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A heroon - ????? (plural heroa - ???a), also called heroum, was a shrine dedicated to an ancient Greek
Ancient Greece

The term Ancient Greece refers to the period of History of Greece lasting from the Greek Dark Ages ca. 1100 BC and the Dorian invasion, to 146 BC and the Roman Republic conquest of Greece after the Battle of Corinth ....
 or Roman
Ancient Rome

Ancient Rome was a civilization that grew out of a small agricultural community founded on the Italian Peninsula as early as the 10th century BC....
 hero and was used for the commemoration or worship of the hero. It was often erected over his supposed tomb or cenotaph
Cenotaph

A cenotaph is a tomb or a monument erected in honor of a person or group of persons whose remains are elsewhere. It can also be the initial tomb for a person who has since been interred elsewhere....
.

The Romans and the Greeks practised an extensive and widespread cult of heroes.






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Sagalassos3
A heroon - ????? (plural heroa - ???a), also called heroum, was a shrine dedicated to an ancient Greek
Ancient Greece

The term Ancient Greece refers to the period of History of Greece lasting from the Greek Dark Ages ca. 1100 BC and the Dorian invasion, to 146 BC and the Roman Republic conquest of Greece after the Battle of Corinth ....
 or Roman
Ancient Rome

Ancient Rome was a civilization that grew out of a small agricultural community founded on the Italian Peninsula as early as the 10th century BC....
 hero and was used for the commemoration or worship of the hero. It was often erected over his supposed tomb or cenotaph
Cenotaph

A cenotaph is a tomb or a monument erected in honor of a person or group of persons whose remains are elsewhere. It can also be the initial tomb for a person who has since been interred elsewhere....
.

The Romans and the Greeks practised an extensive and widespread cult of heroes. Heroes played a central role in the life of a polis
Polis

A polis -- plural: poleis --is a city, a city-state and also citizenship and body of citizens. When used to describe Classical Athens and its contemporaries, polis is often translated as "city-state."...
, giving the city a shared focus for its identity. The cult typically centred around the heroon in which the hero's bones were usually believed to be contained. In a sense, the hero was considered to still 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
Athens

Athens , the Capital and largest city of Greece, dominates the Attica periphery; as one of the List of cities by time of continuous habitation, its recorded history spans around 3,400 years....
 avenged the death of the legendary hero Theseus
Theseus

For other uses, see Theseus Theseus was a legendary king of Athens, son of Aethra , and fathered by Aegeus and Poseidon, with whom Aethra lay in one night....
 in 469 BC, finding a set of bones allegedly belonging to the hero and returning with them in triumph to Athens. Similarly, Herodotus
Herodotus

Herodotus of Halicarnassus was a Greeks historian who lived in the 5th century BC and is regarded as the "Father of History" in Western culture....
 records in his Histories
Histories (Herodotus)

The Histories of Herodotus of Halicarnassus is considered the first work of history in Western literature. Written about 440 BC in the Ionic dialect of classical Greek, The Histories tells the story of the Greco-Persian Wars between the Achaemenid Empire and the Polis in the 5th century BC....
 that the Sparta
Sparta

Sparta was a city-state in ancient Greece, situated on the Eurotas River in the southern part of the Peloponnese. From circa 650 BC it rose to become the dominant military power in the region and as such was recognized as the overall leader of the combined Greek forces during the Greco-Persian Wars....
ns raided the heroon of the city of Tegea
Tegea

Tegea was a settlement in ancient Greece, and it is also a municipality in modern Arcadia, Greece, with its seat in the village Stadio.Ancient Tegea was an important religious center of ancient Greece, containing the Temple of Athena Alea....
, stealing the bones of Orestes
Orestes (mythology)

In Greek mythology, Orestes was the son of Clytemnestra and Agamemnon. He is the subject of several Ancient Greek theatre and of various legends connected with his madness and purification....
. 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 Mycenae
Mycenae

Mycenae , is an archaeology in Greece, located about 90 km south-west of Athens, in the north-eastern Peloponnese. Argos is 6 km to the south; Corinth, 48 km to the north....
an Greece
Greece

Greece , officially the Hellenic Republic , is a country in southeastern Europe, situated on the southern end of the Balkans. It has borders with Albania, Bulgaria and the former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia to the north, and Turkey to the east....
 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
Agrigento

Agrigento , is a city on the southern coast of Sicily, Italy, and capital of the province of Agrigento. It is renowned as the site of the ancient Greek city of Akragras , one of the leading cities of Magna Graecia during the golden age of Ancient Greece....
 in Sicily
Sicily

Sicily is an Autonomous regions with special statute of Italy. Of all the regions of Italy, Sicily covers the largest land area at 25,708 km? and currently has just over five million inhabitants....
. Another notable one, at Vergina
Vergina

Vergina is a small town in northern Greece, located in the prefecture of Imathia Prefecture, Central Macedonia. The town became internationally famous in 1977, when the Greek archaeologist Manolis Andronikos unearthed what he claimed was the burial site of the kings of Macedon, including the tomb of Philip II of Macedon, father of Alexander...
 in Greek Macedonia (the ancient city of Aigai - ???a?), is thought to have been dedicated to the worship of the family of Alexander the Great
Alexander the Great

Alexander the Great , also known as Alexander III of Macedon was an ancient Greeks King of Macedon . He was one of the most successful military commanders of all time and is presumed undefeated in battle....
 and may have housed the cult statue of Alexander's father, Philip II of Macedon
Philip II of Macedon

Philip II of Macedon,...
. A well-preserved Roman heroon from the Augustan period is situated in the ancient city of Sagalassos
Sagalassos

Sagalassos is an archaeological site in southwestern Turkey, about 100 km north of Antalya , and 30 km from Burdur and Isparta. The ancient ruins of Sagalassos are 7 km from Aglasun in the province of Burdur, on Akdag, in the Western Taurus mountains mountain range, at an altitude of 1450-1700 metres....
 in what is now Turkey
Turkey

Turkey , known officially as the Republic of Turkey , is a Eurasian country that stretches across the Anatolian peninsula in southwest Asia and Thrace in the Balkans region of Southern Europe....
.

Terone Theron

Sources

  • Parkins, Helen. Roman Urbanism. Routledge, 1997.


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