The Cult of Itonia Athena and the Human Conscience

Abstract

The cult of Athena as Itonia is today almost completely unknown. Even in antiquity it was limited to specific areas as a local cult of the Aeolian tribe of the Boeotians, where, however, it had universal currency. Known places of her cult are in Thessaly, Boeotia and the island of Amorgos. At the Boeotian city of Koroneia, although the sanctuary of Itonia Athena is referring by the ancient writers (Pausanias and Strabo), its location has not been securely identified and the character of her cult is not well known. The available evidence (literary testimonies, mythological reports and archaeological data) suggest that her worship in Koroneia was a peculiar kind of mystery cult, which had accepted the influence of Orphism. This article highlights the properties of the forms involved in this secret cult and interpret the content of her worship in a philosophical context, with reference mainly to Aristotle’s work “On Memory and Remembrance”. The view supported by the present article is that her worship was oriented towards the achievement of self-awareness, to the Delphic oracular maxim “know thyself” (γνώθι σαυτόν). That was considered essential for the formation of the cultural consciousness of the societies of ancient Greece. This is a parameter of knowledge that in our modern societies has been forgotten, leading consequently to the misinterpretation of cultural development and a completely different perception of cultural memory and consciousness.