What is Cape Tainaron?

Cape Tainaron

Cape Tainaron is the promontory at the southern tip of the Mani, in ancient Laconia, where Greek poets said Heracles brought up the hound of Hades. A sanctuary of Poseidon stood on the headland and held a right of asylum; Thucydides records that Sparta violated it once, at the sanctuary's own suppliants, and that the Spartans blamed the earthquake that followed on the act. Pausanias went to see the cave for himself and reported that no road led underground through it.

The facts

Also known as: Taenarum, Taenarus, Cape Matapan
Principal cult sites: the sanctuary of Poseidon at Tainaron

In short

Thucydides records that the Spartans dragged Helot suppliants from the sanctuary of Poseidon at Taenarum and put them to death, and that the Spartans themselves blamed the earthquake that later levelled Sparta on the act (Thucydides, History 1.128).
The same sanctuary's right of asylum was turned into a trap a generation later, when an agent of the Ephors went to Taenarum as a suppliant so they could overhear the regent Pausanias confess his intrigue with Persia (Thucydides, History 1.133).
Herodotus records a small bronze memorial standing on Taenarum, a man riding a dolphin, set up for the rescue of the poet Arion (Herodotus, Histories 1.24).
Strabo places the cave of the Heracles-and-Cerberus story beside the temple of Poseidon on the headland; Pausanias instead describes the cave itself as the temple, with a statue of Poseidon standing in front of it.
Pausanias found no road leading underground through the cave and wrote that he did not find it easy to believe the gods kept an underground dwelling for souls; he preferred the account of Hecataeus of Miletus, that a venomous serpent on the cape had been mistaken for the hound of Hades.
Taenarum was not the only cave claimed for this kind of story. Pausanias records a chasm at Hermione that its own people said Heracles used, and a bottomless lake at Lerna the Argives said Dionysus used to fetch Semele.

Sparta drags suppliants from Poseidon’s protection

Helot suppliants cling to Poseidon’s sanctuary at Taenarum, and the Spartans drag them out and kill them. Thucydides records both the violation of asylum and its remembered consequence: Spartans themselves blamed the great earthquake that levelled their city on this act. The Athenians later weaponised the memory in diplomacy by demanding that Sparta expel “the curse of Taenarus.” The sanctuary at the end of the Mani was therefore not only a mythic gate; it was protected ground whose breach could explain a civic catastrophe.

The same asylum, turned into a trap

A generation later the sanctuary served the opposite purpose. The Spartan regent Pausanias, victor of Plataea and by then under suspicion of treason with Persia, was drawn to Taenarum by an agent of the Ephors who went there as a suppliant and built himself a hut with a hidden partition inside it. The Ephors concealed there heard Pausanias admit the whole intrigue in his own words; his own suppliant standing at that altar was what let him walk free of the trap that day (History 1.133).

What Herodotus says stood on the cape

Herodotus tells a gentler story fixed to the same ground. The poet Arion, thrown overboard by a Corinthian crew who meant to rob him, sings one last song and leaps into the sea; a dolphin carries him to Taenarum, and he walks from there to Corinth to confront the men who had left him for dead. Herodotus reports that a small bronze memorial of a man riding a dolphin stood on Taenarum in his own time, set up to mark it (Histories 1.24).

Where Strabo and Pausanias part ways

Both geographers describe a temple of Poseidon on the headland and a cave associated with it, and neither calls the cave an oracle. They do not agree on what stood where. Strabo places the temple in a grove on the point, with the cave nearby, and attributes the Heracles story to “the myth writers” rather than to his own testimony (Geography 8.5.1). Pausanias instead describes a temple built like a cave, with a statue of Poseidon standing in front of it, and states plainly that no road leads underground through it and that he does not find it easy to believe the gods keep an underground dwelling where souls collect; he prefers the explanation of Hecataeus of Miletus, that a venomous serpent lived on the cape and was called the hound of Hades because its bite killed at once (Description of Greece 3.25.4-5). Writing in 1854, Smith’s Dictionary of Greek and Roman Geography noted the same discrepancy between the two ancient accounts, and recorded that the temple’s remains had by then been built into a ruined church, with no trace of any passage underground.

Other doors claimed for the same story

Taenarum was not the only cave in the Peloponnese put to this use. At Hermione, Pausanias records a chasm behind the temple of Chthonia, in a precinct the Hermionians called that of Clymenus, through which their own local tradition said Heracles brought up the hound of Hell (Description of Greece 2.35.10). At Lerna, he records a lake the Argives called bottomless, through which they said Dionysus descended to bring up Semele; Nero is said to have tested it with lead-weighted ropes and failed to find the bottom (Description of Greece 2.37.5).

Where to stand

Mani

Peloponnese

Thucydides records that the sanctuary of Poseidon on this headland held a right of asylum, and that the Spartans once dragged out and killed Helot suppliants who had taken refuge in it; the earthquake that later levelled Sparta was, by the Spartans' own account, the temple's retribution. A generation afterward the same asylum was used against one of Sparta's own: an agent posed as a suppliant at the sanctuary so the Ephors hidden nearby could overhear the regent Pausanias confess his treason with Persia.
Mani