A Pausanias Commentary in Progress

1.30.4 I see here a most revealing set of details that point to a Mycenaean role of Athena. We have just learned that the epithet Hippiā is applied to the goddess by the natives of Colonus, just as they apply the epithet Hippios to the god Poseidon. This epithet, which I translate in both cases as ‘controller-of-horses’, is I think referring primarily to the skill of charioteering. At a later point in his write-up, at 8.46.1, 4–5, Pausanias is commenting on a statue of Athena that had been safeguarded by the people of Tegea in Arcadia—until they were robbed of their prized possession by their Roman conquerors; they then replaced that statue of Athena that was lost to Rome by taking another statue of Athena from another site that was sacred to her—in this case, from a neighboring Arcadian dēmos or ‘district’ by the name of Manthouria, as we read further in Pausanias 8.47.1. We learn there that the goddess represented by this statue was called Hippiā by the local Arcadian population that worshipped her, and that she was addressed this way, as ‘controller of the horses’. Pausanias then proceeds to give the reason for worshipping Athena as Hippiā. In the mythology of these Arcadians, he reports, Athena went to war as a charioteer in their local version of a widespread myth traditionally known as the Battle of the Gods and Giants. With these details in mind, I now turn to relevant evidence in Mycenaean Greek as written in the Linear B texts found at Knossos and at Pylos. In these texts, as we are about to see, the comparable forms Athānā and hikkʷeiā are attested in contexts that correspond to the contexts of Athēnē and Hippiā as reported by Pausanias. In analyzing these texts and contexts, I mostly agree with the relevant argumentation presented in a paper jointly authored by Joann Gulizia, Kevin Pluta, and Thomas Palaima (2001). The authors, hereafter abbreviated GPP, concentrate on two texts: the tablet V 52 from Knossos, which they date around 1400 BCE, and the tablet An 1281 from Pylos, unambiguously dated around 1200 BCE. We start with the Linear B tablet V 52 from Knossos. The specific context of this text, according to GPP, can be traced back—with some certainty—to the Room of the Chariot Tablets or RCT, as it is known to archaeologists. This context, as we will see, is relevant to a detail mentioned by Pausanias at 1.30.4: according to our traveler, as I have already noted, the goddess Athena is worshipped as Hippiā or ‘charioteer’ at Colonus. But what about the goddess in the text of tablet V 52, situated in the context of the Room of the Chariot Tablets? She is mentioned prominently, in the first line of V 52, where we read a-ta-na-po-ti-ni-ja. The second element, -po-ti-ni-ja, spells potniāi, dative case of potnia, corresponding to classical Greek potnia (πότνια), meaning ‘mistress, lady’. As for the first element, a-ta-na-, it can be interpreted as spelling either Athānāi or Athānās—so, either the dative or the genitive case of the name Athānā, corresponding to the classical Greek name Athēnē. A big question remains, though: is this Mycenaean name Athānā (1) the personal name of the goddess Athena or (2) a place-name, referring to the citadel of Athens, a primary residence of the goddess? In the paper of GPP, a persuasive argument is made for the second of these two alternative explanations. Crucial for their argumentation is a fact that I have highlighted in my own work: the fact is, as I showed at §§4–9 in Nagy 2015.09.10 with reference to Odyssey 7.78 and with bibliography referring to earlier phases of my relevant work, the singular form Athēnē can refer in Homeric Greek to the citadel of the goddess Athena in what later became, already well before the classical era, the city of Athens. Accordingly, if we follow the interpretation preferred by GPP, the wording of the first line in the tablet V 52 can be interpreted this way: ‘to the Lady [potnia] of Athens’, where a-ta-na- spells Athānās, in the genitive case, while po-ti-ni-ja spells potniāi, in the dative. Alternatively, if we were to read a-ta-na- as Athānāi, in the dative case, then we could interpret the wording this way: ‘to the Lady Athena’. Either way, in any case, the referent would be the goddess Athena, in a Mycenaean phase of her evolution. But more can be said about such a Mycenaean Athena as a charioteer, to be matched with the role of the “classical” Athena at Colonus as Hippiā. Here we turn to the Linear B tablet An 1281 from Pylos, dated around 1200 BCE. We read in this text the noun po-ti-ni-ja, spelling potniāi, in the dative case, and meaning ‘to the Lady [potnia]’. Although the name of the goddess who receives the offering is not indicated, the identity of the divine referent here is most likely to be the goddess Athena. As we see from the analysis of GPP (p. 456), the noun po-ti-ni-ja that we see in the text of this tablet is described by way of the epithet i-qe-ja, which can be interpreted as hikkʷeiā, in the dative case—so, adjective hikkʷeiāi describing and agreeing with the noun potniāi. As observed by GPP (again, p. 456), this Mycenaean Greek epithet hikkʷeiā would be the equivalent of hippeiā in classical Greek. Thus the combination of po-ti-ni-ja and i-qe-ja in the text of this tablet can be interpreted to mean this: ‘to the Lady [potnia], controller-of-horses [hikkʷeiā]’—or, to word it more specifically, ‘to the Lady, Charioteer’.