![]() Characteristics of hero worship: Altar is in a pit in the ground, sacrifice of black coat animal, worshipped during the night, hero felt to be close to human. ![]() For this reason hero cults were chthonic in nature, and their rituals more closely resembled those for Hecate and Persephone than those for Zeus and Apollo: libations in the dark hours, sacrifices that were not shared by the living. He would help those who lived in the vicinity of his tomb or who belonged to the tribe of which he himself was the founder" Because the hero was not thought of as having ascended to Olympus or become a god: he was beneath the earth, and his power purely local. In the hero's restricted and local scope he "retained the limited and partisan interests of his mortal life. ![]() Written sources emphasise the importance of heroes' tombs and the temenos or sanctuary, where chthonic rites appeased their spirits and induced them to continue to favour the people who looked to them as founders, of whom founding myths were related. Greek hero-cults were distinct from the clan-based ancestor worship from which they developed, in that as the polis evolved, they became a civic rather than familial affair, and in many cases none of the worshipers traced their descent back to the hero any longer: no shrine to a hero can be traced unbroken from Mycenaean times. A hero was more than human but less than a god, and various kinds of supernatural figures came to be assimilated to the class of heroes the distinction between a hero and a god was less than certain, especially in the case of Heracles, the most prominent, but atypical hero.
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