Boeotia - The First Amphictyony

The First Amphictyony

Though far from Anthela, which lay on the coast of Malis south of Thessaly in the locality of Thermopylae ("hot gates", that is the place of hot springs and cavernous entrances to Hades), Boeotia was an early member of the oldest religious Amphictyonic League (Anthelian) because her people had originally lived in Thessaly.

Certainly Thessaly had a share in this association of Greek states, the ancient Amphictiony ("dwellers-round') centered on the cult of the chthonic goddess Demeter at Anthela. The twelve delegates were entitled Pylagorai (gate- assemblers), perhaps a reference to the local Gates of Hades, since Demeter was a chthonic goddess in her older local cults. The immediate dwellers-round were some small states and also Achaea-Phthiotis that probably paved the way for the entry of the body of the rest Boeotian tribes which were living around Thessaly (perioikoi).Boeotia and Phokis the remotest may have joined only during or after the "First Sacred War",which led to the defeat of the old priesthood and to a new control of the prosperity of the oracle at Delphi.

As a result of the war the Anthelan body was known thenceforth as the Delphic Amphictyonie and became the official overseer and military defender of the Delphic cult. A strange and revealing anti-Thessalian feeling appeared and a wall was built across the narrow defile at Thermopylae to keep the Thessalians out. This feeling is reflected in the short Boeotian epic The shield of Heracles.A local Thessalian hero interfering with the Phocian sunctuary is killed by the Boeotian hero Heracles,son of Zeus and Alcmene, whose mortal father had for allies Locrians and Phocians. This is a pastiche made to be sung at a Boeotian festival at midsummer at the hottest time of the dogstar Sirios.

The name Hellenes, which was originally the name of a Boeotian tribe in Phthia, may be related to the members of the league and may have been broadened to refer to all Greeks when the myth of their patriarch Hellen was invented. In Greek mythology Amphictyon was brother of Hellen, and Graecus was son of his sister Pandora. According to the Parian Chronicle,the previously named Graeces were named Hellenes.