Damia and Auxesia
Damia and Auxesia ( Greek Δαμία and Αὐξησία ) are two heroines in Greek mythology who, as goddesses of childbirth and fertility , were equated with Demeter and Kore .
According to Pausanias they owned a sanctuary in the Temenos of Hippolytos in Troizen . According to the citizens of Troizen, Damia and Auxesia are said to have been two girls from Crete who came to the city during a period of general turmoil and were stoned by members of an opposing party due to unfortunate circumstances . For atonement, a heroon was set up for them and a festival was celebrated called Lithobolia ("stoning").
Another story is told by Herodotus : According to this, there was a drought in the land of Epidaurus and the citizens sent to the oracle in Delphi to ask for remedial measures. The oracle ordered them to make pictures of Damia and Auxesia out of olive wood. The Epidaurs now asked the Athenians to be allowed to fell an olive tree, either because they did not have any olive trees themselves at the time, or because they considered the olive trees from Athens to be particularly sacred. The Athenians permitted this on the condition that the Epidaurs would make appropriate offerings for Athena Polis and Erechtheus every year .
After the Epidaurs made cult images from the olive tree and set them up, sterility disappeared. Some time later, however, the pictures were stolen by the Aiginetes , who set them up in a place called Oia and worshiped them with the same rites as the Epidaurs. Besides offering sacrifices, these rites included choirs of two times ten men in women's clothing reciting mocking poems about women and other crude jokes. In addition, according to Herodotus, there were still secret rites that one should not talk about.
Now that the pictures had been stolen from the Epidaurs, they no longer sent offerings to Athens. When the Athenians came and complained about it, the Epidaurs left to turn to Aegina, which the Athenians did and demanded the cult images from the Aiginetes.
Here, according to Herodotus, the reports of the Athenians and the Aiginetes diverge: according to the Athenians only one trireme was sent out. The crew tried to remove the cult images, but they did not succeed. When ropes were put around them, thunder and lightning came from the sky and the crew of the ship went mad. They all butchered each other and only one returned home. But he also perished: The women, angry about the death of their husbands, stabbed the only survivor with their clothes needles . That was the reason for the introduction of ionic costume in Athens, which does not need a dress pins, previously namely the women are the type of Dorer been robbed.
According to the Aiginetes, however, Athens had come with a fleet. The Aiginetes had evaded the battle and the Athenians went ashore. In order to pull the cult images from their pedestals , ropes were put around them, whereupon the cult images fell on their knees. They have remained in this position to this day. Herodotus thinks that whoever wants to believe may believe it. In the meantime reinforcements have been received from Argos and the Athenians attacked. At that moment lightning and thunder would have appeared. Pausanias reports that he saw the cult images and sacrificed them “according to the custom of Eleusis ”.
literature
- Vassilis Lambrinoudakis : Damia et Auxesia . In: Lexicon Iconographicum Mythologiae Classicae (LIMC). Volume III, Zurich / Munich 1986, pp. 323-324.
- Rudolf Peter: Damia . In: Wilhelm Heinrich Roscher (Hrsg.): Detailed lexicon of Greek and Roman mythology . Volume 1.1, Leipzig 1886, Col. 943-945 ( digitized version ).
- Karl Scherling: Lithobolia. In: Paulys Realencyclopadie der classischen Antiquity Science (RE). Volume XIII, 1, Stuttgart 1926, Col. 769 f.
- Heinrich Wilhelm Stoll : Auxesia . In: Wilhelm Heinrich Roscher (Hrsg.): Detailed lexicon of Greek and Roman mythology . Volume 1,1, Leipzig 1886, column 738 ( digitized version ).
- Ferdinand Dümmler : Auxesia . In: Paulys Realencyclopadie der classischen Antiquity Science (RE). Volume II, 2, Stuttgart 1896, Col. 2616-2618.
- Otto Kern : Damia . In: Paulys Realencyclopadie der classischen Antiquity Science (RE). Volume IV, 2, Stuttgart 1901, Col. 2054.