CHAPTER XII.

ORPHIC COSMOGONY.

‘Ὡραῖος καὶ Ἔρως ἐπιτέλλεται....’

If, in attempting to understand Orphic Theogony, we turn to the

collection of hymns known as ‘Orphic,’ hymns dating for the most part

about the 4th century A.D., we find ourselves at once in an atmosphere

of mystical monotheism. We have addresses to the various Olympians,

to Zeus and Apollo and Hera and Athene and the rest, but these are no

longer the old, clear-cut, departmental deities, with attributes sharply

distinguished and incommunicable; the outlines are all blurred; we feel

that everyone is changing into everyone else. A few traditional epithets

indeed remain; Poseidon is still ‘dark-haired,’ and ‘Lord of Horses’—he

is a stubborn old god and hard to fuse; but, for the most part, sooner or

later, all divinities greater or less, mingle in the mystery melting-pot,

all become ‘multiform,’ ‘mighty,’ ‘all-nourishing,’ ‘first-born,’

‘saviours,’ ‘all-glorious,’ and the like. In a word the several gods by

this time are all really one, and this one god is mystically conceived as

a potency (δαίμων) rather than a personal divinity (θεός).

The doctrine of the mutation of the gods, now into one shape, now into

another, was, it would seem, part of the regular symbolic teaching of

the mysteries. It is easy to see that such a doctrine would lend itself

readily to the notion of their interchangeability. Proclus says[1544]:

‘In all the rites of initiation and mysteries the gods exhibit their

shapes as many, and they appear changing often from one form to another,

and now they are made manifest in the emission of formless light, now

taking human shape, now again in other and different form.’

By the date of the ‘Hymns’ monotheism was of course in some degree the

common property of all educated minds, and cannot therefore be claimed

as distinctive of Orphism. Wholly Orphic, however, is the mystical

joy with which the Hymns brim over; they are ‘full of repetitions and

magniloquence, and make for emotion[1545].’ They are like learned,

self-conscious, even pretentious echoes of the simple ecstasy of the

tablets.

It would therefore be idle to examine the Orphic Hymns severally and in

detail, in order to extract from them the Orphic characteristics of each

particular god. Any one who reads them through will speedily be conscious

that, save for the proœmium, and an occasional stereotyped epithet, it

would usually be impossible to determine which hymn was addressed to what

god. With whatever attempt at individualization they begin, the poet is

soon safe away into a mystical monotheism. A more profitable enquiry is,

how far did primitive Orphism attempt monotheism, and of what nature was

the one God whom the Orphic made in his own image? Here, fortunately, we

are not left wholly without evidence.

THE WORLD-EGG.

In the _Birds_ of Aristophanes[1546], the chorus tells of a time, when

Earth and Air and Heaven as yet were not, only Chaos was, and Night and

black Erebos:

‘In the beginning of Things, black-winged Night

Into the bosom of Erebos dark and deep

Laid a wind-born egg, and, as the seasons rolled,

Forth sprang Love, gleaming with wings of gold,

Like to the whirlings of wind, Love the Delight—

And Love with Chaos in Tartaros laid him to sleep;

And we, his children, nestled, fluttering there,

Till he led us forth to the light of the upper air.’

This is pure Orphism. Homer knows of no world-egg[1547], no birth of

Love. Homer is so dazzled by the splendour of his human heroes and their

radiant reflections in Olympus that his eyes never look back to see

from whence they sprang. He cares as little, it seems, for the Before

as for the Hereafter. The two indeed seem strangely linked together. An

eschatology and a cosmogony are both pathetic attempts to answer the

question Homer never cared to raise, Whence came Man and the Good and

Evil of humanity?

We have of course a cosmogony in Hesiod, Hesiod who is a peasant and a

rebel, a man bitter and weary with the hardness of life, compelled by

rude circumstances to ask why things are so evil, and always ready, as in

the myth of Pandora, to frame or borrow a crude superstitious hypothesis.

How much Hesiod borrowed from Orphism is hard to say. He knows of Night

and Chaos and the birth of Eros, but he does _not_ know, or does not care

to tell, of one characteristic Orphic element, the cosmic egg. He only

says[1548]:

‘First Chaos came to be and Gaia next

Broad-bosomed, she that was the steadfast base

Of all things—Ge, and murky Tartaros

Deep in the hollow of wide earth. And next

Eros, most beautiful of deathless gods,

Looser of limbs, Tamer of heart and will

To mortals and immortals.’

Hesiod is not wholly Orphic, he is concerned to hurry his Eros up into

Olympus, one and most beautiful among many, but not for Hesiod the real

source of life, the only God.

By common traditional consent the cosmic egg was attributed to Orpheus.

Whether the father was Tartaros or Erebos or Chronos is of small moment

and varies from author to author. The cardinal, essential doctrine is the

world-egg from which sprang the first articulate god, source and creator

of all, Eros.

Damascius[1549], in his ‘Inquiry concerning first principles,’ attributes

the egg to Orpheus. For Orpheus said:

‘What time great Chronos fashioned in holy aether

A silver-gleaming egg.’

It is fortunate that Damascius has preserved the actual line, though

of course we cannot date it. Clement of Rome[1550] in his Homilies

contrasts the cosmogonies of Hesiod and Orpheus. ‘Orpheus likened Chaos

to an egg, in which was then a blending of the primaeval elements; Hesiod

assumes this chaos as a substratum, the which Orpheus calls an egg, a

birth emitted from formless matter, and the birth was on this wise....’

Plato, usually so Orphic, avoids in the _Timaeus_ all mention of the

primaeval egg; his mind is preoccupied with triangles, but Proclus in his

commentary[1551] says ‘the “being” (τὸ ὄν) of Plato would be the same as

the Orphic egg.’

The doctrine of the egg was not a mere dogmatic dead-letter. It was

taught to the initiated as part of their mysteries, and this leads

us to suspect that it had its rise in a primitive taboo on eggs.

Plutarch[1552], in consequence of a dream, abstained for a long time from

eggs. One night, he tells us, when he was dining out, some of the guests

noticed this, and got it into their heads that he was ‘infected by Orphic

and Pythagorean notions, and was refusing eggs just as certain people

refuse to eat the heart and brains, because he held an egg to be taboo

(ἀφοσιοῦσθαι) as being the principle of life.’ Alexander the Epicurean,

by way of chaff, quoted,

‘To feed on beans is eating parents’ heads.’

‘As if,’ Plutarch says, ‘the Pythagoreans meant eggs by _be_ans because

of _be_ing (ὡς δὴ κυάμους τὰ ᾠὰ διὰ τὴν κύησιν αἰνιττομένων τῶν ἀνδρῶν),

and thought it just as bad to eat eggs as to eat the animals that laid

them.’ It was no use, he goes on, in talking to an Epicurean, to plead a

dream as an excuse for abstinence, for to him the explanation would seem

more foolish than the fact; so, as Alexander was quite pleasant about it

and a cultivated man, Plutarch let him go on to propound the interesting

question, which came first, the bird or the egg? Alexander in the course

of the argument came back to Orpheus and, after quoting Plato about

matter being the mother and nurse, said with a smile,

‘I sing to those who know

the Orphic and sacred dogma (λόγος) which not only affirms that the egg

is older than the bird, but gives it priority of being over all things.’

Finally, the speaker adds to his theorizing an instructive ritual fact:

‘and therefore it is not inappropriate that in the orgiastic ceremonies

in honour of Dionysos an egg is among the sacred offerings, as being the

symbol of what gives birth to all things, and in itself contains all

things.’

Macrobius[1553] in the _Saturnalia_ states the same fact, and gives a

similar reason. ‘Ask those who have been initiated,’ he says, ‘in the

rites of Father Liber, in which an egg is the object of reverence,

on the supposition that it is in its spherical form the image of the

universe’; and Achilles Tatius[1554] says, ‘some assert that the universe

is cone-shaped, others egg-shaped, and this opinion is held by those who

perform the mysteries of Orpheus.’

But for the bird-cosmogony of Aristophanes we might have inclined to

think that the egg was a late importation into Orphic mysteries, but, the

more closely Orphic doctrines are examined, the more clearly is it seen

that they are for the most part based on very primitive ritual. A ritual

egg was good material; those who mysticized the kid and the milk would

not be likely to leave an egg without esoteric significance.

How, precisely, the egg was used in Orphic ritual we do not know.

In ordinary ceremonial it served two purposes: it was used for

_purification_, it was an _offering to the dead_. It has been previously

shown in detail (p. 53) that in primitive rites purgation often _is_

propitiation of ghosts and sprites, and the two functions, propitiation

and purgation, are summed up in the common term _devotions_ (ἐναγίσματα).

_Lucian_[1555] in two passages mentions eggs, together with Hecate’s

suppers, as the refuse of ‘purification.’ Pollux is bidden by Diogenes

to tell the Cynic Menippus, when he comes down to Hades, to ‘fill his

wallet with beans, and if he can he is to pick up also a Hecate’s supper

or an egg from a purification or something of the sort’; and in another

dialogue, the ‘Landing,’ Clotho, who is waiting for her victims, asks

‘Where is Kyniskos the philosopher who ought to be dead from eating

Hecate’s suppers and eggs from purification and raw cuttle fish too?’

Again in Ovid’s _Art of Love_[1556] the old hag who makes purifications

for the sick woman is to bring sulphur and eggs:

‘Then too the aged hag must come,

And purify both bed and home,

And bid her, for lustration, proffer

With palsied hands both eggs and sulphur.’

That eggs were offered not only for a purification of the living, but

as the due of the dead, is certain from the fact that they appear on

Athenian white lekythoi among the objects brought in baskets to the

tomb[1557].

We think of eggs rather as for nourishment than as for purification,

though the yolk of an egg is still used for the washing of hair.

Doubtless, in ancient days, the cleansing action of eggs was more magical

than actual. As propitiatory offerings to the dead (ἐναγίσματα) they

became ‘purifications’ in general; then connection with the dead explains

of course the taboo on them as food.

Still, primitive man though pious is also thrifty. A Cynic may show his

atheism, and also eke out a scanty subsistence by eating ‘eggs from

purification’; and even the most superstitious man may have hoped that,

if he did not break the egg, he might cleanse himself and yet secure a

chicken. Clement[1558] says, ‘you may see the eggs that have been used

for purifications hatched, if they are subjected to warmth’: he adds

instructively, ‘this could not have taken place if the eggs had taken

into themselves the sins of the man who had been purified.’ Clement’s own

state of mind is at least as primitive as that of the ‘heathen’ against

whom he protests. The Orphics themselves, it is clear, merely mysticized

an ancient ritual. Orphism is here as elsewhere only the pouring of new

wine into very old bottles.

* * * * *

We may say then with certainty that the cosmic egg was Orphic, and was

probably[1559] a dogma based on a primitive rite. The origin of the

winged Eros who sprang from it is more complex. Elements many and diverse

seem to have gone to his making.

EROS AS HERM.

Homer knows nothing of Eros as a person; with him love is of Aphrodite.

From actual local cultus Eros is strangely and significantly absent.

Two instances only are recorded. Pausanias[1560] says, ‘The Thespians

honoured Eros most of all the gods from the beginning, and they have

a very ancient image of him, an unwrought stone.’ ‘Every four years,’

Plutarch[1561] says, ‘the Thespians celebrated a splendid festival to

Eros conjointly with the Muses.’ Plutarch went to this festival very

soon after he was married, before his sons were born. He seems to have

gone because of a difference that had arisen between his own and his

wife’s people, and we are expressly told by his sons that he took his

newly-married wife with him ‘for both the prayer and the sacrifice were

her affair.’ Probably they went to pray for children. Plutarch, if we

may trust his own letter to his wife, was a kind husband, but the intent

of the conjoint journey was strictly practical, and points to the main

function of the Thespian Eros. The ‘unwrought stone’ is very remote from

the winged Eros, very near akin to the rude Pelasgian Hermes himself,

own brother to the Priapos[1562] of the Hellespont and Asia Minor. There

seems then to have gone to the making of Eros some old wide-spread

divinity of generation.

Pausanias did not know who instituted the worship of Eros among the

Thespians, but he remarks that the people of Parium on the Hellespont,

who were colonists from Erythrae in Ionia, worshipped him equally. He

knew also of an older and a younger Eros. ‘Most people,’ he says, ‘hold

that he is the youngest of the gods and the son of Aphrodite; but Olen

the Lycian (again Asia Minor), maker of the most ancient hymns among the

Greeks, says in a hymn to Eileithyia that she is the mother of Eros.’

‘After Olen,’ he goes on, ‘Pamphos and Orpheus composed epic verses, and

they both made hymns to Eros to be sung by the Lycomids at their rites.’

EROS AS KER OF LIFE.

[Illustration: FIG. 168.]

The Orphic theologist found then to his hand in local cultus an ancient

god of life and generation, and in antique ritual another element quite

unconnected, the egg of purification. Given an egg as the beginning of

a cosmogony, and it was almost inevitable that there should emerge from

the egg a bird-god, a winged thing, a source of life, more articulate

than the egg yet near akin to it in potency. The art-form for this winged

thing was also ready to hand. Eros is but a specialized form of the Ker;

the Erotes are Keres of life, and like the Keres take the form of winged

_Eidola_. In essence as in art-form, Keres and Erotes are near akin. The

Keres, it has already been seen, are little winged bacilli, fructifying

or death-bringing; but the Keres developed mainly on the dark side; they

went downwards, deathwards; the Erotes, instinct with a new spirit, went

upwards, lifewards.

The close analogy, nay, the identity of the art-form of Keres and Erotes

is well seen in the two vase-paintings in figs. 168 and 169. The design

in fig. 168 is from a vase-fragment in the Museum at Palermo[1563]. A

warrior lies fallen in death. From his open mouth the breath of life

escapes. Over him hovers a winged Ker, and with his right hand seems

as though he would tenderly collect the parting soul. A ghost has come

to fetch a ghost. Among the Romans this gentle office of collecting

the parting breath was done with the lips, by the nearest of kin. So

Anna[1564] for Dido:

‘Give water, I will bathe her wounds, and catch

Upon my lips her last stray breath.’

[Illustration: FIG. 169.]

The design in fig. 169 is from a red-figured cylix[1565] in the

Municipal Museum at Corneto. Theseus, summoned by Hermes, is in the act

of deserting Ariadne; he picks up his sandal from the ground and in a

moment he will be gone. Ariadne is sunk in sleep beneath the great vine

of Dionysos. Over her hovers a winged genius to comfort and to crown

her. He is own brother to the delicate Ker in fig. 168. Archaeologists

wrangle over his name. Is he Life or Love or Sleep or Death? Who knows?

It is this shifting uncertainty we must seize and hold; no doubt could be

more beautiful and instructive. All that we can certainly say is that the

vase-painter gave to the ministrant the form of a winged Ker, and that

such was the form taken by Eros, as also by Death and by Sleep.

* * * * *

If we would understand at all the spirit in which the Orphic Eros is

conceived we must cleanse our minds of many current conceptions, and

in effecting this riddance vase-paintings are of no small service. To

black-figured vase-paintings Eros is unknown. Keres of course appear, but

Eros has not yet developed personality in popular art. As soon as Eros

takes mythological shape in art, he leaves the Herm-form under which he

was worshipped at Thespiae, leaves it to Hermes himself and to Dionysos

and Priapos, and, because he is the egg-born cosmic god, takes shape as

_the_ winged Ker. Early red-figured vase-paintings are innocent alike of

the fat boy of the Romans and the idle impish urchin of Hellenism. Nor

do they know anything of the Eros of modern romantic passion between man

and woman. If we would follow the safe guiding of early art, we must be

content to think of Eros as a Ker, a life-impulse, a thing fateful to

all that lives, a man because of his moralized complexity, terrible and

sometimes intolerable, but to plants and flowers and young live things in

spring infinitely glad and kind. Such is the Eros of Theognis[1566]:

‘Love comes at his hour, comes with the flowers in spring,

Leaving the land of his birth,

Kypros, beautiful isle. Love comes, scattering

Seed for man upon earth.’

[Illustration: FIG. 170.]

Such little spirits of life the vase-painter Hieron makes to cluster

round their mother and mistress, Aphrodite. The design in fig. 170

is from a cylix in the Berlin Museum[1567] and is part of a scene

representing the Judgment of Paris. Aphrodite, she the victorious

Gift-Giver, greatest of the Charites, stands holding her dove. About her

cluster the little solemn worshipping Erotes, like the winged Keres that

minister to Kyrene (fig. 23): they carry wreaths and flower-sprays in

their hands, not only as gifts to the Gift-Giver, but because they too

are spirits of Life and Grace.

[Illustration: FIG. 171.]

Just such another Eros is seen in fig. 171, from the centre of a

beautiful archaic red-figured cylix[1568] in the Museo Civico at

Florence. The cylix is signed by the master Chachrylion: he signs

it twice over, proudly, as well he may, ‘Chachrylion made it, made

it, Chachrylion made it.’ His Eros too carries a great branching

flower-spray, and as the spirit of God moves upon the face of the waters.

So Sophocles[1569]:

O Thou of War unconquered, thou, Erôs,

Spoiler of garnered gold, who liest hid

In a girl’s cheek, under the dreaming lid,

While the long night time flows:

O rover of the seas, O terrible one

In wastes and wildwood caves,

None may escape thee, none:

Not of the heavenly Gods who live alway,

Not of low men, who vanish ere the day;

And he who finds thee, raves.

[Illustration: FIG. 172.]

The Erotes retain always the multiplicity of the Keres, but as Eros

developes complete personality he becomes one person, and he changes

from a delicate sprite to a beautiful youth. But down to late days

there linger about him traces of the Life-Spirit, the Grace-Giver. The

design in fig. 172 is from a late red-figured vase in the Museum at

Athens[1570]. Here we find Eros employed watering tall slender flowers

in a garden. Of course by this time the Love-God is put to do anything

and everything: degraded to a god of all work, he has to swing a

maiden, to trundle a hoop, to attend a lady’s toilet; but here in the

flower-watering there seems a haunting of the old spirit. We are reminded

of Plato[1571] in the _Symposium_ where he says ‘The bloom of his body

is shown by his dwelling among flowers, for Eros has his abiding, not in

the body or soul that is flowerless and fades, but in the place of fair

flowers and fair scents, there sits he and abides.’

EROS AS EPHEBOS.

[Illustration: FIG. 173.]

Vase-paintings with representations of Eros come to us for the most

part from Athens, and it was at Athens that the art-type of Eros as the

slender ephebos was perfected. This type appears with marked frequency

on the vases of early red-figured technique which bear the inscription

καλός ‘beautiful,’ vases probably made to sell as love-gifts. Eros is

represented bearing a torch, a lyre, a hare, sometimes still a flower.

Perhaps the finest of these representations left us is the Eros in fig.

173. The design is from an amphora[1572] which bears the inscription

‘Charmides is beautiful.’ Eros is armed, he carries shield and spear, he

flies straight downward, the slender naked body making a clean lovely

line. A poet thinks as he will, but these Love-gods of the vase-painter,

these Keres of Life and Death, and most of all this Eros, armed,

inevitable, recall the prayer of the chorus in the _Hippolytus_ of

Euripides[1573]:

‘Erôs, Erôs, who blindest, tear by tear,

Men’s eyes with hunger, thou swift Foe that pliest

Deep in our hearts joy like an edged spear;

Come not to me with Evil haunting near,

Wrath on the wind, nor jarring of the clear

Wing’s music as thou fliest.

There is no shaft that burneth, not in fire,

Not in wild stars, far off and flinging fear

As in thine hands the shaft of All Desire,

Erôs, Child of the Highest.’

Most often the presentments of painting hinder rather than help the

imagery of poetry, but here both arts are haunted by the same august

tradition of Life and Death.

[Illustration: FIG. 174.]

The Eros of the vase-painter is the love not untouched by passion of man

for man, and these sedate and even austere Erotes help us to understand

that to the Greek mind such loves were serious and beautiful, of the

soul, as Plato says, rather than of the body, aloof from common things

and from the emotional squalour of mere domestic felicity. They seem to

embody that white beat of the spirit before which and by which the flesh

shrivels into silence.

It is curious to note that, as the two women Charites, Mother and

Daughter, became three, so there is a distinct effort to form a trinity

of Erotes. On the vase-painting in fig. 174 from a red-figured _stamnos_

in the British Museum[1574] we have three beautiful Erotes flying over

the sea. The foremost is inscribed Himeros; he carries a long taenia, and

he looks back at the others; one of these carries a tendril, the other

a hare. Near each of them is written καλός. But the triple forms, Eros,

Himeros and Pothos, never really obtain. The origin of the countless

women trinities has been already examined. Male gods lack the natural

tie that bound the women types together; the male trinity is in Greek

religion felt to be artificial and lapses.

EROS AND THE MOTHER.

The mention of these women trinities brings us back to the greatest of

the three Grace-Givers, Aphrodite. At the close of the chapter on _The

Making of a Goddess_ her figure reigned supreme, but for a time at Athens

she suffered eclipse; we might almost say with Alcman[1575]:

‘There is no Aphrodite. Hungry Love

Plays boy-like with light feet upon the flowers.’

We cannot fairly charge the eclipse of Aphrodite wholly to the count of

Orphism. Legend made Orpheus a woman-hater and credited him with Hesiodic

tags about her ‘dog-like’ nature; but such tradition is manifestly

coloured and distorted by two influences, by the orthodox Hesiodic

patriarchalism, and by the peculiar social conditions of Athens and

other Greek states. Both these causes, by degrading women, compelled the

impersonation of love to take form as a youth.

To these we must add the fact that as Orphism was based on the religion

of Dionysos, and as that religion had for its god Dionysos, son of

Semele, so Orphism tended naturally to the formulation of a divinity

who was the Son of his Mother. By the time the religion of Dionysos

reached Athens the Son had well nigh effaced the Mother, and in like

fashion Eros was supreme over Aphrodite; and significantly enough the

woman-goddess, in so far as she was worshipped by the Orphics, was rather

the old figure of Ge, the Earth-goddess, than the more specialized

departmental Love-goddess Aphrodite.

* * * * *

This blend of the old Earth-goddess and the new Love-god is shown in very

instructive fashion by representations on late red-figured vases. The

design in fig. 175 is from a late red-figured hydria[1576]. It will at

once be seen that we have the representation of a scene exactly similar

to that in figs. 68 and 70, the Anodos of an Earth-goddess. The great

head rises from the ground, the Satyr worshippers of the Earth-goddess

are there with their picks. But a new element is introduced. Two Erotes

hover over the goddess to greet her coming. In like fashion in fig. 72

Eros receives Pandora, and in fig. 88 receives Aphrodite at her Birth or

Bath. It is usual to name the goddess in fig. 175 Aphrodite. This is, I

think, to miss the point. She is an Earth Kore like Persephone herself.

She is the new life rising from the ground, and she is welcomed by the

spirits of life, the Keres-Erotes. Beyond that we cannot go. Nothing

could better embody the shift from old to new, and the blend of both,

than the presence together of the Satyrs, the primitive Ge-worshippers,

and the Erotes, the new spirits of love and life.

[Illustration: FIG. 175.]

If we bear in mind the simple fact that Aphrodite and Persephone are

each equally and alike Kore, the Maiden form of the Earth-goddess, it

is not hard to realise how easily the one figure passes into the other.

The Orphic, we have seen (p. 594), put his faith in the Kore who is

Persephone; to her he prays:

‘Out of the pure I come, Pure Queen of Them Below’;

his confession is

‘I have sunk beneath the bosom of Despoina, Queen of the Underworld,’

and again

‘But now I come a suppliant to holy Phersephoneia

That of her grace she receive me to the seats of the Hallowed’;

but from the fragment of an epic poet preserved for us by the anonymous

author of the _Philosophoumena_[1577], we learn that, according to some,

in the underworld grove another Kore, or rather Kore by another name, was

believed to rule. ‘The Lesser Mysteries,’ he says, ‘are of Persephone

below, in regard to which Mysteries and the path that leads there, which

is wide and large and leads the dying to Persephone, the poet also says:

“And yet ’neath it there is a rugged track,

Hollow, bemired; yet best whereby to reach

All-hallowed Aphrodite’s lovely grove.”’

The figures of the two Maidens, Persephone and Aphrodite, acted and

reacted on each other; Persephone takes on more of Love, Aphrodite

more of Death; as Eros the Son waxes, Aphrodite the Mother wanes into

Persephone the underworld Maid.

The blend of the two notions, the primitive Earth-goddess and the Orphic

Eros, is for art very clearly seen on the vase in fig. 175. Happily we

have definite evidence that in local _cultus_ there was the like fusion,

and that at a place of associations specially sacred, the deme of Phlya

in Attica, the birthplace of Euripides[1578].

THE MYSTERIES OF EROS AND THE MOTHER AT PHLYA.

Phlya, as the birthplace of Euripides, has special claims on our

attention. Here, it will be shown, were mysteries reputed to be more

ancient than those of Eleusis, mysteries not only of the Mother and the

Maid but of Eros the cosmic spirit of the Orphics. Euripides, obviously

hostile as he is to orthodox Olympian theology, handles always with

reverence the two gods or spirits of Orphism, Dionysos and Eros; it seems

not improbable that, perhaps unconsciously, the mysteries of his early

home may have influenced his religious attitude.

From Pausanias[1579] we learn that Phlya had a cult of the Earth-goddess.

She was worshipped together with a number of other kindred divinities.

‘Among the inhabitants of Phlya there are altars of Artemis the

Light-Bearer, and of Dionysos Anthios, and of the Ismenian Nymphs, and of

Ge, whom they call the Great Goddess. And another temple has altars of

Demeter Anesidora, and of Zeus Ktesios, and of Athene Tithrone, and of

Kore Protogene, and of the goddesses called Venerable.’

The district of Phlya[1580] is still well watered and fertile, still

a fitting home for Dionysos ‘of the Flowers,’ and for Demeter ‘Sender

up of Gifts’; probably it took its name from this characteristic

fertility[1581]. Plutarch[1582] discussed with some grammarians at

dessert the reason why apples were called by Empedocles ὑπέρφλοα, ‘very

fruitful.’ Plutarch made a bad and unmetrical guess; he thought the word

was connected with φλοιός, husk or rind, and that the apple was called

ὑπέρφλοιον ‘because all that was eatable in it lay outside the inner

rind-like core.’ The grammarians knew better; they pointed out that

Aratus[1583] used the word φλόον to mean verdure and blossoming, the

‘greenness and bloom of fruits,’ and they added the instructive statement

that ‘certain of the Greeks sacrificed to Dionysos Phloios, “He of

blossom and growth.”’ Dionysos Phloios and Dionysos Anthios are one and

the same potency.

Among this family group of ancient earth divinities Artemis and Zeus

read like the names of late Olympian intruders. Artemis as Light-Bearer

may have taken over an ancient mystery cult of Hecate, who also bore the

title of Phosphoros; Zeus Ktesios, we are certain, is not the Olympian.

Like Zeus Meilichios he has taken over the cult of an old divinity of

‘acquisition’ and fertility. ‘Zeus’ Ktesios was the god of the storeroom.

Harpocration[1584] says, ‘they set up Zeus Ktesios in storerooms.’

The god himself lived in a jar. In discussing the various shapes of

vessels Athenaeus[1585] says of the _kadiskos_, ‘it is the vessel in

which they consecrate the Ktesian Zeuses, as Antikleides says in his

“Interpretations,” as follows—the symbols of Zeus Ktesios are consecrated

as follows: “the lid must be put on a new _kadiskos_ with two handles,

and the handles crowned with white wool ... and you must put into it

whatever you chance to find and pour in ambrosia. Ambrosia is pure water,

olive oil and all fruits (παγκάρπια). Pour in these.”’ Whatever are

the obscurities of the account of Antikleides, thus much is clear—Zeus

Ktesios is not the Olympian of the thunderbolt, he is Zeus in nothing

but his name[1586]. _Ktesios_ is clearly an old divinity of fertility,

of the same order as Meilichios; his σημεῖα are symbols not statues,

symbols probably like the _sacra_ carried in chests at the Arrephoria;

they are θεσμοί, magical spells kept in a jar for the safe guarding of

the storeroom. Zeus Ktesios is well in place at Phlya. The great _pithoi_

that in Homer stand on the threshold of Olympian Zeus (p. 47) may be the

last reminiscence of this earlier _Dian_ daemon who had his habitation,

genius-like, in a jar.

* * * * *

But this old daemon of fertility who took on the name of Zeus only

concerns us incidentally. In the complex of gods enumerated by Pausanias

as worshipped at Phlya, the Great Goddess is manifestly chief. The name

given to Kore, _Protogene_, suggests Orphism, but we are not told that it

was a mystery cult, and of Eros there is no notice. Happily from other

sources we know further particulars. In discussing the parentage of

Themistocles Plutarch[1587] asserts that Themistocles was related to the

family of the Lycomids. ‘This is clear,’ he says, ‘for Simonides states

that, when the Telesterion at Phlya, which was the common property of

the gens of the Lycomids, was burnt down by the barbarians, Themistocles

himself restored it and decorated it with paintings.’ In this

Telesterion, this ‘Place of Initiation,’ the cult of Eros was practised.

The evidence is slight but sufficient. In discussing the worship of Eros

at Thespiae Pausanias states incidentally, we already noted (p. 471),

that the poets Pamphos and Orpheus both composed ‘poems about Eros to be

chanted by the Lycomids over their rites.’

This mystery cult, we further know, was also addressed to a form of the

Earth goddess. When actually at Phlya, Pausanias, as already noted,

curiously enough says nothing of _mysteries_; he simply notes that the

Great Goddess and other divinities were worshipped there. Probably by his

time the mystery cult of Phlya was completely overshadowed and obscured

by the dominant, orthodox rites at Eleusis. But, _apropos_ of the

mysteries at Andania in Messene[1588], he gives significant details about

Phlya. He tells us three facts which all go to show that the cult at

Phlya was a mystery-cult. First, the mysteries of Andania were, he says,

brought there by a grandson of Phlyos; and this Phlyos, we may conclude,

was the eponymous hero of Phlya. Second, for the Lycomids, who, we have

seen, had a ‘Place of Initiation’ at Phlya and hymns to Eros, Musaeus

wrote a hymn to Demeter, and in this hymn it was stated that Phlyos was a

son of Ge. Third, Methapos, the great ‘deviser of rites of initiation.’

had a statue in the sanctuary of the Lycomids, the metrical inscription

on which Pausanias quotes. In view of this evidence it cannot be doubted

that the cult of Phlya was a mystery-cult, and the divinities worshipped

among others were the Mother and the Maid and Eros.

At Phlya then, it is clear, we have just that blend of divinities that

appears on the vase-painting in fig. 175. We have the worship of the

great Earth-goddess who was Mother and Maid in one, and, conjointly,

we have the worship of the Orphic spirit of love and life, Eros. It is

probable that the worship of the Earth-goddess was primaeval, and that

Eros was added through Orphic influence.

* * * * *

The Eros of the Athenian vase-painting is the beautiful Attic boy, but

there is evidence to show that the Eros of Phlya was conceived of as

near akin in form to a Herm. In discussing the Orphic mysteries (p.

536), we found that at Phlya according to the anonymous author of the

_Philosophoumena_ there was a παστάς or bridal-chamber decorated with

paintings. This bridal chamber was probably the whole or a part of

that Telesterion which was restored and decorated by Themistocles. The

subjects of these paintings Plutarch had fully discussed in a treatise

now unhappily lost. The loss is to be the more deeply regretted because

the account by Plutarch of pictures manifestly Orphic would have been

sympathetic and would greatly have helped our understanding of Orphism.

The author of the _Philosophoumena_[1589] describes briefly one picture

and one picture only, as follows: ‘There is in the gateway the picture

of an old man, white-haired, winged; he is pursuing a blue-coloured

woman who escapes. Above the man is written φάος ῥυέντης, above the

woman περεηφικόλα. According to the doctrine of the Sethians, it seems

that φάος ῥυέντης is light and that φικόλα is dark water.’ The exact

meaning of these mysterious paintings is probably lost for ever; but it

is scarcely rash to conjecture that the male figure is Eros. He pursues a

woman; he is winged; that is like the ordinary Eros of common mythology.

But this is the Eros of the mysteries; not young, but very ancient, and

white-haired, the ἀρχαῖος ἔρως[1590] of Orphic tradition, eldest of

all the Gods. And the name written above him as he pursues his bride

inscribed ‘Darkness’ or ‘Dark Water’ is ‘Phaos Ruentes,’ ‘The rushing or

streaming Light.’ We are reminded of the time when ‘the Spirit of God

moved upon the face of the waters.’ The ancient Eros of Thespiae, who

was in intent a Herm, has become the principle not only of Life but of

Light—Light pursuing and penetrating Darkness. Exactly such a being, such

a strange blend of animal and spiritual, is the egg-born Protogonos of

the Orphic hymn[1591]:

‘Thou tempest spirit in all the ordered world

On wild wings flashing; bearer of bright light

And holy; therefore Phanes named, and Lord

Priapos, and the Dawn that answereth Dawn.’

So chants the mystic, seeking to utter the unutterable, and the

poet[1592], born in the home of mysticism, sings to Mother and Son:

‘Thou comest to bend the pride

Of the hearts of God and man,

Cypris; and by thy side

In earth’s encircling span

He of the changing plumes,

The Wing that the world illumes,

As over the leagues of land flies he,

Over the salt and sounding sea.

For mad is the heart of Love,

And gold the gleam of his wing;

And all to the spell thereof

Bend, when he makes his spring;

All life that is wild and young,

In mountain and wave and stream,

All that of earth is sprung

Or breathes in the red sunbeam.

Yea and Mankind. O’er all a royal throne,

Cyprian, Cyprian, is thine alone.’

PYTHAGOREAN REVIVAL OF THE MOTHER.

The development of the male Eros, the beautiful youth, was due, we may be

sure, to influences rather Athenian than Orphic. In this connection it is

important to note that the Orphic Pythagoreans tended to revive religious

conceptions that were matriarchal rather than patriarchal. The religion

of Dionysos, based on the worship of Mother and Son, gave to women a

freedom and a consequence possible only perhaps among the more spiritual

peoples of the North. Under Pythagoras we have clear indications of a

revival of the like conditions, of course with a difference, a resurgence

as it were of matriarchal conditions, and with it a realization of the

appeal of women to the spirit as well as the flesh.

According to Aristoxenus[1593] Pythagoras got most of his ethical lore

from a woman, Themistoclea, a priestess of Delphi. We are reminded of

Socrates and Diotima, Diotima the wise woman of Mantinea, which has

yielded up to us the great inscription dealing with the mysteries of

Demeter at Andania[1594]. We are reminded too of the close friendship

between Plutarch and the Thyiad, Clea. It was to a woman, his daughter

Damo, that Pythagoras entrusted his writings with orders to divulge

them to no outside person. Diogenes further[1595] records with evident

surprise that men ‘gave their wives into the charge of Pythagoras to

learn somewhat of his doctrine,’ and that these women were called

‘Pythagoreans.’ Kratinos wrote a comedy on these Pythagorean women in

which he ridiculed Pythagoras; so we may be sure his women followers

were not spared. This Pythagorean woman movement probably suggested some

elements in the ideal state of Plato, and may have prompted the women

comedies of Aristophanes. Of a woman called Arignote we learn[1596] that

‘she was a disciple of the famous Pythagoras and of Theano, a Samian

and a Pythagorean philosopher, and she edited the Bacchic books that

follow: one is about the mysteries of Demeter, and the title of it is the

_Sacred Discourse_, and she was the author of the _Rites of Dionysos_ and

other philosophical works.’ That this matriarchalism of Pythagoras was

a revival rather than an innovation seems clear. Iamblichus[1597] says,

‘whatever bore the name of Pythagoras bore also the stamp of antiquity

and was crusted with the patina of archaism.’

It is not a little remarkable that, in his letter[1598] to the women of

Croton, Pythagoras says expressly that ‘women as a sex are more naturally

akin to piety.’ He says this reverently, not as Strabo[1599] does taking

it as evidence of ignorance and superstition. Strabo in discussing the

celibate customs of certain among the Getae remarks, ‘all agree that

women are the prime promoters of superstition, and it is they who incite

men to frequent worshippings of the gods and to feasts and excited

celebrations (ποτνιασμούς).’ He adds with charming frankness ‘you could

scarcely find a man living by himself who would do this sort of thing.’

It is to Pythagoras, as has already been noted (p. 262), that we owe the

fertile suggestion that in the figures of the women goddesses we have the

counterpart of the successive stages of a woman’s life as Maiden, Bride

and Mother.

The doctrine of the Pythagoreans in their lifetime was matriarchal and in

their death they turned to Mother Earth. The house of Pythagoras[1600]

after his death was dedicated as a sanctuary to Demeter, and Pliny[1601]

records—significant fact—that the disciples of Pythagoras reverted to the

ancient method of inhumation long superseded by cremation and were buried

in _pithoi_, earth to earth.

EROS AS PHANES, PROTOGONOS, METIS, ERIKAPAIOS.

The Eros of Athenian poetry and painting is unquestionably male, but

the Protogonos of esoteric doctrine is not male or female but bisexed,

resuming in mystic fashion Eros and Aphrodite. He is an impossible,

unthinkable cosmic potency. The beautiful name of Eros is foreign to

Orphic hymns. Instead we have Metis, Phanes, Erikapaios, ‘which being

interpreted in the vulgar tongue are Counsel, Light and Lifegiver[1602].’

The commentators on Plato are conscious of what Plato himself scarcely

realizes, that in his philosophy he is always trying to articulate the

symbolism of these and other Orphic titles, trying like Orpheus to utter

the unutterable; he puts νοῦς for Metis, τὸ ὄν for Erikapaios, but, in

despair, he constantly lapses back into myth and we have the winged soul,

the charioteer, the four-square bisexed man. Proklos[1603] knows that

τὸ ὄν is but the primaeval egg, knows too that Erikapaios was male and

female[1604]:

‘Father and Mother, the mighty one Erikapaios,’

and Hermias[1605] knows that Orpheus made Phanes four-square:

‘He of the fourfold eyes, beholding this way, that way.’

It was ‘the inspired poets,’ Hermias[1606] says, ‘not Plato, who invented

the charioteer and the horses,’ and these inspired poets are according to

him Homer, Orpheus, Parmenides.

The mention of Homer comes as something of a shock; but it must be

remembered that the name _Homer_ covered in antiquity a good deal more

than our _Iliad_ and _Odyssey_. It is not unlikely that some of the

‘Homeric’ poems were touched with Orphism. The name _Metis_ suggests it.

The strange denaturalized birth of Athene from the brain of Zeus is a

dark, desperate effort to make _thought_ the basis of being and reality,

and the shadowy parent in the _Kypria_ is the Orphic Metis. Athene, as

has already been shown (p. 301), was originally only one of the many

local Korae; she was ἡ Ἀθηναία (Κόρη), the ‘maiden of Athens,’ born of

the earth, as much as the Kore of Eleusis. Patriarchalism wished to rid

her of her matriarchal ancestry, and Orphic mysticism was ready with the

male parent Metis. The proud rationalism of Athens, uttering itself in a

goddess who embodied Reason, did the rest.

There is a yet more definite tinge of Orphism in the story of Leda and

the swan. Leda herself is all folklore and faery story based probably

on a cultus-object. In the sanctuary of the ancient Maidens Hilaira and

Phoebe at Sparta[1607] there hung from the roof suspended by ribbons an

egg, and tradition said it was the egg of Leda. But the author of the

_Kypria_[1608] gave to Zeus another bride, Nemesis, who belongs to the

sisterhood of shadowy Orphicized female impersonations, Dike, Ananke,

Adrasteia and the like. The birth of the child from the egg appears on no

black-figured vase-painting, and though it need not have been originated

by the Orphics, the birth of Eros doubtless lent it new prestige. The

charming little design in fig. 176 is from a red-figured lekythos in the

Berlin Museum[1609]. On an altar lies a huge egg. Out of it breaks the

figure of a boy. The boy is not winged; otherwise we should be inclined

to call him Eros. The woman to whom the child stretches out his hands

must be Leda. The scene is the birth of one of the Dioscuri, but probably

with some reminiscence of Eros. On most vases in which the birth from the

egg is represented it takes place in a sanctuary.

[Illustration: FIG. 176.]

Homeric theology, as we know it in our canonical Homer, was wholly

untouched by Orphism. The human figures of the Olympians, clear-cut and

departmental as they are, have no kinship with the shifting mystical

Protogonos. The Olympians lay no claim to be All in All, nor are they

in any sense Creators, sources of life. Homer has no cosmogony, only a

splendid ready-made human society. His gods are immortal because death

would shadow and mar their splendour, not because they are the perennial

sources of things. It is noticeable that Zeus himself, the supreme god

of Homeric theology, can only be worked into the Orphic system by making

him become Eros[1610], and absorb Phanes[1611]; only so can he become

_demiourgos_, a feat which, to do him justice, he never on his own

account attempted. Proklos says ‘Orpheus in inspired utterance declares

that Zeus swallowed Phanes his progenitor, and took into his bosom all

his powers.’ This mysticism was of course made easy by savage cosmogonies

of Kronos and the swallowing of the children.

The Olympians concern themselves as little with the Before as with

the Hereafter; they are not the source of life nor are they its goal.

Moreover, another characteristic is that they are, with the strictest

limitations, _human_. They are not one with the life that is in beasts

and streams and woods as well as in man. Eros, ‘whose feet are on the

flowers,’ who ‘couches in the folds,’ is of all life, he is Dionysos,

he is Pan. Under Athenian influence Eros secludes himself into purely

human form, but the Phanes[1612] of Orpheus was polymorphic, a

beast-mystery-god:

‘Heads had he many,

Head of a ram, a bull, a snake, and a bright-eyed lion.’

He is like Dionysos, to whom his Bacchants cry[1613]:

‘Appear, appear, whatso thy shape or name,

O Mountain Bull, Snake of the Hundred Heads,

Lion of the Burning Flame!

O God, Beast, Mystery, come!’

In theology as in ritual Orphism reverted to the more primitive forms,

lending them deeper and intenser significance. These primitive forms,

shifting and inchoate, were material more malleable than the articulate

accomplished figures of the Olympians.

The conception of Phanes Protogonos remained always somewhat esoteric, a

thing taught in mysteries, but his content is popularized in the figure

of the goat-god who passed from being ὁ Πάων the feeder, the shepherd, to

be τὸ πᾶν Pan the All-God.

* * * * *

Pan came to Athens[1614] from Arcadia after the Persian War, came at

a time when scepticism was busy with the figures of the Olympians

and their old prestige was on the wane. Pan of course had to have his

reception into Olympus, and a derivation duly Olympian was found for

his name. The Homeric Hymn[1615], even if it be of Alexandrian date, is

thoroughly Homeric in religious tone: the poet tells how

‘Straight to the seats of the gods immortal did Hermes fare

With his child wrapped warmly up in skins of the mountain hare,

And down by the side of Zeus and the rest, he made him to sit,

And showed him that boy of his, and they all rejoiced at it.

But most of all Dionysos, the god of the Bacchanal,

And they called the name of him PAN because he delighted them ALL.’

Dionysos the Bull-god and Pan the Goat-god both belong to early

pre-anthropomorphic days, before man had cut the ties that bound him

to the other animals; one and both they were welcomed as saviours by a

tired humanity. Pan had no part in Orphic ritual, but in mythology as the

All-god[1616] he is the popular reflection of Protogonos. He gave a soul

of life and reality to a difficult monotheistic dogma, and the last word

was not said in Greek religion, until over the midnight sea a voice[1617]

was heard crying ‘Great Pan is dead.’

* * * * *

Our evidence for the mystic Phanes Protogonos, as distinguished from the

beautiful Eros of the Athenians, has been, so far, drawn from late and

purely learned authors, commentators on Plato, Christian Fathers, and the

like. The suspicion may lurk in some minds that all this cosmogony, apart

from the simple myth of the world-egg vouched for by Aristophanes, is a

matter of late mysticizing, and never touched popular religion at all, or

if at all, not till the days of decadence. It is most true that ‘the main

current of speculation, as directed by Athens, set steadily contrariwise,

in the line of getting bit by bit at the meaning of things through hard

thinking,’ but we need constantly to remind ourselves of the important

fact ‘that the mystical and “enthusiastic” explanation of the world was

never without its apostles in Greece[1618].’ That the common people

heard this doctrine gladly is curiously evidenced by the next monument

to be discussed, a religious document of high value, the fragment of a

black-figured vase-painting[1619] in fig. 177.

[Illustration: FIG. 177.]

In the sanctuary of the Kabeiroi near Thebes[1620] there came to light

a mass of fragments of black-figured vases, dating about the end of the

5th or the beginning of the 4th century B.C., of local technique and

obviously having been used in a local cult. The important inscribed

fragment is here reproduced. The reclining man holding the kantharos,

would, if there were no inscription, be named without hesitation

Dionysos. But over him is clearly written _Kabiros_.

Goethe makes his Sirens say of the Kabeiroi that they

‘Sind Götter, wundersam eigen,

Die sich immerfort selbst erzeugen

Und niemals wissen was sie sind.’

They have certainly a wondrous power of taking on the forms of other

deities; here in shape and semblance they are Dionysos, the father and

the son. Very surprising are the other inscribed figures, a man and a

woman closely linked together, Mitos and Krateia, and a child Protolaos.

What precisely is meant by the conjunction is not easy to say, but the

names Mitos and Protolaos take us straight to Orphism. Clement[1621] says

in the _Stromata_ that Epigenes wrote a book on the poetry of Orpheus and

‘in it noted certain characteristic expressions.’ Among them was this,

that by warp (στήμοσι) Orpheus meant furrow, and by woof (μίτος) he meant

seed (σπέρμα).

Did this statement stand alone we might naturally dismiss it as late

allegorizing, but here, on a bit of local pottery of the 5th or 4th

century B.C., we have the figure of Mitos in popular use. All the Theban

Kabeiroi vases are marked by a spirit of grotesque and sometimes gross

caricature. Mitos, Krateia and Protolaos it will be noted have snub

negro faces. This gives us a curious glimpse into that blending of the

cosmic and the mystic, that concealing of the sacred by the profane,

that seems inherent in the anxious primitive mind. It makes us feel that

Aristophanes, to his own contemporaries, may have appeared less frankly

blasphemous than he seems to us.

The vase fragment has another interest. The little Orphic cosmogonic

group, _Seed_ and _Strong One_ and _First people_, the birth of the

human world as it were, is in close connection with Dionysos, the father

and the son. It is all like a little popular diagram of the relation of

Orphic and Bacchic rites, and moreover it comes to us from the immediate

neighbourhood of Thebes, the reputed birthplace of the god.

[Illustration: FIG. 178.]

The vase fragment from Thebes shows plainly the influence of mystery

doctrines on popular conceptions of Dionysos. It is worth noting that in

red-figured vase-paintings of a somewhat late style Eros comes to be a

frequent attendant on Dionysos, whereas in vases of severe style he is

wholly absent, Maenads and Satyrs revel either together or alone. The

design in fig. 179, from the lid of a red-figured lekane (fig. 178) in

the Museum at Odessa[1622], is a singularly beautiful instance of Eros

as present at a Bacchic revel. A Maenad and a Satyr dance in ecstasy,

holding between them a little fawn, as though in the act of rending it

asunder. Over her long chiton, that trails and swirls about her feet in

oddly modern fashion, the Maenad wears a fawn-skin; a second dancing

Maenad strikes her timbrel. One half of the design is all ecstasy

and even savagery, the other half is perfectly quiet. Two Maenads

stand talking, at rest; the god Dionysos is seated and Eros offers

him the wine-cup. Here it is Eros the son, not Aphrodite the mother,

who is linked with Dionysos, but we remember how in the _Bacchae_ of

Euripides[1623] the Messenger thus pleads with Pentheus:

‘Therefore I counsel thee,

O King, receive this Spirit whoe’er he be

To Thebes in glory. Greatness manifold

Is all about him—and the tale is told

That this is he who first to man did give

The grief-assuaging vine.—Oh, let him live,

For if he die, then Love herself is slain;

And nothing joyous in the world again.’

[Illustration: FIG. 179.]

Eros and Dionysos, the poet sees, are near akin; both are spirits of Life

and of Life’s ecstasy.

Dionysos like Eros is a _daimon_, a spirit rather than a clear-cut

crystallized god; he is as has been already seen of many shapes, of

plants and animals as well as man, so he like Eros becomes Phanes:

‘Therefore him we call both Phanes and Dionysos[1624].’

Dionysos is but a new ingredient in the monotheistic mystery melting-pot:

‘One Zeus, one Hades, one Helios, one Dionysos,

Yea in all things One God, his name why speak I asunder[1625]?’

In becoming the Orphic Phanes Dionysos lost most of his characteristics.

In spite of his persistent monotheism we are somehow conscious

that Orpheus did not feel all the gods to be really one, all equal

manifestations of the same potency. He is concerned to push the claims of

the cosmic Eros as against the simpler wine god. Possibly he felt that

Dionysos needed much adjustment and was not always for edification. Of

this we have some hint in the last literary document to be examined.

* * * * *

In the statutes of the Iobacchoi[1626] at Athens, we have already seen

(p. 476), the thyrsos became the symbol not of revel but of quiet

seemliness. We shall now find that though by name and tradition they are

pledged to the worship of Dionysos the Iobacchoi have introduced into

their ceremonies a figure more grave and orderly, a figure bearing in

the inscription a name of beautiful significance, Proteurhythmos. A part

of their great festival consisted in a sacred pantomime, the _rôles_

in which were distributed by lot. The divine persons represented were

‘Dionysos, Kore, Palaimon, Aphrodite, and Proteurhythmos[1627].’ Who

was Proteurhythmos, First of fair rhythm? The word defies translation

into English, but its initial syllable πρωτ, first, at once inclines

us to see in it an Orphic title like Protogonos or Protolaos. The

word has indeed been interpreted[1628] as a title of Orpheus himself,

Orpheus Proteurhythmos, First dancer or singer. Such an interpretation

argues, I think, a grave misunderstanding. It ignores the juxtaposition

of Proteurhythmos with Aphrodite and rests for support on the initial

error that Orpheus himself is a faded god. Proteurhythmos is, I think,

not Orpheus, but a greater than he, the god whom he worshipped, Eros

Protogonos. Orpheus is a musician, but it was Eros, not Orpheus, who gave

impulse and rhythm to the great dance of creation when ‘the Morning Stars

sang together.’ Eros, not Orpheus, is demiourgos.

Lucian[1629] knew this. ‘It would seem that dancing came into being at

the beginning of all things, and was brought to light together with Eros,

that ancient one, for we see this primaeval dancing clearly set forth

in the choral dance of the constellations, and in the planets and fixed

stars, their interweaving and interchange and orderly harmony.’

It is the primaeval life that Eros, not Orpheus, begets within us, that

wakes now and again, that feels the rhythm of a poem, the pulse of a

pattern and the chime of a dancer’s feet.

‘In the beginning when the sun was lit

The maze of things was marshalled to a dance.

Deep in us lie forgotten strains of it,

Like obsolete, charmed sleepers of romance.

And we remember, when on thrilling strings

And hollow flutes the heart of midnight burns,

The heritage of splendid, moving things

Descends on us, and the old power returns.’

Eros is Lord of Life and Death, he is also Proteurhythmos, but because

of the bitter antinomy of human things to man he is also Lord of Discord

and Misrule. And therefore the chorus in the _Hippolytus_[1630], brooding

over the sickness and disorder of Phaedra, prays:

‘When I am thine, O Master, bring thou near

No spirit of evil, make not jarred the clear

Wings’ music as thou fliest.’

The gods whose worship Orpheus taught were two, Bacchus and Eros; in

actual religion chiefly Bacchus, in mystical dogma Eros, and in ancient

Greek religion these are the only real gods. Orpheus dimly divined the

truth, later to become explicit through Euripides of Phlya:

‘I saw that there are first and above all

The hidden forces, blind necessities

Named Nature, but the things self-unconceived.

We know not how imposed above ourselves,

We well know what I name the god, a power

Various or one.’

Through all the chaos of his cosmogony and the shifting, uncertain

outlines of his personifications, we feel, in these two gods, lies the

real advance of the religion of Orpheus—an advance, not only beyond

the old _riddance_ of ghosts and sprites and demons, but also beyond

the gracious and beautiful _service_ of those magnified mortals, the

Olympians. The religion of Orpheus _is_ religious in the sense that it

is the worship of the real mysteries of life, of potencies (δαίμονες)

rather than personal gods (θεοί); it is the worship of life itself in its

supreme mysteries of ecstasy and love. “_Reason is great, but it is not

everything. There are in the world things, not of reason, but both below

and above it, causes of emotion which we cannot express, which we tend to

worship, which we feel perhaps to be the precious things in life. These

things are God or forms of God, not fabulous immortal men, but ‘Things

which Are,’ things utterly non-human and non-moral which bring man bliss

or tear his life to shreds without a break in their own serenity[1631]._”

It is these real gods, this life itself, that the Greeks, like most men,

were inwardly afraid to recognize and face, afraid even to worship.

Orpheus too was afraid—the garb of the ascetic that he always wears

is the token at once of his realization and his fear—but at least he

dares to worship. Now and again a philosopher or a poet, in the very

spirit of Orpheus, proclaims these true gods, and asks in wonder why to

their shrines is brought no sacrifice. Plato[1632] in the _Symposium_

makes Aristophanes say, ‘Mankind would seem to have never realized the

might of Eros, for if they had really felt it they would have built him

great sanctuaries and altars and offered solemn sacrifices, and none

of these things are done, but of all things they ought to be done.’

Euripides[1633] in the _Hippolytus_ makes his chorus sing:

‘In vain, in vain by old Alpheus’ shore,

The blood of many bulls doth stain the river,

And all Greece bows on Phoebus’ Pythian floor,

Yet bring we to the Master of Man no store,

The Keybearer that standeth at the door

Close barred, where hideth ever

Love’s inmost jewel. Yea, though he sack man’s life,

Like a sacked city and moveth evermore,

Girt with calamity and strange ways of strife,

Him have we worshipped never.’

To resume: the last word in ancient Greek religion was said by the

Orphics, and the beautiful figure of Orpheus is strangely modern.

Then, as now, we have, for one side of the picture, a revived and

intensified spirituality, an ardent, even ecstatic enthusiasm, a high

and self-conscious standard of moral conduct, a deliberate simplicity of

life; abstinence from many things, temperance in all, a great quiet of

demeanour, a marvellous gentleness to all living things.

And, for the reverse, we have formalism, faddism, priggishness, a

constant, and it would seem inevitable lapse into arid symbolism,

pseudo-science, pseudo-philosophy, the ignorant revival of obsolete

rites, the exhibition of all manner of ignoble thaumaturgy and squalid

credulity. The whole strange blend redeemed, illuminated by two impulses,

in practice by the strenuous effort after purity of life, in theory by

the ‘further determination of the Absolute’ into the mysticism of Love.

CRITICAL APPENDIX ON THE ORPHIC TABLETS.

I. _The Petelia Tablet._

Found in excavations near Petelia, S. Italy: now in the British Museum.

Kaibel, _CIGIS_, No. 638. Cf. Comparetti, _J.H.S._ III. p. 112.

[Illustration]

ΕΥΡΗΣΣΕΙΣ Δ’ ΑΙΔΑΟ ΔΟΜΩΝ ΕΠ’ ΑΡΙΣΤΕΡΑ ΚΡΗΝΗΝ,

ΠΑΡ Δ’ ΑΥΤΗΙ ΛΕΥΚΗΝ ΕΣΤΗΚΥΙΑΝ ΚΥΠΑΡΙΣΣΟΝ·

ΤΑΥΤΗΣ ΤΗΣ ΚΡΗΝΗΣ ΜΗΔΕ ΣΧΕΔΟΝ ΕΜΠΕΛΑΣΕΙΑΣ.

ΕΥΡΗΣΕΙΣ Δ’ ΕΤΕΡΑΝ ΤΗΣ ΜΝΗΜΟΣΥΝΗΣ ΑΠΟ ΛΙΜΝΗΣ

ΨΥΧΡΟΝ ΥΔΩΡ ΠΡΟΡΕΟΝ, ΦΥΛΑΚΕΣ Δ’ ΕΠΙΠΡΟΣΘΕΝ ΕΑΣΙΝ

ΕΙΠΕΙΝ· ΓΗΣ ΠΑΙΣ ΕΙΜΙ ΚΑΙ ΟΥΡΑΝΟΥ ΑΣΤΕΡΟΕΝΤΟΣ,

ΑΥΤΑΡ ΕΜΟΙ ΓΕΝΟΣ ΟΥΡΑΝΙΟΝ· ΤΟΔΕ Δ’ ΙΣΤΕ ΚΑΙ ΑΥΤΟΙ·

ΔΙΨΗΙ Δ’ ΕΙΜΙ ΑΥΗ ΚΑΙ ΑΠΟΛΛΥΜΑΙ· ΑΛΛΑ ΔΟΤ’ ΑΙΨΑ

ΨΥΧΡΟΝ ΥΔΩΡ ΠΡΟΡΕΟΝ ΤΗΣ ΜΝΗΜΟΣΥΝΗΣ ΑΠΟ ΛΙΜΝΗΣ

ΚΑΥΤ<ΟΙ ΣΟ>Ι ΔΩΣΟΥΣΙ ΠΙΕΙΝ ΘΕΙΗΣ ΑΠ<Ο ΛΙΜΝ>ΗΣ

ΚΑΙ ΤΟΤ’ ΕΠΕΙΤ’ Α<ΛΛΟΙΣΙ ΜΕΘ’> ΗΡΩΕΣΣΙΝ ΑΝΑΞΕΙΣ

····· ΙΗΣ ΤΟΔΕ ····· ΘΑΝΕΙΣΘ ····

······· ΤΟΔΕΓΡΑΨ ·····

···· ΓΛΩΣΕΙΠΑ (?) ··· ΣΚΟΤΟΣ ΑΜΦΙΚΑΛΥΨΑΣ

‘Thou shalt find to the left of the House of Hades a Well-spring,

And by the side thereof standing a white cypress.

To this Well-spring approach not near.

But thou shalt find another by the Lake of Memory,

Cold water flowing forth, and there are Guardians before it.

Say: “I am a child of Earth and of Starry Heaven;

But my race is of Heaven (alone). This ye know yourselves.

And lo, I am parched with thirst and I perish. Give me quickly

The cold water flowing forth from the Lake of Memory.”

And of themselves they will give thee to drink from the holy

Well-spring,

And thereafter among the other Heroes thou shalt have lordship....’

Kaibel (l.c.) says “pertinet lammina, ut nunc apparet, ad saeculum iii

vel summum iv ante Chr. n.” It had formerly been supposed to be much

later. He confidently attributes the accompanying tablet (No. V.) to

the fourth century, and this one seems to me to be quite as early or

earlier. It is altogether more carefully written, which detracts from

its appearance of age. The use of the diphthong ου for instance, where

No. V. has ο, is probably a sign of careful writing, not of lateness.

The letters are very well formed and early in shape. Subscript ι is

never neglected. Elision only once (εἰμὶ αὔη) and then, it would seem,

of set purpose to avoid ambiguity. Weight must also be allowed to the

completeness and accuracy with which the text of the “ancient Orphic

poem” (see below on No. V.) is given, with no compendia or corruptions.

The dialect, also, is pure literary epic; i.e., one may presume, the pure

dialect of the “ancient poem” itself, with no admixture of local forms

such as have crept by process of time into the formulae on the other

tablets. The double σ of εὑρήσσεις in l. 1 may indeed be dialectical;

cf. ἀσστεροβλῆτα, Δεσσποίνας in V., but that scarcely affects the main

impression.

II. Three tablets from Crete (Eleuthernae?) now in the National Museum at

Athens.

[Illustration: A.

Length 55 mm.; breadth 7 mm.]

[Illustration: B.

Length 62 mm.; breadth 8 mm.]

[Illustration: C.

Length 56 mm.; breadth 10 mm.]

The general formula represented by these tablets is:

Δίψαι αὖος ἐγὼ καὶ ἀπόλλυμαι—Ἀλλὰ πίε μμου

Κράνας αἰερόω [or αἰενάω] ἐπὶ δεξιὰ, τῆ κυφάρισος.

Τίς δ’ ἔσι;.....................

πῶ δ’ ἔσι;...Γᾶς υἱὸς ἠμὶ καὶ ὠρανῶ ἀστερόεντος.

‘I am parched with thirst and I perish.—Nay, drink of Me,

The well-spring flowing for ever on the Right, where the Cypress is.

Who art thou?..................

Whence art thou?—I am son of Earth and of Starry Heaven.’

Tablet C was published, with some inaccuracies, by M. Joubin in _Bull.

de Corr. Hell._ xvii. p. 122, where it is said to have been found at

Eleuthernae in Crete. I subjoin an account of the three tablets kindly

sent by Mr Marcus Tod, Assistant Director of the British School at

Athens, to whom are also due the above fac-similes.

“The inscription is at present in the _Ethnikon Mouseion_ here, and

along with it are two others almost exactly similar. I could get no

information about them, save that they also, according to the Εὑρετήριον

of the Museum, are ‘from Crete.’ All three are on thin strips of gold,

roughly rectangular, and are traced in very small and fine letters with

a needle point. The execution is in all three instances rough, but C

is considerably better in this respect than A; B holds an intermediate

position. I worked with a powerful magnifying glass, and in most cases am

quite sure of my readings even where I differ from _Bull. Corr. Hell._”

NOTES: l. 1. What comes between αὖος and ἐγὼ in A, Mr Tod cannot

decipher. Was it αὖος written twice?

πιε μοι C: πιε μου B (and C, according to Joubin). I had conjectured

from Joubin’s reading πίε μμου, the initial μ being doubled as in ἐνὶ

μμεγάροισιν, etc., in the so-called Aeolic poetry (Cretan = Arcadian =

‘Urgriechisch’), and this proves to be the reading of A.

l. 2. αιειροω C and B. Joubin gave αἰεὶ ῥέω: αιεναω A. Evidently the

Doric genitive of an adj. αἰέροος or αἰέναος. Mr Tod (and I also) had

conjectured αἰὲ ῥέω, and he would also take αἰενάω as a verb.

τῆ κυφάρισος: sc. ἐστί.

As to the metre and reading of the last line, see below p. 672.

III. _Timpone Grande Tablet (a)._

A thin rectangular slip of gold, like the others, found in a large tomb

in the commune of Corigliano-Calabro, S. Italy. (Published in the _Atti

d. R. Accad. dei Lincei_, Serie III. 1878-79; _Memorie_, p. 328: cf.

Kaibel, _CIGIS_, 642.) The fac-simile that follows was kindly furnished

by Prof. Comparetti.

[Illustration]

Ἀλλ’ ὁπόταμ ψυχὴ προλίπηι φάος ἀελίοιο

δεξιὸν ἐν̣·οιας δ̣ειτινα

............πεφυλαγμένον εὖ μάλα πάντα.

Χαῖρε παθὼν τὸ πάθημα, τόδ’ οὔπω π̣ρ̣όσθε ἐπεπόνθεις.

θεὸς ἐγένου ἐξ ἀνθρώπου.

ἔρυφος ἐς γάλα ἔπετες.

χαῖρε, χαῖρε, δεξιὰν ὁδοιπορ<ῶν>

λειμῶνάς τε ἱεροὺς κατά <τ’> ἄ<λ>σεα Φεσε<φο>νείας.

‘But so soon as the Spirit hath left the light of the sun,

To the right................................. of Ennoia

Then must man..............being right wary in all things.

Hail, thou who hast suffered the Suffering. This thou hadst never

suffered before.

Thou art become God from Man. A kid thou art fallen into milk.

Hail, hail to thee journeying on the right.........

... Holy meadows and groves of Phersephoneia.’

l. 2. The reading is doubtful. The strip of gold has been folded over

and over, making eight little divisions by vertical lines and four by

horizontal. The curious thing is that in some cases the fold has been

allowed for in the writing, in others not. For instance, the first

vertical fold would cut, as a rule, the seventh or eighth letter from the

beginning. A large space has been left for it between ἐξ and ἀνθρώπου

in line 5 (the gold is worn into a little hole at this point, and may

have been somehow injured before the writing was made); and in lines

1, 3, 4 and 7 the letters successfully dodge it. But the χ of χαῖρε is

half obliterated, and the letter following ε in l. 2 is lost in a mass

of crumpled gold. It might be ΕΙΟΙΑΣ = ἠοίας, supposing a space to be

vacant in the crumple, as between ἐξ and ἀνθρώπου. But ΕΝΟΙΑΣ is the

most probable, standing presumably for ΕΝΝΟΙΑΣ. The following word has

generally been read as ΔΕΙ, though ΑΕΙ is equally probable.

l. 3. τόδ’ οὔπω: τό τ’ οὔπω coni. Kaibel.

ἐγένου. The γ is clear.

As to the interpretation of l. 2, we may accept Kaibel’s judgment:

“videtur versus ex duobus coaluisse: nam hoc quoque carmen ex antiquiore

archetypo derivatum est.” But any attempt to restore the original “carmen

antiquum” is utterly uncertain. How uncertain, it may be worth while

illustrating from a parallel instance.

There is a small oval Christian amulet (_CIGIS_ 2413, 18) containing

verses from an elegiac poem of Gregory Nazianzene in an abbreviated form.

One passage, for instance, runs in the original

Χριστὸς ἄναξ κέλεταί σε φυγεῖν ἐς λαῖτμα θαλάσσης

ἠὲ κατὰ σκοπέλων ἠὲ συῶν ἀγελήν,

ὡς Λεγεῶνα πάροιθεν ἀτάσθαλον.

This appears on the amulet (I divide the words):

Χσ ἄναξ κέλετέ σε φυγε͂ν ἐσ λε͂τμα θαλάσσης

ὲ ὰ σκοπέλων ὲ συῶ ἀὴν

ὡ εενα πάροι ἀτάσθαλον.

The accented letter alone, or the first and last, or a group of letters

in the middle are made to stand for a word. On this principle we might

find in ΔΕΙΤΙΝΑ

Δεξιόν, Ἐννοίας Δ̣ε̣σποί̣νας ὕδατ̣ι̣ λίμν̣α̣ς

or various other formulae built up in the same manner. (I mark the

letters which occur, not those which are omitted.)

But, is this the process that has taken place at all? The same amulet, a

few lines earlier, in place of

φεῦγ’ ἀπ’ ἐμῶν μελέων, φεῦγ’ ἀπ’ ἐμοῦ βιότου,

κλώψ, ὄφι, πῦρ, βελιάρ, κακίη, μόρε

gives

φεῦγ’ ἀπ’ ἐμῶν μελέων ψόφι πῦρ βελιάρ κακίη μόρε

through mere lipography, the writer’s eye having wandered from φ to ψ.

On this principle we may here be dealing with an original such as

Δεξιόν, Ἐννοίας ἀεί τινα ποσσὶ φέρεσθαι

χριμπτόμενον κρανᾶς, πεφυλαγμένον εὖ μάλα πάντα.

Such conjectures are merely illustrative. The basis of sound conclusion

seems to be that we have here fragments of formulae, not a complete

sentence. (See below p. 672.)

The word δεξιὸν must, I think, certainly bear its ordinary meaning

“right,” “on the right”: cf. l. 6 δεξιὰν ὁδοιπορῶν, and, for the syntax,

δεξιὸς ἀίξας ὑπὲρ ἄστεος Ω 320; ὧδε κατάστας, δεξιὸς, ἀθανάτοις θεοῖσιν

ἐπευχόμενος Theogn. 943. “On the right, by the Spring of Ennoia” means,

perhaps “by the Spring of Thought issuing from the Lake of Memory.”

Such a sense would suit the doctrines of tablets I. and II., and

might even help to explain the origin of Dante’s _Eunoë_. (Professor

Comparetti, who takes δεξιὸν in the metaphorical prose sense of “clever,”

considers the introduction of such a word to be due to Euripidean or

sophistic influence.)

IV. _Timpone Grande Tablet (b)._

[Illustration]

Prof. Comparetti examined the tablet when it was discovered in 1879,

and reported (_Notizie d. Scavi_, 1880, p. 328) that it contained names

of divinities belonging to the Orphic theology. Of these he then read

_Protogonos_, _Gê_, _Pammêtor_, _Kybelê_, _Korê_, _Dêmêtêr_ and _Tychê_.

For his later results we must await his publication and discussion of the

new fac-simile which, by his kindness, is reproduced above. Prof. Diels

published the tablet with a full discussion in 1902 (_Ein Orphischer

Demeter-Hymnus, Festschrift Theodor Gomperz_, p. 1). He also with great

kindness has allowed his photographs of the tablet to be used for the

purposes of the present book.

I examined the tablet itself in the Naples Museum and was able here

and there to make out a few more letters than Prof. Diels; but, as it

evidently did not contain any special Orphic doctrines, and was besides

very trying to the eyes, I did not attempt a complete transcript. This

note is based chiefly on Prof. Comparetti’s fac-simile.

That the tablet is unintelligible as it stands, no one will deny. It

seems indeed to belong to that class of magical or cryptic writings in

which, as Wünsch puts it, “singulari quadam scribendi ratione id agitur

ne legi possint.”

Prof. Diels, however, did not view it in this light. He adopted the

hypothesis that the tablet was the simple and _bonâ fide_ work of an

Apulian engraver who knew very little Greek, but was copying a Greek

original which already contained various readings. He often got his

letters down in the wrong order; often mistook one letter for another;

often tried to correct his mistakes by repeating words or syllables.

Much of this seems perfectly true. Cf. for transpositions ισελαβροντα

= ἐλασίβροντα, ρσαπια = σάραπι, πτεν αματα = πέντ’ ἄματα, μαιτιετη =

μητίετα, οσειιταιν = ὁσίη παῖς (?).

Confusions: τλταιτταταπτα Ζεῦ (= πάντοπτα? or ἄττα, ἰᾶτα written

backward?), so παννυανταντης, if that is what is written, must be an

attempt to get some word right by repeated correction.

Ignorance of Greek: Ηανοπτα = Πανόπτα, επιτιημαρ = ἑπτῆμαρ are typical,

but the above transpositions and confusions point to the same conclusion.

On the other hand, there is knowledge of the Greek alphabet, as is

shown by the varying shapes of many letters, e.g. δ, ρ [sometimes R],

π [sometimes P], and the use of compendia: cf. especially the curious

compounds with Ν.

Prof. Diels, however, goes a good deal further than this. He attempts

to shew that the original from which the tablet is copied is a Hymn

to Demeter, written in hexameters; and he proceeds to its conjectural

reconstruction—while observing that “_Niemand die Unsicherheit der

Ergänzung verkennen oder die Barbarei der Formen beanstanden wird._”

The conjecture was worth making, and is carried out with the learning and

ability which mark all Prof. Diels’s work. So it is less surprising than

it would otherwise be, to find the tablet described by scholars[1634],

without further qualification, as a _Demeter-hymnus_! But it remains a

highly improbable hypothesis, not only because of the violent changes

necessary to get any consecutive sense suitable to a _Demeter-hymnus_,

but more definitely because among the few really legible passages in the

tablet, the very clearest are certainly not in dactylic metre; νυξὶν

ἢ μεθ’ ἡμέραν, ἰητρὸς Ἥλιε, εὔκλητε δαῖμον. True, there are fragments

also which seem dactylic; ῥεῦμ’ ἄστακτα πυρός, Νίκαις ἠδὲ Τύχαις ἐφάνης

παμμήδεσι Μοίραις(?). But this need not surprise us. The words of a

charm, for instance, are sometimes found set in the midst of a hexameter

verse; cf. the Tanagra Tablet in Wünsch, _App. CIA_, Praef. p. viii:

Ἑρμῆν κικλήσκω χθόνιον

(καταδίδημι Διονυσίαν)

καὶ Φερσεφόνηαν. (δῆσαι Διονυσίας

γλῶσαν κτλ.)

This parallel would account easily for all the hexameter fragments that

we have in this tablet.

On the other hand, the strange corruptions and repetitions of the tablet

are more than can be explained by the mere ignorance of a copy-maker.

They are not indeed similar to the rows of abracadabra-like syllables

found in magical papyri (cf. Dieterich, _Abraxas_, p. 178 θηθουθη ααθω

αθηρουωραμια θαρ μιγαρναχφουρι κτλ.) but they do bear a fairly close

resemblance to some of the cryptic curses, in which, as said above, the

writing is deliberately confused by transpositions and the like, so as to

be unintelligible. Cf. Wünsch, 110:

ΠΡΩΤΟΝΩΣΠΕΡΤΑΥΤΑΑΝΑΤΙ ΟΤΩΣΚΑΙΤΟΣΑΓΟΡΑΙΑΣΠΡΩΤΟ

ΝΑΝΑΤΙΑΕΗΑΠΑΤΑΚΑΙΗΜΑΙΟΙΤΟΙΣΤΟΙΣΤΙΜΑΤΙ ΙΤΑΤΟΠΩΑΕ

ΤΟΙΠΑΡΑΠΡΩΤΟΙΟΤΟΚΑΙΟΤΟΠΩΛΟΤΙΚΑΝΔΕΚΑΙΑΥΤΟΣΚΑΙΤΗΤΗΧΝΗ

(Πρῶτον ὥσπερ ταῦτα ... οὕτως καὶ ὁ Ἀρισταγόρας ... then at the

end καταδέω (?) αὐτοὺς καὶ τὴν τέχνην.)

ΤΟΣΑΓΟΡΑΙΑΣ = ὁ Ἀρισταγόρας is just like what we find in our tablet, and

examination will show many other resemblances.

I have here attempted no reconstruction. I have merely copied the

inscription and tried to collect such intelligible words or phrases

as presented themselves at once or were to be reached by very slight

emendations. The result so obtained is a patchwork of a few ritual

phrases and fragmentary formulae; rows of titles of gods, heroes and

daemons, including possibly Phanes and certainly Rhadamanthys; and

lastly, an unintelligible residuum.

The whole seems to be a charm of some kind, concerned with healing and

fasting. I can find no signs of its being a curse; nor indeed was gold,

unless I am mistaken, used for writing curses. The long lists of titles

of gods can be paralleled in abundance from magical inscriptions and

papyri.

Transcript:

ΠΡΩΤΟΤ̣ΟΝΟΤΗΜΑΙΤΙΕΤΗΓΑΜΜΑΤΡΙΕΠ̣ΑΚΥΒΕΛΕΙΑΚΟΡΡΑΟΣ

ΕΝΤΑΙΝΔΗΜΗΤΡΟΣΗΤ̣ |

ΤΛΤΑΠ̣ΤΑΤΑΠΤΑΖΕΥΙ̣ΑΤΗΤΥΔΕΡΣΑΠΙΑΗΔΙΕΠΥΡ̣Α̣Υ̣ΗΙ̣ΑΝΤΑΣΤΗΙ̣ΑΝΤΑΣΤ

ΗΝΚΑΤΟΤΙΕΝ̣ΙΚΑΙΙ

ΣΗΔΕΤΥΧΑΙ̣Τ̣ΕΦΑΝΗΣΠΑΜΜΗ·ΕΟ̣ΙΜΟΙΡΑΙΣΣΤΗΤΟΙΓΑΝΝΥΑΝ̣

ΑΝΤΗΣΥΚΛΗΤΕΔΑΙΜΟΝΔΕ

ΣΠΑΤΡΙΑΤΙ·ΠΑΝΤΑΔΑΜΑΣΤΑΡ̣ΑΝΤΗΡΝΥΝΤΑΙΣ̣ΕΛΑΒΡΟΝΤΑ

ΔΕΠΑΝΙΕΜΟΙΒΝ̣Τ̣ΣΤΛΗΤΕΑΠΑ

·ΤΗΜΗΑΕΡΙΠΥΟΜΕΜΜΑΙΕΡ̣ΑΥΕΣΤΙΣ··Δ·ΕΠ̣ΤΑΤΟΝΗΣΣΙΝ

ΝΥΞ̣ΙΝΗΜΕΘΗΜΕΡΑΝΕΓΩ̣···

ΕΠΙΤΙΗΜΑΡΤΙΝ̣Ν̣·Σ·ΙΑΣΤΑΝΖΕΥΕΝΟΡΥΤΤΙΕΚΑΙΗΑΝΟΠΤΑ

ΔΙΕΝΑΜΙΝ̣Α̣Μ̣ΑΤΕΙΟΜ̣ΑΣΕΠ

·ΠΙΔΥΣΕ̣Ι̣·ΕΡ̣ΕΥΜ̣ΑΣΤΑΚΤΑΠΥΡΟΣ·ΛΚΑΠΕΔΙΟΝ̣ΑΜΗΓΕΜΟΝ

ΚΑΝ̣ΝΑΔΙΕΡΑΔΑΜΑ̣ΝΘΥΔΑΜΝΥΙ

ΤΑΣΤΗΟΤΕΞ̣ΑΜΑΡ̣Ι̣Ε···ΝΤΕΑΡΓ̣ΙΖΕΥΚΕΤΗΞ̣ΕΙΔΑ···ΤΡΑΒ̣··

ΙΗΤΡΟΣΗ̣ΛΙΣ̣ΤΙ̣Ι̣ΟΝ̣Τ̣ΕΙ

ΗΙ·ΩΣΝΗΓ̣Σ̣ΥΝΝΑΟΣΕΣΠΤ̣ΕΝΑΜΑΤΑΜΗΤΗ̣Ν··ΤΗΣΝΝΣΥΜ

ΜΕΣΤΟΡΕ̣ΜΕ··ΩΡΗΜ̣

·Α····ΗΡ̣···ΝΟΣΣ·····ΕΥ̣ΤΟΛΑΕΡΤΑΙ· ΜΥΗ·ΦΑΕΝΑ

ΙΝ̣ΑΙ

Πρωτόγ̣ονε̣ Γῆ Μητίετα παμματριεί̣α (?) Κυβελεία Κόρρα, ὁσίη π̣αῖς̣ (?)

Δήμητρος ηταται (?) παταπτα (= παντόπτα?) Ζεῦ Ἰάτη, τὺ δὲ Σάραπι (?)

Ἥλιε πυραύη φανταστὴ φ̣ανταστὴ ἑκατο··ιε (?) Νίκα ἴση δὲ Τύχα· ἴτε Φάνης

πάμμησ̣τ̣οι Μοῖραι [or Νίκαις ἠδὲ τύχαις ἐφάνης παμμήδ̣ε̣σι Μοίραις]

Στῆτοι (?) παντανυσταὶ (?) εὔκλητε Δαῖμον δέσπο̣τα Ἰάτη (?) παντο̣δάμαστα

παντήρνυντα (= παντοκράτυντα?) ἐλασίβροντα δρ̣επάνιε (?)·····τλητέα

πάντη. Μὴ ἀέρι πύωμ’ ἔμ μο̣ι ἐπ̣αύης, (?) τίσω····ἑπτατόνηστιν. Νυξὶν

ἢ μεθ’ ἡμέραν ἐγὼ····ἑπτῆμαρ τὴ̣ν νηστιαστὺ̣ν (?) Ζεῦ ἐνορύττιε καὶ

π̣ανόπτα δῖε ναματιαῖε (?)···ἐκ̣πιδύσετε ῥεῦμ’ ἄστακτα πυρὸς···καπ πεδίον

(?)···ἡγεμὸν·····δῖε Ῥαδάμανθυ·······ἑξᾶμαρ·····Ζεῦ···Δά<μα>τρα···ἰητρὸς

Ἥλιε (?)············ὡς <ἂ>ν ἡ σύνναος πέντ’ ἄματα μὴ·········συμμηστόρε

(?)···ωρην···················

One might translate tentatively: “O First-Born, Earth, Counsellor,

All-Motherly, Cybelean, Kora, Holy Child of Demeter (?) ..., All-Seeing

Zeus, Healer, and thou Sarapis, Sun, Fire-Kindler, Maker-of-Appearances,

Far-Seeing (??)

Victory and equal Fortune; come ye, Phanes, All-Counselling Fates (or

With victories and Fortunes thou didst appear, with the All-Devising

Fates)

Stayers (?), All-Accomplishers (?), Well-named Daemon, Master, Healer

(?), All-Subduer, All-Controller, Driver of Thunder, Sickle-Bearer (?),

... to be endured in all wise. That thou mayest not with vapour make to

burn a tumour in me (??) ... I will pay ... sevenfold fasting. In the

nights or after daybreak I ... for seven days the fasting.

Zeus Penetrator (?) and All-seeing, Divine, Ruler of Streams, ... ye will

make to spring a stream not in drops of fire....

Plain ... guide ... Divine Rhadamanthys ... for six days.... Zeus ...

Demeter ... Healer, Sun ... that She sharing the Shrine for five days may

not....”

V., VI. and VII. _The Compagno Tablets._

Published _Notizie degli Scavi_, 1880. Cf. Kaibel, _CIGIS_, 481, _a_,

_b_, _c_. These three tablets were found on the estate of the Baron

Compagno, near Naples, not far from the Timpone Grande. The tablets were

close to the hand of the skeleton in each case.

V. _Compagno Tablet (a)._

[Illustration]

ΕΡΧΟΜΑΙ ΕΚ ΚΟΘΑΡΟν, ΚΟΘΑΡΑ ΧΘΟΝΙ<ων>; ΒΑΣΙΛΕΙΑ,

ΕΥΚΛΗΣ ΕΥΒΟΛΕΥΣ ΤΕ ΚΑΙ ΑΘΑΝΑΤΟΙ ΘΕΟΙ ΑΛΛΟΙ.

ΚΑΙ ΓΑΡ ΕΓΩΝ ΥΜΩΝ ΓΕΝΟΣ ΟΛΒΙΟΝ ΕΥΧΟΜΑ<ι>; ΕΙΜΕΝ,

ΑΛΑ ΜΕ ΜΟΡΑ ΕΔΑΜΑΣΕ ΚΑΙ ΑΘΑΝΑΤΟΙ ΘΕΟΙ ΑΛΛΟΙ

········ ΚΑΙ ΑΣΣΤΕΡΟΒΛΗΤΑ ΚΕΡΑΥΝΟΝ.

ΚΥΚΛΟ Δ’ ΕΞΕΠΤΑΝ ΒΑΡΥΠΕΝΘΕΟΣ ΑΡΓΑΛΕΟΙΟ·

ΙΜΕΡΤΟ Δ’ ΕΠΕΒΑΝ ΣΤΕΦΑΝΟ ΠΟΣΙ ΚΑΡΠΑΛΙΜΟΙΣΙ·

ΔΕΣΣΠΟΙΝΑΣ ΔΕ ΥΠΟ ΚΟΛΠΟΝ ΕΔΥΝ ΧΘΟΝΙΑΣ ΒΑΣΙΛΕΙΑΣ

ΙΜΕΡΤΟ Δ’ ΑΠΕΒΑΝ ΣΤΕΜΑΝΟ ΠΟΣΙ ΚΑΡΠΑΣΙΜΟΙΣΙ.

ΟΛΒΙΕ ΚΑΙ ΜΑΚΑΡΙΣΤΕ, ΘΕΟΣ Δ’ ΕΣΗΙ ΑΝΤΙ ΒΡΟΤΟΙΟ.

ΕΡΙΦΟΣ ΕΣ ΓΑΛ’ ΕΠΕΤΟΝ.

Kaibel remarks with regard to these three documents: “Fuit aliquando

Saeculo Quarto antiquius apud Sybaritas carmen, quod Orphico, ut ita

dicam, dicendi genere conceptum lamminis aureis inscriptum defunctorum

corporibus imponi solebat, quo ipsi vitae ante actae quasi testimonio

fidei deorum inferorum commendarentur. Quod carmen cum in usum

sepulcrorum saepius describeretur, sensim corrumpebatur et in brevius

redigebatur, omissis aliis, aliis additis, pluribus denique mutatis, ut

tamen primaria indoles non oblitteraretur. Tria nunc exempla inventa

sunt.... Antiquius primum est, quod ad IV a. Chr. n. saeculum referri

iubet ipsa ratio orthographica (ΚΥΚΛΟ, ΙΜΕΡΤΟ, ΣΤΕΦΑΝΟ) sed haud ita

multo recentiora reliqua duo, quod docet scripturae genus simillimum.”

The letters are ancient and well formed, approaching more closely to

those of fourth and fifth century inscriptions than to the papyrus of,

say, Timotheus.

l. 1. The form κοθαρός is dialectical. It occurs in Elean and Thurian

inscriptions, e.g. the Heraclean Tables. Contrast this peculiarity with

the style of Tablet I.

I punctuate after κοθαρῶν: “I come from the Pure, O Pure Queen,” not

“Pure I come from the Pure, O Queen.” The rhythm of the line points

strongly to this. Only by a definite system of punctuation, such as did

not exist in ancient Greek, could you in such a sentence make a reader

pause elsewhere than in the natural pause of the metre. The sense is: “I

come from the Orphically-initiated, O Queen of the Orphically-initiated.”

3, 4, 5, 8. εἶμεν, Μο͂ρα (= Μοῖρα: cf. the next tablet), ἀσστεροβλῆτα,

Δεσσποίνας are all dialectical forms.

7 and 9. Observe the difference of reading. _V._ 9 is wrong in στεμάνο

and καρπασίμοισι, so ἀπεβαν, in itself an interesting variant, must be

suspected to be mere mistake also.

VI. _Compagno Tablet (b)._

[Illustration]

ΕΡΧΟΜΑ Ε ΚΑΡΩΙΣ ΧΟΝΩΝ ΚΑΘΑΡΑ ΧΟΝΙΩΝ ΒΑΣΙΛΗΕΙ ΕΥΚΛΕ ΚΑΙ ΕΥΒΟΥΛΕΥΙ ΚΑΙ

ΘΕΟΙ <και> ΔΑΙΜΟΝΕ<ϲ> ΑΛΛΟΙ ΚΑΙ ΓΡΑ ΕΓΩΝ ΥΜΩ ΓΕΝΟ ΕΥΧΟΜΑΙ ΟΛΒΙΟΙΝ Ε̣ΙΝΑΙ

ΠΟΝΑΝ̣ Δ ΑΝΤΑΠΕΙΓ̣ΕΣΕΙ ΕΡΓΩΙ ΕΝΕΚΑ ΟΥΣ̣Ι Δ<ι>ΚΑΩΝ ΕΙΤΕ ΜΕ ΜΟΡΑ ΕΔΑΜΑΣΑΤΟ

ΕΙΤΕ ΑΣΤΕΡΟΠΗΤΙ Κ<ε>ΡΑΥΝΩΝ ΝΥΝ Δ ΙΚΕΤΙ ΙΚΩΙ ΠΑΙ̣ ΑΓΝΗν ΦΕΣΕΦΟΝΕΑΝ ΩΣ ΜΕΙ

ΠΡΟΦΩ ΠΕΙΨΗ Ε̣ΔΡΑΙ̣Σ ΕΣ ΕΥΑΓΕΙΩΙ

1. Κ may be compendium for ΚΘ; ΙΣ seems to be a mistake for Ν.

3. ΕΙΝΑΙ either begun _per compendium_ and then written in full, or else

the Ν of ολβιον is compounded with the Ε. Cf. the next tablet.

4. Sc. ποινὰν δ’ ἀνταπέτεισ’ ἔργων ἕνεκ’ οὐχὶ δικαίων.

6, 7. Sc.

Νῦν δ’ ἱκέτης ἵκω παρ’ ἁγνὴν (or ἀγαυὴν?) Φερσεφόνειαν

ὡς με πρόφρων πέμψῃ ἕδρας ἐς εὐαγέων.

VII. _Compagno Tablet (c)._

[Illustration]

ΕΡΧΟΜΑΙ Ε ΚΑΘΑΡΩ ΚΑ[symbol] Ο ΒΑΣΙΛΕΑΕ̣

Ε̣ΥΚΛΕ<ΥΑ> ΚΑ ΕΥΒΟΛΕΥ ΚΑΙ ΘΕΟΙ ΟΣΟΙ ΔΜΟΝΕΣ ΑΛΛΟ

ΚΑΙ ΓΑΡ ΕΩ ΥΩ̣ ΓΕΝΟΣ ΕΥΧΟΜΑΙ ΕΙΝΑΙ ΟΛΒΙΟ

ΠΟΙΝΑΝ ΝΑΤΑΠΕΤΕ ΕΡΓΩ ΟΤΙ ΔΙΚΑΩΝ

ΕΤ ΜΕ ΜΟΙΡ·······ΑΣΤΕΡΟΠΗΤΙ <ΚΑ̣Ι> ΚΕΡΑΥΝΟ

ΝΥΝ ΔΕ ΚΕ ΙΚΩ ΛΚΩ ΠΑΡΑ ΦΣΕΦ

ΩΣ ΜΕ ΡΟΦ ΠΕΨΕ Μ ΕΔΡΑΣ ΕΣ ΕΥΓΩ

1. Perhaps ΕΚΚΑΘΑΡΩ, a double Κ being written _per compendium_.

ΚΑ[symbol] apparently ΚΑΘΡΟ _per compendium_, or even καθαρά. The letter

given as Ο is more like Π, but really illegible.

After ΒΑΣΙΛΕΑ (ΕΑ _per compendium_) a letter like Ε or R. The name Eukles

seems to have puzzled the scribe.

2. ΕΥΚΛΕΥΛ. The last letter may be Α or Λ. Probably there is some

confused dittography, as if the Ε suggested beginning ΕΥΚΛΕ again.

ΟΣΟΙ seems miswriting for ΚΑΙ.

3. ΥΩ or ΥΜ: uncertain.

Εἶναι _per compendium_: cf. the foregoing. Kaibel says of (_b_) and

(_c_): “Haec duo carmina videntur ex communi archetypo esse descripta non

solum quod inter se magis similia sunt quam utrumque primo, sed etiam

propterea quod eadem ligatura in utroque verba ὄλβιον εἶναι scripta sunt.”

4. Or ΝΑΤΑΠΕΤΕΙΣ ΡΓΩ for ἀνταπέτεισ’.

5. ΕΤ: perhaps _compendium_ for εἴτε.

The Σ of ἀστεροπῆτι is like Ε. Before κεραυνο͂ there seems to be καὶ by

dittography.

The general formulae represented by the three tablets together, may be

translated:

‘Out of the Pure I come, Pure Queen of Them Below,

And Eukles and Eubouleus, and other Gods and Daemons:

For I also avow me that I am of your blessed race.

And I have paid the penalty for deeds unrighteous,

Whether it be that Fate laid me low or the Gods Immortal

Or ... with star-flung thunderbolt.

I have flown out of the sorrowful weary Wheel;

I have passed with eager feet to the Circle desired;

I have sunk beneath the bosom of Despoina, Queen of the Underworld;

I have passed with eager feet to (or from) the Circle desired;

And now I come a suppliant to Holy Phersephoneia

That of her grace she receive me to the seats of the Hallowed.—

Happy and Blessèd One, thou shalt be God instead of Mortal.’

(The prose formula: ‘A kid I have fallen into milk’: is once inserted in

the midst of the poem.)

To sum up, we find in these three tablets some common characteristics.

They all show traces of the influence of some colloquial Italian dialect.

The form κοθαρὸς is Thurian. The free omission and addition of final Ν

is probably another Italian symptom, having its analogy in the treatment

of final M in Latin. It seems not to have been pronounced. We find ΥΜΩ

(ὑμῶν), ΠΡΟΦΩ (πρόφρων), ΑΓΝΗ (ἁγνὴν), ΕΥΑΓΕΙΩ (εὐαγεῶν) and _vice

versâ_ ΚΡΑΥΝΩΝ (κεραυνῷ). There is the same uncertainty about Ι following

another vowel: we have ΕΡΧΟΜΑ, ΜΕΙ (με), ΙΚΩΙ. The writer of (_b_), and

perhaps of (_c_) also, did not understand what words he was writing.

One could be more sure about (_c_) if it were not that some of his most

glaring apparent mistakes prove on examination to be compendiary forms

and possibly accurate.

But another form of compendiary writing occurs, I think, in all of these

tablets, and is of more interest.

There is a sentence which appears in (_c_) as

ΕΤ ΜΕ ΜΟΙΡ············ΑΣΤΕΡΟΠΗΤΙ (ΚΑΙ) ΚΕΡΑΥΝΟ.

Evidently not a complete sentence, any more than it is a complete verse,

but a beginning and end with the middle omitted.

In (_b_) we have it a little fuller.

ΕΙΤΕ ΜΕ ΜΟΡΑ ΕΔΑΜΑΣΑΤΟ····ΕΙΤΕ ΑΣΤΕΡΟΠΗΤΙ ΚΡΑΥΝΩΝ.

This, with a little necessary emendation, might seem to be a complete

sentence, as indeed Kaibel takes it, were it not for a fuller version

still in (_a_).

ΑΛΑ ΜΕ ΜΟΡΑ ΕΔΑΜΑΣΕ ΚΑΙ ΑΘΑΝΑΤΟΙ ΘΕΟΙ ΑΛΛΟΙ

·······ΚΑΙ ΑΣΣΤΕΡΟΒΛΗΤΑ ΚΕΡΑΥΝΟΝ.

This fuller and correcter version is obviously incomplete, both in sense

and in metre. The conclusion seems to be that we have in all three cases

a confessedly incomplete collection of words, standing for a complete

and well-known formula. The words seem to be from the beginning and end

of the sentences. It is as though, in a community accustomed to the

Anglican Church service, we found, first: “_When the wicked man his soul

alive._” Second, and deceptively complete in appearance: “_When the

wicked man shall save his soul alive._” Third, fuller and betraying its

incompleteness: “_When the wicked man turneth from save his soul alive._”

Instances of this sort of abbreviation can be found in most liturgies,

though of course in modern times we should put dots to mark the gap

in the middle. But it is certainly not common on Greek inscriptions.

Ordinary abbreviations are common enough—Θ Κ = Θεοὶ Καταχθόνιοι, δμονες

= δαίμονες, and the like. And there is the system, if system it can be

called, illustrated by the quotation from Gregory Nazianzene in the note

on Tablet III. The case most closely resembling the present that is

known to me is that of the Cyprian Curses, published by Miss Macdonald

in the _Proceedings of the Soc. Bibl. Archaeology_, 1890, p. 160 sqq.

Cf. Wünsch, _Append. CIA_, Praef. p. xviii sqq. They are prayers to all

Ghosts and Daemons to hamper and paralyse and “take away the θυμὸς from”

some adversary, of whom the writer is in mortal fear. They begin with

metrical formulae.

The first starts:

ΟΙΚΑΤΑΓΗΝΚΔΜΟΝΕΣΟΙ

ΚΠΑΤΕΡΕΣΠΑΤΕΡΩΝΚΜΗΤΕΡΕ

ΟΙΚΟΙΤΙΝΕΣΕΝΘΑΔΕΚΕΙΣΘΕΚΟΙΤΙΝΕΣ

ΘΕΘΥΜΟΝΑΠΟΚΡΑΔΙΗΣΠΟΛΥΚΗΔΕΑ

ΟΝΤΕΣ

Another, No. IV.:

ΑΤΑ—ΓΗΝΚΔΜΟΝΕΣΟΙΤΕΣΤΕΚ

ΩΝΚΜΗΤΕΡΕΣΑΝΤΙΕΝΙΡΟΙΑΝΔΡΙΟΙ

ΝΕΣΤΙΝΕΣΕΣΤΕΚΟΙΤΙΝΕΣΕΝΘΑ

ΕΑ

These seem to represent two very similar formulae. The first will run:

Δαίμονες οἱ κατὰ γῆν καὶ δαίμονες οἵτινες ἔστε,

καὶ Πατέρες πατέρων καὶ Μητέρες ἀντιένειροι (?),

χοἵτινες ἐνθάδε κεῖσθε καὶ οἵτινες ἔνθα καθῆσθε,

.........................................................

θυμὸν ἀπὸ κραδίης πολυκηδέα πρόσθε λαβόντες.

The other:

Δαίμονες οἱ κατὰ γῆν καὶ δαίμονες οἵτινες ἔστε,

καὶ Πατέρες πατέρων καὶ Μητέρες ἀντιένειροι,

..................... ἄνδριοι ἠδὲ γύναιοι,

δαίμονες οἵτινες ἔστε καὶ οἵτινες ἐνθάδε κεῖσθε

.........................................................

<θυμὸν ἀπὸ κραδίης> πολυκηδέα <πρόσθε λαβόντες.>

The reconstruction of the verses is helped out by several other smaller

fragments. I have followed, with slight variations, Dieterich and Wünsch.

Now here we find several points closely reminding us of the Compagno

Tablets. (1) The different documents are all quoting the same magical

poem. (2) Since the prayer is a prayer to take away somebody’s θυμός, and

otherwise weaken and paralyse him, I think we may conclude that the line

θυμὸν ἀπὸ κραδίης πολυκηδέα πρόσθε λαβόντες (λιπόντες is added as a v. l.

in one only of the fragments) is the final line of the prayer. “Do this,

that, and the other, having first taken away the hurtful spirit out of

his heart.”

(3) The second tablet (No. IV.) gives a half line ἄνδριοι ἠδὲ γύναιοι,

for which there is no place, and which therefore shows the incompleteness

of a formula which, as written in No. I., might have seemed complete,

exactly like καὶ ἀθάνατοι θεοὶ ἄλλοι in Compagno (_a_).

There is possibly a case of the same phenomenon in the Eleuthernae

tablets (II.). There is one place at the end where the metre is broken.

It may be the full formula contained a series of questions, beginning

with Τίς δ’ ἔσι; and ending with Πῶ δ’ ἔσι;—Γᾶς υἱὸς ἠμὶ καὶ ὠρανῶ

ἀστερόεντος. If there were only one tablet containing the formula,

one would prefer to suppose that Τίς δ’ ἔσι; πῶ δ’ ἔσι; was mere

dittography, a scribe having first written the phrase slightly wrong and

then re-written it right without deleting the first version. But this

hypothesis becomes more difficult when there are three tablets differing

in several particulars but agreeing in this unmetrical double question.

In any case, it would probably be wisest to regard the tablets as each

consisting of a series of formulae, mostly in verse but some in prose,

some apparently complete, others compendiary.

VIII. _The Tablet of Caecilia Secundina._

A thin gold tablet (75 mm. by 24 mm. in size) found in Rome about the

year 1899, probably in one of the ancient tombs on the Ostia Road; now

in the British Museum. The script, though generally clear, is peculiar.

The form of ε (cf. ευκλεεσευ in line 2) is new to me, but in general

the writing is like that of a cursive papyrus of Roman times. Prof.

Comparetti, who has published and discussed the tablet in _Atene e Roma_,

LIV. and LV. (1903), considers it certainly later than the Herculanean

papyri, and would place it in the second century or possibly the first,

A.D.

[Illustration]

I read it thus:

ἔρχεται ἐκ καθαρῶν, καθαρὰ χθονίων βασίλεια,

Εὔκλεες Εὐβουλεῦ τε. Διὸς τέκος, ὅπλα δ’ ἔχ’ ὧδε

Μνημοσύνης, (τὸ δὲ δῶρον ἀοίδιμον ἀνθρώποισιν)

Καικιλία Σεκουνδεῖνα, νόμῳ αἰεὶ ἀπαγωγά.

‘She comes from the Pure, O Pure Queen of those below

And Eukles and Eubouleus.—Child of Zeus, receive here the armour

Of Memory, (’tis a gift songful among men)

Thou Caecilia Secundina, in due rite to avert evil for ever.’

_v._ 2. Probably Εὔκλεες as Comparetti: not εὔκλεέ τ’. The rest of this

line is certain as far as Διὸς τέκος: after that, I make out οπλαδεχωδε,

the first δ being (cf. that in τόδε below) very like α, and the ο not

well finished. Repeated examination of the tablet has confirmed my belief

that these are the inscribed letters; and I may add that Dr A. S. Murray

and Mr Cecil Smith, as well as Dr Hartwig, who formerly possessed the

tablet, all independently read the same.

Taking these letters as they stand, we may obtain sense, grammar and

metre by dividing ὅπλα δ’ ἔχ’ ὧδε: “_Have here the armour of Memory_,”

and I believe that this interpretation, though curious, is right. The

change to the second person and the imperative addressed to the Soul are

just like phrases in the other tablets: ὄλβιε καὶ μακάριστε, ἀλλὰ πίε

μου, κτλ. The peculiar use of ὅπλα, to which I can find nothing quite

similar in our fragments of Orphic literature, has its exact parallel in

St Paul’s repeated metaphors ὅπλα δικαιοσύνης (Rom. vi. 12; 2 Cor. vi.

7), ὅπλα φωτός (Rom. xiii. 2). The “armour of Mnemosyne” to an Orphic

would probably bear just the same shade of meaning as the “armour of

light” to a Christian. Lethe was the Orphic “Darkness.” The use of ὧδε

might be paralleled by Homer’s πρόμολ’ ὧδε, and the scholiasts have

remarked long since that in the later Epic language ὧδε was used more

freely than in Homer. The Cyprian Curses just quoted give ὑμεῖς οἱ ὧδε

κείμενοι.

A further question here suggests itself. Who is the Διὸς τέκος?

Eubouleus, by a straining of the identifications of mythologers, might

claim the title; and it would save trouble, no doubt, to admit his claim.

But apart from the unfair advantage which this would give him over

Eukles, a comparison of the phrases applied to the pure soul in the other

tablets (θεὸς ἐγένου, ὑμῶν γένος ὄλβιον εὔχομαι εἶναι, etc.) suggests

that “Child of Zeus” is vocative. “Child of Zeus, receive here thine

armour of Memory.” The doctrine is orthodox in Orphism; the completely

pure soul is the pure blood of Zagreus, freed from the dross of charred

Titan corpses, and as such is the child of Zeus. In an earlier stage it

was Γᾶς παῖς καὶ Ὠρανῶ.

(Prof. Comparetti reads απλαα on the tablet, which he takes to be a

mistake for ἁπαλὰ “tender,” agreeing _per sensum_ with τέκος—not a very

fortunate conjecture.)

_v._ 3. Should we divide τὸ δὲ or τόδε in apposition to ὅπλα?

_v._ 4. Scanned, apparently, Σ’κουνδεῖνα: such licenses are of course

common. The last three words, forming l. 6 on the tablet, are difficult.

The line begins with a vertical bar, like Ι, which in a document of an

earlier time one would certainly take for the final Ι of ΝΟΜΩΙ. Then

follows αι ει; the gap in the middle of the word would be less, if the

bottom of the ε were visible. After this I make out the letters απαγωγα,

apparently the n. pl. of a word ἀπαγωγὸς, “_calculated to avert_” opposed

to ἐπαγωγὸς, “_calculated to induce_” magic influences. Mr Cecil Smith

agrees with this reading. Prof. Comparetti, having only the photograph to

work from, read [ἀ]ιεὶ διαγεγῶσα, “having always lived lawfully.”

The “armour of Memory,” the “gift songful among men,” is firstly perhaps

the spiritual gift, and then in a secondary sense the actual tablet

which both symbolises and _preserves from oblivion_ Cecilia’s claims to

immortality; and does so _in song_.

Caecilia Secundina is not otherwise known, but must have belonged in some

way to the clan of Caecilii Secundi. She would thus be connected with

the Younger Pliny, whose name before his adoption was Publius Caecilius

Secundus.

FOOTNOTES

[1] Thuc. II. 38.

[2] Ps.-Xen. _Rep. Athen._ II. 99.

[3] Ps.-Xen. _Rep. Athen._ III. 8.

[4] Plat. _Euthyph._ 15 D.

[5] So far as it is possible to distinguish the two, τὸ εὐσεβές is

religion from man’s side, his attitude towards the gods, τὸ ὅσιον

religion from the gods’ side, the claim they make on man. τὸ ὅσιον is

the field of what is made over, consecrated to the gods. The further

connotations of the word as employed by Orphism will be discussed

later. ‘Holiness’ is perhaps the nearest equivalent to τὸ ὅσιον in the

_Euthyphron_.

[6] Sext. Empir. _adv. Math._ IX. 123.

[7] _The Characters of Theophrastus_, p. 264.

[8] Arist. _Polit._ p. 1315 a 1.

[9] Plut. _de Superstit._ I.

[10] Plut. _de aud. poet._ 4.

[11] Eur. frg. 292.

[12] Plut. _de Superstit._ X.

[13] Plut. _de Superstit._ IX.

[14] Plut. _de Superstit._ III.

[15] Xen. _Cyropaed._ III. 3. 58.

[16] Isocr. _Or._ V. 117.

[17] Plat. _Legg._ 854 B ἴθι ἐπὶ θεῶν τὰς ἀποδιοπομπήσεις, ἴθι ἐπὶ

ἀποτροπαίων ἱερὰ ἱκέτης ... τὰς δὲ τῶν κακῶν ξυνουσίας φεῦγε

ἀμεταστρεπτί.

[18] Harpocrat. s.v. ἀποπομπάς.

[19] P. II. 11. 1.

[20] Babr. _Fab._ 63.

[21] Hippocr. περὶ ἐνυπνίων 639 ἐπὶ δὲ τοῖσιν ἐναντίοισιν καὶ γῇ καὶ

ἥρωσιν ἀποτρόπαια γενέσθαι τὰ χαλεπὰ πάντα.

[22] English has no convenient equivalent for ἀποτροπή, which may mean

either turning ourselves away from the thing or turning the thing away

from us. _Aversion_, which for lack of a better word I have been obliged

to adopt, has too much personal and no ritual connotation. Exorcism

is nearer, but too limited and explicit. Dr Oldenberg in apparent

unconsciousness of θεραπεία and ἀποτροπή uses in conjunction the two

words Cultus and Abwehr. To his book, _Die Religion des Veda_, though he

hardly touches on Greek matters, I owe much.

[23] Hom. _Il._ II. 421.

[24] _Companion to the Iliad_, p. 77. I have advisedly translated

οὐλοχύται by barley grain, not meal, because I believe the οὐλοχύται to

be a primitive survival of the custom of offering actual grain, but this

disputed question is here irrelevant. I follow Dr H. von Fritze, _Hermes_

XXXII. 1897, p. 236.

[25] The sources for the Diasia are all collected in the useful and so

far as I am aware complete work, Oskar Band, _Die Attischen Diasien—ein

Beitrag zur Griechischen Horteologie_, Wissenschaftliche Beilage zum

Programm der Victoriaschule, Ostern 1883 (Berlin). Many of the more

important sources are easily accessible in Mr Farnell’s _Cults of the

Greek States_, vol. I. pp. 171, 172. Mr Farnell regards Zeus Meilichios

as merely a form of the Olympian Zeus, not as a _contaminatio_ of two

primarily distinct religious conceptions.

[26] _On._ I. 37.

[27] Thucyd. I. 126 ἔστι γὰρ καὶ Ἀθηναίοις Διάσια ἃ καλεῖται Διὸς ἑορτὴ

Μειλιχίου μεγίστη, ἔξω τῆς πόλεως ἐν ᾗ πανδημεὶ θύουσι πολλὰ οὐχ ἱερεῖα

ἀλλ’ <ἁγνὰ> θύματα ἐπιχώρια.

Schol. ad loc. θύματα· τινὰ πέμματα εἰς ζῴων μορφὰς τετυπωμένα ἔθυον.

[28] _vv._ 864 and 408.

[29] Luc. _Icaro-Menip._ 24 schol. ad loc. Διάσια ἑορτὴ Ἀθήνησιν, ἣν

ἐπετέλουν μετά τινος στυγνότητος, θύοντες ἐν αὐτῇ Διὶ Μειλιχίῳ.

[30] Xen. _Anab._ VII. 8. 4 τῇ δὲ ὑστεραίᾳ ὁ Ξενοφῶν ... ἐθύετο καὶ

ὡλοκαύτει χοίρους τῷ πατρῴῳ νόμῳ καὶ ἐκαλλιέρει. The incident probably

took place in February, the month of the Diasia. See Mr H. G. Dakyns,

_Xen._ vol. I. p. 315.

[31] P. X. 38. 8.

[32] P. I. 37. 4.

[33] P. II. 20. 1.

[34] Hesych. s.v. Μαιμάκτης· μειλίχιος, καθάρσιος.

[35] P. II. 2. 8.

[36] Permission to republish the two reliefs figured here and that

in fig. 5 has been courteously granted me by Professor Kekulé von

Stradowitz, Director of the Berlin Museum, and I owe to his kindness the

excellent photographs from which the reproductions are made. From the

official catalogue (_Beschreibung der Antiken Skulpturen in Berlin_) I

quote the following particulars as to material, provenance &c.

1. _Cat._ 722, H. 0·58, Br. 0·31. Hymettus marble found with No. 723

at the Zea harbour not far from Ziller’s house. Taken to Berlin 1879.

Inscribed ΔΙΙ ΜΕΙΛΙΧΙΩΙ. Date fourth century B.C., see _CIA._ II. 3,

1581, cf. _CIA._ II. 3. 1578, 1582, 1583.

2. _Cat._ 723, material, provenance, date, same as 722.

[37] _Bull. de Corr. Hell._ VII. p. 507.

[38] _Bull. de Corr. Hell._ 1883, p. 510.

[39] From a photograph (Peiraeus 12) published by kind permission of the

German Archaeological Institute, see _Eph. Arch._ 1886, p. 47.

[40] Lucian, _Tim._ c. 7.

[41] Suidas s.v. Διάσια.

[42] _J.H.S._ XIX. p. 114, note 1.

[43] Mr P. Giles kindly tells me that a rare Sanskrit word _dveshas_

meaning ‘hate’ and the like exists and phonetically would nearly

correspond to the Latin _dirus_. The corresponding form in Greek would

appear as δειος, unless in late Greek. But from the end of the 5th

century B.C. onwards the pronunciation would be the same as δῖος, and if

the word survived only in ritual terms it would naturally be confused

with δῖος. Almost all authorities on Latin however regard the _ru_ in

_dirus_ as a suffix containing an original _r_ as in _mirus_, _durus_,

etc. This view, which would be fatal to the etymology of _dirus_ proposed

in the text, seems supported by a statement of Servius (if the statement

be accurate) on _Aen._ III. 235 ‘Sabini et Umbri quae nos mala _dira_

appellant,’ as, though _s_ between vowels passes in Latin and Umbrian

into _r_, it remains an _s_ sound in Sabine.

[44] Hesych. s.v. ὁ δὲ Πολέμων τὸ ἐκ τοῦ Διὶ τεθυμένου ἱερείου. From

Athenaeus also we learn that Polemon had treated in some detail of the

‘fleece of Zeus’; Athenaeus says (XI. § 478 C), Πολέμων δ’ ἐν τῷ περὶ τοῦ

δίου κωδίου φησί....

[45] Suidas s.v. θύουσί τε τῷ τε Μειλιχίῳ καὶ τῷ Κτησίῳ Διί, τὰ δὲ κώδια

τούτων φυλάσσουσι καὶ Δία (δῖα) προσαγορεύονται, χρῶνται δ’ αὐτοῖς οἵ τε

Σκιροφορίων τὴν πομπὴν στέλλοντες καὶ ὁ δᾳδοῦχος ἐν Ἐλευσῖνι καὶ ἄλλοι

τινὲς πρὸς καθαρμοὺς ὑποστορνύντες αὐτὰ τοῖς ποσὶ τῶν ἐναγῶν. For Δία

Gaisford conjectures Διὸς but from the passage of Eustathius (see infr.)

it is clear that we must read δῖα.

[46] Eustath. ad _Od._ XXII. 481 § 1934-5 ἐδόκουν γὰρ οἱ Ἕλληνες οὕτω τὰ

τοιαῦτα μύση καθαίρεσθαι διοπομπούμενα. καὶ ἕτεροι μὲν δηλοῦσι τρόπους

καθαρσίων ἑτέρους, ἃ καὶ ἐξάγοντες τῶν οἴκων μετὰ τὰς ἐθίμους ἐπαοιδὰς

προσέῤῥιπτον ἀμφόδοις ἔμπαλιν τὰ πρόσωπα στρέφοντες καὶ ἐπανιόντες

ἀμεταστρεπτί. ὁ δέ γε ποιητικὸς Ὀδυσσεὺς οὐχ οὕτω ποιεῖ ἀλλ’ ἑτέρως

ἁπλούστερον. φησὶ γοῦν· οἶσε θέειον γρῆυ κακῶν ἄκος ... πλέον ποιήσας

οὐδέν ... θέειον δὲ θυμιάματος εἶδος καθαίρειν δοκοῦντος τοὺς μιασμούς.

διὸ καὶ διαστείλας κακῶν ἄκος αὑτό φησιν ὁ ποιητής, οὔτε δέ τινες ἐνταῦθα

ἐπῳδαὶ συνήθεις τοῖς παλαιοῖς οὔτε στενωπὸς ἐν ᾧ ἄνθρακες ἀπαγόμενοι αὐτῷ

ἀγγείῳ ἐῤῥίπτοντο ὀπισθοφανῶς. ἰστέον δὲ ὅτι οὐ μόνον διὰ θείου ἐγίνοντο

καθαρμοὶ καθὰ προσεχῶς ἐγράφη ἀλλὰ καὶ φυτά τινα εἰς τοῦτο χρήσιμα ἦν.

ἀριστερεὼν γοῦν, φυτὸν κατὰ Παυσανίαν ἐπιτήδειον εἰς καθαρμόν· καὶ σῦς δὲ

εἰς τοιαῦτα, ἐστὶν οὗ, παρελαμβάνετο, ὡς ἐν Ἰλιάδι φαίνεται. καὶ οἱ τὸ

διοπομπεῖν δὲ ἑρμηνεύοντές φασιν ὅτι δῖον ἐκάλουν κώδιον ἱερείου τυθέντος

Διῒ μειλιχίῳ ἐν τοῖς καθαρμοῖς, φθίνοντος Μαιμακτηριῶνος μηνὸς ὅτε ἤγοντο

τὰ πομπαῖα, καὶ καθαρμῶν ἐκβολαὶ εἰς τὰς τριόδους ἐγίνοντο. εἶχον δὲ μετὰ

χεῖρας πομπόν· ὅπερ ἦν, φασί, κηρύκιον, σέβας Ἑρμοῦ. καὶ ἐκ τοῦ τοιούτου

πομποῦ καὶ τοῦ ῥηθέντος δίου τὸ διοπομπεῖν ... ἄλλως δὲ κοινότερον

διοπομπεῖν καὶ ἀποδιοπομπεῖν ἐφαίνετο τὸ Διὸς ἀλεξικάκου ἐπικλήσει

ἐκπέμπειν τὰ φαῦλα. Eustathius passes on to speak of purification by

blood and the φαρμακοί, see p. 95.

[47] Maimaktes, it will be remembered, is the other face of Meilichios,

see supra.

[48] See Liddell and Scott, s.v.

[49] Dicaearch. _Frg. Hist._ II. 262.

[50] P. I. 34. 2-5. Strabo (VI. § 284) says that the Daunians when they

consulted the oracle of the hero Calchas sacrificed a black ram to him

and slept on the fleece. The worshippers of the ‘Syrian Goddess,’ Lucian

says (_De Syr. Dea_ 35), knelt on the ground and put the feet and the

head of the victim on their heads. He probably means that they got inside

the skin and wore it with the front paws tied round the neck as Herakles

wears the lion-skin.

[51] Dicaearchus I. 6.

[52] As regards the ethnography of these two strata, I accept Prof.

Ridgeway’s view that the earlier stratum, which I have called chthonic,

belongs to the primitive population of the Mediterranean to which he

gives the name Pelasgian; the later stratum, to which belongs the manner

of sacrifice I have called ‘Olympian,’ is characteristic of the Achaean

population coming from the North. But, as I have no personal competency

in the matter of ethnography and as Prof. Ridgeway’s second volume is

as yet unpublished, I have thought it best to state the argument as it

appeared to me independently, i.e. that there are two strata in religion,

one primitive, one later. I sought for many years an ethnographical clue

to this stratification, but sought in vain.

[53] The sources for the Anthesteria are collected and discussed in the

Lexicons of Pauly-Wissowa and of Daremberg and Saglio and more completely

in Dr Martin Nilsson’s _Studia de Dionysiis Atticis_ (Lundae, 1900),

which has been of great service to me.

[54] Harpocrat. s.v.

[55] Plut. _Q. Symp._ III. 7. 1.

[56] The gist of such offerings will be considered under the _Thargelia_.

[57] Plut. _Q. Symp._ VIII. 3.

[58] _Op._ 368.

[59] Discussed in relation to Dionysos, see infra, Chapter VIII.

[60] Ar. _Ran._ 212, trans. Mr Gilbert Murray.

[61] Aristoph. _Ach._ 1076, schol. ad loc.

[62] Thucyd. II. 15.

[63] Harpocrat. s.v. Χόες.

[64] Suidas s.v. θύραζε· ἔξω τῆς θύρας·

θύραζε Κᾶρες, οὐκ ἔτ’ Ἀνθεστήρια,

οἱ μὲν διὰ πλῆθος οἰκετῶν Καρικῶν εἰρῆσθαί φασιν, ὡς ἐν τοῖς Ἀνθεστηρίοις

εὐωχουμένων αὐτῶν καὶ οὐκ ἐργαζομένων. τῆς οὖν ἑορτῆς τελεσθείσης λέγειν

ἐπὶ τὰ ἔργα ἐκπέμποντας αὐτούς·

θύραζε Κᾶρες, οὐκ ἔτ’ Ἀνθεστήρια.

τινὲς δὲ οὕτω τὴν παροιμίαν φασί·

θύραζε κῆρες, οὐκ ἔνι Ἀνθεστήρια,

ὡς κατὰ τὴν πόλιν τοῖς Ἀνθεστηρίοις τῶν ψυχῶν περιερχομένων.

Photius s.v. substantially identical.

To the information here given Zenobius (_Cent. Paroimiogr._) adds:

Εἴρηται δὲ ἡ παροιμία ἐπὶ τῶν τὰ αὐτὰ ἐπιζητούντων πάντοτε λαμβάνειν.

It is fortunate that Suidas records his second conjecture, as his first

is rendered plausible by the fact that we know the household servants

were admitted to the Pithoigia. Probably in classical days κῆρες had

already become an old fashioned word for souls and the formulary may have

been easily misunderstood. Mommsen in his second edition (_Feste der

Stadt Athen_, p. 386) argues that the form κῆρες is impossible because

‘Gespenstern zeigt man nicht die Thür wie einem Bettler,’ a difficulty

that will scarcely be felt by any one acquainted with primitive customs.

[65] Ovid, _Fasti_ V. 443.

[66] _Primitive Culture_ II. p. 40.

[67] _Religion des Vedas_, p. 533.

[68] Schol. ad Ar. _Ran._ 218 τοῖς ἱεροῖσι Χύτροισι· Χύτροι ἑορτὴ παρ’

Ἀθηναίοις· ἄγεται δὲ παρὰ ταύτην τὴν αἰτίαν, ἣν καὶ Θεόπομπος ἐκτίθεται

γράφων οὕτως· < > ... ἔπειτα· θύειν αὐτοῖς ἔθος ἔχουσι τῶν μὲν Ὀλυμπίων

θεῶν οὐδενὶ τὸ παράπαν, Ἑρμῇ δὲ χθονίῳ. καὶ τῆς χύτρας, ἣν ἕψουσι πάντες

οἱ κατὰ τὴν πόλιν, οὐδεὶς γεύεται τῶν ἱερέων· τοῦτο δὲ ποιοῦσι τῇ <ιγʹ>

ἡμέρᾳ. καί· τοὺς τότε παραγινομένους ὑπὲρ τῶν ἀποθανόντων ἱλάσασθαι τὸν

Ἑρμῆν. ἱερῶν Rav., ἱερέων Ven.: whichever be followed, the mandate of not

tasting is clear.

[69] Schol. ad Ar. _Ach._ 1076 Χύτρους· Θεόπομπος τοὺς διασωθέντας ἐκ τοῦ

κατακλυσμοῦ ἑψῆσαί φησι χύτρας πανσπερμίας ὅθεν οὕτω κληθῆναι τὴν ἑορτήν

... τῆς δὲ χύτρας οὐδένα γεύσασθαι.

[70] _Feste der Stadt Athen_, p. 385.

[71] P. IV. 35. 9 κολυμβήθρα ἥντινα ὀνομάζουσιν οἱ ἐπιχώριοι χύτρους

γυναικείους.

[72] Herod. VIII. 176.

[73] Theoph. _Hist. Plant._ IV. 11. 8 οὗτος δὲ ὁ τόπος προσαγορεύεται μὲν

Πελεκανία, τοῦτο δ’ ἐστὶν ἄττα χύτροι καλούμενοι βαθύσματα τῆς λίμνης.

[74] Hesych. s.v. οἱ χύτρινοι.

[75] Plato, _Rep._ 614 C.

[76] P. IX. 8.

[77] _On._ X. 99.

[78] Hesych. s.v. φαρμακή· ἡ χύτρα ἣν ἡτοίμαζον τοῖς καθαίρουσι τὰς

πόλεις.

[79] _v._ 96.

[80] Schol. ad Ar. _Vesp._ 289.

[81] Suidas s.v. ἐγχυτρίστριαι· αἱ τὰς χοὰς τοῖς τετελευτηκόσιν

ἐπιφέρουσαι ... ἐγχυτριστρίας δὲ λέγεσθαι καὶ ὅσαι τοὺς ἐναγεῖς

καθαίρουσιν, αἷμα ἐπιχέουσαι ἱερείου.

[82] Photius s.v. μιαρὰ ἡμέρα· ἐν τοῖς Χουσὶν Ἀνθεστηριῶνος μηνός, ἐν ᾧ

δοκοῦσιν αἱ ψυχαὶ τῶν τελευτησάντων ἀνιέναι, ῥάμνων ἕωθεν ἐμασῶντο καὶ

πίττῃ τὰς θύρας ἔχριον.

[83] Diosc. _De mat. med._ I. 119 λέγεται δὲ καὶ κλῶνας αὐτῆς θύραις ἢ

θύρασι προστεθέντας ἀποκρούειν τὰς τῶν φαρμακῶν κακουργίας. For this

reference I am indebted to the kindness of Dr Frazer, who also notes that

in Ovid _spina alba_, white thorn, is placed in a window to keep off

_tristes noxas_ and _striges_ (Ovid, _Fasti_ VI. 129-163), and compares

the English notion that hawthorn keeps off witches (see _Golden Bough_,

second edit. vol. I. p. 124, note 3). Miss M. C. Harrison tells me that

to this day rue (_ruta_) is eaten on Ascension Day at Pratola Peligna and

other places in the Abruzzi, “that the witches may not come to torment

our children” (noi mangiamo la ruta affinche le streghe non vengano a

tormentare le creature nostre); see A. De Nino, _Usi Abruzzesi_ I. p. 168.

[84] Phot. s.v. ῥάμνος· φυτὸν ὃ ἐν τοῖς Χουσὶν ὡς ἀλεξιφάρμακον ἐμασῶντο

ἕωθεν, καὶ πίττῃ ἐχρίοντο τὰ δώματα, ἀμίαντος γὰρ αὕτη· διὸ καὶ ἐν ταῖς

γενέσεσι τῶν παιδίων χρίουσι τὰς οἰκίας εἰς ἀπέλασιν τῶν δαιμόνων.

[85] Schol. ad Ar. _Ach._ 961 Χοὰς· ἐγχύσεις, ἐναγίσματα ἐπὶ νεκροῖς ἢ

σπονδάς. ἐκπίπτει χρησμὸς δεῖν χοὰς τοῖς τεθνεῶσι τῶν Αἰτωλῶν ἐπάγειν ἀνὰ

πᾶν ἔτος καὶ ἑορτὴν Χοὰς ἄγειν.

[86] Athen. VII. 2 § 276.

[87] Athen. X. 49 § 437 and Suidas s.v. Χόες.

[88] Eur. _Iph. in T._ 953 seq.

[89] The topographical question does not here immediately concern the

argument. I have tried to show elsewhere (_J.H.S._ XX. p. 111) that the

precinct of the Limnae cannot be severed from the Areopagos without grave

loss to mythology.

[90] Athen. XI. 93 § 496.

[91] Eustath. ad _Il._ XXIV. 526, p. 1363. 26 οὐχ ἑορτάσιμος ... ἀλλ’ ἐς

τὸ πᾶν ἀποφράς.

[92] First published by Dr Paul Schadow, _Eine Attische Grablekythos_,

Inaugural-Dissertation (Jena, 1897), reproduced and discussed by the

present writer _J.H.S._ XX. p. 101.

[93] Ar. _Eq._ 792. Mr R. A. Neil ad loc. points out that πίθος answers

to _fidelia_ in etymology, to _dolium_ in meaning.

[94] Dr Sam. Wide, ‘Aphidna in Nord-Attica,’ _A. Mitt._ 1896, p. 398.

[95] _Od._ X. 236.

[96] _Od._ XXIV. 1-9.

[97] Pind. _Ol._ IX. 33

οὐδ’ Ἀΐδας ἀκινήταν ἔχε ῥάβδον

βρότεα σώμαθ’ ᾇ κατάγει κοίλαν πρὸς ἀγυιὰν

θνᾳσκόντων.

ἀκινήταν is usually rendered ‘unraised’ as though the sceptre were

lifted in token of kingly power. I translate by ‘wave’ because I believe

the action denoted is the waving or moving of a wand, not the raising

of a sceptre. The verb κινέω is, I believe, characteristic of this

wand-waving. κινέω is used in Homer (loc. cit.) τῇ δ’ ἄγε κινήσας. By

Pindar’s time the wand and the sceptre were fused, but he is haunted by

the old connotation of magic.

[98] For text, see p. 24, note 2.

[99] Space forbids the discussion of the whole evolution of the

kerykeion. It contains elements drawn from both sceptre and rhabdos. The

rhabdos is sometimes forked like a divining rod: the forks were entwined

in various shapes. Round the rhabdos a snake, symbol of the underworld,

was sometimes curled as the snake is curled round the staff of

Aesculapius. Ultimately the twisted ends of the rhabdos were crystallized

into curled decorative snakes. In like fashion the frayed fringe of the

leather aegis of Athene is misunderstood and rendered as snakes. By the

time of Eustathius, kerykeion and rhabdos are not clearly differentiated.

[100] _J.H.S._ XX. p. 101.

[101] Plut. _Vit. Cam._ XX.

[102] _Ling. Lat._ 5 § 157.

[103] _Pauli excerpta ex Lib. Pomp._ Fest. s.v. doliola.

[104] _Iliad_ XXIV. 527

δοιοὶ γάρ τε πίθοι κατακείαται ἐν Διὸς οὐδῷ

δώρων οἷα δίδωσι κακῶν ἕτερος δὲ ἑάων.

[105] Fest. 154.

[106] Macr. _Sat._ I. 16. 18.

[107] Harpocrat. s.v. Ἀνθεστ. διὰ τὸ πλεῖστα τῶν ἐκ τῆς γῆς ἀνθεῖν τότε.

[108] _Etym. Mag._ s.v. Ἀνθεστήρια.

[109] _J.H.S._ XX. 115.

[110] _Od._ X. 526.

[111] My view of the primitive significance of the root θεσ, which is

perhaps primarily rather _to conjure_ than _to pray_, will appear more

clearly when we come to the discussion of the Thesmophoria.

[112] Dr Wuensch in his instructive pamphlet _Ein Frühlingsfest auf

Malta_ (Leipzig, 1902) discusses a spring festival of the flowering

of beans which he believes to be analogous to the _Anthesteria_, but

the rites practised are wholly different. Dr Hiller von Gaertringen

(_Festschrift für O. Benndorf_) calls attention to the title _Anthister_

which occurs in an inscription found on Thera, but the inscription is of

the second century B.C., the festival of the ‘Anthesteria’ was celebrated

on Thera, as indeed wherever there was a primitive population, and

_Anthister_ must have borrowed rather than lent his name.

[113] Archbishop Eustathius may have had a dim consciousness of the

separable ἀνα when he says ἄνθος ὅτι ἐκ τοῦ ἀναθέειν παρῆκται κατὰ

συγκοπήν.

[114] Schol. ad Luc. _Tim._ 43 ἀποφρὰς ἡ ἡμέρα] ... ἦσαν παρ’ Ἕλλησιν

ἡμέραι ἀπραξίαν εἰσηγούμεναι παντὸς καὶ ἀργίαν, ἃς ἀποφράδας ἐκάλουν. ἐν

ταύταις οὐδὲ προσεῖπεν ἄν τίς τινα, οὐδὲ καθάπαξ φίλος ἐπεμίγνυτο φίλῳ,

ἀλλὰ καὶ τὰ ἱερὰ ἀχρημάτιστα ἦν αὐτοῖς. ἐκαλεῖτο δὲ ταῦτα αὐτοῖς κατὰ τὸν

Φευρουάριον μῆνα ὅτε καὶ ἐνήγιζον τοῖς καταχθονίοις· καὶ πᾶς οὗτος ὁ μὴν

ἀνεῖτο κατοιχομένοις μετὰ στυγνότητος πάντων προϊόντων ἕτερον τρόπον ὃν

καὶ τὰ Διάσια στυγνάζοντες ἦγον Ἀθηναῖοι.

[115] Plut. _Q.R._ XXXIV. διὰ τί, τῶν ἄλλων Ῥωμαίων ἐν τῷ Φεβρουαρίῳ

μηνὶ ποιουμένων χοὰς καὶ ἐναγισμοὺς τοῖς τεθνηκόσι, Δέκιμος Βροῦτος (ὡς

Κικέρων ἱστόρηκεν) ἐν τῷ Δεκεμβρίῳ τοῦτ’ ἔπραττεν;

[116] Plut. _Q.R._ XXV. τῶν μηνῶν τὸν μὲν πρῶτον ὀλυμπίοις θεοῖς ἱέρωσαν

τὸν δὲ δεύτερον χθονίοις ἐν ᾧ καὶ καθαρμούς τινας τελοῦσι καὶ τοῖς

κατοιχομένοις ἐναγίζουσιν.

[117] Athen. III. 53 § 98 τὸν δὲ μῆνα τοῦτον κληθῆναί φησιν ὁ Μαυρόσιος

Ἰόβας ἀπὸ τῶν κατουδαίων φόβων κατ’ ἀναίρεσιν τῶν δειμάτων ἐν ᾧ τοῦ

χειμῶνός ἐστι τὸ ἀκμαιότατον καὶ ἔθος τότε τοῖς κατοιχομένοις τὰς χοὰς

ἐπιφέρειν πολλαῖς ἡμέραις.

[118] Ovid, _Fasti_ II. 19.

[119] The ceremonies of the Lupercalia have been fully discussed by

Warde-Fowler, _The Roman Festivals_, p. 310, and very fully by Mannhardt,

_Mythologische Forschungen_, p. 72.

[120] _Julius Caesar_, Act I. Sc. 2, _v._ 6.

[121] Herond. _Mim._ III. 3.

[122] Serv. ad Verg. _Aen._ VIII. 343 nam pellem ipsam capri veteres

_februum_ vocabant. Varro (_Ling. Lat._ VI. 13) says that _februum_ was

Sabine for _purgamentum_.

[123] Athen. VIII. 11 § 334 F.

[124] 3rd cent. B.C.

[125] That the religion of Dionysos came to Greece at a comparatively

late date will be shewn in Chapter VIII.

[126] _Od._ XXIV. 215

δεῖπνον δ’ αἶψα συῶν ἱερεύσατε ὅς τις ἄριστος.

[127] Porph. _de Abst._ II. passim.

[128] Eust. ad _Il._ I. 449 § 132 μετὰ δὲ τὰς οὐλοχύτας αἱ θυσίαι καὶ ἡ

ἐν αὐταῖς κρεωφαγία διότι καὶ μετὰ τὴν τῶν ἀναγκαίων τροφῶν εὕρεσιν ἡ τῆς

κρεωδαισίας πολυτέλεια καὶ τὸ τῆς τροφῆς ἐπείσακτον εὕρηται.

[129] Prof. Ridgeway (_Early Age of Greece_, vol. I. p. 524) has shown

(to me conclusively) that these Homeric Achaeans were of Celtic origin

and brought with them from central Europe the flesh-_roasting_ and

flesh-eating habits of their northern ancestors.

[130] Athen. I. 46 § 25.

[131] P. II. 10. 1 ἐπὶ δὲ τῇ θυσίᾳ τοιάδε δρᾶν νομίζουσι. Φαῖστον ἐν

Σικυωνίᾳ λέγουσιν ἐλθόντα καταλαβεῖν Ἡρακλεῖ σφᾶς ὡς ἥρωϊ ἐναγίζοντας·

οὔκουν ἠξίου δρᾶν οὐδὲν ὁ Φαῖστος τῶν αὐτῶν, ἀλλ’ ὡς θεῷ θύειν. καὶ νῦν

ἔτι ἄρνα οἱ Σικυώνιοι σφάξαντες καὶ τοὺς μηροὺς ἐπὶ τοῦ βωμοῦ καύσαντες

τὰ μὲν ἐσθίουσιν ὡς ἀπὸ ἱερείου τὰ δὲ ὡς ἥρωϊ τῶν κρεῶν ἐναγίζουσι.

That the distinction between θύειν and ἐναγίζειν is no late invention

of Pausanias is shown by the fact that Herodotos (II. 43) uses the same

words and draws the same distinction though with less explicit detail.

Speaking of Herakles as god and hero, he says: τῷ μὲν ἀθανάτῳ Ὀλυμπίῳ δὲ

ἐπωνυμίην θύουσι, τῷ δ’ ἑτέρῳ ὡς ἥρωϊ ἐναγίζουσι.

[132] P. VIII. 34. 3 καὶ οὕτω ταῖς μὲν (ταῖς μελαίναις) ἐνήγισεν,

ἀποτρέπων τὸ μήνιμα αὐτῶν, ταῖς δὲ ἔθυσε ταῖς λευκαῖς.

[133] Eust. ad _Il._ XXIII. 429, 1357. 59 οὕτω καὶ ἅγιος παρὰ τοῖς

παλαιοῖς οὐ μόνον ὁ καθαρὸς ἀλλὰ καὶ ὁ μιαρὸς διὰ τὸ τοῦ ἅγους διπλόσημον.

[134] I do not deny that the word can be translated if we are content

to vary our rendering in each various case. In the passages already

discussed ‘devote’ is perhaps a fair equivalent, because the contrast

emphasized is with a sacrifice shared. Sometimes the word may be rendered

simply ‘sacrifice to the dead,’ sometimes ‘purificatory sacrifice,’

sometimes ‘expiatory sacrifice.’ No one word covers the whole field. It

is this lost union of many diverse elements that has to be recovered and

is nameless.

[135] Athen. IX. 78 § 409 E ff. ἰδίως δὲ καλεῖται παρ’ Ἀθηναίοις ἀπόνιμμα

ἐπὶ τῶν εἰς τιμὴν τοῖς νεκροῖς γινομένων καὶ ἐπὶ τῶν τοὺς ἐναγεῖς

καθαιρόντων ὡς καὶ Κλείδημος ἐν τῷ ἐπιγραφομένῳ Ἐξηγητικῷ. Προθεὶς γὰρ

περὶ ἐναγισμῶν γράφει τάδε· “Ὄρυξαι βόθυνον πρὸς ἑσπέραν τοῦ σήματος.

Ἔπειτα παρὰ τὸν βόθυνον πρὸς ἑσπέραν βλέπε, ὕδωρ κατάχεε, λέγων τάδε·

‘Ὑμῖν ἀπόνιμμα οἷς χρὴ καὶ οἷς θέμις.’ Ἔπειτα αὖθις μύρον κατάχεε.”

Παρέθετο ταῦτα καὶ Δωρόθεος φάσκων καὶ ἐν τοῖς Εὐπατριδῶν πατρίοις τάδε

γεγράφθαι περὶ τῆς τῶν ἱκετῶν καθάρσεως. Ἔπειτ’ ἀπονιψάμενος αὐτὸς καὶ

οἱ ἄλλοι οἱ σπλαγχνεύοντες, ὕδωρ λαβὼν κάθαιρε ἀπόνιζε τὸ αἷμα τοῦ

καθαιρομένου καὶ μετὰ τὸ ἀπόνιμμα ἀνακινήσας εἰς ταὐτὸ ἔγχεε.

[136] Hesych. λουτρόν· τὸ ῥύπαρον ὕδωρ ἤγουν ἀπόνιμμα.

[137] _Bull. de Corr. Hell._ XXIV. p. 258.

[138] Now in the Museum at Chicago. _American Journal of Archaeology_,

1899, pl. IV. The vase presents some difficulties, the discussion of

which would be irrelevant here. The figure of Salmoneus madly and

sacrilegiously counterfeiting Zeus and holding his thunder-bolt is I

think certain.

[139] Fillets are specially characteristic of sacrificial victims.

Herodotus VII. 197 describes Athamas as στέμμασι πυκασθείς.

[140] Published by Mr H. B. Walters, _J.H.S._ XVIII. 1898, p. 281, pl.

XV. The class of vases known sometimes as ‘Tyrrhenian,’ sometimes as

Corintho-Attic, all belong to the same period, about the middle of the

sixth century B.C., and are apparently from the same workshop.

[141] Eur. _Hec._ 535.

[142] Omphalos and tomb are in intent the same, see _J.H.S._ XIX. p. 225.

[143] The genesis of the Erinys is discussed later, in Chapter V.

[144] Aesch. _Eum._ 253.

[145] Aesch. _Eum._ 264.

[146] Schol. ad Eur. _Phoen._ 284 διαφέρει βωμὸς καὶ ἐσχάρα. ad 274

ἐσχάρα μὲν κυρίως ὁ ἐπὶ τῆς γῆς βόθρος ἔνθα ἐναγίζουσι τοῖς κάτω

ἐρχομένοις, βωμὸς δὲ ἐν ᾧ θύουσι τοῖς ἐπουρανίοις θεοῖς.

[147] Porph. _de antr. nymph._ 3 τοῖς μὲν Ὀλυμπίοις θεοῖς ναούς τε καὶ

ἕδη καὶ βωμοὺς ἱδρύσαντο, χθονίοις δὲ καὶ ἥρωσιν ἐσχάρας, ὑποχθονίοις δὲ

βόθρους καὶ μέγαρα. The _megara_ will be discussed later (p. 125).

[148] Aesch. _Eum._ 106.

[149] Eustath. ad _Il._ I. 459 § 134.

[150] Eustath. § 1057, 37.

[151] Schol. ad Apoll. Rhod. I. 587 τοῖς μὲν οὖν κατοιχομένοις ὡς περὶ

ἡλίου δυσμὰς ἐναγίζουσι τοῖς δὲ οὐρανίδαις ὑπὸ τὴν ἕω, ἀνατέλλοντος τοῦ

ἡλίου.

[152] Eur. _El._ 514.

[153] Eur. _Ion_ 277

ΙΩ. πατὴρ Ἐρεχθεὺς σὰς ἔθυσε συγγόνους;

ΚΡ. ἔτλη πρὸ γαίας σφάγια παρθένους κτανεῖν.

[154] Eur. _Hec._ 121 τύμβῳ σφάγιον.

[155] Athen. XIV. 22 § 626 καθαρμὸν τῆς πόλεως ἐποιήσαντο σφάγια

περιάγοντες κύκλῳ τῆς χώρας ἁπάσης.

[156] Eur. _Supp._ 1296 ἐν ᾧ δὲ τέμνειν σφάγια χρή σ’ ἄκουέ μου.

[157] P. III. 20. 9.

[158] P. IV. 15. 8.

[159] P. V. 24. 10 τοῖς γε ἀρχαιοτέροις ἐπὶ ἱερείῳ ἦν καθεστηκὸς ἐφ’ ᾧ

τις ὅρκιον ἐποιήσατο μηδὲ ἐδώδιμον εἶναι τοῦτ’ ἔτι ἀνθρώπῳ. Strictly

speaking Pausanias ought to have written ἐπὶ σφαγίῳ, but his meaning is

sufficiently clear. τόμια are actually σφάγια, not ἱερεῖα. Eustathius, in

discussing the sacrifice of Odysseus to the ghosts in the Nekuia, makes

the following statement: ὅτι Ὁμήρου εἰπόντος ἱερήια τὰ ἐν Ἅιδου σφάγια

ἐπὶ χοῇ νεκρῶν φασὶν οἱ παλαιοὶ οὐκ ὀρθῶς εἰρῆσθαι τοῦτο, ἐπὶ γὰρ νεκρῶν

τόμιά φασι καὶ ἔντομα, ἐπὶ δὲ θεῶν ἱερεῖα. Pausanias in the passage cited

above (III. 20. 9) uses θύειν where σφαγιάζεσθαι would be more correct.

He makes a sort of climax of confusion when, in describing the ritual of

the hero Amphiaraos, he says (I. 34. 5): ἐστὶ δὲ καθάρσιον τῷ θεῷ θύειν,

when he should have said τῷ ἥρωι σφαγιάζεσθαι.

[160] _Il._ XIX. 265.

[161] P. II. 34. 3.

[162] Ar. _Ran._ 847.

[163] Virg. _Aen._ III. 120.

[164] P. II. 12. 1.

[165] Aesch. _Agam._ 214.

[166] The full and somewhat revolting details as to how omens were

taken from σφάγια do not concern us here; they are given in full by the

scholiast on Eur. _Phoenissae_ 1255; see P. Stengel, _Hermes_ 1899,

XXXIV. p. 642.

[167] Porph. _de Abst._ II. 51.

[168] Xen. _Anab._ VI. 5. 21.

[169] Aesch. _Sept._ 230

ἀνδρῶν τάδ’ ἐστὶ σφάγια καὶ χρηστήρια

θεοῖσιν ἔρδειν πολεμίων πειρωμένων.

[170] Ammon. p. 72 Valck. θύουσι μὲν γὰρ οἱ σφάζοντες τὰ ἱερεῖα, θύονται

δὲ οἳ διὰ τῶν σπλάγχνων μαντεύονται.

[171] The question of σφάγια has been very fully discussed by Dr Paul

Stengel in four papers as follows: ‘Σφάγια,’ _Hermes_ XXI. p. 307,

1886; ‘Miscellen,’ XXV. p. 321; ‘Prophezeiung aus der Σφάγια,’ XXXI. p.

479 and XXXIV. p. 642. To this must be added papers by the same author

on ἐντέμνειν ἔντομα in the _Zeitschrift für Gymnasial-Wesen_ 1880, p.

743, and in the _Jahrbuch für Philologie_ 1882, p. 322, and 1883, p.

375, and on the winds, _Hermes_ 1900, p. 626. I owe much in the matter

of references to Dr Stengel’s full collection of sources, but his

conclusions as stated in ‘Die Sakralaltertümer’ (Iwan Müller’s _Handbuch

der kl. Altertumswissenschaft_, Band V. Abt. 3) seem to me to be vitiated

by the assumption that ceremonies of purification are late and foreign

importations.

[172] Apoll. Rhod. IV. 470, trans. by Mr Gilbert Murray.

[173] Since the above was written my attention has been called to Dr J.

G. Frazer’s paper ‘On certain Burial Customs as illustrations of the

primitive theory of the soul’ (_Journal of Anthropological Institute_,

vol. XV. 1885-6). After a detailed examination of the burial rites and

customs of the Greeks and many other peoples Mr Frazer reaches the

following memorable and to me most welcome conclusion: ‘In general

I think we may lay down the rule that wherever we find so-called

purification by fire or water from pollution contracted by contact with

the dead we may assume with much probability that the original intention

was to place a physical barrier of fire or water between the living and

the dead, and that the conceptions of pollution and purification are

merely the fictions of a later age invented to explain the purpose of a

ceremony of which the original intention was forgotten.’

[174] Soph. _El._ 445.

[175] The details described by Suidas s.v. ἐμασχαλίσθη have a somewhat

apocryphal air and are probably due to etymology.

[176] Schol. ad Soph. _El._ 445.

[177] P. III. 17. 7.

[178] Plut. _de ser. num. vind._ XVII. μεταπεμφθέντες οἱ ψυχαγωγοὶ καὶ

θύσαντες ἀπεσπάσαντο τοῦ ἱεροῦ τὸ εἴδωλον.

[179] Eur. _Or._ 395

ΜΕ. τί χρῆμα πάσχεις; τίς σ’ ἀπόλλυσιν νόσος;

ΟΡ. ἡ ξύνεσις, ὅτι σύνοιδα δείν’ εἰργασμένος.

[180] Suidas s.v. Ἔμβαρός εἰμι, _Paroimiograph._ I. 402, App. Cent. and

Eustath. ad _Il._ II. 732 § 331.

[181] Plut. _Vit. Pelop._ XXI.

[182] _Cat._ 422.

[183] _Od._ XI. 23 ff.

[184] For the ceremonials of ghost-raising, see Dr W. G. Headlam,

_Classical Review_, 1902, p. 52.

[185] Luc. _Char._ 22.

[186] A. Mommsen (_Feste der Stadt Athen_, p. 486) discusses the

Thargelia, Kallynteria and Plynteria in immediate succession, but without

a hint of the connection of the two last with the first.

[187] Vaniček (s.v. p. 310) derives Θαργήλια, which appears also in the

form Ταργήλια, from a root ταργ meaning ‘hot’ and ‘dry’ and connects it

with τρυγ in τρύσκω, τρυγάω etc. All these analogous forms have the same

meaning, i.e. ‘ripened by the sun,’ ‘ready for harvesting.’

[188] Athen. III. 52 § 115 θάργηλον καλεῖσθαι τὸν ἐκ τῆς συγκομιδῆς

πρῶτον γενόμενον ἄρτον.

[189] Hesych. s.v. θάργηλος χύτρα ἐστὶν ἀνάπλεως σπερμάτων.

[190] loc. cit. supra.

[191] Theocr. _Id._ VII. 31 ἁ δ’ ὁδὸς ἅδε Θαλυσιάς.

[192] Hom. _Il._ IX. 534

ὅ οἱ οὔ τι θαλύσια γουνῷ ἀλωῆς

Οἰνεὺς ῥέξ’.

Eustath. ad loc. θαλύσια δὲ αἱ ἀπαρχαὶ ... τινὲς δὲ τῶν ῥητόρων καὶ

συγκομιστήρια ταῦτα καλοῦσιν ... ἔτι δὲ καὶ θαλύσιος ἄρτος ὁ ἐκ τῆς τῶν

καρπῶν, φασί, συγκομιδῆς πρῶτος γινόμενος.

[193] The sources for the Eiresione are very fully given and discussed

by Mannhardt, _Wald- und Feldkulte_, pp. 214-248; see Dr Frazer, _Golden

Bough_, 2nd edition, vol. I. p. 190, for modern parallels.

[194] Ar. _Eq._ 729, schol. ad loc.

[195] Eustath. ad _Il._ XXII. 496, p. 1283 ᾖδον δὲ παῖδες

εἰρεσιώνη σῦκα φέρει καὶ πίονας ἄρτους

καὶ μέλιτος κοτύλην καὶ ἔλαιον ἐπικρήσασθαι

καὶ κύλικα εὔζωρον ἵνα μεθύουσα καθεύδῃ.

[196] Ar. _Plut._ 1054, schol. ad loc. ταύτην δὲ τὴν εἰρεσιώνην πρὸ τῶν

οἰκημάτων ἐτίθεντο οἱ Ἀθηναῖοι καὶ κατ’ ἔτος αὐτὴν ἤλλαττον ... ἕκαστος

πρὸ τῶν θυρῶν ἔστησαν εἰρεσιώνας εἰς ἀποτροπὴν τοῦ λοιμοῦ, καὶ διέμενεν

εἰς ἐνιαυτόν. ἣν καὶ ξηρανθεῖσαν πάλιν κατ’ ἔτος ἐποίει ἑτέραν χλοάζουσαν.

[197] Plut. _Vit. Thes._ XVIII. The account of Plutarch is substantially

the same as that of his contemporary Pausanias the rhetorician; both

appear to draw from some common source, which may be Krates’ περὶ θυσιῶν:

see Mannhardt, _Wald- und Feldkulte_, p. 219.

[198] Harpocrat. s.v.

[199] _Etym. Mag._ s.v.

[200] Suidas s.v. Πύθιον.

[201] Schol. ad Ar. _Plut._ 1054.

[202] Porph. _de Abst._ II. 7. The text contains obscure words, e.g.

εἰλυσπόα of which Nauck observes _loci medela nobis negata_, but those

translated above seem certain.

[203] _Iliad_ loc. cit. supra.

[204] Aristot. _Eth. Nic._ 1160 Θ. IX. 5 θυσίας τε ποιοῦντες καὶ περὶ

ταύτας συνόδους, τιμάς <τε> ἀπονέμοντες τοῖς θεοῖς καὶ αὑτοῖς ἀναπαύσεις

πορίζοντες μεθ’ ἡδονῆς. αἱ γὰρ ἀρχαῖαι θυσίαι καὶ σύνοδοι φαίνονται

γίνεσθαι μετὰ τὰς τῶν καρπῶν συγκομιδὰς οἷον ἀπαρχαί. μάλιστα γὰρ ἐν

τούτοις ἐσχόλαζον τοῖς καιροῖς.

[205] Spencer and Gillen, _Native Tribes of Central Australia_, pp. 167

ff.

[206] A. Lang, _Religion and Magic_, p. 265.

[207] Philoch. ap. Athen. I. 16 § 9 Φιλόχορος δὲ ἱστορεῖ καὶ κεκωλῦσθαι

Ἀθήνῃσι ἀπέκτου ἀρνὸς μηδένα γεύεσθαι ἐπιλιπούσης ποτὲ τῆς τῶν ζῴων

τούτων γενέσεως.

[208] Fest. § 318 _sacrima_ appellabant mustum quod Libero sacrificabant,

pro vineis et vasis et ipso vino conservando, sicut praemetium de spicis

quas primum messuissent sacrificabant Cereri.

[209] Plut. _Q. Symp._ III. 7. 1 καὶ πάλαι γ’ ὡς ἔοικεν εὔχοντο τοῦ οἴνου

πρὶν ἢ πιεῖν ἀποσπένδοντες ἀβλαβῆ καὶ σωτήριον αὐτοῖς τοῦ φαρμάκου τὴν

χρῆσιν γενέσθαι.

[210] Porph. _de Abst._ I. 14.

[211] Porph. _de Abst._ II. 56. The treatise of Porphyry, so far as

it relates to sacrifice, is mainly based on the previous treatise of

Theophrastos.

[212] Eustath. ad _Il._ I. 449 § 132.

[213] Porph. _de Abst._ II. 20.

[214] Porph. loc. cit. μετὰ δὲ τοὺς οὐλοχύτας αἱ θυσίαι καὶ ἡ ἐν αὐταῖς

κρεωφαγία. διότι καὶ μετὰ τὴν τῶν ἀναγκαίων τροφῶν εὕρεσιν ἡ τῆς

κρεωδαισίας πολυτέλεια καὶ τὸ τῆς τροφῆς ἐπείσακτον εὕρηται.

[215] Eustath. ad _Od._ III. 440, 1476. 37 ὡς καὶ οἱ οὐλοχύται τῆς

παλαιᾶς τροφῆς ἀνεμίμνησκον τῆς τε τῶν οὐλῶν, ὅπερ ἐστὶ τῶν κριθῶν, διὸ

καὶ τοὺς οὐλοχύτας τῶν τις παλαιῶν κριθὰς ἡρμήνευσεν.

[216] Strato ap. Athen. IX. 29 § 382.

[217] For a full discussion of οὐλαί and οὐλοχύται see Dr H. von Fritze,

_Hermes_ 1897, p. 236.

[218] Eustath. ad _Il._ I. 449 § 132, 23 εἰσὶ δὲ οὐλοχύται ... τὰ

προθύματα ... οἱ οὐλοχύται οὐλαὶ ἦσαν τουτέστι κριθαὶ μετὰ ἁλῶν ἃς

ἐπέχεον τοῖς βωμοῖς πρὸ τῆς ἱερουργίας.

[219] Eur. _El._ 804

λαβὼν δέ προχύτας μητρὸς εὐνέτης σέθεν

ἔβαλλε βωμούς, τοιάδ’ ἐννέπων ἔπη.

[220] Athen. XIV. 81 § 661.

[221] Hom. _Od._ IV. 761.

[222] Plut. _Q. Gr._ VI.

[223] Ar. _Av._ 622.

[224] Athen. IV. 14 § 137.

[225] Hom. _Il._ XVIII. 560.

[226] The process of primitive bread-making is fully discussed by Prof.

Benndorf (_Eranos Vindobensis_, p. 374), to whom I am indebted for the

view here expressed. In Yorkshire within my own remembrance a rather

repulsive mess of corn stewed in milk with currants was always eaten on

Christmas Eve before the regular feast began. It was served as soup and

called _frummety_.

[227] Eustath. ad _Il._ XVIII. 563 τὸ δὲ παλύνειν ἄλφιτα οὐδὲ νῦν δηλοῖ

ἀρτοποιΐαν ἀλλὰ τὸ ἐπίπασμα σύνηθες ὂν τοῖς παλαιοῖς, and again in

discussing the feast of Eumaeus (§ 1751, 33) ὁ δ’ ἄλφιτα λευκὰ ἐπάλυνεν,

ὅ ἐστιν ἐπέπασε κατὰ ἔθος ἀρχαῖον τὸ ὕστερον ἀργῆσαν.

[228] Varro _L.L._ V. 106 libum quod ut libaretur. The Latin _puls_ and

_polenta_ are probably from the same root as πέλανος. Pliny (_N.H._

XVIII. 19) says it is clear that in ancient days _pulte non pane Romanos

vixisse_. He adds that to his day primitive rites and those on birthdays

are carried on with _pulse_.

[229] Aesch. _Pers._ 204 ἀποτρόποισι δαίμοσι, and 523 γῇ τε καὶ φθιτοῖς

δωρήματα.

[230] Sannyr. frg. 1 Koch.

[231] The sources for νηφάλια are well collected and discussed by Dr von

Fritze, _De Libatione veterum Graecorum_, Berlin 1893, also by Stengel,

_Hermes_ XXII. p. 645, and ‘Chthonische und Totenkult’ in _Festschrift

für Friedländer_, p. 418, and W. Barth, ‘Bestattungsspende bei den

Griechen,’ _Neue Jahrbücher für klass. Altertüm._ 1900, p. 177. W. Barth

draws distinctions between the cultus of the dead and that of chthonic

divinities, which I think cannot be clearly made out.

[232] Aesch. _Pers._ 607.

[233] Plut. _Q.R._ XX. οἶνον δ’ αὐτῇ σπένδουσι γάλα προσαγορεύουσαι.

[234] Macr. I. 12. 25 quod vas in quo vinum inditum est mellarium

nominetur et vinum lac nuncupetur.

[235] Soph. _Oed. Col._ 468.

[236] Aesch. _Eum._ 104.

[237] Aesch. _Eum._ 727.

[238] P. II. 11. 3. The relation between the Semnae and the Eumenides and

the ritual of the Semnae, which is identical with that of the Eumenides,

will be discussed later in Chapter V.

[239] Schol. ad _Oed. Col._ 100.

[240] Porph. _de antr. Nymph._ 7.

[241] Emped. frg. ap. Porph. _de Abst._ II. 21.

[242] Some further points as to the Nephalia will be considered in

relation to the Eleusinian ritual (p. 150), and the Orphic mysteries

(Chapter X.).

[243] Eustath. ad _Il._ I. 52. For a full discussion of the purport of

cremation see Prof. Ridgeway, _Early Age of Greece_ I. p. 540.

[244] Porph. _de Abst._ II. 5.

[245] Diog. Laert. VIII. 13.

[246] P. VIII. 42. 5.

[247] Pind. _Ol._ VII. 47, schol. ad loc.

[248] Philostrat. _Eik._ II. 27 § 852.

[249] Diod. V. 56.

[250] P. VIII. 2. 2.

[251] Harpocrat. s.v. φαρμακός.

[252] Diog. Laert. II. 4.

[253] Classical sources for the _pharmakos_ are most fully enumerated by

Mannhardt, _Myth. Forschungen_, pp. 123, 133. For primitive analogies see

Frazer, _Golden Bough_, 2nd ed., vol. III. p. 93, from whom I have taken

the instances adduced.

[254] Ar. _Ran._ 734.

[255] Ar. frg. 532.

[256] Ar. _Eq._ 1405.

[257] Lys. _c. Andok._ 108. 4: νῦν οὖν χρὴ νομίζειν τιμωρουμένους καὶ

ἀπαλλαττομένους Ἀνδοκίδου τὴν πόλιν _καθαίρειν_ καὶ _ἀποδιοπομπεῖσθαι_

καὶ φαρμακὸν ἀποπέμπειν καὶ ἀλιτηρίου ἀπαλλάττεσθαι, ὡς ἓν τούτων οὗτός

ἐστι.

[258] Fragments of Hipponax (6th cent. B.C.) incorporated by Tzetzes

_Hist._ 23. 726-756:

Τί τὸ κάθαρμα;

ὁ φαρμακὸς τὸ κάθαρμα τοιοῦτον ἦν τὸ πάλαι.

ἂν συμφορὰ κατέλαβε πόλιν θεομηνίᾳ,

εἴτ’ οὖν λιμὸς εἴτε λοιμὸς εἴτε καὶ βλάβος ἄλλο,

τῶν πάντων ἀμορφότερον ἦγον ὡς πρὸς θυσίαν

εἰς καθαρμὸν καὶ φάρμακον πόλεως τῆς νοσούσης.

εἰς τόπον δὲ τὸν πρόσφορον στήσαντες τὴν θυσίαν

τυρόν τε δόντες τῇ χειρὶ καὶ μᾶζαν καὶ ἰσχάδας,

ἑπτάκις γὰρ ῥαπίσαντες ἐκεῖνον εἰς τὸ πέος

σκίλλαις, συκαῖς ἀγρίαις τε καὶ ἄλλοις τῶν ἀγρίων,

τέλος πυρὶ κατέκαιον ἐν ξύλοις τοῖς ἀγρίοις,

καὶ τὸν σποδὸν εἰς θάλασσαν ἔρραινον καὶ ἀνέμους

καὶ καθαρμὸν τῆς πόλεως ὡς ἔφην τῆς νοσούσης.

ὁ δέ Ἱππῶναξ ἄριστα σύμπαν τὸ ἔθος λέγει

1 _πόλιν καθαίρειν καὶ κράδῃσι βάλλεσθαι_ (φαρμακόν),

καὶ ἀλλαχοῦ δέ πού φησι πρώτῳ ἰάμβῳ γράφων

2 _βάλλοντες ἐν λειμῶνι καὶ ῥαπίζοντες_

_κράδῃσι καὶ σκίλλῃσιν ὥσπερ φαρμακὸν._

καὶ πάλιν ἄλλοις τόποις δὲ ταῦτά φησι κατ’ ἔπος

3 _δεῖ δ αὐτὸν ἐς φαρμακὸν ἐκποιήσασθαι._

4 _κἄφη παρέξειν ἰσχάδας τε καὶ μᾶζαν_

_καὶ τυρὸν οἷον ἐσθίουσι φαρμακοί._

5 _πάλαι γὰρ αὐτοὺς προσδέχοντα(ι) χάσκοντες_

_κράδας ἔχοντες ὡς ἔχουσι φαρμακοί._

καὶ ἀλλαχοῦ δέ πού φησιν ἐν τῷ αὐτῷ ἰάμβῳ

6 _λιμῷ γένηται ξηρὸς ὡς ἐν τῷ θυμῷ_

_φαρμακὸς ἀχθεὶς ἑπτάκις ῥαπισθείη._

[259] Hippon. frg. 11 (4) ὡς οἱ μὲν ἅγεϊ Βουπάλῳ κατηρῶντο.

[260] Hellad. ap. Phot. _Bibl._ c. 279, p. 534.

[261] Hesych. s.v. κραδίης νόμος.

[262] Plin. _N.H._ XX. 9. 39.

[263] Diosc. _de mat. med._ II. 202.

[264] Luc. _Nek._ 7 ἐκάθηρέ τε με καὶ ἀπέμαξε καὶ περιήγνισε δᾳδίοις καὶ

σκίλλῃ.

[265] Theocr. _Id._ VII. 104, schol. ad loc.

[266] Ar. _Ran._ 620.

[267] Luc. _Indoct._ 1.

[268] Schol. ad Ar. _Eq._ 1136.

[269] Harpocrat. s.v. φαρμακός· ὅτι δὲ ὄνομα κύριόν ἐστιν ὁ φαρμακός,

ἱερὰς δὲ φιάλας τοῦ Ἀπόλλωνος κλέψας καὶ ἁλοὺς ὑπὸ τῶν περὶ τὸν Ἀχιλλέα

κατελεύσθη, καὶ τὰ τοῖς Θαργηλίοις ἀγόμενα τούτων ἀπομιμήματά ἐστιν,

Ἴστρος ἐν πρώτῳ τῶν Ἀπόλλωνος ἐπιφανειῶν εἴρηκεν.

[270] For these modern savage analogies and many others see Dr Frazer,

_Golden Bough_, 2nd ed., vol. III. p. 93.

[271] Plut. _de Is. et Os._ LXXIII. ζῶντας ἀνθρώπους κατεπίμπρασαν ὡς

Μανεθὼς ἱστόρηκε Τυφωνίους καλοῦντες καὶ τὴν τέφραν αὐτῶν λικμῶντες

ἠφάνιζον καὶ διέσπειρον.

[272] Clem. Al. _Protr._ XII. 118 φύγωμεν οὖν τὴν συνήθειαν ... ἄγχει τὸν

ἄνθρωπον, τῆς ἀληθείας ἀποτρέπει, ἀπάγει τῆς ζωῆς, πάγις ἐστὶν βάραθρόν

ἐστιν βόθρος ἐστὶ λίκνον ἐστίν, κακὸν ἡ συνήθεια.

[273] Lev. xvi. 21, and for the Egyptian scape-animal see Herod. II. 39.

[274] Plut. _Q. Symp._ VI. 8.

[275] My attention was kindly drawn to this vase by M. Perdrizet who

proposes shortly to publish it. Suidas (s.v. εἴδωλον) seems to refer

to the Charila ceremony, κελεύει ἡ Πυθία εἴδωλόν τι πεπλασμένον εἰς

ὄψιν γυναικὸς μετέωρον ἐξαρτᾶν καὶ ἀνερρώσθη ἡ πόλις. For this and the

_oscilla_ ceremonies and the analogy of Artemis ἀπαγχομένη (P. VIII. 23.

7) see Lobeck, _Aglaoph._ p. 175. The beating of the female slave in the

temple of Leucothea (Plut. _Q.R._ XVI.) seems to have been based on a

racial taboo, but a φαρμακός ceremony may underlie it.

[276] Serv. ad Verg. _Aen._ III. 75.

[277] For a full and very interesting discussion of the etymology

and meaning of φαρμακός, see Osthoff, ‘Allerhand Zauber etymologisch

beleuchtet,’ Bezzenberger, _Beiträge_ XXIV. p. 109. As to the

accentuation of the word φαρμακός Eustathius (1935. 15) notes that it was

proparoxytone ‘among the Ionians.’

[278] As to the god worshipped at the Thargelia it is probable that

when godhead came to be formulated Demeter Chloe long preceded Apollo.

Diogenes Laertius (II. 44) notes that on the sixth day of Thargelia when

the Athenians purified the city, sacrifice was done to Demeter Chloe.

Here as elsewhere Apollo took over the worship of an Earth-goddess.

[279] Herod. VII. 197. My attention was drawn to this passage and its

importance as reflecting the attitude of the Greek mind towards Human

Sacrifices by Dr A. W. Verrall.

[280] Porphyr. _de Abst._ II. 53-56.

[281] My account of the Bouphonia is taken from Dr Frazer’s summary,

which is exactly based on the complex double account given by Porphyry

from Theophrastos (Porphyr. _de Abst._ II. 29 seq.) and Aelian (_V.H._

VIII. 3). With Dr Frazer’s exhaustive commentary (_Golden Bough_, 2nd ed.

vol. II. p. 295) I am in substantial agreement, save that I do not see

in the murdered ox the representative of the Corn Spirit. The Bouphonia

as ox-_murder_ was first correctly explained by Prof. Robertson Smith

(_Religion of the Semites_, p. 286 ff.). I have discussed it previously

in _Mythology and Monuments of Ancient Athens_, p. 424 ff.: see also

Dr Paul Stengel, _Rhein. Mus._ 1897, p. 187. With Dr von Prott’s view

(_Rhein. Mus._ 1897, p. 187) that the sense of guilt in the sacrifice

arises from the fact that the ox was the surrogate of a human victim I

wholly disagree.

[282] It is possible that Dipolia is etymologically not festival of Zeus

Polieus but festival of the Plough Curse, see p. 23.

[283] Ar. _Nub._ 984.

[284] The scholiast is (so far as I know) the only authority who

gives the female form. It is possible that the sacrifice may have

been primarily to an earth-goddess and hence the animals are female.

The curious ceremonial of the _Chthonia_ (P. II. 35. 3) was a similar

butchery of cows in honour of Chthonia and presided over by old women who

did the actual slaughter, and no man native or foreigner was allowed to

see it.

[285] P. V. 27. 6.

[286] Diod. I. 91 καθαπερεὶ τὸ μύσος εἰς ἐκεῖνον τρεπόντων.

[287] Plut. _De defect. orac._ XIV., the text is in places corrupt.

[288] I have elsewhere (_J.H.S._ XIX. 1899, p. 223) stated that the

word ‘Stepterion’ cannot to my thinking be translated ‘Festival of

Crowning.’ This explanation rests only on Aelian (_Hist. An._ XII. 34),

and purification (κάθαρσις, ἔκθυσις), not crowning, is the main gist of

the ceremonies. The name Stepterion, is, I suspect, connected with the

enigmatic στέφη and στέφειν as occurring in Aesch. _Choeph._ 94, Soph.

_Ant._ 431, _Elec._ 52, 458, and means in some way purification.

[289] Other instances are given Ael. _Hist. An._ XII. 34, Philostr. _Im._

II. 24. 850. For analogous Roman Festivals see Regifugium and Poplifugia,

Warde-Fowler, _Roman Festivals_, pp. 327 and 174. For the Stepterion and

savage analogies see Dr Frazer, _Pausanias_, vol. III. p. 53.

[290] Plut. _Vit. Alc._ XXXIV.

[291] Poll. _On._ VIII. 141.

[292] Phot. s.v. Καλλυντήρια.

[293] Plutarch and Photius cannot both be right, but it is unlikely that

Photius would give the _sequence_ incorrectly.

[294] Hesych. s.v. σάρματα.

[295] Hesych. s.v. ἡγητηρία· παρὰ ἡγήσασθαι οὖν τῆς τροφῆς κέκληται

ἡγητηρία.

[296] Plut. _Q.R._ LXXXVI.

[297] Plut. _Q.R._ XXXII.

[298] Ov. _Fasti_ V. 621.

[299] The whole ceremony of the _Argei_ has been fully discussed by

Mr Warde-Fowler (_The Roman Festivals_, p. 111). Abundant primitive

analogies have been collected by Mannhardt (_Baumkultus_, pp. 155, 411,

416, and _Antike Wald- und Feldkulte_, p. 276). For the etymology of

_Argei_ see Mr A. B. Cook, _Class. Rev._ XVII. 1903, p. 269.

[300] Plut. _Q.R._ LXXXVI.

[301] Ov. _Fasti_ VI. 219-234.

[302] Warde-Fowler, _Roman Festivals_, p. 148.

[303] Frazer, _Golden Bough_, 2nd ed., vol. II. p. 329.

[304] The sources for the Thesmophoria are collected and discussed by Dr

J. G. Frazer, _Encyclopaedia Britannica_, Art. Thesmophoria.

[305] II. 171. See also Frazer, _Pausanias_, vol. V. p. 29; Harrison and

Verrall, _Myth. and Mon. Anc. Athens_, pp. xxxiv. and 102-105 and 482; A.

Lang, _Homeric Hymns_, Introd. Essay and Hymn to Demeter.

[306] Schol. ad Aristoph. _Thesm._ 78. Photius, s.v. and Schol. ad

Aristoph. _Thesm._ 585.

[307] Cornut. _de Theol._ 28.

[308] Lucian, _Dial. Meretr._ II. 1, first published and commented

on by E. Rohde, _Rhein. Mus._ XXV. p. 549. As the text is not very

easily accessible it is given below: θεσμοφόρια ἑορτὴ Ἑλλήνων μυστήρια

περιέχουσα. _τὰ δὲ αὐτὰ καὶ σκιροφόρια καλεῖται._ ἤγετο δὲ κατὰ τὸν

μυθωδέστερον λόγον, ὅτι ἀνθολογοῦσα ἡρπάζετο ἡ Κόρη ὑπὸ τοῦ Πλούτωνος.

τότε κατ’ ἐκεῖνον τὸν τόπον Εὐβουλεύς τις συβώτης ἔνεμεν ὗς καὶ

συγκατεπόθησαν τῷ χάσματι τῆς Κόρης. εἰς οὖν τιμὴν τοῦ Εὐβουλέως

ῥίπτεῖσθαι τοὺς χοίρους εἰς τὰ χάσματα τῆς Δήμητρος καὶ τῆς Κόρης. τὰ

δὲ σαπέντα τῶν ἐμβληθέντων εἰς τὰ μέγαρα κάτω ἀναφέρουσιν ἀντλήτριαι

καλούμεναι γυναῖκες, καθαρεύσασαι τριῶν ἡμερῶν. καὶ καταβαίνουσιν εἰς

τὰ ἄδυτα καὶ ἀνενέγκασαι ἐπιτιθέασιν ἐπὶ τῶν βωμῶν. ὧν νομίζουσι τὸν

λαμβάνοντα καὶ τῷ σπόρῳ συγκαταβάλλοντα εὐφορίαν ἕξειν. λέγουσι δὲ

καὶ δράκοντας κάτω εἶναι περὶ τὰ χάσματα, οὓς τὰ πολλὰ τῶν βληθέντων

κατεσθίειν· διὸ καὶ κρότον γίνεσθαι ὁπόταν ἀντλῶσιν αἱ γυναῖκες καὶ ὅταν

ἀποτιθῶνται πάλιν τὰ πλάσματα ἐκεῖνα, ἵνα ἀναχωρήσωσιν οἱ δράκοντες οὓς

νομίζουσι φρουροὺς τῶν ἀδύτων. τὰ δὲ αὐτὰ καὶ ἀρρητοφόρια καλεῖται, καὶ

ἄγεται τὸν αὐτὸν λόγον ἔχοντα περὶ τῆς τῶν καρπῶν γενέσεως καὶ τῆς τῶν

ἀνθρώπων σπορᾶς. ἀναφέρονται δὲ κἀνταῦθα ἄρρητα ἱερὰ ἐκ στέατος τοῦ

σίτου κατεσκευασμένα, μιμήματα δρακόντων καὶ ἀνδρῶν σχημάτων. λαμβάνουσι

δὲ κώνου θαλλοὺς _διὰ τὸ_ πολύγονον τοῦ φυτοῦ. ἐμβάλλονται δὲ καὶ εἰς τὰ

μέγαρα οὕτως καλούμενα ἄδυτα ἐκεῖνά τε καὶ χοῖροι ὡς ἤδη ἔφαμεν, καὶ

αὐτοὶ διὰ τὸ πολύτοκον, εἰς σύνθημα τῆς γενέσεως τῶν καρπῶν καὶ τῶν

ἀνθρώπων, ὡς χαριστήρια τῇ Δήμητρι ἐπειδὴ τὸν δημήτριον καρπὸν παρέχουσα

ἐποίησεν ἥμερον τὸ τῶν ἀνθρώπων γένος. _ὁ μὲν οὖν ἄνω τῆς ἑορτῆς_ λόγος ὁ

μυθικός· ὁ δὲ προκείμενος φυσικός· Θεσμοφόρια καλεῖται καθότι θεσμοφόρος

ἡ Δημήτηρ κατονομάζεται, τιθεῖσα νόμον ἤτοι θεσμὸν καθ’ οὓς τὴν τροφὴν

πορίζεσθαί τε καὶ κατεργάζεσθαι ἀνθρώπους δέον.

[309] The rites of purification included strict chastity, for the purport

of which as a conservation of energy see Dr Frazer, _Golden Bough_, 2nd

ed. II. p. 210.