You will see our beloved son Achilles dwelling in the house on the White Island in the Euxine Sea
-Euripides, Andromache
Hero Worship
A seemingly insignificant little island at one of the many mouths of the Danube became the site of a heroic drama on February 24, 2022, the first day of the of the Russian war against Ukraine. Here, according to news reports, 13 Ukrainian soldiers stationed on the island told Russian invaders to go fuck themselves rather than surrender. Conflicting accounts followed about what happened next. Presumed dead, the men were captured, not killed, as was originally reported. One month to the day, they were released in a prisoner exchange. However, the incident on the island brought the place into the world’s consciousness for the first time in decades—and perhaps millennia.
What hadn’t been mentioned in the stories about this fiercely defended but barely inhabitable hunk of rock in the Black Sea is its long and sacred history. Beneath the lighthouse at the center of the island once stood the House of Achilles—a temple regarded as the earthly residence of the dead hero’s spirit. Built probably sometime in the 6th c. BCE, the temple was first excavated in 1823 by N.D. Kritskii, but all traces of the original foundations were completely dismantled shortly before the lighthouse’s 1842 construction.1
Pliny the Elder and Pomponius Mela believed Achilles was buried here, and several myths claimed that the remains of Achilles, or both Achilles and Patroclus, were brought to the island by Thetis herself. While these may be myths, whatever historical facts may have accompanied them are largely lost now to archaeology.
Achilles abroad
It might seem strange that the famous Greek hero of the Trojan War should spend his eternity, not in his homeland, but on a remote island in the Black Sea. However, to the Greeks, this was “the north,” a misty realm of gloom and frosty winds associated with death.
According to Michael Ivanovich Rostovtzeff:
We hear in the Odyssey of a people called Cimmerians who lived in a mythical country of fog and darkness on the shore of the Euxine. Greek mythology always connected the Black Sea, the Euxine, with the world of departed spirits. The White Island of Achilles, the Hyperboreans, the Crimea, were at once real countries and regions peopled with the souls of heroes.2
The south was for the living, the north for the dead. So, it was perfectly natural for a hero’s soul to journey northward and reside eternally on an island in some dark, forbidding sea. Ovid, exiled to the region centuries later, would certainly see it as a living death.
My Name is Leuke
Snake Island, or Ostriv Zmiinyi, was known in Greek by the seemingly unremarkable name of Leuke, “White,” perhaps because of its geology (it supposedly has white cliffs, though it’s clearly no Dover). Dionysius Periegetes claimed it was because of the white animals, including serpents, that inhabited the island. Is that where the name “Snake Island” came from? I can’t seem to discover that name’s origin either. It was apparently once a haven for snakes and other wildlife including birds, which were present in such abundance they were said to sweep the temple clean with their wings. Leuke also refers to the white poplar, a tree with mythical underworld associations bearing distinctive leaves with white undersides. In storms and high winds, the trees shimmer a silver-white color. Ancient sources mention the island being wooded, and the temple was surrounded by trees, which is difficult to imagine looking at its photo today. Could there have been a grove of white poplars on the island? Other aliases included Achillea, Island of Achilles, Macaron, Island of the Blessed, and Island of Heroes. And while leuke translates as “white,” it derives from the same etymological roots as our English word “light,” and can also carry the sense of “bright, shining,” which lends it something of a celestial air. Or maybe that’s just my imagination running wild…
The first temple on the island (it was rebuilt several times) seems to have been built by Milesian colonists to the Euxine coast, who were the earliest Greeks to establish trading stations in these wild hinterlands. Perhaps they did so with the confidence that the land was already populated with the spirits of their heroes—that their Greek way of life had powerful, if invisible, champions even in lands dominated by barbarians. Greek colonists, sailors, merchants, and travelers passing in and out of the region might have felt inspired—compelled, even—to visit the island of Achilles and pay such a luminary homage. Sailors approaching the island and those who visited the temple claimed to have visions of Achilles, and it’s possible some visited to incubate dreams, though spending the night on the island seems to have been taboo. An oracle presided at the temple, and visitors brought animals for sacrifice and material offerings were housed in the temple treasury. This represented more than extreme literary fandom or proto-Comic-Con; Achilles was worshipped as a god.
Lord of Scythia
Leuke represented the heart of a vast complex of cult sites dedicated to Achilles which spanned the Black Sea—a cult that was widespread, complex, and enduring, remaining active on the island from the 6th c. BCE through the 3rd c. CE. Prominent sites extended from Leuke in the west, through the island of Berezan, the city of Olbia, to the Racecourse of Achilles on Tendra, where games were held, to Achilleum in the east, a cult center on the Asian side of the Crimean Bosporus, counterpart to Parthenium on the European side. As early as the 7th c. BCE, Achilles was celebrated as “Lord of the Scythian Land,” and some even proposed Scythian origins for him:
Arrian says in his Periplus that Achilles son of Peleus was Scythian, from the town of Myrmecium, located by Lake Maeotis, and that he was expelled by the Scythians because of his viciousness, savagery, and arrogance, and settled in Thessaly. (Leo Diaconus 9.6)3
David Braund has suggested4 that Greeks, uncomfortable with brutal elements in their own culture like the behavior of their renowned Homeric hero Achilles, particularly the treatment of Hector’s corpse and human sacrifice of Trojan war prisoners, wanted to distance themselves from him by giving him a foreign, barbaric origin. In this version’s ironic twist, he was even a bit much for the savage Scythians, who apparently wanted nothing to do with him.
Except they did. Achilles’ popularity spread beyond the Greek colonies to the Scythian warrior class. His image is found on items recovered from Scythian tombs, including four bow cases found in the 4th c. BCE Scythian burials at Chertomlyk, Melitopol, Ilintsy, and near Rostov on the Don.
…these items, deposited with elite Scythians in their burials, offered the vision of a warrior’s life and concluded with his mother Thetis’ conveyance of his remains for deposit in the region.5
The singular qualities of Achilles offered a point of contact between these divergent cultures. Perhaps the bold warrior, the loyal friend, the anguished soul that captivates modern audiences won the hearts of ancients as well. The beloved Greek hero became an ambassador, adopted and admired by fearsome northern tribes living in that misty realm of darkness across the sea.
Whether heroic or barbaric, historic or mythic, the character of Achilles inspired a sincere devotion to those braving the unknown, literally and metaphorically. A dedication that spanned centuries, not just in Homer’s Greece, but across the region and disparate cultures on a restless frontier. Its house in ruins, the heart of that story lays sleeping on an island, beneath an old lighthouse. The arcane rites practiced on Leuke so long ago have been forgotten, its gods demythologized—but not dethroned. Perhaps the lighthouse hasn't destroyed a temple, but rebuilt one. Miraculously, millennia after its first telling, the story of Achilles lives on, as great stories do, as a warning, an inspiration, a guiding light to audiences in every age.
Read More:
The Ancient Geography of Ukraine—Introduction
Borysthenes, Underworld River—Ancient Geography of Ukraine: The Dnieper River
Taurica, last refuge of the Cimmerians—The Ancient Geography of Ukraine: The Crimea
The Temple of Achilles on the Island of Leuke in the Black Sea, Rusyaeva; Ancient Civilizations from Scythia to Siberia, Vol. 9, No. 1-2, pg 5
Iranians & Greeks in South Russia, Rostovtzeff, 1922, pg 36
Greek Religion and Cults in the Black Sea region, Braund, 2018, pg 45. Leo Diaconus confuses his facts a bit, as Periplus contains no such reference, though Braund believes it is possible Arrian said this in another work.
Greek Religion and Cults in the Black Sea region, Braund, 2018, pg 46
Classical Olbia & the Scythian World, Braund, 2007, pg 52