Worship Your Enemy: Aspects of the Cult of Heroes in Ancient Greece

Abstract

Herodotus, in the course of his account of the customs of the Scythians, describes the treatment which the inhabitants of the Tauric peninsula reserve for their enemies: after consecration to Iphigeneia, they are struck on the head with a club and decapitated; their bodies are either buried or precipitated from the temple rock, and their heads are impaled on stakes. The head of a prisoner of war is stuck on a long pole which is hoisted over his victor's house. These heads of their enemies, the Taurians say, now watch over their captors' houses, guarding them from their high vantage-point (Herodotus 4.103).

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