ABSTRACT
When over 1,800 years ago Pausanias wrote his guide-book to ancient Greece, he had in mind an audience interested not so much in nature as in the buildings and monuments of man. Oropos, between Athens and Tanagra, was in Pausania's eyes a failure: 'The city is on the coast and has nothing important to write about'. The tomb of Iphinoe is a mythological matrix. It shows the origins of a prevalent type of mythology and exhibits that mythology in its simplest form. The tomb is the place at which to perform a passage ritual, but once called a tomb it is a motif in a new language, a language in which ending maidenhood is figured as the death of a maiden. The myths the author has concerned with are a surprisingly substantial portion of Greek mythology. They are those narratives which on interpretation correspond to the passage rites from maidenhood to the status of married women.
