Heroon

Author: Laxman Burdak, IFS (R).

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Heroon (हेरून) is a shrine dedicated to an ancient Greek or Roman hero and used for the commemoration or cult worship of the hero. They were often erected over his or her supposed tomb or cenotaph.

Variants

• Heroön
• plural Heroa (/hɪˈroʊ.ɒn/;
• Ancient Greek: ἡρῷον,
• romanized: hērôion, pl. ἡρῷα, hērôia,
• also latinized as Heroum

Jat Gotras Namesake

• Her = Heroön (Pliny.vi.33)

History

The Romans and the Greeks practised an extensive and widespread cult of heroes. Heroes played a central role in the life of a polis, giving the city a shared focus for its identity. The cult typically centred on the heroön in which the hero's bones were usually believed to be contained. In a sense, the hero was considered still to be alive; he was offered meals and was imagined to be sharing feasts. His allegiance was seen as vitally important to the continued well-being of the city. This led to struggles between Greek cities for control of heroic remains.

Greek literature records how Cimon of Athens avenged the death of the legendary hero Theseus in 469 BC, finding a set of bones allegedly belonging to the hero and returning with them in triumph to Athens. Similarly, Herodotus records in his Histories that the Spartans raided the heroön of the city of Tegea, stealing the bones of Orestes. This was regarded as changing the hero's allegiance from Tegea to Sparta, ensuring that the Spartans could defeat the Tegeans as foretold by the Oracle of Delphi.

Many examples of heroa can be found around the tholos tombs of Mycenaean Greece and in or near the sacred areas of a number of Greek cities around the Mediterranean. A particularly well-preserved example, the so-called Tomb of Theron, can be found at Agrigento in Sicily. The Greek city of Paestum, south of Naples, has an unlooted heroon of an unknown figure, perhaps the city founder, with its contents intact (now in the museum there), including large metal vases. Another notable one, at Vergina in Greek Macedonia (the ancient city of Aigai - Αἰγαί), is thought to have been dedicated to the worship of the family of Alexander the Great and may have housed the cult statue of Alexander's father, Philip II of Macedon. The sanctuary of Zeus in Nemea also contains a heroön, this one dedicated to the infant hero Opheltes. The Heroon at Nemea was known as a popular place to practice magic due to the nature of Opheltes' death.

A well-preserved Roman heroön from the Augustan period is situated in the ancient city of Sagalassos in what is now Turkey. Another well-preserved and well-known heroön is the Library of Celsus in Ephesus, Turkey. It was built to honor a Roman senator, Tiberius Julius Celsus Polemaeanus, a consul and proconsul of Asia from 92 to 107 and governor of Asia when he died in 114. He bequeathed a large sum of money for its construction which was carried out by his son. Apart from the library in Alexandria, Egypt, it was one of the largest libraries of the ancient world.

Mention by Pliny

Pliny, describing 'The Gulfs Of The Red Sea', mentions....The localities of this region are as follow: On passing the Ælanitic Gulf there is another gulf, by the Arabians called Sœa, upon which is situate the city of Heroön.² The town of Cambysu³ also stood here formerly, between the Neli and the Marchades, Cambyses having established there the invalids of his army.

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1 The Straits of Bab-el-Mandeb.

2 Or Heroöpolis, a city east of the Delta, in Egypt, and situate near the mouth of the royal canal which connected the Nile with the Red Sea. It was of considerable consequence as a trading station upon the arm of the Red Sea, which runs up as far as Arsinoë, the modern Suez, and was called the "Gulf" or "Bay of the Heroes." The ruins of Heroöpolis are still visible at Abu-Keyscheid.

3 This place, as here implied, took its name from Cambyses, the son of Cyrus.