Aristaeus ("the best") was a cult title in many places:Boeotia,Arcadia,Ceos,Sicily,Sardinia,Thessaly, andMacedonia; consequently a set of "travels" was imposed, connecting hisepiphanies in order to account for these widespread manifestations.
If Aristaeus was a minor figure at Athens, he was more prominent inBoeotia, where he was "the pastoral Apollo",[2] and was linked to thefounding myth ofThebes by marriage withAutonoë, daughter ofCadmus, the founder.[3] Aristaeus may appear as a winged youth in painted Boeotian pottery,[4] similar to representations of theBoreads, spirits of the North Wind. BesidesActaeon andMacris, he also was said to have fatheredCharmus and Callicarpus inSardinia.[5]
According toPindar's ninth Pythian Ode and Apollonius'Argonautica (II.522ff), Cyrene despised spinning and other womanly arts and instead spent her days hunting andshepherding, but, in a prophecy he put in the mouth of the wisecentaurChiron, Apollo would spirit her toLibya and make her the foundress of a great city,Cyrene, in a fertile coastal plain.[6] When Aristaeus was born, according to what Pindar sang,Hermes took him to be raised onnectar andambrosia and to be made immortal byGaia.
"Aristaios" ("the best") is anepithet rather than a name:
For some men to callZeus and holyApollo. Agreus and Nomios,[7] and for others Aristaios (Pindar)
From theMyrtle-nymphs inThessaly (being, eitherDryads orOreads)—or theThriae—who raised him on Apollo's behalf, Aristaeus learned other useful arts and mysteries, such asdairying; how to prepare milk forcream,butter,oxygala (similar toyogurt) andcheese(making); how to keepchickens for theireggs; how to tame the Goddess'sbees andkeep them in hives (the bees either belonging to the Myrtle nymphs themselves or theThriae), to harness supplies ofhoney andbeeswax, etc.;[8] how to tame and cultivate the wildoleaster in order to make it bearolives and how to process them intoolive oil (like his aunt,Athena); as such, Aristaeus is a protector of olive trees, of oliveorchards/plantations,Oliviculture and of olive oil presses (whereas Athena is the goddess of olives, of olive oil and of olive-oil-making).[9]
Like his father, Apollo, his mother, Cyrene (a huntress and a shepherdess), his uncle,Hermes, and his cousin(?),Pan, Aristaeus is also a patron god and a protector ofshepherds/herders and ofherding, patron of the art ofSheep shearing, as well as the patron god ofpastoralism; of thecattle and their herds and flocks, and protector ofpastures.[citation needed]
InCeos, Aristaeus is also a god of theEtesian winds (without being mistaken forBoreas or hisbrothers), which provided some respite from the intense heat of their scorching,drought-causing midsummers weather/climate.[10]
When he was grown, he sailed from Libya toBoeotia, where he was inducted into further mysteries in the cave ofChiron the centaur. In Boeotia, he was married toAutonoë and became the father of the ill-fatedActaeon, who inherited the family passion for hunting, to his ruin,[11] and ofMacris, who nursed the childDionysus.
According to Pherecydes, Aristaeus fatheredHecate, goddess of witchcraft, crossroads, and the night.[12]Hesiod'sTheogony suggests her parents were Perses and Asteria.
Aristaeus' presence in Ceos, attested in the fourth and third centuries BC,[13] was attributed to a Delphic prophecy that counselled Aristaeus to sail toCeos, where he would be greatly honored. He found the islanders suffering from sickness under the stifling and baneful effects of the Dog-StarSirius at its first appearance before the sun's rising, in early July. In the foundation legend of a specifically Cean weather-magic ritual, Aristaeus was credited with the double sacrifice that countered the deadly effects of the Dog-Star, a sacrifice at dawn to Zeus Ikmaios, "Rain-making Zeus" at a mountaintop altar,[14] following a pre-dawnchthonic sacrifice to Sirius, the Dog-Star, at its first annual appearance,[10] which brought the annual relief of the coolingEtesian winds.
In a development that offered more immediate causality for the myth, Aristaeus discerned that the Ceans' troubles arose from murderers hiding in their midst, the killers ofIcarius in fact. When the miscreants were found out and executed, and a shrine erected to Zeus Ikmaios, the great god was propitiated and decreed that henceforth, theEtesian wind should blow and cool all the Aegean for forty days from the baleful rising of Sirius, but the Ceans continued to propitiate the Dog-Star, just before its rising, just to be sure.[15] Aristaeus appears on Cean coins.[16]
Then Aristaeus, on hiscivilizing mission, visitedArcadia, where the winged male figure who appears on ivory tablets in the sanctuary ofOrtheia as the consort of the goddess, has been identified as Aristaeus by L. Marangou.[17]
Soon after Aristaeus' inadvertent hand in the death ofEurydice—whose husband, Orpheus, in one version, is Aristaeus' own half-brother, via Apollo (another version says that her husband, Orpheus, was fathered byOeagrus)—his bees became sickened and began to die. Seeking counsel, first from his mother, Cyrene, and then fromProteus, Aristaeus learns that the bees' death was a punishment for causing the death of Eurydice, from hernymph sisters. Tomake amends, Aristaeus needed to sacrifice 12 animals (or four bulls and four cows) to the gods, and in memory of Eurydice, leave the carcasses in the place of sacrifice, and to return 3-days later. He followed these instructions, establishing sacrificial altars before a fountain, as advised, sacrificed the aforementioned cattle, and left their carcasses. Upon returning 3-days later, Aristaeus found within one of the carcasses new swarms of bees, which he took back to hisapiary. The bees were never again troubled by disease.[8]
^His inventions of apicultural apparatus, such as the linen gauze bee-keeper's mask and the technique of smoking the hive, were elaborated byNonnus in hisDionysiaca. V.214ff.
^An expression credited toHesiod inServius' commentary on Virgil'sGeorgics, I.14; cf. William J. Slater,Lexicon to Pindar (Berlin: de Gruyter) 1969,s.v. ""Nomios". When "pastoral Apollo" appears in lines ofTheocritus (Idyll XXV) andCallimachus (Ode to Apollo, 47) the expression blurs the effective domaines of the two figures.
^As on a Boeotian tripod-kothon at theMetropolitan Museum of Art, illustrated and discussed in Brian F. Cook, "Aristaios"The Metropolitan Museum of Art Bulletin New Series,21.1 (Summer 1962), pp. 31-36; there Aristaeus hastens with a mattock and a one-handled amphora, which Cook interprets as filled with seed-corn.
^Theophrastus,Of the winds 14, and other testimony noted inWalter Burkert,Homo Necans (1972), translated by Peter Bing ((University of California Press) 1983), p. 109 note 1; Burkert notes that Aristaeus is already mentioned in aHesiodic fragment.
^Charikleia Papageorgiadou-Banis,The Coinage of Kea (Paris) 1997.
^Marangou, Aristaios"AM8772), pp77-83, noted by Jane Burr Carter, "The Masks of Ortheia"American Journal of Archaeology91.3 (July 1987:355-383) p. 382f.
^Eugene Vanderpool, "Two Inscriptions Near Athens",Hesperia14.2, The American Excavations in the Athenian Agora: Twenty-Sixth Report (April 1945), pp. 147-149; Susan I. Rotroff, "An Athenian Archon List of the Late Second Century after Christ"Hesperia44.4 (October 1975), pp. 402-408; Sterling Dow, "Archons of the Period after Sulla",Hesperia Supplements8 Commemorative Studies in Honor of Theodore Leslie Shear (1949), pp. 116–125, 451, etc.
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