liturgy long resisted this combination. The original deity defended her name and personality there until the 5th century. However, at Mantinea, the Argive Athena had also been introduced under the patronage of Hera: she appears with Hebe alongside Hera in a group sculpted by Praxiteles. On the other hand, a small marble herm, ending in a pyramid and bearing the inscription 'Αθαναία' in letters from the correct period, was discovered by M. Foucart: it was a reproduction of the goddess herself in the tetragonal form favored by the Arcadians. Finally, the Mantinean Protectress followed the example of her neighbor and became Polias. She appears, completely Hellenized, wearing a Corinthian helmet, on the city's coins minted after Epaminondas. One might suppose that this type relates to an independent deity, such as Athena Poliatis of Tegea. But Pausanias does not mention any special temple to Athena. It is more plausible to admit that the merging of Alea and Athena took place in New Mantinea after 371. The desire to compete with the Tegean rival may well have played a part in this combination.

The sanctuary of Alea had, in the first half of the 5th century, an importance that it undoubtedly lost later, in Roman times. A serious case of hierosylia, of which an inscription has preserved the memory, involved human justice associated with divine justice, and a χρηστήριον which is perhaps the ancient oracle of Poseidon Hippios transformed as mentioned above.»

Fougères, Gustave - Mantinée et l'arcadie orientale. Paris, 1898, p. 287-294.

Poseidon of Mantinea Reconstruction
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