Psyche
The Cult of Souls and Belief in Immortality among the Greeks
By
ERWIN ROHDE
LONDON
KEGAN PAUL, TRENCH, TRUBNER & CO., LTD.
NEW YORK: HARCOURT, BRACE & COMPANY, INC.
1925
Translated from the eighth edition by
W. B. HILLIS. M.A.
_Printed in Great Britain by Stephen Austin & Sons, Ltd., Hertford._
CONTENTS
PAGE.
PREFACE TO THE FIRST EDITION . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . VII
PREFACE TO THE SECOND EDITION . . . . . . . . . . . . . . XI
PRELIMINARY NOTE TO THE SEVENTH AND EIGHTH EDITION XIII
TRANSLATOR'S NOTE . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . XV
PART I
CHAP.
I. BELIEFS ABOUT THE SOUL AND CULT OF SOULS IN THE HOMERIC
POEMS . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3
II. ISLANDS OF THE BLEST. _Translation_ . . . . . . . . . 55
III. CAVE DEITIES. SUBTERRANEAN _Translation_ . . . . . . 88
IV. HEROES . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 115
V. THE CULT OF SOULS . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 156
I. Cult of Chthonic Deities . . . . . . . . . . . 158
II. Funeral ceremonies and worship of the dead . . 162
III. Traces of the Cult of Souls in the Blood Feud
and Satisfaction for murder . . . . . . . 174
VI. THE ELEUSINIAN MYSTERIES . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 217
VII. IDEAS OF THE FUTURE LIFE . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 236
PART II
VIII. ORIGINS OF THE BELIEF IN IMMORTALITY. THE THRACIAN WORSHIP
OF DIONYSOS . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 253
IX. DIONYSIAC RELIGION IN GREECE. ITS AMALGAMATION WITH
APOLLINE RELIGION. ECSTATIC PROPHECY. RITUAL
PURIFICATION AND EXORCISM. ASCETICISM . . . . . . . . 282
X. THE ORPHICS . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 335
XI. THE PHILOSOPHERS . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 362
XII. THE LAY AUTHORS (LYRIC POETS--PINDAR--THE TRAGEDIANS) . . 411
{vi}
XIII. PLATO . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 463
XIV. THE LATER AGE OF THE GREEK WORLD . . . . . . . . . . . . . 490
I. Philosophy . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 490
II. Popular Belief . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 524
APPENDIX
I. Consecration of persons struck by lightning . . . . . . . 581
II. ~maschalismo/s~ . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 582
III. ~amu/êtoi, a/gamoi~, Danaids in the lower world . . . . . 586
IV. The Tetralogies of Antiphon . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 588
V. Ritual Purification . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 588
VI. Hekate and the ~Hekatika\ pha/smata~ . . . . . . . . . . . 590
VII. The Hosts of Hekate . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 593
VIII. Disintegration of Consciousness and Reduplication of
Personality . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 595
IX. The Great Orphic Theogony . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 596
X. Previous Lives of Pythagoras. His Descent to Hades . . . . 598
XI. Initiation considered as Adoption by the god . . . . . . . 601
XII. Magical Exorcisms of the Dead . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 603
{{vii}}
PREFACE TO THE FIRST EDITION
THIS book offers an account of the opinions held by the Greeks about
the life of the human soul after death, and is thus intended as a
contribution to the history of Greek religion. Such an undertaking
has in a special measure to contend with the difficulties that face
any inquiry into the religious life and thought of the Greeks. Greek
religion was a natural growth, not a special foundation, and the
ideas and feelings which gave it its inward tone and outward shape
never received abstract formulation. It expressed itself in
religious performances alone: it had no sacred books from which we
might determine the inward meaning and interconnexion of the ideas
with which the Greeks approached the gods created by their faith.
The central essence of the religion held by the Greek people, in
spite of this absence of conceptual formulation--or perhaps because
of it--preserved its original character to a remarkable degree: the
speculations and fancies of Greek poets continually refer to this
central nucleus. Indeed the poets and philosophers in such of their
writings as have come down to us are our only authorities for the
religious thought of the Greeks. In the present inquiry they have
naturally had to be our guides for the greater part of the way. But
though under the special conditions of Greek life the religious
views of poets and philosophers represent an important side of Greek
religion, they yet allow us to perceive very clearly the independent
and self-determined position with regard to the ancestral religion
retained by the individual. The individual believer might always, if
his own temper and disposition allowed him, give himself up to the
plain and unsophisticated emotions which had shaped and decided the
faith of the people and the religious performances of popular
~euse/beia~. But we should know very little of the religious ideas
that filled the mind of the believing Greek if we had to do without
the evidence of philosophers and poets (and of some Attic orators as
well) in whose words dumb and inarticulate emotion finds expression.
The inquirer would, however, be entirely on the wrong track {viii}
and be led to some remarkable conclusions who ventured without more
ado to deduce from the religious ideas that find expression in Greek
literature a complete Theology of the Greek _people_. Where direct
literary statements and allusions fail us we are left with nothing
but surmises in face of the religion of the Greeks and its inmost
guiding forces. Of course there are plenty of people of sanguine
temperament and industrious fancy who find no difficulty in
producing for our benefit the most admirable solutions of the
problem. Others in varying degrees of good faith press the emotions
of Christian piety into the service of explaining ancient faith in
gods. Thus injustice is done to both forms of religion and an
understanding of the essentials of Greek belief in its true and
independent reality is made completely impossible. A good example of
this is provided by the Eleusinian Mysteries, and by that favourite
topic of controversy (which has, indeed, received more than its due
share of attention from students of religion), the amalgamation of
the worship of gods and the belief in Souls said to have taken place
therein. Nowhere else has the complete unprofitableness of the
attempt to make use of the shifting ideas and tendencies of modern
civilization to explain the underlying motive forces of these
significant cult practices, been more strikingly and repeatedly
demonstrated. On this head in particular the author of the present
work has renounced all attempts to cast a fitful and ambiguous light
upon the venerable gloom of the subject by the help of the farthing
dip of his own private imaginings. There is no denying that here as
in so many departments of ancient ~euse/beia~ there is something
greater and finer that eludes our grasp. The revealing word, never
having been written down, has been lost. Instead of trying to find a
substitute in modern catch phrases it seems better simply to
describe, in the plainest and most literal fashion, the actual
phenomena of Greek piety exactly as they are known to us. There will
be plenty of opportunity for the author's own suggestions and they
need not always obtrude themselves. The aim of this work is to make
plain the facts of the Greek _Cult of Souls_ and of that belief in
immortality the inner workings of which are only partially
intelligible to our most sympathetic efforts to understand them. To
give a clearer presentation of the origin and development of those
practices and those beliefs; to distinguish the transformations
through which they passed and their relationship with other and
kindred intellectual tendencies; to disentangle the many different
lines of thought and speculation from the inextricable {ix}
confusion in which they lie in many minds (and in many books) and to
let them stand out clearly and distinctly one from another, seemed
particularly desirable. Why this design has not been carried out by
the same methods throughout; why it has sometimes seemed sufficient
to give a bald summary of the essential points, while at other times
certain topics are pursued into their most distant ramifications
(sometimes with apparently irrelevant prolixity), will be obvious
enough to those who are familiar with the subject. Where a more
careful examination of the overflowing mass of detail was to be
attempted advantage has been taken of the Appendix to achieve a
greater, though still only a relative degree of completeness. This
was made possible by the lengthy period which elapsed between the
publication of the two parts of the book. The first half [to the end
of chapter vii] appeared as long ago as the spring of 1890.
Unpropitious circumstances have delayed the completion of the
remainder till the present moment. The two parts could easily be
kept separate (as they have been): in the main they fall apart and
correspond to the two sides of the question indicated in the title
of the book--Cult of Souls and Belief in Immortality. The Cult of
Souls and the faith in immortality may eventually come together at
some points, but they have a different origin and travel most of the
way on separate paths. The conception of immortality in particular
arises from a spiritual intuition which reveals the souls of men as
standing in close relationship, and indeed as being of like
substance, with the everlasting gods. And simultaneously the gods
are regarded as being in their nature like the soul of man, i.e. as
free spirits needing no material or visible body. (It is this
spiritualized view of the gods--not the belief in gods itself as
Aristotle supposes in the remarkable statement quoted by Sextus
Empiricus Adv. Mathematicos, iii, 20 ff.--which arises from the
vision of its own divine nature achieved by the soul ~kath'
heautê/n~ relieved of the body, in ~enthousiasmoi/~ and
~mantei=ai~.) And this conception leads far away from the ideas on
which the Cult of Souls was based.
The publication of the book in two parts has brought with it a
regrettable circumstance for which I must ask the indulgence of
well-disposed readers (that the first half found so many of them is
a fact which I must gratefully acknowledge). As the dimensions of the
whole work grew beyond expectation and almost overstepped the
~me/tron au/tarkes~, the sixteen excursuses which were promised in
{x} the first volume have had to be dropped: the book would
otherwise have been overloaded. So far as they possess independent
interest they will find a place elsewhere. They are real excursuses
and were intended as such, and the proper understanding of the book
will not be affected by their absence.
ERWIN ROHDE.
HEIDELBERG.
_November 1st, 1893._
{{xi}}
PREFACE TO THE SECOND EDITION
THE publication of a second edition of this book affords me a
welcome opportunity of making my account more exact and to the point
in certain places; of adding some points that had been overlooked or
omitted; and of noticing with approval or disapproval some divergent
opinions that had obtained currency in the interval. Controversy is,
however, confined within the narrowest limits and to points of minor
importance (and only then in answer to more serious and significant
objections). The plan and--if I may say so--the style of the whole
book demanded throughout, and more especially in the great points at
issue, a purely positive statement of my own views and the results
of my own studies. Such a statement, it may well be imagined, was
not arrived at without being preceded in the mind of the author by a
controversial reckoning with the manifold views and doctrines of
others upon the subjects here dealt with--views which in some cases
he felt obliged to reject. Controversy in this sense lies behind
every page of the book, though as a rule only in a latent condition.
In this condition I have been content to let it remain in this
revised edition of the book. My opinions were not arrived at without
toil and much careful reflection; one view being made to reinforce
another till they were all bound together in a single
closely-knitted whole. Neither further reflection on my part nor the
criticisms of others have shaken my belief in the tenability of
opinions reached in this way. I have therefore ventured to leave my
account unaltered in all its main points. I hope that it contains
its own justification and defence in itself without further
vindication on my part.
Nothing in the plan or execution of the whole or its parts has been
altered; neither have I taken anything away. The book contained
nothing that was superfluous to the attainment of the object that I
had in view. This object, it will be apparent, was not in the least
to provide a brief and compendious statement of the most
indispensable facts about the cult of Souls and the belief in
immortality among the Greeks for the benefit of those who wished to
take a hasty {xii} glance over the subject. Such a hasty picker-up
of knowledge who regards himself--I cannot imagine why--as
peculiarly fitted to criticise my book, has ingenuously besought me,
in view of a second edition which he was kind enough to think
probable, to throw overboard most of what he considered the
superfluous parts of the book. With this request I have not felt
myself able to comply. My book was written for maturer readers who
have passed beyond the school stage and look for something more than
an elementary handbook, and who would be able to understand and
appreciate the plan and intention which led me to draw my material
so widely from many departments of literary and cultural history.
The first edition of the book found many such readers: I may hope
and expect that the second will do the same.
In its revised form the book has been divided for the convenience of
those who use it into two volumes (which correspond with the two
parts in which it was first published). I was urged to take away the
notes that stand at the foot of the text and relegate them to a
place by themselves in a separate appendix. I found, however, that I
could not bring myself to adopt this fashionable modern practice,
which so far as I have experience of it in books published in recent
years seems to me to be inconvenient and to hinder rather than help
that undisturbed appreciation of the text which such an arrangement
is intended to serve. Independent readers who in using the book are
working out the subject for themselves would certainly not desire
the separation of the documentary evidence from the statement of the
author's view. The book has also, to my peculiar satisfaction,
attracted a large number of readers from outside the immediate
circle of professional philologists. Such readers have evidently not
been seriously disturbed by the elaborate and perhaps rather
pedantic aspect of the mysterious disquisitions at the foot of the
page, and have been able to fix their attention upon the clearer
language of the text above. I have therefore decided to remove a few
only of the notes which had grown to independent dimensions to an
appendix at the end of each of the two volumes.
ERWIN ROHDE.
HEIDELBERG.
_November 27th, 1897._
{{xiii}}
PRELIMINARY NOTE TO THE SEVENTH AND EIGHTH EDITIONS
IN supervising together this reprint of "Psyche" we have found
ourselves faced with the question which Schöll and Dieterich had to
decide in bringing out the third edition--whether changes or
additions would be admissible. It went without saying that the text
must remain untouched in the form last given to it by Rohde's own
hand. Nor was it possible to make any additions to the notes without
seriously disturbing the carefully considered architecture of the
whole book. It would have been more possible to add an appendix or
supplementary pamphlet recording the literature of the subject which
has appeared since 1898 and giving an account of the present state
of the questions dealt with by Rohde: as has been done with the
"Griechische Roman" by W. Schmid. But on making the attempt we soon
found that the problem was a different one in the case of "Psyche"
with which (much more than in the other case) all subsequent study of
the history of religion as pursued by all nations has had to reckon,
and from which such study has in no small degree taken its starting
point. We have therefore refrained; and we have also refrained from
remodelling the citations to make them correspond with critical
editions that have since appeared. This process could not be carried
through without, in some places, introducing contradictions with
Rohde's interpretation that would have necessitated more detailed
discussion. Rohde's own method of citation was only seriously
inconvenient in the case of Euripides: here he evidently, as we
observed from about the middle of the first volume onwards, made use
of more than one edition at the same time, and has consequently
quoted lines in accordance with different enumerations. For the
greater assurance and convenience of the reader the lines are
uniformly referred to according to the numbering of Nauck. This task
has been undertaken by our devoted helper Frl. Emilie Boer, who has
also verified, with a very few exceptions, the whole of the
references to ancient writers and inscriptions; {xiv} a considerable
number of errors missed by the author or later editors have thus
been corrected. The minor changes introduced in the third and
following editions--the recording on the margin of the pagination of
the first edition and the valuable enlargement of the index due to
W. Nestle with the assistance of O. Crusius--have all naturally been
retained.
F. BOLL. O. WEINREICH.
HEIDELBERG.
_November, 1920._
{{xv}}
TRANSLATOR'S NOTE
ROHDE is very unsystematic in his mode of quoting from ancient
authorities: he has, for example, four different ways of referring
to the Iliad and the Odyssey, two of referring to Demosthenes and
the Orators, etc. In quoting from the lesser authorities he
sometimes used editions which have since become antiquated. (He even
goes so far as to quote Clem. Alex. by the page and letter of
Heinsius' re-edition of Sylburg.) I have made an attempt to reduce
the number of inconsistencies and to give references where possible
to modern editions. In these and other small ways I have tried to
make the notes--the text I hope is intelligible enough--more
accessible to English readers. I have given references to English
translations of German works (where I have been able to find them);
but I have refrained from adding references to the modern literature
of the subject: most readers of the book will prefer to do that for
themselves. In order to save space I have used abbreviation pretty
freely in quoting names of authors and titles of books. The
abbreviated forms agree generally with those given in Liddell and
Scott (supplemented by the list drawn up for the new edition of the
Lexicon): most of the following may be noted:--
A. (or Aesch.) = Aeschylus.
Amm. = Ammonius.
_AP._ = _Anthologia Palatina_.
Apollod. = Ps.-Apollodorus, _Bibiotheca_ (unless _Epit._ is
added).
A. R. = Apollonius Rhodius.
_Ath. Mitth._ = _Mittheilungen d. deutsch. arch. Inst. zu Athen_.
Aug. = Augustine.
D. (or Dem.) = Demosthenes.
D. C. = Dio Cassius.
D. Chr. = Dio Chrysostom.
D. H. = Dionysius of Halicarnassus (i.e. _Rom. Antiq._
unless otherwise indicated)
D. L. = Diogenes Laertius.
D. P. = Dionysius Periegetes.
D. S. = Diodorus Siculus.
E. (or Eur.) = Euripides.
_Epigr. Gr._ = Kaibel, _Epigrammata Graeca_.
Eun. = Eunapius _Vitae Sophistarum_. {xvi}
Gal. = Galen (vol. and page of Kühn).
_GDI._ = Collitz, _Griechische Dialektinschriften_.
**_Gp._ = _Geoponica_.
Grimm = Grimm, _Deutsche Mythologie_ transl. as _Teutonic
Mythology_, by J. S. Stallybrass, Lond., 1880.
Heraclid. _Pol._ = Heraclides Ponticus, _Politica_.
Him. = Himerius.
Hipp. = Hippolytus.
Hp. = Hippokrates.
Hsch. = Hesychius.
H. Smyrn. = Hermippus of Smyrna.
Homer is quoted by the majuscules of the Greek alphabet for the books
of the Iliad, by the minuscules for the Odyssey.
_Inscr. Perg._ = _Inschriften von Pergamon_ ed. Fraenkel.
_IPE._ = _Inscriptiones Ponti Euxini_ ed. Latyschev.
Is. = Isaeus.
J. M. = Justin Martyr.
_Leg. Sacr._ = von Prott and Ziehen, _Leges Graecorum Sacrae_.
Pall. = Palladius, _de Re Rustica_.
Phld. = Philodemus.
Pi. = Pindar.
Pl. = Plato.
_PLG._ = Bergk, _Poetae Lyrici Graeci_ ed. 4.
Plot. = Plotinus.
Plu. = Plutarch.
_PMagPar._ = Paris Magical Papyrus ed. Wessely.
_Rh. Mus._ = _**Rheinisches Museum_.
S. (or Soph.) = Sophokles.
S. E. = Sextus Empiricus.
_SIG._ = Dittenberger, _Sylloge Inscriptionum Graecarum_
ed. 2 (unless otherwise stated).
Str. = Strabo (Casaubon's page).
_Tab. Defix._ = _Tabellae Defixionum_ ed. Wünsch (Appendix to
_CIA_.).
Thphr. = Theophrastus (_Ch._ = _Characters_ ed. Jebb).
Tylor = E. B. Tylor, _Primitive Culture_ ed. 4.
Tz. = Tzetzes.
Vg. = Vergil.
_Vors._ = Diels, _Fragmente der Vorsokratiker_ ed. 4 (vol. 1
unless otherwise indicated).
X. (or Xen.) = Xenophon historicus.
Znb. = Zenobius.
I take this opportunity of thanking my friend Mr. R. Burn, of
Glasgow University, for his invaluable help in these matters.
W. B. HILLIS.
PART I
{{3}}
CHAPTER I
BELIEFS ABOUT THE SOUL AND CULT OF SOULS IN THE HOMERIC POEMS
I
§ 1
To the immediate understanding of mankind nothing seems so
self-evident, nothing so little in need of explanation, as the
phenomenon of Life itself, the fact of man's own existence. On the
other hand, the cessation of this so self-evident existence,
whenever it obtrudes itself upon his notice, arouses man's
ever-renewed astonishment. There are primitive peoples to whom death
whenever it occurs seems an arbitrary abbreviation of life: if it is
not due to visible forces, then some invisible magic must have
caused it. So difficult is it for such peoples to grasp the idea
that the present state of being alive and conscious can come to an
end of its own accord.
Once reflection on such problems is aroused, life itself, standing
as it does on the threshold of all sensation and experience, soon
begins to appear no less mysterious than death--that kingdom into
which no experience reaches. It may even come about that when they
are regarded too long and too hard, light and darkness seem to
change places. It was to a Greek poet that the question suggested
itself: "Who knows then whether Life be not Death, and what we here
call Death be called Life there below?"
From such jaded wisdom and its doubts Greek civilization is still
far removed when, though already at an advanced stage in its
development, it first speaks to us in the Homeric poems. The poet
and his heroes speak with lively feeling of the pains and troubles
of life, both in its individual phases and as a whole. The gods have
allotted a life of pain and misery to men, while they themselves
remain free from care. On the other hand, to turn aside from life
altogether never enters the head of anyone in Homer. Nothing may be
said expressly of the joy and happiness of life, but that is because
such things {4} go without saying among a vigorous folk engrossed in
a movement of progress, whose circumstances were never complicated
and where all the conditions of happiness easily fell to the lot of
the strong in activity and enjoyment. And, indeed, it is only for
the strong, the prudent, and the powerful that this Homeric world is
intended. Life and existence upon this earth obviously belongs to
them--is it not an indispensable condition of the attainment of all
particular good things? As for death--the state which is to follow
our life here--there is no danger of anyone mistaking _that_ for
life. "Do not try and explain away death to me," says Achilles to
Odysseus in Hades; and this would be the answer any Homeric man
would have given to the sophisticated poet, if he had tried to
persuade him that the state of things after life on this earth is
the real life. Nothing is so hateful to man as death and the gates
of Hades: for when death comes it is certain that life--this sweet
life of ours in the sunlight--is done with, whatever else there may
be to follow.
§ 2
But what _does_ follow? What happens when life departs for ever from
the inanimate body?
It is strange that anyone should have maintained (as it has been in
recent times[1\1]) that in any stage of the development of the
Homeric poems the belief can be found that with the moment of death
all is at an end: that nothing survives death. We are not warranted
by any statement in either of the two poems (to be found perhaps in
their oldest parts, as is suggested) nor yet by the tell-tale
silence of the poet, in attributing such an idea either to the poet
or his contemporaries. Wherever the occasion of death is described
we are told how the dead man (still referred to by his name, or his
"Psyche", hastens away into the house of Aïdes--into the kingdom of
Aïdes and the grim Persephoneia; goes down to the darkness below the
earth, to Erebos; or, more vaguely, sinks into the earth itself. In
any case, it is no mere _nothing_ that can enter the gloomy depths,
nor over what does not exist could one suppose that the divine Pair
holds sway below.
But how are we to think of this "Psyche" that, unnoticed during the
lifetime of the body, and only observable when it is "separated"
from the body, now glides off to join the multitude of its kind
assembled in the murky regions of the "Invisible" (Aïdes)? Its name,
like the names given to the {5} "soul" in many languages, marks it
off as something airy and breathlike, revealing its presence in the
breathing of the living man. It escapes out of the mouth--or out of
the gaping wound of the dying--and now freed from its prison
becomes, as the name well expresses it, an "image" (~ei/dôlon~). On
the borders of Hades Odysseus sees floating "the images of those
that have toiled (on earth)". These immaterial images withdrawing
themselves from the grasp of the living, like smoke (_Il._ xxiii,
100) or a shadow (_Od._ xi, 207; x, 495), must at least recognizably
present the general outlines of the once living person. Odysseus
immediately recognizes his mother, Antikleia, in such a
shadow-person, as well as the lately dead Elpenor, and those of his
companions of the Trojan War who have gone before him. The psyche of
Patroklos appearing to Achilleus by night resembles the dead man
absolutely in stature, bodily appearance and expression. The nature
of this shadowy double of mankind, separating itself from man in
death and taking its departure then, can best be realized if we
first make clear to ourselves what qualities it does _not_ possess.
The psyche of Homeric belief does not, as might have been supposed,
represent what we are accustomed to call "spirit" as opposed to
"body". All the faculties of the human "spirit" in the widest
sense--for which the poet has a large and varied vocabulary--are
indeed only active and only possible so long as a man is still
alive: when death comes the complete personality is no longer in
existence. The body, that is the corpse, now becomes mere "senseless
earth" and falls to pieces, while the psyche remains untouched. But
the latter is by no means the refuge of "spirit" and its faculties,
any more than the corpse is. It (the psyche) is described as being
without feeling, deserted by mind and the organs of mind. All power
of will, sensation, and thought have vanished with the
disintegration of the individual man into his component parts. So
far from it being permissible to ascribe the functions of "spirit"
to the psyche, it would be more reasonable to speak of a contrast
between the two. Man is a living creature, conscious of himself and
intelligently active, only so long as the psyche remains within him.
But it is not the psyche which communicates its own faculties to man
and gives him capacity for life together with consciousness, will
and knowledge. It is rather that during the union of the psyche and
the body all the faculties of living and acting lie within the
empire of the body, of which they are functions. Without the
presence of the psyche, the body cannot perceive, feel, or will, but
it does not use these {6} or any of its faculties through or by
means of the psyche. Nowhere does Homer attribute any such function
to the psyche in living man: it is, in fact, only mentioned when its
separation from the living man is imminent or has occurred. As the
body's shadow-image it survives the body and all its vital powers.
If we now ask--as our Homeric psychologists generally do--which, in
the face of this mysterious association between a living body and
its counterfeit the psyche, is the "real" man, we find that Homer in
fact gives contradictory answers. Not infrequently (indeed, in the
first lines of the Iliad) the material body is contrasted,[2\1] as
the "man himself", with the psyche--which cannot therefore be any
organ or component part of the living body. On the other hand, that
which takes its departure at death and hastens into the realm of
Hades is also referred to by the proper name of the person as
"himself"[3\1]--which means that here the shadowy psyche (for
nothing else can go down to Hades) is invested with the name and
value of the complete personality, the "self" of the man. But those
who draw from these phrases the conclusion that either the body or
the psyche must be the "real man" have, in either case,[4\1] left
out of account or unexplained one half of the recorded evidence.
Regarded without prejudice, these apparently contradictory methods
of speaking simply prove that both the visible man (the body and its
own faculties) _and_ the indwelling psyche could be described as the
man's "self". According to the Homeric view, human beings exist
twice over: once as an outward and visible shape, and again as an
invisible "image" which only gains its freedom in death. This, and
nothing else, is the Psyche.
Such an idea--that the psyche should dwell with the living and fully
conscious personality, like an alien and a stranger, a feebler
double of the man, as his "other self"--this may well seem very
strange to us. And yet this is what so-called "savage" peoples,[5\1]
all over the world, actually believe. Herbert Spencer in particular
has shown this most decisively. It is therefore not very surprising
to find the Greeks, too, sharing a mode of thought that lies so
close to the mind of primitive mankind. The earlier age which handed
down to the Greeks of Homer their beliefs about the soul cannot have
failed any more than other nations to observe the facts upon which a
fantastic logic based the conclusion of man's double personality. It
was not the phenomena of sensation, will, perception, or thought in
waking and conscious man which led to this conclusion. It was the
experience of an apparent {7} double of the self in dreaming, in
swoons, and ecstasy, that gave rise to the inference of a two-fold
principle of life in man, and of the existence of an independent,
separable "second self" dwelling within the viable self of daily
life. One has only to listen to the words of a Greek writer of a
later period who, far more explicitly than Homer, describes the
nature of the psyche and at the same time lets us see the origin of
the belief in such an entity. Pindar (fr. 131) tells us that the
body obeys Death, the almighty, but the image of the living creature
lives on ("since this alone is derived from the gods": which, of
course, is not Homeric belief); for it (this _eidôlon_) is
_sleeping_ when the limbs are active, but when the body is asleep it
often reveals the future in a dream. Words could hardly make it
plainer that in the activities of the waking and conscious man, the
image-soul has no part. Its world is the world of sleep. While the
other "I", unconscious of itself, lies in sleep, its double is up
and doing. In other words, while the body of the sleeper lies
wrapped in slumber, motionless, the sleeper in his dream lives and
sees many strange and wonderful things. It is "himself" who does
this (of that there can be no doubt), and yet not the self known and
visible to himself and others; for that lies still as death beyond
the reach of sensation. It follows that there lives within a man a
second self, active in dreaming. That the dream experiences are
veritable realities and not empty fancies for Homer is also certain.
He never says, as later poets often do, that the dreamer "thought"
he saw this or that. The figures seen in dreams are real figures,
either of the gods themselves or a "dream spirit" sent by them, or a
fleeting "image" (eidôlon) that they allow to appear for a moment.
Just as the dreamer's capacity for vision is no mere fancy, so, too,
the objects that he sees are realities. In the same way it is
something real that appears to a man asleep as the shape of a person
lately dead. Since this shape can show itself to a dreamer, it must
of necessity still exist; consequently it survives death, though,
indeed, only as a breath-like image, much as we have seen
reflections of our own faces mirrored in water.[6\1] It cannot,
indeed--this airy substance--be grasped or held like the once viable
self; and hence comes its name, the "psyche". The primeval argument
for such a counterpart of man is repeated by Achilleus himself
(_Il._ xxiii, 103 f.) when his dead friend appears to him and then
vanishes again: so, then, ye Gods, there yet lives in Hades' house a
psyche and shadowy image (of man), but there is no midriff in it
(and consequently none of the faculties which preserve the visible
man alive). {8}
The dreamer, then, and what he sees in his dream proves the
existence of an _alter ego_ in man.[7\1] Man, however, also observes
that his body may suffer a deathlike torpor without the second self
being occupied with dream experiences. In such moments of "swoon",
according to Greek thought and actual Homeric expression, "the
psyche has left the body."[8\1] Where had it gone? No man could
tell. But on this occasion it comes back again: whereupon the
"spirit is gathered again into the midriff". If ever, as happens in
the case of death, the psyche should become completely separated
from the visible body, then the "spirit" will never return. But the
psyche, which in those temporary separations from the body[9\1] did
not perish, will not vanish into nothingness now.
§ 3
So far experience takes us, from which primitive logic arrived at
very much the same conclusions all over the world. But, we may
proceed to ask, where does this liberated psyche go? What becomes of
it? Here begins "the undiscovered country" and it might appear that
at its entrance there was a complete parting of the ways.
Primitive people are accustomed to attribute unlimited powers to the
disembodied "soul"--powers all the more formidable because they are
not seen. Indeed, they refer in part _all_ invisible forces to the
action of "souls", and strain anxiously by means of the richest
offerings within their power to secure for themselves the goodwill
of these powerful spirits. Homer, on the contrary, knows nothing of
any influence exerted by the psyche upon the visible world, and,
consequently, hardly anything of a cult of the psyche. How, indeed,
could the souls (as I may venture to call them without further risk
of misunderstanding) have any such influence? They are all without
exception collected in the realm of Aïdes, far from the living,
separated from them by Okeanos and Acheron, guarded by the
relentless god himself, the inexorable doorkeeper. Only a fabled
hero like Odysseus may for once, perhaps, reach the entrance of that
gloomy kingdom alive: the souls themselves, once they have crossed
the river, never come back--so the soul of Patroklos assures his
friend. How do they get there? The implication seems to be that on
leaving the body the soul passes away, unwilling and complaining of
its fate, but, nevertheless, unresisting, to Hades; and after the
destruction of the body by fire, disappears for ever into the depths
of Erebos. It was only a {9} later poet who, in giving the final
touches to the Odyssey, introduced Hermes, the "Guide of the Dead".
Whether this is an invention of the poet's, or, as appears more
likely, it is borrowed from the ancient folk-belief of some remote
corner of Greece, in the completely rounded circle of Homeric belief
at any rate it is an innovation and an important one. Doubt has
arisen, it appears, whether indeed _all_ the souls must of necessity
pass away into the Unseen; and they are provided with a divine guide
who by his mysteriously compelling summons (_Od._ xxiv, 1) and the
power of his magic wand constrains them to follow him.[10\1]
Down in the murky underworld they now float unconscious, or, at
most, with a twilight half-consciousness, wailing in a shrill
diminutive voice, helpless, indifferent. Of course, flesh, bones,
and sinews,[11\1] the midriff, the seat of all the faculties of mind
and will--these are all gone for ever. They were attached to the
once-visible partner of the psyche, and that has been destroyed. To
speak of an "immortal life" of these souls, as scholars both ancient
and modern have done, is incorrect. They can hardly be said to
_live_ even, any more than the image does that is reflected in the
mirror; and that they prolong to eternity their shadowy
image-existence--where in Homer do we ever find this said? The
psyche may survive its visible companion, but it is helpless without
it. Is it possible to believe that a realistically imaginative,
materially minded people like the Greeks would have regarded as
immortal a creature incapable (once the funeral is over) of
requiring or receiving further _nourishment_--either in religious
cult or otherwise?
The daylight world of Homer is thus freed from spectres of the night
(for even in dreams the psyche is seen no more after the body is
burnt); from those intangible and ghostly essences at whose
unearthly activity the superstitious of every age tremble. The
living are no longer troubled by the dead. The world is governed by
the gods alone; not pale and ghostly phantoms, but palpable and
fully materialized figures, working powerfully everywhere, and
dwelling on the clear mountain tops: "and brightness gleams around
them." No daimonic powers can compare with the gods or can avail
against them; and night does not set free the departed souls of the
dead. The reader starts involuntarily and begins to suspect the
influence of another age, when in a part of Book XX of the Odyssey,
added by a later hand, he reads how shortly before the destruction
of the suitors the clairvoyant soothsayer beholds in hall and
forecourt the soul-phantoms (eidôla) {10} floating in multitudes and
hurrying down to the darkness under the earth: "the sun was darkened
in the heaven and a thick mist came over all." The later poet has
been very successful in suggesting the terror awakened by a
foreboding of tragedy; but such terror in the face of the doings of
the spirit world is entirely un-Homeric.
§ 4
Were the Greeks, then, always so untroubled by such fears of the
souls of the dead? Was there never any _cult_ of disembodied
spirits, such as was not only known to all primitive peoples
throughout the world, but was also quite familiar to nations
belonging to the same family as the Greeks, for instance, the
Indians and the Persians? The question and its answer have more than
a passing interest. In later times--long subsequent to Homer--we
find in Greece itself a lively worship of ancestors and a general
cult of the departed. Were it demonstrable--as it is generally
assumed without proof--that the Greeks only at this late period
first began to pay a religious cult to the souls of the dead, this
fact would give very strong support to the oft-repeated theory that
the cult of the dead arose from the ruins of a previous worship of
the gods. Anthropologists are accustomed to deny this and to regard
the worship of disembodied souls as one of the earliest forms (if
not as originally the only form) of the reverence paid to unseen
powers. The peoples, however, upon whose conditions of life and
mental conceptions such views are generally based, have indeed
behind them a long past, but no history. What is to prevent pure
speculation and theorizing in conformity with the preconceived idea
just mentioned (which is almost elevated to the position of a
doctrine of faith by some comparative religionists) from introducing
into the dim past of such savage peoples the primitive worship of
gods, out of which the worship of the dead may then subsequently
arise? But _Greek_ religious development can be traced from Homer
onwards for a long period; and there we find the certainly
remarkable fact that a cult of the dead, unknown to Homer, only
appears later, in the course of a long and vigorous expansion of
religious ideas in after times; or, at least, then shows itself more
plainly--but not, it is important to notice, as the precipitate of a
dying belief in gods and worship of the gods, but rather as a
collateral development by the side of that highly developed form of
piety.
Are we, then, really to believe that the cult of disembodied {11}
spirits was absolutely unknown to the Greeks of pre-Homeric times?
Such an assertion, if made without due qualification, is
contradicted by a closer study of the Homeric poems themselves.
It is true that Homer represents for us the earliest great stage in
the evolution of Greek civilization of which we have clear evidence.
But the poems do not stand at the beginning of that evolution.
Indeed, they only stand at the beginning of Greek Epic poetry--so
far as this has been transmitted to us--because the natural
greatness and wide popularity of the Iliad and the Odyssey secured
their preservation in writing. Their very existence and the degree
of artistic finish which they show, oblige us to suppose that behind
them lies a long history of heroic "Saga" poetry. The conditions
which they describe and imply point to a long course of previous
development--from nomadic to city life, from patriarchal rule to the
organization of the Greek Polis. And just as the maturity of
material development tells its tale, so do the refinement and
maturity of culture, the profound and untrammelled knowledge of the
world, the clarity and simplicity of thought reflected in them. All
these things go to show that before Homer, in order to reach Homer,
the Greek world must have thought and learned much--must, indeed,
have unlearned and undone much. As in art, so in all the products of
civilization, what is simple, appropriate, and convincing is not the
achievement of beginners, but the reward of prolonged study. It is
prima facie unthinkable that during the whole length of Greek
evolution before Homer, religion alone, the relationship between man
and the invisible world, should have remained stationary at any one
point. It is not from the comparison of religious beliefs and their
development among kindred nations, nor even from the study of
apparently primitive ideas and usages in the religious life of the
Greeks themselves of later times, that we are to seek the truth
about the religious customs of that remote period which is obscured
for us by the intervening mass of the Homeric poems. Comparative
studies of this kind are valuable in their way, but must only be
used to give further support to the insight derived from less easily
misleading methods of inquiry. For us the only completely
satisfactory source of information about pre-Homeric times is Homer
himself. We are allowed--indeed, we are forced--to conclude that
there have been change in conceptions and customs, if, in that
otherwise so uniform and rounded Homeric world, we meet with
isolated occurrences, customs, forms of speech that contradict the
{12} normal atmosphere of Homer and can only be explained by
reference to a world in all essentials differently orientated from
his own and for the most part kept in the background by Homer. All
that is necessary is to open our eyes, freed from preconceived
ideas, to the "rudiments" ("survivals", as they are better called by
English scholars) of a past stage of civilization discoverable in
the Iliad and Odyssey themselves.
§ 5
Such rudiments of a once vigorous soul-worship are not hard to find
in Homer. In particular, we may refer to what the Iliad tells us of
the manner in which the dead body of Patroklos is dealt with. The
reader need only recall the general outline of the story. In the
evening of the day upon which Hektor has been slain, Achilles with
his Myrmidons sings the funeral dirge to his dead friend: they go
three times in procession round the body, Achilles laying his
"murderous hands" on the breast of Patroklos and calling upon him
with the words: "Hail, Patroklos mine, even in Aïdes'
dwelling-place; what I vowed to thee before is now performed; Hektor
lies slain and is the prey of dogs, and twelve noble Trojan youths
will I slay at thy funeral pyre." After they have laid aside their
arms he makes ready the funeral feast for his companions--bulls,
sheep, goats, and pigs are killed, "and all around, in beakers-full,
the blood flowed round the corpse." During the night the soul of
Patroklos appears to Achilles demanding immediate burial. In the
morning the host of the Myrmidons marches out in arms, bearing the
body in their midst. The warriors lay locks of their hair, cut off
for the purpose, upon the body, and last of all Achilles places his
own hair in the hand of his friend--it was once pledged by his
father to Spercheios the River-god, but Patroklos must now take it
with him, since return to his home is denied to Achilles. The
funeral pyre is got ready, many sheep and oxen slaughtered. The
corpse is wrapped in their fat, while their carcasses are placed
beside it; jars of oil and honey are set round the body. Next, four
horses are killed, two dogs belonging to Patroklos, and last of all
twelve Trojan youths taken prisoner for this purpose by Achilles.
All these are burnt together with the corpse, and Achilles spends
the whole night pouring out dark wine upon the earth, calling the
while upon the psyche of Patroklos. Only when morning comes is the
fire extinguished with wine; the bones of Patroklos are collected
and laid in a golden casket and entombed within a mound. {13}
Here we have a picture of the funeral of a chieftain which, in the
solemnity and ceremoniousness of its elaborate detail, is in
striking conflict with the normal Homeric conception of the
nothingness of the soul after its separation from the body. A full
and rich sacrifice is here offered to such a soul. This sacrifice is
inexplicable if the soul immediately upon its dissolution flutters
away insensible, helpless and powerless, and therefore incapable of
enjoying the offerings made to it. It is therefore not unnatural
that a method of interpretation which isolates Homer as far as
possible and adheres closely to his own fixed and determinate range
of ideas, should attempt to deny the sacrificial character of the
offerings made on this occasion.[12\1] We may well ask, however,
what else but a sacrifice, i.e. a repast offered in satisfaction of
the needs of the person honoured (in this case the psyche), can be
intended by this stream of blood about the corpse; this slaughtering
and burning of cattle and sheep, horses and dogs, and finally of
twelve Trojan prisoners on or at the funeral pyre? To explain it all
as a mere performance of pious duties, as is often done in
interpreting many of the gruesome pictures of Greek sacrificial
ceremonies, is impossible here. Besides, Homer often tells us of
merely pious observances in honour of the dead, and they are of a
very different character. And the most horrible touch of all (the
human sacrifice is not put in simply to satisfy Achilles' lust for
vengeance--twice over does Achilles call to the soul of Patroklos
with the words: "To _you_ do I bring what I formerly promised to
_you_" (_Il._ xxiii, 20 ff., 180 ff.).[13\1] The whole series of
offerings on this occasion is precisely of the kind which we may
take as typical of the oldest sort of sacrificial ritual such as we
often find in later Greek religion in the cultus of the infernal
deities. The sacrificial offerings are completely burnt in honour of
the Daimon and are not shared between the bystanders as in the case
of other offerings. If such "holocausts", when offered to the
Chthonic and some of the Olympian deities, are to be regarded as
sacrificial in character, then it is unjustifiable to invent some
other meaning for the performances at the funeral pyre of Patroklos.
The offering of wine, oil, and honey, at least, are normal in
sacrificial rituals of later times. Even the severed lock of hair
spread out over the dead body or laid in the cold hand is a well
known sacrificial tribute, and must be supposed such here as much as
in later Greek ceremonial or in that of many other peoples.[14\1] In
fact, this gift in particular, symbolically representing as it does
a more valuable sacrifice by means of another and less important
{14} object (in the giving of which only the goodwill of the giver
is to be considered)--this very offering, like all such symbolical
substitutions, bears witness to the long duration and past
development of the cultus in which it occurs--in this case of the
worship of the dead in pre-Homeric times.
The whole narrative presupposes the idea that by the pouring out of
streams of blood, by offerings of wine and burnt offerings of human
beings and of cattle, the psyche of a person lately dead can be
refreshed, and its resentment mollified. At any rate, it is thus
thought of as accessible to human prayers and as remaining for some
time in the neighbourhood of the sacrifice made to it. This
contradicts what we expect in Homer, and, in fact, just in order to
make this unusual performance plausible to an audience no longer
familiar with the idea, and to make it admissible on a special
occasion, the poet (though the actual course of his story does not
really require it)[15\1] makes the psyche of Patroklos appear by
night to Achilles. And, in fact, to the end of the narrative
Achilles repeatedly greets the soul of Patroklos as though it were
present.[16\1] The unusual way in which Homer deals with this whole
affair, so full of primeval, savage ideas as it is, seems, indeed,
to betray a certain vagueness about what its real meaning may be.
That the writer has certain qualms on the subject is indicated by
the brevity--not at all like Homer--with which the most shocking
part of the story, the slaughter of human beings, together with
horses and dogs, is hurried over. But the thing to be noted
particularly is that the poet is certainly not devising such
unpleasant circumstances for the first time out of his own
imagination. This epic picture of the worship of the dead was
adopted by Homer from an earlier source (whatever that source may
have been),[17\1] and not invented by him. He makes it serve his
special purpose, which is to provide a satisfactory climax to the
series of vivid and emotional scenes beginning with the tragic death
of Patroklos and ending with the death and dishonouring of the
champion of Troy. After such emotional exaltation the overstrained
nerves must not be allowed to relax too suddenly; a last flicker of
the superhuman rage and grief that made Achilles rave so furiously
against his foes must show itself in the serving up of this awful
banquet to the soul of his friend. It is as though a primitive and
long-suppressed savagery had broken out again for a last effort.
Only when all is over does the soul of Achilles find repose in
melancholy resignation. More calmly he calls upon the rest of the
Achæans to take their seats "in a wide circle round about"; and
there follows the {15} description of those splendid "Games", a
subject that must have awakened the enthusiasm of every experienced
athlete in the audience--and was there ever a Greek who was not an
athlete? It is true that athletic contests are described by Homer
mainly on account of their own peculiar interest and for the sake of
the artistic effects that their description allowed. Still, the
selection of such games as a fitting conclusion to a chieftain's
funeral cannot be fully understood except as a survival of an
ancient and once vigorous worship of the dead. Such athletic
contests in honour of the great immediately after their death are
often referred to by Homer;[18\1] indeed, a funeral is the _only_
occasion[19\1] recognized by him as suitable for the exhibition of
athletic prize-competitions. The practice never quite died out, and
it became usual in later post-Homeric times to mark the festivals of
Heroes and, later of gods, too, by Games which gradually became
regularly repeated performances, developed from the traditional
contests that had concluded the funeral ceremonies of great men.
Now, no one doubts that the _Agon_ at the festival of a Hero or a
god formed part of their religious worship. It is only reasonable,
then, to suppose that the funeral games which accompany the burial
of a chieftain (and are confined to that one occasion) belong to the
religious _cult_ of the dead, and to recognize that such a mode of
worship can only have been introduced at a time when men regarded
the soul, in whose honour the ceremony took place, as capable of
sharing consciously in its enjoyment. Even Homer is certainly
conscious of the fact that the games, like the rest of the offerings
made then, were intended for the satisfaction of the dead and not
solely for the entertainment of the living.[20\1] We may also cite
the declared opinion of Varro, who says that the dead in whose
honour funeral games are celebrated are thereby proved to have been
regarded originally, if not as gods, at least as very powerful
spirits.[21\1] Of course, this feature of the original cultus of the
soul was very easily stripped of its real meaning--it recommended
itself quite apart from its religious significance--and for that
very reason remained longer than other performances of the kind in
general use.
If we now survey the whole series of ritual acts directed to the
honouring of the soul of Patroklos, we can deduce from the
seriousness of these attempts to please the disembodied spirit what
must have been the strength of the original conception--how vivid
must have been the impression of enduring sensibility, of formidable
power possessed by a soul {16} to whom such a cult was offered. It
is true of the cult of the dead, as of any other sacrificial custom,
that its perpetuation is due solely to the hope of avoiding hurt and
obtaining assistance at the hands of the Unseen.[22\1] A generation
that no longer anticipated either help or harm from the "Souls"
might be ready to perform last offices of all kinds to the deserted
body out of pure _piety_, and to offer to the dead a certain
traditional reverence. But this would testify rather to the grief of
those left behind than to any special reverence felt for the
departed.[23\1] This is mostly the case in Homer. It is not,
however, what we should call piety, but much rather mistrust of a
"ghost" become powerful through its separation from the body, that
explains the exaggerated fullness of the funeral offerings that are
made at the burial of Patroklos. They cannot be made to fit in with
the ordinary circle of Homeric ideas. Indeed, that this circle of
ideas excluded all misgiving at the possible action of unseen
spirits is quite clearly shown by the fact that the honours paid
even to a dead man held in such veneration as Patroklos are confined
to the solitary occasion of his funeral. As the psyche of Patroklos
himself assures his friend, once the burning of the body is
completed, it, the psyche, will take its departure to Hades, never
to return.[24\1] It is easy to see that from this point of view
there was no motive whatever that could lead to a permanent cult of
the soul such as was common among the Greeks of later times. But it
should be noticed further that the luxurious repast offered to the
soul of Patroklos on the occasion of his funeral had no point if the
goodwill of the soul which was to be assured by that process would
never have an opportunity in the future of making itself felt. The
contradiction between Homeric belief and Homeric practice on this
occasion is complete, and shows decisively that the traditional view
that would see in this description of soul-worship at the funeral of
Patroklos an effort after _new_ and more lively ideas of the life
after death, must certainly be wrong. When new surmises, wishes,
conjectures begin to arise and seek a means of expression, the new
ideas generally find incomplete utterance in the old and
inappropriate external forms, but express themselves more clearly
and certainly (generally with some tendency to exaggeration) in the
less conservative words and language of men. Here just the opposite
occurs: every word the poet utters about the circumstances
contradicts the elaborately wrought ceremonial which those
circumstances call forth. It is impossible to point to a single
touch that accords with the belief implied by the {17} ceremonial.
The poet's bias is a different and, indeed, an opposite one. Of this
much at least there cannot be the slightest doubt: the funeral
ceremonies over the body of Patroklos are not the first budding of a
new principle, but rather represent a "vestige" of a more vigorous
worship of the dead in earlier times, a worship that must once have
been a complete and sufficient expression of belief in the great and
enduring power of the disembodied spirit. It has, however, been
preserved unaltered into an age that, with quite other religious
beliefs, no longer understands, or at best half-guesses at the sense
of such strange ceremonial observances. Thus ritual generally
outlives both the state of mind and the belief which originally gave
rise to it.
§ 6
Neither the Iliad nor the Odyssey contains anything that can equal
the scenes at the funeral of Patroklos as evidence of primitive
worship of the dead. But even the ordinary forms of interment of the
dead are not entirely without such "vestigial" features. The dead
man's eyes and mouth are closed,[25\1] the body is washed and
anointed, and after being wrapped in a clean linen cloth is laid
upon a bier,[26\1] and the funeral dirge begins.[27\1] It is hardly
possible to see even the remotest, lingering, reminiscence of a once
vigorous worship of the dead in such performances as these; or in
the very simple burial customs that follow the burning of the body;
the bones are collected in a jar or a casket and buried under a
mound, and a post set up to mark the place as a "grave-mound".[28\1]
But when we find that the body of Elpenor, in accordance with the
command issued by his psyche to Odysseus (_Od._ xi, 74), is burned
together with his weapons (_Od._ xii, 13); when, further, we read
that Achilles burnt the weapons of his overthrown foe together with
his body on the funeral pyre (_Il._ vi, 418), it is impossible not
to feel that we have here, too, survivals of an ancient belief that
the soul in some mysterious fashion was capable of making use of
these objects that are burnt along with its discarded bodily
envelope. No one doubts that this is the reason for such a custom
when it meets us in the case of other nations; with the Greeks, too,
it must have had an equally good foundation, however little such is
to be discovered in the ordinary Homeric view of the soul. The
custom, moreover, more precisely described in these cases, was of
general observance; we often hear how the completeness of a burial
requires the burning of the possessions of the dead along with the
body.[29\1] We cannot {18} tell to what extent the duty of offering
to the dead _all_ his movable possessions[30\1] (a duty originally
without doubt interpreted quite literally) had come in Homeric times
to be interpreted in a symbolical sense--a process which reached its
lowest stage in the custom prevalent in later times of presenting an
obol "for the Ferryman of the Dead". Finally, the "funeral feast"
offered by the king to the mourning people either after the funeral
of a chieftain (_Il._ xxiv, 802, 665), or before the burning of his
body (_Il._ xxiii, 29 ff.), could only have derived its full meaning
from an ancient belief that the soul of the person thus honoured
could itself take a share in the feast. In the banquet in honour of
Patroklos the dead man is given a definite portion--the blood of the
slaughtered animals which is poured round his body (_Il._ xxiii,
34). Like the funeral games, this banquet is apparently intended to
propitiate the soul of the dead man. Consequently, we find even
Orestes, after slaying Aigisthos, his father's murderer, offering
him a funeral feast (_Od._ iii, 309)--not, surely, in a mood of
simple "piety". The custom of inviting the whole people, on the
occasion of important funerals, to such a banquet no longer appears
in later times; it has little resemblance to the funeral feasts
shared by the relations of the dead man (~peri/deipna~) that were
afterwards customary; it is far closer to the great _cenæ ferales_
that accompanied the _silicernia_ in Rome, to which the relations of
the dead man, if he were an important person, invited the whole
population.[31\1] After all, it is no harder to understand the
underlying conception of the soul in this case sharing the feast
with the whole people, than it is to understand the same conception
when applied to the great sacrifices to the gods which, though the
congregation partakes, are, in name and in fact, essentially
"Banquets of the Gods" (_Od._ iii, 336).
Such are the relics of ancient soul-worship to be found within the
limits of the Homeric world. Further attention to the spirits of the
dead beyond the time of the funeral was prevented by the deeply
ingrained conviction that after the burning of the body the psyche
was received into the inaccessible world of the Unseen, from which
no traveller returns. But, in order to secure this complete
departure of the soul, it is necessary for the body to be burnt.
Though we do occasionally read in the Iliad or the Odyssey that
immediately after death and before the burning of the body "the
psyche departed to Hades",[32\1] the words must not be taken too
literally; the soul certainly flies off at once towards Hades, but
it hovers now between the realms of the living and {19} the dead
until it is received into the final safekeeping of the latter after
the burning of the body. The psyche of Patroklos appearing by night
to Achilles declares this; it prays for immediate burial in order
that it may pass through the door of Hades. Until then the other
shadow-creatures prevent its entrance and bar its passage across the
river, so that it has to wander restlessly round the house of Aïs of
the wide gate (_Il._ xxiii, 71 ff.). This hastening off towards the
house of Hades is again all that is meant when it is said elsewhere
of Patroklos himself (_Il._ xvi, 856) that the psyche departed out
of his limbs to the house of Hades. In exactly the same way it is
said of Elpenor, the companion of Odysseus, that "his soul descended
to Hades" (_Od._ x, 560). This soul meets his friend, nevertheless,
later on, at the entrance of the Shadow-world, not yet deprived of
its senses like the rest of the dwellers in that House of Darkness;
not until the destruction of its physical counterpart is complete
can it enter into the rest of Hades. Only through fire are the souls
of the dead "appeased" (_Il._ vii, 410). So long, then, as the
psyche retains any vestige of "earthliness" it possesses some
feeling still, some awareness of what is going on among the
living.[33\1]
But once the body is destroyed by fire, then is the psyche relegated
to Hades; no return to this earth is permitted to it, and not a
breath of this world can penetrate to it there. It cannot even
return in thought. Indeed, it no longer thinks at all, and knows
nothing more of the world beyond. The living also forget one so
completely cut off from themselves (_Il._ xxii, 389). What, then,
should tempt them, during the rest of their lives here, to try to
hold communication with the dead by means of a _cult_?
§ 7
The practice of cremation itself will perhaps give us one last piece
of evidence that there had been a time when the idea of the
prolonged sojourn of the disembodied spirit in the realm of the
living and its power of influencing the survivors existed among the
Greeks. Homer knows of no other kind of funeral than that of fire.
On a funeral pyre are burnt the bodies of king or leader with the
most solemn ritual; those of the common people fallen in war are
given to the flames with less ceremony; none are buried. We may well
ask whence comes this custom, and what is its meaning for Greeks of
the Homeric age? This means of disposing of the bodies of the dead
is not by any means the most simple and obvious; it {20} is far
easier to carry out, and far less expensive, to bury them in the
earth. It has been suggested that the custom of cremation as
observed by Persians, Germans, Slavs, and other peoples, is
inherited from a nomadic period. The wandering horde has no
permanent habitation in which or near which the body of the beloved
dead can be buried and perpetual sustenance offered to his soul.
Unless, therefore, as is the custom with some nomadic tribes, the
dead body is given up to be the prey of beasts or weather, it might
seem a natural idea to reduce it to ashes and carry the remains,
preserved in a light jar, along with the tribe on its further
journeyings.[34\1] Whether such practical reasonings can have had so
much influence in a connexion that is generally governed entirely by
fancy, and in which practical considerations are altogether
scouted--I shall leave undecided. But, in any case, if we postulate
a nomadic origin for the practice of burning the dead among the
Greeks, we should have to go back altogether too far into the past
to explain a mode of behaviour that, by no means exclusively
practised in early times by the Greeks, becomes absolutely
prescriptive in a period when they have long ceased to wander. The
Asiatic Greeks, and in particular the Ionians, whose popular beliefs
and customs are, in general outline, at least, reproduced for us in
Homer, deserted one settled habitation in order to found another.
Cremation then must have been so permanently established among them
that it never entered their heads to seek any other method of
disposing of their dead. In Homer not only the Greeks before Troy
and Elpenor, far away from home, are burnt when they die; Eëtion,
too, in his own home is given a funeral pyre by Achilles (_Il._ vi,
418). Hektor's body is burnt in the middle of Troy and the Trojans
themselves in their own native land burn their dead (_Il._ vii). The
box or urn that holds the cremated bones of the dead is buried in a
mound; the ashes of Patroklos, Achilles, Antilochos, and Aias rest
on foreign soil (_Od._ iii, 109 ff.; xxiv, 76 ff.). It never occurs
to Agamemnon that if Menelaos dies before Ilios his brother's grave
could be anywhere else than at Troy (_Il._ iv, 174 ff.). There is,
therefore, evidently no intention on the part of the living of
taking the remains of the dead with them on their return home;[35\1]
and this cannot be the object of cremation. It will be necessary to
look for some principle more in accordance with primitive modes of
thought than such merely practical considerations. Jakob Grimm[36\1]
suggested that the burning of the corpse might have been intended as
an offering of the dead man to the gods. Among {21} the Greeks this
could only mean the gods of the lower world; but nothing in Greek
belief or ritual suggests such a grim intention.[37\1] The real
purpose aimed at in cremation is not so far to seek. Since the
destruction of the body by fire is supposed to result in the
complete separation of the spirit from the land of the living,[38\1]
it must be assumed that this result is also _intended_ by the
survivors who employ the means in question; and consequently that
the complete banishment of the psyche once and for all into the
other world is the real purpose and the original occasion of the
practice of cremation. Isolated expressions of opinion among the
nations that have practised the custom do, as a matter of fact,
indicate as its object the speedy and entire separation of soul from
body.[39\1] The exact nature of the intention varies with the state
of belief about the soul. When the Indians turned from the custom of
burying their dead to that of burning them, they were actuated, it
appears, by the idea that the sooner and more completely the soul
was freed from the body and its limitations, the more easily would
it reach the Paradise of the Just.[40\1] Of the purifying effects of
the fire implied in this conception, the Greeks knew nothing until
the idea was revived in later times.[41\1] The Greeks of the Homeric
age, innocent of any such "Kathartic" notion, thought only of the
destructive powers of that element to which they entrusted the body
of their dead, and of the benefit that they were conferring upon the
soul in freeing it by fire from the lifeless body, thus adding their
assistance to its own efforts to get free.[42\1] Nothing can destroy
the psyche's visible counterpart more quickly than fire. If, then,
the body is burnt and the most treasured possessions of the dead man
consumed along with it, no tie remains that can detain the soul any
longer in the world of the living.
Cremation, therefore, is intended to benefit the dead, whose soul no
longer wanders unable to find rest; but still more the living, for
they will not be troubled by ghosts that are securely confined to
the depths of the earth. The Greeks of Homer, accustomed by long
usage to the burning of the dead, are free from all fears of
haunting "ghostly" presences. But when the practice of the
fire-funeral was first adopted, that which was to be guarded against
in the future by the destruction of the body with fire must have
been a real cause of fear.[43\1] The souls that were so anxiously
relegated to the other world of the Unseen must have been feared as
awesome inhabitants of this world. And so, from whatever source it
may have come to them,[44\1] the custom of cremation gives firm
ground for {22} supposing that at some period of their history the
belief in the power and activity of the spirits of the dead and
their influence upon the living--a subject of fear rather than
reverence--must have been prevalent amongst the Greeks; even though
only a few scattered hints still bear witness to such beliefs in the
Homeric poems.
§ 8
And evidence of these ancient beliefs we can now see with our eyes
and touch with our hands. Owing to an inestimable series of
fortunate circumstances, we are enabled to catch a glimpse of a far
distant period of Greek history, which not only supplies a
background to Homer, but makes him cease to be the earliest source
of our information upon Greek life and thought. He is brought
suddenly much nearer, perhaps deceptively nearer, to ourselves. The
last decades of excavation in the citadel and lower town of Mycenæ
and other sites in the Peloponnese right into the centre of the
peninsula and as far northwards as Attica and Thessaly, have
resulted in the discovery of graves--shaft-graves, chamber-graves,
and elaborately constructed domed vaults, which were built and
walled up in the period before the Dorian invasion. These graves
prove to us--what was already hinted at by a few isolated
expressions in Homer[45\1]--that the Greek "Age of Burning" was
preceded, as in the case of the Persians, Indians, and Germans, by a
period in which the dead were buried in the ground intact.[46\1] The
lords and ladies of golden Mycenæ, and lesser folk, too (in the
graves at Nauplia, in Attica, etc.), were buried when they died.
Chieftains take with them into the grave a rich paraphernalia of
gorgeous furniture and ornaments--unburnt like their own bodies;
they rest upon a bed of small stones, and are covered by a layer of
loam and pebbles;[47\1] traces of smoke and remains of ashes and
charred wood bear witness to the fact that the dead were laid upon
the place where the "sacrifice for the dead" had already been made;
upon the hearth where offerings had been previously burnt inside the
grave chamber.[48\1] This may very well be a burial procedure of the
most primeval antiquity. Our oldest "Giants'" graves, in whose
treasures no metal of any kind is found, and whose age is on that
account considered to be pre-Teutonic, exhibit similar features.
Either on the ground, or, occasionally, on a specially prepared
basis of fire-brick, the sacrificial fire is lighted, and, when it
has burnt out, the corpse is set down upon the place and given {23}
a covering of sand, loam, and stone.[49\1] Remains of burnt
sacrificial animals (sheep and goats) have also been found in the
graves at Nauplia and elsewhere.[50\1] In conformity with such
different burial customs, the conceptions then held of the nature
and powers of the disembodied spirits must have differed widely from
those of the Homeric world. Offerings to the dead at a funeral occur
in Homer only on special and isolated occasions and accompanied by
an obsolete and half-understood ritual. Here they were the regular
procedure both with rich and poor alike. But why should they have
made offerings to their dead if they did not believe in their power?
And why should they have taken away gold and jewellery and art
treasures of all kinds and in astonishing quantities from the living
and given them to the dead if they had not believed that the dead
could find enjoyment in their former possessions even in the grave?
Where the material body still remains intact, there the second self
can at least occasionally return. Its treasured possessions laid by
its side in the tomb are there to prevent its appearing uninvited in
the outer world.[51\1]
Supposing, however, that the soul could return if and where it
liked, it is evident that the cult of the dead would not be confined
to the occasion of the funeral. And, indeed, that very
circumstance--the prolongation of the cult paid to the dead beyond
the time of the funeral--of which we could not find a vestige in
Homer, can at last (as it seems to me) be traced in pre-Homeric
Mycenæ. Over the middle one of four shaft-graves found on the
citadel stands an altar which can only have been placed there after
the grave was closed and sealed up.[52\1] It is a round altar,
hollow inside, and not closed in at the bottom; in fact, a sort of
funnel standing directly upon the earth. If, now, the blood of the
victim, mingled with the various drink-offerings, were poured down
into this receptacle, the whole would flow downwards into the ground
beneath and to the dead man lying there. This is no altar (~bômo/s~)
such as was in use in the worship of the gods above, but a
sacrificial hearth (~escha/ra~) for the worship of the inhabitants
of the underworld. This structure corresponds closely with the
description we have of the hearths upon which offerings were made in
a later age to "Heroes", i.e. the souls of transfigured human
beings.[53\1] Here, then, we have a contrivance for the permanent
and repeated worship of the dead; for such worship alone can this
structure have been intended. The funeral offering to the dead had
already been completed inside the grave-chamber. We thus find a {24}
meaning in the "beehive" tombs, for the vaulted main-chamber, beside
which the corpse lay in a smaller chamber by itself. They were
evidently intended to allow sacrifices to be made inside them--and
not once only.[54\1] At least this is the purpose which the outer
chamber serves elsewhere in double-vaulted graves. The evidence of
the eye is therefore able to establish the truth of what could only
be made out with difficulty from the Homeric poems. We can thus see
that there had been a time in which the Greeks, too, believed that
after the separation of body and soul the psyche did not entirely
cease from intercourse with the upper world. Such a belief naturally
called forth a cult of the soul, which lasted on even when the
method of burying the body had changed, and even survived into
Homeric times, when, with the prevalence of other beliefs, such
observances ceased to have any meaning.
II
Homer consistently assumes the departure of the soul into an
inaccessible land of the dead where it exists in an unconscious
half-life. There it is without clear self-consciousness and
consequently neither desires nor wills anything. It has no influence
on the upper world, and consequently no longer receives any share of
the worship of the living. The dead are beyond the reach of any
feelings whether of fear or love. No means exists of forcing or
enticing them back again. Homer knows nothing of necromancy or of
oracles of the dead,[55\1] both common in later Greek life. Gods
come into the poems and take part in the action of the story; the
souls of the departed never do. Homer's immediate successors in the
Epic tradition think quite differently on this point; but for Homer
the soul, once relegated to Hades, has no further importance.
If we think how different it must have been before the time of
Homer, and how different it certainly was after him, we can hardly
help feeling surprise at finding at this early stage of Greek
culture such extraordinary freedom from superstitious fears in that
very domain where superstition is generally most deeply rooted.
Inquiries, however, into the origin and cause of such an untroubled
attitude must be made very cautiously and a completely conclusive
answer must not be expected. More especially it must be borne in
mind that in these poems we have to do, directly and immediately, at
least, only with the poet and his circle. The Homeric Epos can only
be called "folk poetry" in the sense that it was adapted to the {25}
acceptance of the whole family of Greek-speaking people who welcomed
it eagerly and transformed it to their own uses; and not because the
"folk" in some mystical sense had a share in its composition. Many
hands contributed to the composition of the poem, but they merely
carried it further in the general direction which had been given to
it not by the "Folk" or by the "Saga" tradition, as is sometimes too
confidently asserted, but by the authority of the greatest poetic
genius that the Greeks or, indeed, mankind ever knew. The tradition
once formed was handed on by a close corporation of master-poets and
their pupils who preserved, disseminated, continued and imitated the
original great poet's work. If, then, we find on the whole, and
apart from a few vagaries in detail, a single unified picture of the
world, of gods and men, life and death, given in these two poems,
that is the picture which shaped itself in the mind of Homer and was
impressed upon his work, and afterwards preserved by the Homeridai.
It is plain that the freedom, almost the freethinking, with which
every possible occurrence in the world is regarded in these poems,
cannot ever have been characteristic of a whole people or race. And
not only the animating spirit, but even the outward shape that is
given in the two epic poems to the ideal world surrounding and
ruling over the world of men, is the work of the poet. It was no
priestly theology that gave him his picture of the gods. The popular
beliefs of the time, each peculiar to some countryside, canton, or
city, must, if left to themselves, have split up into even more
contradictory varieties of thought than they did in later times when
there existed some few religious institutions common to all Hellas
to act as centres of union. The poet alone must have been
responsible for the conception and consistent execution of the
picture of a single and unified world of gods, confined to a select
company of sharply characterized heavenly beings, grouped together
in certain well-recognized ways and dwelling together in a single
place of residence above the earth. If we listened to Homer alone we
should suppose that the innumerable local cults of Greece, with
their gods closely bound to the soil, hardly existed. Homer ignores
them almost entirely. His gods are pan-Hellenic, Olympian. In fact,
in his picture of the gods, Homer fulfilled most completely his
special poetic task of reducing confusion and superfluity to
uniformity and symmetry of design--the very task which Greek
idealism in art continually set before itself. In his picture Greek
beliefs about the gods _appear_ absolutely uniform--as uniform as
dialect, political condition, manners, {26} and morals. In
reality--of this we may be sure--no such uniformity existed; the
main outlines of pan-Hellenism were doubtless there, but only the
genius of the poet can have combined and fused them into a purely
imaginary whole. Provincial differences in themselves interested him
not at all. So, too, in the special question that we are
considering, if we find him speaking of a single kingdom of the
underworld, the resort of all departed spirits ruled over by a
single pair of divinities and removed as far from the world of men
and their cities as the Olympian dwelling of the Blessed Ones is in
the opposite direction, who shall say how far he represents naive
popular belief in such matters? On this side Olympus, the meeting
place of all the gods that rule in the daylight;[56\1] on that the
realm of Hades that holds in its grasp the unseen spirits that have
left this life behind--the parallel is too apparent to be due to
anything but the same simplifying and co-ordinating spirit in the
one case as in the other.
§ 2
It would, however, be an equally complete misunderstanding of the
relation in which Homer stood to the popular beliefs of his time if
we imagined that relation to be one of opposition, or even supposed
him to have taken up an attitude resembling that of Pindar or the
Attic Tragedians towards the conventional opinions of their time.
These later poets often enough allow us to see quite clearly the
intentional departure from normal opinion represented by their more
advanced conceptions. Homer, on the contrary, is as free from
controversy as he is from dogma. He does not offer his pictures of
God, the world and fate as anything peculiar to himself; and it is
natural, therefore, to suppose that his public recognized them as
substantially the same as their own. The poet has not taken over the
whole body of popular belief, but what he does say must have
belonged to popular belief. The selection and combination of this
material into a consistent whole was the poet's real work. If the
Homeric creed had not been so constructed in essentials that it
corresponded to the beliefs of the time, or, at least, could be made
to correspond, then it is impossible to account (even allowing for
the poetic tradition of a school) for the uniformity that marks the
work of the many poets that had a hand in the composition of the two
poems. In this narrow sense it can be truly said that Homer's poems
represent the popular belief of their time; not, indeed, the belief
of all Greece, but only of the _Ionian_ {27} cities of the coasts
and islands of Asia Minor in which the poet and his songs were at
home. In a similarly restricted sense may the pictures of outward
life and manners that we find in the Iliad and the Odyssey be taken
as a reflection of the contemporary life of the Greeks with
particular reference to that of the Ionians. This life must have
differed in many respects from that of the "Mycenæan civilization",
and there can be little doubt that the reasons for this difference
are to be sought in the long-continued disturbances which marked the
centuries that divide Homer from the age of Mycenæ, more especially
in the Greek migrations, both in what they destroyed and what they
created. The violent invasion of northern Greek peoples into the
central mainland and the Peloponnese, the destruction of ancient
empires and their civilization, the foundation of new Dorian states
held by right of conquest, the great migrations to the Asiatic
coasts, and the institution of a new life on foreign soil--all these
violent modifications of the old course of existence must have dealt
a severe blow at the whole fabric of that civilization and culture.
In the same way we find that the cult of Souls and the conception of
the fate of departed spirits which governed this cult did not remain
in Ionia (the beliefs of which country are reflected in Homer) what
it had been at the height of the Mycenæan period. To this change, as
to the others which accompanied it, we may well suppose that the
struggles and wanderings of the intermediate period contributed a
good deal. Homer's clear-sighted vision that transcends the limits
of city and even of racial gods, faiths, and worships, would hardly
be explicable without the freedom of movement beyond the boundaries
of country, the common life shared with companions of other races,
the widened knowledge of all the conditions of foreign life, such as
must have resulted from the dislocations and migrations of whole
peoples. It is true that the Ionians of Asia Minor did, as we can
prove, take a good many of their religious observances with them to
their new homes. The migrations, however, did not preserve the
connexion between the old homes and the new country with anything
like the closeness that marked the later colonization; and when the
colonists left the familiar soil behind, the local cults attached to
the soil must often have had to be abandoned, too. Now the worship
of ancestors, connected as it was with the actual graves of those
ancestors, was essentially a _local_ cult. Remembrance of the great
ones of the past might survive transplantation, but not their
religious worship, which could only be offered at the one spot {28}
where their bodies lay buried and which had now been left behind in
an enemy's country. The deeds of ancestors lived on in song, but
they themselves began to be relegated to the domain of poetry and
imagination. Imagination might adorn the story of their earthly
life, but a world that was no longer reminded of their power by the
regularly repeated performance of ceremonial, ceased to pay honour
to their disembodied souls. Thus the most highly developed form of
the cult of Souls--ancestor worship--died out, and the later version
of the same thing, the cult of those of the tribe that had died in
the new land and been buried there, was prevented from attaining a
similar force and development by the newly-introduced practice of
burning the bodies of the dead. It may well be that the _origin_ of
this new form of funeral rite lay, as has been suggested, in the
wish to dismiss the soul of the dead man as quickly and completely
as possible from the realm of the living; but it is beyond doubt
that the _result_ of this practice was to cut at the root of the
belief in the near presence of the departed and the duty of
performing the religious observances that were their right; so that
such things being deprived of their support, fell into decay and
disappeared.
§ 3
We can thus see at least dimly how it was that the Ionian people of
the Homeric age were led by the events of their own history and the
alteration in funeral customs into holding that view of the soul
which a study of their own poets has persuaded us was theirs. This
view can hardly have retained more than a few stray vestiges of the
ancient cult of the dead. Still, we should only be in a position to
say what were the real reasons for this alteration in belief and
custom if we knew and understood more about the _intellectual_
changes that led to the gradual appearance of the Homeric view of
the world; a view which included within its range a set of beliefs
about the soul. Here it is best to confess our ignorance. We have
before us the results only of those changes. From them, however, we
can at least perceive that the religious consciousness of the
Greeks, among whom Homer sang, had developed in a direction which
did not allow much scope to the belief in ghosts and spirits of the
dead. The Homeric Greeks had the deepest consciousness of man's
finite nature, of his dependence upon forces that lay without him.
To remind himself of this and be content with his lot was his proper
form of piety. Over him the gods hold sway, wielding a supernatural
power--{29}not infrequently a misguided and capricious power--but a
conception of a general world-order is beginning to make its way; of
a plan underlying the cross-purposes of individual and common life,
working itself out in accordance with measured and appointed lot
(~moi=ra~). The arbitrary power of individual _daimones_ is thus
limited, and it is limited further by the will of the highest of the
gods. The belief is growing that the world is, in fact, a cosmos, a
perfect organization such as men try to establish in their earthly
states. In the face of such conceptions it would be increasingly
difficult to believe in the vagaries of a supernatural ghostly order
which, in direct opposition to the real heavenly order, is always
distinguished by the fact that it stands outside any all-embracing
dispensation, and allows full play to the caprice and malice of
individual unseen powers. The irrational and the unaccountable is
the natural element of the belief in ghosts and spirits; this is the
source of the peculiar disquiet inspired by this province of belief
or superstition. It owes most of its effect to the instability of
its fibres. The Homeric world, on the contrary, lives by reason; its
gods are fully intelligible to Greek minds and their forms and
behaviour are clearly and easily comprehensible to Greek
imagination. And the more distinctly were the gods represented, the
more did the spirit-phantoms fade away into empty shadows. There was
no one who might have been interested in the preservation and
extension of the superstitious side of religion; there was in
particular no priesthood with a monopoly of instruction or an
exclusive knowledge of the details of ritual and the methods of
controlling the behaviour of spirits. If anyone did possess any
monopoly of teaching, it was, in this age when all the highest
faculties of the spirit found their expression in poetry, the poet
and the singer. They, however, showed a completely "secular" outlook
even in religious matters. Indeed, these very clear-headed men,
belonging to the same stock which in a later age "invented" (if one
may be allowed to put it so science and philosophy, were already
displaying a mental attitude that distantly threatened the whole
system of that plastic representation of things spiritual which the
older antiquity had laboriously constructed.
The earliest view held by primitive man about the activities of
willing, feeling, or thinking, regards them simply as the
manifestations of something which lives and wills inside the visible
man. This something is regarded as embodied in one or other of the
organs of the human body or as concealed {30} therein. Accordingly
the Homeric poems give the name of the "midriff" (~phrê/n,
phre/nes~) to most of the phenomena of will or feeling and even to
those of the intellect. The "heart" (~ê=tor, kê=r~) is also the name
of a variety of feelings that were regarded as located in the heart
and even identified with it. But this mode of expression had already
for Homer become mere formula; such expressions are not always to be
taken literally; the words of the poet often show that as a matter
of fact he thought of these functions and emotions as incorporeal,
though they were still named after parts of the body.[57\1] And so
we often find mentioned side by side with the "midriff" and in the
closest conjunction with it, the ~thumo/s~, a name which is not
taken from any bodily organ and shows already that it is thought of
as an immaterial function. In the same way many other words of this
kind (~no/os-noei=n-no/êma, boulê/, me/nos, mê=tis~) are used to
describe faculties and activities of the will, sense, or thought,
and show that these activities are thought of as independent,
free-working, and incorporeal. A single thread still attaches the
poet to the modes of conception and expression of the older world,
but he himself has penetrated adventurously far into the realm of
pure spirit. With a less cultured people the identification of the
special functions of the will and the intellect only leads to the
materialization of these into the notion of special physical
entities, and consequently to the association of still other
"souls", in the shape of "Conscience", it may be, or "Will", in
addition to that other shadowy "double" of mankind, the "second
self".[58\1] The tendency of the Homeric singers was already setting
in just the opposite direction--the mythology of the "inner man" was
breaking down altogether. They had only to take a few steps further
in the same direction to find that they could dispense with the
_psyche_ as well. The belief in the existence of the psyche was the
oldest and most primitive hypothesis adopted by mankind to explain
the phenomena of dreams, swoons, and ecstatic visions; these
mysterious states were accounted for by the intervention of a
special material personality. Now, Homer has little interest in
premonitions and ecstatic states, and no inclination in that
direction whatever. He cannot, therefore, have been very much
concerned with the evidence for the existence of a psyche in living
men. The final proof of the idea that the psyche must have been
dwelling in man is the fact that it is separated from him in death.
A man dies when he breathes out his last breath. This breath,
something like a breath of air, and not a "nothing", any more than
the wind its relative, {31} but a body with a definite form (though
it may not be visible to waking eyes)--this is the psyche, whose
shape, the image of the man himself, is well known from
dream-vision. One, however, who has become accustomed to the idea of
bodiless powers working inside man will, on this last occasion when
the powers within man show themselves, be likely to suppose that
what brings about the death of a man is not a physical thing that
goes out of him, but a power--a quality--which ceases to act;
nothing else, in fact, than his "life". And he would not, of course,
think of ascribing an independent continuous existence after the
disruption of the body to a mere abstract idea like "life". Homer,
however, never got quite as far as this; for the most part the
psyche is for him and always remains a real "thing"--the man's
second self. But that he had already begun to tread the slippery
path in the course of which the psyche is transformed into an
abstract "concept of life", is shown by the fact that he several
times quite unmistakably uses the word "psyche" when we should say
"life".[59\1] It is essentially the same mode of thought that leads
him to say "midriff" (~phre/nes~) when he no longer means the
physical diaphragm, but the abstract concept of will or intellect.
To say "psyche" instead of "life" is not the same thing as saying
"life" instead of "psyche" (and Homer never did the latter); but it
is clear that for him in the process of dematerializing such
concepts, even the psyche, a figure once so full of significance, is
beginning to fade and vanish away.
The separation from the land of their forefathers, and habituation
to the use of cremation, the new direction taken by religious
thought, the tendency to turn the once material forces of man's
inner life into attractions--all these things contributed to weaken
the belief in a powerful and significant life of the disembodied
soul and its connexion with the affairs of this world. And at the
same time it caused the decline of the cult of the Souls. So much, I
think, we may safely assert. The deepest and most fundamental
reasons for this decline in both belief and cult may elude our
search, just as it is impossible for us to be sure how far in detail
the Homeric poems reflect the beliefs of the people who first
listened to them, and where the free invention of the poet begins.
But the combination of the various elements of belief into a whole
which, though far from being a dogmatically closed system, may yet
not unfairly be called the Homeric Theology--this, we may say, is
most probably the work of the poet. The poet has a free hand in the
picture he gives of the gods and never comes into conflict with any
popular doctrine because Greek {32} religion then, as always,
consisted essentially in the right honouring of the gods of the
country and not in any particular set of dogmas. There could hardly
be any general conception of godhead and divinity with which the
poet might come into conflict. That the popular mind absorbed
thoroughly that picture of the world of gods which the Homeric poems
had given, is shown by the whole future development of Greek culture
and religion. If divergent conceptions did, in fact, also maintain
themselves, they derived their strength not so much from a different
religious theory, as from the postulates of a different religious
_cult_ that had not been influenced by any poet's imagination. They
might also more particularly have had the effect of causing an
incidental obscurity within the epic itself, in the poet's vision of
the Unseen World and its life.
III
A test case of the thorough-going uniformity and consistency of the
Homeric conception of the nature and circumstances of the souls of
the departed is provided for us, within the limits of the poems
themselves, by the story of Odysseus' _Journey to Hades_--a test
they are hardly likely to survive, it may well be thought. How is
the poet in describing a living hero's dealings with the inhabitants
of the shadow-world, going to preserve the immaterial, dreamlike
character of the Homeric "Souls"? How keep up the picture of the
soul as something that holds itself resolutely aloof and seems to
avoid all active intercourse with other folk? It is hard to see what
could tempt the poet to try and penetrate with the torch of
imagination into this underworld of ineffectual shadows. The matter
becomes somewhat more intelligible, however, as soon as it is
realized in what manner the narrative arose; how through continual
additions from later hands it gradually assumed a form quite unlike
itself.[60\1]
§ 1
It may be taken as one of the few certain results of the critical
analysis of the Homeric poems that the narrative of the Descent of
Odysseus to the Underworld did not form part of the original plan of
the Odyssey. Kirke bids Odysseus undertake the journey to Hades in
order that he may see Teiresias there and be told of "the way and
the means of his return, and how he may reach his home again over
the fish-teeming deep" (_Od._ x, 530 f.). Teiresias, however, on
being {33} discovered in the realm of shadows, fulfils this
requirement only very partially and superficially. Whereupon, Kirke
herself gives to the returned Odysseus a much fuller account, and as
regards the one point already mentioned by Teiresias, a much more
precise account, of the perils that lie before him on his homeward
journey.[61\1] The journey to the land of the dead was thus
unnecessary, and there can be no doubt that originally it had no
place in the poem. It is plain, however, that the composer of this
adventure only used the (superfluous) inquiry addressed to Teiresias
as a pretext which afforded a more or less plausible motive for the
introduction of this narrative into the body of the poem. The real
object of the poet, the true motive of the story, must then be
sought elsewhere than in the prophecy of Teiresias, which turns out
to be so brief and unhelpful. It would be natural to suppose that
the aim of the poet was to give the eye of imagination a glimpse
into the marvels and terrors of that dark realm into which all men
must go. Such an intention would be very intelligible in the case of
a medieval or a Greek poet of later times; and there were afterwards
plenty of Greek poems which described a Descent to Hades. But it
would be hard to account for it in a poet of the Homeric school; for
such a poet the realm of the dead and its inhabitants could hardly
supply a subject for a narrative. And, in fact, the inventor of
Odysseus' visit to the dead had quite a different object in view. He
was anything but a Greek Dante. It is possible to see the purpose
which guided him as soon as his poem is stripped of the manifold
additions with which later times invested it. The original kernel
which thus remains is then seen to be nothing but a series of
conversations between Odysseus and the souls of those of the dead
with whom he had stood in close personal relationship. Besides
Teiresias he speaks with his old ship-companion Elpenor, who had
just died, with his mother Antikleia, with Agamemnon and Achilles;
and he tries in vain to effect a reconciliation with the implacable
Aias. These conversations in Hades are, for the general furtherance
of the story of Odysseus' wanderings and return, quite superfluous,
and they serve in a very minor degree and only incidentally to give
information about the conditions and character of the inscrutable
world beyond the grave. The questions and answers there given are
confined entirely to the affairs of the upper world. They bring
Odysseus, who has now been wandering so long alone and far from the
world of actual humanity, into ideal association with the
substantial world of flesh and blood to which his thoughts {34}
stretch out, and in which he himself had once been an actor and is
soon to play an important part again.[62\1] His mother informs him
of the distracted state of Ithaca, Agamemnon of the treacherous deed
of Aigisthos carried out with the help of Klytaimnestra. Odysseus
himself is able to console Achilles with an account of the heroic
deeds of his son, who is still alive in the daylight; with Aias,
resentful even in Hades, he cannot come to terms. Thus the theme of
the second part of the Odyssey begins to appear; even to the shadows
below there reaches an echo of the great deeds of the Trojan war and
of the adventures of the Return from Troy, which occupied the minds
of all the singers of the time. The introduction of these stories by
means of conversations with the persons who took part in them is the
essential purpose of the poet. The impelling instinct to expand in
all directions the circle of legend in whose centre stood the
adventure of the Iliad, and link it up with other circles of heroic
legend, was fully satisfied by later poets in the separate poems of
the Epic Cycle. At the time when the Odyssey was composed these
other epic narratives were in the full tide of their youthful
exuberance. The streams had not yet found a convenient bed in which
to run, and they added their individual contributions (for they all
related events which preceded it) to the elaborate narration of the
return of the last Hero who still wandered vainly and alone. The
main object of the story of Telemachos' journey to meet Nestor and
Menelaos (in the third and fourth books of the Odyssey) is
manifestly to bring the son into relation with the father's
companions in war, and so to provide occasion for further narratives
in which a more detailed picture of some of the events between the
Iliad and the Odyssey might be given. Demodokos, the Phæacian bard,
is made to recount (in abbreviated form) two adventures that had
occurred to the great chieftain. Even when such stories did not
immediately add to the picture of Odysseus' deeds or character, they
served to point to the great background from which the adventures of
the much-enduring wanderer, now completely isolated, should stand
out; and to set these in the ideal framework which could alone give
them their full significance. This natural creative instinct of
legendary poetry also inspired the poet of the "Journey to Hades".
He, too, saw the adventures of Odysseus not in isolation but in
lively and vital connexion with all the other adventures that took
their origin from Troy. He conceived the idea of bringing once more,
for the last time, the chieftain famed in council and war, into
communication with the mightiest king and the noblest {35} hero of
that famous expedition; and to do that he had to take him to the
realm of the shadows which had long contained them. Nor could he
well avoid the tone of pathos which is natural to this interview on
the borders of the realm of nothingness to which all the desire and
the strength of life must eventually come. The questioning of
Teiresias is merely, as has been said, the poet's pretext for
confronting Odysseus with his mother and his former companions, and
this meeting was his prime motive. Probably this particular device
was suggested by the recollection of the story which Menelaos tells
of his meeting with Proteus, the Old Man of the Sea (_Od._ iv, 351
ff.),[63\1] where the inquiry from the seer as to the means of
reaching home again is also a mere pretext for the narration of
Return adventures--those of Aias, Agamemnon, and Odysseus.
§ 2
It is certain that the intention of this poet cannot possibly have
been simply the description of the underworld for its own sake. Even
the scenery of these mysterious incidents which might well have
attracted his fancy, is only given in brief allusions. The ship
sails over Okeanos to the people of the Kimmerians[64\1] that never
see the sun, and reaches at last the "barren coast" and the "Grove
of Persephone", with its black poplars and weeping willows. Odysseus
with two companions goes on ahead to the entrance of Erebos, where
Pyriphlegethon and Kokytos, a branch of the Styx, flow into Acheron.
There he digs his sacrificial trench to which the souls flock upward
out of Erebos over the asphodel-meadows. It is the same underworld
in the bowels of the earth that is presupposed in the Iliad, too, as
the dwelling-place of the dead, only more accurately described and
more fully realized.[65\1] The details of the picture are so lightly
sketched in that one might well suppose that they, too, had been
taken from some older mythical material. At any rate, he borrowed
the "Styx", so well known in the Iliad; and it may be supposed that
the same applies to the other rivers as well, whose names are
clearly derived from words meaning burning (of dead bodies?),[66\1]
lamentation, and sorrow.[67\1] The poet himself, interested only in
the representation of character, is not at all disposed to dwell
upon the merely fanciful, and confines himself to a few brief
allusions. Nor does he give any very lengthy account of the dwellers
in Erebos, and what he does say of them keeps well within the limits
of the usual Homeric belief. The Souls resemble shadow- or
dream-pictures, and {36} are impalpable to the human touch.[68\1]
They are without consciousness when they appear. Elpenor alone,
whose body still lies unburnt, has for that very reason retained his
senses and even shows a form of heightened consciousness that
approaches prophecy; resembling in this respect Patroklos and Hektor
at the moment when the psyche is parted from the body.[69\1] This,
however, is to leave him as soon as his corpse is destroyed.
Teiresias alone, the prophet famed above all others in Theban
legend, has preserved his consciousness and prophetic vision even in
the Shadow-world through the good-will of Persephone; but this is an
exception which only establishes the rule. What Antikleia tells her
son of the powerlessness and immateriality of the soul after the
burning of the body[70\1] sounds almost like an official
confirmation of the orthodox Homeric view. Everything, in fact, in
this poet's description enforces the truth of this belief, and
though the living are, indeed, untroubled by the feeble souls
banished to outer darkness, yet out of Erebos itself the piteous
knell of this decree reaches us in the lament of Achilles as he
refuses his friend's attempt at comfort--everyone knows the
unforgettable words.
§ 3
And yet the poet ventures to go beyond Homer in one important point.
What he hints rather than actually says of the condition of things
in Hades conflicts in no single point with the conventional Homeric
view; but it is an innovation to suggest that this condition of
things can even for the briefest moment be interrupted. The blood
drunk by the souls gives them back for a moment their consciousness;
their remembrance of the upper world returns to them. Their senses
must then all the while have been not dead but sleeping. There can
be no doubt that the poet for whom this supposition is indispensable
to his story did not thereby intend to formulate an entirely new
doctrine. But in order to add to his poetic effect, he was led to
include in his story some touches which, meaningless within the
circle of his own beliefs, pointed elsewhere, and, indeed, backward,
to older, quite differently moulded beliefs, and to the usages
founded upon them. He makes Odysseus, following the advice of Kirke,
dig a grave at the entrance of Hades in which to pour out a solemn
drink-offering to "all the dead", consisting first of all in a
mixture of milk and honey, then wine and water, over which white
meal is finely sprinkled. Next he slays a ram and a black ewe,
bending their heads downwards into the grave.[71\1] {37} Then the
bodies of the animals are burnt, and round the blood collect all the
souls, who flutter about it, kept at a distance by Odysseus'
sword[72\1] till Teiresias has first drunk. Here the drink-offerings
constitute undoubtedly a sacrificial offering devoted to the dead
and poured out for their satisfaction. The poet indeed does not
think of the slaughtered animals as a sacrifice; the tasting of the
blood is simply intended to restore to the souls their
consciousness; in the case of Teiresias, who retains his senses, the
gift of prophetic clairvoyance. But this, we can see clearly, is a
fiction of the poet's: what he here describes is in every detail a
sacrifice to the dead, such as we so often find described as such in
accounts from later times. The scent of the blood calls up the
spirits; their satiation with blood (~haimakouri/a~) is the
essential purpose of such offerings; and these are what the poet's
imagination dimly recalls as models. Nothing in this picture has
been invented. Neither, on the other hand, it is quite clear, has he
altered his sacrificial ceremony to make it fit in with _novel_
ideas that were beginning to gain ground; ideas that ascribed a more
vital existence to the souls of the dead. For here, too, just as in
the case of the offerings to the dead described in the funeral of
Patroklos, the poet's manner of conceiving the life of the dead is
not such as could give support to new and more vigorous cult
ceremonies. His conception tends rather to contradict the ceremonies
that he describes. In fact, what we have here, too, is a
"fossilized" and no longer intelligible vestige of a practice that
was once rooted in belief--a relic deprived of its original meaning
and adapted by the poet to the special purposes of his narrative.
The sacrificial ritual used to attract the souls on this occasion
strikingly resembles the ritual which was used in later times to
conjure up the souls of the dead at those places which were supposed
to give entrance to the ghostly world below the earth. It is also
not impossible that, even in the time of the poet of the "Journey to
Hades", in some remote corners of Greek lands such calling-up of the
dead was still practised as a relic of former belief. But, supposing
that the poet had some information of such local cults of the dead,
and modelled his story on them,[73\1] that only makes it the more
remarkable that he effaces all trace of the original meaning of his
ritual, and in adherence to the strict Homeric doctrine on the
point, banishes all thought that the souls may possibly continue in
the neighbourhood of the living and can thence be conjured up into
the light of day.[74\1] He knows only of one kingdom of the Dead far
off in the dim West, beyond the bounds of sea {38} and ocean, where
the legendary hero of romance can, indeed, reach its gateway, but
where alone he can have communication with the souls of the dead.
The House of Hades never allows its inhabitants to pass out.
And yet all this is hopelessly contradicted by the votive offerings
that the poet, by what can only be called an oversight, makes
Odysseus promise to all the dead, and particularly to Teiresias,
upon his return home (_Od._ x, 521-6; xi, 29-33). Of what use would
it be to the dead to receive the offering of a "barren cow",[75\1] of
"treasures" burnt upon the funeral pyre; or how could Teiresias
enjoy the slaughtering of a black sheep far away in Ithaca--when
they are all confined to Erebos and could not taste the offerings
made to them? This is the most remarkable and important of all
vestiges of an ancient worship of the dead. It proves indubitably
that in pre-Homeric times the belief prevailed that even after the
funeral of the body the soul is not eternally banished to the
inaccessible land of shadows, but is able to approach the sacrificer
and to enjoy the sacrifices offered to it, just as much as the gods
can. A single obscure allusion in the Iliad[76\1] suggests what is
here much more clearly and almost naïvely revealed--namely that even
at the time when the Homeric view of the nothingness of the souls
for ever parted from their bodies reigned supreme, the custom of
making offerings to the dead after the funeral was over (though in
exceptional circumstances only, and not as a regularly recurring
performance had not been entirely forgotten.
§ 4
The contradictions into which he is betrayed by the introduction of
such intercourse between the living and the dead proves that the
undertaking was rather venturesome for a Homeric poet of strictly
orthodox views. Still, in the picture of Odysseus' meeting with his
mother and former companions, which was his main object, the poet
hardly strayed at all from the normal Homeric path. This, however,
was, as it happened, the very point in which later generations of
poetically inclined readers or hearers found his narrative wanting.
He himself carefully linked up every detail with his living hero,
the central interest of his story, and only made him speak with the
souls of such as had some real and close connexion with him. A
review of the motley inhabitants of the underworld in their
multitude hardly interested him at all. It was the very thing which
seemed indispensable to later readers. They made additions to his
story and introduced the multitudes of the dead of all ages; the
warriors with {39} wounds still visible and in bloodstained
armour;[77\1] or else, more in the manner of a Hesiodic catalogue
for the assistance of the memory than making them live in Homeric
fashion for the imagination, they pictured a whole host of mothers,
the illustrious ancestors of great families, passing before
Odysseus, though they had no particular claim upon his sympathy;
nor, indeed, is any serious attempt made to bring them into
relationship with him.[78\1] This seemed to improve the picture of
the general multitude of the dead, represented in the persons of
selected individuals. Next, the condition of things in the world
below must at least be illustrated by a few examples. Odysseus casts
a glance into the inner recesses of the underworld--which was hardly
possible for him, considering that he stood at its outermost
gateway--and sees there the heroic figures of those who, like true
"images" (~ei/dôla~) of the living, still continue the activities of
their former lives. There he sees Minos giving judgment among the
dead, Orion hunting, Herakles still with the bow in his hand, and
the arrow fitted to the string, "like one ever about to shoot." This
is certainly not Herakles, the "Hero-God", as he was known to later
ages. The poet knows nothing as yet of the elevation of the son of
Zeus above the lot of all mortals--any more than the earliest poet
of the "Journey" knew of the translation of Achilles out of Hades.
The disregard of such things was naturally regarded by later readers
as a negligence on the part of the poet. And, in fact, they boldly
inserted three verses here which inform us that he "himself", the
real Herakles, dwells among the gods--what Odysseus saw in Hades was
only his counterfeit. Whoever wrote this was practising a little
original theology on his own account. Such a contrast between a
fully animated "self" possessing the original man's body and soul
still united, and a counterfeit presentment of himself (which cannot
be his psyche relegated to Hades, is quite strange both to Homer and
to Greek thought of later times.[79\1] It is, in fact, an example of
the earliest "harmonizer's" solution of a difficulty. The poet does,
indeed, attempt to connect Herakles with Odysseus by making the two
enter into conversation, in imitation of the conversations with
Agamemnon and Achilles. But it is soon evident that these two have
really nothing to say to each other; Odysseus, in fact, is silent.
There was no real relationship between them, at most an analogy;
Herakles, too, having once descended alive into Hades. This analogy
alone, in fact, appears to have suggested the introduction of
Herakles in this place.[80\1] {40}
There now remains (inserted after Minos and Orion and before
Herakles and probably composed by the same hand that was responsible
for them) the incident of the three "penitents" undergoing
punishment; a passage that no reader can possibly forget. First
Tityos, whose giant frame is preyed upon by two vultures, is seen,
then Tantalos, who in the middle of a lake is parched with thirst
and cannot reach up to the fruit-laden branches over his head, and
last Sisyphos, who is bound to roll up-hill the stone that ever
rolls back again. The limits of the Homeric conception (with which
the pictures of Minos, Orion, and Herakles might still perhaps be
reconciled) are in these pictures definitely overstepped. The souls
of these three unfortunates are credited with complete and
continuous consciousness. Without this, their punishment would not
have been felt and would not have been inflicted. And, observing the
extraordinarily matter-of-fact and cursory description, which takes
the reasons of the punishment for granted except in the case of
Tityos, we cannot help feeling that these examples of punishment
after death were not invented for the first time by the composer of
these lines. They cannot have been offered to the astonished ears of
their hearers as a daring novelty, but were rather recalled briefly
to those hearers' recollection. Probably these three are selected as
examples out of a much larger collection of such pictures. Can it be
that still older poets (who may still, however, have been more
recent than the poet of the earliest parts of the "Journey") had
already dared to desert the Homeric view of the soul?
However that may be, we may be sure that the punishment of the three
"penitents" was not intended to contradict flatly the Homeric
conception of the unconsciousness and nothingness of the shades.
They could not in that case have accommodated themselves so well to
a poem that is founded upon such conceptions. They do not disprove
the rule because they are, and are only intended to be, _exceptions_
to that rule. This, however, would be impossible if it were
justifiable to interpret the poet's fiction as representing, in the
person of these three unfortunates, three types of special sins and
classes of sinners; as, for example, unbridled Lust (Tityos),
insatiable Gluttony (Tantalos), and Pride of the Intellect
(Sisyphos).[81\1] They would in that case be particular examples of
the retribution which one must think of as being extended to all the
innumerable hosts of shadows who have been guilty of the same sins.
But nothing in the description itself warrants such a theological
interpretation; indeed, we have no reason {41} or excuse for
attributing to this particular poet such a desire to prove the
existence of a compensatory justice in an after life. It is quite
strange to Homer, and so far as it ever became known to later Greek
theology, it was only introduced very late, through the influence of
a speculative mysticism. No, the almighty power of the gods is able
in special cases, so this picture assures us, to preserve for
individual souls their consciousness; in the case of Teiresias as a
reward, in the case of these three objects of the gods' hatred, in
order that they may be capable of feeling their punishment. The real
fault for which they are punished can be guessed fairly certainly
from what the poet tells us about Tityos--it is in each case a
grievous offence committed by them against the gods. The crime of
Tantalos we can make out from what we know of him through other
sources. It is less easy to discover what was the exact misdeed for
which the crafty Sisyphos is punished.[82\1] In any case, it is
clear that retribution has overtaken all three of them for sins
against the gods themselves--sins which human beings of later times
could not possibly commit. And for this reason alone, neither their
deeds nor their punishment can have anything typical or
representative about them; they are sheer exceptions, and that is
why the poet found them interesting.
The episode of Odysseus' journey to Hades (even in its latest
portions) suggests no acquaintance whatever with any general class
of sinners who receive their punishment in that place. If, indeed,
it had alluded to the punishment in the after-world of _perjurers_,
orthodox Homeric doctrine would not in that case have been violated.
Twice over in the Iliad, on solemn occasions of oath-taking, besides
the gods of the upper world, the Erinyes also are called upon as
witnesses of the oath; for they punish under the earth those who
break their oath.[83\1] Not without reason have these passages been
held to show "that the Homeric conception of the phantasmal
half-life of the souls under the earth, where they are without
feeling or consciousness, was not a general folk-belief."[84\1] We
must add, however, that the belief held in Homeric times of the
punishment of oath-breakers in the realm of shadows cannot as yet
have been very vital, for it was quite unable to prevent the success
of the totally incompatible belief in the unconscious nothingness of
disembodied spirits. A solemn oath-formula (so much that is
primitive persisting, even after it has become dead letter, in
formula) preserved a reference to that ancient belief, which had
become strange to Homeric ears--a vestige, in fact, of a bygone
point of view. It may be {42} that in the dim past, when men still
vividly and literally believed in the reality of a punishment in
after life for perjury, all the souls in Hades were credited with a
conscious existence; but there never was a time when men generally
believed that earthly sins (including perjury as only one among
many) were punished in Hades. Oath-breaking was not punished as a
specially outrageous moral failing--it may well be doubted whether
the Greeks ever considered or felt it to be such. The perjurer,
rather than any other particular sinner, was the special victim of
the dread goddesses, for the simple reason that the perjurer in his
desire to emphasize in the most awful manner his aversion to
falsehood, has invoked against himself, if he fails to keep his
oath, the most terrible fate of all--to suffer torment in the realm
of Hades whence is no escape.[85\1] To the Infernal Spirits of the
Underworld, to whom he had condemned himself, he falls a victim if
he breaks his word. Belief in the supernatural power of such
imprecations,[86\1] and not any special moral importance attached to
truth-telling--an idea quite strange to the older Antiquity--gave
to the oath its peculiar terrors.
§ 5
A final example of the tenacity with which custom may outlive the
belief on which it is founded is afforded by the story told of
Odysseus, that in fleeing from the Kikonian land, he did not leave
it until he had called thrice upon those of his companions who had
fallen in the battle with the Kikones (_Od._ ix, 65-6). References
to similar callings upon the dead in later literature make the
meaning of such behaviour clear. The souls of the dead who have
fallen in foreign lands must be "called";[87\1] they will then, if
this is properly done, follow the caller to their distant home,
where an "empty grave" awaits them.[88\1] This duty is regularly
performed in Homer for the benefit of those whose bodies it is
impossible to recover and bury in the proper way. But a summons of
the dead and the erection of such empty receptacles--intended for
whom if not for the souls who must then be accessible to the
devotion of their relations?--was natural enough for those who
believed in the possibility of the soul's sojourn in the
neighbourhood of its living friends; it was not admissible for
supporters of the Homeric belief. Here we have once more a
remarkable vestige of an ancient belief, surviving in a custom that
has not been entirely given up even in altered times. Here, too, the
belief which had given rise to the custom, was extinct. {43} If we
ask the Homeric poet for what purpose a mound was heaped up over the
grave of the dead and a gravestone set upon it, he will answer us:
in order that his fame may remain imperishable among men, and that
future generations may not be ignorant of his story.[89\1] That
sounds truly Homeric. When a man dies his soul departs into a region
of twilit dream-life; his body, the visible man, perishes. Only his
glorious name, in fact, lives on. His praises speak to after ages
from the monument to his honour on his grave-mound--and in the song
of the bard. A _poet_ would naturally be inclined to think such
things.
NOTES TO CHAPTER I
I
[1\1: E. Kammer, _Einheit d. Odyssee_, 510 ff.]
[2\1: E.g. _Il._ ~A~ 3, ~polla\s d' iphthi/mous _psucha\s_
(kephala/s~ Apol. Rhod., as in ~L~ 55: mistakenly) ~A/ïdi proï/apsen
hêrô/ôn, _autou\s_ de\ helô/ria teu=che ku/nessin.~ ~Ps~ 105,
~pannuchi/ê ga\r moi Patroklê=os deiloi=o _psuchê\_ ephestê/kei . .
. e/ïkto de\ the/skelon _autô=|_~ (cf. 66).]
[3\1: E.g. ~L~ 262, ~e/nth' Antê/noros hui=es hup' Atrei/dê|
basilê=i po/tmon anaplê/santes e/dun do/mon A/ïdos ei/sô~. The
~_psuchê/_~ of Elpenor and afterwards that of Teiresias, of his
mother, of Agamemnon, etc., is addressed by Odysseus in the Nekyia
of the Od. simply as: ~Elpê=nor, Teiresi/ê, mê=ter emê/~, etc. And
cf. such expressions as: ~Ps~ 244, ~eis ho/ ken _auto\s_ egô\ A/ïdi
keu/thômai~, or ~O~ 251, ~kai\ dê\ e/gôg' epha/mên, ne/kuas kai\
dô=m' Ai/dao ê/mati tô=|d' hi/xesthai . . .~ or ~X~ 456 f., etc.]
[4\1: The first view is Nägelsbach's, the second that of
Grotemeyer.]
[5\1: And of civilized peoples, too, in antiquity. Just such a
second self, an ~ei/dôlon~ duplicating the visible self of man,
were, in their original significance, the _genius_ of the Romans,
the _Fravashi_ of the Persians, the _Ka_ of the Egyptians.]
[6\1: ~hupoti/thetai~ (sc. Homer) ~ta\s psucha\s toi=s eidô/lois
toi=s en toi=s _kato/ptrois_ phainome/nois homoi/as kai\ toi=s dia\
tô=n _huda/tôn_ sunistame/nois, ha\ katha/pax hêmi=n exei/kastai
kai\ ta\s kinê/seis mimei=tai steremniô/dê de\ hupo/stasin oudemi/an
e/chei eis anti/lêpsin kai\ haphê/n~, Apollod. ~p. theô=n~ ap.
Stob., _Ecl._ i, p. 420 W.]
[7\1: Cf. Cic., _Div._ i, 63: iacet corpus dormientis ut mortui,
viget autem et vivit animus. Quod multo magis faciet post mortem cum
omnino corpore excesserit. _TD_. i, 29: visis quibusdam saepe
movebantur eisque maxime nocturnis, ut viderentur ei qui vita
excesserant vivere. Here we have precise ancient testimony both for
the subjective and the objective elements in dreaming and for their
importance for the origin of belief about the soul.]
[8\1: ~To\n d' e/lipe psuchê/ . . . au=tis d' ampnu/nthê~, ~E~ 696
f. ~Tê\n de\ kat' ophthalmô=n erebennê\ nu\x eka/lupsen, ê/ripe d'
exopi/sô, apo\ de\ psuchê\n eka/pussen . . . e/pei ou=n a/mpnuto
kai\ es phre/na thumo\s age/rthê~--~Ch~ 466 ff., 475; and ~ô~ 348:
~apopsu/chonta~.]
[9\1: Speaking of _suspirium_ ( = ~leipopsuchi/a~), Sen., _Ep._ liv,
2, says, medici hanc "meditationem mortis" vocant. faciet enim
aliquando spiritus ille quod saepe conatus est.]
[10\1: A remarkable idea seems to be obscurely suggested in an
expression such as that of ~x~ 207, ~all' ê/toi to\n Kê=res e/ban
thana/toio phe/rousai eis Aï/dao do/mous~; cf. ~B~ 302. Usually the
Keres bring death to men: here (like Thanatos himself in later
poetry) they conduct the dead into the realm of Hades. They are
_daimones_ of Hades, originally and primitively themselves souls of
the departed (see below, p. 168), and it is a natural idea to make
such soul-spirits, hovering in the air, carry off the souls of men
just dead to the realm of the souls. In Homer only a stereotyped
phrase preserves the vague memory of such a conception.] {45}
[11\1: Of the dead we read in ~l~ 219, ~ou ga\r e/ti sa/rkas te kai\
oste/a i=nes e/chousi~. Taking the words strictly this might mean
that the dead possess sinews but not the flesh or bones that should
be held together by the sinews. This is how Nauck, in fact,
understood the Homeric words: _Mélanges Grécorom._ iv, 718. But it
is very difficult to picture "shadows" which in this manner possess
sinews but no body of flesh and bones: the corrupt words of _fr._
229, preserved apart from their context, are quite insufficient to
prove that Aesch. derived such an unrealizable impression from the
Homeric words.--That the poet of these lines from the Nek. simply
meant "flesh, bones, and sinews, too, which might have held them
together", is shown quite clearly by what follows: ~alla\ ta\ me/n
te puro\s kratero\n me/nos aithome/noio damna=|, epei/ ke prô=ta
li/pê| leu/k' oste/a thumo/s, psuchê\ d' êü/t' o/neiros apoptame/nê
pepo/têtai~. How, then, could the fire help destroying the sinews
too?]
[12\1: The sacrificial character of the proceedings at the _rogus_
of Patroklos has again been called in question by v. Fritze, _de
libatione veterum Graecorum_, 71 f. (1893). He admits this
interpretation of the pouring of the blood on the pyre, but explains
the other circumstances differently. It would be quite easy to
disprove in this fashion the sacrificial character of every
~holokau/tôma~ for ~chtho/nioi~ whether Heroes or the dead. It is
true that the bodies of sheep and cattle, horses and dogs, thus
completely consumed by fire, are not a "food-offering", but they are
a sacrifice for all that, and belong to the class of expiatory
offerings in which the flesh is not offered for the food of the
daimon but the lives of the victims are sacrificed to him. That
Achilles slays the Trojan prisoners at the rogus ~ktame/noio
cholôthei/s~ (~Ps~ 23) does not destroy the sacrificial character of
this offering intended to appease the wrath (felt also by Achilles)
of the dead man.--The whole procedure gives a picture of primitive
sacrificial ritual in honour of the dead and differs in no
particular from the ritual of sacrifice to the ~theoi\ chtho/nioi~.
This is recognized by Stengel in his _Chthonischer und Todtencult_
(_Festschr. Friedländ._), p. 432, who also marks clearly the
differences between the two religious ceremonies as they were
gradually evolved in the process of time.]
[13\1: It cannot be denied that the libation of wine poured out by
Achilles during the night (to which he expressly summons the psyche
of Patroklos, ~Ps~ 218-22) is _sacrificial_ in character, like all
similar ~choai/~. The wine with which the embers of the funeral pyre
are extinguished may have been intended to serve that purpose alone
and not as a sacrifice. But the jars of honey and oil which Achilles
has placed upon the pyre (~Ps~ 170; cf. ~ô~ 67-8) can hardly be
regarded as anything but sacrificial (cf. Bergk, _Opusc._ ii, 675;
acc. to Stengel, _Jahrb. Philol._, p. 649, 1887, they only serve to
kindle the flames, but the honey, at any rate, seems a strange
material for the purpose. For libations at the _rogus_ or at the
grave honey and oil are regularly used--see Stengel himself, loc.
cit., and _Philol._ xxxix, 378 ff.). Acc. to v. Fritze, _de libat._,
72, the jars of honey and oil were intended not as libations but for
the "bath of the dead"--in the next world, in the Homeric
Hades!--Honey can only have been used for bathing purposes, in
Greece as elsewhere, by those who unintentionally fell into it like
Glaukos.]
[14\1: On Greek hair offerings see Wieseler, _Philol._ ix, 711 ff.,
who rightly regards these offerings as symbolic and as substitutes
for primitive human sacrifice. The same explanation of the offering
of hair is given in the case of other peoples also; cf. Tylor, ii,
401.] {46}
[15\1: Patroklos' request for prompt burial (69 ff.) gives no
sufficient motive, since Achilles has already given orders for the
funeral to take place next day, 49 ff. (cf. 94 f.).]
[16\1: ll. 19; 179. Again, in the night following the erection of
the funeral pyre, when the body is burning, Achilles calls to the
soul of Patroklos ~psuchê\n kiklê/skôn Patroklê=os deiloi=o~ 221.
The person thus called upon is evidently supposed to be still close
at hand. This is not contradicted by the formula ~chai=re . . . kai\
ein Aï/dao do/moisi~ (19, 179), for in l. 19. at least, the words
cannot mean _in Hades_, since the soul is still outside Hades, as it
tells us itself, 71 ff. The words can only mean "about", "before"
the House of Hades (like ~en **potamô=|~ "by the river", etc.). In
the same way ~eis Aï/dao do/mon~ often only means _towards_ the
house of Hades (Ameis on ~k~ 512).]
[17\1: From descriptions in ancient poetry? or had similar
customs--at least, at the funerals of chieftains--survived into the
poet's own time? Especially magnificent, e.g., were the burials of
Spartan kings--and also Cretan kings, it appears, so long as there
were any; cf. Arist. _fr._ 476, p. 1556a, 37 ff.]
[18\1: Funeral games for Amarynkeus, ~Ps~ 630 ff., for Achilles, ~ô~
85 ff. Such games are referred to as being quite the usual custom in
~ô~ 87 ff. Later poetry is full of descriptions of such ~agô=nes
epita/phioi~ of the heroic age.]
[19\1: As Aristarchos noticed: see _Rh. Mus._ 36, 544 f. Rather
different are the (certainly ancient) games and contests for the
hand of a bride (cf. stories of Pelops, Danaos, Ikarios, etc.).]
[20\1: Cf. ~Ps~ 274, ~ei me\n nu=n _epi\_ a/llô| aethleu/oimen
Achaioi/~, i.e. in _honour_ of Patroklos; cf. 646: ~so\n hetai=ron
ae/thloisi _ktere/ïze_~. ~ktereï/zein~ means to give the dead man
his ~kte/rea~, i.e. his former possessions (by burning them). The
games are therefore on exactly the same footing as the burning of
the personal effects of the dead in which the soul of the dead man
was supposed still to take pleasure.]
[21\1: Aug., _CD._ viii, 26: Varro dicit omnes mortuos existimari
manes deos, et probat per ea sacra quae omnibus fere mortuis
exhibentur, ubi et ludos commemorat funebres, tamquam hoc sit
maximum divinitatis indicium, quod non solent ludi nisi numinibus
celebrari.]
[22\1: Quae pietas ei debetur a quo nihil acceperis? aut quid
omnino, cuius nullum meritum sit, ei deberi potest? . . . (dei)
quamobrem colendi sint non intellego nullo nec accepto ab eis nec
sperato bono, Cic., _ND._ i, 116; cf. Pl., _Euthphr._ pass. Homer
speaks in the same way of the ~_amoibê\_ agakleitê=s hekato/mbês~,
~g~ 58-9 (cf. ~amoiba\s tô=n thusiô=n~ from the side of the gods,
Pl. _Smp._, 202 E).]
[23\1: ~tou=to/ nu kai\ ge/ras hoi=on oïzuroi=si brotoi=sin,
kei/rasthai/ te ko/mên bale/ein t' apo\ da/kru pareiô=n~, ~d~ 197
f.; cf. ~ô~ 188 f., 294 f.]
[24\1: ~ou ga\r e/t' au=tis ni/somai ex' Aï/dao epê/n me puro\s
lela/chête~, ~Ps~ 75 f.]
[25\1: ~--io/nti eis Aï/dao chersi\ kat' ophthalmou\s ele/ein su/n
te sto/m' erei=sai~, ~l~ 426; cf. ~L~ 453, ~ô~ 296. To do this is
the duty of the next of kin, mother or wife. The necessity for
closing the sightless eyes and dumb mouth of the dead is
intelligible without reference to any superstitious _arrière
pensée_. Such an idea is, however, dimly discernible in such a
phrase as ~a/chris ho/tou _psuchê/n_ mou mêtro\s che/res ei=lan ap'
o/ssôn~, _Epigr. Gr._, 314, 24. Was there originally some idea of
the "soul" being released by these means?--Seat of the soul in the
~ko/rê~ of the eye: ~psuchai\ d' en ophthalmoi=si tô=n
teleutô/ntôn~, Babr. 95, 35 (see Crusius, _Rh. Mus._ 46, 319).
Augurium non timendi mortem in aegritudine quamdiu oculorum pupillae
imaginem reddant, Plin., _N.H._ 28, 64; cf. Grimm, p. 1181. (If a
person can no longer see his or her ~ei/dôlon~ {47} in a mirror it
is a sign of approaching death, Oldenburg, _Rel. d. Ved._, 526 [p.
449^3 French tr.].)--Among many peoples it is believed that the eyes
of the dead must be closed in order to prevent the dead person
seeing or haunting anyone in the future: Robinsohn, _Psychol. d.
Naturv._, 44; cf. Cic., _Verr._ v, 118 (of the Greeks); Vg., _A._
iv, 684 f.: extremus si quis super halitus errat ore legam. Serv. ad
loc.: muliebriter, tamquam possit animam sororis excipere et in se
transferre (cf. _Epigr. Gr._, 547; _IG. Sic. et It._, 607e, 9-10).
~psuchê/~ making its exit through the mouth: ~I~ 409; cf. "Among the
Seminoles of Florida when a woman died in childbirth the infant was
held over her face to receive her parting spirit and thus acquire
strength and knowledge for future use," Tylor, i, 433.]
[26\1: And even ~ana\ pro/thuron tetramme/nos~, ~T~ 212, i.e. with
feet turned towards the door. The reason for this custom--which
existed elsewhere, too, and still exists--is hardly to be sought
only in the _ritus naturae_, as Plin. 7, 46, thinks. This has
generally little to do with the customs observed on the solemn
occasions of life. The meaning of the practice is much more naively
revealed in a statement about the manners of the Pehuenchen Indians
in South America given by Pöpig, _Reise in Chile, Peru, etc._, i,
393. There they carry the dead man feet foremost out of the door
"because if the corpse of the dead man were carried out otherwise
his wandering ghost might come back into the house". The Greek
custom, though in Homeric times long faded to a mere symbol, must be
supposed to have depended originally upon similar fears of the
return of the "soul". (Similar precautions arising from the same
belief were customary at funerals elsewhere: Oldenberg, _Rel. d.
Veda_, 573-4 [489 F.T.]. Robinsohn, _Psychol. d. Naturv._, 45 f.)
Belief in the incomplete departure of the soul from this world has
dictated these customs, too.]
[27\1: The details of the procedure until the funeral dirge are
given in ~S~ 343-55.]
[28\1: ~tu/mbos~ and ~stê/lê, P~ 457, 675, ~R~ 434, ~L~ 371, ~m~ 14.
A heaped-up ~sê=ma~ as the burial-place of Eetion round which the
Nymphs plant elms: ~Z~ 419 ff.--which preserves a trace of the
custom, obtaining also in later times, of planting trees and even a
whole grove round the grave.]
[29\1: ~kte/rea ktereï/zein~ in the formula ~sêma/ te/ hoi cheu=ai
kai\ epi\ kte/rea ktereï/zein~, ~a~ 291, ~b~ 222. Here the
~ktereï/zein~ comes after the heaping up of the
grave-mound--possibly the ~kte/rea~ are to be burnt on or at the
grave-mound. Schol. B on ~T~ 212 is, however, mistaken in the rule
deduced from these cases: ~prouti/thesan, ei=ta e/thapton, ei=ta
etumbocho/oun, ei=ta ektere/ïzon~. All the cases refer to the
ceremonial at _empty_ graves. Where the body was obtainable the
relatives or friends would have burnt the ~kte/rea~ with the body.
This is done in the case of Eetion and Elpenor, and it must be
understood in the close connexion of the words ~en puri\ kê/aien
kai\ epi\ kte/rea kteri/saien~, ~Ô~ 38, and again ~o/phr' he/taron
tha/ptoi kai\ epi\ kte/rea kteri/seien~, ~g~ 285.]
[30\1:--a custom that originally belonged to all primitive peoples
and remained in force for a very long time among many of them. _All_
the possessions of a dead Inca remain his own absolute property:
Prescott, _Peru_^4, i, 31. Among the Abipones of Paraguay all the
possessions of the dead are burnt: Klemm, _Culturges._ ii, 99. The
Albanians of the Caucasus buried all the dead man's possessions with
him, ~kai\ dia\ tou=to pe/nêtes zô=sin oude\n patrô=|on e/chontes~,
Str. 503. Of ancient origin are also the extravagant burial customs
of the Mingrelians living in what was formerly Albania: Chardin,
_Voy. en Perse_ (ed. **Langlès), i, 325, 298, 314, 322.] {48}
[31\1: Examples given by O. Jahn, _Persius_, p. 219 fin.]
[32\1: ~psuchê\ d' ek rhethe/ôn ptame/nê A/ïdo/sde bebê/kei, ho\n
po/tmon goo/ôsa lipou=s' androtê=ta kai\ hêbên~, ~P~ 756. ~Ch~ 362
cf. ~U~ 294, ~N~ 415. ~psuchê\ d' Aïdo/sde katê=lthen~, ~k~ 560, ~l~
65. Complete departure into the depths of the kingdom of Hades is
more clearly expressed in such words as ~bai/ên do/mon A/ïdos
_ei/sô_~, ~Ô~ 246, ~ki/on A/ïdos ei/sô~, ~Z~ 422, etc. Again, in ~l~
150, the soul of Teiresias while speaking to Odysseus is still in
Hades in the wider sense but is more exactly on the extreme edge of
that region: we are told ~psuchê\ me\n e/bê do/mon A/ïdos
_ei/sô_~--now at last it goes back again into the depths of the
Kingdom of Hades.]
[33\1: Aristonikos on ~Ps~ 104: ~hê diplê= ho/ti ta\s tô=n ata/phôn
psucha\s Ho/mêros e/ti sôzou/sas tê\n phro/nêsin hupoti/thetai~.
(Rather too systematically put by Porph. ap. Stob., _Ecl._ i, p.
422, 20 ff., 425, 25 ff. W.) Elpenor is the first to approach
Odysseus' sacrificial trench ~ou ga/r pô ete/thapto~, ~l~ 52. His
~psuchê/~ had not yet been received into Hades (_Rh. Mus._ 1, 615).
Achilles' treatment of the body of Hektor shows that he thought of
his enemy (because he was still unburied) as being able to feel what
was done to him: lacerari eum et sentire credo putat, Cic., _TD._ i,
105.]
[34\1: Plin. vii, 187, explains the change among the Romans from
burial to cremation as being due to the fear that in times of war
and disturbance the dead might be deprived of their rest. If a man
dies in war time, i.e. during a period of temporary nomadism, his
body is burnt, but a limb (sometimes the head) is cut off to be
taken home and buried ad quod servatum iusta fierent, Paul. Festi,
148, 11; Varro, _LL._ v, 23; Cic., _Lg._ ii, 55, 60. The same custom
is found among certain German tribes: see Weinhold, _Sitzb. Wien.
Ac._ xxix, 156; xxx, 208. Even among the negroes of Guinea and the
South American Indians practices resembling the _os resectum_ of the
Romans are found in the case of those who die in war in foreign
country; cf. Klemm, _Culturg._ iii, 297; ii, 98 f. In every case
burial is regarded as the ancient and traditional mode of disposing
of the dead, and the one strictly required on religious grounds.]
[35\1: Only once is there any mention of taking home the burnt
bones, ~Ê~ 334 f. Aristarch. rightly recognized this as being in
conflict with the normal conceptions and practice of Homer and
regarded the lines as the composition of a later poet (Sch. A ad
loc. and on ~D~ 174; Sch. EMQ., ~g~ 109). The lines may have been
inserted to account for the absence from the Troad of such enormous
grave-mounds as the burial of the ashes of both armies should have
produced. The same reason--the desire expressed in these lines to
bring back those who have died in a foreign country to their own
land at last--is implied as the origin of cremation in the
illustrative story of Herakles and Argeios, the son of Likymnios, in
the ~histori/a~ (derived from Andron) of Sch. A on ~A~ 52.]
[36\1: _Kl. Schr._ ii, 216, 220.]
[37\1: It would apply better to Roman beliefs; cf. Vg., _A._ iv,
698-9--though even that means something else. (Cf. also Oldenberg,
_Rel. d. Veda_, 585, 2.)]
[38\1: Cf. esp. ~Ps~ 75-6, ~l~ 218-22.]
[39\1: Serv. ad _A._ iii, 68: Aegyptii condita diutius servant
cadavera scilicet ut anima multo tempore perduret et corpori sit
obnoxia nec cito ad aliud transeat. Romani contra faciebant,
comburentes cadavera ut statim anima in generalitatem, i.e. in suam
naturam rediret (the pantheistic touch may be neglected).--Cf. the
account given by Ibn Foslan of the burial customs of the pagan
Russians {49} (quoted from Frähn by J. Grimm, _Kl. Schr._ ii, 292):
the preference for burning was due to the idea that the soul was
less quickly set free on its way to Paradise when the body was
buried intact, than when it was destroyed by fire.]
[40\1: Cf. the Hymn of the Rigveda (x, 16) which is to be said at a
cremation, esp. v. 2, 9 (quoted by Zimmer, _Altind. Leben_, 402 f.),
and also _Rigv._ x, 14, 8 (Zimmer, p. 409). The Indians also wished
to prevent the return of the dead to the world of the living. The
feet of the corpse were chained so that the dead could not return
(Zimmer, p. 402).]
[41\1: It lies at the root of the stories of Demeter and Demophoon
(or Triptolemos), and also that of Thetis and Achilles, when the
goddess, laying the mortal child in the fire, ~periê/|rei ta\s
thnêta\s sa/rkas, e/phtheiren ho\ ê=n autô=| thnêto/n~, in order to
make it immortal (cf. Preller, _Dem. u. Perseph._, 112); cf. also
the custom observed at certain festivals (? of Hecate, cf. Bergk,
_PLG._ iii, 682) of lighting fires in the streets and leaping
through the flames carrying children, see Grimm (E.T.), p. 625; cf.
also Cic., _Div._ i, 47: o praeclarum discessum cum ut Herculi
contigit mortali corpore cremato in lucem animus excessit! Ov.,
_M._, ix, 250: Luc., _Herm._, 7; Q.S. v, 640 ff. (For more about the
"purifying" effects of fire, see below, chap. ix, n. 127.)]
[42\1: Nothing else than this is implied by the words of ~Ê~ 409-10,
~ou ga\r tis pheidô\ neku/ôn katatethnêô/tôn gi/gnet', epei/ ke
tha/nôsi puro\s meilisse/men ô=ka~. The souls of the dead must be
quickly "assuaged with fire" (their longing gratified) and so their
bodies are burnt. Purification from what is mortal and unclean,
which Dieterich (_Nekyia_, 197, 3) thinks is referred to in this
passage, is certainly not suggested as such by the words of the
poet.]
[43\1: Light may be incidentally thrown on the question of the
transition from burial to cremation by such a story as that which an
Icelandic Saga tells of a man who is buried by his own wish before
the door of his house; "but as he returned and did much mischief his
body was exhumed and burnt and the ashes scattered over the sea"
(Weinhold, _Altnord. Leben_, 499). We often read in old stories how
the body of a dead man who goes about as a vampire is burnt. His
soul is then exorcized and cannot come back again.]
[44\1: It is natural to think of Asiatic influence. Cremation
hearths have recently (1893) been discovered in Babylonia.]
[45\1: See Helbig, _D. Hom. Epos aus d. Denkm. erl._, 42 f.]
[46\1: That the men of the "Mycenaean" culture, though much affected
by foreign influences, were Greeks--the Greeks of the Heroic age of
whom Homer speaks--may now be regarded as certain (see esp. E.
Reisch, _Verh. Wien. Philol._, 99 ff.).]
[47\1: See Schliemann, _Mycenae_, E.T., 155, 165, 213-14.]
[48\1: Helbig. _Hom. Epos_^2, p. 52.]
[49\1: Cf. K. Weinhold, _Sitzb. Wien. Ak._, 1858 (_Phil. hist.
Cl._), xxix, pp. 121, 125, 141. The remarkable coincidences between
the Mycenaean and these North European burial customs do not seem as
yet to have been noticed. (The object of this elaborate foundation
and covering may have been to preserve the corpse from decay longer,
and especially from the effects of damp.)]
[50\1: Also in the domed grave of Dimini: _Ath. Mitth._, xii, 138.]
[51\1: The soul of a dead man from whom a favourite possession is
withheld returns (equally whether the body and the possessions with
it are burnt or buried). The story in Lucian, _Philops._, xxvii, of
the wife of Eukrates (cf. Hdt. v, 92~ê~), is quite in accordance
with popular belief.] {50}
[52\1: Schliemann, _Myc._, 212-13: see plan F. A similar altar in
the Hall of the Palace of Tiryus: Schuchhardt, _Schliemann's Exc._
(E.T.), p. 107.]
[53\1: ~escha/ra~ is essentially ~eph' hê=s toi=s hê/rôsin
apothu/omen~, Poll. i, 8; cf. Neanthes ap. Ammon., _Diff. Voc._, p.
34 V. Such an altar rested directly on the ground without anything
intervening (~mê\ e/chousa hu/psos all' epi\ gê=s hidrume/nê~), it
is round (~strogguloeidê/s~) and hollow (~koi/lê~): cf. esp. Harp.,
87, 15 ff. Phot., s.v. ~escha/ra~ (2 glosses); _AB._ 256, 32; _EM._,
384, 12 ff.; Sch. on ~z~ 52; Eust., _Od._, p. 1939 (~ps~ 71): Sch.
Eur., _Ph._, 284. It is evident that the ~escha/ra~ is not very far
removed from the sacrificial trench of the cult of the dead: thus it
is actually called also ~bo/thros~; Sch. Eur., _Ph._, 274 (~skaptê/~
S. Byz., 191, 7 Mein.).]
[54\1: Stengel has a different view (_Chthon. u. Todt._, 427, 2).]
II
[55\1: It is doubtful whether Homer even knew of dream-oracles
(which would be closely related to oracles of the dead**). That in
~A~ 63 ~egkoi/mêsis~ is "at least alluded to" (as Nägelsbach,
_Nachhom. Theol._, 172, thinks) is by no means certain. The
~oneiropo/los~ would not be a priest who intentionally gave himself
up to prophetic sleep and thus ~hupe\r hete/rôn onei/rous hora=|~,
but rather an ~oneirokri/tês~--an interpreter of other men's
unsought dream-visions.]
[56\1: Even the river-gods and Nymphs who are usually confined to
their own homes are called to the ~agora/~ of all the gods in
Olympos, ~U~ 4 ff. These deities who remain fixed in the locality of
their worship are weaker than the Olympians just because they are
not elevated with the rest to the ideal summit of Olympos. Kalypso
resignedly admits this, ~e~ 169 f., ~ei/ ke theoi/ g' ethe/lôsi,
toi\ ourano\n euru\n e/chousin, hoi/ meu phe/rteroi/ eisi noê=sai/
te krê=nai/ te~. They have sunk to the second rank of deities. They
are, however, never thought of as free and independent, but as a
mere addition to the kingdom of Zeus and the other Olympians.]
[57\1: Exx. in Nägelsbach, _Hom. Theol._^2, 387 f. (~phre/nes~), W.
Schrader, _Jb. f. Philol._ 1885, p. 163 f. (~ê=tor~).]
[58\1: The belief in the existence of more than one soul in the same
person is very wide-spread. See J. G. Müller, _Americ. Urrelig._, p.
66, 207 f., Tylor, i, 432 f. The distinction between the five
spiritual powers dwelling within man given by the Avesta rests upon
similar grounds (Geiger, _Civ. of East. Iran_, 1, 124 ff.). Even in
Homer Gomperz, _Greek Thinkers_, i, 249, finds a "two-soul" theory
fully developed. According to him Homer recognizes in the
~thumo/s~--a word supposed to be derived from the steam rising from
freshly shed and still warm blood--a second soul in addition to the
~psuchê/~: a "smoke-soul" side by side with the "breath-soul". But
if by soul a "something" is meant--as it must be in popular
psychology--which is added independently to the body and its
faculties, something which lives separately in the body and after
the death of the body (with which it is not indissolubly united)
dissociates itself and goes off independently--then the ~thumo/s~ of
Homer cannot be called a "soul" or a double of the ~psuchê/~. Again
and again the ~thumo/s~ is clearly referred to as a mental faculty
of the living body; either thinking or willing or merely feeling
(~thumô=| noe/ô, thumô=| dei=sai, gêthê/sei thumô=|, echolô/sato
thumô=|, ê/rare thumo\n edôdê=|~, etc.) is conducted by its means.
It is the seat of the emotions (~me/nos e/llabe thumo/n~) and
belongs to the body of the living man, and is especially enclosed in
the ~phre/nes~. In the face of {51} this it is impossible to regard
it as something independent of the body or as anything else than a
special faculty of the same living body. Once, indeed, ~Ê~ 131, the
~thumo/s~ is spoken of, instead of ~psuchê/ as that which goes down
to Haides, but this can only be an error or an oversight (see also
below, ch. xi, n. 2). According to Homeric ideas--and this is a
conception repeated over and over again in Greek literature and even
in Greek philosophy--the body has all its vital powers in itself,
not merely ~thumo/s~ but ~me/nos, no/os, mê=tis, boulê/~. Yet it
only acquires life when supplemented by the ~psuchê/~, which is
something different from all these bodily powers--something with an
independent being of its own and alone deserving the name "soul", a
name which belongs as little to ~thumo/s~ as to ~no/os~. Gomperz
thinks that ~thumo/s~, etc., were at first the only recognized
faculties of the body and that ~psuchê/~ was only (for the Greeks)
added later. This is certainly not to be made out from Homer--or any
other part of Greek literature.]
[59\1: ~peri\ psuchê=s the/on~, ~Ch~ 161; ~peri\ psuche/ôn
ema/chonto~, ~ch~ 245; ~psuchê\n paraballo/menos~, ~I~ 322;
~psucha\s parthe/menoi~, ~g~ 74, ~i~ 255; ~psuchê=s anta/xion~, ~I~
401; and cf. ~i~ 523: ~ai\ ga\r dê\ psuchê=s te kai\ aiô=no/s se
dunai/mên eu=nin poiê/sas pe/mpsai do/mon A/ïdos ei/sô~. No one
strictly speaking can go into Hades bereft of his ~psuchê/~, for it
is the ~psuchê/~ alone which goes there. Thus ~psuchê/~ here clearly
= life, as is shown also by the addition of the words ~kai\ aiô=nos~
for the sake of clearness. It is more doubtful whether this is the
explanation of ~psuchê=s o/lethros~, ~Ch~ 325, or of ~psucha\s
ole/santes~, ~N~ 763, ~Ô~ 168. Other passages adduced by Nägelsb.,
_Hom. Th._^2, 381, and Schrader, _Jb. f. Philol._ 1885, p. 167,
either admit or require the material sense of the word ~psuchê/~:
e.g. ~E~ 696 ff., ~Th~ 123, ~s~ 91, etc.]
III
[60\1: A more detailed statement and documentation of the following
analysis of the Nekyia in Od. ~l~ will be found in _Rh. Mus._ 1, 600
ff. (1895). [_Kl. Schr._ ii, 255.]]
[61\1: The information given by Teiresias, ~l~ 107 ff., about
Thrinakia and the cattle of Helios seems to be put in such a brief
and inadequate form just because the fuller account given by Kirke,
~m~ 127, was already known to the poet who did not wish to repeat
this word for word.]
[62\1: A final example of such pictures intended to suggest the
background of the Odyssey is the conversation between Achilles and
Agamemnon in the "second Nekyia", ~ô~ 19 ff. The composer of these
lines has understood quite correctly the meaning and purpose of his
model, the original Nekyia of ~l~, though his continuation of it is
certainly very clumsy.]
[63\1: ~k~ 539-40 is borrowed from ~d~ 389-90, 470.--I find after
writing this that Kammer had already suggested imitation of ~d~ in
the Nekyia: _Einheit d. Od._, 494 f.]
[64\1: It is striking (and may have some special reason) that in
Kirke's account there is no mention of the Kimmerians. It is easier
to see why the careful description of the country in Kirke's speech,
~k~ 509-15, is not afterwards repeated but merely recalled to the
memory of the reader in a few words (~l~ 21-2).]
[65\1: I can see no essential difference between the conception and
situation of Hades as indicated in the Iliad and the account given
in the Nekyia of the Odyssey. J. H. Voss and Nitzsch were right in
this matter. Nor do the additional details given in the "second
Nekyia" of ~ô~ essentially "conflict" (as Teuffel, _Stud. u.
Charact._, thinks) with the description of the first Nekyia. It does
not adhere {52} slavishly to its original, but it rests upon the
same fundamental conceptions.]
[66\1: Sch. H.Q., ~k~ 514, ~Puriphlege/thôn, ê/toi to\ pu=r to\
aphani/zon to\ sa/rkinon tô=n brotô=n~, cf. Apollodor., ~p. theô=n~,
ap. Stob., _Ecl._ i, p. 420, 9 W. ~Puriphlege/thôn ei/rêtai apo\ tou=
puri\ phle/gesthai tou\s teleutô=ntas~.]
[67\1: Acheron, too, seems to be regarded as a river. The soul of
the unburied Patroklos, which has already departed, ~an' eurupule\s
A/ïdos dô=~, and has therefore passed over Okeanos, is prevented by
the other souls from passing over "the river", ~Ps~ 72 f. This can
hardly be the Okeanos, and must, therefore, be Acheron (so, too,
Porph. ap. Stob., _Ecl._ i, p. 422 f., 426 W.). ~k~ 515 does not in
the least prove that Acheron was thought of as a lake and not a
river, as Bergk, _Opusc._ ii, 695, thinks.]
[68\1: Cf. ~l~ 206 ff., 209-393 ff., 475.]
[69\1: See ~P~ 851 ff. (Patroklos), ~Ch~ 358 ff. (Hektor), ~l~ 69
ff. Behind each of these there lies the ancient belief that the soul
in the moment of escape achieves a higher state of being and returns
to a form of knowledge independent of sense-perception (cf. Artemon
ap. Sch., ~P~ 854, Arist. _fr._ 12 (10) R.). Otherwise this power
belongs to gods and, strictly, only to Zeus, who can foresee
everything (in Homer). But the statements are intentionally modified
to suggest an undefined middle position between prophecy in the full
sense and mere ~stocha/zesthai~ (cf. Sch. B.V., ~Ch~ 359)--~Ch~ 359
at the most may go beyond this point.]
[70\1: ~l~ 218-24.]
[71\1: ~o/ïn arneio\n rhe/zein, thê=lu/n te me/lainan, eis E/rebos
stre/psas~, ~k~ 527 f. From the word ~me/lainan~ the ~o/ïn
arneio\n~ is also to be understood ~apo\ koinou=~ as being, more
precisely, black (and so again in 572)--the ram offered to the gods
(or Souls) of the underworld is regularly black. ~eis E/rebos
stre/psas~, i.e. bending the head downwards (not towards the west) =
~es bo/thron~, ~l~ 36--as Nitzsch rightly explains it. Everything
corresponds to the regular ~e/ntoma~ of later times for the
underworld beings (cf. Stengel, _Ztsch. f. Gymn._, 1880, p. 743
f.).]
[72\1: ~koinê/ tis para\ anthrô/pois esti\n hupo/lêpsis ho/ti
nekroi\ kai\ dai/mones si/dêron phobou=ntai~, Sch. Q., ~l~ 48. It is
really the _sound_ of the bronze or iron that drives away spirits:
Luc., _Philops_. 15 (cf. O. Jahn, _Abergl. d. bös. Blicks_, 70). But
even the mere presence of iron objects is sufficient: [Aug.] _Hom.
de sacrileg._ (about the seventh century), 22, states that to the
_sacrilegi_ belong among others those who wear rings or armlets of
iron, aut qui in domo sua quaecumque de ferro, propter ut daemones
timeant, ponunt.]
[73\1: The idea that the Thesprotian ~nekuomantei=on~ by the river
Acheron was the original of the Homeric picture was first started by
Paus. 1, 17, 5. He was followed by K. O. Müller, _Introd. to a
Scientific System of Myth._, pp. 297-8 (_E. T._, Leitch), who has
been followed by many others. But it has scarcely more justification
than has e.g. the localization of the Homeric entrance to Hades at
Cumae, Herakleia Pont. (cf. _Rh. Mus._ 36, 555 ff.), or other places
of ancient worship of the dead (e.g. Pylos). At such places the
traditional names of Acheron, Kokytos, Pyriphlegethon were easily
introduced--but taken from Homer and not coming thence into Homer.
The fact that it is just this Thesprotian oracle of the dead that is
mentioned in Hdt.'s well-known story (v, 92 ~ê~) does not at all
prove that this was the oldest of all such oracles.]
[74\1: To this extent Lobeck's denial of necromancy to the Homeric
poems (_Agl._ 316) may, perhaps, require to be modified; but so
modified it may be accepted.] {53}
[75\1: In accordance with primeval sacrificial custom. To the dead
only female (or castrated) animals are offered (see Stengel,
_Chthon. u. Todtenc._, 424). Here it is a ~stei=ra bou=s, a/gona
toi=s ago/nois~ (Sch.). So among the Indians, "to the Manes that are
without the powers of life and procreation" a wether instead of a
ram was offered: Oldenberg, _Rel. d. Ved._, 358 [= 306 Fr. T.].]
[76\1: ~Ô~ 592 ff. Achilles says to the dead Patroklos ~mê/ moi
Pa/trokle skudmaine/men ai/ ke pu/thêai ein A/ïdo/s per eô\n ho/ti
He/ktora di=on e/lusa patri\ phi/lô|, e/pei ou/ moi aeike/a dô=ken
a/poina. soi\ d' au= egô\ kai\ tô=nd' apoda/ssomai ho/ss'
epe/oiken~. The possibility that the dead in Hades may be able to
know what is happening in the upper world is referred to only
hypothetically (~ai/ ke~)--not so, however, the intention of giving
the dead man a share in the gifts of Priam (~di' epitaphi/ôn eis
auto\n agô/nôn~ as Sch. B.V. on 594 thinks). The strangeness of such
a promise seems to have been one of the reasons that made Aristarch.
(unjustly) athetize ll. 594-5.]
[77\1: 40-1. This is not un-Homeric, cf. esp. ~X~ 456. Thus on many
vase-paintings we see the psyche of a fallen warrior flying over the
corpse, often clad in full armour, but very diminutive in size--to
express invisibility.]
[78\1: Strictly speaking Odysseus is supposed to enter into
conversation with the women while each informs him of her fate
(231-4); every now and then comes a ~pha/to~ 236, ~phê=~ 237,
~eu/cheto~ 261, ~pha/ske~ 306. But the whole section is little more
than a review at which Odysseus assists without taking any real
part.]
[79\1: Cf. _Rh. Mus._ 1, 625 ff. The nearest parallel to such a
distinction between an ~ei/dôlon~ and the fully animated ~auto/s~ is
to be found in what Stesichoros (and Hesiod before him: see Paraphr.
ant. Lyc., 822, p. 71, Scheer, and _PLG._ iii, p. 215) relates of
Helen and her ~ei/dôlon~. Prob. this latter story gave rise to the
insertion of these lines, ~l~ 602 ff.]
[80\1: Cf. 623 ff.]
[81\1: Welcker, _Gr. Götterl._ i, 818, and others following him.]
[82\1: [Apollod.] 1, 9, 3, 2; Sch., ~A~ 180 (p. 18b, 23 ff., Bekk.)
gives as reason for the punishment of Sisyphos that he betrayed to
Asopos the rape of his daughter Aigina by Zeus. This, however, does
not rest upon good epic tradition. Another story follows up the
betrayal with the myth of the outwitting of Death and then Hades by
S., after which he is sent down to Hades again and punished by the
task of the endless stone-rolling. The story of the double
outwitting of the powers of death (cf. the similar fairy tale of
_Spielhansel_: Grimm, _Fairy Tales_, n. 82, and _Anm._, vol. ii, p.
163, ed. 1915) is obviously intended humorously, and so it seems to
have been treated in a satyr-drama of Aesch., the ~Si/suphos
drape/tês~ [Sch., ~Z~ 153.] The fact that this story ends in the
punishment of the stone-rolling ought to be sufficient warning
against taking it in the serious and edifying sense in which Welcker
and his followers interpret it. It is quite contrary to ancient
ideas to suppose that Sis. is punished for his cunning as a warning
to other crafty (as well as good) men. In ~Z~ 153 he is called
~ke/rdistos andrô=n~ as praise and not blame: so Aristarch. rightly
maintained and supported his case by clear ~anaphora/~ to the line
of the Nekyia (see Sch., ~Z~ 153, ~K~ 44, Lehrs, _Aristarch._^3, p.
117 and ~l~ 593). The idea that the adj. refers to the ~kako/tropon~
of S. is merely a misunderstanding of Porph. ap. Sch., ~l~ 385. How
little anyone thought of S. as a criminal, even with the Homeric
story in his mind, is shown by the Platonic Sokrates who _rejoices_
(_Apol._, 41 C) over the fact that in Hades he will meet, amongst
others, Sisyphos (cf. also {54} Thgn., 702 ff.). The case of Sis.
presents the most serious difficulties that face any attempt to give
a moralizing sense (quite outside the poet's intention) to the
section of the "three penitents". (See also _Rh. Mus._ 1, 630.)]
[83\1: ~G~ 279, ~T~ 260 (cf. _Rh. Mus._ 1, 8). Nitzsch, _Anm. z.
Od._ iii, p. 184 f., vainly employs all the arts of interpretation
and criticism to deny their obvious meaning to both passages.]
[84\1: K. O. Müller, _Aeschylus Eumenides_, p. 167 = E.T., 1853, p.
159.]
[85\1: It should be remembered also that no legal penalties against
perjury existed in Greece, any more than in Rome. They were
unnecessary in face of the general expectation that the deity whom
the perjurer had invoked against himself would take immediate
revenge upon the criminal. (Esp. instructive are the words of
Agamemnon on the Trojan breach of faith, ~D~ 158 ff.) Such revenge
would be taken either during the life time of the perjurer--in which
case the instruments of vengeance would be the spirits of Hell, the
Erinyes: Hes., _Op._, 802 ff.--or else after death.]
[86\1: The oath as a bond in favour of the oath-gods: Thgn., 1195
f., ~mê/ti theou\s epi/orkon epo/mnuthi, ou ga\r anusto\n
athana/tous kru/psai _chrei=os_ opheilo/menon~. Perjury would be
~eis theou\s hamarta/nein~, Soph. _fr._ 431 (472 P.).]
[87\1: Eust., _Od._, p. 1614-15, has understood this. He calls
attention to Pi., _P_. 4, 159, ~ke/letai ga\r hea\n psucha\n
komi/zai Phri/xos eltho/ntas pro\s Aiê/ta thala/mous~--on which
passage the Sch. refers us back again to Homer. Both passages imply
the same belief: ~tô=n apolome/nôn en xe/nê| gê=| ta\s psucha\s
euchai=s tisin epekalou=nto apopleo/ntes hoi phi/loi eis tê\n
ekei/nôn patri/da kai\ edo/koun _kata/gein_ autou\s pro\s tou\s
oikei/ous~ (Sch. ~i~ 65 f., Sch. ~Ê~, ~i~ 62). Nitzsch, _Anm._ iii,
17-18, vainly attempts to get out of the necessity of seeing in this
act the fulfilment of a religious duty. He supposes that Odysseus is
merely satisfying a "need of the heart", etc. The real meaning of
religious performance is too often obscured by such "ethical"
interpretation.]
[88\1: The command of Athene to Telem., ~a~ 291, presupposes as
universally customary the erection of a cenotaph for those who die
in foreign lands unless their bodies can be obtained by their
friends. Menelaos erects an empty tomb to Agamemnon in Egypt, ~d~
584.]
[89\1: ~d~ 584, ~cheu=' Agame/mnoni tu/mbon hi=n' a/sbeston kle/os
ei/ê~. ~l~ 75 f., ~sê=ma/ te/ moi cheu=ai poliê=s epi\ thini\
thala/ssês, andro\s dustê/noio, kai\ essome/noisi pu/thesthai~.
Achilles in the second Nekyia, ~ô~ 30 ff., says to Agam.: Would thou
hadst died before Troy, for then the Achaeans would have set up a
tomb for thee and ~kai\ sô=| paidi\ me/ga kle/os ê/ra' opi/ssô~ (cf.
93 f., where Agam. says to Achilles ~hôs su\ me\n oude\ thanô\n
o/nom' ô/lesas alla/ toi aiei\ pa/ntas ep' anthrô/pous kle/os
e/ssetai esthlo\n Achilleu=~). The words of Hektor, ~Ê~ 84 ff., show
how the ~sê=ma epi\ platei= Hellêspo/ntô|~ served to remind sailors
as they passed, ~andro\s me\n to/de sê=ma pa/lai katatethnêô=tos
ktl.~ and to suggest that this was the proper and principal purpose
of such erections.--In contrast with this cf. what is stated of the
inhabitants of the Philippine Islands: "they laid their illustrious
dead in a chest and set them up on a high place or on a rock by the
bank of a river in order that they might be _worshipped_ by the
pious": Lippert, _Seelencult_, p. 22.]
{{55}}
CHAPTER II
ISLANDS OF THE BLEST
_TRANSLATION_
The Homeric picture of the shadow-life of the disembodied soul is
the work of resignation, not of hope. Hope would never have beguiled
itself with the anticipation of a state of things which neither
afforded men the chance of further activity after death, nor, on the
other hand, gave them rest from the toil of life; one which promised
them only a restless, purposeless fluttering to and fro, an
existence, indeed, but without any of the content that might have
made it worthy of the name of life.
Was there never any aspiration after a more consolatory picture of
the life after death? Did the tremendous vital energies of that time
really devote themselves so completely to the realms of Zeus that
not even a ray of hope penetrated to the House of Hades? We should
have had to suppose so were it not for a single passing glimpse
which we get of a distant land of hearts' desire, such as even the
Greece that lay under the sway of the Homeric order of things still
imagined for itself.
When Proteus, the sea-god who could foretell the future, has
finished informing Menelaos, on the sea-shore of Egypt, of the
circumstances of his return home to his country and of the fate of
his dearest companions, he adds the prophetic words--so Menelaos
himself informs Telemachos in the fourth book of the Odyssey (560
ff.): "But thou, god-like Menelaos, art not ordained to die in
horse-pasturing Argos or to meet thy fate there; for the immortals
shall send thee far away to the Elysian plain, to the ends of the
world where dwells fair-haired Rhadamanthys, and where life is most
easy for men. There is neither snow nor heavy storms nor rain, but
Okeanos ever sends zephyrs with soft-breathing breezes to refresh
men--because thou hast Helen to wife and art thereby in their eyes
the son-in-law of Zeus."
These verses allow us a glimpse into a world about which the Homeric
poems are otherwise silent. At the end of the {56} world, by the
River Okeanos, lies the "Elysian Plain", a land where the sky is
always clear, as in the land where the gods live.[1\2] There dwells
the great Rhadamanthys, not alone, one may suppose as "men" are
spoken of (565, 568). Thither shall the gods some day send
Menelaos--he is not to die (562); that is to say, he is to reach
that place alive nor shall he suffer death there. The place to which
he is to be sent is not a part of the realm of Hades, but a land on
the surface of the earth set apart as the abode not of disembodied
"souls", but of men whose souls have not been separated from their
visible selves--for only thus can they feel and enjoy the sense of
_life_ (565). The picture which fancy has drawn here is the precise
opposite of the blessed immortality of the soul in its separate
existence. Just because such an idea remained quite unthinkable for
Homeric singers, hope sought and found an exit from the shadow-world
which swallows up all living energy. Hope imagined a land at the end
of the world, but still of this world, to which occasionally some
few favourites of the gods might be "translated" without the psyche
being separated from its body and descending to Hades.
The actual mention of such miraculous "translation" stands alone in
the Homeric poems, and the passage in the Odyssey seems to have been
introduced by a later hand.[2\2] But the conditions of such a
miracle are all implied within the range of Homeric ideas. Menelaos
is carried off by the power of the gods and lives an eternal life
far from the world of mortals. The belief that a god could suddenly
withdraw his earthly favourite from the eyes of men and invisibly
waft him away on the breeze not infrequently finds its application
in the battle-scenes of the Iliad.[3\2] The gods could also make a
mortal "invisible" for a prolonged period. When Odysseus has been so
long lost to his friends they suspect that the gods have "made him
invisible" (_Od._ i, 235 ff.); they do not regard him as "dead" but
"the Harpies have carried him away", and he is consequently
withdrawn from all human ken (_Od._ i, 241 f.; xiv, 371). Penelope,
in her grief, prays _either_ for swift death through the arrows of
Artemis, _or_ that a storm wind may lift her up and carry her away
on dark pathways to the mouths of Okeanos, that is, to the entrance
of the Land of the Dead (_Od._ xx, 61-5; 79 ff.).[4\2] To explain
her wish she recalls a fairy tale of the kind that must often have
been told in the women's quarters; how the daughters of Pandareos,
after the violent death of their parents, were brought up to lovely
maidenhood by Aphrodite and provided by Hera, Artemis, and Athene
with all kinds of gifts and {57} accomplishments; till one day when
Aphrodite had gone to Olympos to ask Zeus to make a match for them,
the Harpies came and carried them off and made them the hand-maidens
of the hated Erinyes.[5\2] This folk-tale reveals more clearly than
is usual with the generally cultured Homeric narrative the popular
belief that men might be carried off permanently from the land of
the living, and, without seeing death, live on in another
dwelling-place. For the daughters of Pandareos are carried away
alive--to the Kingdom of the Dead, it is true, for that is where
they must go if they become the servants of the Erinyes, the spirits
of the underworld.[6\2] That is where Penelope wishes to be carried
off, and without dying first--away from the land of the living which
has become intolerable for her. Such a translation is accomplished
by means of the Harpies or the Stormwind, which is the same thing,
since the Harpies are nothing else but wind-deities of a peculiarly
sinister kind. They may be compared to the Devil's Bride or the
"Whirlwind's Bride" of German folk-tales, who rides in the whirlwind
and also carries off men with her.[7\2] The Harpies and what we are
here told of them, belong to the "vulgar mythology" which so seldom
finds any expression in Homer; a popular folk-lore that could tell
of many things between heaven and earth of which the Homeric "grand
style" takes little notice. In Homer the Harpies never act on their
own authority; only as the servants of the gods or of a single god
do they transport mortals where no word of man, no human power, can
reach.[8\2]
The prophesied removal of Menelaos to the Elysian fields at the end
of the world is only another example of such a "translation" by the
will and the might of the gods. Even the fact that prolonged
habitation in that happy land, inaccessible to other men, is
promised to him, does not differentiate the fate of Menelaos from
that of the daughters of Pandareos, or from that which Penelope
wishes for herself. For Menelaos, however, immortal life is promised
not in Hades, or even at its entrance, but in a special country of
the blest, as though in a new kingdom of the gods. He is to become a
"god"; for since to the Homeric poets "god" and "immortal" are
interchangeable terms, a man who is granted immortality (that is,
whose psyche is never separated from his visible self) becomes for
them a god.
It is also a Homeric belief that gods can raise mortals to their own
realm, to immortality. Kalypso wishes to make Odysseus "immortal and
ageless for all time", that he may remain for ever by her side
(_Od._ v, 135 f.; 209 f.; xxiii, 335 f.), {58} that is to say, make
him a god like herself. The immortality of the gods is conditioned
by the eating of the magic food ambrosia and nectar;[9\2] man, too,
by eating continually the food of the gods, becomes an immortal god.
What Odysseus in his longing for the earthly home, to which he is
drawn by loyalty and duty, rejects, has been attained by other
mortals. The Homeric poems can tell of more than one mortal promoted
to immortal life.
As he is struggling in the stormy sea rescue comes to Odysseus in
the person of Ino Leukothea, once the daughter of Kadmos, "who had
formerly been a mortal woman, but now in the waves of the sea shares
in the honour of the gods" (_Od._ v, 333 ff.).[10\2] Did some god of
the sea bear her away and imprison her for ever in his own element?
The belief existed that a god might descend from heaven even upon an
earthly maiden and carry her off for ever as his spouse (_Od._ vi,
280 f.).[11\2]
Ganymede, the most beautiful of mortals, had been carried away by
the gods to Olympos to dwell among immortals, as the cup-bearer of
Zeus (_Il._ xx, 232 ff.).[12\2] He was a scion of the old Trojan
royal house, to which Tithonos also belonged, whom both the Iliad
and the Odyssey already know as the husband of Eos; from his side
the goddess arose every morning to bring the light of day to gods
and men.[13\2] It appears that she had "translated" her beloved not
to Olympos but to the distant dwelling-place by the River Okeanos
from which she sets out in the morning.[14\2] It was Eos who had
once borne off the beautiful Orion, and in spite of the jealousy of
the other gods had enjoyed his love until Artemis "on Ortygia" had
slain him with her gentle arrow (_Od._ v, 122 ff.). The story may be
derived from ancient star-myths, which represented in the language
of myth what is actually to be observed in the morning sky. But in
such myths the elements and celestial phenomena are thought of as
living and animate like men. And in the same way, these
star-spirits, in accordance with the regular development of legend,
have long ago sunk, for the Homeric poet, to the level of earthly
youths and heroes. If the goddess can raise Orion into her own
kingdom, then, according to the belief of the time (which is all
that matters to us here), the same thing might happen to any mortal
through the favour of the gods. A simple imitation of the same
legend in a purely human setting is the story of Kleitos, a youth of
the family of the seer Melampous, whom Eos has carried off for the
sake of his beauty that he may dwell among the gods (_Od._ xv, 249
f.). {59}
§ 2
The translation, then, of Menelaos, while still alive, to the ends
of the earth to live there in perpetual blessedness is indeed a
miracle, but a miracle that finds its justification and precedent in
the range of Homeric belief. The only thing new about it is that
Menelaos has a special dwelling-place assigned to him, not in the
land of the gods, the proper realm of immortality, nor as in the
case of Tithonos and as Kalypso desired for Odysseus, in the company
of a deity, but in a separate place specially allotted to the
translated hero, the Elysian fields. Nor does this appear to be the
invention of the writer of these lines. He refers so briefly to the
"Land of the Departed"[15\2] and its delights that we are forced to
believe that he did not himself originate so enticing a
vision.[16\2] He can only, in the case of Menelaos, have added a
fresh companion to the company of the blessed. That Rhadamanthys the
Just dwells there seems to be known to him from ancient tradition,
for he evidently only intends to recall the fact and does not think
it necessary to justify this selection of the brother of
Minos.[17\2] It might even be supposed that the picture of such a
wonderland had been invented and embellished by older poets simply
for the benefit of Rhadamanthys. The only novelty is that this
picture, which has been fully adopted into the circle of Homeric
poetry, now includes a hero of the Trojan epic cycle among the
number of those translated to that land of ever unclouded happiness.
The lines were inserted, as has already been remarked, at a later
date, into the prophecy of Proteus, and it is hard not to suppose
that the whole idea lay far from the thoughts of previous Homeric
singers. Would the flower of the heroic chivalry, including Achilles
himself, have been doomed to that dim shadow-world in which we see
them wandering in the Nekyia of the Odyssey, if a way out into a
life exempt from death had already revealed itself to imagination at
the time when the Epic gave the stamp of its approval to the stories
which dealt with the fate of the greater number of the heroes?
Because the poem of the Trojan War and the adventures of the Return
from Troy had not yet decided upon the fate of Menelaos, a later
poet could speak of his "translation" to the--since
"discovered"--Land of Destiny. It is highly probable that even at
the time of the composition of the Journey to Hades of Odysseus this
conception--afterwards so important for the development of the Greek
belief in immortality--of a secluded resting-place of living and
translated heroes had not yet been completely {60} formulated. It
fits easily into the framework of belief prevailing in the Homeric
poems, but it is not necessarily required by that framework. It is
natural on this account to suppose that it entered the Epic from
without. And, remembering the Babylonian story of Hasisatra and the
Hebrew one of Enoch,[18\2] both of whom without suffering death were
translated into the realm of immortal life--either to "Heaven" or to
the "End of the Rivers" to the gods--we might be inclined to follow
the fashion that prevails in some quarters nowadays, and believe
that these earliest Greek translation legends were borrowed from
Semitic tradition. Little, however, would be gained by such a
mechanical derivation. Here and in all such cases the main question
remains still unanswered: what were the reasons which led the Greek
mind to wish to borrow this particular idea at this particular time
from abroad? In the present instance at least, nothing argues
specially for the handing on of the belief in translation from one
nation to another rather than for its independent origin in the
different countries out of similar needs.
This new idea did not contradict the normal Homeric beliefs about
the soul but on the contrary presupposed them and supplemented them
without incongruity. It was also, as we have seen, based upon
conceptions that were familiar and natural to Greek thought. There
was, indeed, no need for any stimulus from without to produce from
these materials the undoubtedly new and peculiarly attractive idea
of which we receive the earliest intimation in the prophecy of
Proteus.
§ 3
The importance of this new creation for the later development of
Greek belief makes it all the more necessary to be quite clear as to
what exactly this novelty really was. Was it a Paradise for the
pious and the just? A sort of Greek Valhalla for the bravest
heroes?--or was it that a reconciliation and adjustment between
virtue and happiness such as this life never knows had revealed
itself to the eyes of hope in a Land of Promise? Nothing of the kind
is warranted by these lines. Menelaos was never particularly
remarkable for those virtues which the Homeric age rated
highest.[19\2] He is only to be transported to Elysium because he
has Helen to wife and is therefore the son-in-law of Zeus; such is
Proteus' prophecy to him. We are not told why Rhadamanthys has
reached the place of happiness; nor do we learn it through the title
by which he was referred to almost invariably by {61} later poets,
the "Just". We may, however, remind ourselves that as brother of
Minos he was also a son of Zeus.[20\2] It was not virtue or merit
that gave him a claim to blessedness after this life; indeed, of any
such claim we never find the least trace. Just as the retention of
the psyche in the body and the consequent avoidance of death can
occur only as a miracle or by magic--that is, as an exceptional
case--so does translation into the "Land of Destiny" remain a
privilege of a few special favourites of the gods. No one could
deduce from such cases any article of faith of universal
application. The nearest parallel to this miraculous preservation of
life for a few individuals in a land of blessed repose is to be
found in the equally miraculous preservation of consciousness in
those three enemies of the gods in Hades whom we hear of in the
Nekyia of the Odyssey. The Penitents in Erebos and the blessed in
Elysium correspond: both represent exceptions which do not destroy
the rule and do not affect the main outline of Homeric belief. In
the first case, as in the second, the omnipotence of Heaven has
broken through the rule. Those, however, who owe to the special
favour of the gods their escape from death and their translation to
Elysium are near relatives of the gods. This seems to be the only
reason for the favour shown to them.[21\2] If therefore any more
general reason beyond the capricious good-will of some god is to
account for the translation of these individuals it might perhaps be
found in the belief that near relationship with the gods, that is,
the very highest nobility of lineage, could preserve a man from the
descent into the common realm of hopeless nothingness after the
separation of the psyche from the body. In the same way the beliefs
of many primitive peoples represent the ordinary man as departing to
a joyless country of the dead (if he is not annihilated altogether)
while the descendants of gods and kings, or the aristocracy, go to a
land of unending happiness.[22\2] Such a fancy, however, is only
dimly apparent in the promise made to Menelaos; nowhere is anything
said of a general rule from which the individual case might be
deduced.--
§ 4
But the individuals who are admitted to an everlasting life in the
Elysian land at the end of the world are much too distantly removed
from the habitations of the living for them to be credited with the
power of influencing the world of men.[23\2] They resemble the gods
only in the enjoyment accorded to them of an unendingly conscious
life. Of the omnipotence of {62} the gods they have not the smallest
share[24\2] any more than the dwellers in Erebos, from whose fate
their own is otherwise so different. We must not suppose, therefore,
that the origin of the stories of the promotion of individual heroes
above their companions and their translation into a distant
dwelling-place, is to be sought in any _cultus_ offered to those
individuals in their previous earthly dwelling-place. Every
religious cult is the worship of something real and powerful; no
popular religion and no poet's fancy would have given the national
heroes, if they were to be regarded as powerful and worshipped
accordingly, such a distant and inaccessible home.
It was the free activity of the poetic fancy which created and
embellished this last refuge of human aspiration upon the Elysian
plain. The needs which this new creation was chiefly intended to
satisfy were poetical and not religious.
The atmosphere of the younger of the two Homeric epics already
differs widely from that of its older companion, the Iliad, with its
heroic delight in the untiring manifestation of vital energy. It is
likely that the feelings of the **conquerors of a new home upon the
Asiatic coast may have differed considerably from those of the same
people confirmed in undisturbed possession and enjoyment of their
conquests. It seems as if the Odyssey reflected the temper and
aspiration of these Ionian city-dwellers of a later time. A spirit
of contentment and leisure seems to flow like an undercurrent
through the whole poem, and has made for itself a haven of rest in
the midst of the busy action of the story. When the poet's own
feelings find their true expression they show us idyllic scenes of
quiet enjoyment of daily life; magnificent in the country of the
Phæacians, gay and more homely at the farm of Eumaios; pictures of
quiet repose after the fights of the heroic past, that have now
faded into a mere pleasant memory, such as we get in the house of
Nestor, or in the Palace of Menelaos and the regained Helen. Or,
again, we have a description of nature in a mood of liberality and
gentleness, as upon the island of Syriê, the home of Eumaios'
childhood, upon which in ample possession of cattle, wine and corn,
a people live free from necessity and pain, till they arrive at a
good old age when Apollo and Artemis with their gentlest shafts
bring swift death to them (_Od._ xv, 403 ff.). If you ask the poet
where this fortunate island lies he will tell you that it lies over
there beyond Ortygiê where the sun turns back. But where is
Ortygiê,[25\2] and who can point out the place where the sun begins
his return journey far in the West? The country of idyllic happiness
lies indeed almost beyond {63} the limit of this world. Phoenician
merchant-men who go everywhere may perhaps reach that land as well
(415 ff.), and Ionian seamen in this earliest period of Greek
colonization into which the composition of the Odyssey reaches may
well have hoped to find far out over the sea such propitious
habitations of a new life.
In the same way the country and the life of the Phæacians seem like
an ideal picture of an Ionian state newly founded in a distant land
far from the turmoil, the restless competition, and all the
limitations of their familiar Greek homes. But this unclouded
dream-picture, bathed in purest light, lies far away in a distant
land all but inaccessible to man. Only by chance is a strange ship
cast away on to that coast, and at once the magic ships of the
Phæacians carry back the stranger through night and cloud to his own
home again. True, there is no reason to see in the Phæacians a sort
of ferry-people of the dead, neighbours of the Elysian fields.
Still, the poetic fancy which invented the country of the Phæacians
is not unrelated to that which gave rise to the idea of an Elysian
plain beyond the bounds of the inhabited world. Given the idea that
a life of untroubled bliss can only be had in the remotest confines
of the earth, jealously guarded from all intrusion, only one more
step remains to be taken before men come to believe that such bliss
is really only to be found where neither accident nor purpose can
ever bring men, more remote even than the Phæacians, than the
country of the Æthiopians, the beloved of the gods, or than the
Abioi of the North, already known to the Iliad. It must lie beyond
the bounds of real life. Such idyllic longings have given rise to
the picture of Elysium. The happiness of those who there enjoy
everlasting life seemed to be fully safeguarded only if their place
of abode were removed for ever beyond the range of all exploration,
out of reach of all future discovery. This happiness is imagined as
a condition of perfect bliss under the most benignant sky; easy and
untroubled says the poet, is the life of men there, in this
resembling the life of the gods, but at the same time without
aspiration and without activity. It is doubtful whether the poet of
the Iliad would have considered such a future worthy of his heroes,
or given the name of happiness to such felicity as this.
§ 5
We were obliged to assume that the poet who inserted these
inimitably smooth, melodious verses in the Odyssey was not the first
inventor or discoverer of the Elysian paradise beyond {64} the realm
of mortality. But though he followed in the footsteps of others,
when he introduced into the Homeric poem a reference to this new
belief, he was giving this idea for the first time an enduring place
in Greek imagination. Other poems might disappear, but anything that
appeared in the Iliad or the Odyssey was assured of perpetual
remembrance.
The imagination of Greek poets or Greek people never gave up the
alluring fancy of a distant land of blessedness into which
individual mortals might by the favour of the gods be translated.
Even the scanty notices which have come down to us of the contents
of the heroic poems that led up to, continued, or connected the two
Homeric Epics and linked them up with the whole cycle of Theban and
Trojan legend enable us to see how this post-Homeric poetry took
pleasure in the recital of still further examples of translation.
The Kypria first described how the army of the Achæans for the
second time encamped in Aulis, was detained by adverse winds sent by
Artemis; and how Agamemnon on the advice of Kalchas would have
sacrificed his own daughter Iphigeneia to the goddess. Artemis,
however, snatched away the maiden and transported her to the land of
the Taurians, and there made her immortal.[26\2]
The Aithiopis, a continuation of the Iliad, tells of the help
brought to the Trojans by Penthesileia and her Amazons, and after
her death by Memnon the Æthiopian prince, an imaginary
representative of the eastern monarchies of inner Asia. Antilochos,
the new favourite of Achilles, falls in the war, but Achilles slays
Memnon himself. Thereupon Eos the mother of Memnon (and known as
such already to the Odyssey) obtains the permission of Zeus to give
immortality to her son.[27\2] It may be supposed that the poet
described what we see so often represented upon Greek vases: the
mother bearing through the air the dead body of her son. According
to the story told in the Iliad, Apollo, with the help of Sleep and
Death, the twin brothers, bore off the body of Sarpedon, the son of
Zeus, to his Lycian home after he had been slain by Achilles, merely
in order that he might be buried in his own country. But the poet of
the Aithiopis has tried to outdo the story in the Iliad in
impressiveness (for it was evidently his model),[28\2] and has made
Eos, with the permission of Zeus, not merely carry off the dead to
his far-off home in the East, but there awaken him to immortal life.
Soon after the death of Memnon fate overtakes Achilles himself. When
his body, rescued by his friends after much hard fighting, is laid
upon its bier, Thetis, his mother, with {65} the Muses and the other
sea-goddesses come and sing the funeral dirge. Of this we are told
in the last book of the Odyssey (xxiv, 47 ff.) which relates further
how his body was burnt, his bones gathered together and entombed
under a mound, and the psyche of Achilles departed to the House of
Hades; the whole story being told to him in the underworld by the
psyche of Agamemnon. But the author of the Aithiopis--always
remarkable for his bold innovations in the traditional
material--here ventures upon an important new touch. From the
funeral pyre, he tells us, Thetis carried off the body of her son
and brought him to Leuke.[29\2] That she restored him to life again
there and made him immortal the one meagre extract which accident
has preserved to us does not say. But there can be no question that
that is what the poet narrated--all later accounts conclude the
story in this way.
The parallel is clear: the two opponents, Achilles and Memnon, are
both set free from the fate of mortals by their goddess-mothers. In
bodies once more restored to life they continue to live, not among
men, nor yet among the gods, but in a distant wonderland--Memnon in
the east, Achilles in the "White Island". The poet himself can
hardly have imagined Achilles' Island to have been in the Euxine
Sea, where, however, later Greek sailors located this purely
mythical spot.
The translation of Menelaos is still more closely paralleled by the
story told in the Telegoneia, which was the final and the
latest-written of the Cyclic poems, of the fate which attended the
family of Odysseus. Telegonos, the son of Odysseus and Kirke, slays
his father unwittingly; when he discovers his mistake he brings the
body of Odysseus with Penelope and **Telemachos to his mother, Kirke,
who makes them immortal; and there they dwell now (in the Isle
Aiaia, far away over the sea, we must suppose--Penelope as the wife
of Telegonos, and Kirke with Telemachos.[30\2]
§ 6
It is natural to feel surprise that in none of these stories is
there any mention of translation to a common meeting-place of the
Elect, such as the Elysian plain seemed to be. We must on that
account be content to leave unanswered the question to what precise
extent these lines of the Odyssey which describe the translation of
Menelaos to Elysium may have influenced the development of
translation stories in the post-Homeric Epics. The influence must
clearly have been {66} considerable.[31\2] The stories of the
translation of individual heroes to a solitary after-life in
secluded abodes of immortality show, at any rate, the same direction
of fancy as that which produced the fields of Elysium. No longer
does Eos, after she has snatched him from Hades, raise her son to be
among the gods as once she had raised Kleitos and others of her
favourites. Memnon enters upon a peculiar state of being that
differentiates him from the rest of mankind as much as from the
gods. The same applies to Achilles and the other translated heroes.
Thus did poetry increase the number of those who belonged to this
middle realm; who, born in **mortality have, outside the realms of
Olympos, achieved immortality. It is still only favoured individuals
who enter this kingdom; it is still poetical aspiration, giving free
rein to its creative instinct, that continues to transport an
ever-increasing number of the bright figures of Legend into the
illumination of everlasting life. Religious worship can have had no
more influence in the development of these stories than it had in
the narrative of the translation of Menelaos. Achilles, for example,
may in later times have had a cult paid to him on an island at the
mouth of the Danube, supposed to be Leuke. But the cult was the
result and not the motive or the cause of the story. Iphigeneia was
certainly the epithet of a Moon-goddess; but the poet who told of
the translation of her namesake, the daughter of Agamemnon, had no
suspicion of the latter's identity with a goddess--otherwise he
would never have regarded her as Agamemnon's daughter. Nor, we may
be fairly certain, can it have been an accidental meeting with the
cult of the goddess Iphigeneia, which induced him to invent an
immortality _iure postlimini_ for his mortal Iphigeneia, by the
machinery of translation. Both for the poet and his contemporaries
the importance and the essence of his narrative--whether free
invention or a reconstruction out of older material--lay in the fact
that it told of the raising of a mortal maiden, the daughter of
mortal parents, to immortal life, and not to religious veneration
which could not have made itself very apparent to the maiden
relegated to the distant Tauric country.
The busy expansion of the legendary material went on in epics that
finally lost themselves in genealogical poems. To what extent it may
have made use of the _motif_ of translation or transfiguration we
can no longer accurately judge. The materials at our disposal are
quite insufficient to warrant any conclusion. When such a misty
figure as Telegonos is deemed worthy of immortality, it may be
supposed that in the mind {67} of the poet all the heroes of Epic
tradition had come to be possessed of a virtual claim to a share in
this mode of continued existence in a life after death. Certainly
the more important among them could not be left out--those at least
of whose end the Homeric poems themselves had not already given a
different version. The poem of the Return of the Heroes from Troy
may especially have given scope for many translation stories.[32\2]
We may, for example, ask whether Diomedes, at least, whose
immortality is often vouched for by later mythology, was not already
added to the number of the immortals in the epics of the Heroic
cycle. An Attic folk-song of the fifth century can speak with
assurance of Diomedes as not having died but as living in the
"Islands of the Blest". Thus a far greater company of the Heroes of
the Trojan War was thought of by the poetry of Homeric tradition as
gathered together in "Isles of the Blest", far out to sea, than we
should guess from the summaries of the post-Homeric Epics which
accident has preserved to us. This conclusion must be drawn from the
lines of a Hesiodic poem which give us some remarkable information
about the oldest Greek forms of the Cult of the Souls and belief in
immortality, and the lines, therefore, must be subjected to a closer
examination.
II
The Hesiodic poem known as the "Works and Days" consists of a number
of independent pieces of didactic or narrative interest loosely
strung together. In it, not far from the beginning, comes the story
of the Five Ages of Men. As regards its subject-matter, the train of
thought which unites this section to the passages which precede and
follow it is hardly discoverable; in form it is quite disconnected.
In the beginning we are there told the gods of Olympos created a
Golden race whose members lived like the gods, without care,
sickness or decrepitude, and in enjoyment of rich possessions. After
their death, which came upon them like sleep to tired men, they
became, by the will of Zeus, _Daimones_ and Guardians of mankind.
They were followed by a Silver race, far inferior to the first, and
unlike them in body as in mind. The men of this race had a long
childhood, lasting a hundred years, followed by a short youth,
during which their wantonness and pride in their dealings with each
other and with the gods brought them much sorrow. Because they
refused the honours due to the gods Zeus destroyed them and they are
now Daimones of the Underworld, honoured {68} but inferior to the
Daimones of the Golden Age. Zeus then created a third race, this
time of Bronze--hard-hearted and of great strength; war was their
delight, and being destroyed by their own hands they went down
unhonoured to the House of Hades. Thereupon Zeus made a fourth race
that was juster and better, the race of Heroes, who were called
"Demigods". They fought before Thebes and Troy and some of them
died, while others Zeus sent to dwell at the ends of the world on
the Islands of the Blest by the river Okeanos, where the Earth
brings them her fruits three times in the year. "Would that I did
not belong to the fifth Age; would that I had died earlier or been
born hereafter," says the poet, "since now is the Iron Age," when
toil and grief never leave men, when there is enmity of all against
all and force conquers right, and Envy, evil-tongued, delighting in
wickedness, fierce-eyed, is over everything. Now, Shame and the
goddess of retribution, Nemesis, depart from men and go to the gods;
every misfortune is left behind for man, and there is no defence
against evil.
The author here lays before us the results of gloomy reflection upon
the origin and growth of evil in the world of men. He sees the steps
of mankind's degeneration from the height of godlike happiness to
the extremes of misery and wickedness. He is following popular
conceptions. It is natural to every race of men to lay the scene of
earthly perfection in the past, so long, at least, as man gets his
information about that past not from distinct historical memory, but
from the picturesque stories and beautiful dreams of the poets which
encourage the natural tendency of fancy to retain only the more
attractive features of the past in the memory. The folk-lore of many
lands can tell of a Golden Age and how mankind gradually fell from
that high estate; and it is not at all surprising if fanciful
speculation starting from the same point and travelling along the
same road has reached the same conclusion in the case of more than
one people without the aid of any historical connexion. We have a
number of expressions of the idea of man's gradual degeneration
through several Ages which present the most striking similarities
among themselves and with the Hesiodic picture of the five Ages of
Men. Even Homer is sometimes overcome by the mood; it lies, for
instance, at the root of such idealizations of the past as are
implied when in his description of the heroic life he thinks of "men
as they now are" and "how few sons are equal to their fathers in
virtue; worse, most of them; few, indeed, are the men who are better
than their fathers" {69} (_Od._ ii, 276 f.). But the epic poet keeps
himself and his fancy on the heights of the heroic Past; only
occasionally, and in passing, his glance falls upon the commonplace
level of real life. But the poet of the "Works and Days" has all his
thoughts fixed upon the level plain of real and contemporary life;
the glance which he occasionally casts upon the heights of the
storied past is all the more bitter on that account.
What he has to say of the first condition of mankind and the gradual
process of deterioration is given, not as an abstract exposition of
what in the necessary course of things must have occurred, but
rather as a traditional account of what had actually happened--in
fact, as history.
In this light he himself must certainly have regarded it, though,
apart from a few vague memories, no historical tradition is
contained in what he says of the nature and deeds of the earlier
generations of mankind. His story remains an imaginary picture. And
for this reason the development, as he presents it, takes a
logically defined and regulated course, based on the idea of a
gradual deterioration. The uneventful happiness of the first race of
men who know neither virtue nor vice is followed by a second race,
which after a prolonged minority displays pride and contempt of the
gods. In the third, or brazen age, active wickedness breaks out,
with war and murder. The last age, at the beginning of which the
poet himself seems to stand, marks the breakdown of all moral
restraint. The fourth race of men, to which the heroes of the Theban
and Trojan wars belong, is alone among all the others in not being
named and ranked after a metal. It is an alien in the evolutionary
process. The downward course is checked during the fourth age, and
yet in the fifth it goes on again as if it had never been
interrupted. It is not apparent why that course should have been
interrupted. Most of the commentators have recognized in the story
of the fourth age a fragment of different material, originally
foreign to the poem of the Ages of Men and added deliberately by
Hesiod to this poem, which he may have taken over in its essential
features from older poets. But if we adopt this view we have to ask
what can have tempted the poet to such serious disturbance and
dislocation of the orderly succession of the original speculative
poem. It will not be enough to say that the poet, brought up in the
Homeric tradition, found it impossible to pass over, in a
description of the earlier ages of men, the figures of the heroic
poetry which, thanks to the power of song, had acquired in the
imagination of the Greeks more reality than the plainest
manifestations of actual life. Nor {70} is it likely that, having in
his grim description of the Bronze race introduced a darker picture
of the Heroic age, drawn from a point of view different from that of
the courtly Epos, he wished to set by its side this bright vision of
the same age as he saw it in his own mind. If the picture of the
Bronze race does really refer to the Heroic age,[33\2] giving its
reverse side, so to speak, Hesiod never seems to have noticed the
fact. He must have had stronger grounds than these for the
introduction of his narrative. He cannot have failed to perceive
that he was breaking the continuity of moral deterioration by his
introduction of the Heroic race. It follows that he must have had
some aim, other than that of the description of the moral
deterioration of men, which he imagined himself to be serving by the
introduction of this new section. This other purpose will become
plain if we inquire what it is that really interests the poet in the
Heroic race. It is not their higher morality--that only interrupted
the series of continually worsening generations. Nor would he in
that case have dismissed the subject with a few words which barely
suffice to connect this section with the theme of moral development.
Further, it is not the fights and great deeds done at Thebes or Troy
that interest him for he says nothing of their greatness, and at
once declares that the cruel war and the dread fury of battle
destroyed the Heroes. This, again, does not discriminate between the
Heroes and the men of the Bronze age who also, being destroyed by
their own deeds, had to go down to Hades. What distinguishes the
Heroic age from the others is the way in which some of the Heroes
depart from this life without dying. This is the point that
interests the poet, and this it must have been that chiefly induced
him to bring in here his account of the fourth race of men. He
combines clearly enough with his main purpose of describing the
advancing moral decline of man, a secondary aim--that of telling
what happened after death to the representatives of each successive
race. In introducing the Heroic race of men this secondary aim
becomes the chief one, and justifies what would otherwise have been
merely an intrusive episode. It is this aim, too, which gives the
Hesiodic narrative its importance for our present inquiry.
§ 2
The men of the Golden Age, after sleep has overcome them and they
have died and been laid in the earth, become by the will of Zeus
"Daimones"--Daimones upon earth, watchers of men, wandering over all
the earth, veiled in clouds, {71} observing justice and
injustice,[34\2] dispensing riches like kings. These men of the
earliest times have then become effective realities. They are not
spirits confined to an inaccessible region beyond this world, but
powers acting and working amongst men. In this exalted state Hesiod
calls them _Daimones_, and thus describes them by a name which is
otherwise applied by him as well as by Homer only to the immortal
gods. The name so employed is not to be understood as implying a
separate class of immortals, an intermediate class of beings between
gods and men, as later speculation used the word.[35\2] These later
beings of an intermediate class were thought of as possessing an
originally immortal nature like the gods, and as dwelling in an
intermediate region of their own. Hesiod's Daimones, on the
contrary, have once been men and have only after their death become
immortals invisibly[36\2] roaming the earth. When they are given the
name Daimones nothing more is implied than that they now share the
invisible might and unending life of the gods, and to that extent
may be called gods--with as much right as Ino Leukothea, for
instance, who, according to Homer, became a goddess after being a
mortal; or as Phaëthon, who, according to the Hesiodic Theogony, was
raised by Aphrodite from the world of mortality and is now called a
"godlike Daimon" (_Th._, 991). On the other hand, these immortals
who were once men are clearly distinguished from the everlasting
gods, "who have their Olympian dwellings," by being called Daimones
"who rule upon earth".[37\2] And though they are given the name,
familiar to everybody from Homer, of Daimones, i.e. gods, they,
nevertheless, form a class of beings which is entirely unknown to
Homer. Homer knows of certain individual men who are raised or
translated, body and soul together, to undying life. The later Epos
can tell of certain also who, like Memnon or Achilles, receive a new
life after their death and now live on in undivided unity of body
and soul. But that the soul outside Erebos could carry on a
conscious life of its own and influence living men--of this there is
no mention in Homer. Yet this is exactly what has happened according
to the Hesiodic poem. The men of the Golden Age have died and now
live on divided from their bodies, invisible and godlike, and
therefore called gods. Just as in Homer, the gods themselves assume
manifold shapes and visit the cities of men, observing the good and
evil deeds of men,[38\2] so also do the souls of the dead in Hesiod.
For the beings who here, after their separation from the body, have
become Daimones, are _Souls_--that is to say, beings who after their
{72} death have entered in any case upon a higher existence than was
theirs while they were united to the body. This, however, is an idea
that we never meet with in the Homeric poems.
And yet it is quite unthinkable that this remarkable conception is
the independent and passing invention of the Boeotian poet. He comes
back to it again later on in the course of his poem. "Thirty
thousand," that is, innumerable immortal Watchers over mortal men
wander invisibly in the service of Zeus over the earth, taking note
of right and wrong (_Op._, 252 ff.). The conception is important to
him for ethical reasons; if he is to make use of it in his argument
he must not have invented it himself. And, in fact, nothing that
belongs to the sphere of religious belief and cultus, or even the
lower levels of superstition, has been invented by this
earnest-minded poet. The Boeotian school of poetry to which he
belonged was far removed from, and indeed, hostile to the free
inventiveness and roaming fancy with which the Homeric school ". . .
know how to put forward many lies and make them seem like truth"
(_Th._, 27). In pursuance of their purpose not simply to please but
always in some sense to teach, the Boeotian poets never innovate in
the region of the purely mythical, but simply order or piece
together, or merely register what they find in the tradition. In
religion especially invention lies farthest from their minds, though
they do not by any means deny themselves the right of independent
speculation about the traditional. Thus, what Hesiod tells us about
the men of a previous age, whose souls after death become Daimones,
came to him from tradition. It might still be objected that this
tradition while being older than Hesiod may, nevertheless, be more
recent than Homer, and be the result of post-Homeric speculation. It
is unnecessary to develop the reasons which make such a view
untenable; the course of our inquiry up to the present has made it
possible for us to maintain decidedly that in what Hesiod here says
we have a fragment of primitive belief reaching back far beyond
Homer and surviving in the secluded Boeotian countryside. We have
found even in the poems of Homer vestiges of a cult of the dead
sufficient to make us believe that once in a distant past the Greeks
resembled the majority of other nations and believed in the
continued, conscious existence of the psyche after its separation
from the body and in its powerful influence upon the world of men.
We found, too, that in accordance with this belief, religious
honours of various sorts were paid to the disembodied souls. In
Hesiod's narrative we simply have documentary confirmation of {73}
what could only be with difficulty extracted from the study of
Homer. Here we encounter the still living belief in the elevation of
the soul after death to a higher life. They are the souls, it must
be noted, of a race of men long since disappeared, about whom this
belief is held. The belief in their godlike after-life must
therefore be long-standing, and the worship of these souls as
powerful beings still continues. For when it is said of the souls of
the second race "these also receive worship"[39\2] (_Op._, 142), it
is distinctly implied that the Daimones of the first or Golden
generation _a fortiori_ received worship.
The men of the Silver generation, on account of their refusal to pay
due honour to the Olympians, are "hidden" by Zeus under the earth,
and are now called "mortal Blessed Ones that live below the earth,
second in rank, yet worship is paid to them also" (141-2). Thus, the
poet knows of the souls of men who likewise belonged to the distant
past, whose home is in the bowels of the earth, who receive
religious honour and who must therefore have been conceived as
powerful. The poet has not specified the nature of their influence
upon the upper world. It is true that he does not distinctly call
the spirits of this second generation "good", as he had done the
first (122), and he makes them spring from the less perfect Silver
age and seems to have given them inferior rank. But it does not
follow that he here anticipated later speculation and thought of the
second generation as a class of wicked demons whose nature it is to
work evil.[40\2] Only to the Olympians do they seem to stand in a
rather more distant relationship--almost one of hostility. They had
before paid the gods none of their pious dues, and so now they are
not called, like the souls of the first race, "Daimones appointed by
Zeus to be Watchers of men." The poet refers to them with a
remarkable expression, "mortal Blessed Ones," that is, mortal gods.
This very singular denomination, the two parts of which really
cancel one another, points to a certain embarrassment felt by the
poet in making use of an expression taken from the Homeric
vocabulary (to which the poet felt himself confined) to designate
clearly and effectively a class of beings that was unknown to
Homer.[41\2] The disembodied souls of the first race he had simply
called Daimones. But this name, common as it was both to the race of
those who from mortality had achieved immortality and to the
immortal gods, left the essential difference between the two classes
of immortal beings unexpressed. For that very reason the name was
never employed in Hesiod's fashion by later ages,[42\2] who always
{74} called such as, not having been born immortal, had achieved
immortality, by the name of "Heroes". Hesiod, who could not use the
word in this sense, described them by the bold oxymoron: mortal
Blessed Ones, human gods. As immortal spirits they resembled the
gods in their new state of being. But their nature was still mortal,
and hence their bodies had to die, and this constituted their
difference from the everlasting gods.[43\2]
The name Daimones then does not appear to involve any essential
distinction between the spirits of the men of the Silver generation
and the Daimones of the Golden Age. Only the place where the two
classes of spirits have their dwelling is different--the Daimones of
the Silver race live in the depths of the earth. The expression "of
the underworld", used of them, is a vague one, and only suffices to
differentiate them from the spirits of the "upper world" who were
derived from the first race. Still, the abode of the souls of the
Silver Age is in any case not thought of as being the distant
meeting-place of the unconscious, vegetating shadow-souls--the House
of Hades; the "phantoms" that hover about that place could not have
been called Daimones or "mortal gods", nor do they receive any kind
of worship after their death.
§ 3
The Silver Age, then, belongs to a long-since vanished past.[44\2]
The stalwarts of the Bronze Age, we are told, destroyed by their
deeds, went down into the gloomy home of the dreadful Hades,
nameless. Black Death seized them, for all their violence, and they
left the light of the sun.
Except for the addition of the adjective "nameless" one might,
indeed, suppose that this was a description of the fate of the souls
of the Homeric heroes. Perhaps, however, the word[45\2] only means
that no honourable and distinctive title, such as belonged to the
souls of the first and second as well as to the fourth race, was
attached to those who had gone down into the shadow-world of
annihilation and become as nothing.
There follows "the divine race of Heroes who were called the
Demigods". The wars at Thebes and Troy destroyed these. Part were
"enfolded in the destiny of Death"; others received life and a home
far from men at the hand of Zeus Kronides, who gave them a
dwelling-place at the ends of the world. There they live, free from
care, in the Islands of the Blest, by the deep-flowing Okeanos;
favoured Heroes, for whom the Earth, of her own accord, brings forth
her sweet fruits three times a year. {75}
Here, at last, for the first time we have reached a clearly
definable period of legendary history. The poet means to speak of
the Heroes whose adventures were narrated in the Thebais, the Iliad
and kindred poems. What we notice here specially is how little the
Greeks yet knew of their history. Immediately after the
disappearance of the Heroes the poet begins the age in which he
himself must live. Where the realm of poetry ends, there is an end
of all further tradition; there follows a blank, and to all
appearances the present age immediately begins. That explains why
the Heroic Age is the last before the fifth, to which the poet
himself belongs, and why it does not, for example, precede the
(undated) Bronze Age. It connects itself conveniently with the
Bronze Age also in what is related of the fate suffered by a part of
its representatives, for the subject which here particularly
interests the poet is the fate of the departed. Some of the fallen
Heroes simply die--that is to say (there can be no doubt of it) they
enter the realm of Hades like the members of the Bronze race or the
Heroes of the Iliad. But when others are _distinguished_ from those
whom "Death took" in that they reach the Islands of the Blest, it is
impossible not to suppose that these last have not suffered death,
that is, the separation of the Psyche from the visible Self, but
have been carried away alive in the flesh. The poet is thinking of
such cases as those we have met with in the Odyssean narrative of
Menelaos, or, in the Telegoneia, of Penelope, Telemachos and
Telegonos. These few exceptional instances could hardly have made
such a deep impression on him that he felt himself bound on their
behalf to erect a special class of the Translated to be set over
against those who simply died. There can be no doubt that he had
many more examples before him of this same mysterious mode of
separation from the world of men that did not involve death. We have
already seen how the lines in the Odyssey in which the translation
of Menelaos is foreshadowed, point back to other and earlier poems
of the same kind. Further, the references to the subject which we
found in the remains of the Cyclic Epics make it easy to suppose
that later Heroic poetry had been continually widening the circle of
those who enjoyed translation and illumination.
Only from such a poetical source can Hesiod have derived his
conception of a common meeting-place where the Translated enjoy for
ever their untroubled existence. He calls that place the "Islands of
the Blest"; and these lie far removed from the world of men, in the
Ocean, on the confines of the earth, just where the Odyssey puts the
Elysian {76} plain, another meeting-place of the still-living
Translated, or rather the same under a different name. Its name does
not oblige us to regard the "Elysian plain" as an island, but
neither does it exclude that assumption. Homer never expressly calls
the land of the Phæacians an island,[46\2] but the imagination of
most readers will picture Scheriê as such, and so did the Greeks
perhaps already at the time of the Hesiodic school of poets. In the
same way a poet may have thought of the "Land of Destiny" that
receives passing mention in Homer as an island, or group of islands;
only an island surrounded and cut off by the sea can give the full
impression of a distant asylum far from the world, inaccessible to
all save those specially called thither. And accordingly the
mythology of many peoples, especially those who live by the sea, has
made a distant island the dwelling-place of the souls of the
departed.
Complete isolation is the essential feature of the whole idea of
translation, as Hesiod clearly shows. A later poet has added a
line--which does not quite fit into its place--to make this
isolation even more marked.[47\2] According to it, these Blessed
Ones live not only "far from men" (167), but also (169) far from the
immortals, and are ruled over by Kronos. The writer of this line
follows a beautiful legend, later, however, than Hesiod, in which
Zeus released the aged Kronos, together with the other Titans,[48\2]
from Tartaros, so that the old king of the gods, under whose rule
the Golden Age had once prevailed with peace and happiness upon
earth, now wields the sceptre of another Golden Age over the Blessed
in Elysium, himself a figure of peaceful contemplation dwelling far
away from the stormy world, from the throne of which he has been
ousted by Zeus. Hesiod himself has provoked this transference of
Kronos from the Golden Age to the land of the Translated; for in the
few lines that he devotes to the description of the life of the
Blessed a reminiscence of the picture of the Golden Age's untroubled
existence is clearly discernible. Both pictures, the one of a
childhood's paradise in the past, the other of unclouded happiness
reserved in the future for the elect, are closely related; it is
difficult to say which of them has influenced the other[49\2] since
the colours must have been the same in any case--the purely idyllic
having an inevitable uniformity of its own.
§ 4
Hesiod says nothing of any influence upon this world exerted by the
souls of the Translated in the Islands of the Blest, such as is
attributed to the Daimones of the Golden {77} race, nor of any
religious worship, which would be implied by such influence if it
existed, such as the underworld spirits of the Silver Age receive.
All relations with this world are broken off, for any influence from
this side would completely contradict the whole conception of these
blessed departed. Hesiod faithfully sets down the conception of the
Translated exactly as poetic fancy, without any interference from
religious cultus, or the folk-belief founded on it, had
instinctively shaped it.
Supposing, then, that he follows Homeric and post-Homeric poetic
tradition in this particular, whence did he derive his ideas about
the Daimones and spirits of the Golden and Silver Ages? He did not
and could not have got these from Homeric or semi-Homeric sources,
for they (unlike the idea of Translation) do not simply expand, but
actually contradict Homeric beliefs about the soul. To this question
we may answer with certainty; he derived them from _cultus_. There
survived, in spite of Homer, at least in central Greece where the
Hesiodic poetry had its home, a religious worship paid to the souls
of certain departed classes of men; and this cultus preserved alive,
at least as a vague tradition, a belief which Homer had obscured and
dispossessed. It only reached the Boeotian poet, whose own
conceptions spring entirely from the soil of Homeric belief, as from
a far distance. Already in the days of the Bronze race, he tells us,
the souls of the dead were swallowed up in the dread House of Hades,
and this (with a few miraculous exceptions) applies to the Heroic
race as well. And for the poet, standing as he does, at the opening
of the Iron Age, to which he himself belongs, nothing remains but
dissolution in the nothingness of Erebos. That such is his view is
proved by his silence about the fate after death of his
generation--a silence that is all the more oppressive because the
grim picture that he gives of the misery and ever-increasing
depravity of real and contemporary life might seem to require a
brighter and more hopeful picture of future compensation, if only to
balance it and make it endurable. But he is silent about all such
future compensation; he has no such hope to offer. Though in another
part of the same poem Hope alone of all the blessings of an earlier
and better age still remains among men, such Hope no longer
illuminates the next world, at any rate, with its beams. The poet,
more deeply distressed by the common realities of life, can by no
means dispense so easily as the singers of the epic tradition
enclosed in the magic circle of their poetry, with such hopes of the
future. He can draw comfort only from what poetry {78} or religious
myth tell him of the far distant past. It never enters his head to
believe that the miracle of the translation of living men could
transcend the limits of the Heroic Age and repeat itself in the
common and prosaic present day. And the time when, according to a
law of nature no longer (so it seems) in operation, the souls of the
dead became Daimones and lived a higher life upon and beneath the
earth, is situated far back in the distant past. Another law rules
now; the men of to-day may still worship the immortal spirits of the
Golden and the Silver Age, but they themselves will never be added
to the number of those illuminated and exalted souls.
§ 5
Hesiod's description, then, of the five Ages of Men gives us the
most important information about the development of Greek belief in
the soul. What he tells us of the spirits of the Silver and Golden
race shows that from the earliest dawn of history down to the actual
lifetime of the poet, a form of _ancestor-worship_ had prevailed,
based upon the once living belief in the elevation of disembodied
and immaterial souls to the rank of powerful, consciously active
spirits. But the company of these spirits receives no additions from
the life of the present day. For centuries now the souls of the dead
have been claimed by Hades and his vain shadow world. The worship of
the soul is stationary; it affects only the souls of the long-since
departed; it no longer increases the number of the objects of its
worship. In other words, the belief has changed; the Homeric poems
have triumphed and the view they held, and to which they gave
authority, and, as it were, official sanction, now prevails. They
teach men that the psyche once separated from the body loses all its
powers and consciousness; the strengthless shadows are received into
a distant Underworld. For them, no action, no influence upon the
world of men is possible, and therefore no cult can be paid to them.
Only on the farthest horizon faintly appear the Islands of the
Blest, but the circle of the fortunate, who, according to the
visionary fancy of the poets, are translated alive there, is now
closed, just as the circle of epic story is complete also. Such
miracles no longer happen.
Nothing in this evolutionary process so clearly depicted in the poem
of Hesiod contradicts what we have learned from Homer. One thing
only is new and immensely important; in spite of everything the
memory survives that once the souls of departed generations of men
had achieved a higher, {79} undying life. Hesiod speaks in the
present tense of their being and working and of the worship paid to
them after their death; if they are believed to be immortal, men
will naturally continue to worship them. And the opposite also is
true; if the worship of such spirits had not survived into the
present, no one would have held them to be deathless and eternally
potent.
In a word, we are in the old Greek mainland, the land of Boeotian
peasants and urban farmers, among a stay-at-home race which neither
knows nor desires to know of the seafaring life that tempts men to
foreign lands whence they bring back so much that is new and
strange. Here in the central uplands vestiges of ancient custom and
belief remained that had been forgotten in the maritime cities of
new Greece on the Asiatic coast. Even here, however, the new
learning had penetrated to this extent: the structure of ancient
belief, transported into the distant past, interwoven with fanciful
tales of the earliest state of mankind, like the expiring echo of
half-forgotten song lives on only in memory. But the cult of Souls,
is not yet quite dead; the possibility remains that it may yet renew
its strength and expand into fresh life when once the magic
influence of the Homeric view of the world shall have been broken.
NOTES TO CHAPTER II
[1\2: It is not for nothing that what is here said of the "climate",
if one may so call it, of the Elysian plain, ~d~ 566-8, reminds us
so strikingly of the description of the abode of the Gods on
Olympos, ~z~ 43-5.]
[2\2: The announcement of the fate of Menelaos is quite superfluous;
it is not necessitated (and not even justified) by his first request
(468 ff.), or by his further questions (486 ff.; 551 ff.). Nitzsch
already regarded the lines 561-8 as a later addition: _Anm. z. Od._
iii, p. 352--though indeed on grounds that I cannot regard as
conclusive. Others have done the same since.]
[3\2: The following are made invisible (by envelopment in a cloud)
and carried away--this, though not always stated, is most probably
to be understood in most cases: Paris, by Aphrodite, ~G~ 380 ff.;
Aeneas, by Apollo, ~E~ 344 f.; Idaios, son of Dares, the priest of
Hephaistos, by Heph., ~E~ 23; Hektor, by Apollo, ~U~ 443 f.; Aeneas,
by Poseidon, ~U~ 325 ff.; Agenor, by Apollo, ~Ph~ 596 ff.--this last
appears to be the original copied twice over in the story of this
one day of fighting by later poets (in the above-mentioned cases of
the use of the motif, ~U~ 325 ff.; 443 f.). It is remarkable (for no
special reason for it suggests itself) that all these cases of
translation are found on the _Trojan_ side. Otherwise we only have
one instance (and that only in the narrative of a long past
adventure, the translation of the Anaktoriones by their father
Poseidon, ~L~ 750 ff. Lastly, a case that hardly goes beyond those
already mentioned: Zeus could have translated alive his son Sarpedon
out of the fray and placed him in his Lykian home (~P~ 436), but
refrains owing to the warning of Hera (440 ff.).]
[4\2: The wish to die quickly is expressly _contrasted_ with the
wish to be carried off by the Harpies, 63 ~ê\ e/peita~--"or if not,"
i.e. if quick death is denied to me. (v. _Rh. Mus._ 50, 2, 2.) Again
79-80: ~hôs e/m' _aïstô/seian_ Olu/mpia dô/mat' e/chontes êe/ m'
eüplo/kamos ba/loi A/rtemis~. Thus the Harpies (= ~thu/ella~ 63) in
this case do not bring death but carry away men alive (~anarpa/xasa
oi/choito~ 63 f., ~ha/rpuiai anêrei/psanto~ 77 = ~ane/lonto
thu/ellai~ 66, and they carry them off ~kat' êero/enta ke/leutha~ 64
to the ~prochoai\ apsorro/ou Ôkeanoi=o~ 65 ~e/dosan stugerê=|sin
Erinu/sin amphipoleu/ein~ 78). At the "mouths of Okeanos" (where it
goes into the sea is the entrance to the world of the dead; ~k~ 508
ff., ~l~ 13 ff. To be carried off by the storm-spirits used
proverbially as a wish: ~Z~ 345 ff. ~hô=s m' o/phel' ê/mati tô=|
ho/te me prô=ton te/ke mê/têr oi/chesthai prophe/rousa kakê\
ane/moio _thu/ella_ eis o/ros ê\ eis ku=ma poluphloi/sboio
thala/ssês~ (i.e. to some solitary place, Orph., _H._ 19, 19; 36,
16; 71, 11). Such transportation through the air is elsewhere
contrasted with death and dwelling in Hades, as in Penelope's
prayer. (Roscher, _Kynanthropie_ [Abh. d. sächs. Ges. d. Wiss.
xvii], p. 67, gives a strange but hardly the correct explanation of
this.) Cf. Soph., _Tr._, 953 ff.; _Ai._, 1193 ff.; (_Phil._, 1092
ff.?); cf. also Eur., _Hipp._, 1279 ff.; _Ion_, 805 f.; _Supp._,
833-6. A deeply rooted popular mode of thought, and one of primeval
antiquity, lies at the root of all {81} these instances.--~hupo\
pneuma/tôn sunarpage/nta a/phanton gene/sthai~ is a reason for
~timai\ atha/natoi~, in the only half-rationalized story of Hesperos
in D.S. 3, 60, 3.]
[5\2: One would like to know more of this strange story, but what we
learn elsewhere of Pandareos and his daughters (Sch. ~u~ 66-7; ~t~
518; Ant. Lib. 36) contributes nothing to the understanding of the
Homeric narrative and probably belongs in part to another connexion.
Pandareos, father of Aëdon (~t~ 518 ff.), seems to be another
person. Even the strange representation of the two daughters of
Pandareos in Polygnotos' picture of the underworld (Paus. 10, 30, 2)
casts no light on the Homeric fable. (Cf. Roscher, _Kynan._, 4 ff.,
65 f.)]
[6\2: The Erinyes live normally in Erebos, as is shown esp. by ~I~
571 f.; ~T~ 259. But when they punish during the lifetime of the
criminal acts done in contravention of the laws of family life, it
must be supposed that they were sometimes thought of as going about
the earth, e.g. ~I~ 454: ~l~ 278--for "working at a distance" seems
impossible--as in Hes., Op., 803 f.--~Erinu/sin amphipoleu/ein~ (78)
cannot be anything but "serve the Erinyes", "become their
~amphi/poloi~". To understand it as Roscher does (_Kynan._, 65, n.
183) following Eustathius, in the sense "fly about in the train of
the E." is forbidden by the use of the simple dative ~Erinu/si~
joined closely with ~amph.~ (~theai=s amphipolô=n~ Soph., _O.C._,
680, is different.)]
[7\2: "When the Bride of the Wind comes by you must throw yourself
on the ground as though it were the Muodisheere (on which see Grimm
(E.T.), p. 931) otherwise they will carry you off." Birlinger,
_Volksthüml. a. Schwaben_, i, 192, "She is the Devil's Bride," ib.
(On the "Bride of the Wind", etc., see Grimm, pp. 632, 1009.) Such
wind-spirits are in unholy alliance with the "Furious Host", i.e.
the unquiet "souls" of the dead that travel through the air by
night.]
[8\2: On the Harpies, see _Rh. Mus._, 50, 1-5.]
[9\2: See Nägelsb., _H.T._, pp. 42-3, and Roscher, _Nektar u.
Ambrosia_, p. 51 ff., answering Bergk's objections, _Opusc._ ii,
669. (Arist. _Meta._, 1000a, 9-14, is very definite.)]
[10\2: It is not improbable that this Ino Leukothea was originally a
goddess who was later turned into a "Heroine" (identified with the
daughter of Kadmos for reasons no longer recoverable and only
afterwards turned back again into a goddess. But for the Homeric age
she was essentially a mortal who had _become_ a goddess: for this
reason, just because she was an example of such deification of
mortals, she remained an interesting character to later writers; cf.
in addition to the well-known passages in Pindar, etc., Cic., _T.D._
i, 28. Only what the actual conception of the people and their poets
was--not what may possibly be suggested as the doubtful background
of such conceptions--concerns me in this as in many other cases.]
[11\2: Only temporary translation (~anê/rpase~) of Marpessa by
Apollo ~I~ 564.]
[12\2: Ganymedes, ~anê/rpase the/spis _a/ella_~, _h. Ven._, 208, as
the ~thu/ella~ (= ~Ha/rpuia~) did the daughters of Pandareos. The
eagle is the addition of later poetry.]
[13\2: ~L~ 1; ~e~ 1.]
[14\2: ~Êô\s . . . ap' Ôkeanoi=o rhoa/ôn ô/rnuth', hi/n'
athana/toisi pho/ôs phe/roi êde\ brotoi=sin~, ~T~ 1 f.: cf. ~ps~ 244
(_h. Merc._, 184 f.). So also _h. Ven._, 224 ff., says of Tithonos:
~Êoi= terpo/menos chrusothro/nô| êrigenei/ê| nai=e par' Ôkeanoi=o
rhoê=|s epi\ pei/rasi gai/ês~, in good Homeric style. It seems that
the magic island Aiaia was considered the home of Eos (and of
Tithonos): ~m~ 3: ~nê=so/n t' Aiai/ên, ho/thi t' Êou=s êrigenei/ês
{82} oiki/a kai\ choroi/ eisi antolai\ êeli/oio~. I need not here go
into the attempts made even in antiquity to explain the
much-discussed difficulty introduced by this verse and to bring it
into conformity with the westerly situation of Aiaia implied in the
rest of the Odyssey. One thing is certain: the first composer of
this verse thought of Aiaia as lying towards the east. Only the last
resources of the commentator's art could situate the place of the
"sun's uprising" and the "dwelling of the Dawn" in the west.]
[15\2: Among innumerable unsuccessful attempts made by the ancients
at finding an etymological derivation for the word ~Êlu/sion~ (Sch.,
~d~ 563, Eust., p. 1509, Hesych., s.v., etc., also Cels. ap. Orig.,
_Cels._ vii, 28, p. 53 L.) occurs also the right one, _E.M._, 428,
36: ~para\ tê\n e/leusin, e/ntha hoi eusebei=s paragi/nontai~. The
grammarians seem to have disputed over the question, did Menelaos
live for ever in Elysion? It was agreed on all hands that he reached
that abode alive, without separation of psyche from body; but the
over-subtle thought that the prophecy meant that he too should die
there though not in Argos--not that he should never die at all: so
esp. _E. Gud._, 242, 2 ff. This was the opinion also of those who
derived ~Êlu/sion~ from the fact that there the ~psuchai\
_lelume/nai_ tô=n sôma/tôn dia/gousi~: Eust., 1509, 29, _E.M._, etc.
The etymology is as bad as the interpretation of the line. The line
remained, however, throughout antiquity as a curiosity; intelligent
readers understood the prophecy quite rightly as referring to the
translation of Menelaos to everlasting life without separation of
~psuchê/~ from body; e.g. Porph. ap. Stob., _Ecl._ i, p. 422, 8 ff.,
W. So, too, those who gave the right interpretation of fact, but
rested it upon the more dubious etymology: ~Êlu/sion oulu/sion,
ho/ti ou dialu/ontai apo\ tô=n sôma/tôn hai psuchai/~. Hesych. (cf.
_E.M._, 428, 34-5; Sch., ~d~ 563; Procl. on Hes., _Op._, 169).]
[16\2: ~ou mê\n phai/netai/ ge (ho poiêtê/s) proagagô\n to\n lo/gon
es ple/on hôs heu/rêma a/n tis oikei=on, prosapsa/menos de\ autou=
mo/non ha/te es ha/pan ê/dê diabeboême/nou to\ Hellêniko/n~--to
adopt the words that Pausanias (10, 31, 4) uses of a similar case.]
[17\2: The reasons for the special favour shown to Rhadamanthys are
as unknown to us as they evidently were to the Greeks of later
times. What is generally said of the "justice" of Rhad. rests upon
private opinion only and does not supply the place of the precise
legend that should have justified his translation. That he once had
a complete legend of his own may be guessed from the allusion to him
in ~ê~ 323, though that passage still leaves us quite in the dark.
At any rate, it certainly does not follow from that reference that
while dwelling in Elysion he was a neighbour of the Phaeacians as
Welcker thinks: nor further that he had always been a dweller in
Elysion, as Preller supposes, instead of being transported there.
Nothing in the former passage justifies us in regarding him as then
dwelling in Elysion; while the other reference to him must be
supposed to mean that Rhad. just as much as Menelaos, was translated
to Elys. (and so e.g. Paus. understood the poet 8, 53, 5: ~pro/teron
de\ e/ti Rhada/manthun entau=tha hê/kein~; doubtful: Aesch. _fr._
99, 12-13). In fact, we have lost the legends which gave the details
of his translation: his figure had become isolated and had not
entered into the greater circle of epic figures--and as a
consequence his mythical context soon disappeared too.]
[18\2: Hasisatra's _Translation_: see the translation of the
Babylonian account in Paul Haupt's _Der Keilins. Sintfluthber._
(Leip. 1881), p. 17, 18. The expressions used by the Greek-writing
reporters are exactly like those common in Greek accounts of
translation: ~gene/sthai aphanê= {83} (to\n Xi/southron) meta\ tô=n
theô=n oikê/sonta~, Beros. ap. Sync., p. 55, 6, 11 Di.; ~theoi/ min
ex anthrô/pôn aphani/zousi~, Abydenus ap. Syncell., p. 70, 13. Of
Enoch we read, Gen. 5^24: ~ouch heuri/sketo ho/ti mete/thêken auto\n
ho theo/s (metete/thê~, Ecclus., 44^16; Hebr. 11^5); ~anelê/phthê
apo\ tê=s gê=s~, Ecclus. 49^14; ~anechô/rêse pro\s to\ thei=on~,
Jos., _AJ._ i, 3, 4 (of Moses: ~aphani/zetai~, Jos., _AJ._ iv, 8,
48). On the translation of Enoch and Elijah, see also Schwally, _D.
Leben. nach d. Tode n. d. Vorst. d. a. Israel_ (1892), p. 140.
Translation of the living into Sheol often in the O.T., see
Schwally, p. 62. Even Enoch has not escaped the fate of being
regarded by comparative mythologists as the sun. Enoch may be given
up to them, if the Orientalists have no objection; but it seems a
pity that the theory, in accordance with the favourite argument from
analogy, should be applied to Greek Translation-myths too, so that
we should see the whole series of such figures, from Menelaos to
Apollonios of Tyana, transformed by magic into mythological suns (or
dawns, water-meadows, thunder-clouds, etc.).]
[19\2: ~malthako\s aichmêtê/s~, ~R~ 588.]
[20\2: ~X~ 321-2.]
[21\2: One might even suspect that Menelaos is translated to
everlasting life not merely because he has Helen, Zeus' daughter, to
wife: ~hou/nek' e/cheis Hele/nên~ as Proteus tells him, but in
_imitation_ of a much earlier mythical tradition, according to which
Helen herself was translated and made immortal. No ancient tradition
reports the _death_ of Helen--with the exception of the absurd
invention of Ptolemaios Chennos (Phot. _Bibl._, p. 149_a_, 37 Bk.;
42; 149_b_, 1 ff.) and the not very superior aetiological myth in
Paus. 3, 19, 10. On the other hand, we often hear of her
deification, living on the island Leuke or else in the Islands of
the Blest. It was not unnatural that mythological tradition should
have at an early period set free the most "daemonic" of women from
the usual fate of mankind and that Menelaos should rather have
followed her example than she his (as Isoc. 10, 62, definitely
says).]
[22\2: Cf. Tylor, ii, 85: J. G. Müller, _Ges. d. Americ. Urrelig._,
660 f.; Waitz, _Anthrop._ v, 2, 114; vi, 302, 307.]
[23\2: We are told that Rhadamanthys was once conveyed by the
Phaeacians to Euboea ~epopso/menos Tituo\n Gaiê/ïon huio/n~ (~ê~ 321
ff.). We have no grounds and no right to complete this story by
supposing that this was when Rh. already lived in Elysion. To regard
the Phaeacians as a sort of "ferry-folk of the dead" connected in
some way with Elysion is pure unsupported fancy.]
[24\2: The possessor of ~athanasi/a~ did not necessarily possess
also ~du/namin iso/theon~ (Isoc. 10, 61).]
[25\2: To identify ~Ortugi/ê~, ~o~ 404, with Delos, and ~Suri/ê~
with the island Syros as the older commentators and K. O. Müller,
_Dorier_, i, 381 [? not in _E.T._], did, is impossible on account of
the addition of the words ~ho/thi tropai\ êeli/oio~ alone. These
show that Syrie was far away in the fabulous west, the only possible
place for such a wonderland. It is evident that Ortygia is
originally a purely mythical spot, sacred to Artemis and no more
certainly fixed in one place than the Dionysian Nysa, and for that
reason always to be found wherever the cult of Artemis was
especially popular, in Aetolia, Syracuse, Ephesos, or Delos. Delos
is clearly distinguished from O. in _h. Ap._ 16, and only later
identified with O. (Delos being considered the older name, O.
Schneider, _Nicandr._, p. 22, n.), when Artemis had been brought
into closer connexion with Apollo, and even then not invariably.
Thus in Homer Ortygia _never_ clearly = Delos.] {84}
[26\2: ~A/rtemis de\ autê\n hexarpa/xasa eis Tau/rous metakomi/zei~
(cf. the ~mete/thêken auto\n ho theo/s~ of Enoch, Gen. 5^24) ~kai\
atha/naton poiei=, e/laphon de\ anti\ tê=s ko/rês pari/stêsi tô=|
bômô=|~, Procl., _Chrest._ ap. Kinkel _Epic. Fr._, p. 19: [Apollod.]
_Epit._ iii, 22. Wagn.]
[27\2: ~tou/tô| (tô=| Me/mnoni Êô\s para\ Dio\s aitêsame/nê
athanasi/an di/dôsi~ says Proclus with regrettable brevity (p. 33,
Kinkel).]
[28\2: It cannot be doubted (in spite of Meier, _Annali dell' Inst.
Arch._, 1883, p. 217 ff.) that the story given in ~P~ of Sarpedon's
death and the carrying away of his body, even if it does not belong
to the oldest part of the poem (which I cannot regard as certain),
is nevertheless earlier than the _Aithiopis_ and was the model for
its account of Memnon's death (cf. also Christ, _Chron. altgr.
Epos._, p. 25). But why do Thanatos and Hypnos carry away the body
of Sarpedon (instead of the usual ~thu/ella, a/ella, Ha/rpuia~, or
the winds, Q.S. ii, 550, in the case of Memnon)? Where these two are
found on Attic lekythoi as bearers of the corpse (Robert,
_Thanatos_, 19) they were perhaps intended in some consolatory sense
as in the grave inscriptions ~hu/pnos e/chei se, ma/kar . . . kai\
ne/kus ouk ege/nou~. The Homeric poet, however, can hardly have
meant anything of the sort, but merely invents the indispensable
second bearer to assist Thanatos--an effective touch but not one
that rested on any religious grounds. Hypnos as brother of Thanatos
is also found in the ~Dio\s apa/tê~, ~X~ 231.]
[29\2: ~ek tê=s pura=s hê The/tis anarpa/sasa to\n pai=da eis tê\n
Leukê\n nê=son diakomi/zei~, Procl., _Chrest._, p. 34, Kink. Then he
continues, ~hoi de\ Achaioi\ to\n _ta/phon_ chô/santes agô=na
tithe/asin~. Thus a grave-mound is set up though the body of
Achilles has been translated: evidently a concession to the older
narrative (~ô~ 80-4), which knew nothing of the translation of the
body but gives prominence to the grave-mound. Besides which, the
tumulus of Achilles--a landmark on the seashore of the
Troad--required explanation, and the poet accordingly speaks of the
erection of a cenotaph. It was not considered a contradiction to
erect cenotaphs, not only to those whose bodies were irrecoverable
(see above, Ch. I, n. 88), but also to Heroes whose bodies had been
translated. Thus Herakles, after he has been struck by lightning and
snatched up into the sky, has a ~chô=ma~ made for him, though no
bones were found upon the ~pura/~, D.S. 4, 38, 5; 39, 1. (The tumuli
found in the Troad were not, indeed, originally empty as Schliemann,
_Troy, etc._, pp. 252, 263, supposed; they were not cenotaphs but
merely grave-mounds that had once been filled and belong to a type
frequently met with in Phrygia; see Schuchhardt, _Schliemann's
Excav._ [E.T.], p. 84 ff. Kretschmer, _Einl. Ges. gr. Spr._, 1896,
p. 176.)]
[30\2: What became of Odysseus? Proclus is silent on the point, and
we have no means of guessing. According to Hyginus 127 he was buried
in Aiaia; but if nothing more was going to be done with his body why
bring him to Aiaia? Acc. to Sch. Lyc., 805, he was raised to life
again by Kirke, but what happened to him then? (Acc. to [Apollod.]
_Epit._ vii, 37 W., the dead Odysseus seems to remain in Ithaka.--We
have no grounds for altering the words to suit the Telegoneia as
Wagner does, esp. as a complete correspondence with that poem cannot
be obtained.) The death and burial of Od. among the Tyrrhenians
(Müller, _Etruscans_ iii, 281 tr. Gray) belong to quite another
connexion.]
[31\2: The _Aithiopis_ is later than the Hades scenes in ~ô~, and
consequently later still than the Nekyia of ~l~. The prophecy of the
Translation of Menelaos in ~d~ is likewise later than the Nekyia but
to all appearance older than the _Aithiopis_.] {85}
[32\2: The extract from the Nostoi in Proclus, _Chrest._, is
particularly inadequate and evidently gives no full idea of the very
wide and various subject matter of that poem. Thus, too, the notices
of it preserved from other sources give details of its subject
matter (esp. of the Nekyia which was included in it) that cannot be
fitted into the limits of Proclus' outline.]
[33\2: The idea that the Bronze age is really identical with the age
of Heroes is at first sight attractive (see e.g. Steitz, _Die W. u.
T. des Hesiod_, p. 61); one soon finds, however, that it breaks down
on closer examination.]
[34\2: It does not seem to me absolutely necessary to strike out
lines 124 f. (~hoi/ rha phula/ssousi/n te di/kas kai\ sche/tlia
e/rga, êe/ra hessa/menoi pa/ntê phoitô=ntes ep' ai=an~). They are
repeated in lines 254 f., but that is a natural place to repeat
them. Proclus does not comment on them; but it does not follow that
he did not have them before him; and Plutarch, _D.O._ 37, p. 431 B,
seems to allude to l. 125 in its present context.]
[35\2: Plu., _D.O._, 10, p. 415 B, in obvious error, takes Hesiod's
~dai/mones~ for such an intermediate class of beings; he supposes
that Hesiod distinguishes four classes ~tô=n logikô=n, theoi/,
dai/mones, hê/rôes, a/nthrôpoi~. In this Platonist division the
~hê/rôes~ would correspond rather with Hesiod's ~dai/mones~ of the
first age. (What Proclus has to say on Hesiod, _Op._ 121, p. 101,
Gaisf., is taken evidently word for word from Plutarch's commentary
on Hesiod and resembles closely the remarks in the passage cited
from the _Def. Orac._) Modern critics have often failed to notice
the difference between the Hesiodic ~dai/mones~ and the Platonic.
Plato himself is very decided about the difference (_Crat._ 397
E-398 C).]
[36\2: ~êe/ra hessa/menoi~ 125 (cf. 223; ~X~ 282) is a naive
equivalent for "invisible" as Tzet. correctly explains. This is how
it is to be understood regularly in Homer whenever there is mention
of envelopment in a cloud and the like.]
[37\2: These daimones are called ~epichtho/nioi~ in contrast (not to
the ~hupochtho/nioi~ of l. 141, but) to the ~theoi\ epoura/nioi~, as
Proclus on l. 122 rightly remarks. Thus in Homer we have
~epichtho/nioi~ regularly used as an adjective, or, standing alone,
as an equivalent of men as distinguished from gods. Then the
~hupochtho/nioi~ of 141 are brought in to form another and secondary
contrast with the ~epichtho/nioi~.]
[38\2: ~r~ 485 ff. It follows that the descriptions of the visits
paid by gods to the homes of men are of great antiquity; cf. my
_Griech. Roman_, p. 506 ff. Zeus Philios in particular is fond of
visiting men: Diod. Com. ~Epi/klêr.~, Mein. _Com._ iii, p. 543 f.
(ii, p. 420 K.).]
[39\2: ~timê\ kai\ toi=sin opêdei=~ 142. ~timê/~ in the sense not of
simple honour but of practical worship, as frequently in Homer, e.g.
in such phrases as: ~timê\ kai\ ku=dos opêdei=~, ~R~ 251; ~timê=s
aponê/menos~, ~ô~ 30: ~timê\n de\ lelo/gchasin i=sa theoi=sin~, ~l~
304; ~e/chei timê/n~, ~l~ 495, etc. In the same way here, l. 138:
~hou/neka tima\s ouk edi/doun maka/ressi theoi=s~.]
[40\2: Light and dark, i.e. good and bad, ~dai/mones~ are acc. to
Roth, _Myth. v. d. Weltaltern_ (1860), pp. 16-17, distinguished in
Hesiod's daimones of the golden and silver age. Such a distinction,
however, never appears in Hesiod; and it is hardly credible that the
gods and spirits of ancient Greek popular belief (which never really
admitted the categories good and bad) should in this primitive
period have been actually classified in accordance with such
categories. At any rate, Greek readers never found anything of the
kind expressed in Hesiod: {86} the conception of bad daimones is
regularly supported by reference to the philosophers alone (e.g.
Plut., _D.O._, 17, p. 419 A, and the conception is certainly no
older than the earliest philosophic speculation.]
[41\2: l. 141: ~toi\ me\n hupochtho/nioi (epichtho/nioi~ all MSS.
except one, see Köchly's Apparatus; also Tz.) ~ma/kares thnêtoi\
kale/ontai.--phu/lakes thnêtoi\~ was read and explained by Proclus.
This is clearly wrong, and is corrected to ~phu/lakes thnêtô=n~ (as
in l. 123) by Hagen and Welcker. But this transfers from the first
to the second race an expression that we cannot be sure Hesiod meant
to be transferred. Not merely the words but the sense, too, is thus
corrected, without due ground. ~ma/kares~ does not look like a
corruption; it is more likely that ~phu/lakes~ is an accidental
alteration. ~hup. ma/kares thnêtoi=s kale/ontai~ is the reading of
the latest editor: but here to say the least of it the addition of
~thnêtoi=s~ is superfluous. We should rather try to understand and
explain the traditional text and show how the poet came by the
remarkable expression.]
[42\2: When philosophers and philosophizing poets of a later age
occasionally refer to the soul when freed from the body as a
~dai/môn~, the expression has a totally different sense.]
[43\2: Similarly, though the oxymoron is much less daring in his
case, Isocrates, 9, 72, has ~dai/môn thnêto/s~. In order to describe
a daimon who has originally been a mortal later ages boldly invented
the compound ~anthrôpodai/môn~ which corresponds fairly well with
the Hesiodic ~ma/kar thnêto/s~: [Eur.] _Rhes._, 971; Procop., _An._
12, p. 79, 17 D. (~nekudai/môn~ on a _defixio_ from Carthage, _BCH._
xii, 299). Later still a king destined to become a god is called,
even at his birth, by Manetho (i, 280) ~_theo\n broto\n_
anthrô/poisin~.]
[44\2: The silver race was created by the gods of Olympos, like the
golden before them (l. 110; 128); only the third race (l. 143) and
then the fourth (158) by Zeus alone. It might be supposed from this
that the silver age as well as the golden age occurred in the period
before Zeus' rule, ~epi\ Kro/nou ho/t' ouranô=| embasi/leuen~ (l.
111); and in this sense "Orpheus" understood the words of Hesiod
when he ~tou= argurou= ge/nous basileu/ein phêsi\ to\n Kro/non~
(Proclus on l. 126). But it would be very difficult to reconcile l.
138 ~Zeu\s Kroni/dês ktl.~ with this view. Hesiod may then have
placed the silver age in the time when sub Iove mundus erat (as Ovid
explicitly states, _M._ i, 113 f.); but all the same it lay for him
in the far distant past before all history.]
[45\2: ~nô/numnoi~ 154 may quite as well mean "nameless", i.e.
without name or special title, as "fameless" (as it does for the
most part though not invariably in Homer).]
[46\2: See Welcker, _Kl. Schr._ ii, 6, who, however, in the desire
to rule out all possibility of identifying Scherie with Korkyra
asserts too positively that it was a part of the mainland. ~z~ 204
(compared with ~d~ 354) at least comes very close to regarding it as
an island. But it is clear that nowhere is it explicitly called an
island.--It is possible that ~Scheri/ê~, connected with ~schero/s~,
may really mean "mainland" (Welcker, loc. cit.; Kretschmer, _Einl.
Gesch. gr. Spr._, 281): but the question still remains whether the
Homeric poet, who did not invent the name, understood or respected
its original significance. At any rate, it was no longer understood
by those who in very early times identified Scherie with the island
Korkyra.]
[47\2: The objections to l. 169 as regards its form are brought out
by Steitz, _Hesiods W. u. T._, p. 69. The line is missing in most of
the MSS.; it was rejected (together with the line following, which,
however, {87} is quite sound) by ancient critics (Proclus on l.
158). Later editors are united in condemning it. But the
interpolation is at any rate old: probably even Pindar already knew
the line in this place (_O._ ii, 70).]
[48\2: ~lu=se de\ Zeu\s a/phthitos Tita=nas~ Pi. (_P._ iv, 291), in
whose time, however, this was a well-known myth to which he is only
making a passing allusion for the sake of an example. The Hesiodic
Theogony still knows nothing of it.]
[49\2: Before Hesiod we have no mention of the myth of a Golden,
Saturnian Age, nor any complete description of the imaginary life
upon Blessed Islands. But epic poetry had already, as we have seen,
provided him with occasional examples of translation to a place of
blessedness, and he only collects these into a combined picture of
such a place. To that extent the belief in a blessed life beyond the
grave meets us earlier than the myth of a Golden Age. But we have
not the slightest ground for saying that the former "must have
existed from the beginning among the Greeks" (as Milchhöfer at least
thinks, _Anf. Kunst_, p. 230). On the other hand, it may be mere
accident that the myth of the Golden Age has no older authority than
Hesiod--the story itself _may_ be much earlier. After Hesiod it was
frequently taken up and improved upon; not, however, first by
Empedocles as Graf supposes, _ad aureæ aet. fab. sym._ (_Leip.
Stud._ viii, p. 15), but already in the epic ~Alkmeôni/s~, see
Philod. _Piet._, p. 51 Gp. (See also some remarks by Alfred Nutt,
_The Voyage of Bran_, p. 269 f., 1895, with which I cannot agree.)]
{{88}}
CHAPTER III
CAVE DEITIES: SUBTERRANEAN TRANSLATION
The history of Greek culture and religion shows no sudden break or
revolution in its course. The Greeks neither at any time experienced
a movement from within that caused a violent recoil from the path
which they had chosen, nor were they ever diverted by the
overwhelming might of an invading force from the natural course of
their evolution. Out of their own natural feelings and reflexion
this most intellectually gifted nation evolved the great ideas that
nourished succeeding centuries. They anticipated all later ages. The
profoundest and the boldest, the most devout as well as the most
irreverent speculations as to the nature of God, the world and men
have their origin among the Greeks. But this excessive
many-sidedness led to a general condition of equipoise in which
individual factors restrained or balanced each other. Whereas the
most violent impacts and sudden revolutions in the history of
civilization are given by just those nations who are only able to
embrace one idea at a time and who, confined in the narrow limits of
their fanaticism, throw everything else overboard.
It is true, indeed, that the Greeks were ever open to
influences--whether civilized or the reverse--from abroad. In wave
after wave of peaceful invasion foreign ideas and ways of life,
especially from the East, flowed over Greece. In one case, at least
(that of the ecstatic religion of the Thracian
Dionysos-worshippers), a spring flood burst out that broke down all
the dykes. In many cases the invading elements might be easily
eliminated again from Greek culture; in many others they obtained a
permanent footing and influenced it deeply. But never did an
influence from abroad obtain in Greece an authority at all
comparable to the subversive and transforming power exercised by
Buddhism, Christianity, or Islam over the peoples on whom they laid
their grip. The Greek genius, as supple as it was tenacious,
maintained control over all such foreign influences, in full
possession of its original nature, its genial **naivety. New ideas,
whether introduced from abroad or engendered at home, were taken up
and assimilated, but the old were not done away with; they gradually
amalgamated with the new so that much was learnt while nothing was
quite forgotten. The stream flowed on in its peaceful course, but it
still remained the same stream. _Nec manet ut fuerat nec formas
servat easdem: sed tamen ipse idem est_. {89}
The history of Greek culture, then, has no sharply contrasted
epochs, no periods of abrupt change, when the old is completely
given up and a new era definitely begins. Indeed, the most serious
revulsions of Greek history, culture, and religion took place beyond
doubt _before_ the time of the Homeric Epos, and in that dim past it
is possible that more violent and startling upheavals may have
occurred to make the Greeks what we afterwards know them to be.
Greek life becomes first clearly known to us in Homer. It is true
that the broad uniformity that it has in the picture reflected for
us in the poems of Homer vanishes in the course of the years that
follow. New forces emerge; much that was forgotten comes to light
again now that the Homeric system of ideas, once all powerful, is
falling to pieces; out of the very old and the quite new things of
which Homer never gives the least hint are being put together. But
nowhere during the violent movements of the next troubled centuries
after Homer did any absolute break with the Epic or its system take
place. Only in the sixth century did the defiant speculation of a
few bold spirits begin to seek a way of escape from the thraldom of
the Homeric poems which still lay over the whole of Greece. The
history of the Greek common people knows nothing of a reaction
against Homer and his world. Homeric religion and moral ideas
gradually ceased to reign supreme in men's minds, but they were
never violently or completely discarded.
So we, too, though we leave behind us Homer and the Epos and enter
upon the tortuous paths of the later history of Greek soul worship
and belief in immortality, may still for a time be guided by the
Ariadne thread of the epic. In our subject, too, there are links
which connect the Homeric with following ages. Soon enough the
thread will break, and we shall have to enter the new field of
inquiry depending on our own resources. . . .
§ 1
Prominent among the chieftains, who, under the leadership of
Adrastos, came to the help of Polyneikes and laid siege to Thebes,
was Amphiaraos the Argive hero and seer descended from the
mysterious priest and prophet Melampous. He was drawn into the war
against his will, for he foresaw its unhappy end. After the decisive
struggle in which the opposing brothers fell slain by each other's
hand, the Argive host turned to flight, and with them fled
Amphiaraos. But before Periklymenos, who was pursuing him, could
drive his spear into the fugitive's back, Zeus made the earth open
before him in a flash of {90} lightning and Amphiaraos with his
horses, his chariot, and his charioteer, was swallowed up in the
depths where Zeus made him _immortal_. So runs the legend of the
fate of Amphiaraos as we learn it from innumerable sources from
Pindar onwards,[1\3] and we may be sure that thus it was told in the
Thebaïs, the old epic poem of the war of the Seven against Thebes,
which was taken up into the Epic Cycle.[2\3]
At Thebes, then, Amphiaraos lived on for ever under the earth.
Northwards in the Boeotian countryside, near Lebadeia, men told of a
similar marvel. In a cave of the mountainous ravine, before which
Lebadeia lies, lived Trophonios for ever immortal. The legends that
professed to explain his miraculous cave-existence do not quite
agree among themselves, as, indeed, is generally the case with those
figures who were not early taken up by the poets and given a fixed
place in the narratives of heroic adventure. But all accounts (the
oldest of which perhaps go back to the "Telegoneia") agree in the
assumption that Trophonios, like Amphiaraos, was first a _man_, a
famous master-builder, who while flying from his foes, had dived
underground at Lebadeia and now lives for ever in the depths of the
earth whence he foretells the future to those who come and question
him there.
These stories, then, claim to speak of men who during their lifetime
were swallowed up by the earth, and who now live on for ever at the
places where they were taken down into the depths--places situated
in quite definite localities of the Greek countryside.
We are not entirely without other legends of a similar character.
One of the wild spirits of the Lapith people from Thessalia, Kaineus
by name, having been made invulnerable by Poseidon (who had before
this transformed him from a woman into a man), was cudgelled with
tree-trunks in a battle with the Centaurs; but they could do nothing
to him, and with "upright foot" (i.e. standing upright, alive, not
lying at full length like a dead man or one mortally wounded) he
clove the earth under him and went down alive into the depths.[3\3]
In Rhodes Althaimenes was honoured as the "founder" of the Greek
cities on that island; he had not died but had vanished into a chasm
in the ground.[4\3] Like Amphiaraos, his son Amphilochos, the heir
of his prophetic power, appears to have had a legend according to
which he still dwelt alive under the earth either in Akarnania or
Cilicia.[5\3] A few more examples of the same type might be
produced,[6\3] but the number of such stories remains small, and
they only make their appearance here and there, as if by {91}
accident, in the tradition. Epic poetry without whose co-operation
such local legends rarely achieved widespread or lasting popularity,
with few exceptions left such narratives out of account. In fact,
they conflicted with the normal Homeric outlook. The belief,
however, that immortality when it was miraculously bestowed by the
favour of heaven upon certain individual men, was absolutely
conditioned by the non-occurrence of death, i.e. the separation of
the psyche from the visible man--this belief has helped to shape
these stories too. They never speak of an undying existence of the
soul by itself in separation from the body. Thus far they are firmly
rooted in orthodox Homeric belief.
But the heroes of these stories have their everlasting existence in
special abodes under the surface of the earth, in subterranean
chambers[7\3]--not in the common meeting place of the departed; they
each have their own peculiar domain far from the House of Aïdoneus.
Such isolation of individuals below the earth does not agree with
Homeric ideas; though it almost seems as if a dim echo of these
stories of seers like Amphiaraos and Amphilochos, translated alive
and with consciousness undestroyed, could be discerned in what the
Homeric Nekyia says of Teiresias the Theban seer, in whom alone of
all the shadows Persephone had allowed consciousness and
intelligence (the essential vital powers) to remain
undiminished.[8\3] But even he is fast bound in Erebos, the general
home of the dead, and cut off from all connexion with the upper
world, as is demanded by the Homeric view of the world. Amphiaraos
and Trophonios, on the other hand, are released from Hades; not
having suffered death they have not entered the world of the
strengthless dead. They are also translated out of this life
(besides out of Hades). But this "subterranean translation" is in
its nature and in the origin of the belief in it quite distinct from
that "translation to Islands of the Blest" of which we spoke in the
last chapter. Those Heroes dwelling alone or in company on holy
islands far out over the sea are far removed from human life and
beyond the reach of prayers and desires. No influence upon the
things of this world is attributed to them, and consequently no cult
is offered to them: there never existed a cult of the dwellers in
Elysium _as such_. They glimmer in the distance like visions of the
poet's fancy from which no one anticipates active interference with
the world of reality. It is quite different with these dwellers in
the caves. They are actually alive under the surface of the earth;
not far away in the inaccessible, spectral world of Hades, but here
in the midst of Greece. Questions and prayers {92} can reach down to
them, and they can send up aid to those who call to them. To them,
accordingly, as powerful and effectual Spirits a _cult_ is paid.
We have detailed information of the manner in which Amphiaraos was
worshipped, more especially in later times, when, in addition to the
neighbourhood of Thebes, where the original legend of his descent
beneath the earth was localized, Oropos also, the boundary town
between Boeotia and Attica, was with overwhelming success identified
as the place of his disappearance and made a centre of his
influence.[9\3] We have also a certain amount of information, again
from later ages, about the cult of Trophonios. With the passage of
time, the details of the worship grew and multiplied, but among them
all certain features stand out as especially characteristic and
allow us to understand the religious ideas lying behind them. To
Amphiaraos and Trophonios were offered just those sacrifices which
were also paid to the Chthonic deities, i.e. those deities who dwelt
in the depths of the earth.[10\3] Aid was not expected from them in
the details of the daily life of individuals or states. Only in the
actual locality of their descent were they effectual, and only there
because they revealed the future. Kroisos had already, and Mardonios
after him, sent inquiries to the most famous oracles of the
day,[11\3] and among them to Amphiaraos at his ancient oracular seat
near Thebes and to Trophonios at Lebadeia. Of Amphiaraos it was
believed that he revealed the future by visions sent in dreams to
those who after making offering laid themselves down to sleep in his
temple. To question Trophonios, it was necessary to pass through a
narrow passage into his cave. Inside, the inquirer expected to see
Trophonios in person or, at least, to hear his instructions.[12\3]
He dwelt, like a spirit confined to the scene of his magical
existence, in bodily person at the bottom of his cave. In fact, the
method of _Incubation_, or temple-sleep, by which Amphiaraos (like
many other daimones and Heroes) was questioned, was based on the
assumption that the daimon, who was only visible indeed to mortal
eyes in the higher state achieved by the soul in dreams, had his
permanent dwelling at the seat of his oracle.[13\3] That is why his
appearance can only be expected at this particular place and nowhere
else. Originally, too, it was only the dwellers in the depths of the
earth who were thus visible in dreams to those who lay down to sleep
in the temple over the place where they had their subterranean
abode. Homer knows nothing of either gods or daimones who live
permanently under the ground in definite places in the inhabited
world, near mankind; and for that {93} reason he betrays no
knowledge of _Incubation-oracles_.[14\3] There is some ground for
the belief that this method, inherent in the divinatory power, of
getting into touch with the spirit world, was one of the oldest
types of Greek oracular art--certainly not later than the Apolline
_mantikê_ of inspiration. And it is precisely in the legend of
Amphiaraos, as we may believe it to have been related as early as
the cyclic poem of the Thebaïs, that we have a proof that already in
the days when the quasi-Homeric poetry was still popular, people
believed in deathless dwellers below the earth and in their active
potency in the mantic art.
It is clear, then, that the worship of Amphiaraos and the belief in
his subterranean existence was not due to the influence of the Epic.
Rather the reverse was the case; the cult already existed and
provided the idea of the daimon and this gave rise to the Epic
narrative. The Epic found an existing cult of an oracular daimon who
dwelt beneath the earth near Thebes ready to its hand. It reduced
this fact to a form which it could understand in a manner typical of
the relation which frequently existed between the facts of religious
life and Epic poetry. The cult was connected with an event in
legendary history, and so brought into harmony with the Epic
outlook. The Epic knew nothing of gods attached in this way to a
**particular earthly spot, and so the spirit worshipped in the cult
became in the epic imagination a chieftain and Seer who had not
always lived beneath the earth in that place, but had only been
transported there subsequently by a miraculous fiat of the supreme
god, who had also accorded an eternal life in the depths to the
translated hero.[15\3]
We may perhaps find a parallel in more recent Saga story that will
throw light on the question. German mythology is perfectly familiar
with such figures for ever, or until the day of judgment, alive in
caverns of the mountains or subterranean chambers. Thus,
Charlemagne, or it may be Charles the Fifth, still has his abode in
Odenberg or in Unterberg, near Salzburg, Frederick II (or, in more
recent versions of the legend, Frederick I Barbarossa in Kyffhäuser,
Henry the Fowler in Sudemerberg, near Goslar. Thus, too, King
Arthur, Holger Danske, and many other favourite characters of
popular tradition dwell in subterranean caverns.[16\3] Occasionally,
we can still plainly see how these were originally ancient _gods_
who according to pagan belief dwelt in hollow mountains and whose
place has been taken by these heroes and holy men "translated"
beneath the earth.[17\3] So, too, Greek tradition allows us to see
even now that those ancient {94} translated mortals, Amphiaraos and
Trophonios, are only Epic substitutes for ancient deities who did
not owe their everlasting life and subterranean abode to the favour
of heaven, but had possessed these from the beginning. At least, at
the site of his worship men knew that the prophetic dweller in the
cave was a _god_; one of them is called Zeus Trophonios or
Trephonios, not only by learned authorities, but in inscriptions
from Lebadeia;[18\3] Amphiaraos, too, is once called Zeus Amphiaraos
and more often a god.[19\3] In the Translation legends of
Christianized people the kings have usurped the place of the ancient
gods because the gods themselves, fallen into neglect, have been
dethroned. For reasons not so very different from these the ancient
gods on Greek soil were turned into heroes.
Surrounded by the unending multiplicity of contemporary notions of
divinity the imagination of the Epic poet had fashioned for itself a
generalized picture of a divine kingdom. This was at that time a
solitary attempt to erect a Panhellenic theological system, but it
had the greatest influence upon the mental conceptions of Greeks of
every race, for the Epic poet addressed them all. He stood as though
on a height looking down on all the narrow valleys and mountainous
countrysides cut off from the rest of the world, and a wide prospect
opened out before his eyes. He **soars above all the innumerable
contradictory and conflicting details of local cult and belief, and
finds something universal beyond. The name and conception of Zeus,
Apollo, Hermes, Athena, and all the gods represented innumerable
diversities in the myths and ritual of the different cities and
races; their outward shapes and personalities differed widely
according to their localization and the manner of their influence.
Instead of all these the Epic poet sees only one Zeus, Apollo, etc.,
reduced in each case to a single unified personality. And just as he
had looked beyond the multiplicity of local deities so he did not
confine his gods to particular local habitations and centres of
influence in the Greek countries; they did not belong to one
locality more than another. True they worked and ruled in the world,
but they were for all that free to move where they would. They dwell
and meet together on the heights of Olympos, the Pierian Holy
Mountain, which, however, became in the imagination of Homer,
unfettered by attachment to any particular place, more and more an
ideal mountain of fancy. So the broad sea is the dwelling-place of
Poseidon; he is not confined to any one place. Even the rulers of
the spirit world. Aïdes and Persephoneia, have their abode, not,
indeed, on {95} Olympos, and certainly not here or there beneath the
surface of the Greek countryside, but far away in a land of fancy;
they, too, are not bound to any particular locality of the actual
world. At the end of this enormous work of unification and
idealization, that, out of all the infinite special manifestations
of the name Zeus, each worshipped only in its narrow little circle
in Greece, had evolved the single almighty figure of Zeus Father of
Gods and Men--how could one who had imagined all this be able to
understand, if he met with such a creature, a special Zeus, calling
himself Zeus Trophonios, who passed his undying existence in a cave
near Lebadeia and was only powerful in that one spot?
Of course, the inhabitant of such a holy spot would not allow
himself to be deprived of the belief in the existence and presence
of the god on his native soil. Though he might be ready enough in
general and in respect of other men's local deities to regulate
conceptions of the nature of the gods in accordance with the Homeric
picture, yet he refused absolutely to be shaken in his belief in his
own local deity, however unknown to the Olympian family of gods in
Homer that deity might be. The local worship in its unaltered,
undisturbed persistence, witnessed to the objective truth of his
belief. Thus there were preserved in the pious faith of their
worshippers large numbers of local deities whose circle of influence
was, however, very limited. They had not been raised with the other
gods to the heights of Olympos, but had remained faithful to the
soil in which they had their home,[20\3] witnesses to a far distant
past in which the members of every remote little community had their
separate god bound to the soil beyond which their thoughts did not
stray. We shall see how in post-Homeric times many such ancient
earth-gods, i.e. gods thought of as living below the surface of the
ground, were given new and in some cases a more wide-reaching lease
of life. The Epic in its prime knew nothing of these earth-dwelling
deities. When it could not close its eyes to their existence it
changed them into translated heroes, and beyond the immediate
locality of the cult this version of them became the commonly
accepted one throughout the rest of Greece.
§ 2
But the Epic was by no means uniform in intention, or carried
through as a systematic unity; it was far from being the offspring
of a learned reflection that could tolerate no discrepancy. Even
here we find at least some few dim {96} recollections of the ancient
belief in gods that can have their permanent abode in mountain
hollows.
The Odyssey (xix, 178 f.) calls Minos, the son of Zeus (cf. _Il._
xiii, 450; xiv, 322; _Od._ xi, 568) who ruled in Knossos the Cretan
city, "the familiar gossip of great Zeus."[21\3] Very probably the
poet meant by these words much the same as was understood by them in
later times: that Minos was personally acquainted with Zeus, on
earth, of course, and, in fact, in the cave--not far from Knossos on
the side of Mount Ida--which was revered as the "Cave of
Zeus".[22\3] The island of Crete, overrun by the Greeks at an early
period, still preserved in its remote seclusion much that was
primeval in belief and legend. There, sometimes on Mount Ida,
sometimes on Mount Dicte (in the east of the island) the holy cave
was pointed out where (already in Hesiod) Zeus was said to have been
born.[23\3] According to a local legend, which probably was present
to the fancy of the writer of these lines of the Odyssey, the god
now fully grown up still dwelt in his subterranean chamber, and was
visited by individual mortals. As Minos before him, so, too,
Epimenides had been allowed to hear the prophecies of the god.[24\3]
The Zeus that dwelt in Ida was worshipped in a mystical cult;[25\3]
every year a "throne" was "spread" for him, i.e. probably a "divine
banquet" (Theoxenion) was prepared for his consumption, as for other
especially Chthonic deities. The initiated then entered the cave
dressed in black woollen garments, and remained within for thrice
nine days.[26\3] Everything points to the existence of conceptions
similar to those that we found expressed in the cult of Zeus
Trophonios at Lebadeia. Zeus dwelling in bodily form in the depths
of his cave can appear in person to those who enter his cave duly
sanctified.
Then there appears, from the fourth century onwards, the strange
statement, perhaps started by Euhemeros and eagerly taken up in
later ages by scoffers like Lucian or Christian opponents of the old
religion, that Zeus lay _buried_ on Ida.[27\3] What is here called
the _grave_ of the god is nothing in reality but the _cave_ which
was generally regarded as his permanent abode.[28\3] The
idea--always strange to the Greeks[29\3]--that a god could lie
buried anywhere on the earth, deprived of life for ever or even for
a limited period of time, is often met with in the tradition of
Semitic and other non-Greek peoples.[30\3] We need not inquire what
deeper or perhaps allegorical sense such legends may have had in the
beliefs of those nations; there is no reason to suppose that such
foreign legends had any influence in the formation of Greek myth.
Nor does the {97} tradition in Greek lands give the slightest
support to the view current among modern mythologists that the death
and burial of gods is intended to symbolize the "death of Nature".
It is, in fact, plain that in the legend of the Cretan Zeus' grave,
the "grave" has simply taken the place of the cave as the
everlasting abode of the undying god, and that it is a paradoxical
expression intended to signify his perpetual confinement to that
place. We are immediately reminded of a no less paradoxical notice
of a god's grave at Delphi. Under the navel stone (Omphalos) of the
Earth-goddess (which was a vaulted piece of masonry in the Temple of
Apollo recalling in its shape the ancient vaulted tombs),[31\3]
there lay buried a divine being. Our learned authorities call this
being Python, the enemy of Apollo; one and only one quite
untrustworthy witness says it was Dionysos.[32\3] Here we have a
case of one god setting up his temple and abode over the grave of
another god. Apollo, the god of prophecy, thrones it over the
Earth-spirit Python, the son of the Earth-goddess Gaia. Now, we have
ancient and in the highest degree trustworthy traditions to the
effect that there was originally at Delphi an ancient Earth-Oracle
into whose place Apollo and his mantic art came later as an
intruder. We are therefore justified in believing that this
circumstance in the history of religion has found expression in the
legend that Apollo's temple and oracular seat stood over the place
where an ancient and superseded oracle-daimon lay "buried".[33\3] In
the days when the primeval Earth-Oracle was still powerful its
guardian would not lie dead and buried under the Omphalos of the
Earth-goddess, but would have dwelt there alive underground, like
Amphiaraos or Trophonios or Zeus on Ida.
§ 3
The "grave" under the Omphalos means in the case of Python the
overthrow of an earth-dwelling Chthonic Daimon by the cult of
Apollo. The "grave" of Zeus, which had thrust itself into the place
of an older legend of the dwelling of Zeus in the cave of the
mountain, expresses the same idea as this legend, but expresses it
in a form current in later ages which knew of many "Heroes" who
after their death and from their graves gave proof of a higher
existence and a powerful influence. The Zeus that died and is buried
is only a god reduced to a Hero;[34\3] remarkable and paradoxical is
only the fact that unlike Zeus Amphiaraos, Zeus Trophonios (and Zeus
Asklepios), he has not, in the usual fashion, dropped his title of
god, which directly contradicted his "Hero" {98} nature. It is
possible that in the case of this cave-Zeus, half-god half-Hero, a
conception has been transferred merely on analogy from other cases
where it was applied more properly, after they had become fully
"Heroized", to gods who according to the no longer intelligible
theory had once been dwellers in the depths of the earth.
We have several accounts of Heroes who were buried in temples of
gods and were sometimes associated with the cult of the higher god
to whom the temple was dedicated. The way in which such legends
could arise may be seen unusually clearly from the case of
_Erechtheus_.
The Ship-Catalogue in the Iliad (ii, 546 ff.) tells us that
Erechtheus was the son of the Earth, but that Athene brought him up
and "settled him in her rich temple",[35\3] where the Athenians
every year honour him with sacrifice of sheep and bulls.[36\3] It is
plain that Erechtheus is here thought of as still living; to honour
a dead man with such offerings, repeated every year and attended by
the whole community, would be a custom quite unknown to Homer.
Erechtheus is, therefore, thought of as dwelling alive in the temple
in which Athene has set him down, i.e. the ancient temple on the
Acropolis which was enclosed in the "strong house of Erechtheus", to
which, according to the Odyssey, Athene betakes herself as her _own_
home. On the old citadel of the Kings, royal residence and sanctuary
of the goddess were combined; its foundation walls have recently
been discovered on the spot where later joint worship was paid to
Athene and Erechtheus in the "Erechtheion".[37\3] Erechtheus dwells
below the ground in a crypt of this temple,[38\3] like other
earth-deities, in the form of a snake, immortally. He is not dead,
for as Euripides still says, in a story which otherwise follows
different lines, "the earth gaped and covered him over,"[39\3] i.e.
he was _translated_ and lived on under the earth. On the analogy of
the examples already discussed it is clear that this is also a case
of a primitive local deity,[40\3] once supposed to have been living
always in a cave on the mountain-side, transformed to a Hero who has
been brought there and raised to immortal life. The later belief in
Heroes required a _grave_ at which the continued existence and
potency of the "Hero" was localized; by a natural process of
development the Hero Erechtheus translated alive and made immortal
is thought of as _buried_ in a grave. Erichthonios, who was
expressly identified with the Homeric Erechtheus, was by later ages
supposed to be buried in the Temple of Polias, i.e. the oldest
temple of Athene, on the Acropolis.[41\3] We have clearly before us
the steps by which the {99} aboriginal deity, dwelling beneath the
ground, the son of Earth, is made into a mortal Hero, translated to
immortality and placed under the protection of the Olympian goddess
who has now become more powerful than he; and finally transferred,
cave and all, to the precincts of her temple, and finally reduced to
the condition of a Hero like another, who had died and lies
peacefully buried in the temple of the goddess on the citadel.
With this example before us we may explain several other analogous
cases, in which we have only the last stage of the process, the
grave of a Hero in a god's temple, without any of the intermediate
steps. A single example may be given.
At Amyklai, not far from Sparta, in the holiest temple of Laconia,
stood the ancient bronze statue of Apollo upon an altar-shaped base,
within which, according to legend, _Hyakinthos_ lay buried. Through
a bronze door in the side of the altar offerings for the dead were
sent down to "Hyakinthos" buried below every year at the festival of
the Hyakinthia.[42\3] The recipient of these offerings has little
resemblance to the gentle youth of popular legend. The Hellenistic
poets tell how he was beloved by Apollo and died by a cast of
Apollo's discus and was changed into a flower. The fable, almost
destitute of local reference, has been put together from many
popular themes.[43\3] The sculpture on the above-mentioned altar, on
the other hand, represents among many gods and heroes Hyakinthos and
his sister Polyboia as they are being carried up to heaven--which
will not square with the metamorphosis story. Further, he is
represented as bearded, and so not as the boy whom Apollo
loved,[44\3] but as a grown man (of whose daughters indeed other
legends make mention).[45\3] The true story of _this_ Hyakinthos has
disappeared almost without leaving a trace. But in what the monument
reveals and in what we know of the yearly festival held in honour of
Hyakinthos significant features emerge which perhaps can tell us the
real character of the Daimon that was honoured at Amyklai together
with, and as our information clearly shows, before Apollo
himself.[46\3] Hyakinthos was given offerings that were otherwise
peculiar to the gods that ruled the lower world.[47\3] These
offerings were let down directly into the underground place where,
in fact, Hyakinthos himself was supposed to dwell. In the great
festival of the Hyakinthia the alternate worship of Apollo and
Hyakinthos (after whom as the chief personage the festival is named)
points to the incomplete amalgamation of two originally distinct
cults; and the plain and unadorned, almost dismal, ceremonies of
{100} the days devoted to Hyakinthos--contrasted with the more
cheerful worship paid to Apollo on the middle day of the
feast[48\3]--allow us to see clearly the real nature of Hyakinthos
as a Daimon related to the gods of the underworld. On the
altar-relief Polyboia was represented as his sister: she was a
goddess of the underworld like Persephone.[49\3] Hyakinthos was,
then, an old local deity of the Amyklaian countryside, dwelling
below the earth, and his worship at Amyklai was older than that of
Apollo. But he is a dim figure. The Olympian god (probably not
before the Doric conquest of the Achæan land) has set himself down
beside, and indeed over, the ancient earth-spirit, and now outshines
him without quite being able to banish his worship. The divine
existence of the latter under the ground could not be imagined by
later ages, except as the after-existence of the psyche of a dead
and buried Hero whose body lay in the "grave" under the statue of
the god. Next, in order to explain their association in cult, poetic
legend made the god a lover, just as in another case, and for
similar reasons, it had made him the lover of Daphne.[50\3]
§ 4
Thus it may be that under many a Hero whose grave was shown in the
Temple of a god an ancient local-god was hidden, whose abode beneath
the earth had been converted into a "grave" now that he himself had
sunk from a deity of higher rank to a human chieftain. It depended
upon the circumstances of the case whether his humanization was
complete or whether the memory of his former god-head (preserved in
cult) secured for him a second elevation to the heavenly
regions[51\3] among the Olympian gods whose nature was originally
quite foreign to that of the old earth-daimon. Such conceptions,
differing widely according to the circumstances of place and time,
are shown most clearly in the different views taken of _Asklepios_.
For Homer and the poets he is generally a great chieftain, a mortal
who had learnt the art of healing from Cheiron. In religious cult he
was generally set on a level with the upper gods. In reality he,
too, is a local earth-dwelling deity from Thessaly, who from beneath
the earth dispenses, like so many earth-spirits, healing from the
ills of the flesh and knowledge of the future[52\3]--the two being
closely connected in antiquity. He, too, easily bore the change from
god to Hero. Asklepios was struck by Zeus' lightning which in this,
as in many cases, did not destroy life, but translated the person
affected to a higher existence outside the visible world.[53\3]
{101} We can now easily understand what it means when even this
ancient earth-deity is said to be "buried"--his grave being shown at
different places.[54\3] Many peculiarities of the worship paid to
him show clearly the original character of Asklepios as an ancient
god living below the earth.[55\3] One essential characteristic
indeed of such earth-spirits he lacks--he is not bound to any one
particular place. An enterprising priesthood, wandering in company
with the rest of their tribe, had taken with them this old
established worship of theirs, and spread it far and wide, so that
Asklepios himself became at home in many different places.
Now, in closest relationship, though they remained more faithful to
their original character, with this Zeus Asklepios stood those
Boeotian earth-spirits with whom this discussion began. Trophonios,
and Amphiaraos, too, might have been described as an Asklepios, who
had stayed at home in his old cavern dwelling.[56\3] They, too,
Amphiaraos and Trophonios, had become mortal men of a past age in
the imagination of a time which could no longer properly understand
such cave-spirits. But we never hear of their "graves"; for the
generation which made _them_ Heroes knew nothing of mortal
chieftains who after dying and being buried yet lived on with
undiminished powers. But it was the belief in their uninterrupted
potency that gave those strange cavern deities a secure place in
men's memory. In the epic and in legends inspired by the epic they
are recognized as human beings that had not died but had been
translated, without any division of soul from body, to everlasting
life in the depths of the earth. Ever afterwards--even when they are
not only called immortal, but actually "gods"--they are reckoned as
men who have _become_ immortal or godlike.[57\3] And they have
become the patterns of what other mortals too may rise to. In the
_Electra_ of Sophokles (836 ff.) the chorus wishing to justify the
hope of a continued life for the departed, expressly appeal to the
example of Amphiaraos, who still rules below the earth with all his
spiritual powers intact. For the same reason these and other
examples offered by ancient legend and poetry of the "translation"
of individual great men to a life below the earth are important for
our inquiry too. In them, as it did (in another sense) in the case of
those translated to the Islands of the Blest, the Epic points beyond
its own resigned and gloomy conception of the state after death
towards a higher life after the visible world has been left behind.
It took isolated cases of the once numerous class of cavern deities
worshipped in Greek countries, and deprived {102} them of their
god-head, though not of the superhumanly continued existence and
(especially mantic) powers claimed for them by the belief and cult
of their countrymen. Thus reduced to mortal rank, it interwove them
in the fabric of the heroic mythology, and in so doing instituted a
class of outstanding human individuals who had been raised to a
godlike existence, far, indeed, from the upper world, but, at least,
not condemned to the common realm of the souls. Instead they were
given a home beneath the earth, each in a definite place in Greek
territory, near living men, and able to help them. The descent from
god to mortal Hero resulted, since the essential point of continued
existence was not denied, in a corresponding exaltation of the
mortal and the heroic to the divine. Thus the epic leads us in this
instance towards a range of conceptions which the poems themselves
treated as though it never existed, and which now suddenly comes
into view.
NOTES TO CHAPTER III
[1\3: Pi., _N._ ix, 24 ff., x, 8 f., [Apollod.] iii, 6, 8, 4 (~su\n
tô=| ha/rmati kai\ tô=| hênio/chô| Ba/tôni . . . _ekru/phthê_ kai\
Zeu\s _atha/naton_ auto\n epoi/êsen~) etc. The expressions used to
describe the translation and continued conscious existence of A. are
noteworthy: ~kata\ gai=' auto/n te/ nin kai\ phaidi/mous hi/ppous
_e/marpsen_~, Pi., _O._ vi, 14. ~Zeu\s _kru/psen_ ha/m' hi/ppois~,
_N._ ix, 25. ~gai=a _hupe/dekto_ ma/ntin Oiklei/dan~, x, 8. ~ma/ntis
_kekeuthô\s_ polemi/as hupo chthono/s~, A., _Th._, 588. ~ede/xato
rhagei=sa Thêbai/a ko/nis~, S. _fr._, 873 (= 958 P.). ~theoi\ _zô=nt'
anarpa/santes_ es mu/chous chthono\s autoi=s tethri/ppois
eulogou=sin emphanô=s~, E. _Supp._, 928 f. ~_hê/rpasen_ cha/rubdis
oiônosko/pon, te/thrippon ha/rma peribalou=sa cha/smati~, 501 f.
(Eriphyle ~Amphia/raon _e/krups'_ hupo\ gê=n autoi=si su\n
hi/ppois~, Oracle in Ephorus ap. Ath., 232 F. ~Amphiara/ou _zô=ntos_
to\ sô=ma katade/xasthai tê\n gê=n~, Agatharch., p. 115, 21 Mü.
~_epespa/sato_ hê gê= _zô=nta_~, Philostr., _V. Ap._, 2, 37, p. 79,
18 Kays. ~_aphanismo/s_~ of A., St. Byz. s. ~Ha/rpuia.--_pa/mpsuchos_
ana/ssei~, S., _El._, 841; ~_aei\_ zô=n tima=tai~, Xen.,
_Cyn._ i, 8.]
[2\3: That the translation of Amphiaraos in the form so frequently
repeated by later authors (clearly following an important and
influential original) appeared already in the Thebaïs of the epic
cycle is taken by Welcker for granted, _Ep. Cykl._ ii, 362, 66. The
view is intrinsically probable: but it can claim more definite
grounds. Pi., _O._ vi, 12-17, tells us that after Amphiaraos and his
team had been swallowed up by the earth, Adrastos, over the seven
funeral-pyres (which consumed the bodies of the Argives who had
fallen in battle, said ~pothe/ô stratia=s ophthalmo\n ema=s,
ampho/teron, ma/ntin t' agatho\n kai\ douri\ ma/rnasthai~. That this
famous lament was taken ~ek tê=s kuklikê=s Thêbaï/dos~, _fr._ 5
Kinkel, p. 12, is proved by the testimony of the ancient scholia on
~pothe/ô ktl.~, quoting Asklepiades. This means that in the Thebaïs
too, after the battle was over Amphiaraos was not to be found either
among the fallen or the survivors--was in fact translated. Pindar
must have taken not merely the words of the lament of Adrastos but
the whole situation that led up to these words, as he described it,
from the Thebaïs. (Bethe, _Theb. Held._ [1891], p. 58 f., 94 ff.,
claims to prove that Pindar took nothing but the words ~ampho/teron
ktl.~ from the Thebaïs which said nothing of the burial of these who
had fallen before Thebes, and that Pindar added this last on his own
account, _O._ vi, as well as _N._ ix, 25. But the "proofs" of this
view, in itself highly improbable, on closer examination come to
nothing.)--In the Odyssey it is said of Amph. ~_o/let'_ en
Thê/bê|si~ ~o~ 247; ~_tha/nen_ Amphia/raos~ 253. The expression "is
naturally to be understood as merely implying _disappearance_ from
the earth" says Welcker, _Ep. C._ ii, 366. All we can claim is that
the expression does not indeed _prevent_ us from assuming that the
story of the "disappearance" of Amph. was known also to the poet of
these lines. Thus in the _OC._ of Soph. Antigone says twice over
(ll. 1706, 1714) that Oedipus ~_e/thane_~, whereas he really was
like Amphiaraos translated alive (~a/skopoi pla/kes _e/marpsan_~
1681).]
[3\3: Pi., _fr._ 167, A.R. i, 57-64 (~zôo/s per e/ti . . . edu/seto
neio/thi gai/ês~). Orph., _Arg._, 171-5 (~phasi\n . . . zôo/n t' en
phthime/noisi molei=n hupo\ keu/thesi gai/ês~). Agatharch., p. 114,
39-43 Mü. (~eis tê\n gê=n katadu=nai ortho/n te kai\ zô=nta~).
Schol. and Eust. on ~A~ 264, p. 1001.--In Ovid, _M._ xii, 514 ff.,
the translation becomes a metamorphosis (into a bird); and {104}
often an ancient translation myth has thus been replaced by a
metamorphosis in later mythology. The connected story of Kaineus has
been lost, and only a few fragments survive in Sch., A.R. i, 57;
Sch., ~A~ 264 (the best known being the change of sex [cf. also
Meineke, _h. crit. com._, 345], the meaning of which is very
dubious. Similar stories are told of Teiresias, Sithon (Ov., _M._
iv, 280), Iphis, and Ianthe, this last reminding us strikingly of a
narrative in the Mahâbhârata. Then frequently in many miracle tales,
both heathen and Christian, to which far too much respect is paid by
those who seek to find in them dark reminiscences of bisexual gods).
No traces of a _cult_ of Kaineus can be found.]
[4\3: Althaimenes, son of Katreus (cf. _Rh. Mus._ 36, 432 f.),
~euxa/menos hupo\ cha/smatos ekru/bê~ [Apollod.], iii, 2, 2, 3.
Rationalistic version of Zeno of Rhodos ap. D.S., 5, 59, 4, who
says, however, ~hu/steron kata\ chrêsmo/n tina tima\s e/sche para\
Rhodi/ois hêrôïka/s~, and, in fact, we learn from an insc. in
Newton, _Gr. Insc. in B.M._ ii, 352, that a political division
(Ktoina?) of the people of Rhodos was called ~Althaimeni/s~, whose
~hê/rôs epô/numos~ must have been Althaimenes.]
[5\3: Amphilochos appeared in person to sleepers at his dream-oracle
at Mallos in Cilicia (Luc., _Philops._, 38)--so also did his rival
Mopsos, Plut., _DO._ 45, 434 D--as well as at his oracle in
Akarnania, Aristid. i, p. 78 D. [38, 21 Keil]. Mopsos in Cilicia and
Amphilochos in Akarnania are alike in being among those ~daimo/nia~
which ~hidrume/na e/n tini to/pô| tou=ton oikou=sin~, Orig., _c.
Cels._ iii, 34, pp. 293-4 L. The same author says of Amph. Mopsos
and others, ~anthrôpoeidei=s theôrei=sthai theou/s~, vii, 35, p.
53.]
[6\3: Laodike, daughter of Priam [Apollod.], _Epit._ v, 25; Nicol.
_Prog._ ii, 1.--Aristaios, who ~a/phantos gi/gnetai~ in M. Haemus
and is now honoured ~athana/tois timai=s~, D.S. iv, 82, 6. (Cf.
Hiller v. Gärtr., Pauly-Wiss. ii, 855, 23 ff.)]
[7\3: The regular expression for these subterranean dwelling-places
is ~me/gara~. Lex. rhet. ap. Eust., _Od._, 1387, 17 f. Hence also
the sacrificial pits into which men lowered the offerings made to
the deities of the lower world are called ~me/gara~ (Lob., _Agl._,
830; ~me/gara = cha/smata~, Schol. Luc., _D. Mer._ 2, pp. 275 ff.
Rabe. It was thought that by sinking the gifts in the ground they
would immediately reach the dwelling-place of the spirit who lived
there. The sacrificial chasm is itself the "chamber", ~me/garon~, in
which the spirit lives (in the form of a snake) and dwells.]
[8\3: ~k~ 492 ff., ~psuchê=| chrêsome/nous Thêbai/ou Teiresi/ao,
ma/ntêos alaou= tou= te phre/nes e/mpedoi/ eisin; tô=| kai\
tethnêô=ti no/on po/re Persepho/neia, oi/ô| pepnu=sthai; toi\ de\
skiai\ aï/sousin~. His ~phre/nes~ being undestroyed the most
important and distinguishing feature of death is absent. His body,
indeed, is destroyed and hence he is called ~tethnêô/s~ like all the
other dwellers in Hades, though it is still difficult to see how the
~phre/nes~ could remain without a body. It is highly probable that
the idea of the continued existence of the consciousness of the
famous seer renowned in Theban legend was derived by the poet from a
popular tradition according to which Teiresias still gave proof of
the clearness of his wits by the oracles which he sent up from below
the earth. In Orchomenos there was a ~chrêstê/rion Teiresi/ou~,
Plu., _DO._ 44, p. 434 C (as Nitzsch, _Anm. Od._ iii, p. 151. also
reminds us). If we may argue from the context in which Plutarch
speaks of him, this must have been an earth-oracle, i.e. an
_incubation-oracle_. There stories like those told at Thebes of
Amphiaraos may have been related of Teiresias and his survival after
death. Some such information the poet of {105} the Nekyia may then
have transformed and made use of for his own purposes. Str. 762 not
without good ground connects these verses about Teiresias with the
stories of Amphiaraos and Trophonios.]
[9\3: The ancient site of the Oracle of Amphiaraos was near Thebes
at the place (Knopia where according to the epic story he sank into
the earth. Paus. 9, 8, 3, Str. 404. Even at the time of the Persian
war the envoy of Mardonios inquired of him there, near Thebes, as
Hdt. viii, 134, unmistakably says. (That the oracle lay in Theban
territory is shown also by the addition of the words, otherwise
pointless, ~Thêbai/ôn oudeni\ e/xesti manteu/esthai autothi/~. A
similar rule is found at the temple of Herakles in Erythrai which
may be approached by Thracian women but not by Erythræan women
[Paus. 7, 5, 7-8]; and in the same way the Lampsakenoi were
excluded from the funeral games of Miltiades on the Chersonnese:
Hdt. vi, 38.) Oropos also claimed to harbour Amphiaraos under its
soil; Sch. Pi., _O._ vi, 18, 21-3; differently in Paus. 1, 34, 2-4.
But the oracle must have been moved there afterwards--hardly before
the end of the fifth century (~methidru/thê~, Str. 404); to suppose
that it had always been confined to Oropos is contrary to all the
traditional evidence.]
[10\3: Those who wished to inquire of his oracle offered by night to
Trophonios, before going down into the cave, a ram, sacrificing it
in a pit (~bo/thros~): Paus. 9, 39, 6; to Amphiaraos, after a
considerable fast (Philos., _VA._, 2, 37, pp. 79, 19 ff. K.) and the
provision of a ~katha/rsion~, the inquirer offered a ram upon the
fleece of which he lay down to sleep (Paus. 1, 34, 5).--Cleanthem
cum _pede terram percussisset_ versum ex Epigonis (prob. of Soph.)
ferunt dixisse: audisne haec, Amphiaraë, sub terram abdite? Cic.,
_TD._ ii, 60. The gesture also must have been borrowed from the same
scene in the ~Epi/gonoi~. It was thus customary to knock on the
ground in calling upon A., as in the case of other ~katachtho/nioi
(Amphia/rae chtho/nie~ occurs as late as _P. Mag. Par._ 1446 f. W
.): ~I~ 568; cf. Paus. 8, 15, 3. Cf. also Nägelsb., _Nachh.
Theol._, 102, 214. Skedasos in Sparta ~gê=n tu/ptôn anekalei=to ta\s
Erinu/as~, Plu., _AN._ 3, p. 774 B. In his grief for the loss of his
daughter Herodes Atticus threw himself on the ground ~tê\n gê=n
pai/ôn kai\ boô=n; ti/ soi, thu/gater, kathagi/sô? ti/ soi
xuntha/psô?~ Philostr., _VS._ 2, 1, 10. Pythagoras ~ho/tan
brontê/sê| tê=s gê=s ha/psasthai parê/ggeilen~, Iamb., _VP._ 156.]
[11\3: That the dream-oracle of Trophonios had a much older
influence is implied by the story of the inquiry made of it by the
~Boiôtoi\ halo/ntes hupo\ Thra|kô=n~ in Phot. (Suid.) ~lu/sioi
teletai/~.]
[12\3: Trophonios himself was supposed to appear in the cave at
Lebadeia. The inquirer goes down to it ~deo/menos _suggene/sthai_
tô=| daimoni/ô|~ (Max. Tyr. 14, 2, p. 249 R.); indications were
sought from sacrifice ~ei dê\ to\n katio/nta eumenê\s kai\ hi/leôs
_de/xetai~_ (Trophonios), Paus. 9, 36, 6. Saon, the discoverer of
the oracle and founder of the cult, had after entering the
~mantei=on~ met Trophonios himself in person, ~tê\n hierourgi/an . .
. didachthê=nai para\ tou= Trophôni/ou phasi/~ (Paus. 9, 40, 2). He
dwells and is visible in the oracular cavern: Orig., _Cels._ iii,
34, pp. 293-4 L.; vii, 35, p. 53; Aristid. i, p. 78 D. [38, 21
Keil]. Even the stupidly rationalising account of Troph. in Schol.
Ar., _Nub._ 508, p. 190 Ruth., Sch. Luc., _DM._ iii, Cosm. ad Greg.
Naz. p. 184 [Clarke, p. 52] (Eudoc., _Viol._, p. 682, 8)--implies
the bodily presence of an ~egkatoikê=san daimo/nion~ in the cave of
Trophonios. Lucian, too, shows that this was the popular impression
(_DM._ iii, 2) by his curious satiric fiction that whereas Troph.
himself was in Hades (to which acc. to _Necyom._ 22 the cave of
Trophonios was only an {106} entrance ~to\ thei=on hêmi/tomon~ of
Trophonios ~chra=| en Boiôti/a|~. Thus the visitor expected to meet
Trophonios there in his divine shape, as Ampelius puts it in a
similar case with great simplicity and directness, 8, 3: ibi (Argis
in Epiro Iovis templum hyphonis (irretrievably corrupt: _Trophonii_
absurdly Duker; _Typhonis_, _Tychonis_ others not much better) unde
est ad inferos descensus ad tollendas sortes: in quo loco dicuntur
ii qui descenderunt Iovem ipsum videre. Otherwise, Tr. was said to
inhabit the cave in the shape of a snake as is so frequently the
case with earth-deities. Not only are snakes sacred to him as to
Asklepios (Paus. 9, 39, 3) and live in his cave (to propitiate them
people take honey-cakes down with them) but he himself is present in
the form of a snake: ~o/phis ê=n ho manteuo/menos~, Schol. Ar.,
_Nub._ 508: cf. Suidas ~Trophô/nios~. It was this personal contact
between the god and the inquirer which specially distinguished the
oracle of Tr. ~mo/non ekei=no (to\ mantei=on) di' autou= chra=| tou=
chrôme/nou~. Philostr., _VA._ 8, 19, p. 335, 30 K. Of course, many
only _heard_ without seeing: ~tis kai\ ei=den kai\ a/llos ê/kousen~,
Paus. 9, 39, 11. But it was the god they heard.]
[13\3: Speaking of Zalmoxis among the Getae (cf. Str. 297 f.; 762;
Hdt. iv, 95-6. _EM._ ~Za/lm.~), Mopsos in Cilicia, Amphilochos in
Akarnania, Amphiaraos and Trophonios--in fact, all of them daimones
who had oracles of Incubation--Or. (_Cels._ iii, 34, p. 293-4 L.)
says: they have temples and ~aga/lmata~ as ~daimoni/ois ouk oi=d'
ho/pôs _hidrume/nois_ e/n tini to/pô|, ho\n . . . _oikou=sin_~. They
dwell within this ~he/na keklêrôme/non to/pon~, vii, 35 (pp. 53-4
L.), cf. iii, 35 fin. In that place and only there are such daimones
visible. _Cels._ vii, 35 (p. 53 L.), of the temples of Amph.,
Troph., Mops.: ~e/ntha phêsi\n anthrôpoeidei=s theôrei=sthai theou\s
kai\ ou pseudome/nous alla\ kai\ enargei=s. . . . o/psetai/ tis
autou\s ouch ha/pax pararrue/ntas . . . all' _a/ei_ toi=s
boulome/nois homilou=ntas~ (and so ever present there. Aristid. i,
p. 78 Di. [38, 21 K.], ~Amphia/raos kai\ Trophô/nios en Boiôti/a|
kai\ Amphi/lochos en Aitôli/a| chrêsmô|dou=si kai\ _phai/nontai_~.
On the extension beyond its original home of the cult of such an
Incubation-deity localization in a single spot was of course
relaxed. It was either disputed where his permanent habitation
really was (as in the case of Amph.), or else the god gradually
ceased to be bound to any one place, though still bound to certain
places in the sense that he could appear only there, and not
anywhere he chose. Such is the case with Asklepios and with various
other daimones equally bound originally to a single spot, who then
~epiphai/nontai, epiphoitô=sin~, in certain other temples as well
(cf. for example, the account of the ~epipha/neiai~ of Machaon and
Podaleirios in Adrotta given by Marin., _V. Procli_, 32; cf. Suid.
~Euste/phios~, from Damascius, _V. Isid._). But when inquiries are
made of a god by _Incubation_ the god must always appear in person;
if he is absent no oracle can be given. See the story of Amphiaraos
in Plu., _DO._ 5, p. 412 A. In the records of miracles of healing
found in Epidauros the god himself regularly comes to the sleeper in
the ~a/duton~ (or else in the form of a snake ~Eph. Arch.~ '83, p.
215 f., ll. 113-19), sometimes accompanied by his ~hupê/retai~ (the
Asklepiadai), cf. ~Eph. Arch.~ '85, p. 17 ff. ll. 38 ff., 111 f. In
the old miracle of Aristagora of Troezen (~Eph. Arch.~ '85, p. 15,
l. 10 ff.) reported already by Hippys of Rhegion (which there is no
reason to doubt) at first only "the sons of the god" appeared to the
sick woman ~ouk epidamou=ntos autou= all' en Epidau/rô| eo/ntos~.
Only in the following night did Asklepios himself appear to her
~hikô\n ex Epidau/rou~. Everywhere it is implied that dream-healing
can only take place through personal action of the god (cf. Ar.,
_Plut._); {107} later by the advice, at least, of the god,
personally appearing to the patient (see Zacher, _Hermes_, xxi, 472
f.); and this presumption is explained by the fact that originally
Incubation could only take place at the actual spot where the god
(or Hero) had his permanent abode.]
[14\3: The ~hupophê=tai~ of the Dodonian Zeus the ~Selloi/,
anipto/podes chamaieu=nai~, ~P~ 234 f., were explained by some
already in antiquity as priests of an Incubation oracle (Eust.,
_Il._, p. 1057, 64 ff.), Welcker agreeing with them, _Kl. Schr._
iii, 90 f. This view is founded solely on the adj. ~chamaieu=nai~,
which is not, however, to be separated from ~anipto/podes~. But
since ~anipto/podes~ can have no connexion with Incubation neither
then can ~chamaieu=nai~. Both epithets refer obviously to the
special severity and simplicity of the life of the ~Selloi/~, the
(ritual) reason for which it is true we do not know and have no
means of guessing.]
[15\3: It remains indeed impossible to determine what moved the epic
to recognize in the Boeotian cave-daimon the _Argive_ seer
Amphiaraos (even during his life-time an adept in the
incubation-mantic art acc. to Paus. 2, 13, 7; cf. Did. in _Gp._ 2,
35, 8, p. 73, 14 ff. Beckh), or why the heroized god Amphiaraos was
turned into an Argive and made a member of the prophetic family of
Melampous otherwise the foes of the Boeotian seers; or, finally, why
he was brought to Boeotia as an enemy and then made to dwell for
ever in that hostile and alien land.]
[16\3: Henry the Fowler in Sudemerberg: Kuhn and Schwartz, _Nordd.
Sag._, p. 185. The other examples in Grimm, ch. xxxii.--G. Voigt in
Sybel's _hist. Zeits._ xxvi (1871), pp. 131-87, shows in his most
lucid account that it was not originally Frederick Barbarossa but
Frederick II whom the legend represented as not dead but "lost" and
to whom the expectation referred that he would come again some day.
From the fifteenth century the story begins to appear that he was
dwelling in Kyffhäuser (or in a cave in the rocks near
Kaiserslautern); the name of Barbarossa does not appear till the
sixteenth century, and then gradually predominates. But how it came
about that from a definite moment onwards the translated emperor was
thought of as living on in a hollow mountain is by no means clear
from the written documents alone or from the critical study of the
evolution of the legend. Suddenly and without intermediate steps the
story assumes this shape, and it can hardly be accounted for except
on the view that it arose from the combination of the Frederick
legend with already existing Saga-stories of translated Heroes or
gods (as Voigt also suggests, p. 160).]
[17\3: Grimm, pp. 959-61. Simrock, _D. Myth._^3, p. 144.--How easily
similar legends can appear spontaneously among different peoples
without interconnexion appears from the fact that translation
legends are also found not only in Greece but in distant Mexico; see
Müller, _Gesch. am. Urrel._ 582. Holy men who have "vanished" and
are not dead but live on in the depths of mountain caves, and are
expected one day to reappear on earth, occur in the legends of
Mohammedan peoples of the East: A. v. Kremer, _Culturg. Streifz.
Geb. Islam_, 50; _Gesch. Ideen Islam_, 375 f., 378.]
[18\3: ~Dii\ Trephôni/oi~ Insc. from Lebadeia, Meister, _Böot.
Insc._ 423 (_GDI._ i, p. 163); otherwise only ~Trephôni/oi~ (n. 407,
414, ~kataba\s en Trephô/nion~ _BCH._ 1890, p. 21), ~Trophôni/ô|~
(n. 413); and side by side occur ~tu= Di\ tu= Basilei=i kê\ tu=
Trephôni/u~, etc. (n. 425, 429, 430). ~Dionu/sô eustaphu/lô kata\
chrêsmo\n Dio\s Trophôni/ou~ Insc. from Labadeia in Stephani _Reise
d. Geg. nörd. Griechen_, No. 47. Ins. from Leb. _IGSept._ i, 3077
(1st-2nd cent. A.D.)--Str. 414: ~Leba/deia ho/pou Dio\s Trophôni/ou
mantei=on hi/drutai~. {108} Liv. 45, 27, 8, Labadiae templum Iovis
Trophonii adiit. Obs. 50 (= 110) Lebadiae Eutychides in templum
Iovis Trophonii degressus--. ~Dio\s mantei=on~ is the name given to
the oracle of Tr. in Phot. also and Hesych. ~Leba/deia~.]
[19\3: ~Dio\s Amphiara/ou hiero/n~ (at Oropos): [Dicaearch.] _Descr.
Gr._ i, § 6 (i, 100 Mü.). Even Hyperides in the speech for
Euxenippos refers throughout to Amph. at Oropos as a god. Amph. in
Or. ~ho theo/s~ (1st-2nd cent. B.C.): _IGS._ i, 3498; 412; _CIG._
1570a, 25, 30, 52. Liv. 45, 27, 10 (in Oropos) pro deo vates
antiquus colitur. Cic. _Div._ i, 88: Amphiaraum sic honoravit fama
Græciæ, deus ut haberetur. Plutarch also, speaking of the embassy
sent by Mardonios to the ancient Theban oracle, calls Amph.
~theo/s~: _DO._ 5, p. 412 A. Acc. to Paus. 1, 34, 2, however, Amph.
was first honoured as a god in Oropos.]
[20\3: Origen is expressing it in his own way, but he is quite right
in principle when he distinguishes the local gods remaining in the
countryside from the gods of Olympos, _Cels._ iii, 35 fin.:
~mochthêrô=n daimo/nôn kai\ to/pous epi\ gê=s prokateilêpho/tôn,
epei\ tê=s katharôte/ras ou du/nantai epha/psasthai chô/ras kai\
theiote/ras~. He says of Asklepios, 5, 2 (p. 169 L.), ~theo\s me\n
a\n ei/ê aei\ de\ lachô\n oikei=n tê\n gê=n kai\ hôsperei\ phuga\s
tou= to/pou tô=n theô=n~.]
[21\3: ~Dio\s mega/lou oaristê/s~. The word implies quite as much
familiar conversation as well as general intimacy with Zeus. The
obscure ~enne/ôros~ need not be considered here. In any case it is
to be taken closely with ~basi/leue~, next to which it stands, and
not with ~Dio\s m. oaristê/s~ (as many even ancient writers have
done.]
[22\3: Intercourse of Minos with Zeus in the cave: [Pl.] _Min._ 319
E. (whence Str. 762), Ephorus ap. Str. 476; (from Eph. also Nic.
Dam. ap. Stob. _Fl._ iv, 2, 25, p. 161 H.). V.M. i, 2, ext. 1. Here
the position of the cave is as a rule not precisely stated. But the
Idaian cave is generally meant and Max. Tyr. definitely refers to
this one as the place where Minos met Zeus, 38, 2 (p. 221 R.).]
[23\3: Birth of Zeus in the cave: ~Aigai/ô| en o/rei~ Hes., _Th._
481 ff. Thence his mother bore him ~es Lu/kton~ 482 (cf. 477), which
would be near Ida:--~es Di/ktên~ Schömann. And, at any rate, the
cave on Mt. Dicte was the generally reputed place of Zeus' _birth_:
[Apoll.] 1, 1, 6. D.S. 5, 70, 6; Mela 2, 113; D.H. 2, 61 (who also
makes Minos visit Zeus there). At Praisos ~to\ tou= Diktai/ou Dio\s
hiero/n~: Str. 475-8. Others, indeed, mention Ida as the place of
the birth of Zeus: D.S. 5, 70, 2, 4; A.R. iii, 134. Both the holy
caves are thus continually rivals; but it appears that the legend of
the birth of Zeus was principally localized at the Diktaian cave,
that of his intercourse with Minos chiefly at the Idaian; cf. now
also M. Mayer, _Myth. Lex._ s. Kronos, ii, 1533 ff.]
[24\3: Max. Tyr. 16, 1 (cf. 38, 3; prob. from Max. only, Theod. Met.
_Misc._ c. 90, p. 580 Mü.). Cf. _Rh. Mus._ 35, 161 f. Max. speaks of
the cave of Diktaian Zeus, perhaps only inexactly and by oversight.
It would be to Ida rather and its cave which rose above Knossos, the
home of Epimenides, that the legend would make him go on pilgrimage.
So, too, D.L. viii, 1, 3, of Pythagoras, ~en Krê/tê| su\n
Epimeni/dê| katê=lthen eis to\ Idai=on a/ntron~. Pyth. in the Idaian
cave, Porph., _VP._ 17.]
[25\3: Schol. Plat., _Leg._ i, introd. (p. 372 Herm.) and _Leg._ 625
B, see Lob., _Agl._ 1121. (~Dio\s Idai/ou mu/stês~, Eur., _Cret.
fr._ 472, 10 N.) Recently the Idaian cave of Zeus has been
rediscovered high up in the mountains, a day's journey from Knossos
(Fabricius, _Ath. Mitth._, vol. x, 59 ff.). Remains of votive
offerings of antiquity have been {109} found, but only before the
entrance to the cave ~en tô=| stomi/ô| tou= a/ntrou~ (where Thphr.
had already remarked the like, _HP._ 3, 3, 4); inside the cave,
which, like a vaulted tomb, consisted of two chambers, only traces
of the cult from Roman times were found. It seems from this that the
sacrificial ritual of the previous period did not reach further than
the entrance of the cave (as was the case also at the temple of
Troph. at Lebadeia; while the interior of the cave as the seat of
the god himself was only entered by Mystai and priests (the
birth-chamber was not to be approached at all: Boios, ap. Ant. Lib.
19).]
[26\3: Porph., _VP._ 17, p. 25 N.: ~eis de\ to\ Idai=on kalou/menon
a/ntron kataba\s e/ria e/chôn me/lana ta\s nomizome/nas tri\s
enne/a~ (cf. Nauck on S., _OC._ 483) ~hême/ras ekei= die/tripsen
kai\ kathê/gisen tô=| Dii/, to/n te stornu/menon autô=| kat' e/tos
thro/non ethea/sato~. The historical truth of the story of Pyth.'s
visit to the cave need not be discussed here, but we may assume the
credibility of the details given of the cult of Zeus in the cave and
the customary ceremonial of pilgrimage to it. (The story comes from
relatively good sources, _Gr. Roman_, p. 254.)--The long time spent
in the cave (i.e. in the wide and lofty outer chamber) has its
companion picture in what Str. 649 says of ~Charô/nion~ at Acharaka,
Plu., _Gen. Soc._ 21, 590 B., of the cave of Trophonios. It was
necessary also to spend several days in the ~oi/kêma Dai/monos
agathou= kai\ Tu/chês~ in preparation for the descent into the cave:
Paus. 9, 39, 5. The (to Zeus) ~stornu/menos kat' e/tos thro/nos~ has
nothing to do with the Korybantic ~thronismo/s~ (see Hiller,
_Hermes_, 21, 365). What is meant is in any case a _lectisternium_:
thus in Athens it was usual to ~kli/nên strô=sai tô=| Plou/tôni~,
_CIA._ ii, 948-50; to Asklepios (_CIA._ ii, 453b 11): to Attis,
_CIA._ ii, 622; (in Cos at the ~xenismo/s~ of Herakles, _Ins. Cos_
36b, 22), etc. The ~thro/nos (strônu/ein _thro/nous_ du/o~ for a
goddess _CIA._ ii, 624, 9, 10) appearing instead of a ~kli/nê~ is
possibly in accordance with ancient ritual. Thus in the so-called
feasts of the dead in ancient times the Hero is represented on a
throne while later he reclines on the ~kli/nê~. Thus in Rome besides
_lectisternia_ we sometimes have _sellisternia_ especially for
female deities: _Comm. Lud. Saec._, l. 71; 101; 138 [Dessau, ii, 1,
p. 282; _CIL._ vi, 32] and elsewhere.]
[27\3: Acc. to Ennius, _Euh._ 73 Vahl. (ap. Lactant. i, 11, and ap.
Min. Fel. xxi, 1) Euhemeros spoke of the grave of Zeus. Call., _h.
Jov._ 8-9, clearly attacks the fable of Zeus' grave in Crete. It
seems to me very probable that Euh. had taken up the story as one
that evidently suited his cheap pragmatical interpretation of myths
and had introduced it into literature. It would be Euh. then whom
Call., loc. cit., was attacking as he did elsewhere the ~ge/rôn
alazô/n~ and his ~a/dika bibli/a~ (_fr._ 86).]
[28\3: The grave of Zeus in Crete is spoken of without exact
specification of the place by Call., loc. cit., Cic., _ND._ iii, 53;
D.S. 3, 61, 2; Mela ii, 112; Luc., _Tim._ 6, _J. Tr._ 45, _Sacr._
10, _D. Conc._ 6; Min. xxi, 8; Firm., _Err. Prof. Rel._ vii, 6.
Euhemeros ap. Min. xxi, 1, speaks of the _Dictæi Iovis sepulcrum_
obviously inexactly, for acc. to Lact. i, 11, he made the grave in
oppido Cnosso far from Mt. Dicte. Even there he means not "in" but
"near" Knossos, i.e. on Mt. Ida. For the fact that it was on Mt. Ida
we have the testimony of Varro _de litoralibus_ ap. Solin. 11, p.
81, 12-15 Momms. Finally, the situation of the grave within the
Idaian cave is clear from Porph., _VP._ 17, p. 25 N.]
[29\3: Hence the story of the grave of Zeus (when not denied
outright as by Call.) was allegorized; Celsus hinted at ~tropika\s
huponoi/as~: Or., _Cels._ iii, 43, p. 307 L.; cf. Philostr., _VS._
p. 76, 15 ff. K.] {110}
[30\3: Examples are frequent in the mythology of Oriental, and
generally but not exclusively Semitic peoples. It is generally
"Kronos" who is buried (cf. Mayer, _Myth. Lex._ ii, 1487 ff.); at
other times Astarte, Adonis, the Phrygian Attis, "Herakles," and
others. Cf. also the stories of the Heroes sleeping eternally in
Sardinia (_Rh. Mus._ 35, 157 ff.; 37, 465 ff.); and of Kragos and
the other ~a/grioi theoi/~ (or ~theoi\ agrei=s~? _JHS._ 10, 57, 55)
who "were made immortal" on Mt. Kragos in Lykia (St. Byz.
~Kra/gos~): they, too, were thought of as sleeping, and not "dead",
as Eust. on D.P. 847 expresses it.]
[31\3: Varro, _LL._ vii, 17, p. 124 Sp.^2, compares the shape of the
Omphalos with a _thesaurus_, i.e. with one of the vaulted buildings
which used to be called treasuries, but which have now been
undoubtedly proved to be really vaulted graves. On a smaller scale
(as vase paintings show) the ~omphalo/s~ had the shape generally
given to the dwelling-places made for the spirits of the departed
who dwelt below the earth, as well as that of the abodes of other
earth-spirits; even the ~cha/sma gê=s~ over the cavern of Trophonios
was of this shape, Paus. 9, 39, 10. Was this dome-shape especially
connected with earth-spirits who had mantic powers? The Delphic
"omphalos" was even used as a technical expression to describe this
"tholos" shape; thus the ~omphaloi/~ (of ~phia/lai~) ~kai\ tô=n
balanei/ôn hoi _tho/loi_ paro/moioi~, Ath. 501 D. E. (cf. Hesych.
~Balaneiompha/lous~, _AB._ 225, 6). It was called ~omphalo/s Gê=s~
because sacred to the earth-goddess. It was later interpreted
"navel", i.e. middle point of the earth, by mistake, and then
fabulous accounts made up to explain this.]
[32\3: Modern writers have adopted the view that Dionysos was buried
under the Omphalos: e.g. Enmann, _Kypros u. Ursp. Aphrod._, S.
Petersb., 1886, p. 47 ff. But closer examination shows that all that
we have good authority for is that the ~omphalo/s~ was _Pythonis
tumulus_ (Varro, _LL._ vii, 17, p. 124 Sp.), ~ta/phos tou=
Pu/thônos~ (Hesych. s. ~Toxi/ou bouno/s~). _Dionysos_, on the other
hand, was buried at Delphi, ~para\ to\n Apo/llôna to\n chrusou=n~
(Philochoros ap. Sync. 307, 4 ff. Di.; Eus. Arm. = Hier. _Chr._, pp.
44-5 Sch.; Malal., p. 45, 7 Di., from Africanus acc. to Gelzer,
_Afric._ i, 132 f.), i.e. he was buried in the ~a/duton~ (cf. Paus.
10, 24, 5), or, what comes to the same thing, ~para\ to\
chrêstê/rion~ (Plu., _Is. et O._ 35, 365 A.), ~para\ to\n tri/poda~
(Call. ap. Tz. Lyc. 208; cf. _E.M._ ~Delphoi/~). The tripod stood in
the Adyton (D.S. 16, 26; Str. 419; cf. Hdt. vii, 140). Whether the
~omphalo/s~ also stood in the Adyton (or whether as some think, in
the _Cella_ of the Temple) cannot be made out for certain though it
seems probable. No one, however, made the grave of Dionysos under
the Omphalos except Tat., _Gr._ viii, p. 40 Ott. [p. 9, 16 ff.
Schw.]: ~ho omphalo\s ta/phos esti\ Dionu/sou~, and the statement of
this very careless pamphleteer cannot stand against the witness of
Varro, etc. It is plain that Tatian confused the two "graves", as
Hyg. 140 and Serv. (_A._ iii, 92; iii, 360; vi, 347) did, reversing
the process and making the tripod into the grave of the Python. The
real tradition knew, besides the grave of Dionysos near the tripod,
the grave of Python in the Omphalos of his mother Gaia. This was
never seriously denied; doubt might rather have been believed to
linger over the question, who then was preserved in the tripod?
Porph., _VP._ 18, p. 25, 6 ff. N., says that it was Apollo himself,
or possibly _an_ Apollo the son of Silenos. This absurdity seems to
go back to Euhemeros (cf. Minuc. xxi, 1; worthless is Fulgentius
_Expos._, 2, p. 769 Stav. = p. 112, 3 ff. Helm), and may be merely a
frivolous jest. (Too much respect is paid to this tradition by K. O.
Müller, _Introd. to Scient. Myth._, p. 246.)] {111}
[33\3: That the snake killed by Apollo was the guardian of the old
~mantei=on chtho/nion~ we have on unimpeachable authority (testim.
collected by Th. Schreiber, _Apollo Pythoktonos_, p. 3): esp. Eur.,
_IT._ 1245 ff. Call., _fr._ 364; ~poiêtai/~ acc. to Paus. 10, 6, 6,
who say that ~(to\n Pu/thôna) epi\ tô=| mantei/ô| phu/laka hupo\ Gê=s
teta/chthai ktl.~ That the struggle was for the oracle is shown
briefly and plainly by [Apollod.] 1, 4, 1, 3: ~hôs de\ ho phrourô=n
to\ mantei=on Pu/thôn o/phis ekô/luen auto\n (Apo/llôna) parelthei=n
epi\ to\ cha/sma~ (the oracular cleft), ~tou=ton anelô/n to\
mantei=on paralamba/nei~. The snake form is proper to earth-spirits,
and, as earth-spirits always have mantic power, to oracle-spirits.
Trophonios appeared as a snake and so did Asklepios. There can be no
doubt that the Delphian ~dra/kôn~ is the embodiment of the
pre-Apolline oracle-daimon. Thus Hesych. says exactly ~Pu/thôn
daimo/nion mantiko/n~ (elaborated in Hyg. 140). Cf. _Act._
16^16.--Supporters of the doctrine of the Greek "religion of Nature"
find even in the legend of Apollo's fight with the snake an
allegorical version of a physical fact tending to become an ethical
one. I cannot regard such an allegory as primitive.]
[34\3: An instructive parallel may be added. In [Clem.] _Hom._ 5,
22, p. 70, 32 Lag., there is mention of a _grave_ of Plouton ~en
tê=| Acherousi/a| li/mnê|~. This may be explained as follows. At
Hermione Hades under the name of Klymenos was honoured together with
Demeter ~Chthoni/a~ and Kore. Pausanias knew well that Klymenos was
a titular name (~epi/klêsis~) of Hades (2, 35, 9), but his rejection
of the opinion that Klymenos was a man from Argos who had come to
Hermione (as founder of the Chthonic cult) shows that this was the
general view. Behind the temple of Chthonia lay ~chôri/a ha\
kalou=sin Hermionei=s to\ me\n Klume/nou, to\ de\ Plou/tônos, to\
tri/ton de\ autôn _li/mnên Acherousi/an_~. At this ~li/mnê
Acherousi/a~ it is possible that a _grave_ of Hades, transformed
into the Hero Klymenos, may have been shown. This Clemens referred
to, but instead of Klymenos or Hades used inaccurately the name more
familiar to later times, Plouton.]
[35\3: ~ka\d d' en Athê/nê|s' ei=sen, heô=| eni\ pi/oni nêô=|~.
These words may be kept in mind in order to explain the mysterious
narrative in Hesiod _Th._ 987 ff. of Phaethon whom Aphrodite ~ô=rt'
anereipsame/nê kai/ min zathe/ois eni\ nê/ois nêopo/lon mu/chion
poiê/sato, dai/mona di=on~. Aphr., in fact. "translated" Phaethon
alive and made him immortal--within her own temple just as Athene
had Erechtheus. Perhaps Phaethon was translated beneath the ground
under the temple--the adj. ~mu/chion~ may mean this. ~theoi\
mu/chioi~ are those that rule over the ~mucho/s~ of a house, e.g.
over the ~tha/lamos~ as the inmost chamber: thus ~Aphrodi/tê
muchi/a~ (Ael., _HA._ x, 34). ~Lêtô\ muchi/a~ (Plu. ap. Eus., _PE._
iii, 1, 3, p. 84 c.). A goddess called simply ~Muchi/a~, ins. fr.
Mytilene, _GDI._ 255. But ~mu/chioi~ could also mean dwellers in the
depths of the earth (~muchô=| chthono\s euruodei/ês~, Hes., _Th._
119; more commonly in the plural ~muchoi\ chthono/s~, see Markland
on Eur., _Sup._ 545; cf. ~A/ïdos mucho/s~, _AP._ vii, 213, 6
(Archias); also ~mucho\s eusebe/ôn, athana/tôn~ under the earth,
_Epigr. Gr._ 241 _a_, 18; 658 _a_; _Rh. Mus._ 34, 192). Thus (of the
Erinyes) Orph. _H._ 69, 3, ~mu/chiai, hupo\ keu/thesin oiki/'
e/chousai a/ntrô| en êero/enti~. Phot. 274, 18, ~mucho/pedon; gê=s
ba/thos, Ha/idês.~]
[36\3: That the ~mi/n~ of line 550 refers to Erechtheus and not
Athene is shown by the context: Schol. BL. states it expressly.
Athene cannot have been intended to accept the offering of bulls and
rams, for ~thê/lea tê=| Athêna=| thu/ousin~. And, in fact, cows, not
bulls, were offered to Athene; cf. P. Stengel, _quaest. sacr._, p.
4-5, Berl. 1879.]
[37\3: See Wachsmuth, _Ber. sächs. Ges. Wiss._, p. 399 ff., 1887.]
{112}
[38\3: Thus there was, at the temple of Palaimon on the Isthmus, an
~a/duton kalou/menon, ka/thodos de\ es auto\ hupo/geôs, e/ntha dê\
to\n Palai/mona _kekru/phthai_~ (i.e. not dead and buried)
~phasi/n~. Paus. 2, 2, 1.]
[39\3: ~cha/sma kru/ptei chthono/s~, Eur. _Ion_, 292.--Erechtheus ab
Iove Neptuni rogatu fulmine est ictus, Hyg. 46. That is only another
kind of translation.]
[40\3: We need not here speak of the relationship between Erechtheus
and Poseidon, with whom he was eventually merged.]
[41\3: Clem. Al. _Protr._ iii, p. 39 P. (with Arnob. and the others
who copy him); [Apollod.] 3, 14, 7, 1. Clemens (quoting Antiochos of
Syracuse mentions a grave of Kekrops on the citadel. It is uncertain
what is the relation between this and the ~Kekro/pion~ known from
insc. _CIA._ i, 322, and ~to\ tou= Ke/kropos hiero/n~ on the citadel
(Decree honouring the Epheboi of the tribe Kekropis in the year 333:
_BCH._ '89, p. 257. l. 10).]
[42\3: ~Huakinthi/ois pro\ tê=s tou= Apo/llônos thusi/as es tou=ton
Huaki/nthô| to\n bômo\n dia\ thu/ras chalkê=s enagi/zousin; en
aristera=| de/ estin hê thu/ra tou= bômou=~. Paus. 3, 19, 3. We
shall meet with similar examples in treating of the sacrifices made
to Heroes. This naive sacrificial rite regularly presumes the
physical presence of the god or "spirit" in the place underground
into which the offerings are poured or thrown (as in the ~me/gara~
of Demeter and Kore, etc.).]
[43\3: The story of Hyakinthos is found in its familiar form in the
poets of the Hellenistic period and their imitators, Nikander, Bion,
Ovid, etc.: already Simmias and Euphorion had told it (see Welcker,
_Kl. Sch._ i, 24 ff.; and G. Knaack, _Anal. Alexandrino-romana_, p.
60 ff.). It may even reach back to earlier times; the death of H.
caused by Apollo's discus-throw is mentioned by Eur., _Hel._ 1472
ff., though he does not speak of the love of Apollo for H. As the
story was generally given, and, indeed, as it had already been
implicitly told by Nikias, it had no local colouring and no
importance as local legend. It was not ever even an aetiological
myth for it could only account in the most general way for the
melancholy character of the Hyakinthos festival and not at all for
the peculiar features of its ritual. It is an erotic myth leading up
to a metamorphosis, like so many others of its kind, in substance,
it is true, closely related the Linos myth, etc., with which it is
generally compared--and in accordance with the fashionable theory
interpreted as an allegory of the spring blossom fading beneath the
heat of the sun. It is, in fact, a regular mythological theme (the
death through the cast of the discus occurring for example in the
stories of Akrisios, Kanobos, Krokos [see Haupt, _Opusc._ iii, 574
f. In Philo ap. Galen, xiii, 268, read v. 13 ~êïthe/oio~, v. 15
perhaps ~kei/nou dê\ stathmo/n~]). We cannot tell how far the flower
Hyakinthos had anything to do with the Amyklaian Hyakinthos (cf.
Hemsterhuis, _Lucian_ ii, p. 291 Bip.); perhaps nothing at
all--there were no hyacinths used in the Hyakinthia. The similarity
of the name may have suggested this addition to the metamorphosis
story to the Hellenistic poets.]
[44\3: Certainly not as Apollo's ~erô/menos~ (as which Hauser,
_Philol._ 52, 218, in spite of the beard, regards the Hyakinthos of
the Amyklaian altar). Bearded ~paidika/~ are unthinkable as every
reader of the Anth. Pal. knows. The most ancient form of the story,
as implied in the sculpture at Amyklai, neither knows anything of
the love of Apollo and Hyakinthos nor consequently of the latter's
early death, etc.]
[45\3: The ~Huakinthi/des~ at Athens were regarded as the daughters
(strangely migrated to Athens) of the "Lacedaemonian" Hyakinthos.
i.e. the one buried in Amyklai. See St. Byz. ~Lousi/a~; Harp. {113}
~Huakinthi/des~; [Apollod.] 3, 15, 8, 5-6; Hyg. 238 (Phanodemos ap.
Suid. ~Parthe/noi~ arbitrarily identifies the ~Huakinthi/des~ with
the ~Hua/des~ or daughters of Erechtheus. So also [Dem.] 60, 27).
This idea implies a form of the story in which Hyak. did not die
while still a boy or a half-grown youth as in the metamorphosis
version.--That the figure of Hyakinthos on the sculpture at Amyklai
had a beard is expressly mentioned by Paus. 3, 19, 4, as conflicting
with the fresh youthfulness of Hyakinthos as Nikias (second half
fourth century) with reference to the love-story had represented him
in his famous picture (~prôthê/bên Hua/kinthon~, Nic., _Th._ 905).
Paus. § 5, expressly raises a doubt as to the truth of the
traditional fable about H.'s death.]
[46\3: ~pro\ tê=s tou= Apo/llônos thusi/as~ Paus. 3, 19, 3. More
than once it is stated that at a particular festival sacrifice to
the Hero preceded that to the god (cf. Wassner, _de heroum ap. Gr.
cultu_, p. 48 ff.). Probably the reason in all such cases is that
the cult of the "Hero" (or god turned Hero is _older_ in that
particular spot than the worship of the god whose cult had only been
adopted there at a later time. Thus in Plataea at the Daidalia
sacrifice was made to Leto before Hera (~prothu/esthai~): Plu. ap.
Eus., _PE._ iii, 84 C: there it is quite evident that the cult of
Hera was adopted later. Perhaps even the form of the word
~Hua/kinthos~ implies that it was the name of an ancient deity
worshipped already by the pre-Greek inhabitants of the Peloponnese.
See Kretschmer, _Einl. in Gesch. gr. Spr._ 402-5.]
[47\3: ~Huaki/nthô| enagi/zousin~, Paus. 3, 19, 3.]
[48\3: The second day of the festival was sacred to Apollo and not
to Hyakinthos: ~to\n theo\n a/|dousin~ Ath. 139 E. (It has been
rightly said that this was when the ~paia/n~ mentioned by Xen.,
_HG._ 4, 5, 11, must have been sung.) It is impossible to deny, with
Unger, _Philol._ 37, 30, the cheerful character of this second day
of the festival as described by Polykrates ap. Ath. 139 E, F. It is
true that Didymus (whose words Athenaeus is quoting) begins in a way
(139 D) that might lead one to suppose that all three days of the
~tô=n Huakinthi/ôn thusi/a dia\ to\ pe/nthos to\ geno/menon
(gino/menon?) peri\ to\n Hua/kinthon~ were passed in gloom without
festivity, crowns, feasting, or Paean, etc. But he refutes himself
afterwards in his description of the second day of the festival, at
which not merely at the performances but at the sacrifice and the
banquetings festivity reigns supreme. We can only suppose that his
language at the beginning is inaccurate, and that he means what he
says of the solemnity of the occasion "because of the mourning for
Hyakinthos" to be taken as limited like the mourning itself to the
first day of the feast.]
[49\3: Hesych. ~Polu/boia; theo/s tis hup' eni/ôn A/rtemis, hupo\
de\ a/llôn Ko/rê~. Cf. K. O. Müller, _Dorians_, i, 361 (~A/rtemis~
there probably as Hekate).]
[50\3: Another view of the combined worship of Apollo and Hyakinthos
at Amyklai is taken by Enmann, _Kypros_, etc., 35. In this as
elsewhere he relies on certain opinions adopted from H. D. Müller's
mythological writings, which must be approved of in general before
they can be found enlightening as applied to any particular case.]
[51\3: As happened in the case of Hyakinthos, too, in the scene
represented on the Amyklaian altar, Paus. 3, 19, though nothing can
be deduced from this as to his original nature.]
[52\3: The oracular activity of Asklepios plays a subordinate part
in the usual accounts of him in comparison with his powers of
healing. But originally they were closely united (as was usually the
case with earth spirits). Apollodorus ~p. theô=n~ ap. Macrob. 1, 20,
4, puts it {114} distinctly: scribit quod Aesculapius divinationibus
et auguriis praesit. Celsus calls Asklepios ~euergetou=nta kai\ ta\
me/llonta prole/gonta ho/lais po/lesin anakeime/nais heautô=|~, Or.,
_Cels._ iii, 3, pp. 255-6 L.]
[53\3: See Appendix I.]
[54\3: Cicero quoting the pragmatical "_theologi_" says, _ND._ iii,
57, Aesculapius (the second one fulmine percussus dicitur humatus
esse Cynosuris (the district of Sparta? From a similar source come
Clem. Al., _Protr._ ii, p. 26 P.; Lyd., _Mens._ iv, 90, p. 164
Wünsch); of the third Askl., Cic. § 57 says: cuius in Arcadia non
longe a Lusio flumine sepulcrum et lucus ostenditur. Even the temple
of Asklepios in Epidauros was regarded by many as the place of his
grave if we are to believe the Clementine _Hom._ v, 21, _Rec._ x, 24
(sepulcrum demonstrator in Epidauro Aesculapii).]
[55\3: The chthonic character of Asklepios is shown specially by the
fact that not only are snakes sacred and dedicated to him but that
he himself was actually thought of as a snake (cf. Welcker,
_Götterl._ ii, 734). ~o/phis, Gê=s pai=s~ (Hdt. i, 78); deities who
dwell in the earth, and afterwards "Heroes" (in the later sense),
appear in the form of snakes as ~chtho/nioi~. Since such
earth-spirits generally have oracular powers the snake is an
oracular animal; but that is a secondary development. The offer of a
cock, too (as by Sokrates before his departure to the underworld),
points to the chthonic character of Ask., for it was a sacrifice
also made to Heroes. Thus the ~hêrô=|a~ at Athens were frequented by
the priests of Asklepios (_CIA._ ii, 453 b); cf. Köhler, _Ath.
Mitth._ vol. ii, 245 f. (Sacrificial pit, ~bo/thros~, for this
chthonic worship in the Asklepieion at Athens? see Köhler, ib.
254.)]
[56\3: The connexion between Amphiaraos and Asklepios is shown also
by the fact that Iaso, one of the allegorical figures attached to
Asklepios, though generally the daughter of Askl. (e.g. _EM._ 434,
17 ~Iasô/~ with Sylb.; cf. Herond. iv, 6), was probably also
regarded as the daughter of Amph.: Sch. Ar., _Plut._ 701. Hesych.
s.v. (her portrait in the temple at Oropos, Paus. 1, 34, 3). So,
too, ~A/lkandros~ the son of Trophonios (Charax. ap. Schol. Ar.,
_Nub._, 508, p. 500 Bk.) seems to be the same as ~A/lkôn~, the
Asklepiad daimon whose priest Sophokles was. The portraits of
Trophonios followed the type of the Asklepios statues: Paus. 9, 39,
3-4. Troph. son of Valens (= Ischys) and Koronis, and brother of
Asklepios: Cic., _ND._ iii, 56, acc. to the _theologi_. With good
reason, considering their intrinsic affinity, Trophonios,
Amphiaraos, Amphilochos, and the Asklepiadai are mentioned side by
side by Aristid. i, p. 78 D.]
[57\3: Sulla counted Amphiaraos a "god" and hence the territory
belonging to his temple at Oropos was excepted from the lease for
the collection of taxes granted to the Roman _publicani_. The Roman
Senate allowed this to stand, ins. from Oropos ~Eph. Arch.~, 1884,
p. 101 ff.; _Hermes_, 20, 268 ff.; the publicani had denied
immortalis esse ullos qui aliquando homines fuissent, Cic., _ND._
iii, 49. Thus only the fact that he was _now_ a god was claimed by
the other side--it was not denied that he had once been a mortal.
Paus. again 8, 2, 4, mentions Amph. among the ~theoi/~ who
~egi/nonto ex anthrô/pôn~; so too Varro ap. Serv. _A._ viii, 275;
cf. Apul., _D. Soc._ 15 fin.; also Philo, _Leg. ad Gaium_, § 78, ii,
p. 557 M.]
{{115}}
CHAPTER IV
HEROES
§ 1
When about the year 620 Drakon at Athens for the first time
collected and committed to writing the customary law of his country
he also ordained that the gods and the national Heroes should be
honoured together according to ancestral usage.[1\4]
We are thus for the first time introduced to _Heroes_ as beings of a
higher kind, mentioned side by side with the gods, and like them to
be worshipped with regularly offered sacrifice. Their cult, like
that of the gods, is by implication of long standing: it does not
have to be reorganized, but is merely established in the form
ancestral ordinances had given it. We see at this turning-point of
Greek religious development how defective our knowledge is of the
history of religious ideas in primitive Greece. This is our earliest
record, and it has been preserved to us by a mere accident, but it
points backwards and beyond itself to a long previous history in the
worship of such guardian deities of the country--of which, however,
we have hardly a scrap of early evidence.[2\4] We should in fact,
from the meagre remains of the literature that is so important from
this point of view, especially the lyric poetry of the seventh and
early sixth centuries, hardly have derived a suspicion of the
existence of this quite un-Homeric element in the religious life of
Greece.[3\4] When at last the stream of surviving literature begins
to flow more broadly, then, indeed, the Heroes are often referred
to. Pindar's Hymns of Victory and Herodotos' History cover the
generations that lived through the Persian wars and the following
fifty years. From them we can see with overwhelming distinctness how
strong at that time was the belief in the existence and potency of
Heroes even among men of education who had not been too much
influenced by the fashionable enlightenment of the time. In the
beliefs of the people, in the religious customs of countries and
cities, the national Heroes have their recognized place beside the
gods. The representatives of states swear by the gods and the Heroes
of the country:[4\4] it is to the gods and Heroes of Greece that the
pious attribute the victory over the Barbarians.[5\4] So well
established, indeed, was the validity of the Greek belief in Heroes
that even the Persian magi in the army of Xerxes made libation by
night in the Troad to the Heroes buried there.[6\4] {116}
§ 2
If now we inquire into the nature and essence of this species of
higher beings that was as yet unknown to, or disregarded by, the
epic we get little information on the subject from direct statements
as to their nature by writers of antiquity. We can, however, learn a
great deal about them from what we are told of individual Heroes and
more particularly from what we know of the peculiar nature of the
religious worship paid to them.[7\4] The Heroes were worshipped with
sacrifice like the gods; but these sacrifices were very different
from the offerings that were made to the Olympians.[8\4] They differ
in time, place, and character. Sacrifice was made to the gods in
broad daylight, to Heroes towards evening or at night;[9\4] and not
on raised altars, but on low, and sometimes hollow, sacrificial
hearths close to the ground.[10\4] For them were slain animals of
black colour and male sex,[11\4] and in sacrificing, the heads of
the animals were not turned upwards towards heaven as they were when
offered to the gods, but were bent down to the ground.[12\4] The
blood of these animals was allowed to run down into the ground or
into the sacrificial hearth, that the Heroes might have their
"appeasement of blood".[13\4] The carcass was completely burnt, for
no living man might taste of it.[14\4] This peculiar mode of
worshipping the Heroes was in strict usage described by a different
name from that used of the sacrifices to the gods.[15\4] On special
occasions a sacrificial meal of cooked food was prepared, to which
the Hero was invited as a guest.[16\4] They are near by in the earth
itself, and there is no need in their case, as for the Olympians, to
send up the savour of sacrifice in smoke to heaven.
This sacrificial ritual is in those features which distinguish it
from that commonly in use for the gods of Olympos precisely
identical with that by which the gods who dwelt under the earth,
and, later, even the souls of dead men, were honoured. This will
seem quite natural if we regard the Heroes as closely related to the
chthonic deities on the one hand, and to the dead on the other. In
fact, they are nothing else than the spirits of dead men who now
dwell beneath the earth, immortal like the gods of that underworld,
and almost equal to them in power. Their real nature as the souls of
great men of the past, who have died but have not been deprived of
conscious existence, is made plain by another mode of doing honour
to them originally belonging to them and them only--I mean the
yearly repeated celebration of Funeral Games.
Athletic contests for chieftains at the funeral of a prominent {117}
one of their number were known to Homer, and we have already
referred to them among other relics in epic poetry of a once
powerful cult of souls.[17\4] But Homer knew nothing of their
repetition, and certainly not of an annual recurrence of such
funeral celebrations.[18\4] Games celebrated afresh after the lapse
of a definite period became known to the Greeks only when the cult
of Heroes had reached its maturity. Many of these contests were
connected perpetually with the yearly festivals of individual
Heroes, and were intended to honour their memory.[19\4] Even in
historical times, generally on the command of the Delphic oracle,
annual contests were instituted in honour of Heroes.[20\4] It was
the mode of worship proper to Heroes, and men realized that in
holding such contests they were really repeating the funeral
ceremonies of a dead man.[21\4] The cult of Heroes was the earliest
breeding ground of the Agôn, that most characteristic feature of
Greek life and school of the individualism that made the greatness
of Greece. It was not unreasonable that afterwards many of the
victors at the great Agônes were themselves raised by popular
superstition to the number of the Heroes. The greatest Games of all,
to which all Greece assembled, the Pythian, Olympian, Nemean, and
Isthmian, were during the historical period, it is true, celebrated
in honour of gods; but that they had been originally instituted as
Funeral Games of Heroes and only subsequently transferred to higher
guardianship was, at any rate, the general opinion of
antiquity.[22\4]
§ 3
The Heroes are, then, spirits of the dead, and not a species of
inferior deities or "demigods";[23\4] and quite distinct again from
the "daimones" known to later speculative thought and, indeed, to
popular superstition. These latter are divine spirits of a lower
order; but spirits which have always been exempt from death because
they have never entered into the finite existence of men. The Heroes
on the other hand have once been living men; from being men they
have _become_ Heroes, and that only after their death.[24\4]
Furthermore, they have now entered upon a higher stage of existence
as a special class of beings who are named by the _side_ of gods and
men.[25\4] In them we meet with something quite unknown to the
Homeric poems--_souls_ which after their death and separation from
the body have a higher imperishable life.
But though the Heroes have once been men, it does not follow that
all men become Heroes after their death. On the contrary, the
Heroes, even though their number was not fixed {118} and limited,
but continually admitted additions, remained an _exception_, a
select minority which for that reason alone can be contrasted with
ordinary humanity. The chief figures, the outstanding
representatives of this heroic company, we may say, were those whose
lifetime was fixed by legend or history in the distant past--who
were in fact the ancestors of later humanity. The worship of Heroes
is not, then, a cult of souls, but in a narrower sense a cult of
_ancestors_. Even their name, as it appears, distinguishes the
Heroes as men of the past. In the Iliad and the Odyssey "Hero" is
the honourable title of chieftains, and also, generally, of all free
men.[26\4] Poetry of later centuries, so far as it touched upon the
events of the legendary past, continued to use the word "Hero" in
this sense. But when in post-Homeric times the speaker, whether he
is a poet or prose-writer, regards the matter from the point of view
of contemporary life, then by "Hero", if he is referring to a man at
all, he means a man of those days when, according to the Homeric
poems, this honourable title was still in use among living men--he
refers in a word to men belonging to the legendary _past_ celebrated
in poetry.[27\4] In Hesiod's narrative of the Five Ages of Men, the
use of the word Hero is confined to the Champions of the wars at
Thebes and Troy; they are called, as though by their special name,
the "divine race of Heroes".[28\4] For Hesiod the "Heroes" are by no
means the transfigured dead of past generations.[29\4] He knows well
enough of such transfigured dead of a still earlier past, but these
he calls "Daimones". And so, too, when in after times the name of
Hero is applied to these favoured individuals who enjoy a higher
life after their death, the name which in itself did not imply the
higher nature of such departed spirits is evidently intended to show
that the _lifetime_ of those who had received this privilege after
their death occurred in a legendary past. As these men of the
distant past had been "Heroes" during their life, so, too, they must
be called after their death. But the meaning of the word Hero has
undergone a change, and now contains the additional notion of
unending transfigured existence. The worship of the Heroes reveals
itself as something quite new, a form of religious belief and cult,
of which the Homeric poems at least gave no inkling. And, indeed,
the conception of such transfigured ancestral souls living on in a
higher state must have been a novel one, if no special word of
ancient coinage could be found to express it, and a long-standing
word of the epic vocabulary had to be pressed into a new sense.
Whence came this new thing? If we try to derive it from {119} a
natural process of development in the Homeric view of life we shall
find ourselves in the greatest perplexity when it comes to showing
the connecting links between two such widely different conceptions.
It would not avail us much to say that the prestige of the epic was
such that those whom it had honoured in song must have appeared so
glorious and distinguished among mankind that it was natural for
later imagination to transform them to demigods and to worship them
as such. The Homeric poems, so violently opposed to any idea of a
conscious or active existence of the soul after death, could hardly
have brought it about that those very champions whom it had
represented as indeed dead and departed to the distant land of Hades
should be regarded as still living and exercising an influence from
out their graves. Moreover, it is in the highest degree improbable
that in the process of historical development it should have been
just the champions of the epic from whose worship the cult of Heroes
arose; for in cult, at any rate, with negligible exceptions, those
champions played little part. And, indeed, that any cult at all
should have arisen from the mere suggestions of fancy, such as the
epic offered, is in itself unlikely. And it is essentially upon a
religious cult that the belief in Heroes is founded.
In fact after all that has been hitherto shown, what we see most
plainly is the _contrast_ between the belief in Heroes and Homeric
conceptions. The fanciful thought of the translation of individuals
to Islands of the Blest or the underground dwellings did not itself
conflict with the implications of Homeric eschatology. The
miraculous preservation in an immortal existence of men whom the
gods loved did not involve the separation of soul from body, nor the
consequence of that separation--the dim borderland existence of the
disembodied soul. But the belief in Heroes was a different matter;
that involved the continuation of a conscious mode of being, in the
neighbourhood of the living, after death, and in spite of the
separation of soul from body. This directly contradicts Homeric
psychology. We should have to give up the attempt altogether to
bring this new belief into any real relationship with earlier
development--if we could not draw upon what we have learnt from our
previous investigations. In the Homeric poems themselves, in
striking contrast with the general conception there prevailing of
the insubstantiality of the disembodied soul, we found vestiges of a
once-vigorous _cult of the soul_ which implied the existence of a
corresponding belief in the conscious after-life of the soul and its
lingering {120} in the neighbourhood of the living. From the study
of Hesiod's picture of the Five Ages of Men, we saw that, in fact,
vestiges of an ancient belief in the continued and enhanced
existence of dead men, of which no clear trace remained in Homer,
had been preserved at least in occasional remote corners of the
Greek countryside. But it was only the dead of a legendary past who
were regarded by Hesiod as "Daimones": the poet could relate no
similar marvels from more recent periods, and still less of men in
his own lifetime. Thus, we have in this case traces of
_ancestor-worship_ indeed, but not of a general worship of souls
that is elsewhere the normal development of the worship of
ancestors. So, then, in the worship of Heroes, what we have before
us is not a general cult of the soul but a cult of ancestors. We may
express the matter in this way: in the cult of the "Hero" a still
burning spark of ancient belief is kindled to renewed flame--it is
not the appearance of something entirely strange and new, but
something long past and half-forgotten is awakened to new life.
Those Daimones which arose from the men of the earlier golden and
silver ages--whom the poet of the "Works and Days" had situated in
the dimmest and remotest past--what are they but the "Heroes"
worshipped by later ages under a new name and brought down nearer to
the period of contemporary life?
§ 4
How it came about that the cult of ancestors was rescued from
partial, and more than partial, oblivion, and rose to a new and
lasting importance, that, indeed, we cannot say. We can give no real
explanation indicative of the origin and progress of this important
development in Greek religious life. We know neither the time nor
the place of the first serious revival of this newly awakened
primitive worship; nor can we tell the manner or stages of its
diffusion during those obscure years of the eighth and seventh
centuries. We can, however, bring the fact of the revival of
ancestor-worship into relation with a number of other facts which
prove that during those years many hitherto buried or repressed
ideas about the life of gods and men came to the surface again out
of the depths of popular faith and out of an older worship of the
gods that had never quite died out. This revival did not, indeed,
suppress the Homeric view entirely--that never occurred--but it did
set itself on a level with that view. The great movement with which
we shall be dealing in the next chapter also contributed to the
progress of the belief in Heroes. Many other favouring {121}
circumstances may in detail have helped to strengthen that belief.
Even the epic itself had in one point at least approached the ideas
that were receiving a new life in the worship of Heroes. Many of the
local gods who had faded before the new deities of common Hellenic
belief had been reduced to the rank of humanity and joined in heroic
adventure. By a sort of compromise effected with the local cult of
such gods the epic poets had been led, in a few cases, to the
creation of a remarkable series of figures in which the divine and
the human was wonderfully mixed. These champions and seers of old
time, as they had once been mortal men among other men, so now after
their departure must they live on and have influence eternally like
the gods. We can easily see the close resemblance that exists
between such figures as Amphiaraos or Trophonios and the Heroes of
later belief; in fact, both of them, when they were not called gods,
were frequently reckoned among these Heroes. But for all that, they
are only _quasi-Heroes_; prototypes of the real Heroes they can
never have been. They have been translated during their lifetime,
and live on immortally just because they have never tasted death.
They, with those others translated to the Islands of the Blest,
represent the idea of immortality in the only form recognized by the
Homeric poetry. The Heroes of the newly awakening creed, on the
contrary, have died unmistakably; and yet they continue to live on,
though relieved of their bodies. They are entirely distinct from the
translated few of the epic tradition. They emerge out of the
obscurity of the half-remembered past as something strange--as
something, indeed, opposed to the circle of ideas influenced by the
epic.
It was not from poetic imagination or story that the Heroes took
their origin, but from the remains of an ancient pre-Homeric belief
which local worship had preserved alive.
§ 5
The worship of a Hero is everywhere connected with the site of his
grave. That is the general rule proved in innumerable cases. That is
why in the case of a more than ordinarily revered Hero, his grave as
the centre of his worship is set up in some prominent and honourable
place--the market-place of the city, the Prytaneion,[30\4] or, like
the grave of Pelops in the Altis at Olympia, in the very middle of
the holy precinct, in the thick of the festival crowd.[31\4] Or else
the Hero who guarded the city and the land might have his grave in
the wall of the city gate or upon the farthest border of its
territory.[32\4] Where his grave is, there the Hero is fast bound;
that is his {122} dwelling-place.[33\4] This idea prevails
everywhere, though it may not be given such blunt expression as at
Tronis, in the country of the Phocians, where the blood of the
offering made to the Hero was poured down through an opening
immediately into his grave mound.[34\4] It is implied, as a rule, in
these cases that the grave contains the bones of the Hero. The
bones--all that is left of his mortality--chain the Hero to his
grave. Hence, when it was thought desirable to attach a Hero and his
protective power to a city his bones (or what were taken for such)
on the command of an oracle were brought from a foreign land and
laid to rest in his native country. We possess many accounts of such
transference of relics.[35\4] Most of them occurred in the distant
past, but we also read how in the full light of history in the year
476 enlightened Athens brought over the bones of Theseus from
Skyros;[36\4] and not until they were buried in the Theseion was
Theseus properly attached to Athens.
Since the possession of the corporeal remains[37\4] of the Hero
secured the possession of the Hero himself, the cities often
protected themselves against strangers, who might remove the
treasured bones, by keeping the position of the grave a
secret.[38\4] A grave is always necessary to fix the Hero at a
definite place, or, at least, an "empty tomb", which sometimes had
to do duty for a grave.[39\4] In such cases the Hero was perhaps
thought of as bound by a spell to that place.[40\4] As a rule, it is
the remains of his former body that hold him fast. But these remains
are a part of the Hero himself; though dead (and mummified, as we
are told in one case),[41\4] he works and acts just the same; his
psyche, his invisible counterpart and double, hovers in the
neighbourhood of the body and the grave.
These are all very primitive conceptions such as have, as a rule,
only been preserved among peoples who have remained at a very
undeveloped stage of culture.[42\4] When we find them in force among
Greeks of post-Homeric times, we cannot really believe that they
arose then for the first time, in complete contrast with the
clear-sighted freedom of the men of the Homeric age. They have only
re-emerged from the repressive influence of the Homeric rationalism.
It would be natural to think that the same ideas that have been
described as underlying the belief in Heroes were already in the
minds of those prehistoric Greeks who in Mycenae and elsewhere took
such care (even it seems going so far as to embalm them)[43\4] to
preserve the bodies of their princes from destruction, and who put
ornaments and utensils in their graves for future use {123} or
enjoyment. It has been explained above how, in the times of which
Homer's poems give us a picture, the alteration in sentiment as well
as the spread of the custom of completely destroying the bodies of
the dead with fire must have weakened the belief in the confinement
of the soul to this world and to the remains of the body. This
belief never entirely perished. It was preserved alive, perhaps for
a long time only by a few, in those places where there remained a
cult attached to a _grave_. Such a cult would not, indeed, extend to
those whose death had occurred within more recent times, but it did
not allow the old-established worship of the great dead of the past
to die out entirely. Over the royal graves on the citadel at Mycenae
stood a sacrificial hearth,[44\4] which bears witness to the
continuance of the ancient worship of the kings buried there. The
Catalogue of Ships in Homer mentions the "grave of Aipytos", an old
Arcadian local monarch, as a landmark of the district;[45\4] may not
the sanctity of that grave have been preserved? In many places, at
any rate, graves were pointed out and honoured that belonged to
Heroes who owed their existence solely to poetic fancy or were even
mere personifications--abstractions of the names of places and
countries whose ancestors they purported to be. In such cases the
Hero-worship had become purely symbolic, and often perhaps a mere
formality. But from such a fictitious ancestor-worship the cult of
the graves of Heroes cannot possibly have arisen; such fictions are
themselves only intelligible as copies of another and more vivid
worship, of a cult of real ancestors. If no such cult had existed in
actual fact before men's eyes, it would be impossible to understand
how men came to imitate ancestor-worship in the shape of such purely
imaginary creatures. A copy implies the existence of a model; a
symbol requires the contemporary or earlier existence of the reality
symbolized. We should certainly know more of the worship of
ancestors among the ancient royal families if in nearly all the
Greek states monarchy had not been abolished at an early period and
all traces of it suppressed. Sparta alone provides us with a
solitary example of what may once have been the prevailing custom in
all the seats of royal authority. When a Spartan king died his
funeral was celebrated with extreme pomp. His body (which, even when
he had died abroad, was embalmed and brought home to Sparta was laid
beside the other dead of his family, and honour was paid to him, in
Xenophon's words, not as a man, but as a _Hero_.[46\4] In this case,
which undoubtedly represents a traditional usage handed down from
remote {124} antiquity, we have the rudiments of Hero-worship as
applied to the dead of a royal family. The members of noble families
who, like the Eupatridai of Athens, sometimes traced their descent
from a king,[47\4] must also have retained from ancient times the
practice of ancestor-worship. As of all unofficial cults, we hear
little of the cults of the old clans based on blood-relationship and
connexion by marriage (~ge/nê, pa/trai~). But just as out of their
combination first the village communities and then the fully
organized Greek Polis grew up, so, too, the religious cults which
were paid to the ancestors of these unions of kinsfolk set a pattern
for the manifold social groups out of which the developed state was
built up.[48\4]
§ 6
The "clans" that we meet with at Athens and in other Greek states
are, as a rule, groups for which a demonstrable common kinship is no
longer a condition of membership. The majority of such politically
recognized, self-contained clans assemble together for the common
worship of particular gods but many also honour a Hero as well, who
generally in such cases gives his name to the clan. Thus, the
Eteoboutadai at Athens paid honour to Boutes, the Alkmaionidai to
Alkmaion, the Bouzygai to Bouzyges, in Sparta and Argos Talthybios
was worshipped by the Talthybiadai, etc. And in these cases, as the
name of the clan itself shows, the Hero of their common worship was
regarded as the _ancestor_ of the clan.[49\4] Further, this
ancestor-worship and the name derived from a common, even if
fictitious, ancestor, distinguished the clans from the
cult-associations of a different origin which since the time of
Kleisthenes had been put on a footing of legal equality with the
clans in the phratries. The members of these associations (Orgeones)
lacked a common name, the existence of which, therefore, indicated
in the case of the members of a clan a closer bond of union than
mere membership of a religious association which had been chosen at
will, and was not decided by the fact of birth.
Everywhere these clans kept up the outward formalities of
ancestor-worship; and the formality must once have had meaning.
However the publicly recognized clans may have developed their own
special characteristics, in their origin, at least, they must go
back (like the Roman _gentes_) to associations of kinsfolk developed
from the family (extended through the male line and held together by
a real bond of kinship. Even the purely symbolical ancestor-worship
of the later "clans", of which hardly a single one could have shown
the {125} pedigree of its descent from the reputed common ancestor,
must have arisen from the real ancestor-worship of genuine groups of
kinsfolk. The imitation in this case, too, points to the existence
at some time of an original.
In the same way the larger groups into which the Athenian state
since the time of Kleisthenes was divided were unable to dispense
with the practice of association for the cult of a commonly
worshipped Hero. The Heroes of the newly organized _phylai_[50\4]
had their temple, land, priests, statues, and regular cult; and so
also had the Heroes of the smaller purely local divisions, the
demes. Here, too, the fiction of ancestor-worship was kept up; the
names of the phylai, always patronymic in form, represent the
members of each _phyle_ as the descendants of the Hero Eponymos or
Archegetes of the phyle.[51\4] The demes also in many cases have
patronymic titles which for the most part are also known to us as
the names of aristocratic families.[52\4] It is evident that in such
demes the members of individual aristocratic families had settled
down together or near each other. The Archegetes, whether real or
fictitious, of the family must then have been regarded as the
Archegetes of the deme. We thus see how the cult of a family
ancestor, taken over by a wider group of worshippers, might be
preserved and extended--little as the cult might benefit in
sincerity by such political enlargement.
The cult of Heroes everywhere has the same features as the cult of
ancestors; at least, the more influential Heroes, those worshipped
by the greater communities, were everywhere regarded as the
forefathers and progenitors of the groups of countryfolk, citizens,
or kinsmen who honoured them. The fact that the persons of these
prehistoric Heroes owed their existence almost without exception
solely to poetry or fancy allows us to conclude that at the time
when ancestor-worship had its re-birth in Hero-worship, the memory
of the real Archegetai of the country, the ancestors of the ruling
families and clans, together with their cult, had fallen into
oblivion. A great or illustrious name was introduced where the real
name was no longer known. More often, even when the real forefather
of the clan was still well known, the name of a great man of the
primeval past was placed at the head of the list in order to throw
the origin of the family as far back into the past as possible and
connect it the more closely with a divine source.[53\4] Men thus
came to worship a phantom, often a mere symbol, of an ancestor. But
they held fast to the imitation of real ancestor-worship; the
remains of a true cult of ancestors provided the model and were the
real starting-point for the later belief and cult of Heroes. {126}
§ 7
We can no longer follow in detail the process of development and
extension which the idea of the Hero underwent. The accounts which
we possess show us the fully developed product, not the steps which
led up to this result. We first get an idea of the number of
Hero-cults existing in Greece during the greatest period of its
history from the enormous number of graves or cults of Heroes
mentioned by Pausanias in the account of his travels in the age of
the Antonines over the most important countries of the Greece that
was now fast falling into decay. Nearly all the legendary figures
celebrated in epic poetry were now worshipped as Heroes, whether in
their own homes (as Achilles in Thessaly, Aias at Salamis, etc.) or
in other places that either claimed to possess their graves (as the
Delphians did that of Neoptolemos, the people of Sybaris that of
Philoktetes, etc.) or else, through the genealogical relationship of
their leading families with the Heroes, regarded themselves as
closely connected with them (as, for example, the Athenians with
Aias and his sons). In the colonies especially the Hero-cults, like
the ingredients of the population, may have been a motley crew;
thus, in Tarentum the Atreidai, the Tydidai, the Aiakidai, the
Laertiadai, and especially the Agamemnonidai were worshipped in a
combined Hero-cult, and Achilles also had a temple of his own.[54\4]
There were Heroes with famous names who may yet have owed their
subsequent elevation to that position, during the times of the
greatest extent of the cult, in part to their fame in ancient
poetry. Side by side with these were a host of obscurer figures
whose memory had been kept alive by their cult alone, which a small
circle of country or city folk had paid to them from primitive
times. These are the real "national Heroes", of whose worship Drakon
had spoken; as true forebears and real ancestors of their country
they, too, are called "Archegetai".[55\4] We are told the names of
the seven Archegetai of Plataea to whom Aristeides was commanded by
the Delphic oracle to sacrifice before the battle of Plataea; not
one of them is ever heard of again.[56\4] It might happen that the
name of a Hero to whom worship had been paid from time immemorial
might no longer be known even to the dwellers near his grave. In the
market at Elis there stood a little temple whose roof was supported
on wooden pillars; men knew that this was the chapel belonging to a
grave, but no one could give the name of the Hero buried
there.[57\4] In the market at Herakleia on the Black Sea was a
monument of a Hero {127} overshadowed by wild olive-trees; it
contained the body of that Hero whom once the Delphian oracle had
bidden the founders of Herakleia to placate. The learned differed as
to his name; the inhabitants of Herakleia called him simply "the
local Hero".[58\4] In the Hippodrome at Olympia stood a round altar
at which the chariot horses used to shy. It was disputed what Hero
lay buried there, but the people called him, after the effect he had
on the horses, simply Taraxippos.[59\4] In the same way many Heroes,
instead of being called by their real names, were more often
referred to by adjectives which recalled their nature or their power
or some external detail of their appearance.[60\4] At Athens there
was a Hero Physician, a Hero General, and a Hero
Garland-bearer.[61\4] Many a Hero may have been known to the
neighbourhood which worshipped him simply as "the Hero".[62\4] In
such cases it was entirely due to the grave and the cult attached to
the grave that the Hero's memory had been preserved at all. There
might, indeed, be stories current as to his doings and nature as a
"spirit", but what it was that had marked him out in his lifetime
and caused his elevation to a Hero was totally forgotten.
Undoubtedly these are precisely the oldest Hero-cults. In the
instances quoted from Elis, Herakleia and Olympia, first one and
then another of the famous champions of antiquity were supposed to
be buried under that nameless gravestone. But, often enough, the
doubt was suppressed, and by an arbitrary and successful imposition
some famous name out of the heroic legend may have been substituted
as occupant of such ownerless or unclaimed grave sanctuaries.
§ 8
As a rule there was no difficulty in securing great or famous names
when it was necessary to find a patron-Hero for the city. In
particular the founder of the city and its regular worship of the
gods, and the whole divine circle which hedged round the life of the
citizens, was regularly worshipped with high honour as Hero
Archegetes.[63\4] Naturally, they were mostly mythical or even
arbitrarily invented figures to whom the greater or lesser cities of
Greece, as well as their offshoots in foreign lands, did honour as
their "Founder".
But from the times when colonies were frequently dispatched and laid
out in accordance with a carefully thought-out plan, under the
leadership of a single person (generally named by an oracle) who was
given plenipotentiary powers,[64\4] this real _Oikistes_ was himself
usually promoted after his death to the rank of Hero. Pindar speaks
of the sacred grave of the {128} Hero-founder of Kyrene in the
marketplace of the city;[65\4] the inhabitants of the Thracian
Chersonnese made sacrifices to Miltiades the son of Kypselos as
their Oikistes, "as the custom is," and held games annually in his
honour;[66\4] at Katana, in Sicily, Hieron of Syracuse was buried,
and was worshipped with the honours of a Hero as the Founder of the
city.[67\4] At Abdera the Teians on the occasion of the second
founding of the city restored to his position of Hero its original
founder Timesios.[68\4] On the other hand, the original and real
Oikistes of a colony might be deprived of his worship if the
inhabitants quarrelled with the mother country, and another
"Founder" chosen after the event and given the highest honours of a
Hero in his place. This was what happened in the year 422 with
Hagnon and Brasidas in Amphipolis.[69\4]
In these cases Hero-making leaves the sacred mists of antiquity and
enters the light of the contemporary world: faith and cult become
profaned by political motives. The name of Hero, once applied only
to the glorified figures of the far distant past, now that such
Heroizing of the recent dead was possible, must have begun to have
the more general meaning of one who has come to enjoy a higher
nature and enlarged capacities after his death. In fact, any kind of
prominence during a man's lifetime seems at last to have given him a
virtual claim to heroic honours after his death. As Heroes are now
regarded, great kings such as Gelon of Syracuse, law-givers such as
Lykourgos of Sparta,[70\4] and even representatives of poetic genius
from Homer down to Aeschylus and Sophokles,[71\4] no less than the
most famous victors in the contests of bodily skill and strength.
One of the Olympic victors, Philippos of Kroton, was reputed to be
the most beautiful man in Greece of his time. Over his grave the
people of Egesta, so Herodotos (v, 47) tells us, erected a Hero's
temple and paid honour to him with sacrifice as to a Hero merely on
account of his great personal beauty.
Still, religious or superstitious motives were not always absent.
They were particularly to the fore in the numerous cases where the
extent and importance of the world of Heroes were added to on the
recommendation of the Delphic oracle. Ever since the Delphic
priesthood had risen from its obscure beginnings to a recognized
position as the supreme authority in all questions of spiritual
right, the opinion of the oracle had been sought on all occurrences
that seemed to have any connexion with the unseen world. Especially
in the case of prolonged drought or infertility of the soil, or when
pestilential sicknesses had attacked a part of the country, was the
oracle {129} requested to state the origin of the misfortune. In
many cases the answer of the oracle would be that the origin of the
evil lay in the anger of a Hero who was to be placated by sacrifice
and the foundation of a permanent worship; or it would command that
the plague should be averted by the recovery of the bones of a Hero
from a foreign land, which should then be preserved at home and be
the object of an official cult.[72\4] Innumerable cults had their
origin in this way, nor do the examples all belong to a
half-legendary past. When pestilence and dearth broke out in the
island of Cyprus after the death of Kimon, the oracle bade the
inhabitants of Kition "not to slight" Kimon, but to regard him as a
"higher" being, i.e. do him honour as a Hero.[73\4] So, too, when
some one possessed by special religious scruples inquired the cause
of a strange vision that he had had, or of the remarkable appearance
of the body of one lately dead,[74\4] the oracle would often trace
the matter to the action of a Hero who must forthwith be given an
official cult. When a serious undertaking lay before a state,
whether it was the invasion of a foreign land or a decisive battle
in war, the oracle would bid the inquirers first placate the Heroes
of the country that was to be attacked or where the battle was to be
fought.[75\4] Sometimes the oracle of its own accord, without being
applied to, commanded the honours of a Hero to be paid to a dead
man.[76\4]
A peculiar case is that of Kleomedes of Astypalaia. This man had at
the 71st Olympic festival (486) killed his opponent in the boxing
match. He was disqualified by the Hellanodikai from taking his crown
and returned home to Astypalaia full of indignation. There he tore
down the pillar which supported the roof of a boys' school, and on
the destruction of the boys fled to Athene's temple where he hid
himself in a chest. His pursuers vainly sought to open the lid of
the chest and at last the chest itself had to be broken into by main
force. But Kleomedes was not found inside, either alive or dead. The
envoys sent to inquire of the oracle were informed that Kleomedes
had become a Hero, and that he must be honoured with sacrifice since
he was no longer a mortal.[77\4] And so the inhabitants of
Astypalaia paid honour to Kleomedes as a Hero. In this case the
simple conception of a Hero as one raised to divine power after his
death is united with the ancient belief, which had never quite died
out since the great days of the epic, in the _translation_ of
individual mortals who without dying disappear from sight to enter
immortal life with body and soul complete. Such a miracle seemed to
have occurred once again in the case of Kleomedes. He had
"disappeared" and {130} been "carried away".[78\4] He could,
however, only be called a "Hero" because there was no common name to
describe the effect of translation which made men no longer mortals
nor yet gods. The oracle called Kleomedes "the last of the Heroes";
indeed, it might well appear time to close at last the already
over-lengthy list of "Heroes". The Delphic oracle[79\4] had itself
contributed largely to their increase, and with full intent; nor did
it observe for long its own decision to make an end now.[80\4]
It is easy to understand the reasons for the universal acceptance
among the Greeks of the unquestioned authority of the oracle in all
matters connected with the Heroes. The god does not invent new
Heroes or add to the number of local divinities at his own caprice
or by the exercise of his own authority. He merely sees them where
human eyes are not clear-sighted enough. He, the all-seeing,
recognizes them as one spirit does another, and is able to see them
at work when men only feel the results of their activity. Thus, he
enables inquirers to be rid of their difficulties, to understand
supernatural occurrences by the recognition and worship of invisible
powers. For the believer he is in this, as in all other directions
of religious life, "the true Expositor".[81\4] He only points out
what already exists; he does not invent anything new, though the
information that he gives may be something quite new to men. We,
indeed, may be permitted to inquire what motive the shrewd Delphic
priesthood may have had in the creation or renewal of so many
Hero-cults. There is very evident method in their promotion of the
belief in Heroes, as there is in all the activities of the oracle in
religious and political matters. Was it ecclesiastical policy that
made the priests of Delphi, in this as so many other cases, search
out and multiply to the greatest possible extent the objects of
belief and cult? The more widespread and the more deeply ingrained
was the uneasy dread of an invisible all-powerful spirit-world, the
greater became the authority of the oracle that alone could give
guidance in this confused turmoil of ghostly activities.
Superstition had achieved a power that the Homeric age never knew,
and it cannot be denied that the oracle encouraged this
_deisidaimonia_ and did its best to increase it. Still, the priests
of the oracle themselves were undoubtedly subject to the beliefs of
their age; at any rate, they shared the belief in Heroes. They would
think it quite natural, when faced by anxious inquiries as to the
cause of disease or dearth, to confirm the half-expressed
attribution of the evil to the action of an angry Hero. They had
rather {131} to give their sanction to what was already anticipated
than invent something new. They only applied to the particular case
(with free scope in the invention of details) what the popular
belief of the times had already settled in principle. But what it
all meant was that the oracle took under its protection everything
that could promote and strengthen the cult of _souls_: and in so far
as it is possible to speak of a "Theology of Delphi", the popular
belief in the survival of the soul after death and the cult of the
disembodied soul formed two of the most important articles in its
creed. We shall have more to say on this subject hereafter. In any
case, if the priests lived in the atmosphere of such ideas, it was
natural for them in times of need and stress, when strange things
happened, to regard as the author of the disturbance some dead
legendary Hero's ghost or even a powerful spirit of more recent
times, and to direct the faithful accordingly. Thus, the Delphic god
became the patron of the cult of Heroes, just as he was a patron of
the Heroes themselves, and invited them every year at the
_Theoxenia_ to a meal in his own temple.[82\4]
§ 9
Thus encouraged on all sides, Hero-worship began to multiply the
objects of the cult beyond all counting. The great wars of freedom
against the Persians had aroused the deepest and most religious
feelings of the Greeks, and it did not seem too much when whole
companies of those who had fallen for freedom were raised to the
rank of Hero. Thus, even into a very late period, the solemn
procession every year to honour the Greeks who had been left on the
field of Plataea was never omitted; and at the sacrifice the archon
of the city called upon the "brave men who had laid down their lives
for Greece" and invited them to a meal and satisfaction of
blood.[83\4] At Marathon, also, those who had once fallen in battle
and been buried there were worshipped as Heroes.[84\4]
Out of the enormous multitude of those who had thus become Heroes an
aristocracy of Heroes of a higher rank came to be formed, chiefly
composed of those who had been honoured in legend and poetry from
the earliest times and had acquired fame all over Greece. Examples
of these are those whom Pindar[85\4] in one place names together:
the descendants of Oineus in Aetolia, Iolaos in Thebes, Perseus in
Argos, the Dioscuri in Sparta, the many-branched heroic family of
the Aiakidai in Aegina, Salamis, and many other places. Indeed, a
brighter lustre seemed to illumine some of the greater Heroes {132}
and to distinguish them almost in kind from the rest of their
fellows. Thus, Herakles was now elevated to the gods, though Homer
did not even know him as a "Hero" in the later sense, and though in
many places he was still worshipped as a Hero.[86\4] Asklepios is
sometimes a Hero and sometimes a god, as he had been
originally.[87\4] Then many other Heroes began to receive sacrifice
as gods,[88\4] not without the assistance of the Delphic oracle,
which in the case of Lykourgos, at least, seems itself to have given
the lead in the elevation of that Hero.[89\4] The boundary line
between the Hero and the god seems to become more and more
uncertain; sometimes a Hero of the narrowest local observance is
called a "god",[90\4] without our having any reason for thinking of
a formal elevation to divine honour in his case or any corresponding
alteration of ritual. The title of Hero seemed already to have lost
some of its value, though the time had not yet come when to name a
dead man as Hero hardly distinguished him at all from all the other
dead.
§ 10
However much the meaning attached to the name of Hero may have
widened or even deteriorated, the belief in the Heroes lost none of
its significance and long retained its hold on the people. The
belief in such a class of spirits stood almost on a par with the
belief in gods. If the circle of influence possessed by some
particular local-Hero was narrow and restricted, that only made him
seem all the nearer to his worshippers. The spirits of their
ancestors, their own and the country's peculiar possession and
shared with no one else, seemed more intimately theirs than other
invisible powers even of higher rank. Permanent as the gods
themselves, such Heroes were honoured as hardly second to the gods,
"though they cannot equal them in might."[91\4] "Not equal"--for
their efficacy was confined within bounds; it did not reach beyond
the limits of their home and the little band of their worshippers.
They were bound to the soil as the Olympian gods no longer were--(a
Hero who breaks free from local limitations soon achieves divinity).
In particular those Heroes who send up, from beneath the earth where
they dwell, relief in sickness or prevision of the future are
certainly bound to one spot. Only at their graves can such
assistance be expected, for that is their dwelling-place. In their
case the relationship between the belief in Heroes and the belief in
those subterranean deities, of whom something was said in the
previous chapter, is peculiarly plain. Indeed, in so far as their
influence is limited {133} to a single locality and their powers
concerned especially with _iatromantic_ manifestations, these two
classes of spirits essentially coincide.
Such relief in sickness was expected, not only from Asklepios
himself, but from the Asklepiadai, Machaon--who had a grave and
temple at Gerenia on the coast of Laconia--and Podaleirios. The
latter was buried in Apulia, near Mount Garganus. In his heroön
those who sought his aid laid themselves down to sleep on the skin
of the ram that had been previously sacrificed. In sleep they
received other revelations from the Hero besides remedies for the
ailments of man and beast.[92\4] Machaon's son, too, Polemokrates,
healed sicknesses in his temple of Eua in Argolis.[93\4] In Attica
there was a _Heros Iatros_ in the city whose efficacy in curing
disease was witnessed to by innumerable silver ex voto facsimiles of
various parts of the body restored to health by him.[94\4] Another
Hero Iatros, whose name is given as Aristomachos, had an oracle of
healing at Marathon.[95\4] Healing of disease was rarely attributed
to any other than these Asklepiad Heroes. Dream-revelations of other
kinds, however, were vouchsafed from their graves especially by
those Heroes who had been seers also in their lifetime, such as
Mopsos and Amphilochos at Mallos in Cilicia, Amphilochos, again, in
Akarnania, Teiresias at Orchomenos, Kalchas in Apulia near the
just-mentioned heroön of Podaleirios.[96\4] Besides these Odysseus,
too, had a dream-oracle among the Eurytanes in Aetolia,[97\4]
Protesilaos one at his grave-monument at Elaious in the Thracian
Chersonnese,[98\4] Sarpedon in Cilicia and another (alleged) in the
Troad,[99\4] Menestheus, the Athenian leader, far away in
Spain,[100\4] Autolykos in Sinope,[101\4] and perhaps also Anios in
Delos.[102\4] A Heroine called Hemithea had a dream-oracle, from
which she dispensed cures in sickness, at Kastabos in Karia;[103\4]
Pasiphaë gave prophecies in dreams at Thalamai on the Laconian
coast.[104\4] Since from none of these Heroes did the epic tradition
give any particular grounds in legend for expecting a display of
mantic powers, we must suppose that knowledge of the future and
communication of such knowledge to the living was regarded as
belonging naturally to the spiritual nature of the glorified souls
of Heroes. The notices which have come down to us allow us to hear
of a few regular and permanently established Hero-oracles, but there
may have been numbers of them of which we know nothing, and isolated
and occasional manifestations of oracular powers by other Heroes may
not have been entirely out of the question.[105\4] {134}
§ 11
The oracular Heroes are regularly confined to the neighbourhood of
their graves. In addition, what we know of the legends that were
told of the appearances or the unseen activities of these Heroes
shows that, like the spirits that haunt ancient castles or caverns
in our own popular mythology, they were confined within the
boundaries of their native country, the neighbourhood of their
graves or the site of their cult. They are, as a rule, artless
stories of the anger displayed by a Hero whose rights have been
infringed or whose cult neglected. At Tanagra[106\4] there was a
Hero Eunostos, who, having been deprived of his life through the
machinations of a woman, would tolerate no woman in his grove or
near his grave.[107\4] If any of the hated sex intruded there was
danger of an earthquake or drought, or else the Hero was seen going
down to the sea (which washes away all pollutions) to cleanse
himself. In Orchomenos there was a spirit who went about "with a
stone" devastating the neighbourhood. This was Aktaion, whose
earthly remains were therefore buried with much ceremony on the
command of an oracle. A bronze statue of him was also set up and
fastened with chains to a rock, and honoured every year in a feast
of the dead.[108\4] Herodotos solemnly tells us of the wrath of
Minos with the Cretans, who had not avenged his own violent end,
whereas they had gone to the aid of Menelaos.[109\4] There is a
deeper sense in the legend, also related by Herodotos, of Talthybios
who was enraged not for any private grievance but because of a
violation of the moral law and order. He himself as the protector of
heralds and messengers punished the Spartans for their murder of the
Persian envoys.[110\4] But the most awe-inspiring legend of the
revenge of a Hero was told of a local-Hero of the Athenian parish of
Anagyros. A countryman had cut down the Hero's sacred grove.[111\4]
The Hero first caused the death of the man's wife and then inspired
the second wife with a guilty passion for his son, her stepson. The
latter opposed her wishes and when she denounced him to her husband
was blinded by him and banished to a desert island. The father,
having become an object of loathing to all men, hanged himself; the
stepmother threw herself into a well.[112\4] This story is
remarkable for the fact that in it the Hero, like the gods
themselves, is regarded as able to affect men's consciousness, their
feelings, and their resolves. Many of the details may have been
improved upon by a taste accustomed to poetry of a higher
style.[113\4] But as a rule the legends of Heroes bear a {135}
thoroughly popular stamp. They are a kind of vulgar mythology, which
still put forth fresh shoots in this way now that the myths of
ancient gods and champions have become merely traditional and have
been given over to the never-ending operations of the poets. Such
myths were no longer thrown off naturally by the creative instinct
of the people. The gods seemed too far removed, their visible
influence in the affairs of men seemed only credible in the legends
of a far-distant past. The spirits of Heroes hovered nearer to men;
in good fortune and bad men traced their handiwork. In the myths and
legends of the people arising out of the events of the immediate
present they now constitute the supernatural element without which
neither life nor stories would offer any attraction or meaning to
the simple-minded.
We can learn what these legends were like from a single example,
which happens to have been preserved to us and which must stand for
the numbers of similar stories which once must have been current. At
Temesa, in Lucania, there was a Hero who went about destroying any
of the inhabitants that he could lay his hand on. The Temesians, who
had got as far as thinking of leaving Italy, turned in their
distress to the Delphic oracle, and were told that the ghost was the
spirit of a stranger who had once been stoned to death by the
inhabitants of the country for the violation of a maiden.[114\4] A
sacred precinct must be dedicated to him, and a temple built, where
every year the most beautiful maiden in Temesa must be delivered up
to him. The citizens of Temesa did as they were told, and the spirit
left them in peace, but every year the awful sacrifice took place.
To this place there came in the 77th Olympiad a famous boxer,
Euthymos of Locri, returning with his crown of victory back to
Italy. He heard at Temesa of the sacrifice that was about to take
place, and entered the temple where he saw the chosen maiden waiting
for the Hero. Pity and love filled his heart; and when the Hero
arrived the victor of so many single combats dared to try
conclusions with this new foe and finally threw him into the sea and
rid the country of the monster. It is just as in our own fairy tale
of the youth who went forth to learn how to shudder;[115\4] and, of
course, now that the land is delivered there is a brilliant wedding
and the "Knight of Good Courage" marries the beautiful maiden he has
rescued. He lived on to extreme old age, and even then he did not
die but was translated alive and is now himself a Hero.[116\4]
Such champions of the Pan-Hellenic contests, of whom {136} Euthymos
was one, are the favourite figures of popular legend both in their
lifetime and, after their death, as spirits. A story was told also
of one of the contemporaries of Euthymos, Theagenes of Thasos, one
of the most famous victors in the great games, and how after his
death one of his opponents went and thrashed his statue by night
till one night the statue fell on him and killed him. The Thasians
then threw the murderous image into the sea, but were thereupon
plagued with barrenness as a result of the Hero's anger. This went
on until, after the several times repeated command of the Delphic
oracle, they fished up the statue from where it had sunk and
restored it to its old position and sacrificed to it "as to a
god".[117\4] The remarkable thing about this story is the way in
which the crude and primitive notion, common to almost all
image-worshipping peoples, that the strength of a "spirit" resides
in his effigy, is here more than usually striking and applied to the
belief in Heroes. It lies at the bottom of many stories of the
revenge of dumb statues against those who offend them.[118\4] The
statue of Theagenes, indeed, cured fevers even in later ages,[119\4]
as did the statue of another famous boxer, Polydamas of
Skotoussa.[120\4] An Achæan Olympic victor, Oibotas of Dyme, had for
centuries prevented the Achæans from winning in any contest by a
curse.[121\4] When he had been appeased the Achæans, on starting out
to take part in a contest at Olympia, used to do sacrifice to his
statue.[122\4]
§ 12
But the belief in Heroes rose to still greater heights. Not merely
in peaceful athletic contests, but in real need, in struggles when
they were fighting to defend the highest possessions of all--the
freedom and safety of their country--the Heroes were found on the
side of the Greeks. Nowhere do we see more plainly how real and
vivid was the faith of contemporary Greece in the Heroes than in the
stories told of the appeals then made to them and of their
participation in the Persian wars. At Marathon there were many who
saw an apparition of Theseus in full armour fighting in the front of
the battle against the barbarians.[123\4] In the painting of
Panainos (the brother of Pheidias) in the Stoa Poikile at Athens
there was shown among the fighters at Marathon a certain Hero,
Echetlos, of whose appearance at the battle a peculiar story was
told.[124\4] In the war against Xerxes Delphi was preserved by two
of the local Heroes of the land against a Persian raid.[125\4] In
the morning before the battle of Salamis the Greeks prayed to the
gods, but they called directly {137} upon the Heroes to give them
practical help: Aias and Telamon were summoned from Salamis, and a
ship was sent to fetch Aiakos and the other Aiakidai from
Aegina.[126\4] So little were these Hero spirits mere symbols or
great names to the Greeks. Their actual physical participation in
the decisive hour was confidently expected. And, indeed, they came
and helped:[127\4] after the battle had been won a trireme out of
the spoil was dedicated to the Hero Aias as well as to the gods as a
thankoffering.[128\4] A Salaminian local Hero, Kychreus, had also
come to the help of the Greeks, as a snake, in which form the
Heroes, like the earth spirits, frequently appeared.[129\4] After
the battle everyone was fully persuaded that they owed their victory
to the gods and Heroes.[130\4] As Xenophon puts it, it was the
Heroes and their aid which "made Greece unconquerable" in the fight
against the barbarians.[131\4] Less frequently we hear of the active
participation of national Heroes in the fights of one Greek state
against another.[132\4]
Even in the petty details of the life of individuals the Heroes
played their part, helping or hindering, as once in mythical times
the gods had done. Everyone will be reminded of well-known legends
of the gods, and will at the same time be able to measure the
difference between the sublime and the merely idyllic, in reading
Herodotos' naive and circumstantial tale of how Helen once appeared
in person to a nurse at Therapne. The nurse was praying at Helen's
grave for her ill-favoured foster-child, when the Heroine appeared
to her and with a touch of her hand made the child the most
beautiful maiden in Sparta.[133\4] So, too, we read how the Hero
Astrabakos, in the likeness of Ariston, king of Sparta, visited in
secret the king's wife and made her the mother of Demaratos.[134\4]
The heroön of this Astrabakos was situated by the door of Ariston's
house,[135\4] and it was a frequent custom thus to place a Hero's
shrine before the house-door where he might give a special
protection to his neighbour.[136\4]
In all the circumstances of human life, in happiness or in need, for
individuals or the city, the Heroes are thus very near to men. It is
now often said of the Hero worshipped by a city (just as it was said
of the city's gods) that he rules it, is its possessor, or is lord
over it;[137\4] he is its true guardian and protector. It may,
indeed, have been the case in many cities, as it was said to be in
some, that the belief in the city-Hero was more deeply held there
than the belief in the gods worshipped by all Greece in
common.[138\4] The relation of man to the Heroes is closer than it
is to the majestic gods above: {138} the faith in Heroes gave a
different and a more familiar bond of union between men and the
spirit-world above them. The worship of Heroes began as an
ancestor-cult and an ancestor-cult it remained in essence, but it
had now been widened to a cult of certain greater human souls who
had raised themselves above their fellows by peculiar powers
exercised in many, and by no means predominantly moral, directions.
Many of them were of later ages or even of the quite recent past,
and in this lies the peculiar importance of their cult. They show
that the company of the spirits is not fixed and made up; individual
mortals are still continually being raised to that higher circle
after the completion of their earthly life. Death does not end all
conscious existence nor does the gloom of Hades swallow up all life.
But for that reason the cult of Heroes cannot be the origin of the
belief in an immortality belonging to all human souls by their very
nature. Nor can this ever have been its effect. In the beginning,
among the hosts that streamed down to Hades, the special individuals
who had another fate were a small class apart and favoured above all
others--and so it still remained. Though the numbers of the heroic
figures might be increased enormously, yet every individual case of
the transition of a human soul into the ranks of the Heroes was a
fresh and special miracle. Such exceptional cases, however
frequently repeated, could never produce a general rule applying
without distinction to all men alike.
The belief in Heroes in its gradual evolution and extension
unquestionably led far away from the course taken by the Homeric
belief in the things after death. In fact, it pointed in the
opposite direction. But with the belief in Heroes men had not yet
arrived at the belief in an immortality proper to the human soul by
virtue of its own nature, nor yet (which would be something
different again) was a general cult of souls thereby founded. In
order that such beliefs might arise after, but not out of, the cult
of Heroes, and maintain themselves side by side with an undiminished
cult of Heroes, a movement was first necessary that had its origin
in different sources.
NOTES TO CHAPTER IV
[1\4: Porph., _Abst._ 4, 22, p. 268, 23 Nauck.]
[2\4: It is not quite clear whether it is legitimate to see in what
Paus. 2, 2, 2, says about the graves of Neleus and Sisyphos a first
trace of the worship of Hero-relics, as Lobeck does, _Agla._ 284.
The oracle verse from Oinom. ap. Eus., _PE._ 5, 28, p. 223 B, in
which Lykourgos is warned to honour ~Mene/lan te kai\ a/llous
athana/tous _hê/rôas_, hoi\ en Lakedai/moni di/ê|~--is certainly
quite late, later than the ~hê/keis ô= Luko/orge~ that was known
already to Herod.; earlier however than the second century, cf.
Isyllos (_GDI._ 3342), l. 26. Oinomaos got it, like all the oracles
that he used in making his ~Goê/tôn phô/ra~ from a collection of
oracular sayings, certainly not from (or even indirectly from)
Ephoros as has been groundlessly maintained.--Unquestionably the
cult of Helen and Menelaos at Therapne was ancient: see Ross, _Arch.
Aufs._ ii, 341 ff. Connexion with the legitimate pre-Dorian monarchy
was eagerly sought for in Sparta; thus the bones of Orestes and
Tisamenos were brought to Sparta and both honoured there as Heroes.
The cult of Menelaos in Therapne has nothing whatever to do with his
translation to Elysion (Od. ~d~).]
[3\4: One Daites ~hê/rôa timô/menon para\ toi=s Trôsi/n~ is
mentioned by Mimn. _fr._ 18. Still earlier Alc. seems to refer to
the cult of Achilles as a Hero, _fr._ 48 b: ~Achi/lleu, ho\ ga=s
Skudi/kas me/deis~ (see Wassner, _de her. cult._, p. 33).]
[4\4: ~theoi\ ho/soi gê=n tê\n **Plataiï/da e/chete kai\ hê/rôes,
xuni/store/s este~, Thuc. ii, 74, 2; ~ma/rturas theou\s kai\ hê/rôas
egchôri/ous poiê/somai~, Th. iv, 87, 2; cf. Th. v, 30, 2-5.]
[5\4: Hdt. viii, 109: ~ta/de ga\r ouk hêmei=s katergasa/metha alla\
theoi/ te kai\ hê/rôes~.]
[6\4: Hdt. vii, 43.]
[7\4: In the first edition of this book I could not refer to the
copiously documented article by Deneken on "Heros" in Roscher's
_Myth. Lex._ Even now I must be content to refer the reader
generally to the rich collections of material there supplied. The
view taken of the nature and origin of the Hero is, however, one
which I can only reject. According to that account (which in this
follows the current view) the belief in Heroes arose from a weakened
belief in gods, and the race of Heroes was composed of formerly
divine figures who had come to be regarded in the course of time
with diminished awe. But the _cult_ of Heroes was by no means an
attenuated worship of the gods: on the contrary it was fundamentally
contrasted in its essence to the cult of the gods above:
~enagi/zein~ can never have been derived from ~thu/ein~ in however
attenuated a form. Equally little can the Heroes of cult have been
ever (much less frequently) derived from gods directly. The "Heroes"
(as objects of a cult) are invariably elevated souls of men, not
reduced divinities. This rule holds good even though a considerable
number of once divine figures after they had been deprived of their
godhead and made into great _men_, were when they died exalted, as
outstanding human beings, to the rank of Hero. In this respect they
did not differ from the innumerable cases before and beside them of
simple mortals who had never been gods. Only when and because they
had become men and been mortal could such {140} ex-divine personages
become Heroes: no one stepped straight from godhood to Herohood. The
Hero is regularly a promoted human spirit and nothing else.--I
intend here and generally in this book to avoid further polemic
against the currently accepted view of the origin of the Hero out of
degraded godhead and to content myself instead with the statement of
my own positive attitude in these matters.]
[8\4: ~theô=n a/llois a/llai timai\ pro/skeintai kai\ hê/rôsin
a/llai, kai\ hau=tai apokekrime/nai tou= theiou=~, Arr., _Anab._ iv,
11, 3.]
[9\4: Sacrifice to Heroes ~en duthmai=sin auga=n~ and throughout the
night, Pi., _I._iv, 65 ff. ~hupo\ kne/phas~, Ap. Rh. i, 587 (=
~peri\ hêli/ou dusma/s~, Schol.). ~tô=| me\n (Alexa/nori hôs hê/rôï
meta\ hê/lion du/nata enagi/zousin Euameri/ôni de\ hôs theô=|
thu/ousin~, Paus. 2, 11, 7. ~nu/ktôr kata\ e/tos enagi/zousin~, (the
Pheneatai to Myrtilos, Paus. 8, 14, 11. By night Solon sacrificed to
the Salaminian Heroes, Plu., _Sol._ 9.--After noon, ~apo\ me/sou
hême/ras~, must sacrifice be made to the Heroes, D.L. viii, 33;
~toi=s katoichome/nois apo\ mesêmbri/as~, _EM._ 468, 34 (cf. Procl.
in _Hes. Op._ 763, Eust., ~Th~ 65, p. 698, 36). The Heroes also are
among the ~katoicho/menoi~: ~toi=s hê/rôsin _hôs katoichome/nois_
e/ntoma e/thuon, apoble/pontes ka/tô es gê=n~, Schol. A.D., ~A~
459.--In later times sacrifice seems to have been made to the
ordinary dead even in broad daylight (see Stengel, _Chthon. u.
Todtencult_, 422 f.), but to "Heroes", as once to the dead (~Ps~ 218
ff.), always towards evening or at night.]
[10\4: ~escha/ra~, see above, Ch. I. n. 53.]
[11\4: Cf. Stengel, _Jb. f. Phil._, 1886, pp. 322, 329.]
[12\4: Schol. A.D., ~A~ 459. Schol., _Ap. Rh._ i, 587. ~ente/mnein~,
see Stengel, _Zt. f. Gymn._, 1880, p. 743 ff.]
[13\4: ~haimakouri/a~, Pi., _O._ i, 90. Plu., _Aristid._ 21. The
word is supposed to be Boeotian acc. to Schol. Pi., _O._ i, 146
(hence Greg. Cor., p. 215, Schaefer).]
[14\4: Rightly (as against Welcker) Wassner, _de h. cult._, p. 6,
maintains that the ~enagi/smata~ for Heroes were ~holokautô/mata~.]
[15\4: ~enagi/zein~ to heroes, ~thu/ein~ to gods. Pausanias in
particular is careful in his use of the words, but even he, and
Herodotos, too, occasionally says ~thu/ein~ where ~enagi/zein~ would
have been correct (e.g. Hdt. vii, 117, ~tô=| Artachai/ê| thu/ousi
Aka/nthioi hôs ê/rôi~). Others frequently say ~thu/ein~ instead of
~enagi/zein~, which as the more special idea could easily be
included in ~thu/ein~ the more generic word for making sacrifice.]
[16\4: Cf. Deneken, _de theoxeniis_ (Berl. 1881), cap. 1; Wassner,
_de h. cult._, p. 12. The expressions used by primitive peoples
allow us to see the ideas that lie at the bottom of this mode of
offering; cf. Réville, _les rel. des peuples non-civ._ i, 73. The
ritual may be regarded as specially primitive and even earlier than
the practice of burnt offering (cf. Oldenberg, _Rel. d. Veda_, 344
f.).]
[17\4: See above, Ch. I, p. 14 ff.--~epi\ Aza=ni tô=| Arka/dos
teleutê/santi a=thla ete/thê _prô=ton_; ei me\n kai\ a/lla ouk
oi=da, hippodromi/as de\ ete/thê~, Paus. 8, 4, 5.]
[18\4: The same is implied by the observation of Aristarchos that
Homer knows no ~hiero\s kai\ stephani/tês agô/n~, see _Rh. Mus._ 36,
544 f. (as to the observation there put forward that Homer in fact
did not know the word ~ste/phanos~ or its use, cf. further Schol.
Pi., _Nem._ intr., pp. 7, 8 ff., Abel; see also Merkel, _Ap. Rh._
proleg., p. cxxvi: ~eüste/phanos~ derived from ~stepha/nê~ not from
~ste/phanos~: Schol. ~Ph~ 511).]
[19\4: Many such Agones for Heroes are mentioned, esp. by Pindar.]
[20\4: e.g. on the command of the oracle an ~agô\n gumniko\s kai\
hippiko/s~ was founded in honour of the fallen Phocaeans in Agylla,
Hdt. i, 167. {141} Agon for Miltiades, Hdt. vi, 38; for Brasidas,
Thuc. v, 11; for Leonidas in Sparta, Paus. 3, 14, 1.]
[21\4: At the Iolaia in Thebes ~mursi/nês stepha/nois stephanou=ntai
hoi nikô=ntes; mursi/nê| de\ stephanou=ntai dia\ to\ ei=nai _tô=n
nekrô=n_ ste/phos~, Sch. Pi., _I._ iii, 117. (The myrtle ~toi=s
chthoni/ois aphie/rôto~, Apollod. ap. Sch. Ar., _Ran._ 330; as
adorning graves, Eur., _El._ 324, 511.)]
[22\4: General statement: ~etelou=nto hoi palaioi\ pa/ntes agô=nes
epi\ tisi teteleutêko/si~, Sch. Pi., _I_, p. 349 Ab. (~ta\s
_epitumbi/ous_ tautasi\ panêgu/reis~, Clem. Alex. calls the four
great games, _Protr._ ii, p. 29 P.). The Nemean as an ~agô\n
epita/phios~ for Archemoros, Sch. Pi., _N._, pp. 7, 8 Ab.; later
offered to Zeus first by Herakles, ib., p. 11, 8 ff.; 12, 14-13, 4
(cf. Welcker, _Ep. Cycl._ ii, 350 ff.). Victor's crown, since the
Persian wars, of parsley ~epi\ timê=| tô=n katoichome/nôn~, ib., p.
10 (parsley on graves: Schneidewin on Dgn. viii, 57; see below.
~seli/nou ste/phanos pe/nthimos . . . Dou=ris en tô=| peri\
agô/nôn~, Phot. 506, 5). Black dress of the judges, ib., p. 11, 8
ff. Schol. Arg., _N._ iv, v.--Isthmian games as ~epita/phios agô/n~
for Melikertes and then for Sinis or Skiron, Plu., _Thes._ 25. Sch.
Pi., _I._, pp. 350-2 Ab. Crown made of parsley or pine, both signs
of mourning, Paus. 8, 48, 2 (and elsewhere see Meineke, _An. Alex._,
80 ff.). The Pythian games are said to be an ~agô\n epita/phios~ for
Python; the Olympian for Oinomaos or Pelops (Phlegon, **_FHG._ iii,
603; cf. P. Knapp, _Corresp. Würt. Gelehr._ 1881, p. 9 ff.). These
notices cannot all be learned invention. It is a fact, for instance,
that the funeral games of Tlepolemos in Rhodes, known to Pindar,
_O._ vii, 77 ff., were later transferred to Helios (cf. Sch. Pi.,
_O._ vii, 36, 146-7, and Böckh on v, 77).]
[23\4: "Half-gods," ~hêmi/theoi~. The name does not, as is sometimes
declared, imply that the Heroes were spirits who thus constituted a
class of intermediate beings between gods and men. The Heroes were
not called ~hêmi/theoi~; the name was really applied to the kings
and champions of the legendary age, more especially those who fought
at Troy or Thebes (Hes., _Op._, 160; Hom. ~M~ 23; _h. Hom._, 31, 19;
32, 19. Callin., _fr._ i, 19, and often later). It applies to them,
however, as living men not as glorified spirits (thus Pla., _Ap._ 41
A; cf. D.H. 7, 32, 13, ~hêmithe/ôn _genome/nôn_~ [on earth] ~hai
psuchai/~).--The ~hêmi/theoi~ are a species of men not of spirits or
daimones; they are those ~hoi\ pro/tero/n pot' epe/lonto, theô=n d'
ex ana/ktôn ege/nonth' hui=es hêmi/theoi~ (Simon., _fr._ 36; cf.
Pla., _Crat._ 398 D), the sons of gods and mortal women and then
their companions as well (a potiori so named). Even the idea that
the great men of the past, thus called ~hêmi/theoi~, were naturally
made "Heroes" after their death as a consequence of their
half-divine nature which might give them special privileges even
then--this idea has no very ancient authority. Cicero, _ND._ iii,
45, seems to be the first to suggest such a view. That the Greeks of
the best period ever regarded semi-divine origin as a qualification
for becoming a Hero is refuted by the simple fact that for the great
majority of the "Heroes" descent from a god was not claimed. Of
course, poetry was always ready to give a Hero a divine father in
order to enhance his value, cf. Paus. 6, 11, 2; but this was never a
condition of being made a Hero (rather of being raised from Hero to
god).]
[24\4: ~ma/kar me\n andrô=n me/ta, hê/rôs d' e/peita laosebê/s~,
Pi., _P._ v, 94 f.]
[25\4: ~ti/na theo/n, ti/n' hê/rôa, ti/na d' a/ndra?~ Pi., _O._ ii
init. ~ou/te theou\s ou/te hê/rôas ou/te anthrô/pous
aischunthei=sa~, Antiph. i, 27. With "daimones" added: Gods,
daimones, heroes, men: Pl., _Rp._ 392 A; 427 B; _Lg._ iv, 717 AB. In
later times the distinction between ~theoi/, dai/mones, hê/rôes~,
corresponded to a real and popular opinion, see e.g. _GDI_. {142}
1582 (Dodona, cf. also 1566, 1585 b.--There can be no question of
identifying Heroes with the daimones (as Nägelsb., _N. Th._ 104,
does). When philosophers call the _dead_ "daimones" that is from
quite a different point of view. It is a speculative idea peculiar
to Plutarch himself that, in view of the transition from men to
Heroes and from these to daimones, the Heroes themselves might be
regarded as a sort of lower daimon (_DO._ 10, 415 A; _Rom._ 28). A
Schol. on Eur., _Hec._ 165, quite justifiably makes a parallel
between gods and daimones on the one hand and Heroes and men on the
other: the gods are ~hupsêlo/tero/n ti ta/gma tô=n daimo/nôn~ and
this is the relation of ~hoi hê/rôes pro\s tou\s loipou\s
anthrô/pous, hupsêlo/teroi/ tines dokou=ntes kai\ hupere/chontes~.]
[26\4: Aristarchos' remark that in Homer not only kings but ~pa/ntes
koinô=s~ are designated as ~hê/rôes~, was directed against the
mistaken limitation of the word by Ister; see Lehrs, _Aristarch._^3,
p. 101. Before Aristarch., however, the mistaken idea that ~hoi
hêgemo/nes tô=n archai/ôn mo/noi ê=san hê/rôes, hoi de\ laoi\
a/nthrôpoi~ seems to have been general: it is expressed in the
[Arist.] _Probl._ 19, 48, p. 922b, 18; Rhianos, too, held it, see
Schol. ~T~ 41 (Mayhoff, _de Rhiani stud. Hom._, p. 46).--It is
incorrect to say that in the supposed "later" parts of the Odyssey
~hê/rôs~ is no longer used of all free men, but only of the
aristocracy (Fanta, _Staat in Il. u. Od._, 17 f.). In ~d~ 268, ~th~
242, ~x~ 97, the word is used as an honourable title of free men of
superior rank, but there is no suggestion of a restriction of the
word to such use. In addition to which, the word ~hê/rôs~
unmistakably appears in its wider sense also in other parts of the
poem equally and rightly supposed to be late (~a~ 272, ~th~ 483, ~ô~
68, etc.).]
[27\4: So for example esp. when Pausanias speaks of the ~kalou/menoi
hê/rôes~, 5, 6, 2; 6, 5, 1; 7, 17, 1; 8, 12, 2; 10, 10, 1, etc.]
[28\4: ~andrô=n hêrô/ôn thei=on ge/nos~, Hes., _Op._ 159.]
[29\4: Of the "Heroes" of his fourth race the great majority fell
according to Hesiod in the war of Troy or Thebes and died without
any "illumination"; the few, on the other hand, who are translated
to the Islands of the Blest are illuminated indeed, but have never
died. To regard them as the prototypes and forerunners of the Heroes
worshipped in later times (as many do is inadmissible.]
[30\4: Grave in the market: Battos in Kyrene, Pi., _P._ v, 87 ff.,
and frequently. Hero-graves in the Prytaneion at Megara, Paus. 1,
43, 2-3. Adrastos was buried in the market at Sikyon. Kleisthenes,
to play a trick on him, brought from Thebes (the corpse of)
Melanippos, who, when alive, had been his greatest enemy, and placed
him ~en tô=| prutanei/ô| kai/ min hi/druse enthau=ta en tô=|
ischurota/tô|~, Hdt. v, 67. Themistokles had a ~mnêmei=on~ in the
market at Magnesia on the Maiander. Th. 1, 138, 5; i.e. a ~hêrô=|on~
(see Wachsmuth, _Rh. Mus._ lii, 140).]
[31\4: ~tu/mbon amphi/polon e/chôn poluxenôta/tô| para\ bô/mô|~,
Pi., _O._ i, 93; i.e. the great ash-altar of Zeus. The excavations
have confirmed Pindar's description (cf. Paus. 5, 13, 1-2).]
[32\4: Grave built in the gateway: ~en autê=| tê=| pulê=|~ at Elis
Aitolos the son of Oxylos was buried, Paus. 5, 4, 4; cf. Lobeck,
_Agl._ 281 f. Grave at the boundary of the country: Koroibos, the
first Olympic victor, was buried ~Êlei/as epi\ tô=| pe/rati~ as the
insc. stated: Paus. 8, 26, 4. Grave of Koroibos, son of Mygdon, ~en
_ho/rois_ Phrugô=n Stektorênô=n~, Paus. 10, 27, 1.]
[33\4: The idea of the grave as the dwelling-place of the Hero is
shown in a very strange fashion by the story that the Phliasians
before the feast of Demeter ~kalou=sin epi\ ta\s sponda/s~ the hero
Aras and his sons, _looking_ while so doing towards the graves of
these Heroes: Paus. 2, 12, 5.] {143}
[34\4: This hero (Xanthippos or Phokos) ~e/chei epi\ hême/ra| te
pa/sê| tima/s, kai\ a/gontes hierei=a hoi Phôkei=s to\ me\n hai=ma
di' opê=s egche/ousin es to\n ta/phon ktl.~ Paus. 10, 4, 10.
Similarly at the grave of Hyakinthos at Amyklai, Paus. 3, 19, 3. The
meaning of such an offering is the same in Greece as in similar
cases among any "savage" tribe. In Tylor, ii, 28, we read: "In the
Congo district the custom has been described of making a channel
into the tomb to the head or mouth of the corpse, to send down month
by month the offerings of food and drink."]
[35\4: Most of the examples are mentioned by Lobeck, _Agl._ 281 [u],
but he omits the most remarkable case, fully reported by Hdt. i,
67-8, of the transference of the bones of Orestes from Tegea to
Sparta (cf. Paus. 3, 3, 6; 11, 10; 8, 54, 4. The reason is obvious,
cf. Müller, _Dorians_, i, 72). Besides this note: the removal of the
bones of Hektor from Ilion to Thebes, Paus. 9, 18, 5, Sch. and Tz.,
_Lyc._ 1194, 1204; of Arkas from Mainalos to Mantinea, Paus. 8, 9,
3; cf. 8, 36, 8; of Hesiod from Naupaktos to Orchomenos, Paus. 9,
38, 3; of Hippodameia from Midea in Argolis to Olympia, Paus. 6, 20,
7; of Tisamenos from Helike to Sparta, Paus. 7, 1, 8; of Aristomenes
from Rhodes to Messene, Paus. 4, 32, 3. Strange story of the
shoulder bone of Pelops, Paus. 5, 13, 4-6. In all these cases the
removal followed upon a command of the oracle, cf. also Paus. 9, 30,
9-11. Practical stimulus may have been given occasionally by the
discovery of abnormally large bones in dug-up graves; we often hear
of such discoveries, cf. W. Schmid, _Atticismus_, iv, 572 f., and it
was always believed that such gigantic bones were remains of one of
~tô=n kaloume/nôn hêrô/ôn~, Paus. 6, 5, 1 (cf. also 1, 35, 5 ff.; 3,
22, 9). It would be the business of the oracle to determine the name
of the Hero concerned and see that the remains were reverently
preserved. (One example may be given, though from a later period. In
the dried-up bed of the Orontes a clay coffin 11 yards long was
found and a corpse within it. The oracle of the Clarian Apollo on
being applied to for enlightenment as to its origin answered
~Oro/ntên ei=nai, ge/nous de\ auto\n ei=nai tou= Indô=n~, Paus. 8,
29, 4; Philostr., _H._ 669 p. 138, 6-19 K.]
[36\4: Plu., _Cim._ 8; _Thes._ 36; Paus. 3, 3, 7.--In the year 437-6
we hear of the removal by Hagnon and his Athenians, at the command
of the oracle, of the bones of Rhesos from Troy to Amphipolis:
Polyaen. vi, 53. The neighbourhood of the mouth of the Strymon on
the western slopes of Mt. Pangaios was the original home of Rhesos:
he was already known to the Doloneia as the son of Eïoneus; to later
writers as the son of Strymon and (like Orpheus) a Muse--which is
the same thing (see Conon, 4). On M. Pangaios he still lived as an
oracular deity: this must have been the popular belief of the
district which the author of the _Rhesus_ explains after Greek
fashion (ll. 955-66). He is a tribal god of the Edonians, of the
same pattern as Zalmoxis of the Getai, and Sabos or Sabazios of
other Thracian tribes. In the mind of the Greeks he had become since
the poem of the Doloneia entirely detached from the site of his
worship and was a mere mortal champion with whom fancy might do what
it chose (cf. Parth. 36). The restoration of his bones to the
neighbourhood of the lower Strymon (~mnêmei=on tou= Rhê/sou~ in
Amphipolis: Marsyas ~ho neô/teros~ in Sch., _Rhes._ 346), and the
heroic cult which was undoubtedly paid to him in connexion
therewith, may have been a kind of official recognition by the
Greeks of the worship of Rhesos discovered in that neighbourhood by
the Athenian colonists. I see no reason for doubting the historical
fact of the occurrence, though some of the details of Polyaenus'
account have a fabulous colouring. It is true Cicero says of Rhesos,
_nusquam_ {144} _colitur_ (_ND._ iii, 45), and so it may have been
in C.'s time: for the earlier period the close of the tragedy
clearly suggests the cult of R. as a divinity, while the story of
Polyaen. implies his Hero-cult.]
[37\4: Sometimes only single parts of the body, e.g. the
shoulder-blade of Pelops at Olympia (Paus. 5, 13).--In Argos on the
road to the Akropolis their heads were buried in the ~mnê=ma tô=n
Aigu/ptou pai/dôn~, while the rest of their bodies were in Lerne,
Paus. 2, 24, 2.]
[38\4: See Lob., _Agl._ 281. This only can be the meaning of Soph.,
_OC._ 1522 f. (Nauck otherwise.--A strange case is that of
Hippolytos in Troizen: ~apothanei=n auto\n ouk ethe/lousin (hoi
Troizê/nioi) sure/nta hupo\ tô=n hi/ppôn oude\ to\n ta/phon
apophai/nousin eido/tes; to\n de\ en ouranô=| kalou/menon hêni/ochon
tou=ton ei=nai nomi/zousin ekei=non (ekei=noi?) Hippo/luton, timê\n
para\ theô=n tau/tên e/chonta~ Paus. 2, 32, 1. Here it seems as if
the grave were not shown because Hipp. was not regarded as having
died and therefore would not have a grave; he is said to have been
_translated_ and set among the stars. But there _was_ a grave and
the translation story must therefore only be an afterthought. (The
death of Hipp. is spoken of clearly enough by the poets: but what
happened to him after Asklepios had restored him to life again? The
Italian Virbius legend seems to have been little known in Greece.
Paus. 2, 27, 4, knows it from Aricia.)--Very occasionally the
possession of the relics of the Hero was secured by burning the
bones and scattering the ashes in the market place of the city. Thus
Phalanthos in Tarentum, Justin. 3, 4, 13 ff.; Solon in Salamis, D.L.
i, 62; Plu., _Sol._ 32. As a rule the scattering of ashes is
intended to serve a different purpose, cf. Plu., _Lycurg._ 31 fin.;
Nic. Dam., _Paradox._ **16, p. 170 West.]
[39\4: A few examples: ~keno\n sê=ma~ of Teiresias in Thebes, Paus.
9, 18, 4; of Achilles at Elis, Paus. 6, 23, 3; of the Argives who
fought in the war against Troy, at Argos, Paus. 2, 20, 6; of Iolaos
at Thebes, Paus. 9, 23, 1; Sch. Pi., _N._ iv, 32 (in the tomb of
Amphitryon? Pi., _P._ ix, 81); of Odysseus at Sparta, Plut., _Q.
Gr._, 48, 302 C; of Kalchas in Apulia, Lyc. 1047 f.]
[40\4: Perhaps by ~ana/klêsis~ of the ~psuchê/~? see above, Ch. I,
n. 86 (at the foundation of Messene ~epekalou=nto en koinô=| kai\
hê/rôa/s sphisin epanê/kein sunoi/kous~, Paus. 4, 27, 6).]
[41\4: ~kai\ tethneô\s kai\ ta/richos eô\n du/namin pro\s theô=n
e/chei to\n adike/onta ti/nesthai~, Hdt. ix, 120.]
[42\4: No detailed proof of this statement is needed. We will only
remark that the attempt to conceal the grave is often met with among
so-called "savage" tribes and has the same purpose as in the Greek
Hero-cult: cf. on this subject Herbert Spencer, _Princ. of Sociol._
i, p. 176.]
[43\4: See Helbig, _D. hom. Epos aus Denkm._^1, p. 41.]
[44\4: See above, p. 23.]
[45\4: ~B~ 603 ~hoi\ d' e/chon Arkadi/ên hupo\ Kullê/nês o/ros
aipu/, Aipu/tion para\ tu/mbon~.--Cf. Paus. 8, 16, 2-3.--In the
Troad the frequently mentioned ~I/lou sê=ma~, the ~sê=ma
poluska/rthmoio Muri/nês~ which "men" call ~Bati/eia~, were similar
monuments.]
[46\4: The ceremonial announcement of death, the ~katamiai/nesthai~
of the proper persons (as usual the next of kin to the dead); the
assembling of Spartiates Perioikoi and Helots (cf. Tyrt. _fr._ 7)
with their women to the number of several thousands, the extravagant
expression of grief and praise of the dead, the period of mourning
(no business in the market for ten days, etc.)--all this is
described by Hdt. vi, 58. He compares this grandiose funeral with
the pomp customary at the burial of an Asiatic (Persian)
monarch.--The Lycurgan ~no/moi~ by these funeral rites ~ouch hôs
anthrô/pous all' hôs _hê/rôas_ tou\s Lakedaimoni/ôn~ {145}
~basilei=s protetimê/kasin~, Xen., _Rep. Lac._ xv, 9. King Agis I
~e/tuche semnote/ras ê\ kat' a/nthrôpon taphê=s~, Xen., _HG._ 3, 3,
1.--A peculiar circumstance at the burial of a Spartan king is
mentioned by Apollod., _fr._ 36.--The burial places of the royal
Houses of the Agiadai and the Eurypontidai (apart even in their
death), Paus. 3, 12, 8; 14, 2 (cf. Bursian, _Geog._ ii,
126).--Embalming of the body of a king who dies abroad, Xen., _HG._
5, 3, 19: D.S. 15, 93, 6; Nep., _Ages._ 8; Plu., _Ages._
40.--Besides this the participation in primitive times of the whole
people in the funeral of the Herakleid kings in Corinth may probably
be deduced from the story told of the compulsory attendance of the
Megarian subjects of Corinth at the funeral at Corinth of a king of
the Bakchiad family: Sch. Pi., _N._ vii, 155 (cf. _AB._ 281, 27 ff.;
Zenob. v, 8; Dgn. vi, 34). In Crete ~tô=n basile/ôn kêdeuome/nôn
proêgei=to purrichi/zôn ho strato/s~ (as at the funeral of Patroklos,
~Ps~ 131 ff.), Arist. ap. Schol. V., ~Ps~ 130.]
[47\4: ~Eupatri/dai, hoi . . . mete/chontes tou= basilikou=
ge/nous~, _EM._ 395, 50.--Thus the Bakchiadai in Corinth were
descendants of the royal family of the house of Bakchis. The
~Basili/dai~, a ruling family of oligarch nobles in Ephesos (Ael.
_fr._ 48), Erythrai (Arist., _Pol._ 1305b, 19), and perhaps Chios as
well (see Gilbert, _Gr. Alt._ ii, 153), also traced back their
descent to the old kings of those Ionic cities. Respect paid to
those who were descended ~ek tou= ge/nous~ of Androklos at Ephesos,
Stra. 633.--The Aigid Admetos, priest of Apollo Karneios at Thera
was descended ~Lakedai/monos ek basilê/ôn~, _Epigr. Gr._ 191; 192.]
[48\4: Here some reference might have been expected to Fustel de
Coulanges' brilliant and penetrating work _La Cité antique_. In that
book the attempt is made to fix upon ancestor-worship, _la religion
du foyer et des ancêtres_, as the root of all the higher types of
worship (among the Greeks: only that part of the book concerns us
here); and to show how out of these ancestor-worshipping
aggregations, begun by the family, larger communities of
ever-widening membership developed, and finally out of these the
~po/lis~ itself--the highest and most extensive political as well as
religious community of all. For the author of that book the proof of
his theory lies entirely in the simple logical consequence with
which the details and, as far as we know it, the development of both
private and public law follow from the original causes adopted by
him essentially as postulates. A strictly historical proof that
should not have to deduce the original causes from the results but
should start from known beginnings and demonstrate the actual
existence of every step was indeed an impossibility. The whole
historical process must have been already finished when our
knowledge first begins: for Homer shows us the ~po/lis~ and its
component parts (~kri=n' a/ndras kata\ phu=la kata\ phrê/tras
Aga/memnon~) as well as the worship of the gods as fully established
and developed. It is no disparagement of the valuable and fruitful
suggestions made in that book if we say that its leading idea--as
far as Greece is concerned--cannot be considered as more than an
intuition, which though it may be just and true, must remain
unproved. If there ever was a time when ancestor-worship was the
only Greek religion at least we cannot see into that dim epoch long
anterior to all tradition. To that remote period long before both
the all-powerful religion of the gods and the earliest records of
the Greek genius, even the narrow and slippery path of inference and
reconstruction will hardly lead us. Natural as it might seem,
therefore, so far as the subject itself is concerned to deal with
such questions, I have taken no notice in the {146} present work of
any attempts to deduce Greek religion from an original sole worship
of ancestors (such as have been made by many scholars besides F. de
Coulanges both in England and in Germany).]
[49\4: Those worshipped by a ~ge/nos~ regarded as its progenitors,
~gonei=s~: _AB._ 240, 31 ~(ta\ thu/mata di/dôsin) eis ta\ _gone/ôn_
(hiera\) ta\ ge/nê~.--Physical relationship between the ~gennê=tai~,
originally a fact though afterwards only occasionally demonstrable,
is indicated by the ancient name ~homoga/laktes~ applied to the
members of the same clan (Philoch. _fr._ 91-4) and meaning strictly
~pai=des kai\ pai/dôn pai=des~ (Arist., _Pol._ 1252b, 18).--The word
~pa/tra~ with the same meaning as ~ge/nos~ (~Midulida=n pa/tra~,
Pi., _P._ viii, 38), makes it still more clear that the members of
such a group are regarded as the descendants of a single ancestor.
See Dikaiarch. ap. St. Byz. ~pa/tra~.]
[50\4: Whose names were chosen by the voice of the Delphic oracle
out of a hundred submitted to the Pythia. Arist. ~Athp.~ 21, 6. Cf.
Mommsen, _Philol._, N.F. i, 456 f.]
[51\4: Instead of the common ~epô/numoi~ we also find the word
~_archê/getai_~ used of the Heroes of the phylai: Ar. ~Gê=ras~,
_fr._ 126 H.-G. (_AB._ 449, 14); Pl., _Lys._ 205 D, cf. _CIA._ ii,
1191; 1575. It is even plainer that the Hero is regarded as the
ancestor of his ~phulê/~ when he is called ~_archêgo/s_~: thus
Oineus was the ~archêgo/s~ of the Oineïdai, Kekrops the ~archêgo/s~
of the Kekropidai, Hippothoön ~archêgo/s~ of the Hippothoöntidai in
[Dem.] 60, 30-1. The ~archêgo\s tou= ge/nous~ is its physical
forebear and progenitor, Poll. iii, 19: thus Apollo ~archêgo\s tou=
ge/nous~ of the Seleucids, _CIG._ 3595, 26; cf. Isocr. 5, 32. Thus
too the members of a phyle are actually described as the
~suggenei=s~ of their Hero eponymos: [Dem.] 60, 28.]
[52\4: Thus we know of both ~dê=mos~ and ~ge/nos~ of the Ionidai,
Philaïdai, Boutadai (for the intentional distinctness of the
Eteoboutadai see Meier, p. 39), Kephalidai, Perithoïdai, etc.:
Meier, _de gentil. Attica_, p. 35. Such demes were called ~apo\ tô=n
ktisa/ntôn~, others ~apo\ tô=n to/pôn~: Arist. ~Athp.~ 21, 5 (in
which case a name as much like a personal name as possible was
extracted out of the place-name and made into the local Hero: cf.
Wachsm., _Stadt Athen_, ii, 1, 248 ff.). Similar conditions existed
at other places. In Teos the same names occur as ~pu/rgoi (= dê=moi~
and ~summori/ai (= ge/nê~, e.g. ~Kolôti/ôn, tou= Alki/mou pu/rgou,
Alkimi/dês~ (also names which differ ~Nai/ôn, tou= Mêra/dou pu/rgou,
Bruski/dês~), _CIG._ 3064, where see Böckh II, p. 651. In Rhodos a
~pa/tra~ as well as its larger inclusive group (~ktoi/na~) is called
~Amphinei=s~: _IGM. Aeg._ i, 695, ~Amphine/ôn pa/trai; Euteli/dai,
Amphinei=s~, etc. (Ancestor worship ~progonika\ hiera/~ in the
Rhodian ~ktoi=nai~ is vouched for by Hesych. ~ktu/nai~: see Martha,
_BCH._ iv, 144.)]
[53\4: Thus the descendants of Bakchis in Corinth traced their
descent to Aletes (D.S. 7, 9, 4; Paus. 2, 4, 3); the descendants of
Aipytos in Messenia to Kresphontes (Paus. 4, 3, 8), the descendants
of Agis and Eurypon in Sparta to Eurysthenes and Prokles. The real
ancestors were in these cases well known and could not be entirely
eclipsed (being too deeply rooted in cult); thus later, as well as
in the earlier period, these same families are called ~Bakchi/dai,
Aiputi/dai~, not ~Hêraklei=dai~ (D.S., loc. cit., Paus. 4, 3, 8);
the Spartan royal families are still Agidai, Eurypontidai, while the
fictitious ancestors Eurysthenes and Prokles never quite achieved
the status of ~archêge/tai~: Ephoros ap. Str. 366. In many other,
perhaps more numerous, cases the fictitious ancestor may have ousted
the real and once better known from men's minds altogether.]
[54\4: [Arist.] _Mirab._ 106.] {147}
[55\4: See Paus. 10, 4, 10. In an oracle ap. Plu., _Sol._ 9:
~_archêgou\s_ chô/ras thusi/ais _hê/rôas_ enoi/kous hi/laso~.]
[56\4: Plu., _Arist._ 11, names seven ~archêge/tai Plataie/ôn~;
Clem. Al., _Protr._ ii, 35 P., gives four of these (~Kuklai=os~
seems to be a mistake). Androkrates seems to have been the most
prominent; his ~te/menos~ is mentioned by Hdt. ix, 25, his
~hêrô=|on~ Thuc. iii, 24, 1; it stood in a thick grove, Paus. loc.
cit.]
[57\4: Paus. 6, 24, 9-10.]
[58\4: A.R. ii, 835-50, says that this Hero was Idmon the prophet,
others called him Agamestor. Sch. ad 845: ~le/gei de\ kai\
promathi/das, ho/ti dia\ to\ agnoei=n ho/stis ei/ê _epichô/rion
hê/rôa_ kalou=sin hoi Hêrakleô=tai~. He was the local daimon
worshipped on the spot before the colony came, and then taken over
by the colonists for their own. Cf. the case of Rhesos, above, n.
36.]
[59\4: Paus. 6, 20, 15-19. It was a round altar, according to many
~ta/phos andro\s auto/chthonos kai\ agathou= ta\ es hippikê/n~--the
grave and altar being one as was the grave and altar of Aiakos at
Aegina, Paus. 2, 29, 8--whose name was Olenios. Acc. to others it
was the grave of Dameon son of Phlious and of his horse; or the
~keno\n êri/on~ of Myrtilos set up in his honour by Pelops; or of
Oinomaos; or of Alkathoös son of Porthaon, one of the suitors of
Hippodameia--to say nothing of the learned suggestion of the ~anê\r
Aigu/ptios~ given by Paus. l.c. as a last resort. Acc. to Hesych.
~tara/xippos~ it belonged to Pelops himself, acc. to Lyc. 42 f. to a
giant called Ischenos (see Sch. and Tz.). Besides all this a
~tara/xippos~ seems to have been almost indispensable on the
racecourses of the great games. The Isthmus and Nemea had theirs as
well (Paus. § 19)--and Paus. 10, 37, 4, mentions it as something
unusual that the course at Delphi had no ~tara/xippos~. Cf. Pollak,
_Hippodromica_, p. 91 ff., 1890.]
[60\4: ~hê/rôs eu/odos~, _CIG._ 4838b, cf. Welcker, _Rhein. Mus._,
N.F. vii, 618--~kalami/tês hê/rôs~ (Dem. 18, 129, with Sch. and
Hesych. s.v.)--~hê/rôs teichophu/lax en Muri/nê|~, Hesych.--~hê/rôs
epite/gios~, _CIA._ iii, 1, 290, and 1, 194-206, see Hiller v.
Gärt., _Philol._ 55, 180 f.--With place-names ~ho epi\ blau/tê|
hê/rôs~, Poll. vii, 87--~hê/roin em pedi/ô|~, Att. ins. ap., _Leg.
Sacr._ i, p. 5.--In Epidauros on an architrave occurs the inscr.
~hê/rôos klaïkopho/rou~, _F. d'Epid._ i, n. 245. ~tô=|
klaïkopho/rô|~ also occurs in an inscr. from Mt. Ithome, _Leg.
Sacr._, p. 36 (n. 15, l. 11).--Probably to this class belongs the
~hê/rôs pa/nops~ at Athens, Pl. _Lys._ init.; Hesych. Phot. s.v.]
[61\4: ~hê/rôs iatro/s~ in Athens, _CIA._ ii, 403-4, see below.--A
~hê/rôs stratêgo/s~ is mentioned by a (late ins. ~Eph. Arch.~, 1884,
p. 170, l. 53. From their activities are named also the Heroes
Matton, Keraon in Sparta, Deipneus in Achaea (Polemon: Ath. ii, 39
C; iv, 173 F).--The ~Stephanêpho/rou hêrô=|on~ was mentioned by
Antiph., ~stephanê/phoros hê/rôs~ by Hellan., but his name was
unknown: Harp. Phot. Suid. s.v.; _AB._ 301, 19 ff. Cf. Böckh, _Econ.
of Ath._^2, p. 144 Lew.; _CIG._ 1, p. 168.]
[62\4: In Phaleron there was an altar, ~kalei=tai de\
"hê/rôos"~--the learned declared it to be an altar of Androgeos the
son of Minos: Paus. 1, 1, 4.--Cf. 10, 36, 6: ~Charadrai/ois~ (at
Charadra in Phocis) ~Hêrô/ôn kaloume/nôn~ (i.e. they were _called_
"the Heroes") ~eisi\n en tê=| agora=| bômoi/, kai\ autou\s hoi me\n
Dioskou/rôn, hoi de\ epichôri/ôn phasi\n ei=nai hêrô/ôn.--hêrôi,
hêrôï/nê|~ a sacrifice is offered at Marathon: sacrificial Calendar
of the Attic Tetrapolis (fourth century B.C.) in _Leg. Sacr._ i, p.
48. ~hê/rôi, hêrôï/nê|~, ib., p. 2; _CIA._ i, 4: fifth
century.--Decree ordering a record to be set up in the Peiraeus
~para\ to\n hê/rô~, _SIG._ 834, 26; _CIA._ ii, 1546-7: ~hê/rô|
ane/thêken ho dei=na~. Roehl, _IG._ {148} _Ant._ 29: (Mykenai) ~tou=
hê/rôo/s êmi~, cf. Furtwängler, _Ath. Mitth._ 1896, p. 9; ib. 323;
~ane/thêkan tô=| hêrôi~ (Locris).--On the different superimposed
layers of stucco on the so-called **Heroön west of the Altis at
Olympia were the ins. ~Hê/rôos, Hê/rôor~, and once also ~Hêrô/ôn~.
There seems to me to be no reason to suppose that this nameless Hero
was Iamos in particular, the ancestor of the Iamidai (as Curtius
does, _Die Altäre v. Olymp._, p. 25, _Abh. Berl. Ak._ 1881). For
what reason should the name of this highly honoured oracular
Hero--which had by no means been forgotten--be suppressed? The name
of the Hero was not given for the simple reason that it was unknown.
Nameless ~hê/rôes epichô/rioi~, who according to some had set up the
great sacrificial altar of Zeus in Olympia, are mentioned by Paus.
5, 13, 8. In some cases the namelessness of a Hero is explained by
the fear of uttering awful names, which esp. in the case of the
spirits of the lower world are very frequently suppressed or
referred to by a circumlocution (cf. Erinyes and spirits of the
dead, _Rh. Mus._ 50, 20, 3): cf. Ant. Lib. 13, p. 214, 19 W. This
was perhaps why Narkissos was called ~hê/rôs sigêlo/s~, Str. 404. On
the other hand, it was a special form of respect, at the sacrifice
to a Hero, to call out his _name_: ~tô=| Artachai/ê| thu/ousi
Aka/nthioi ek theopropi/ou hôs hê/rôï epounoma/zontes to\ ou/noma~,
Hdt. vii, 117. ~Hu/la| thu/ousin kai\ auto\n ex ono/matos eis tri\s
ho hiereu\s phônei= ktl.~ Anton. Lib. 26 fin. Cf. Paus. 8, 26, 7;
~epikalou/menoi to\n Mui/agron~.--No one will miss the obvious
analogy with the worship of the gods. In many places in Greece
nameless (or merely "adjectival") gods were worshipped, ~a/gnôstoi
theoi/~, as at Olympia, Paus. 5, 14, 8, and elsewhere. At Phaleron
~bômoi\ theô=n te onomazome/nôn agnô/stôn kai\ hêrô/ôn~ (sc.,
~agnô/stôn~?) Paus. 1, 1, 4. (~agnô=tes theoi\~ Poll. viii, 119.
Hesych. s.v.: ~bômoi\ anô/numoi~ in Attica D.L. i, 110.)]
[63\4: ~Tlapole/mô| archage/ta|~ Pi., _O._ vii, 78; _P._ v, 56. The
regular custom is mentioned by Ephorus ap. Str. 366: ~oud'
archêge/tas nomisthê=nai; ho/per pa=sin apodi/dotai oikistai=s~.]
[64\4: ~Dêmoklei/dên de\ katastê=sai tê\n apoiki/an _autokra/tora_~.
Official decree about Brea: _CIA._ i, 31 [Hicks and Hill^2, n. 41,
l. 8].]
[65\4: Pi., _P._ v, 87 ff.]
[66\4: Hdt. vi, 38.]
[67\4: D.S. 11, 66, 4.]
[68\4: Hdt. i, 168.]
[69\4: Thuc. v, 11.--Thus in the fourth century at Sikyon Euphron
the leader of the demos has been murdered by some of the other
party, but ~hoi poli=tai autou= hôs a/ndra agatho\n komisa/menoi
e/thapsa/n te en tê=| agora=| kai\ hôs archêge/tên tê=s po/leôs
se/bontai~, Xen., _HG._ 7, 4, 12.]
[70\4: Worship of the law-givers of Tegea as Heroes: Paus. 8, 48, 1.]
[71\4: In the case of Sophokles the "heroizing" had a special
superstitious reason. He had once received Asklepios as a guest into
his house (and established a worship of A.) and was therefore
regarded as especially favoured by heaven and after his death
worshipped as Hero ~Dexi/ôn~: _EM._ 256, 7-13. (In the temple of
Amynos, an Asklepiad daimon, on the west of the Akropolis an
honorific decree dating from the end of the fourth century B.C. has
been discovered, referring to the ~orgeô=nes tou= _Dexi/ônos_~
together with those of Amynos and Asklepios: _Ath. Mitt._ 1896, p.
299.) In this way many mortals who had entertained the gods as
guests were themselves made Heroes, cf. Deneken, _de Theoxen._ c, ii.]
[72\4: In the examples collected in n. 35 above the removal of the
Hero's bones was in each case commanded by the Delphic oracle.
Typical examples of the foundation of an annual festival of a Hero
on {149} the recommendation of an oracle: Hdt. i, 167; Paus. 8, 23,
7; 9, 38, 5.]
[73/4: Plu. _Cim._ 19--his authority is Nausikrates ~ho rhê/tôr~ the
pupil of Isokrates. The god ordered ~mê\ amelei=n Ki/mônos~. Kimon's
spirit was thus expressing its anger at the "neglect" by sending
pestilence and ~gê=s aphori/a~--he wanted a cult.]
[74\4: Appearance at the battle of Marathon, command of the oracle
~tima=n Echetlai=on hê/rôa~, Paus. 1, 32, 5.--Swarm of bees in the
severed head of Onesilos at Amathos; the oracle orders his head to
be buried ~Onêsi/lô| de\ thu/ein hôs hê/rôi ana\ pa=n e/tos~, Hdt.
v, 114.]
[75\4: Before the battle of Plataea: Plu., _Arist._ 11. Before the
occupation of Salamis the oracle ordered Solon ~archêgou\s hê/rôas
_hi/laso_~, Plu. _Sol._ 9.]
[76\4: The Persian Artachaies, of the family of the Achaimenidai,
was given a burial of great pomp after his death, by Xerxes at
Akanthos: ~thu/ousi Aka/nthioi ek theopropi/ou hôs hêrôi
epounoma/zontes to\ ou/noma~, Hdt. vii, 117 (--the ~Artachai/ou
ta/phos~ remained a well-known spot, Ael., _HA._ xiii, 20). It is
hardly likely that the unusual size of the Persian of which Hdt.
speaks was the cause of his being made a Hero by the oracle.]
[77\4: Paus. 6, 9, 6-7. Plu., _Rom._ 28. Oinom. ap. Eus., _PE._ 5,
34, p. 230 C (Vig.). Celsus _c. Xt._ also refers to the miracle,
Or., _Cels._ iii, 33, p. 292 L. Cf. iii, 3, p. 256; iii, 25, p. 280.]
[78\4: Kleomedes ~moi/ra| tôi\ daimoni/a| _die/ptê_ apo\ tê=s
kibôtou=~, Cels. ap. Orig., _Cels._ iii, 33, p. 293 L. Oinom. ap.
Euseb., _PE._ 5, 34, 1, (p. 296 Giff.): ~hoi theoi\ _anêrei/psanto/_
se hô/sper hoi tou= Homê/rou to\n Ganumê/dên~. Thus the gods, acc.
to the popular opinion derided by Oinom., gave Kleomedes
_immortality_, ~athanasi/an e/dôkan~, p. 297 Giff.]
[79\4: We rarely hear of other oracles directing Heroes to be
worshipped. But cf. Xenag. ap. Macr. 5, 18, 30: on the occasion of a
failure of the crops at Sicily ~e/thusan Pediokra/tê| tini\ hê/rôi
prosta/xantos autoi=s tou= ek Palikô=n chrêstêri/ou~.--This Hero is
probably the same as Pediakrates, one of the six ~stratêgoi/~ of the
~egchô/rioi Sikanoi/~ in Sicily who were slain by Herakles and
~me/chri tou= nu=n hêrôïkê=s timê=s tucha/nousin~. D.S. 4, 23, 5:
from Timaeus?]
[80\4: The lines of the oracle about Kleomedes may very well be
ancient (~e/schatos hêrô/ôn ktl.~) simply on the ground that its
assertion had not been fulfilled. If oracles that come true are
rightly regarded as subsequent to the events which they profess to
foresee, then it is only reasonable to regard an oracle which is
proved incorrect by later events as _earlier_ than the events which
contradict its prophecy.]
[81\4: ~hou=tos ga\r ho theo\s peri\ ta\ toiau=ta pa=sin anthrô/pois
pa/trios exêgêtê\s en me/sô| tê=s gê=s epi\ tou= omphalou=
kathê/menos exêgei=tai~, in the words of Plato, _Rp._ 427 C.]
[82\4: ~gi/netai en Delphoi=s hê/rôsi xe/nia, en hoi=s dokei= ho
theo\s epi\ xe/nia kalei=n tou\s hê/rôas~, Sch. Pi. _N._ vii, 68.]
[83\4: Plu., _Arist._ 21.--Grave of the Megarians who had fallen in
the Persian wars, erected in the market of that city: _CIG._ 1051 (=
Sim., _fr._ 107 _PLG._), Paus. 1, 43, 3. We hear nothing of the
Hero-worship of these men, but it is natural to suppose it.--Thus in
Phigaleia in the market place there was a common grave of the
hundred Oresthasians who had died fighting for Phigaleia, ~kai\ hôs
_hê/rôsin_ autoi=s enagi/zousin ana\ pa=n e/tos~, Paus. 8, 41, 1.]
[84\4: Paus. 1, 32, 4: ~se/bontai de\ hoi Marathô/nioi tou/tous,
hoi\ para\ tê\n ma/chên ape/thanon _hê/rôas_ onoma/zontes~. They lay
buried on the field of battle, Paus. 1, 29, 4; 32, 3. Every night
could be heard the neighing {150} of horses and the sound of battle.
Those who attempted to witness the doings of the spirits suffered
for it, Paus. l.c. The sight of the spirits made men blind or killed
them. This is well known of gods--~chalepoi\ de\ theoi\ phai/nesthai
enargô=s~. As to the results of seeing a Hero cf. the story in Hdt.
vi, 117.]
[85\4: Pi., _I._ iv, 26 ff.; cf. _N._ iv, 46 ff.]
[86\4: Hdt. ii, 44, has recourse to the idea that there was a
difference between the god Herakles and the Hero Herakles the son of
Amphitryon: ~kai\ doke/ousi de/ moi hou=toi ortho/tata Hellê/nôn
poie/ein, hoi\ dixa\ Hêra/kleia hidrusa/menoi e/ktêntai kai\ tô=|
me\n hôs athana/tô| Olumpi/ô| de\ epônumi/ên thu/ousi, tô=| de\
hete/rô| hôs hê/rôï enagi/zousi~. Combination of ~thu/ein~ and
~enagi/zein~ in one sacrifice to Herakles, at Sikyon: Paus. 2, 10,
1. Herakles ~hê/rôs theo/s~ Pi., _N._ iii, 22.]
[87\4: Varying worship of the same person as Hero and as god, e.g.
Achilles. He was a god in Epirus for example (called upon as
~A/spetos~, Plu., _Pyr._ 1) in Astypalaia (Cic., _ND._ iii, 45) in
Erythrai (third century ins. _SIG._ 600, 50, 75), etc. As Hero he
was worshipped in Elis where an empty grave was erected to him ~ek
mantei/as~, and where at his annual festival at sunset the women
~ko/ptesthai nomi/zousin~, i.e. lament over him as dead. Paus. 6,
23, 3.]
[88\4: I shall not multiply examples and only note Plu., _M. Virt._,
p. 255 E: ~tê=| Lampsa/kê| pro/teron hêrôïka\s tima\s apodido/ntes,
hu/steron hôs theô=| thu/ein epsêphi/santo~.]
[89\4: In the well-known lines ~hê/keis ô= Lu/ko/orge ktl.~ Hdt.
i, 65.]
[90\4: Thus Eupolis calls the Hero Akademos ~theo/s~, as Sophokles
does the Hero Kolonos, and others do the same, see Nauck on Soph.,
_OC._ 65.]
[91\4: ~hoi hê/rôes kai\ hai hêrôi/des toi=s theoi=s to\n auto\n
e/chousi lo/gon~ (i.e. for dream-interpretation), ~plê\n ho/sa
duna/meôs apolei/pontai~, Artemid. iv, 78.--Paus. 10, 31, 11: the
ancients considered the Eleusinian mysteries as ~tosou=ton
entimo/teron~ than all other religious ceremonies ~ho/sô| kai\
theou\s epi/prosthen hêrô/ôn~.]
[92\4: Machaon's ~mnê=ma~ and ~hiero\n ha/gion~ at Gerenia, Paus. 3,
26, 9. His bones had been brought by Nestor when he came home from
Troy: § 10. Cf. Schol. Marc. and Tz. Lyc. 1048. The first to
sacrifice to him was Glaukos the son of Aipytos: Paus. 4, 3,
9.--Podaleirios. His ~hêrô=|on~ lay at the foot of the ~lo/phos
Dri/on~ by Mt. Garganus 100 stades from the sea, ~rhei= de\ ex
autou= pota/mion pa/nakes pro\s ta\s tô=n thremma/tôn no/sous~, Str.
284. The method of _incubation_ given in the text is described by
Lyc. 1047-55. He also speaks of a river Althainis (so called because
of its medicinal properties, cf. _EM._ 63, 3, from Schol. Lyc.),
which cured disease if one sprinkled oneself with water from it.--?
from Timaeus, cf. Tz. on 1050. (Cf. also the spring by the
Amphiaraion at Oropos: Paus. 1, 34, 4.)]
[93\4: Paus. 2, 38, 6.--The brother of Polemokrates, Alexanor, had a
**heroön at Titane in the territory of Sikyon: Paus. 2, 11, 7; 23,
4; but we hear nothing of sick-cures (though his name would lead us
to suspect such).--Other Asklepiadai: Nikomachos, Gorgasos, Sphyros
(Wide, _Lac. Culte_, 195).]
[94\4: Sanctuary of ~Hê/rôs iatro/s~ near the Theseion: Dem. 19,
249; 18, 129; Apollon., _V. Aesch._, p. 265, 5 f. West. Decree about
melting down silver votive-offerings (third and second century),
_CIA._ ii, 403-4.--Acc. to Usener (_Götternamen_, 149-53) ~Iatro/s~
is to be regarded as the _proper_ name of this Hero (really a
functional "_Sondergott_") and not as an adjectival description of a
nameless Hero (as in ~hê/rôs stratêgo/s, stephanêpho/ros,
klaïkopho/ros~--this last in two different places, like ~hê/rôs
iatro/s~, see above, n. 61). Acc. to {151} his view ~Iatro/s~ was
given the adj. title ~hê/rôs~ to distinguish him from a ~theo\s
Iatro/s~. But this would only be possible if there existed a god who
was not merely an ~iatro/s~ and so called by this title, like
~Apo/llôn, Poseidô=n iatro/s~, but whose _proper name_ was
~Iatro/s~. But there was no such god. Usener (151) infers the
existence of a god ~Iatro/s~ out of the proper name ~Iatroklê=s~.
But this would only be justifiable if there were not a whole host of
proper names compounded with ~-klê=s~, the first part of which is
anything but a god's name (list in Fick, _Griech. Personennamen_^2,
p. 165 ff.).--There seems no real reason for understanding the name
~hê/rôs iatro/s~ differently from the analogous ~hê/. stratêgo/s,
hê/. teichophu/lax~, etc.--There existed besides even ~nu/mphai
iatroi/, peri\ Êlei/an~. Hesych.]
[95\4: _CIA._ ii, 404, distinguishes the Hero referred to by the
decree as the ~hê/rôs iatro\s ho en a/stei~. This clearly implies a
second ~hê/rôs iatro/s~, outside Athens. But the Rhet. Lex. in _AB._
262, 16 f. (cf. Sch. Dem., p. 437, 19-20 Di.), speaks of a ~hê/rôs
iatro/s~ called Aristomachos ~ho/s eta/phê en Marathô=ni para\ to\
Dionu/sion~, who it is clear cannot be the ~hê/rôs iatro\s~ that
Demosthenes meant--for he is ~ho en a/stei~; but the description
applies very well to the Hero Physician worshipped in Attica outside
the ~a/stu~. See L. v. Sybel, _Hermes_, xx, 43.]
[96\4: Cenotaph of Kalchas in Apulia near the heroön of Podaleirios,
Lyc. 1047 ff.--his body was said to be buried in Kolophon:
~No/stoi~; Tz. Lyc. 427; Schol. D.P. 850. ~egkoi/mêsis~ at his
heroön, sleeping on the skin of the sacrificed ram: Str. 284; the
same as, acc. to Lycophron, in the temple of Podaleirios. It almost
looks like a mistake in either Strabo or Lyc. But the ritual may
quite well have been the same in both temples and we find it again
in the dream-oracle of Amphiaraos in Oropos, Paus. 1, 34, 5.--At the
present day the Archangel Michael is worshipped at Monte Sant'
Angelo beneath Mt. Garganus. He appeared there during the fifth
century and in a cave which is perhaps rightly regarded as the
former site of the incubation-oracle of Kalchas: Lenormant, _à
travers l'Apulie_, i, p. 61, Paris, 1883. S. Michael had in other
cases also taken over the duties of the ancient _incubation_ mantic,
and continued them in a Christian form--though the task belonged
more often to SS. Cosmas and Damian--e.g. in the Michaelion in
Constantinople, the ancient ~Sôsthe/nion~: see Malal., pp. 78-9
Bonn.; Soz., _HE._ ii, 3.]
[97\4: Lyc. 799 f. Arist. and Nicand. in Schol. ad loc. Was there a
legend that made Odysseus die there? Lyc. himself, it is true, gives
quite a different story a little later (805 ff.), much to the
amazement of his scholiasts. Perhaps in 799 f. he was thinking, in
spite of the dream oracle, only of a ~keno\n sê=ma~ of Odysseus in
Aetolia (as in the case of Kalchas).]
[98\4: Grave of Prot.: Hdt. ix, 116 ff.; Lyc. 532 ff. ~hiero\n tou=
Prôtesila/ou~ Thuc. viii, 102, 3. Oracle: Philostr., _Her._ 678, p.
146 f. K. It was esp. also an oracle of healing: ib., 147, 30 f. K.]
[99\4: An oracle "_Sarpedonis in Troade_" is mentioned in a cursory
enumeration of oracular sites by Tert., _An._ 46. It is difficult to
imagine how Sarpedon, the Homeric one--no other can be meant
here--whose body had been so ceremoniously brought to Lykia, can
have had an oracle in the Troad. It may be merely a slip of the pen
on Tertullian's part.--At Seleucia in Cilicia there was an oracle of
Apollo Sarpedonios, D.S. 32, 10, 2; Zos. 1, 57. Wesseling on D.S.
ii, p. 519, has already called attention to the more detailed
account in the _Vit. S. Theclae_ of Basilius bishop of Seleucia; see
the extracts given by R. Köhler, _Rhein. Mus._ 14, 472 ff. There the
oracle is described {152} as a dream-oracle of Sarpedon himself who
was consulted at his grave in Seleucia. It is also certain, as
Köhler remarks, that Sarpedon, the son of Europa and brother of
Minos, is meant. (This Cretan Sarpedon appears first in Hesiod and
is quite distinct from the Homeric one: Aristonic. on ~Z~ 199.
Indeed, Homer knows no other brother of Minos except Rhadamanthys:
~X~ 322. In spite of this he was often regarded as the same as the
Homeric Sarpedon who came from Lykia [cf. the name Zrppädoni on the
Obelisk of Xanthos: _Lyc. Inscr._ tab. vii, l. 6]; acc. to
[Apollod.] 3, 1, 3, he lived through three ~geneai/~, cf. Schol. V.,
~Z~ 199: which seems a marvellous feat much in the manner of
Hellanikos. Others made the Cretan Sarp. into the grandfather of the
Lykian: D.S. 5, 79, 3.) The oracle belonged properly to Sarpedon;
Apollo seems merely to have been an intruder here and to have taken
the place of the Hero as he did with Hyakinthos at Amyklai. That
Sarpedon, however, was not therefore quite forgotten is shown by the
Christian notice of him. Perhaps Apollo was regarded as merely the
patron of the oracle whose real guardian was still Sarpedon. It
certainly indicates community of worship when Ap. is there called
~Apo/llôn Sarpêdo/nios~; so too in Tarentum--brought thither from
Sparta and Amyklai--there was a ~ta/phos para\ me/n tisin
Huaki/nthou prosagoreuo/menos, para\ de/ tisin Apo/llônos
Huaki/nthou~ (in which no alteration is necessary), Plb. 8, 30, 2.
In Goityn there was a cult of Atymnos (Solin. 11, 9, p. 73 Mom.),
the beloved of Apollo (or of Sarpedon): he too was worshipped as
Apollo Atymnios (Nonn., _D._ 11, 131; 258; 12, 217).]
[100\4: The inhabitants of Gadeira sacrificed to Men.; Philostr.,
_VA._ 5, 4, p. 167, 10 K. ~to\ Menesthe/ôs _mantei=on_~ on the
Baetis is mentioned by Str., p. 140. How it got there we do not
know.]
[101\4: Str. 546. Autol. came there as a sharer in the expedition of
Herakles against the Amazons and with the Argonauts. A.R. ii,
955-61. Plut., _Luc._ 23.]
[102\4: For Anios see Meineke, _An. Alex._ 16-17; Wentzel in
Pauly-Wissowa _Anios_. Apollo taught him the mantic art and gave him
great ~tima/s~: D.S. 5, 62, 2. He is called ~ma/ntis~ also by Clem.
Al., _Strom._ i, p. 400 P. Perhaps he was also a mantic Hero in the
cult that was paid to him at Delos; in giving a list of the
~dai/monas epichôri/ous~, Clem. Al., _Protr._ ii, p. 35 P., mentions
also ~para\ d' Êlei/ous A/nion~, which Sylburg corrected to ~para\
Dêli/ois~. A priest of Anios ~hiereu\s Ani/ou~ at Delos is given
_CIA._ ii, 985 D 10; E 4, 53.]
[103\4: D.S. 5, 63, 2. There she is identified with Molpadia,
daughter of Staphylos. In that case ~hêmithe/a~ would more probably
be an adjectival title of a Heroine whose real name was unknown,
like the names of the unknown Heroes mentioned above, nn. 60-2. The
daughter of Kyknos of the same name is quite a different person.]
[104\4: Plut., _Agis_, 9, cf. Cic., _Div._ i, 43. At Thalamai we
hear of a dream-oracle of _Ino_ in front of which was a statue of
Pasiphaë: Paus. 3, 26, 1. This probably means, as Welcker, _Kl.
Schr._ iii, 92, says, that the same oracle had once belonged to
Pas., but had then been afterwards dedicated to Ino. (Not of course
that Pasiphaë = Ino, and this is not suggested by W., but merely
that Ino may have taken the place of Pas.) A ~mantei=on tê=s
Pasiphi/lês~ is also mentioned by Apollon., _Mir._ 49: see also
Müller, _FHG._ ii, 288 [see Keller, _Paradoxogr._, p. 55, 15].]
[105\4: Something of the kind seems to be suggested by Pi., _P._
viii, 57: I praise Alkmaion ~gei/tôn ho/ti moi kai\ ktea/nôn phu/lax
emô=n hupa/ntase/ t' io/nti ga=s omphalo\n par' aoi/dimon
manteuma/tôn t' epha/psato suggo/noisi {153} te/chnais~. Those
much-discussed words I can only interpret as follows. Alkmaion had a
~hêrô=|on~ near Pindar's house: he could only be "Guardian of his
possessions" if he were either the guardian spirit of his neighbour
or if Pindar had deposited money for safe keeping in his temple--the
custom is well known, see Büchsenschütz, _Besitz in Cl. Alt._, p.
508 ff. As Pindar was once thinking of going to Delphi "Alk. applied
himself to the prophetic arts traditional in his family"
(~te/chnais~ to be connected with ~epha/ps.~, a construction common
in Pind.): i.e. he made him a revelation in a dream--on what subject
Pindar does not say--as was customary in the family of the
Amythaonidai, though not generally undertaken by Alkmaion (elsewhere
who unlike his brother Amphilochos nowhere seems to have had a
dream-oracle of his own. (It seems to be a mere slip when Clem. Al.,
_Str._ i, p. 400 P. attributes the Oracle in Akarnania to Alk.
instead of Amphil.)]
[106\4: Plu., _Q. Gr._, 40, 300 D.]
[107\4: Thus no herald might approach the heroön of Okridion in
Rhodes, Plu., _Q. Gr._, 27, 297 C. No flute-player might approach,
nor the name of Achilles be mentioned in the heroön of Tenes at
Tenedos, ib., 28, 297 D. How an old grievance of a Hero might be
continued into his after-life as a spirit is shown by an instructive
example given by Hdt. v, 67.]
[108\4: Paus. 9, 38, 5. The fetters were no doubt intended in such
cases to fasten the statue (as the abode of the Hero himself) to the
site of his worship. Thus in Sparta an ~a/galma archai=on~ of
Enyalios was kept in fetters. About this the ~gnô/mê tô=n
Lakedaimoni/ôn~ was that ~ou/pote to\n Enua/lion pheu/gonta
oichê/sesthai/ sphisin enecho/menon tai=s pe/dais~, Paus. 3, 15, 7.
Similar things elsewhere: Lob., _Agl._ 275; cf. again Paus. 8, 41,
6. The striking effect of the statue fastened to the rocks may then
very well have given rise to the (aetiological) legend of the
~pe/tran e/chon ei/dôlon~.]
[109\4: Hdt. vii, 169-70.]
[110\4: Hdt. vii, 134-7.]
[111\4: Sanctity of trees and groves dedicated to a Hero: Ael.,
_VH._ v, 17: Paus. 2, 28, 7; but esp. 8, 24, 7.]
[112\4: The story of the wrath of the Hero of Anagyros is told, with
a few variations in detail, by Jerome ap. Suid. ~Ana/g. dai/môn~ =
Apostol. ix, 79; Dgn., _Prov._ iii, 31 (in cod. Coisl., p. 219 f.
Götting.); cf. Zenob. ii, 55 = Dgn. i, 25. Similar stories of a
~dai/môn Kili/kios, Ai/neios~, are implied but not related by
Macarius, iii, 18 (ii, p. 155 Gött.).]
[113\4: The story in Suid. goes back to Hieron. Rhod. ~peri\
tragô|diopoiô=n~ (_fr._ 4 Hill.), who compared the story with the
theme of the Euripides _Phoenix_.]
[114\4: According to Paus. the ghost was explained to be one of the
companions of Odysseus. Strabo says more particularly Polites, who
was one of these. But a copy of an ancient picture representing the
adventure called the daimon Lykas and made him black and
grim-looking and dressed in a wolf-skin. The last is probably merely
symbolic and represents _full_ wolf-shape such as belonged to the
Athenian Hero Lykos: Harp. ~deka/zôn~. Wolf-shape given to a
death-bringing spirit of the underworld, as often: cf. Roscher,
_Kynanth._ 60-1. This must have been the more ancient form of the
legend and the daimon was only subsequently changed into a Hero.]
[115\4: The story in its general outline recalls esp. the other
Greek legends in which similar rescues occur; we are reminded not
merely of the stories of Perseus and Andromeda or Herakles and
Hesione, but also of the fight of Herakles with Thanatos for the
sake of Alkestis, {154} in Eurip., _Alc._, and of Koroibos' struggle
with the ~Poi/nê~ in Argos. But the story of Euthymos and the Hero
of Temesa agrees even in its details with a story coming from a far
distant locality, Krisa at the foot of Mt. Parnassos, where lived
the monster Lamia, or Sybaris, who was overthrown by Eurybatos--as
it is told in Nikander's ~Heteroiou/mena~, ap. Ant. Lib. viii--and
is even to this day related as a fairy-tale; see B. Schmidt. _Gr.
Märchen_, 142, 246 f. It is unnecessary to suppose imitation of
either legend by the other; both independently reproduce the same
fairy-tale motif, which is in fact very common everywhere. The
monster overcome by the champion is regularly a chthonic being, a
fiend from below: Thanatos, Poine, Lamia (which is the generic name,
~Su/baris~ being apparently the special name of this particular
Lamia) and the ghostly "Hero" of Temesa.]
[116\4: Paus. 6, 6, 7-11, the main source; Str. 255; Ael., _VH._
viii, 18; Plut. Paroem. ii, 31; Suid. ~Eu/thumos~. The "translation"
occurs in Paus. Ael., and Suid. According to Aelian he went to the
River Kaikinos near his old home Locri and disappeared:
~aphanisthê=nai~. (The river-god Kaikinos is regarded as his real
father: Paus. 6, 6, 4.) Perhaps the heroön of Euthymos may have been
near the river. "Heroizing" of Euthymos by a flash of lightning is
confirmed by his statue: Callim., _fr._ 399; Pliny, _NH._ 7, 152;
Schol. Paus. _Hermes_, 29, 148. Inscription on base of statue of E.
at Olympia: _Arch. Zeit._, 1878, p. 82.]
[117\4: Paus. 6, 11, 2-9; D. Chr. 31, 340 M. [i, 247 Arn.]. Cf.
Oinom. ap. Eus. _PE._ 5, 34, p. 231-2 V. Oinomaos 232 C refers to a
similar legend of the _pentathlos_ Euthykles and his statue, at
Locri.]
[118\4: The story of Mitys (or Bitys) in Argos is known from Arist.
_Po._ 9, p. 1452a, 7 ff. (_Mirab._ 156). A few more such stories are
recorded in Wyttenbach, Plu. _M._ vii, p. 316 (Oxon.); cf. also
Theoc. 23. Just as in the story of Theagenes, the statue was
punished as responsible for the murder, so, too, the attribution of
a fetichistic personality to inanimate objects lies at the bottom of
the ancient customs observed in the Athenian murder laws, by which
judgment was given in the Prytaneion ~peri\ tô=n apsu/chôn tô=n
empeso/ntôn tini\ kai\ apokteina/ntôn~: Poll. viii, 120, after Dem.
23, 76, cf. Arist. ~Athp.~ 57, 4. Such judgments cannot originally
have been merely symbolical in meaning.]
[119\4: Luc., _D. Conc._ 12; Paus. 6, 11, 9.]
[120\4: Luc., l.c. On Polydamas see Paus. 6, 5, and among many
others Eus. _Chron. Olympionic._, Ol. 93, p. 204 Sch.]
[121\4: His victory was won in Ol. 6 (see also Eus. _Chron._, Ol. 6,
p. 196); the statue erected to him only in Ol. 80; Paus. 7, 17, 6.]
[122\4: Paus. 7, 17, 13-14.]
[123\4: Plu., _Thes._ 35.]
[124\4: Paus. 1, 15, 3; 32, 5.]
[125\4: Hdt. viii, 38-9.]
[126\4: Hdt. viii, 64. The difference should be noted: ~_eu/xasthai_
toi=si theoi=si kai\ _epikale/sasthai_ tou\s Aiaki/das
_summa/chous_~. So, too, we are told in Hdt. v, 75, that both the
Tyndaridai ~epi/klêtoi ei/ponto~ the Spartans into the field. (The
Aeginetans sent the Aiakidai to the help of the Thebans, but as they
proved unprofitable the Thebans ~tou\s Aiaki/das apedi/dosan~. Hdt.
v, 80).]
[127\4: Plu., _Them._ 15.]
[128\4: Hdt. viii, 121.]
[129\4: Kychreus: Paus. 1, 36, 1. The Hero himself appeared as a
snake, as also e.g. Sosipolis in Elis before the battle, Paus. 6,
20, 4-5; Erichthonios, Paus. 1, 24, 7: for ~hoi palaioi\ ma/lista
tô=n zô/ôn to\n dra/konta toi=s hê/rôsi sunô|kei/ôsan~, Plu.,
_Cleom._ 39. The temple snake, {155} the ~Kuchrei/dês o/phis~ kept
at Eleusis, was undoubtedly the Hero himself; though acc. to the
rationalizing account in Str. 393-4 it had merely been reared by
Kychreus.]
[130\4: Themistokles in Hdt. viii, 109.]
[131\4: Xen., _Cyn._ i, 17.]
[132\4: The Dioscuri helped the Spartans in war, Hdt. v, 75; the
Locrian Aias the Locrians in Italy: Paus. 3, 19, 12-13; Conon 18
(artistically elaborated and no longer naive legend but both taken
from the same source).]
[133\4: Hdt. vi, 61 (hence Paus. 3, 7, 7); grave of Helen at
Therapne, Paus. 3, 19, 8.]
[134\4: Hdt. vi, 69. Thus, too, the Theagenes mentioned above was
regarded in Thasos not as the son of Timosthenes, ~tou= Theage/nous
de\ tê=| mêtri\ Hêrakle/ous suggene/sthai pha/sma eoiko\s
Timosthe/nei~, Paus. 6, 11, 2.--Everyone will be reminded, too, of
the fable of Zeus and Alkmene. But it should be noticed how near
such stories as that so naively told by Herod. approach the risky
novel-plot in which some profane mortal visits in disguise an
unsuspecting woman and plays the part of a god or spirit-lover. That
in Greece, too, such stories were current we may perhaps deduce from
Eur., _Ion_, 1530 ff. Ov., _M._ iii, 281; says outright: multi
nomine divorum thalamos iniere pudicos. An adventure of this sort is
told by the writer of [Aeschines] _Ep._ 10, and he is able to
produce two similar cases which he certainly has not invented
himself (8-9).--In more recent times both western and Oriental
nations have delighted in telling such stories; a typical Oriental
example is the story of "the Weaver as Vishnu" in the Panchatantra
(see Benfey, _Pantsch._ i, § 56); in the West there is the story of
Boccaccio dealing with Alberto of Imola as the angel Gabriel,
_Decam._ iv, 2--Very suspicious, too, seems the account of a miracle
that occurred in Epidauros: a barren woman comes to the temple of
Asklepios to seek advice by ~egkoi/mêsis~. A big snake approaches
her and she has a child. ~Eph. Arch.~ 1885, pp. 21-2, l. 129 ff.]
[135\4: ~ek tou= hêrôi/ou tou= para\ tê=|si thu/rê|si **tê=|si
aulei/ê|si hidrume/nou~, Hdt. vi, 69.]
[136\4: Hero ~epi\ prothu/rô|~, Callim., _Ep._ 26; a Hero ~pro\
pu/lais, pro\ do/moisin~, late epigram from Thrace, _Epigr. Gr._
841; ~hê/rôas plêsi/on tê=s tou= ido/ntos oiki/as hidrume/nous~,
Artemid. iv, 79, p. 248, 9 H. This, too, is how Pindar's words about
the Hero Alkmaion as his ~gei/tôn~ are to be understood: _Pyth._
viii, 57, see above, n. 105. An Aesopian fable dealing with the
relations of a man with his neighbour-Hero begins ~hê/rôa/ tis epi\
tê=s oiki/as e/chôn tou/tô| polutelô=s e/thuen~, 161 Halm.; cf. also
Babr. 63.--A similar idea is at work when a son put up a monument to
his father at the doorway of his house--see the fine lines of Eur.,
_Hel._ 1165 ff.]
[137\4: ~Ku/prô| e/ntha Teu=kros _apa/rchei_~. Aias ~_e/chei_~
Salamis and Achilles his island in the Pontus; ~The/tis de\
_kratei=_ Phthi/a|~, and so, too, Neoptolemos in Epirus: Pi., _N._
iv, 46-51; ~_amphe/pei_~ used of a Hero, _P._ ix, 70; ~toi=s theoi=s
kai\ hê/rôsi toi=s _kate/chousi_ tê\n po/lin kai\ tê\n chô/ran tê\n
Athênai/ôn~: Dem. 18, 184.]
[138\4: Cf. Alabandus whom the inhabitants of Alabanda sanctius
colunt quam quemquam nobilium deorum: Cic., _ND._ iii, 50 (in
connexion with an anecdote relating to the fourth century)--Tenem,
qui apud Tenedios sanctissimus deus habetur, Cic., _V._ ii, 1, 49.]
{{156}}
CHAPTER V
THE CULT OF SOULS
Greek civilization as we see it reflected in the Homeric poems
strikes us as so variously developed, and yet so complete in itself,
that if we had no further sources of information, we should
naturally suppose that the characteristic culture of the Greeks
there reached the highest point attainable under the conditions set
by national character and external circumstance. In reality the
Homeric poems stand on the border line between an older development
that has come to complete maturity and a new, and in many ways
differently constituted, order of things. The poems themselves offer
an idealized picture of a past that was on the point of disappearing
entirely. The profound upheavals of the following centuries can be
measured by their final results; we can guess the underlying forces
from a study of the individual symptoms. But the fact remains that
in the very imperfect state of our information about this period of
transformation, we can do little more than recognize the existence
of all the conditions necessary for a complete reorganization of
Greek life. We can see how the once less-important races in Greece
now come into the foreground of history; how they set up new
kingdoms by the right of conquest on the ruins of the old, and bring
into prominence their own special ways of thinking. Colonization
over a wide area meant the expansion of Greek life; while the
colonies themselves, as is so often the case, traversed all the
stages of development at a much faster rate. Commerce and industry
developed, calling forth and satisfying new demands. New elements of
the population came to the fore, governments began to fall and the
old rule of the kings gave way to Aristocracy, Tyranny, Democracy.
In friendly and (in the West especially) hostile relationship the
Greeks came into contact more than formerly with foreign peoples in
every stage of civilization who influenced them in many directions.
All these great movements must have produced many fresh currents in
intellectual life too. And in fact the attempt to get free from
tradition, from the long-standing culture that seemed, when
reflected in the Homeric poems, so permanent and {157} complete in
itself, is seen most clearly in the sphere of poetry. The poets
threw off the tyranny of the epic convention. They ceased to obey
its formal verse-rhythm. And with the freedom thus gained from its
vocabulary of stock words, phrases, and images, it was inevitable
that the point of view also should change and gain in width. The
poet no longer turns his gaze away from his own time and his own
person. He himself becomes the central figure of his poetry, and to
express the ferment of his own emotions he invents for himself the
most natural rhythm, in close alliance with music which now becomes
an important and independent element in Greek life. It is as though
the Greeks had just discovered the full extent of their own
capacities and dared to make free use of them. In every branch of
the plastic arts the hand of the artist wins in the course of the
centuries an ever greater capacity to give visible shape to the
imagined world of beauty. Even the ruins of that world reveal to us
more plainly and impressively (because less mixed with conscious
reflexion) than any literary achievement, the thing that is of
permanent value in Greek art.
It was impossible that religion, alone unaffected by the general
atmosphere of change, should remain unaltered in the old paths. But
here, even more than in other directions, we must admit that the
inward reality of the change remains hidden from us. We can see
indeed many external alterations, but of the directing spirit which
called them forth we hardly catch more than a glimpse. It is easy,
by comparing the later condition of religion with the Homeric, to
see how enormously the _objects_ of religious worship have
multiplied. We can see how much more sumptuous and elaborate
ceremonial has become and observe the development in beauty and
variety, in conjunction with the fine arts, of the great religious
festivals of the different cities and peoples of Greece. Temples and
sculpture bear unmistakable witness to the increased power and
importance of religion. That an inward and far-reaching change had
come over religious thought and belief might have been already
guessed from the fame and importance which belonged to the oracle at
Delphi, now coming into real power; and from the many new
developments in Greek religious life taking their origin from this
spiritual centre. At this time there grew up, under the influence of
a deepening moral sense, that new interpretation of religion that we
meet with in its completed form in Aeschylus and Pindar. The age was
decidedly more "religious-minded" than that in which Homer lived. It
is as though the Greeks then went through a period such as {158}
most civilized nations go through at some time or other, and such as
the Greeks themselves were to repeat more than once in after
centuries--a period in which the mind after it has at least half
succeeded in winning its freedom from disquieting and oppressive
beliefs in invisible powers shrinks back once more. Under the
influence of adversity it feels the need of some comforting
illusions behind which it may take shelter and be relieved in part
of the burden of responsibility.
The obscurity of this period of growth hides also from our sight the
origin and development of beliefs about the soul very different from
the Homeric. The results of the process are however visible enough
and we can still discern how a regular cult of the disembodied soul
and eventually a belief in immortality fully worthy of the name were
being built up at this time. These things are the result of
phenomena which partly represent the re-emergence of elements in
religious life which had been submerged in the previous period, and
partly the entry of fresh forces which in conjunction with the
resuscitated old give rise between them to a third and new creation.
I
CULT OF THE CHTHONIC DEITIES
The chief new feature revealing itself to comparative study in the
development of religion in the post-Homeric period is the worship of
_chthonic_ deities, that is, of deities dwelling in the interior of
the earth. And yet it is an undoubted fact that these divinities are
among the oldest possessions of Greek religious faith. Indeed, bound
as they are to the soil of the country, they are the true local
deities, the real gods of home and country. They are also not
unknown to Homer; but epic poetry had transferred them, divested of
all local limitation, to a distant subterranean region, inaccessible
to living men, beyond the limits of Okeanos. There Aïdes and the
terrible Persephoneia rule as guardians of the dead. From that
distant and unapproachable place they can have no influence upon the
life and doings of men on earth. Religious cult, too, only knows
these deities in connexion with particular localities and particular
groups of worshippers. Each of these worships the deities of the
underworld as denizens of their soil and their countryside alone.
They are untroubled by any considerations of a general and uniform
kingdom of the gods such as the epic had set up; nor are they
disturbed by similar and conflicting claims made by neighbouring
{159} communities. And only in these local cults are the gods of the
lower world seen in their true nature as they were conceived by the
faith of their worshippers. They are the gods of a settled,
agricultural, inland population. Dwelling beneath the soil they
guarantee two things to their worshippers: they bless the
cultivation of the ground and ensure the increase of the fruits of
the soil to the living; they receive the souls of the dead into
their underworld.[1\5] In certain places they also send up from the
spirit-world revelations of future events.
The most exalted name we met with among these dwellers below the
earth is that of Zeus Chthonios. This is at once the most general
and the most exclusive designation of the god of the lower world;
for the name "Zeus" had in many local cults thus preserved the
generalized meaning of "god" in combination with a particularizing
adjective. The Iliad also once speaks of "Zeus of the lower world";
though by this is meant none other than the ruler of the distant
realm of the dead, Hades. Hades too, in the Hesiodic Theogony is
once called "Zeus the Chthonian".[2\5] But the agricultural poem of
Hesiod bids the Boeotian countryman, when preparing his fields for
sowing, pray for a blessing to the Chthonic Zeus. Zeus Chthonios was
also sacrificed to in Mykonos for the "fruits of the earth".[3\5]
But, more frequently than under this most general and exalted
title,[4\5] we meet with the god of the living and the dead under
various disguises. The gods of the underworld were generally
referred to by affectionate or cajoling nicknames that laid stress
on the lofty or beneficent character of their rule and threw a veil
over the darkest side of their nature with conciliatory
euphemism.[5\5] Thus Hades had many flattering titles and special
names.[6\5] So, too, in many places Zeus of the underworld was
worshipped as Zeus Eubouleus or Bouleus,[7\5] at other places,
especially Hermione, as Klymenos.[8\5] Zeus Amphiaraos, Zeus
Trophonios we have dealt with already in their capacity of Heroes,
but they are really nothing else but such earth deities with
honourable titles, who have been deprived to some extent of their
full status as gods[9\5] and have on that account developed all the
more strongly the oracular side of their powers. Hades, the ruler of
that distant kingdom of darkness, is one of this class of
manifestations of Zeus Chthonios that vary in name according to the
different localities of their worship. The king of the shadows in
Erebos as he appears in Homer has no altars or sacrifices made to
him[10\5]; but these things belong to him as the local god of
particular places. In the Peloponnese there were local centres {160}
of his worship in Elis and Triphylia,[11\5] sites of a very ancient
civilization; and it is probable enough that tribes and clans having
their origin there contributed by their wanderings to the spread of
their native cult of the chthonic deity in other Greek countries as
well.[12\5] Hades, too, was for his Peloponnesian worshippers a god
of the fertility of the earth just as much as a god of the
dead.[13\5] And in the same way he was the lord of the Souls as
well, in those places where "in fear of the name of Hades"[14\5] he
was called, in honour of his beneficent powers, Plouton, Plouteus,
or Zeus Plouteus.
The welfare of the living and the dead was also the concern of the
female deity of the underworld called by the name of the earth
itself Ge or Gaia. At the places where she was worshipped she was
regarded as one who brought fruitfulness to the fields, but she held
sway over the souls of the dead as well, in conjunction with whom
prayers and sacrifice were offered to her.[15\5] Her temples
remained in honour, especially at Athens and at the primeval centre
of ancient worship of the gods, Olympia.[16\5] But her personality
had never been quite reduced to definite and intelligible outline
from the enormous vagueness natural to primitive deities.
Earth-goddesses of more recent and intelligible form had supplanted
her. She retained longest her mantic powers which she exercised from
beneath the earth, the abode of spirits and souls, at ancient
oracular sites--though even here she often had to give way to
oracular gods of another description, such as Zeus and Apollo. A
poet indeed mentions her once side by side with the great ruler of
the lower world,[17\5] but in actual worship she was seldom found
among the groups of male and female deities of chthonic nature such
as were worshipped together at many places. Above all, at Hermione
there flourished from primitive times a solemn cult of the
lower-world Demeter in conjunction with the lower-world Zeus, under
the name of Klymenos, and with Kore.[18\5] At other places Plouton
and these two goddesses were worshipped together, or Zeus Eubouleus
and the same two, etc.[19\5] The names of the underworld god vary
indefinitely, but the names of Demeter and her divine daughter
appear every time unchanged. Either alone or together, and
worshipped in connexion with other related deities, these two
goddesses have by far the most important place in the cult of the
underworld. The fame and widespread popularity of their cult in all
Greek cities of the mother-country and in the colonies proves more
than anything else that since Homeric times a change must have taken
place in the sphere of religious emotion and service of the gods.
{161}
Homer gives no hint of the character or importance of the later cult
of Demeter and Persephone. For him Persephone is simply the grim
unapproachable Queen of the dead, Demeter invariably (and solely) a
goddess of the fertility of crops[20\5]; she stands apart indeed
from the rest of the Olympians, but no reference to a close
association with her daughter is ever made.[21\5] Now, however, both
goddesses appear in various and changing activity, but always
closely associated, and it seems as if they had come to share some
of their previously distinct characteristics. Both are now chthonic
deities who together have in their protection the growth of the
crops and the care of the souls of the dead. How in detail the
change came about we can no longer discover. It may be that, in the
times of the great migrations, from various centres of the worship
of the two goddesses, such as had existed from great antiquity in
the Peloponnese especially,[22\5] there issued forth this faith that
differed so essentially from the Homeric-Ionic view of things. It
must have spread just as in later times the special variety of the
cult of the closely associated goddesses that was practised in
Eleusis was widely propagated by regular missions. It also seems
that Demeter, in whose name there was early a tendency to recognize
a second "Mother Earth," in many places took the place of Gaia in
religious cult, and thereby entered into closer connexion with the
realm of the souls below the earth.
§ 2
As the numbers of the underworld beings increased, and their cult
grew and expanded, these divinities began to have a very different
meaning for the living from what they once had for the Greeks of the
Homeric age. The upper and the lower worlds are drawn closer to each
other; the world of the living borders upon that world after death
over which the chthonic gods hold sway. The ancient belief that the
earth-caverns of their own land, on which men dwelt and worked, were
the near and accessible abode of divinity, now reappeared here and
there, and was no longer completely awed into silence by the poetic
lustre of the all-embracing divine world of Olympos. We have spoken
in a previous chapter of Amphiaraos at Thebes, Trophonios in the
Lebadean cave, and Zeus in the cave on Mt. Ida; and again of that
Zeus who was seen enthroned by those who descended into a cave in
Epirus. These are all vestiges of the same belief which originally
underlay all local cults of underworld deities. The realm of {162}
chthonic gods, of spirits and departed souls, seemed to be close at
hand. _Ploutonia_, i.e. direct inlets to the underworld, existed at
many places,[23\5] as also did _Psychopompeia_, clefts in the rock
through which the souls can pass out into the upper world. In the
middle of the city of Athens, in a natural chasm on the Areiopagos,
underworld beings were reputed to have their home.[24\5] The most
striking denial of the separation between the living and the
underworld, such as was demanded by Homeric theology, was at
Hermione. Here, behind the temple of Chthonia lay a sacred precinct
of Plouton or Klymenos with a chasm in the ground through which
Herakles had once brought up Kerberos to the earth--and an
"Acherusian Lake".[25\5] So near did the spirit world seem here,
that the people of Hermione did not give their dead the usual coin
to pay the fare of Charon, the ferryman of the dead:[26\5] for
_them_, in whose own country lay the river Acheron, no tract of
water lay between the land of the living and the dead.
More important than these cases of contact between the dark
underworld and the world of the living--for the localization of the
underworld still remained for the most part matter of fancy--is the
fact that the creatures of that world are again drawing closer to
the senses of men. The thoughts of men turn more frequently to the
other world at so many festivals and anniversaries; the gods who
rule below desire and repay the veneration of mankind, both of the
individual and the city. And in the train of the chthonic gods the
souls of the dead, always closely bound to them, receive a cult
which in many particulars goes beyond anything customary in the
Homeric Age.
II
FUNERAL CEREMONIES AND WORSHIP OF THE DEAD
The first duty that the survivors owe to their dead is to bury the
body in the customary manner. This age takes the matter more
seriously than the Homeric people had done. Whereas in Homer denial
of burial to enemies fallen in war is often mentioned, it is now
regarded as a religious duty that is seldom neglected to give back
the bodies of the fallen foe for burial. To deny the honour of
burial to members of one's own city is an outrage of the most
extreme kind; everyone knows what terrible vengeance for such a
neglect of duty was taken, by the excited populace at Athens, on the
generals after Arginousai. Nothing can release a son from the duty
of burying his father and offering him the regular gifts at his
{163} grave.[27\5] And if the relations, in spite of everything,
neglect their task the law at Athens requires the Demarch to see to
the burial of his fellow demesman.[28\5] Religious requirements,
however, go beyond the law. At the solemn agricultural festival of
Demeter the Bouzyges at Athens invoked a curse on all who should
leave a corpse unburied.[29\5] This matter, which the chthonic
deities take under their protection, is no mere sanitary police
regulation. It is not any such consideration, but solely the
"unwritten laws" of religion which are obeyed by Antigone when she
covers the dead body of her brother with a little dust: even such
symbolical burial is enough to avert the "abomination" (~a/gos~).
Motives of pure piety may have played their part, but the really
fundamental idea underlying all such practices was the one already
met with in the Iliad:[30\5] that the soul of the unburied person
can find no rest in the hereafter. The ghost haunts the
neighbourhood, its rage afflicts the land in which it is detained
against its will; and the withholding of burial "is worse for the
**withholder than for him to whom burial is refused".[31\5]
Condemned criminals, indeed, are thrown by the state, unburied, into
a pit;[32\5] the sacrilegious and traitors to their country are
denied burial in the ground of that country.[33\5] This is a
formidable punishment, for even though the outlaw is buried in a
foreign country,[34\5] his soul cannot be permanently tended there.
Only the family of the dead in their own home can give their
departed kinsman the honour due to him in the cult of the souls, and
only they at the spot where his remains lie buried.[35\5]
What we know of the details of the funeral ceremonies, differs very
little in essence from what had survived into the Homeric age as
customs no longer fully explained by contemporary belief. The new
features that we meet with may also, for the most part, be very
primitive usage restored to currency. Some of the particular details
make the solemnity of the act more apparent.
After the eyes and mouth have been closed by the next of kin the
body is washed and anointed by women of the family, and clothed in
clean garments. It is then laid out upon a bier in the interior of
the house for the ceremonial lying-in-state. In Athens marjoram was
strewn under the body, for superstitious reasons,[36\5] and also
four broken-off vine branches; in the grave, also, the corpse lay on
vine branches.[37\5] Underneath the bier were placed ointment
vessels of the peculiar slim shape that the graves have restored to
us again in such numbers. At the door of the room, for the benefit
of those leaving the house who had incurred religious defilement by
coming in contact {164} with the corpse, was placed a bowl full of
pure water brought in from another house.[38\5] Cypress branches
fixed upon the house door outside warned the scrupulous that a
corpse was in the house.[39\5] The head of the dead person was
generally decked with garlands and fillets, in a manner unknown to
the Homeric age, as a sign, it appears, of respect for the higher
sanctity of the departed.[40\5]
The lying-in-state of the dead, lasting the whole of one day, was
certainly not intended originally to serve the purpose of a public
"notification of death", such as later writers attribute to
it.[41\5] The funeral dirge was sung at the bier of the dead man,
and to give opportunity for this ceremony was its real purpose. The
habit of the old Attic government of the Eupatridai had increased
the pomp of funeral ceremonies in every direction, and had
encouraged an extravagant cult of the souls of the departed. Solon's
legislation had to restrain and limit such exaggeration in many
ways, and in particular, the tendency to increase unduly the
lamentation sung over the dead body required to be kept within
bounds. Only the women of the immediate family of the dead might
take part in it, for to them alone the cult of the departed belonged
as a duty.[42\5] The violent expression of grief, the tearing of the
cheeks, beating the breast and head, was forbidden,[43\5] as also
was the singing of "poems",[44\5] i.e. in all probability regular
funeral dirges specially written for the purpose such as Homer made
the women sing round Hektor's bier. To extend the subject of the
funeral dirge to apply to others beside the person then being buried
had to be made absolutely illegal.[45\5] This prohibition must also
have been applied already to the gathering at the graveside. But to
sacrifice animals before the procession to the grave was a very
ancient custom, and it seems as if Solon **forbade this too.[46\5]
In other states, also, legislation was necessary to put a curb on
the tendency to overdo the violence of the expressions of grief for
the dead[47\5] which were common in the antiquity of the Greeks as
among many of the "uncivilized" tribes who carry them to the point
of exhaustion. It was not simple piety or natural human grief (never
particularly given to violent or excessive demonstration) that
caused these things. It was rather the ancient belief that the soul
of the dead was still invisibly present, and would be pleased at the
most violent expressions of grief for its loss.[48\5] The dirge,
carried to this extreme, belongs in fact to the _cult_ of the
departed spirit. The restraints placed upon the traditional
lamentation may in their turn--in so far as they were effective--
have been derived not from considerations of good {165} sense (which
rarely have much influence in such matters) but from religious or
superstitious reasons.[49\5]
The lying-in-state of the body seems invariably to have lasted for
one day only.[50\5] In the early morning of the third day[51\5]
after death the corpse, together with the bier on which it lay, was
borne out of the house. Legislation was in some places necessary to
check excessive ostentation at the funeral procession.[52\5] What
pomp and ceremony was customary in the time of the old aristocratic
rule at this part of the cult of the dead, we may gather (if it
corresponded at all to reality) from the picture of a funeral
procession represented on a very archaic "Dipylon vase".[53\5] There
the body is carried on high on a wagon drawn by two horses: men
carrying swords surround it, and a whole company of women, making
lamentation and beating their heads, follow the procession. At
Athens the attendance in the procession was confined, in the case of
women at least, to those of the immediate kinsfolk (for three
generations). The men, who had their place in front of the women
seem to have been admitted without such restriction.[54\5] The
admission of hired companies of Karian women and men, singing the
national dirges, seems at Athens not to have been forbidden.[55\5]
At Keos and elsewhere, the laws ordered processions to the grave to
be conducted in silence.[56\5] On the whole, the discipline of
respectable city life reduced the "excessive and barbaric",[57\5]
which must once have been the rule in the display of mourning, to a
discreet symbolism.
On the details of the burial procedure our information is
incomplete. Occasional expressions used by Greek authors allow us to
conclude--and this is confirmed by the excavation of graves in Greek
countries--that besides the custom, exclusively prevailing in
Homeric times, of cremation, the more ancient practice of burying
the body unburnt was still kept up.[58\5] The body was not intended
to be completely destroyed. Out of the ashes of the funeral pyre the
son carefully gathers the remains of his father's bones[59\5] in
order to bury them, enclosed in an urn or a box. If on the other
hand the body remains unburnt, it is either enclosed in a coffin
made of baked clay, or wood[60\5]--a custom clearly betraying its
foreign origin, or else--and this must have been certainly the older
and more purely native Greek usage--it is let down into the earth
without a coffin, and laid upon a bed of leaves;[61\5] at other
times, if the nature of the ground allows, it may rest unburied in a
rock-chamber, upon a bed of stonework.[62\5]
The soul, though now set free, keeps up some connexion with the body
it once inhabited. It is for its use and pleasure {166} that an
ample provision of household implements and vessels is laid beside
the corpse (though no longer the whole of the dead man's possessions
as once was usual); and graves since opened have restored such
things in large numbers to our gaze.[63\5] But the Greeks never
seriously believed that such a phantasmal existence could be
prolonged to eternity. Elaborate expedients for the perpetual
preservation of the corpse (by embalmment and other means, such as
were employed in the case of bodies buried in the Mycenæan
shaft-graves)[64\5] were unknown in these later times--except as a
peculiar archaism in the burial of Spartan kings.
§ 2
Once the body is buried, the soul of the dead enters the invisible
company of the "Better and Superior".[65\5] This belief, which
Aristotle regarded as of primeval antiquity in Greece, emerges very
clearly in the cult-observance of these post-Homeric centuries from
the obscurity which the Homeric age had imposed upon it. The soul of
the dead has its special cult-group composed naturally enough of the
descendants and family of the dead, and of them only. There even
survived a dim memory of the time when the body of the dead was
buried inside the house, which thus became the immediate centre of
his cult.[66\5] That must quite certainly have been during an age
which knew little or nothing of the almost painful sensitiveness to
the idea of ritual "purification" such as prevailed in later times.
At least, we have no reason for supposing that the Greeks (like many
so-called "savage" peoples among whom the custom prevails of burying
the corpse within the dead man's own hut) deserted the house that
had now become haunted, and left it to the undisturbed possession of
the ghost of the dead man buried there.[67\5] To bury the dead
within the walls of the city, at least, was **considered
unobjectionable in later times by certain Dorian states.[68\5] Even
where religious scruples and the practical convenience of city life
combined to fix the place for burials outside the city walls,
families kept their graves together often in a single extensive plot
with a wall built round it.[69\5] Where a country estate belonged to
a family, this generally also included the graves of its
ancestors.[70\5]
Wherever it was situated, the grave was holy, as being the place
where later generations tended and worshipped the souls of departed
members of their family. Grave columns indicated the holiness of the
spot;[71\5] trees and sometimes a complete {167} grove surrounded
the grave, as they did so often the altars and temples of the
gods.[72\5] These were intended to serve as pleasant retreats for
the souls of the beloved dead.[73\5]
Sacrificial offerings began for the most part at the actual time of
the funeral. The custom of pouring libations of wine, oil, and honey
at the grave was probably in general use.[74\5] Even the sacrifice
of animals, such as was made at the funeral pyre of Patroklos and
even of Achilles, cannot have been unusual at an earlier period.
Solon expressly forbade the sacrifice of an ox at the grave.[75\5]
At Keos, permission is just as expressly given for a "preliminary
sacrifice to be offered at the funeral in accordance with ancestral
custom".[76\5] When the funeral ceremony is over, the members of the
family, after a solemn rite of religious purification,[77\5] put on
garlands (they had previously avoided this[78\5]) and begin the
funeral feast.[79\5] This also was a part of the cult of the dead.
The soul of the dead man was regarded as being present--even as
playing the part of host.[80\5] It was awe felt for the invisible
presence that originally inspired the custom of speaking only praise
of the dead at the funeral feast.[81\5] This feast was an
entertainment given in the house of the dead man to the surviving
members of his family. The dead man had a meal to himself alone,
which was offered at the grave[82\5] on the third and on the ninth
day after the funeral.[83\5] On the ninth day it appears that
ancient usage brought the period of mourning to an end.[84\5] Where
it was extended to a longer period the earlier series of offerings
to the dead was prolonged proportionally. Sparta had a period of
mourning lasting eleven days.[85\5] At Athens, in addition to the
sacrifice on the third and ninth days, another funeral feast which
might be repeated several times,[86\5] was held on the thirteenth
day.[87\5]
Even after the ceremonies attached to the funeral itself were at
last over, the relations of the dead were by no means released from
the duty of tending not merely the grave, but the soul of the
deceased member of their family. In particular the son and heir had
no more sacred duty to perform than the offering of "the customary
things" (~ta\ no/mima~) to the soul of his father. These consisted
above all of libations to be made to the dead on certain fixed and
recurrent festivals. On the 30th of the month there was a
traditional feast of the dead.[88\5] Besides this, every year at the
"Genesia", when the birthday of the dead came round, the occasion
was regularly celebrated with sacrifice.[89\5] The day on which he
first entered this life is still of importance to the psyche of the
dead man. It is plain that no impassable gulf was fixed between life
and {168} death: it almost seems as though life went on quite
uninterrupted by death.
Besides these variable feasts of the Genesia, celebrated as they
occurred by the individual families, there was at Athens a festival,
also called the Genesia, at which the whole citizen body did honour
to the souls of their dead relatives on the 5th Boëdromion.[90\5] We
hear also of the Nemesia as a feast of the dead in Athens[91\5]
(probably intended for the averting of the anger of the dead--always
a subject of apprehension), and of various festivals of the dead in
other Greek States.[92\5] At Athens the chief festival of all the
dead occurred at the close of the Dionysiac feast of the
Anthesteria, in the spring, of which it formed the concluding day.
This was the time when the dead swarmed up into the world of the
living, as they did in Rome on the days when the "mundus patet", and
so still in the belief of our own (German) country people at
"Twelfth-tide". The days belonged to the souls (and their master
Dionysos): they were days of "uncleanness"[93\5] unsuited to the
business of city life. The temples of the gods were closed during
that period.[94\5] As protection against the ghosts invisibly
present, the citizens employed various old and tried precautionary
measures; they chewed hawthorn leaves on their morning walk, and
smeared their doorposts with pitch. In this way the ghosts were kept
at arms length.[95\5] Each family made offering to its own dead, and
the offerings they made have remained for the most part the
appropriate gifts of the dead on their feast-days in many lands down
to modern times. A special offering was made to the dead[96\5] on
the last day of the feast, the Chytrai, which was sacred to none of
the Olympians, but to Hermes the leader of the dead. To this
god--but "for the dead"--were offered cooked vegetables and seeds in
pots (which gave their name to this day of the festival).[97\5] It
seems probable that as a sacrifice to the dead honey-cakes were
thrown into a cleft of the earth in the Temne of Ge Olympia.[98\5]
Indoors, too, the swarming ghosts entered and were entertained. They
were not, however, permanently welcome guests, and finally they were
driven out of the house in a manner parallelled at the close of
festivals of the dead among many nations of old and modern
times.[99\5] "Begone ye Keres, Anthesteria is over" were the words
used in sending away the souls, and it is remarkable that in this
formula they were given their primeval name--a name whose original
sense had been forgotten by Homer, but not by the language of the
common people of Attica.[100\5]
Individuals may have found still further opportunities of {169}
bringing gifts to their own dead and showing their reverence for
them. The cult paid by the family to the spirits of their ancestors
is hardly distinguished, except by the greater limitation of the
circle of worshippers, from the worship of underworld deities and
Heroes. In the case of the souls, however, nature itself united the
sacrificers and worshippers (and no one else) with the object of
their devotion. If we wish to form some idea of the way in which
(under the influence of a civilization that tended to reduce all
primitive grandeur to mere idyll) the worship of the dead altered
its character in the direction of piety and intimacy--we need only
look at the pictures representing such worship (though rarely before
the fourth century) on the oilflasks which were used at funerals in
Attica and then laid by the side of the dead in the grave. These
slight sketches breathe a spirit of simple kindliness; we see the
mourners decking the grave monument with wreaths and ribbons;
worshippers approaching with gestures of adoration, bringing with
them many objects of daily use--mirrors, fans, swords, etc., for the
entertainment of the dead.[101\5] Sometimes the living seek to give
pleasure to the spirit of the dead by the performance of
music.[102\5] Gifts, too, of cakes, fruit, and wine are being
made--but the blood of the sacrificial animals is never
spilt.[103\5] There was a time when more solemn--and less
comfortable--thoughts prevailed;[104\5] and of these we learn
something from the much older sculptured reliefs, found on
sepulchral monuments in Sparta, which give the dead a more
awe-inspiring attitude. The ancestral pair sit in state and are
approached by members of the family (represented as much smaller
figures) offering their worship. These bring with them flowers,
pomegranates, and sometimes even animals for sacrifice, a cock, a
pig, or a ram. Other and later types of such "banquets of the dead"
show the dead person standing up (not infrequently by the side of a
horse or lying upon a couch and accepting the drink-offering made to
him by the survivors.[105\5] These reliefs allow us to see at what a
distance the departed spirits are supposed to stand from the living:
the dead do, indeed, seem now to be "better and stronger" beings;
they are well on the road to becoming "Heroes". Drink offerings such
as those we see offered on these reliefs--a mixture of honey-water,
milk, and wine, and other liquids, offered in accordance with
precise ritual--always formed a regular part of sacrifices made to
the dead.[106\5] Besides these, animals, too, were slain, especially
sheep (less often oxen) of black colour. These must be completely
burnt, as being intended for the sole enjoyment of the dead--a
custom {170} observed at all sacrifices made to the spirits of the
underworld.[107\5]
The whole of this very material cult depended upon the
assumption--which was sometimes distinctly expressed--that the soul
of the dead is capable of receiving, and is in need of, a physical
satisfaction from the gifts made to it.[108\5] It is consequently,
not thought of as deprived of the power of sense-perception. Even in
the grave it can feel what is going on in its neighbourhood.[109\5]
It is not a good thing to attract its attention; it is best to pass
by the graves of the dead in silence.[110\5] The common people
thought of the dead, according to a famous phrase of Plato's, as
"hovering" suspended over their graves, the site of their
cult.[111\5] The pictures on the Attic oilflasks illustrate this
belief, for they represent the souls of the dead flying above the
grave-monument, and the diminutive size of these winged figures is
evidently intended to represent their somewhat contradictory
immaterial materiality, and to express their invisibility for mortal
eyes.[112\5] Sometimes, indeed, the souls become visible, and then,
like the underworld gods and the Heroes, they prefer the shape of a
snake.[113\5] Nor are they absolutely bound to the immediate
neighbourhood of the grave; they sometimes revisit their old
habitations among the living, and not only on those days of the dead
in the month Anthesterion. The Greeks, like other people, were
acquainted with the custom of allowing what fell to the ground to
lie there undisturbed for the spirits that hovered about the house
to carry away if they liked.[114\5] The dead man's spirit, being
thus invisibly present, can overhear if anyone speaks ill of it:
either with the idea of defending the helpless, or, on the contrary,
to avoid incurring the wrath of invisible but potent spirits, a
Solonian law forbade abusive language to be addressed to a dead man.
That is the real meaning of the old warning _de mortuis nil nisi
bene_, as popular belief understood it. The descendants of a dead
man were bound to prosecute anyone who slandered their
ancestor:[115\5] this also is among the religious duties owed by the
living to the soul of the dead.
§ 3
Like all other cults, the cult of the dead had more to do with the
relations of the daimon to the living than with his nature and
essence considered abstractly, and in itself: a dogmatic account of
this nature was neither offered nor required by his worship. Still,
the cult was founded upon a general {171} conception, merely evading
more exact definition, of the nature of the departed spirit. Men
sacrificed to the souls of the dead, as to the gods[116\5] and
Heroes, because they regarded them as invisible Powers,[117\5] a
special class of "Blessed Ones", as the dead were beginning to be
called even in the fifth century. They attempted to propitiate
them,[118\5] or at least to avert their easily awakened
displeasure.[119\5] Their help was also sought in all times of need;
but most especially, like the chthonic gods into whose realm they
have entered, they can prosper the fruits of the earth[120\5] and
lend assistance at the entry of a new soul into life. For this
reason libation is made to the souls of ancestors at a
marriage.[121\5] The Tritopatores also, who were invoked at wedding
celebrations in Attica that the marriage might prove
fruitful,[122\5] were nothing else than the souls of the
ancestors.[123\5] We know them also to have been referred to as
wind-spirits,[124\5] and in this there appears, plainly or
obscurely, an isolated fragment of the most ancient belief of the
people: the departed spirits of the dead become spirits of the air;
the ghosts that travel on the winds are the liberated souls of the
dead.
§ 4
Though it is good and profitable in one's own interest to enlist the
sympathy and retain the goodwill of these invisible spirit powers by
sacrifice, yet their worship is to a much greater degree conditioned
by a sentiment of piety which no longer seeks its own advantage, but
the greater honour and welfare of the dead. Such piety certainly
takes on a curious form, but it is this which gives its special
character to the cult of the souls, and the ideas which lie behind
that cult. The souls of the dead are dependent upon the cult paid to
them by the members of their family who still live on in this world;
their fate is determined by the nature of this cult.[125\5] The
beliefs which nourished the cult of the dead are totally distinct
from the mode of thought prevailing in the Homeric poems according
to which the souls are banished into the distant realm of Hades and
cut off eternally from all attention or care that the living might
pay them. It differs again from the beliefs which the mysteries
implanted in the minds of their worshippers; for in this case it was
not their _merit_--whether religious or moral--which secured to the
disembodied souls their position in the future life. These two
streams of religious belief flowed side by side, but never met. The
nearest analogue to the cult of the souls and its appropriate
beliefs was undoubtedly the cult {172} of Heroes, but even here the
difference is profound. It is no longer a special privilege
miraculously bestowed upon a few favoured individuals; every soul
has a right to the attentive care of its own family, and in each
case its fate is settled, not by the character displayed or deeds
done during its lifetime, but by the relation to itself of those who
survive. As a consequence everybody on the approach of death thinks
of the "future state" of his soul, and that means the cult which he
would like to make sure will be offered to his departed spirit.
Sometimes for this purpose he makes a special foundation, or
bequest, which is provided for in his will.[126\5] Of course, if he
leaves a son behind him, the care of his spirit will be amply
provided for; until that son comes of age, a guardian will offer the
appropriate gifts.[127\5] Even slaves to whom he has given their
freedom will be sure to take part in the permanent and regular cult
of their former master.[128\5] One who has no son to leave behind
him will make haste to take a son from another family into his own
house, who, together with his property will inherit also the duty of
offering a regular and enduring cult to his adopted father, and his
new ancestors, and of caring for the needs of their souls. This is
the real and original meaning of all adoption; and how seriously
such provision for the proper care of the souls of the departed was
taken, can best and most clearly be seen from the testamentary
speeches of Isaeus, in which with a completeness of art that almost
conceals itself expression is given to the genuine and simple
feelings of the homely Athenian bourgeoisie whom no enlightenment
had ever disturbed in the beliefs of their fathers.[129\5]
All cult, all prospect of a full life and future well-being--for so
we may express the naive conception--of the soul on its separation
from the body, depends upon the holding together of the family. To
the family itself the souls of its former ancestors are, in a
limited sense, of course, gods--_its_ gods.[130\5] It can hardly be
doubted that here we have the root of all belief in the future life
of the soul, and we shall be tempted to subscribe to the belief--as
a guess tending in the right direction--of those who see in such
family worship of the dead one of the most primitive roots of all
religious belief--older than the worship of the higher gods of the
state and the community as a whole; older even than the worship of
Heroes, and of the ancestors of large national groups. The family is
older than the state,[131\5] and among all peoples that have not
passed beyond family-organization and formed states, we find this
type of belief about the soul invariably present. Among {173} the
Greeks, who in the course of their history learnt so much that was
new without ever quite discarding the old, this belief lived on in
the shadow of the great gods and their cults, even in the midst of
the tremendous increase in the power and organized influence of the
state. But these larger and wider organizations cramped and hindered
its development. Left to itself, and given more freedom to grow,
such belief might possibly have elevated the souls of the family
ancestors to the position of all-powerful spirits of the house under
whose hearth they had once been laid to rest. The Greeks, however,
never had anything to correspond exactly with the Italian _Lar
familiaris_.[132\5] The nearest equivalent to it would be the Good
Daimon which the Greek household honoured. Careful examination shows
this Daimon to have been originally the soul of an ancestor who has
become the good spirit of his house--but the Greeks themselves had
forgotten this.[133\5]
§ 5
We cannot at this late date trace the reawakening of the cult of
souls in post-Homeric times or the varying stages it may have gone
through in its development. Still, some of the facts are plain.
Indications have already been noticed that point to the view that
the cult of the dead was carried on in the days when the
aristocratic regime still held sway in Greece with greater pomp and
seriousness than in the centuries--the fifth and sixth--beyond which
our knowledge hardly extends. In these earlier times, we are forced
to conclude, there must also have been a livelier belief in the
power and importance of the souls corresponding with the greater
vigour of religious cult. It seems as if at this time ancient usage
and belief broke violently through the suppression and neglect under
which they lay in the times that speak to us in the Homeric poems.
There is no reason to suppose that any one member of the Greek
peoples was specially responsible for the change. At the same time,
different districts in accordance with their varying natural
proclivities and civilization differed in the cult they paid their
dead. In Attica, with the spread of democracy, the ideas at the
bottom of such practice tended more and more in the direction of
mere affectionate piety. In Laconia and Boeotia[134\5] and in other
places where primitive life and customs maintained themselves for a
long time, more serious notions of the nature and reality of the
disembodied spirits remained in force and a more serious cult was
paid to them. Elsewhere, as in Locris and on the island of
Keos,[135\5] the {174} cult of the dead seems to have maintained
itself only in a very much weakened form. When advancing culture
made individuals less dependent on the traditional beliefs of their
own country many temperamental variations and gradations in belief
and conception made their appearance. Homeric ideas on the subject,
universally familiar from poetry, may have entered into the question
and added to the confusion; even where the cult of the dead was
practised with the greatest fervour, ideas radically incompatible
with that cult--as that the souls of the worshipped dead are "in
Hades"[136\5]--are sometimes revealed unintentionally. At quite an
early period we find expressions of the view, which goes beyond
anything said in Homer, that nothing at all survives after death.
Attic orators, for example, are allowed to speak to their audience
in a tone of hesitation and doubt about hopes commonly cherished of
continued consciousness and sensation after death. Such doubts,
however, only affect the theoretic consideration of the soul's
future life; the _cult_ of the souls was still carried on inside the
family. Even an unbeliever, if he were in other respects a true son
of his city and deeply rooted in its ancient customs, might in his
last will and testament provide seriously for the perpetual cult of
his own soul and those of his near relatives--as Epicurus did in his
will, to the astonishment of after ages.[137\5] Thus, even unbelief
still clung to _cult_ as to other old established customs, and in
many an individual the cult still tended to awaken the _beliefs_
which alone could justify it.
III
TRACES OF THE CULT OF SOULS IN THE BLOOD-FEUD AND SATISFACTION FOR
MURDER
§ 1
In the renewal and development of the cult offered to the dead, an
important part was again played by that priestly association which
exercised such a decisive influence on the public worship of
invisible powers in the Greek states--the priesthood of the Delphic
oracle. On the occurrence of disturbing portents in the sky recourse
was had to the god, who gave orders that in addition to the gods and
Heroes "sacrifice should be made to the dead also on the appointed
days, in accordance with custom and tradition, by their
relatives."[138\5] Individuals in doubt as to what the sacred law
{175} required in the observance due to a departed soul applied at
Athens to one of the "Exegetai"--probably one of that college of
Exegetai that had been founded under the influence of Delphi.[139\5]
The god protected the rights of the dead, too; the fact that his
decisions confirmed the sanctity of the cult of the dead must have
contributed a good deal to the consideration and awe in which that
cult was held by the living.[140\5]
The decrees of Delphi were even more influential where they
concerned a cult to be offered not to one who had died in peace, but
to a person who had been robbed of his life through an act of
violence. The treatment of such cases shows with striking
distinctness the change which had come over the beliefs about the
dead since the Homeric period.
In Homer, when a free man has been killed, the State takes no share
whatever in the pursuit and punishment of the murderer. It is the
duty of the nearest relatives or the friends of the murdered
man[141\5] to carry on the blood-feud against the assailant. As a
rule the latter puts himself out of reach of reprisals by flight. He
withdraws to a foreign country which is unconcerned in his action.
We hear nothing of any distinction between premeditated murder and
unintentional or even justifiable homicide;[142\5] and it seems
probable that at that time, when no regular inquiry was made into
the nature of the individual case, the relatives of the murdered man
took no account of the different varieties of killing. If the guilty
man can escape by flight from those whose duty it is to avenge his
deed, they on their part may forgo the full toll of vengeance, which
would have required the death of the murderer, and may be satisfied
with the payment of compensation, after which the doer of the deed
is allowed to remain in his own country undisturbed.[143\5] The
requirements of vengeance are thus in essence fulfilled, but the
retaliatory murder of the murderer can be bought off. This decided
relaxing of the ancient notion of vengeance can only be accounted
for by an equally decided weakening of the belief in the continued
consciousness, power, and rights of the murdered man, upon which the
requirement of vengeance was founded. The soul of the dead is
powerless; its claims can be easily satisfied by the payment of
"weregild" to the living. In such a satisfaction as this, the
departed soul is in reality not concerned at all; it remains a
simple business transaction between living people.[144\5] In the
midst of the general declension of the beliefs about the
dead--amounting almost to complete extinction--which is found
throughout the Homeric poems, this weakening of belief in one
particular point is not very surprising. But {176} in this case, as
in the general study of Homeric beliefs about the dead, it is clear
that the conception of the soul as powerless, shadowlike, and feeble
is not the primitive or original one; it has foisted itself
gradually in the course of years upon a more ancient mode of
conception in which the dead had undiminished sensibility and could
influence the condition of the living. Of this older conception we
have emphatic witness in the duty--not forgotten even in Homeric
Greece--of prosecuting the blood-feud.
In later times the pursuit and punishment of homicide was organized
in accordance with quite different principles. The _State_
recognized its interest in the reprisals made for such a breach of
the peace: we may take it as certain that in Greek cities generally
the state took a share in the regular investigation and punishment
of murder in its courts of justice,[145\5] though here, too, it is
only in the case of Athenian law that we have precise information.
At Athens, in accordance with the ancient code dealing with the
legal prosecution of murder (which never fell into disuse after
Drakon had established it by his penal legislation), the exclusive
right--and the unavoidable duty--of prosecuting the murderer
belonged to the next of kin of the murdered man. (In special cases
only it was extended to include the more distant relatives, and even
the members of the _phratria_ to which he had belonged.) It is clear
that this duty of making an accusation which fell upon the next of
kin, preserves a relic of the ancient duty of the blood-feud which
has been transformed by the requirements of the public welfare. It
is the same narrow circle of relationship, extending to the third
generation, united by a strict religious bond, to which alone
belonged the right to inherit property and the duty of performing
the cult of the dead. This circle of relatives is here again called
upon to "succour" the unfortunate who has been violently done to
death.[146\5] The reason for this duty--a duty evidently derived
from the ancient blood-feud--is easy to understand: it, too, is a
department of the cult of the dead which was binding as a duty upon
exactly that circle of relatives. It was no mere abstract "right",
but a quite definite personal claim, made by the dead man himself,
that the surviving relatives were required to satisfy. At Athens
even in the fourth and fifth centuries the belief still survived in
undiminished vigour that the soul of one violently done to death,
until the wrong done to him was avenged upon the doer of it, would
wander about finding no rest,[147\5] full of rage at the violent
act, and wrathful, too, against the relatives {177} who should have
avenged him, if they did not fulfil their duty. He himself would
become an "avenging spirit"; and the force of his anger might be
felt throughout whole generations.[148\5] Implacable revenge is the
sacred duty of those--his representatives and executors--who are
specially called upon to fulfil the needs of the dead soul. The
state forbids them to take the law into their own hands; but it
commands them to seek redress at the tribunals of justice. It will
take over the duties of judge and executioner itself; but a decided
consideration will be shown to the relatives of the murdered man at
the hearing of the case. In duly conducted criminal procedure the
courts specially appointed for this purpose will decide whether the
deed is to be considered one of wilful murder, unintentional
manslaughter, or justifiable homicide. In making these distinctions
the state has struck a blow at that older code of the blood-feud in
which the right of vengeance belonged entirely to the family of the
murdered man. According to that code, as we cannot but conclude from
Homer, nothing but the fact of the violent death of a relative was
considered, not the character or motive of the deed itself. Now,
however, the murderer is liable to a death penalty which he can
avoid before the verdict is given by going into voluntary and
perpetual exile. He disappears and leaves the country--at the
boundaries of the country the state's authority ceases, and so does
the power of the indignant spirit of the dead, which is bound to its
native soil--like that of all local deities, whose influence is
confined to the place where they are worshipped. If, by such flight
over the frontier, "the doer of the deed withdraws himself from the
person injured by him--i.e. the angry soul of the dead
man"[149\5]--his life is thereby saved, even if he himself is not
justified. This alone is meant by the permission of such voluntary
exile. Involuntary homicide[150\5] is punished by banishment for a
limited period, after the expiration of which the relations of the
dead man are to grant a pardon to the murderer on his return to his
native land.[151\5] If they voted for it unanimously[152\5] they
could even do this before he went into banishment, in which case
this would not take place at all. There can be no doubt that this
pardon had to be granted by them in the name of the dead man as
well, of whose rights they were the representatives; indeed, the man
himself lying mortally wounded could before his death, even in the
case of wilful murder, pardon his assailant and thereby excuse his
relatives the duty of prosecution;[153\5] to such an extent was the
injured soul's wish for vengeance the only point at issue, {178}
even in the legal procedure of a constitutionally governed state,
and not in the least the lawless act of the murderer as such. When
there is no desire for vengeance on the part of the victim requiring
to be satisfied, the murderer goes unpunished. When he suffers
punishment, he suffers it for the satisfaction of the soul of the
murdered man. He is no longer slain as a sacrifice to his victim;
but when the relations of the dead exact vengeance from him by
legally constituted processes, that, too, is a part of the cult
offered to the soul of the dead.
§ 2
It is true that the state directs the blood-feud required of the
relatives of the dead man along constitutional channels that shall
not contravene the laws of the community; but it does not in the
least intend to abolish the fundamental idea of the ancient family
vendetta. It reasserts the original claim to vengeance of the victim
violently done to death--a claim closely bound up with the cult of
the dead--by forbidding the old custom, common in Homeric times, of
buying off the blood-guiltiness of the murderer by a compensatory
payment made to the relatives of the dead man.[154\5] It does not
destroy the religious character of the whole transaction; it uses
its own processes to secure the fulfilment of the requirements of
religion. That is why the head of all criminal jurisdiction is the
King Archon, the constitutional Administrator of all the _religious_
functions of the ancient royal government. The religious basis of
the oldest Athenian criminal jurisdiction is particularly evident.
It has its seat on the Areiopagos, the hill of the Curse-Goddesses,
over the sacred chasm in which they themselves, the "Venerable
Ones", have their dwelling. The judicial office is closely bound up
with the service of the goddesses.[155\5] At the commencement of the
proceedings both parties take an oath in the name of the
Erinyes.[156\5] Each of the three days at the end of the month, upon
which legal proceedings in these courts took place,[157\5] was
sacred to one of the three goddesses.[158\5] To them sacrifice was
made by those who were acquitted in those courts;[159\5] for it is
the goddesses who have given them absolution just as it is the
goddesses who demand the punishment of the guilty. They still do it,
as once they had done in the typical case of Orestes, in which they
themselves had been the accusers.[160\5] In this Athenian worship
the Erinyes had not vet entirely lost their true and original
character. They had not become the mere guardians of law in general,
as which they were sometimes {179} represented by poets and
philosophers who thus extended and weakened immeasurably their once
much narrower significance. They are formidable daimones, dwelling
in the depths of the earth from which they are conjured up by the
curses and maledictions of those who have no earthly avenger left.
Hence they are more particularly the avengers of murder committed
within the family itself; they punish the man who has slain the very
person whom he would have been called upon to avenge, if that person
had fallen at the hand of another murderer than himself. When the
son has slain his father or mother, who shall then carry out the
blood-feud incumbent upon the nearest relation of the dead? This
nearest relation is the murderer himself. It is the Erinys of the
father or the mother who sees to it that the dead shall still
receive due satisfaction. She breaks out from the kingdom of the
dead to seize the murderer. She is ever at his heels in pursuit,
leaving him no rest night or day. Vampire-like she sucks his
blood:[161\5] he is her destined victim.[162\5] Even in the judicial
procedure of the fully organized state it is the Erinyes who demand
revenge for murder at the courts of law. Their absolute power
extends in widening circle to all murder, even when it is committed
outside the limits of the family; though it was only the imagination
of the poetically or philosophically minded that ever transformed
them completely to champions of justice of all kinds, in heaven and
upon earth. In the cult and beliefs proper to individual cities they
remained the auxiliaries attached to the souls of murdered men.
These gruesome daimones had their origin in the worship of the dead,
and they lived on in connexion with the undying worship of which
they were a part. Indeed, if we examine closely the sources of
information at our disposal, we can see even through their
inadequacy and obscurity that the Erinys was nothing else but the
soul itself of the murdered man, indignant at its fate and seizing
its revenge for itself--till later ages substituted for this the
conception of the ghost from hell taking over to itself the rage of
the dead man's soul.[163\5]
§ 3
Thus, the whole procedure at murder trials was directed rather to
the satisfaction of invisible powers--the injured souls of the dead
and the daimones that represent them--than of the state and its
living members. In essence it was a religious act. As a result all
was not at an end when the human verdict on the case had been given.
On his return from exile the man guilty of involuntary homicide,
besides receiving the {180} pardon of the relatives of the dead man,
had still a double duty to perform; he had to be purified and to
offer propitiatory sacrifice.[164\5] Purification from the blood of
the slain was necessary even in the case of the unpunished agent of
what the state regarded as justifiable homicide;[165\5] it restored
the man, hitherto regarded as "unclean", to participation in the
religious gatherings of state and family which could not have been
approached by an unpurified person without suffering defilement. The
Homeric poems know nothing of any such religious purification of
those who have incurred the stain of blood.[166\5] Analogous
occurrences in the religious usage of allied peoples make it,
however, almost impossible to doubt that the notion of religious
uncleanness belonging to a man who has had any dealings with uncanny
powers was of primeval antiquity among the Greeks, too. It can only
have been suppressed in the Homeric view of the matter; just as that
view also suppressed the usages of expiation. These were intended to
propitiate the indignant soul of the dead and the gods who protected
it, by means of solemn sacrifice; but in the Homeric picture of the
world they never appear, for the ideas on which they were based had
themselves been swept away.
The details of purification and expiation--the former serving the
interests of the state and its religious needs, the latter intended
as a final appeasement of the injured powers of the unseen
world--were closely united in practice and are often confused in the
accounts which have come down to us. A hard and fast distinction
between them cannot be drawn. So much at all events is clear; the
expiatory rites indispensable when murder had been committed had the
closest possible similarity with the ritual of sacrifice to the gods
of the underworld.[167\5] And, in fact, the deities invoked at such
rites of expiation--Zeus Meilichios, Zeus Apotropaios, and the
rest--belong to the underworld circle of gods.[168\5] To them,
instead of the murderer himself, a victim was offered to appease the
anger felt by them as the patrons of the departed soul. The Erinyes,
too, have sacrifice made to them at expiations[169\5]--everything in
these matters is connected with the kingdom of the dead and its
inhabitants.
But it was the Delphic Oracle that saw to the details of
purification and expiation after murder. The necessity of such
rights was impressed on men by the example set in the story of
Apollo's own flight and purification after the slaying of the
earth-spirit at Pytho. These events were symbolically enacted over
again regularly every eight years.[170\5] At Delphi, {181} too,
according to Aeschylus, Apollo himself purified Orestes the
matricide from the pollution of his crime.[171\5] At Athens one of
the oldest propitiatory sites was called after one of Apollo's
titles, the Delphinion.[172\5] The Oracle must often have directed
its inquirers to placate not merely the Heroes, but also the angry
souls of murdered (and not heroized) men by means of expiatory
sacrifices: as it bade the murderers of Archilochos and the Spartan
king Pausanias.[173\5] Propitiatory sacrifice in this sense does not
belong to the Apolline cult as an exclusive possession; it belongs,
also, to other, mostly lower-world, deities; but it was the Oracle
of Apollo that set the seal on its sanctity. At Athens the Exegetai
founded under the influence of the Delphic Oracle were the official
administrators of this expiatory ritual.[174\5] Plato was certainly
following the customs of Greek cities when in the "Laws" he declares
that his state shall take its regulations for purification and
propitiation from Delphi.[175\5]
§ 4
The Oracle, then, of the omniscient God sanctified and recommended
these rites of expiation; the state regulated its judicial procedure
in murder cases on the lines of the old family blood-feud. It was
natural, then, that the ideas on which these religious and political
institutions were based--the conviction of a continued existence
enjoyed by the murdered man's soul and of his consciousness and
knowledge of what occurred among the living who survived, his anger
and his powers--that these ideas should attain to something like the
position of an article of faith. The confidence with which these
beliefs were held still manifests itself to us in the speeches at
murder trials in which Antiphon, suiting his language to his real or
imagined public, tries to arouse terror and awe, as at the presence
of indubitable realities, by calling upon the angry soul of the dead
man and the spirits that avenge the dead.[176\5] About the souls of
murdered men indeed, regarded as more than other spirits unable to
find rest, a strange and ghostly mythology grew up, of which we
shall have some specimens later on. How primitive such beliefs could
be we may gather with startling clearness from occasional records of
purely savage customs[177\5] which are derived from them--customs
which cannot possibly have been freshly invented in the Greece of
this enlightened period, and must be either primitive Greek savagery
come to light again, or else barbarisms only too easily welcomed
from less civilized neighbours. In any case they imply the most
materialistic view of the survival {182} of the murdered man, and of
the revenge that might be taken by his soul.
It is evident that what men believed about the souls of murdered men
must have had an important influence upon the general belief in a
future life as it took shape in the mind of the people. But the
extent of such an influence can be more exactly measured in the
story which Xenophon tells about the dying Kyros; as the strongest
grounds for the hope that an after-life will be the portion of _all_
souls after their separation from the body, the dying king points to
the unquestioned facts which, as all admit, prove a special
after-life for the souls "of those who have suffered injustice". In
addition to this he lays stress on the argument that the worship of
the dead would not have been preserved intact to his own time if
their souls had been entirely deprived of all active power.[178\5]
Thus we see how the _cult_ of the souls of the dead was the chief
source of the _belief_ in a continued life after death.
NOTES TO CHAPTER V
I
[1\5: This dual efficacy of the ~chtho/nioi~ is explained naturally
enough by their nature as underground spirits. There is no reason
for supposing that their influence on the fertility of the fields
was a later addition (as Preller does, _Dem. u. Perseph._ 188 ff.,
followed by many). Still less have we any grounds for regarding the
protection of souls and the care for the fertility of crops as a
sort of allegorizing parallel (soul = grain of seed) as has been
usual since the time of K. O. Müller.]
[2\5: ~Zeu\s katachtho/nios~, ~I~ 457. ~theou= chthoni/ou . . .
iphthi/mou Aï/deô~, Hes. _Th._ 767 f. Evidently there is no
distinction here between ~katachtho/nios~ and ~chtho/nios~, as
Preller, _Dem. u. Pers._ 187, wishes to make out.]
[3\5: Hes. _Op._ 465, ~eu/chesthai de\ Dii\ chthoni/ô| Dêmê/teri/
th' hagnê=| ktl.~ It is impossible even by far-fetched methods of
interpretation (such as Lehrs makes use of, _Popul. Aufs._^2 298 f.)
to make this ~Zeu\s chtho/nios~ into anything else than a Zeus of
the underworld. The god of the lower world, totally distinct from
the Olympian Zeus (~Zeu\s _a/llos_~, Aesch., _Supp._ 231), is here a
dispenser of blessings to the farmer. In the sacrificial regulation
from Mykonos (_SIG._ 615) it is prescribed to offer: ~hupe\r karpô=n
(kampô=n~ on the stone) ~Dii\ Chtho/ni/ô| Gê=| Chthoni/ê| DERTA
me/lana etê/sia? xe/nô| ou the/mis~ (where ~derta\~ = _hostias pelle
spoliatas_, see Prott, _Leg. Sacr._ i, p. 17; though the addition of
the colour of the no longer visible skin seems remarkable)--~hupe\r
karpô=n~ here belongs to ~Dii/~, etc., as the division-mark on the
stone before ~hupe\r~ shows: see _BCH._ 1888, p. 460 f. Evidence of
this sort makes it clear how unjustifiable it would be to rule out
all fructifying influence from the "idea of the chthonic" and to
regard the chthonic deities as simply the power of death and
destruction in the world of nature and men, as is done by H. D.
Müller (who is met by serious difficulty in this passage from the
_Op._: _Mythol. d. griech. St._ ii, 40). It is, indeed, scarcely
necessary to seek for an abstractly formulated "idea of the
chthonic"; but if this fructifying and life-giving force does belong
to the nature of the ~chtho/nioi~ as such, what becomes of H. D.
Müller's ingeniously thought-out and violently defended view
according to which the chthonic only constitutes one side of the
nature of certain deities who have in addition a different,
Olympian, side in which they are positively creative and
beneficent?]
[4\5: ~Zeu\s chtho/nios~ at Corinth, Paus. 2, 2, 8; at Olympia, 5,
14, 8.]
[5\5: Thus Persephone is called ~Hagnê/, De/spoina~, etc. (Lehrs,
_Pop. Aufs._^2 288), also ~Melitô/dês, Meli/boia~; ~Melindi/a~,
consort of Hades, Malalas, p. 62, 10, Di. [8th ed., Bonn.] (?
~Meli/noia~, as Hekate is ~Meilino/ê~, Orph., _H._ 71). ~Ari/stê
chthoni/a~, _P. Mag. Par._ 1450.--Hekate is ~Kalli/stê, Eukoli/nê
(kat' anti/phrasin hê mê\ ou=sa eu=kolos~, _EM._), the Erinyes
~Semnai/, Eumeni/des~; their mother ~Euônu/mê (= Gê=~): Ister ap.
Sch. Soph., _OC._ 42 (from a similar source, Sch. Aeschin. i, 188),
etc. Cf. Bücheler, _Rh. Mus._ 33, 16-17.]
[6\5: ~Polude/ktês, Polude/gmôn, Agêsi/laos~ (_Epigr. Gr._ 195; see
Bentley ad Callim., _Lav. Pall._ 130; Preller, _Dem. u. Pers._ 192;
Welcker, _Götterl._ ii, 482), ~Euklê=s~ (Bücheler, _Rh. Mus._ 36,
332 f.).--~Eu/kolos~ (corresponding to the ~Eukoli/nê~ above as a
title of Hades must be rejected if Köhler's correction of _CIA._ ii,
3, 1529, is right: ~Hêdu/los--Euko/lou~.] {184}
[7\5: Cult of ~Zeu\s Eubouleu/s~ at Amorgos, Paros (insc. cit. by
Foucart, _BCH._ vii, 402), of ~Zeu\s Bouleu/s~ at Mykonos, _SIG._
615 (~Zeu\s Boulai=os~, _Ins. Perg._ i, 246, l. 49, does not belong
here); of ~**Eu/boulos~ (original title of Hades: Orph., _H._ xviii,
12) in Eleusis (side by side ~ho theo/s, hê thea/~): _SIG._ 20, 39;
_CIA._ ii, 1620 c.d. (The Athenian legend makes Eubouleus into a
mortal herdsman: Clem. Al., _Protr._ ii, pp. 14-15 P.; Schol. Luc.,
_De Merc._, 2, p. 275, 27 Rabe.) ~Eubouleu/s~ simply = Hades: Nic.,
_Al._ 14; epitaph from Syros, _Epigr. Gr._ 272, 9, and frequently.
So, too, the ~Zeu\s Eubouleu/s~ (Hesych. s. ~Eub.~) worshipped in
Kyrene must have been a ~Zeu\s chtho/nios~. Eubouleus is also a
title of Dionysos as Zagreus (Iakchos), i.e. the Dionysos of the
underworld.--Incidentally, what is the origin of this designation of
the god of the underworld as "good counsellor" (_boni consilii
praestitem_ as Macr. 1, 8, 17, translates ~Euboulê=a~)? It can
hardly have been because he was specially able to take counsel on
his own behalf (this is the sense in which D.S. 5, 72, 2, takes the
title; but rather because he was an _oracle_ god, and as such
dispensed good counsel to inquirers. Thus the oracle-god Nereus is
called ~eu/boulos~ in Pi., _P._ iii, 92; so also _I._ vii, 32:
~eu/boulos The/mis~.]
[8\5: Lasos _fr._ 1 (_PLG._ iii, 376), etc.--Consecration to
~Klu/menos~ from Athens: _CIG._ 409.--Hesych. ~Periklu/menos; ho
Plou/tôn~ (it is no accident that gave the name Periklymenos to the
magically gifted son of Neleus). Klymenos = Hades, _Epigr. Gr._ 522
a 2.]
[9\5: The name ~Trephô/nios~, ~Trophô/nios~ itself also points to
the fact that assistance to the fertility of the earth was expected
of this ~Zeu\s chtho/nios~. In the later cult of Trophonios not a
trace of such a belief survives.]
[10\5: ~en oudemia=| po/lei Ha/idou bômo/s estin. Aischu/los
phêsi/n; mo/nos theô=n ga\r Tha/natos ou dô/rôn era=| ktl.~ (_fr._
161 Sidg.): Schol., AB. on ~A~ 158.]
[11\5: In Elis ~hiero\s tou= Ha/idou peri/bolo/s te kai\ nao/s~,
Paus. 6, 25, 2. Cult of Demeter and Kore and of Hades in the very
fertile Triphylia, Str. 344.]
[12\5: Kaukones from Pylos, the Nelidai at their head, reach Attica:
connexion with the cult of the ~chtho/nioi~ in Phlya in Eleusis: see
K. O. Müller, _Kl. S._ ii, 258. Such accounts may have an historical
foundation. The elaborate accounts by H. D. Müller, _Mythol. Gr._ 1,
c. 6, and O. Crusius, _Ersch-Gruber_ "Kaukones"--operate with too
many uncertain factors for the results to have any certainty.]
[13\5: ~Ha/idês . . . toi=s entha/de tosau=ta agatha\ ani/êsin~:
Pl., _Crat._ 403 E. ~ho Ha/idês ou mo/non ta\s psucha\s sune/chei,
alla\ kai\ toi=s karpoi=s ai/tio/s estin anapnoê=s kai\ anado/seôs
kai\ auxê/seôs~: Schol. B.L., ~O~ 188.]
[14\5: ~hoi polloi\ phobou/menoi to\ o/noma Plou/tôna kalou=sin
auto/n (to\n Ha/idên)~, Pl., _Crat._ 403 A.]
[15\5: At the Genesia (Nekysia sacrifice for Ge and the dead,
Hesych. ~Gene/sia.--choai\ Gê=| te kai\ phthitoi=s~, A. _Pers._ 220:
calling to Hermes, Ge, and Aïdoneus in "spirit-raising", _Pers._ 628
ff., 640 ff. cf. _Ch._ 124 ff.--appeal to Hermes and ~Gê=
ka/tochos~ on _defixiones_: _CIG._ 538-9.]
[16\5: ~Gai=os~ in Olympia, Paus. 5, 14, 10; cf. E. Curtius, _Altäre
v. Olymp._, p. 15. At Kos it would seem to have been stated that Ge
was worshipped ~mo/nê theô=n~, Ant. Lib. 15 (acc. to Boios). Side by
side with ~Zeu\s Chtho/nios~ was worshipped ~Gê= chthoni/ê~ at
Mykonos, _SIG._ 615, 26.]
[17\5: ~po/tnia Gê= Zagreu= te, theô=n panupe/rtate pa/ntôn~,
_Alkmaionis fr._ 3 (Kink.).]
[18\5: Cult of Klymenos and Demeter ~Chthoni/a~ (her festival
~Chtho/neia~: see also Ael. _HA._ xi, 4) in Hermione, Paus. 2, 35, 4
ff. Pausanias also thinks (3, 14, 5) that the cult of Dem.
~Chthoni/a~ was brought to Sparta {185} from Hermione, which may be
right. Kore as ~Meli/boia~ is also mentioned in this connexion by
Lasos of Herm. _fr._ 1, _PLG._ iii, 376. Dedicatory inscriptions
(_CIG._ 1194-1200) also mention, side by side with Demeter Chthonia,
Klymenos, and Kore as well. Once (_BCH._ 1889, p. 198, n. 24) only
~Da/matri, Klume/nô|~. Demeter was clearly the chief goddess: cf.
_CIG._ 1193.--From the community of the worship of Damater Chthonia
in both Hermione and Asine it may be justifiable to conclude that
this cult belonged originally to the Dryopians who combined with the
Dorians in Hermione and were driven by them out of Argolic Asine.
There is no warrant whatever for the fanciful derivation of the
Demeter-cult of these neighbourhoods from "Pelasgians" submerged by
Dryopian invaders.]
[19\5: There was a common worship of: Zeus Eubouleus, Demeter, and
Kore at Amorgos; Zeus Eub., Demeter Thesmophoros, Kore, Here, Babo
at Paros; Plouton, Demeter, Kore, Epimachos, Hermes in Knidos;
Plouton and Kore in Karia. See the citations given by Foucart,
_BCH._ vii, 402 (with whose own pronouncements I cannot, however,
agree at all). In Delos, Demeter, Kore, Zeus Eubouleus: _BCH._ 24,
505 n. 4. So, too, in Corinth Plouton, Demeter, and Kore: Paus. 2,
18, 3; Hades Demeter and Kore in Triphylia, Str. 344. Observe also
the group of divinities at Lebadeia in the cult of Trophonios: Paus.
9, 39.--At Eleusis side by side with Demeter and Kore Plouton also
was worshipped: _CIA._ ii, 834 b. But there existed even there other
groups of ~chtho/nioi~ worshipped in conjunction, ~tô\ theô/~ once
more joined with Triptolemos, and a second triad: ~ho theo/s, hê
thea/~, and Eubouleus, _CIA. Suppl._ i, 27b, p. 59, ff. ii, 1620 bc;
iii, 1108-9. This second triad, which is not mentioned on the inscr.
_CIA._ i, 5 (from the beginning of the fifth century), may have only
been subsequently added to the Eleusinian official cult (see Ziehen,
_Leg. Sacr., Dissert._ pp. 9-10). It is a waste of time to try and
identify the vague appellations ~theo/s~ and ~thea/~ with the names
of definite chthonic deities (as e.g. Kern attempts, _Ath. Mitth._
1891, pp. 5-6). Acc. to Löschcke, _D. Enneakrunosepis. bei Paus._,
pp. 15-16, these Eleusinian divinities were imported into Athens,
established in the chasm of the Eumenides, and instead of ~ho
theo/s, hê thea/~ and Eubouleus, were called Hermes, Ge, and
Plouton. But the correlation of these divinities worshipped there in
conjunction with the ~Semnai/~ (acc. to Paus. 1, 28, 6) with the
Eleusinian group depends entirely upon the identification of the
~Semnai/~ with Demeter and Kore. This, however, is based on nothing
more than a guess of K. O. Müller's (_Aesch. Eum._, p. 176 [160 f.
E.T.]), which would still be very much in the air even if the
theories about "Demeter Erinys" with which it is connected did not
rest on such insecure foundations. (To identify the
Eleusinian-Athenian Eubouleus with Plouton is impossible, if only
because of the fact that in the chthonic cult of those places
~Eubouleu/s~, originally the name of an underworld god, has
developed into the name of a Hero who now has a place _alongside_
the chthonic deities.)--With the cautious appelations ~ho theo/s, hê
thea/~ we may compare the appeal on a _defixio_ from Athens, _CIG._
1034: ~dai/moni chthoni/ô| kai\ tê=| chthoni/a| kai\ toi=s
chthoni/ois pa=si ktl.~]
[20\5: Cf. Mannhardt, _Mythol. Forsch._ 1884, p. 225 ff.]
[21\5: It cannot, however, be denied that already in Homer
Persephone is the daughter of Demeter and Zeus. Adducing ~X~ 326 and
~l~ 217 K. O. Müller (_Kl. Sch._ ii, 91) has disposed conclusively
of Preller's doubts: in spite of which H. D. Müller in his
reconstruction of the Demeter-myth clings firmly to the view that
the goddess carried {186} away by Hades was only afterwards made the
daughter of Demeter.--The Homeric poems seem to know of the rape of
Persephone by Aïdoneus but not the story of her periodical return to
the upper world--which is the most important feature in the
Eleusinian creed. What Lehrs says on this much-discussed subject is
completely convincing (_Pop. Aufs._^2, p. 277 f.).]
[22\5: The cult of Demeter is old in Phthiotis too (--~Pu/rason,
Dê/mêtros te/menos~, ~B~ 695 f.--~e/chousai Antrô=na petrê/enta~,
_h. Cer._ 490). Also in Paros and Crete. That it is possible to
trace the extension of the worship of Demeter in detail (as many
have tried to do, is one of the current illusions on this subject
that I cannot share.]
[23\5: _Aornon_ and ~nekuomantei=on~ (~psuchopompei=on~ Phot.
~Theoi\ Molottikoi/~ cf. Append. prov. iii, 18 L.-S.; Eust. ~k~ 514,
p. 1667) at Ephyre on the River Acheron in Thesprotia: well known
from Hdt.'s story of Periander (v, 92). Here the place of Orpheus'
descent to the lower world was localised, Paus. 9, 30, 6; cf. also
Hyg. 88, p. 84, 19-20 Schm.--Entrance to Hades at Tainaron, through
which Herakles dragged up Kerberos (Schol. D.P. 791, etc.), with
~psuchomantei=on~: cf. Plu., _Ser. Num. Vind._ 17, p. 560 E (cf.
Stat., _Th._ ii, 32 ff., 48 f., etc.).--Similar entrance to Hades at
Hermione, see below; ~kataba/sion ha/|dou~ at Aigialos = Sikyon:
Call. _fr._ 110.--At Phigaleia in Arcadia a ~psuchomantei=on~ at
which King Pausanias inquired, Paus. 3, 17, 9.--More famous is the
~psuchomantei=on~ at Herakleia Pont.: see _Rh. Mus._ 36, 556 (this
also was a place where Kerberos appeared above, Mela i, 103). Hither
Pausanias came for guidance, acc. to Plu., _Ser. Num._ 10, p. 555 C;
_Cimon_ 6.--The ~Ploutô/nion~ and ~psuchomantei=on~ at Cumae in
Italy had a long-standing reputation (mentioned as early as Soph.,
_fr._ 682 [748 P.]): cf. _Rh. Mus._ 36, 555 (an Italian Greek
applies to ~ti psuchomantei=on~, Plu., _Cons. Apoll._ 14, p. 109
C).--Next the Asiatic ~Ploutô/nia~ and ~Charô/neia~: at Acharaka in
Karia, Str. 649-50; at Magnesia on the Maiander, ~a/ornon spê/laion
hiero/n, Charô/nion lego/menon~, Str. 636; at Myous, Str. 579. This
is what ~to\ en La/tmô| o/rugma~ must have been, mentioned among
other ~Charô/nia~ by Antig. Caryst. 123; the ~Ki/mbros kalou/menos
ho peri\ Phrugi/an bo/thunos~ also mentioned there, may very well
have been the place in Phrygia spoken of by Alkman ap. Str. 580:
~bo/thunos Kerbê/sios e/chôn olethri/ous apophora/s~ (suggested by
Keller on Antig). Perhaps the latter place--named after the
Korybantes (?) see Bergk on Alcm. _fr._ 82--is the same as the cave
at Hierapolis.--Better known than any was the oracular cavern at
Hierapolis in Phrygia into which only the Galli of the Great Mother,
the _Matris Magnae sacerdos_, can go without being overcome by the
vapours issuing from it: Str. 629-30, Plin. ii, 208. There existed
under a temple of Apollo a direct ~kataba/sion ha/|dou~, accessible
at least to the faithful ~tetelesme/noi~: see the very remarkable
account of Damasc., _V. Isid._ ap. Phot., p. 344b, 35-345a, 27 Bk.
(Cult of Echidna in Hierapolis, see Gutschmid, _Rh. Mus._ 19, 398
ff.; this is also a chthonic cult: ~ne/rteros E/chidna~, Eur. _Ph._
1023; Echidna among the monsters of Hades: Ar., _Ra._ 473).--These
are the mortifera in Asia Plutonia, quae vidimus, Cic., _Div._ i, 79
(cf. Gal. iii, 540; xvii, 1, 10).--Entrances to Hades were regularly
to be found at those places where the cave was shown by which
Aidoneus made his exit or his entrance in carrying off Kore. Thus at
Eleusis, ~to/thi per pu/lai eis' Aï/dao~, Orph., _H._ 18, 15, Paus.
1, 38, 5; at Kolonos, Sch. S., _OC._ 1590-3; at Lerna, Paus. 2, 36,
7; at Pheneos (a ~cha/sma en Kullê/nê|~: Conon 15), and probably in
Crete too (cf. Bacch. _fr._ 53 Jebb, ap. Sch. Hes., _Th._ 914); at
Enna in Sicily a ~cha/sma **kata/geion~: D.S. 5, 3, 3; Cic., _Verr._
iv, 107; {187} at Syracuse at the spring Kyane, D.S. 5, 4, 2; at
Kyzikos, Prop. 3 (4), 22, 4.]
[24\5: The ~Semnai/~ live there in a ~cha/sma chthono/s~, Eur.,
_El._ 1266 f., on the eastern slope of the hill.]
[25\5: Paus. 2, 35, 10. The precinct of the temple was an Asylon,
Phot. ~Hermi/onê~; _AB._ 256, 15; Znb. ii, 25 (Ar.
~Babul.~).--Kerberos is brought up from below at Hermione: Eur.,
_HF._ 615. An Acheron, and even an ~Acherousia\s li/mnê~, was to be
found in Thesprotia, Triphylia, Herakleia on the Pontus, Cumae, and
Cosentia in Bruttium--all sites of ancient cults of Hades and
reputed as in close proximity to the underworld.]
[26\5: Strabo viii, 373--the same is reported by Call. _fr._ 110 of
the inhabitants of ~Aigialo/s~ (prob. = Sikyon, where there was a
cult of Demeter, Paus. 2, 11, 2-3; cf. 2, 5, 8. Hesych. ~_epôpi/s_;
Dêmê/têr para\ Sikuôni/ois~), where, at any rate, there was a
~kataba/sion ha/|dou~.--The name "Hermione" seems almost to have
acquired a generic sense. In the Orphic _Argonautica_ a city
Hermioneia is said to be situated in the fabulous north-west of
Europe in the neighbourhood of the gold-bearing river Acheron, where
(as always on the margin of the ~oikoume/nê~) there dwell ~ge/nê
dikaiota/tôn anthrô/pôn, hoi=sin apophthime/nois a/nesis nau/loio
te/tuktai~, etc. (1135-47). Thus Hermione in this case lies
immediately in the country of souls and blessedness, which the
ancient inhabitants of the Peloponnesian city rather supposed to be
in the neighbourhood of their own country.--Hesych. strangely:
~_Hermio/nê_; kai\ hê Dêmê/têr kai\ hê ko/rê en Surakou/sais~. Was
there a place called Hermione there too? See Lob., _Paralip._ 299.]
II
[27\5: If a father makes money by his son's unchastity, the son is
released from the duty of providing food or shelter for his father
while the latter is alive--~apothano/nta d' auto\n thapte/tô kai\
ta=lla poiei/tô ta\ nomizo/mena~: Solonian law ap. Aeschin.,
_Tim._ 13.]
[28\5: Dem. 43, 57-8.]
[29\5: Sch. Soph., _Ant._ 255. Philo ap. Euseb., _PE._ viii, 358 D;
359 A. See Bernays, _Berichte Ber. Ak._ 1876, p. 604, 606 f.]
[30\5: ~Ps~ 71 ff.]
[31\5: Isoc. 14, 55.]
[32\5: The ~ba/rathron~ at Athens, the ~Kaia/das~ at Sparta. But the
bodies were often given up to the relatives to bury, and in any case
the refusal of burial can only have been temporary--it is incredible
that they could have wished to leave the bodies to putrify in the
open air.]
[33\5: Athenian law, Xen., _HG._ 1, 7, 22; common Greek institution
at least as against temple-robbers, D.S. 16, 25. Examples of the
enforcement of this law in the fifth and fourth centuries discussed
by W. Vischer, _Rh. Mus._ 20, 446 ff.--Suicides in some places were
refused burial honours (in Thebes and Cyprus); even in Athens it was
customary to cut off the hand of the suicide and bury it separately
(Aeschin., _Ctes._ 244). This is the punishment of ~auto/cheires~.
Self-starvation was considered less shocking and that is perhaps why
it occurs so frequently as a method of suicide. Cf. Thalheim, _Gr.
Rechtsalt._ p. 44 f. Perhaps also the religious objection of the
Pythagoreans (and Platonists) to taking this means of escape from an
existence that has become unbearable rests upon popular feeling and
belief--it was not shared at all by the enlightened of later ages.
(There is, however, nothing in ancient beliefs that points to the
idea that the body of the suicide should be allowed only burial, not
burning. Acc. {188} to the ~Ilia\s mikra/~ Aias after taking his own
life was buried, not burnt, ~dia\ tê\n orgê\n tou= basile/ôs~--_fr._
3: [Apollod.] _Epit._ v, 7. There is no ground for supposing that
the fable of Philostr., _H._ 721, p. 188 K., acc. to which Kalchas
declared the burning of the bodies of suicides to be not ~ho/sion~,
is taken out of an ancient poem; as Welcker does _Kl. Schr._
ii, 291.)]
[34\5: Cf. the words of Teles ~peri\ phugê=s~ ap. Stob., _Fl._ 40, 8
(iii, p. 738, 17 ff. Hens.), and the answer of Krates Cyn. to
Demetrius of Phaleron ap. Plu., _Adul._ 28, p. 69 CD. It is worth
remarking that in the fourth and even third centuries it was still
necessary to reply to the idea ~ho/môs de\ to\ epi\ xe/nês taphê=nai
o/neidos~. When later on the cosmopolitanism preached by the Cynics
(and after their model by Teles) becomes really common property it
seems no longer necessary to introduce special grounds of
consolation for having to be buried in foreign soil into pamphlets
~peri\ phugê=s~. At least this is not done by the Stoic Musonius or
the Platonizing Plutarch. Cf. also Philodem. _Mort._, p. 33-4 Mekl.]
[35\5: This is the reason why so often the bones or ashes of those
who die abroad are collected and brought home for burial by their
relations. Exx. ap. Westermann on Dem., _Eubul._ 70; cf. also Plu.,
_Phoc._ 37.]
[36\5: Ar., _Ec._ 1030. Origanon (wild marjoram, white thyme
possesses apotropaic power: it keeps away evil spirits. The ancients
knew of the virtue possessed by these plants of scaring snakes,
ants, and other vermin--Aristot., _HA._ 4, 8, 534b, 22; Plin. 10,
195; Thphr., _CP._ 6, 5, 4; Diosc., _MM._ iii, 29 = i, p. 375 Spr.;
_Gp._ 12, 19, 9: cf. Niclas ad _Gp._ 13, 10, 5. Modern superstition
employs them against goblins and water sprites, witches and ghosts,
Grimm, p. 1214; p. 1820, n. 980. If marjoram and gentian are laid by
women in child-bed ghosts and devils can do them no harm "for they
shun such herbs": J. Ch. Männlingen ap. Alwin Schultz, _Alltagsleben
e. d. Frau im 18 Jahrh._, p. 195 f. The two purposes are closely
connected. The pungent odour of herbs and burning stuff keeps away
snakes as do nocentes spiritus monstra noxia: Pall. 1, 35 = 11, 3,
p. 49 Sohn. The same thing applies to monstra noxia if they try to
approach the corpse in the shape of snakes or insects (just as the
ghost in Apul., _M._ ii, 25, approaches the corpse in the shape of a
weasel; where we also read that the versipelles which threaten the
corpse et aves et rursum canes et mures immo vero etiam muscas
induunt: ii, 22). So, too, the marjoram has a kathartic effect on
the corpse, i.e. it is a means of keeping off underworld spirits.]
[37\5: Ar., _Ec._ 1031. The corpse lay on vine branches in several
of the recently discovered Dipylon graves at Athens: _Athen. Mitt._
1893, pp 165, 184. Superstitious reasons (as in the cases where
olive leaves are used as a bed: see below) are to be suspected in
this case, too, but can hardly be proved: cf. **Fredrich,
_Sarkophagstud._, Nach. Gött. Ges. Wiss. Ph. Cl. 1895, pp. 18, 69;
Anrich, _Gr. Mysterienw._ 102, 3. Apart from this the ~a/mpelos~
does not seem to have lustral effect.]
[38\5: ~lê/kuthoi, tou/strakon~: Ar., _Ec._ 1032 f.; ~che/rnips epi\
phthitô=n pu/lais~: Eur., _Al._ 98 ff. The bowl was called
~arda/nion~: Sch. Ar., _Ec._ 1033; Poll. viii, 65 (cf. Phot. 346, 1
~orda/nion~). It contained water fetched from _another_ house:
Hesych, ~o/strakon~--obviously because the water in the house where
the corpse lay was regarded as polluted. (Thus when the fire, for
example, is "polluted", fresh fire is brought in from outside: Plu.,
_Q. Gr._ 24, p. 297 A; _Arist._ 20.) Those who left the house
purified themselves with it: Hesych. ~arda/nia~, cf. {189}
~pêgai=on, pêgai=on hu/dôr~. A laurel branch (as holy-water
sprinkler, as commonly in lustrations) was placed in it: Sch. Eur.,
_Al._ 98.]
[39\5: Serv., _A._ iii, 680: apud Atticos funestae domus huius
(cupressi) frondo velantur. The object may have been to warn the
superstitious against approaching the "unclean" house: it is a
characteristic of the ~deisidai/môn, ou/te epibê=nai mnê/mati, ou/te
epi\ nekro\n ou/t' epi\ lechô\ elthei=n ethelê=sai~, Thphr., _Ch._
16. This at least was the reason given at Rome for a similar custom:
Serv., _A._ 3, 64; 4, 507.]
[40\5: Crowning of the dead with garlands, afterwards a general
custom, is first mentioned in the ~Alkmaiôni/s~ (epical, but hard to
date precisely: _fr._ ii, p. 76 Kink.). On the "Archemoros" vase a
woman is about to place a myrtle-wreath on the head of Archemoros.
The myrtle is sacred to the ~chtho/nioi~, and hence the myrtle-crown
belongs to the Mystai of Demeter as well as to the dead: see
Apollod. ap. Sch. Ar., _Ran._ 330; Ister ap. Sch. Soph., _OC._ 681.
Grave-monuments too were crowned and planted especially with
myrtles; Eur., _El._ 324, 512; cf. Thphr., _HP._ 5, 8, 3; Vg., _A._
iii, 23. Not only the dead but graves too were frequently crowned
with ~se/linon~, parsley: Plu., _Timol._ 26; _Smp._ 5, 3, 2, p. 676
D; Diogen. viii, 57, and others; cf. above, chap. iv, n. 21. The
crowning invariably implies some form of consecration to a god. Acc.
to Tertul., _Cor. Mil._ 10, the dead were crowned quoniam et ipsi
idola statim fiunt habitu et cultu consecrationis; which at least
gets nearer the real sense of the practice than the view of Sch.
Ar., _Lys._ 601: ~ste/phanos edi/doto toi=s nekroi=s hôs to\n bi/on
diêgônisme/nois~.]
[41\5: Pl., _Lg._ 959 A. Poll. iii, 65. A still stranger reason
added ap. Phot. ~pro/thesis~.]
[42\5: Permission to attend either the ~pro/thesis~ of the corpse
(and the funeral lamentation) or the funeral procession (the
~ekphora/~) given only to women of kinship ~mechri\ anepsio/têtos~:
Law ap. Dem. 43, 62-3: i.e. within the ~agchistei/a~, to which alone
the duty of the cult of the dead belonged in principle. Only these
women of the immediate kin are ~miaino/menai~ in the case of death:
cf. Hdt. vi, 58; this is the reason for the restrictions laid down
by the funeral regulation from Keos (_SIG._ 877, 25 ff.), which
makes an even narrower selection within the ranks of the
~agchistei/a~. (From l. 22 ~mê\ hupotithe/nai~, etc., the law speaks
of the ~pro/thesis~, even though at the beginning only the
~ekphora/~ is in question.)]
[43\5: ~amucha\s koptome/nôn aphei=len~. Plu., _Sol._ 21. The
democratizing of life in Attica after Solon's time may have
contributed to the carrying out there of provisions restricting the
elaborate funeral rites of the old aristocratic period. The practice
of ~ko/ptesthai epi\ tethnêko/ti~ appears, however, to have remained
in use: beating of the head at funeral lamentations is a favourite
motif in Attic vase-paintings (the so-called "Prothesis" vases); cf.
_Monum. dell' Instit._ viii, 4, 5; iii, 60, etc. See Benndorf,
_Griech. Sicil. Vasenb._ 1.]
[44\5: ~to\ thrênei=n pepoiême/na~, Plu., _Sol._ 21: by which is
meant funeral hymns carefully prepared beforehand and perhaps
ordered from professional ~thrê/nôn sophistai/~, not spontaneous
expressions of grief breaking out as though involuntarily.]
[45\5: Plu., _Sol._ 21: ~kai\ to\ kôku/ein a/llon en taphai=s
hete/rôn aphei=len~. This must surely mean: Solon forbade dirges to
be sung at a funeral of one person in honour of another, different
from the person actually being buried. (~hete/rôn~ is only used for
variety after ~a/llon~ and simply = ~a/llôn~: as frequently by Attic
writers: ~mê\ proïe/menon a/llon hete/rô| tê\n allagê\n~, Pl., _Lg._
viii, 849 E: ~he/teron--a/llon~ Isoc. 10, 36, etc.). {190} The
tendency to extend the funeral hymns to include others besides the
dead man is implied by a prohibition in a funeral ordinance of the
~patri/a~ of the ~Labua/dai~ at Delphi (fifth-fourth century B.C.),
_BCH._ '95, p. 11, l. 39 ff. ~tô=n de\ pro/sta tethnako/tôn en toi=s
sama/tessi mê\ thrênei=n mêd' ototu/zen~ (at the funeral of another
person). Was Homer thinking of something of the kind in ~T~ 302:
~Pa/troklon pro/phasin~--?]
[46\5: In Athens it had once been the custom ~hierei=a prospha/ttein
pro\ tê=s ekphora=s~, i.e. while still in the house of the dead
person: [Pl.] _Min._ 315 C. Such a sacrifice _before_ the ~ekphora/~
(which is not described till l. 1261 ff.) is implied by Euripides,
_Hel._ 1255, at the burial of the dead body found in the sea:
~prospha/zetai me\n hai=ma prô=ta nerte/rois~--where ~prospha/gion~
is used inaccurately of sacrifice at the grave, in which case the
~_pro/_~ is meaningless; as also in the insc. from Keos (_SIG._ 877,
21). ~pro/sphagma~ is also thus used, Eur., _Hec._ 41. Plu. (_Sol._
21) says of Solon: ~enagi/zein de\ bou=n ouk ei/asen~. Possibly
Solon **forbade the sacrifice of animals _before_ the ~ekphora/~,
since the author of the Ps.-Platonic _Minos_ seems also to refer to
such a prohibition.]
[47\5: The Solonian restrictions says Plu. (_Sol._ 21) have been for
the most part adopted in our (i.e. the Boeotian) ~no/moi~--as acc.
to the indubitable witness of Cicero, Solon's funeral regulations
had been reproduced **eisdem prope verbis in the tenth of the Twelve
Tables by the Decemviri. Limits set to ceremonial mourning in
Sparta: Plu., _Lyc._ 27 (whence _Inst. Lac._, 18, p. 238 D), in
Syracuse by Gelon: D.S. 11, 38, 2; cf. "Charondas", Stob., _Fl._ 44,
40 M. = iv, 2, 24, p. 153, 10 H. Some degree of restriction was
imposed on their members (about the beginning of the fourth century
B.C.) by the ~patri/a~ of the ~Labua/dai~ in Delphi in the
~tethmo/s~ published in the _BCH._ '95, p. 9 ff.]
[48\5: We have a very naive expression of the ideas lying behind
such violent lamentations, self-inflicted injuries, and other
excessive demonstrations of grief in the presence of the dead body,
when e.g. in Tahiti people wound themselves and then "call out to
the soul of the dead man to witness their attachment to him"
(Ratzel, _Hist. of Mankind_, i, 330); cf. Waitz-Gerland, _Anthrop._
vi, 402.]
[49\5: It is a very ancient idea common to many different nations
that too violent expressions of grief for the dead man may disturb
his rest and make him return: see Mannhardt, _Götter der deutschen
Völker_, 1860, p. 290 (for Germany in partic. see Wuttke, _Deut.
Volksabergl._^2, § 728, p. 431; Rochholz, _D. Glaube u. Brauch_, i,
207). Similar superstition in Greece is referred to in Lucian,
_Luct._ 24 (in which the lateness of the witness does not prevent
the belief from being ancient). The survivors who prolong beyond
reason their laments are asked: ~me/chri ti/nos oduro/metha? e/ason
anapau/sasthai tou\s tou= makari/ou dai/monas~.--In Pl., _Mx._ 248
B, the dead say ~deo/metha pate/rôn kai\ mête/rôn eide/nai ho/ti ou
thrênou=tes oude\ olophuro/menoi hêma=s hêmi=n ma/lista
chariou=ntai~--thus violent grief is intended in Greece, too, to
please the dead: see last note--~alla\ . . . hou/tôs _acha/ristoi_
ei=en a\n ma/lista~: while acc. to "Charondas", Stob., _Fl._ iv, 2,
24, p. 153 H.: ~_acharisti/a esti\ pro\s dai/monas chthoni/ous_
lu/pê hupe\r to\ me/tron gignome/nê~.]
[50\5: ~ekphe/rein to\n apothano/nta tê=| husterai/a| hê=| a\n
prothô=ntai, pri\n hê/lion exe/chein~, Solonian law in D. 43, 62;
cf. Antipho, _Chor._ 34. Klearch. ap. Proclus _in Pl. _Rp.__ ii, 114
Kroll: Kleonymos in Athens, ~tethna/nai do/xas tri/tês hême/ras
ou/sês kata\ to\n no/mon proute/thê~, i.e. it was the morning of the
third day, immediately before the ~ekphora/~, the ~pro/thesis~
having occupied the whole of the second day (quite differently taken
by Maass, _Orpheus_, 1895, p. 232, 46; but hardly correctly. It is
scarcely probable that a man ~tethna/nai do/xas~, i.e. seeming to
those {191} around him to be dead, should be recognized by these
same people and treated as merely in a trance--as in fact, was the
case). So, too, in the analogous story of Thespesios of Soli in
Plutarch, _S. Num. Vind._ 22, p. 563 D, ~tritai=os, ê/dê peri\ ta\s
tapha\s auta/s, anê/negke~ (Philostr., _VA._ 3, 38, p. 114, 28 K.:
the wife of the man who has just died ~peri\ tê\n eunê\n hu/brise,
tritai/ou keime/nou~ [sc. ~tou= andro/s~] ~gamêthei=sa hete/rô|~:
i.e. immediately before the ~ekphora/~, while the dead man still was
in the house). Similar customs are implied for the Greeks in Cyprus
ap. Ant. Lib. 39, 5, p. 235, 21 West. [= p. 122, 7 f. Mart.]:
~hême/ra| de\ tritê| to\ sô=ma proê/negkan eis emphane/s (eis
toumphane/s~?) ~hoi prosê/kontes~. Further, acc. to Plato's view as
given in _Lg._ 959 A, there should be ~tritai/a pro\s to\ mnê=ma
ekphora/~.]
[51\5: Before sunrise: D. 43, 62 (more distinctly commanded by a law
of Dem. Phal.: Cic., _Lg._ ii, 66). On the other hand, it was
considered a disgrace to be buried during the night: ~ê= kako\s
kakô=s taphê/sê|, nukto\s ouk en hême/ra|~, Eur., _Tro._ 448.]
[52\5: So in particular the funeral-law from Keos, _SIG._ 877; cf.
Plu., _Sol._ 21; Bergk, _Rh. Mus._ 15, 468. Funeral-law of the
Labyadai at Delphi, l. 29 f.: ~strô=ma de\ he\n hupobale/tô kai\
poikepha/laion he\n potithe/tô~ (for the dead).]
[53\5: Reproduced _Monum. dell' Instituto_, ix, 391 [and in
Rayet-Collignon, _Céramique grecque_, Pl. i].]
[54\5: The law in D. 43, 62 (cf. 64), makes restrictions in the
attendance at a funeral which are to apply to women only (and only
then for those under 60): men seem therefore to be granted
permission indiscriminately. We are told too in Plu., _Sol._ 21,
that at the ~ekkomidê/~ Solon had _not_ forbidden ~ep' allo/tria
mnê/mata badi/zein~--for men that is, we must suppose. The men went
in front in procession; the women followed: D. 43, 62. Evidently the
same applied in Keos: _SIG._ 877, 20.--Pittakos as aesymnetes in
Mitylene forbade absolutely accedere quemquam in funus aliorum,
Cic., _Lg._ ii, 65.--Funeral-law of the Labyadai (Delphi, l. 42 ff.:
from the burial ~api=men woi/kade he/kaston, e/chthô homesti/ôn kai\
patradelpheô=n kai\ pentherô=n kêkgo/nôn kai\ gambrô=n~, i.e. the
next-of-kin of the dead in ascending and descending order.]
[55\5: This is referred to as still-existing custom by Plato, _Lg._
800 E; cf. Sch. ad loc.; Hesych. ~Kari=nai~. Menand. ~Kari/nê~,
Mein., _Com._ iv, p. 144 (Karo-phrygian funeral-flutes: Ath. 174 F:
Poll. iv, 75-9).]
[56\5: ~to\n thano/nta de\ phe/ren katakekalumme/non siôpê=| me/chri
epi\ to\ sê=ma~, _SIG._ 877, 11. Funeral-law of Labyad., l. 40 ff.
~to\n de\ nekro\n kekalumme/non phere/tô siga=|, kê\n tai=s
strophai=s~ ("at the street-corners") ~mê\ kattithe/ntôn mêdamei=,
mêd' ototuzo/ntôn e/chthos ta=s woiki/as pri/g k' epi\ to\ sa=ma
hi/kônti; tênei= d' e/nagos e/stô ktl.~ (the last not yet
satisfactorily explained).
[57\5: Solon diminished (under the alleged influence of Epimenides)
at funerals ~to\ sklêro\n kai\ to\ barbariko\n hô=| sunei/chonto
pro/teron hai plei=stai gunai=kes~, Plu., _Sol._ 12.]
[58\5: In the list of quotations from individual authors from the
fifth century on, given in Becker **_Char._^2 iii, 98 ff. [= E.T.^3
pp. 390-1], only the foll. speak for _burial_ as the prevailing
custom: Plu., _Sol._ 21. ~ouk ei/asen~ (Solon) ~_suntithe/nai_
ple/on himati/ôn triô=n~, and Plu., _Lyc._ 27, ~_suntha/ptein_
ou/den eiasen~ (Lycurg.) ~alla\ en phoiniki/di kai\ phu/llois
elai/as _the/ntes to\ sô=ma_ perie/stellon~: cf. Th. i, 134, 4.
_Cremation_, on the other hand, is implied as the more common in
Athens (fourth century) by Is. 4, 19: ~_ou/t' e/kausen_ out'
ôstolo/gêsen~; so, too, the will (third century) of the Peripatetic
Lykon (D.L. v, 70): ~peri\ de\ tê=s ekphora=s kai\ {192} _kau/seôs_
epimelêthê/tôsan ktl.~ Cf. Also Teles ap. Stob. 40, 8, i, p. 747, 5
H.; ~ti/ diaphe/rei hupo\ puro\s katakauthê=nai~--which is here
regarded as _Greek_ funeral usage.--In the graves recently
discovered before the Dipylon gate in Athens those belonging to the
earliest period almost without exertion have their dead _buried_
(without coffin); the following period (into the sixth century)
generally burnt their dead; later, burial seems to have been more
usual--see the account by Brückner and Pernice of the excavations
before the Dipylon gate, _Ath. Mitt._ 1893, pp. 73-191. Thus it
appears that in the later period burial was the prevailing practice
in Attica (L. Ross, _Archaeol. Aufs._ i, 23), as also, being
essentially cheaper than cremation, in other parts of Greece as well
(a few references given in _BCH._ '95, p. 144, 2).]
[59\5: ~ôstolo/gêsen~, Is. 4, 19.]
[60\5: The custom of ~ekphora/~ on an open ~kli/nê~ is not in
harmony with the intention of laying the body of the dead in a
coffin, but evidently presupposes that the body is to be placed
either unenveloped in the ground or else to be burnt. The practice
of coffin-burial (probably introduced from the East) later became
common, but was never completely harmonized with the ancient
ceremonies of the _~ekphora/~_.]
[61\5: Coffinless burial was usual in the graves of the "Mycenaean"
period, and also in the oldest times in Attica. The Spartans were
merely keeping up this ancient custom when they ~en phoiniki/di kai\
phu/llois elai/as the/ntes to\ sô=ma perie/stellon~ (buried), Plu.,
_Lyc._ 27. Here everything points to the retention of primitive
usage. The bodies were buried in the ancient fashion, not burnt;
they were wrapped in a crimson robe. Crimson is otherwise the
special colour for war and festival dress (cf. Müller, _Dorians_,
ii, 264); here it is used in connexion with chthonic cult: ~e/chei
ga/r tina to\ porphurou=n chrô=ma sumpa/theian pro\s to\n tha/naton~
says rightly Artemid. 1, 77, p. 70, 11 H. This can hardly be because
of the red colour of blood; any more than that is why ~tha/natos~ is
called ~porphu/reos~. But even Homer ~Ô~ 796 makes Hektor's bones
wrapped ~_purphure/ois_ pe/ploisi~--the bones only in this case
instead of the whole body: clearly a vestige of an older custom
which survived unchanged in Sparta. Similarly ~Ps~ 254. So, too,
e.g. in the Dipylon graves at Athens burnt bones were found wrapped
in a cloth, _Ath. Mitt._ 18, 160-1, 185. The head of the murdered
brother ~_phoiniki/di_ ekalupsa/tên kai\ ethapsa/tên~ the two other
Kabeiroi in the religious myth related by Clem. Al., _Protr._ ii, p.
16 P. Crimson frequently occurs as a colour used in chthonic cult:
e.g. at the ceremonial ~a/rai~ implying consecration to the infernal
deities in [Lys.] 6, 51; at sacrifices to the Plataean Heroes: Plu.,
_Arist._ 21; at the transfer of the bones of Rhesos: see above,
chap. iv, n. 36; Polyaen. vi, 53; at sacrifices to the Eumenides,
Aesch., _Eum._ 1028.--The custom of burial upon leaves was also
retained by the Pythagoreans: they buried their dead (without
burning them, Iamb., _VP._ 154) in myrti et oleae et populi nigrae
foliis (in fact, the trees regularly sacred to the ~chtho/nioi~),
Plin. 35, 160. Fauvel (ap. Ross, _Arch. Aufs._ i, 31) found in
graves by the Melitean gate at Athens le squelette couché sur un lit
épais de feuilles d'olivier encore en état de brûler. (Olive stones
in Mycenaean Graves, Tsundas, ~Eph. Arch.~, '88, p. 136; '89, p.
152.)]
[62\5: Thus in the letter of Hipparchos, in Phlegon, 1; similarly
Xen. Eph. 3, 7, 4 (see my _Griech. Roman_, p. 391 n. 2). Plato
wished his Euthynoi to be buried like this on stone ~kli=nai~ (_Lg._
xii, 947 D); and this is probably how the bodies were placed in the
rock burial-chambers provided with separate couches, such as occur
at e.g. Rhodos and Kos {193} (see Ross, _Arch. Aufs._ ii, 384 ff.,
392): cf. esp. the description given by Heusey, _Mission arch. de
Macédoine_ (_Texte_), p. 257 ff., '76. It is the regular mode of
burial in Etruria (following Greek models?): several skeletons have
been found there lying on couches of masonry in the grave-chambers.]
[63\5: As though the dead had not entirely departed ~kai\ ho/pla
kai\ skeu/ê kai\ hima/tia sunê/thê toi=s tethnêko/sin suntha/ptontes
hê/dion e/chousin~ Plu., _Ne Suav. Ep._ 26, p. 1104 D. Restrictions
in Law of the Labyad. (l. 19 ff.) ~ho/d' ho tethmo/s per tô=n
entothêkô=n; mê\ ple/on pe/nte kai\ tria/konta drachma=n enthe/men,
mê/te pria/menon mê/te woi/kô~.]
[64\5: Helbig, _Hom. Epos._ 41.]
[65\5: ~belti/ones kai\ krei/ttones~. Arist., _Eudem._ 37 [44] ap.
Plu., _Cons. Apoll._ 27, p. 115 BC.]
[66\6: [Pl.] _Min._ 315 D. To raise doubts on this point is mere
perversity. It is of no avail to advance the argument (which is
commonly used also against the similar statements about Rome in
Serv., _A._ v, 64; vi, 152) that this story only intends to explain
the origin of the worship of the household _Lares_. The Greeks did
not have this particular worship, or else it was so completely
forgotten that no explanatory account of its origin was ever
offered.--Beside the hearth and the altar of Hestia the most ancient
resting place of the head of the house must have been placed too.
When the wife of Phokion had had the body of her husband burnt
abroad ~entheme/nê tô=| ko/lpô| ta\ osta= kai\ komi/sasa nu/ktôr eis
tê\n oiki/an katô/ruxe para\ tê\n hesti/an~, Plu., _Phoc._ 37.--It
was wrongly believed that in the remarkable rock-graves in the
neighbourhood of the Pnyx at Athens examples of such graves situated
inside the house had been discovered. See Milchhöfer in Baumeister's
_Denkm._ 153b.]
[67\5: This occurs among the New Zealanders, Eskimos, etc.; cf.
Lubbock, _Prehistoric Times_, pp. **465, 511, etc.]
[68\5: In Sparta and Tarentum: see Becker, _Char._^2 iii, 105
(E.T.^3 p. 393). Acc. to Klearch. ap. Ath. 522 F certain men of
Tarentum were struck by lightning and killed; they were then buried
~pro\ tô=n thurô=n~ of their houses and ~stê=lai~ were put up in
their honour. If they had really been the criminals that legend made
them it would have been impossible, even in Tarentum, for them to
have been buried within the walls of the city, still less before the
doors of their houses--an honour given only to Heroes; cf. above,
chap. iv, n. 136. The violent alteration of ~pro\ tô=n thurô=n~ into
~pro\ tô=n pulô=n~ in order to avoid this difficulty, is obviously
rendered untenable by the previous ~heka/stê tô=n oikiô=n ho/sous
ktl.~ The legend is evidently a fiction and these ~dio/blêtoi~ (to
whom it appears, as Heroes, neither the funeral dirge nor the usual
~choai/~ were offered) must have belonged to the class of those whom
death by the flash of lightning raised to a higher and honoured rank
(see _Append._ 1). Thus, too, the graves in the market at Megara
mentioned by Becker must have been Hero-graves: see above, chap. iv,
n. 83. These cases where the graves of Heroes are found in the
middle of the city, in the market place, etc., show very plainly the
essential difference that was held to exist between the Heroes and
the ordinary dead.]
[69\5: The ~mnê=ma koino\n pa=si toi=s apo\ Bouse/lou genome/nois~
was a ~polu\s to/pos peribeblême/nos, hô/sper hoi archai=oi
eno/mizon~: D. 43, 79. The Bouselidai composed not a ~ge/nos~, but a
group of five ~oi=koi~ bound together by definitely traceable ties
of kinship. The members of a ~ge/nos~ in its political sense no
longer held graves in common possession: see Meier, _de gentil.
Att._ 33; Dittenb., _Hermes_, 20, 4. The ~Kimô/neia {194} mnê/mata~
were also family-graves: Plu., _Cim._ 4, Marcellin. _V. Th._ 17,
Plu., _X Or._, p. 838 B. It was always insisted on, for obvious
reasons, that no stranger to the family should be laid in the family
grave. But just as the penal clauses so often inscribed on graves of
a later period were necessary to prevent the burial of strangers in
those graves, so too Solon had to make a law in respect of graves ne
quis alienum inferat: Cic., _Lg._ ii, 64.]
[70\5: The speaker in Dem. 55, 13 ff., mentions the ~palaia\
mnê/mata~ of the ~pro/gonoi~ of the earlier possessors of his
~chôri/on~ (country-estate). This custom of burying the family dead
in the private ground of the family ~kai\ toi=s a/llois chôri/ois
sumbe/bêke~. Timarchos is asked by his mother ~to\ Alôpe/kê|si
chôri/on~ (which lay 11 or 12 stades away from the city walls)
~_entaphê=nai_ hupolipei=n autê=|~ (in spite of which he sold it):
Aeschin., _Tim._ 99. Examples in East Attica of walled-in family
cemeteries with room for many graves: Belger, _Localsage von den
Gräbern Agamem._, etc. (Progr. Berl. 1893), pp. 40-2. It was thus
the very general custom to keep the family graves on their own
ground and soil; and this corresponds closely enough with the oldest
custom of all, that of burying the master of the house in his own
home.--In Plu., _Arist._ 1, Demetr. Phal. mentions an ~Aristei/dou
chôri/on en hô=| te/thaptai~ in Phaleron.]
[71\5: Restriction of the growing magnificence of grave columns in
Athens made by Demetr. Phal., Cic., _Lg._ ii, 66. (Penal clauses
~ei/ ti/s ka tha/[ptê| ê\ epi/]stama ephista=| ktl.~ in a law from
Nisyros [_Berl. Phil. Woch._ 1896, pp. 190, 420]: they probably do
not refer to a general prohibition of tombstones altogether.)]
[72\5: Cf. Curtius, _Z. Ges. Wegebaus Gr._, p. 262.]
[73\5: Nemora aptabant sepulcris ut in amoenitate animae forent post
vitam: Serv., _A._ v, 760. In lucis habitabant manes piorum: iii,
302; cf. ad i, 441; vi, 673. "My grave is in a grove, the pleasant
haunt of birds," says a dead man ~o/phra kai\ ein A/ïdi terpno\n
e/choimi to/pon~, _Epigr. Gr._ 546, 5-14.]
[74\5: Cf. the ins. from Keos, _SIG._ 877, 8-9. Eur. _IT._ 633 ff.:
~xanthô=| t' elai/ô| sô=ma so\n katasbe/sô, kai\ **. . . ga/nos
xouthê=s meli/ssês es pura\n balô=~.]
[75\5: ~enagi/zein de\ bou=n ouk ei/asen~, Plu., _Sol._ 21.]
[76\5: ~prosphagi/ô|~ (at the funeral) ~chrê=sthai kata\ ta\
pa/tria~, _SIG._ 877, 13. In general, however, the sacrifice of
animals at the graves of private individuals gradually became rarer
and rarer: see Stengel, _Chthon. u. Todt._ 430 f.]
[77\5: Cf. esp. the ins. from Keos, l. 15 ff., 30. The
~egchutri/striai~ employed in old Athenian usage, [Pl.] _Min._ 315
C, seem to have been women who caught the blood of the sacrificed
animals in bowls and purified the ~miaino/menoi~ with it. The name
itself suggests it; to this effect is one among several other,
clearly mistaken, explanations given by the Schol. to _Min._, loc.
cit. (differently Sch. Ar., _Vesp._ 289).]
[78\5: ~peri\ ta\ pe/nthê . . . homopathei/a| tou= kekmêko/tos
kolobou=men hêma=s autou\s tê=| te koura=| tô=n trichô=n kai\ tê=|
tô=n stepha/nôn aphaire/sei~, Arist. _fr._ 108 (101) Rose.]
[79\5: ~peri/deipnon~. This is implied as universally occurring by
Aen. Tact. 10, 5. This meal shared by the relatives (who alone are
invited: Dem. 43, 62) must be meant by Heraklid., _Pol._ 30, 2,
~para\ toi=s Lo/krois odu/resthai ouk e/stin epi\ toi=s
teleutê/sasin, all' epeida\n ekkomi/sôsin euôchou=ntai~.]
[80\5: ~hê hupodochê\ gi/gnetai hupo\ tou= apothano/ntos~, Artemid.
5, 82, p. 271, 10 H.]
[81\5: Cic., _Lg._ ii, 63 (cf. **~le/gein epide/xia epi\
tethnêko/ti~, Anaxandr. ap. Ath. 464 A.). On the other {195} hand,
mentiri nefas erat. And yet ~eiô/thesan hoi palaioi\ en toi=s
peridei/pnois to\n teleutêko/ta epainei=n, kai\ ei phau=los ê=n~,
Zenob. v, 28, and other Paroemiogr.--Besides this the lamentation
for the dead may have been renewed at the various commemorations of
the dead; the funeral regulation of the Labyadai at Delphi forbids
expressly (not the festival but) the funeral dirge on such
occasions: l. 46 ff. ~mêde\ ta=| husterai/a|~ (after the burial, on
which day the ~peri/deipnon~ was held) ~mêde\ en tai=s deka/tais
mêd' en toi=s eniautoi=[s]~ (we should expect rather ~en t.
_eniauti/ois_~, cf. nn. 88-92 of this chap.) ~mê/t' oimô/zen mê/t'
ototu/zen~.]
[82\5: These meals given to the dead took place at the grave itself.
Ar., _Lys._ 612 f. ~hê/xei soi . . .~; Is. 8, 39, ~ta\ e/nata
epê/negka~.]
[83\5: The ~tri/ta~ and ~e/nata~, at any rate, were held on the
third and ninth days after the funeral, and not after the day of
death. It is true the references to these sacrifices in Ar., _Lys._
612 ff., Is., etc., do not make this very clear. But if the ~tri/ta~
had taken place on the third day after death it would have coincided
with the ~ekphora/~ itself, which is against all the evidence.
Further, the Roman _novemdiale_, which was clearly modelled on Greek
custom, also occurred on the ninth day after the burial, acc. to the
unequivocal testimony of Porph. on Hor., _Epod._ xvii, 48 (nona die
quam sepultus est). This is also deducible from Vg., _A._ v, 46 ff.,
and 105; cf. also Ap., _M._ ix, 31.]
[84\5: That this was the object of the Novemdialia festival at Rome
is shown clearly enough by the evidence; that the same was true of
Greece is at least highly probable; cf. K. O. Müller, _Aesch. Eum._,
p. 143 [120 E.T.]. Leist, _Graecoitalische Rechts._, p. 34.--Nine is
evidently a round number, esp. in Homer; i.e. the division of
periods of time into groups of nine was in antiquity a very common
and familiar practice. Cf. now, Kaegi, _Die Neunzahl bei den
Ostariern_, Phil. Abh. f. Schweitzer-Sidler, 50 ff. Mourning customs
were really intended to ward off maleficent action on the part of
the dead. They lasted as a rule as long as the return of the soul of
the dead was to be feared (esp. so in India: see Oldenberg, _Rel. d.
Veda_, p. 589), and acc. to ancient belief the soul can return once
more on the ninth day after death. See below, chap. xiv, ii, n.
154.]
[85\5: A ~chro/nos pe/nthous~ of eleven days, the mourning concluded
with a sacrifice to Demeter: Plu., _Lyc._ 27; cf. Hdt. vi, 58 fin.
The Labyadai at Delphi celebrate the _tenth_ day after the funeral
as a feast of the dead; see above, n. 81 of this chapter. This
mourning period is not otherwise demonstrable for Greece (_SIG._
633, 5, is different), but it is met with again among the Indians
and Persians (cf. Kaegi, p. 5, 11), and may be primitive.]
[86\5: Lex. Rh., in _AB._ 268, 19 ff.; Phot. a little differently:
~kathe/dra; tê=| triakostê=| (prô/tê|~ Phot.: ~A~ instead of ~L~)
~hême/ra| tou= apothano/ntos hoi prosê/kontes suneltho/ntes koinê=|
edeipnou=n epi\ tô=| apothano/nti--kai\ tou=to kathe/dra ekalei=to~
(Phot. adds: ~ho/ti kathezo/menoi edei/pnoun kai\ ta\ nomizo/mena
eplê/roun;) ê=san de\ kathe/drai te/ssares~ (the last clause is
absent from Phot.) It was a meal shared by the relatives of the dead
in honour of the dead and held "on the thirtieth day"; possibly
nothing more nor less than the oft-mentioned ~triaka/des~. The
guests eat their food _sitting_ after the old custom prevailing in
Homeric times and always observed by women; as applied to men it
survived in Crete only, see Müller, _Dorians_, ii, 284. Perhaps this
primitive attitude preserved in cultus is what we see in the Spartan
sculptured reliefs representing "feasts of the dead" where the
figures are _seated_. There were four such ~kathe/drai~, i.e. the
period of mourning extended over four months: thus it was the law in
Gambreion (_SIG._ 879, 11 ff.) that {196} mourning might last at the
most three months, or in the case of women four. We often hear of
monthly repetitions of the feasts of the dead: monthly celebration
of the ~eika/des~ for Epicurus in acc. with his will, D.L. x, 18;
cf. Cic., _Fin._ ii, 101; Plin. 35, 5; ~kata\ mê=na~ sacrifice to
the deified Ptolemies, _CIG._ 4697, 48. (In India, too, the
sacrifices to the dead on the thirtieth of the month were several
times repeated: Kaegi, 7; 11.)]
[87\5: The Lexicographers, Harp., Phot., etc. (_AB._ 308, 5, is
ambiguous, too), speak of the ~triaka/s~ in a way that makes it hard
to see whether they mean the traditional sacrifice of the dead
taking place regularly on the thirtieth day of the month, or a
special offering on the thirtieth day after burial or after the day
of death (~hê triakostê\ hême/ra dia\ tou= thana/tou~ Harp., Phot.
~meta\ tha/naton~ is the correction of Schömann on Is., p. 219, but
~dia\ thana/tou~ is formed, not quite correctly, on the analogy of
~dia\ chro/nou, dia\ me/sou~ [even ~dia\ progo/nôn~ "since the time
of our forefathers", Polyb. 21, 21, 4], and must mean the same
thing, viz. "after death"). But in Lys. 1, 14, we have the idea
clearly expressed that the period of mourning should last till the
thirtieth day (see Becker, _Char._^2 3, 117 E.T.^3, p. 398), and in
this case it is natural to suppose that the ~triaka/des~
corresponding with the ~tri/ta~ and ~e/nata~, took place on the
thirtieth day after burial. So, too, the ins. from Keos, _SIG._ 877,
21, ~epi\ tô=| thano/nti triêko/stia mê\ poiei=n~. For Argos see
Plu., _Q. Gr._ 24, p. 296 F. It is evident that the ~triaka/des~
were not so firmly established in Athens (at least in the fourth
century) as the ~tri/ta~ and ~e/nata~: e.g. Isaeus generally only
refers to these last as the indispensable ~nomizo/mena~: 2, 36-7; 8,
39. It appears also that it is wrong to regard the ~triaka/des~ as
otherwise exactly on a footing with the ~tr.~ and ~e/nata~, as is
generally done. The last-mentioned pair were sacrifices to the dead,
the ~triaka/des~ seems to have been a commemorative banquet of the
living.--These fixed periods of mourning like so much else in the
cult of the dead may have been handed down by tradition from a very
early time. The third, ninth (or tenth), and thirtieth days after
the funeral marked stages in the gradually diminishing "uncleanness"
of the relatives of the dead, and this existed, it appears, already
in "Indo-Germanic" times. Until the ninth day the relatives were
still in contact with the departed and were consequently "unclean";
the thirtieth day puts an end to this, and is a memorial festival
(though often repeated); cf. Kaegi, pp. 5, 10, 12 (of the separate
edition); Oldenberg, 578. In Christian usage, sanctioned by the
church, the third, ninth, and fortieth days after death or after
burial were very early observed as memorial days (sometimes third,
seventh, thirtieth; cf. Rochholz, _D. Gl. u. Brauch_, i, 203), and
survive in some cases to the present day: see _Ac. Soc. ph. Lips._
v, 304 f.]
[88\5: ~ta\ neku/sia tê=| triaka/di a/getai~: Plu., _Prov. Alex._
viii, p. 6, 10 Crus. (App. prov. Vat. in Schneidewin's Crit. App. to
Diogen. viii, 39). There was a festival kept by servants in honour
of their dead masters (~allathea/des~, _GDI._ 1731, 10; 1775, 29;
1796, 6) twice monthly, at the ~_noumêni/a_~ and on the seventh:
_GDI._ 1801, 6-7 Delphi. The last three days of the month are at
Athens sacred to the inhabitants of the lower world and therefore
~apophra/des~: _EM._ 131, 13 f.; _E. Gud._ 70, 3 ff.; cf. Lys.,
_fr._ 53. On these days banquets were prepared, at the crossroads,
etc., for Hekate (acc. to Ath. 325 A, for Hekate ~kai\ toi=s
apotropai/ois~ (Plu., _Symp._ 7, 6, p. 709 A). The souls of the dead
were then not forgotten. Sch. Pl., _Lg._ vii, 800 D, ~apophra/des
hême/rai en hai=s toi=s katoichome/nois choa\s epiphe/rousin~.]
{197}
[89\5: The son ~enagi/zei kath' he/kaston eniauto/n~ to his dead
father, Is. 2, 46. This sacrifice to the dead, celebrated once every
year (~thusi/a epe/teios~ offered by a ~pai=s patri/~), is the
festival of the _~Gene/sia~_, in vogue acc. to Hdt. iv, 26, among
the Greeks, everywhere as it appears. As the name shows this
festival fell on the birthday of the honoured ancestor as it
recurred (not on the day of his death as Amm. pp. 34-5 Valck.
incorrectly says); cf. Schol. Pl., _Alc._ i, 121 C. So Epicurus in
his will (D.L. x, 18) provides for a yearly celebration of his
birthday. (Similar foundation, _CIG._ 3417.) The Koans ~enagi/zousi~
to Hippokrates every year on the 27th Agrianos as his birthday:
Soran., _V.Hp._, p. 450, 13-14 West. Hero-festivals, too, fall on
the birthday of the Hero: Plu., _Arat._ 53. Gods have their
feast-days and their birthdays combined; thus Hermes has his on the
4th of the month, Artemis on the 6th, Apollo on the 7th, and so on.
These are birthday festivals repeated every month. In the second
century at Sestos, following such precedents, there was held ~ta\
gene/thlia tou= basile/ôs~ (one of the deified Attalids) ~kath'
he/kaston mê=na~: _SIG._^1 246, 36. Celebration of the ~e/mmênos
gene/sios~ of the ruling Emperor: _Ins. Perg._ ii, 374 B, 14. Even
in later times in imitation of heathen usage the Kephallenians still
honour Epiphanes, son of Karpokrates, ~kata\ _noumêni/an,
gene/thlion_ apothe/ôsin~, Clem. Al., _Str._ iii, p. 511 P.]
[90\5: This is the public festival meant by Phryn., p. 103 Lob. =
83, p. 184 Ruth., when, to distinguish it from the birthday
celebrations of living persons, ~gene/thlia~ (which did not become
common till later), he calls the ~Gene/sia, Athê/nêsin heortê/
[pe/nthimos~ add. Meursius; cf. Hesych. ~gene/sia~; _AB._ 231, 19].
The Antiatticista, in his rather absurd polemic against Phryn. (p.
86, 20 ff.), adds the still clearer statement (taken from Solon's
~a/xones~ and Philochoros) that the ~heortê\ dêmotelê/s~ of the
~Gene/sia~ at Athens was held on the 5th Boedromion. There is not
the slightest reason for doubting the correctness of this statement
(as many have done). In Rome, too, besides the many moveable
_parentalia_ of the families there was an official and public
Parentalia held every year (in Feb.). Similarly in ancient India:
Oldenberg, 550, 3.]
[91\5: The ~Neme/seia~ is mentioned by Dem. 41, 11. The context
suggests a rite performed by a daughter in honour of her dead
father. It is a quite certainly correct _conjecture_ (~mê/pote--~)
of the Lexicog. that the _Nemeseia_ may be a festival of the dead
(see Harp. s.v. _AB._ 282, 32: both glosses combined in Phot. Suid.
~neme/sia~). It is clear, however, that they knew nothing further
about it. Mommsen declares (_Heort._ 209) the _Nemeseia_ to have
been "without doubt" identical with the ~Gene/sia~. I see no reason
at all for supposing so.--The name ~neme/seia~ characterizes it as a
festival dedicated to the "wrath" of the dead, to the ~ne/mesis tô=n
thano/ntôn~, Soph., _El._ 792; ~phthime/nôn ôkuta/tê ne/mesis~,
_Epigr. Gr._ 119; cf. 195--this easily becomes a personified
~Ne/mesis~: ~e/sti ga\r en phthime/nois Ne/mesis me/ga~, _Epigr.
Gr._ 367, 9. The cult of the dead, like the cult of the underworld
in general, is always apotropaic in character (placantur sacrificiis
ne noceant, Serv., _A._ iii, 63): the Nemeseia must then have been
apotropaic in intention too.]
[92\5: At Apollonia in Chalcidice there was a yearly custom to ~ta\
no/mima suntelei=n toi=s teleutê/sasin~ in early times in
Elaphebolion, later in Anthesterion: Hegesand. ap. Ath. 334
F.--~eniau/sia~, a yearly festival of the dead (but perhaps rather
to be taken as _sacra privata_) in Keos: _SIG._ 878.--There is a
month called ~Neku/sios~ in Knossos (and common to the whole of
Crete acc. to the ~Hêmerolo/gion~ Flor. [Corsini, _Fast. Att._ ii,
428]). It took its name from a feast of the dead (~neku/sia~ is
mentioned along with ~peri/deipna~, as a regular expression by
Artemid. {193} iv, 81, p. 249, 9 H.): for this see "Treaties of
Kretan cities", _BCH._ 1879, 294, l. 56 f.--There was a month
~Agriô/nios~ or ~Agria/nios~ in Boeotia and even in Byzantium,
Kalymna, Kos, Rhodos: Hesych. ~Agria/nia; _neku/sia_ para\ Argei/ois
kai\ agô=nes en _Thê/bais_~ (as to the _Agon_ at the A. see the ins.
from Thebes, _Ath. Mitt._ vii, 349).--~etelei=to de\ kai\ thusi/a
toi=s nekroi=s en Kori/nthô|, di' hê\n tê=s po/leôs en toi=s
mnê/masin ou/sês epe/rchetai ho Alê/tês ktl.~ Sch. Pi. _N._ vii,
155.]
[93\5: Hesych. ~miarai\ hême/rai~. Phot. ~miara\ hême/ra~.]
[94\5: ~sugkleisthê=nai ta\ hiera\~ during the _Choes_: Phanodem.
ap. Ath. 437 C.]
[95\5: Phot. ~miara\ hême/ra; en toi=s Chousi\n Anthestêriô=nos
mêno/s, en hô=|~ (~en hoi=s~?) ~dokou=sin hai psuchai\ tô=n
teleutêsa/ntôn anie/nai, rha/mnon he/ôthen emasô=nto, kai\ pi/ttê|
ta\s thu/ras e/chrion. Rha/mnos; phuto/n, ho\ en toi=s Chousi\n hôs
alexipha/rmakon emasô=nto he/ôthen; kai\ pi/ttê| echri/onto ta\
sô/mata~ (leg. ~dô/mata); ami/antos ga\r hau/tê; dio\ kai\ en **tai=s
gene/sesi tô=n paidi/ôn chri/ousi ta\s oiki/as eis ape/lasin tô=n
daimo/nôn~.--I do not recollect having read elsewhere of pitch as a
protection against malevolent spirits or of its use in Greek
superstitious practices. (The _flame_ and _smoke_ of burning
pitch--and of ~a/sphaltos~: Diph. _fr._ 126 [ii, p. 577 K.] ap.
Clem. Al. _Str._ 7, 4, 26, p. 844 P.--as of sulphur, belong to the
region of magic and are ~katharmoi/~: but that is a different
matter.--~ta\ katha/rsia; tau=ta de/ esti da=|des kai\ thei=on kai\
a/sphaltos~, Zos. ii, 5, p. 67, 19 Bk.). Better known is the magic
protective power of the ~rha/mnos~. It is of use against ~pha/rmaka~
and ~phanta/smata~, and is therefore hung up on the doors ~en toi=s
enagi/smasi~: Sch. Nic., _Th._ 860 (Euphorion and Sophnon had also
referred to this superstition). Cf. Anon., _de Vir. Herb._ 9-13, 20
ff., and the Scholia (p. 486, ed. Haupt., _Opusc._ 2); also
Dioscorides i, 119 fin. (~rha/mnos~ also frightens away poisonous
beasts: Diosc. iii, 12. In the same way marjoram and scilla are
equally available against daimones and ~iobo/la~.) At Rome the
hawthorn (_spina alba_) is specially known for these purificatory
properties. Ovid, _F._ vi, 129 (at a wedding procession a torch made
of a branch of the _spina alba_ is used [Fest. 245_a_, 3 Mü.], and
this is _purgationis causa_: Varro ap. Charis., p. 144, 22 K.).--At
the _Choes_ the ~rha/mnos~ (i.e. twigs or leaves of it) is _chewed_:
this is in order that its powers may be absorbed into the chewer's
own body. The Superstitious man (like the Pythia) puts laurel leaves
in his mouth ~kai\ hou/tô tê\n hême/ran peripatei=~: also at the
_Choes_? Thphr., _Ch._ 16. The laurel in addition to its other
marvellous properties can also drive off spirits: ~e/ntha a\n hê=|
da/phnê, ekpodô\n dai/mones~, _Gp._ 11, 2, 5-7. Lyd., _Mens._ 4, 4,
p. 68, 9 Wü.]
[96\5: Sch. Ar., _Ach._ 961, p. 26, 8 ff. Dübn.--At the ~nekrô=n
dei=pna~ the souls of the departed members of the family are
summoned by the ~prosê/kontes~ to come and take their share (with
the single exception of those who have hanged themselves): Artemid.
i, 4, p. 11, 10 f. H. (cf. what is said of the ~neku/sia~ in
Bithynia by Arr. ap. Eust., ~i~ 65, p. 1615). The same thing must
have happened at the Anthesteria.]
[97\5: Worshippers offered the ~chu/tran panspermi/as~ to Hermes
~hilasko/menoi to\n Hermê=n kai\ peri\ tô=n apothano/ntôn~, Sch.
Ar., _Ach._ 1076 (Didymus from Theopomp.)--~tou\s to/te
paragenome/nous~ (read ~periginome/nous~, viz. from the Flood)
~hupe\r tô=n apothano/ntôn hila/sasthai to\n Hermê=n~, Sch. Ar.,
_Ran._ 218 (after Theop.). The offering was merely placed ready for
the recipients (not sent up to heaven in flames and smoke) as was
customary at the Theoxenia (esp. those in honour of chthonic
deities) and in offerings made to Heroes. The ~Heka/tês dei=pna~
were similar, and particularly the offerings to the Erinyes: ~ta\
pempo/mena autai=s hiera\ po/pana kai\ ga/la en a/ggesi
keramei/ois~, Sch. Aeschin. i, 188.] {199}
[98\5: _EM._ 774, 56: ~Hudropho/ria; heortê\ Athê/nêsi pe/nthimos~
(so far Hesych. too, s.v.) ~epi\ toi=s en tô=| kataklusmô=|
apolome/nois~. The feast of _Chytrai_ was also supposed to have been
a commemoration of Deucalion's Flood. The flood was said to have
subsided finally through a cleft in the earth in the Temple of ~Gê=
Olumpi/a~: Paus. 1, 18, 7. Pausanias adds, ~esba/llousin es auto\~
(the chasm) ~ana\ pa=n e/tos a/lphita purô=n me/liti ma/xantes~. It
is at least natural, with Preller, _Dem. u. Pers._ 229, n., to see
in the _Hydrophoria_ a part of which is described by Pausanias, a
festival related to the Chytrai. Connexion of the dead with ~Gê=~ in
the ~Gene/sia~ too: Hesych. s.v.--~Hudropho/ria~ a feast of Apollo
at Aegina: Sch. Pi., _N._ v, 81 (fanciful remarks thereon by K. O.
Müller, in _Aesch. Eum._, p. 141 [116 E.T.]).]
[99\5: Ovid's account of the _Lemuria_ at Rome, _F._ v, shows the
closest resemblances to the Athen. customs. The spirits are finally
driven out: Manes exite paterni! (443). The same happens in the
festivals of the dead in many places: esp. in India, Oldenberg, 553;
cf. also the Esthonian customs: Grimm, p. 1844, n. 42. A parallel
from ancient Prussia is given (after Joh. Meletius, 1551) by Ch.
Hartknoch, in _Alt- u. Neues Preussen_, 1684, pp. 187-8. There on
the third, sixth, ninth, and fortieth day after the funeral a
banquet of the relatives of the dead was held. The souls of the dead
were invited and (with other souls as well) entertained. "When the
feasting was ended the priest rose from the table and swept out the
house, driving forth the souls of the dead as though he were driving
out fleas, saying the while: 'Ye have eaten and drunk, O ye Blessed
Ones, depart hence! depart hence!'" At the close of the
lantern-feast to the dead in Nagasaki (Japan) when the entertainment
of the souls was over a great noise was made all over the house "so
that no single soul should remain behind and haunt the place--they
must be driven out without mercy": _Preuss. Exped. nach Ostasien_,
ii, 22. Other examples of the expulsion of souls given in Tylor, ii,
199. The ghosts were thought of in a thoroughly materialistic
fashion, and driven out by waving clubs in the air, swinging
torches, etc., as in the case of the ~xenikoi\ theoi/~ of the
Kaunians: Hdt. i, 172. Compare with this the prayers addressed to
Herakles in the Orphic Hymns (reproducing ancient superstitions as
frequently): ~elthe\ ma/kar . . . exe/lason de\ kaka\s _a/tas,
kla/don en cheri\ pa/llôn_, ptênoi=s t' iobo/lois _kê=ras_ chalepa\s
apo/pempe~ (12, 15-16). It will be clear how near such personified
~a=tai~ and ~kê=res~ are to the angry "souls", from which in fact
they have arisen; cf. besides, Orph., _H._ 11, 23; 14, 14; 36, 16;
71, 11.--~kê=ras apodiopompei=sthai~, Plu., _Lys._ 17.]
[100\5: ~thu/raze _Kê=res_, ouk e/t' Anthestê/ria~. This is the
correct wording of the formula; ~Ka=res~ the form common later and
explained with mistaken ingenuity. Photius has it right and
explains, ~hôs kata\ tê\n po/lin toi=s Anthestêri/ous tô=n
_psuchô=n_ perierchome/nôn.--Kê=res~--is clearly a most primitive
equivalent for ~psuchai/~ which has become almost completely
obscured in Homer, though it dimly appears in ~B~ 302, ~x~ 207,
where the ~Kê=res~ are spoken of as those who carry away other
~psuchai/~ to Hades. Aeschylus knew it (presumably from old Attic
speech) and simply substituted ~psuchai/~ for the Keres in the
fate-weighing scene in Homer, thus turning the Kerostasia into a
~Psuchostasi/a~ (to the surprise of the Schol. A, ~Th~ 70; A.B. ~Ch~
209). See O. Crusius in Ersch-Gruber, "Keren," 2, 35, 265-7 [Aesch.
_fr._ 279 Sidg.].]
[101\5: Cf. the collections in Pottier, _Les lécythes blancs
attiques à représ. funér._, p. 57, 70 ff.]
[102\5: Though not all of them, some at any rate of the scenes in
which {200} lyre-playing at a grave is represented on a lekythos are
to be taken as implying that the living provide music for the
entertainment of the dead: see Furtwängler on the _Sammlung
Saburoff._ i, Pl. lx.]
[103\5: See **Benndorf, _Sicil. u. unterital. Vasenb._, p. 33.]
[104\5: How the mode of conceiving the spiritual activity of the
dead and consequently the cult of the dead was at first more solemn
and awestruck and completely on a par with the cult of the
~chtho/nioi~; how in the course of time the relations of the living
to the departed became more familiar and the cult of the dead
correspondingly less awe-inspiring, more piously protective in
character than apotropaic--all this is set out in more detail by P.
Stengel, _Chthonisch. u. Todtencult_ [Festschrift für Friedländer],
p. 414 ff.]
[105\5: The reliefs represent a man enthroned, sometimes alone,
sometimes with a woman beside him, stretching out a kantharos to
receive the offerings. As a rule he is approached by a group of
worshippers represented on a smaller scale. The earliest examples of
these reliefs were found in Sparta and go back to the sixth century.
Since the investigations of Milchhöfer especially, they are now
generally recognised as representing the family worship of the dead.
They are the forerunners of the representations of similar
food-offerings in which (following later custom) the Hero is lying
on a _kline_ and receiving his worshippers. (That this class of
reliefs representing "banquets of the dead" was also sacrificial in
character is proved clearly by the presence of the worshippers who
in many cases lead sacrificial victims. H. v. Fritze in _Ath. Mitt._
'96, p. 347 ff., supposes that they are intended to represent not
sacrifices but the ~sumpo/sion~ which the dead person is to enjoy in
the after life. But he can only account for the presence of the
worshippers in such a forced and unnatural way [p. 356 ff.], that
this alone seems to refute his theory. ~purami/des~ and incense
among the offerings made do not by any means contradict its nature
as a sacrifice to the dead.) The same is the meaning of the reliefs
found esp. in Boeotia in which the person worshipped is seated on a
horse, or leading a horse, and accepting offerings (summary by
Wolters, _Archäol. Zeitung_, 1882, p. 299 ff.; cf. also Gardner,
_JHS._ 1884, pp. 107-42; Furtwängler, _Samml. Sab._ i, p. 23). The
worshippers bring pomegranates, a cock (e.g. _Ath. Mitt._ ii, Pl.
20-2), a pig (cock and pig on Theban relief: _A. Mitt._ iii, 377;
pig on Boeotian rel.: _A. Mitt._ iv, Pl. 17, 2), a ram (rel. from
Patras: _A. Mitt._ iv, 125 f.; cf. the ram's head on a grave
monument from the neighbourhood of Argos, _A. Mitt._ viii, 141). All
these gifts are of the kind proper to the underworld. We know the
pomegranate as food of the ~chtho/nioi~ from the Hymn to Demeter;
the pig and ram are the main constituents of sacrifice made to the
~chtho/nioi~ and burnt in cathartic or hilastic (propitiatory)
ceremonial. In such cases the cock, of course, does not appear
because it was sacred to Helios and Selene (cf. D.L. viii, 34;
Iamb., _VP._ 84), but because it was a sacrificial animal of the
~chtho/nioi~ (and of Asklepios) and for the same reason much used in
necromancy, spirit-raising, and magic [Dieterich, _Pap. mag._ 185,
3]. As such it was forbidden food to the Mystai of Demeter at
Eleusis: Porph., _Abs._ 4, 16, p. 255, 5 N. Sch. Luc., _D. Me._ 7,
4, p. 280, 23 Rabe--Anyone who partakes of the food of the
underworld spirits is forfeit to them. On their side the reclining
or enthroned spirits of the dead on these reliefs are brought into
conjunction with a snake (_A. Mitt._ ii, Pl. 20-2; viii, Pl. 18, 1,
etc.), a dog, or a horse (sometimes a horse's head only occurs). The
snake is the well-known symbol of the Hero: the {201} dog and the
horse certainly do not represent victims as Gardner, p. 131,
thinks--their real meaning has not yet been made out. The horse
occurs sometimes by the side of women and therefore can hardly
symbolize a knight's status. I regard it as also a symbol of the
departed as now having entered the spirit-world, like the snake too
(Grimm understands it differently: p. 841 f., 844). I can form no
decided opinion as to the dog: it is not likely to be mere
genre--any more than anything else in these sculptures.]
[106\5: The ~choai/, ha/per nekroi=si meiliktê/ria~, of wine, honey,
water, or oil, which are offered in Tragedy by children at the grave
of a father--A. _Pers._ 609 ff.; _Ch._ 84 ff.; E., _IT._ 159
ff.--are modelled upon the food offerings to the dead in real life.
Honey and water (~meli/kraton~) were always the chief ingredients:
cf. Stengel, _Philolog._ 39, 378 ff.; _Jahr. f. Phil._ 1887, p. 653.
The ritual at the pouring of an ~apo/nimma~--essentially a cathartic
libation-sacrifice but also offered ~eis timê\n toi=s nekroi=s~ is
described by Kleidemos ~en tô=| Exêgêtikô=|~ (the quotation is not
complete, Ath. 409 E f. (Striking similarities in ritual and
language in Indian sacrifice to the dead: Oldenberg, _Rel. d. Ved._
550. Something extremely primitive may be preserved in these uses.)
The same is the meaning of the ~chtho/nia loutra\ toi=s nekroi=s
epiphero/mena~, Zenob. vi, 45, etc. These things have nothing to do
with the ~Hudropho/ria~, as some have thought.]
[107\5: The regular animal used as victim in ~enagi/smata~ for the
dead is a sheep; other animals occur less frequently. The black
colour is general; the sacrifice was burnt completely: cf. the
instances collected by Stengel, _Ztschr. f. Gymnasi._, 1880, p. 743
f., _Jahrb. f. Phil._ 1882, p. 322 f.; '83, p. 375.--Phot.
~kausto/n; karpôto\n ho\ enagi/zetai toi=s teteleutêko/sin~ (cf.
Hesych. ~kauto/n~).--The ~se/linon~ (a plant sacred to the dead; see
above, n. 40) probably served as food for the dead at the ~tri/ta~
and other banquets "of the dead", and was not used as food for the
living at the ~peri/deipnon~; consequently it might never be used at
the meals of the living: Plin. 20, 113, following Chrysippos and
Dionysios. (In the mysteries of the Kabeiroi the ~anaktotele/stai~
had a special reason of their own for forbidding parsley ~auto/rizon
epi\ trape/zês tithe/nai~, Clem. Al., _Protr._ ii, p. 16 P.)]
[108\5: The food offered is a meal for the dead: A., _Ch._ 483 ff.
(cf. Luc., _Luct._ 9; _Char._ 22). The dead man is summoned to come
and drink the offerings (~elthe\ d' hôs pi/ê|s~): E., _Hec._ 535 ff.
It was the general opinion that ~ho nekro\s pi/etai~ of the drink
offerings (_AP._ xi, 8; _Epigr. Gr._ 646, 12), ~hai ga\r choai\
parapsuchê/ tis eisephe/reto toi=s eidô/lois tô=n teteleutêko/tôn
ktl.~ Lyd., _Mens._ 4, 31, p. 90 Wü.]
[109\5: It feels when friends or enemies approach its grave: Is. 9,
4, 19.]
[110\5: Sch. Ar., _Av._ 1490 (referring to the ~Titano/panes~ of
Myrtilos, a poet of the Old Comedy). Phot. ~krei/ttones~ (Hesych.
~krei/ttonas~) ~hoi hê/rôes; dokou=si de\ kakôtikoi\ ei=nai; di' ho\
kai\ hoi ta\ hêrô=|a pario/ntes siôpô=sin. (hê/rôes~ and ~hêrô=|a~
here, in accordance with the usage common in later times, simply =
~teteleutêko/tes~ and ~mnê/mata~ of the usual kind.) Since a Hero in
the higher sense was buried there it was customary to pass in
silence the monument, e.g., of Narkissos, ~hê/rôs Sigêlo/s~: Str.
404 (so also the grove and chasm of Kolonos where the Erinyes dwell:
S., _OC._ 130 ff.). The feeling underlying this is easy to
understand, and the custom therefore is widespread: e.g. among West
African negroes, Réville, _Relig. des peuples non civil._ i, 73. It
is a German superstition (Grimm, p. 1811, n. 830). "Never call the
dead by name or you may _cry them up_".]
[111\5: Pl., _Phd._ 81 CD. The ~psuchê/ . . . hô/sper le/getai peri\
ta\ mnê/mata/ te {202} kai\ tou\s ta/phous kulindome/nê; peri\ ha\
dê\ kai\ _ô/phthê_ a/tta psuchô=n skioeidê= phanta/smata, ktl.~]
[112\5: See O. Jahn, _Archäol. Beitr._ 128 ff.; Benndorf, _Griech.
u. sicil. Vasenb._, p. 33 f., p. 65 (on Pl. 14, 32); also Pottier,
_Lécythes blancs_, p. 65, 2 (who proposes a doubtful theory of a
supposed _Éros funèbre_, p. 76 ff.).]
[113\5: We frequently on vases see the occupant of a grave
represented in the form of a snake at the foot of his tomb, etc.;
e.g. on the _Prothesis_ vase, _Monum. d. Instit._ viii, 4, 5, and
often, see Luckenbach, _Jahrb. f. Phil._, Suppl. ii, 500.--We have
already met with snakes as a favourite form of incarnation chosen by
~chtho/nioi~ of all kinds, deities of the underworld, Heroes, and
the ordinary dead, and we shall frequently meet with the same thing
again. Here we need only refer to Photius ~hê/rôs poiki/los--dia\
to\ tou\s o/pheis poiki/lous o/ntas hê/rôas kalei=sthai~.]
[114\5: What falls to the ground belongs to the ~hê/rôes~ ( = souls
of the dead): Ar. ~Hê/rôes~ _fr._ 305 H. and G. ~toi=s
teteleutêko/si tô=n phi/lôn ape/nemon ta\ pi/ptonta tê=s trophê=s
apo\ tô=n trapezô=n~ (alluded to by Eur. in the _Belleroph._
[_Stheneb. fr._ 667 Din.]), ap. Ath. 427 E. This is the origin of
the Pythagorean ~su/mbolon~--as usual founded on ancient belief
about the soul--~ta\ peso/nta apo\ trapezê=s mê\ anairei=sthai~,
D.L. viii, 34. Suid. ~Puthago/ra ta\ su/mbola~. This superstition is
also the reason for the ~no/mos~ said to have been current in
Kroton, ~to\ peso\n epi\ tê\n gê=n kôlu/ôn anairei=sthai~, Iamb.,
_VP._ 126. Similar belief and custom in Rome: Plin. 28, 27. Among
the ancient Prussians it was the custom not to pick up the fragments
of food that fell to the ground at meal times, but to leave them for
the "poor" souls that have no blood-relations or friends left behind
in the world to look after them; see Chr. Hartknoch, _Alt u. Neues
Preussen_, p. 188. Similar customs elsewhere: Spencer, _Princ. of
Sociol._ i, 281.]
[115\5: Solonian law: D. 20, 104; 40, 49. Plu., _Sol._ 21, ~So/lônos
ho kôlu/ôn no/mos to\n tethnêko/ta kakô=s agoreu/ein. kai\ ga\r
ho/sion tou\s methestêko/tas _hierou\s_ nomi/zein~. This reminds us
of the words of Arist., _Eudem. fr._ 37 [44] given in Plu., _C.
Apoll._ 27, p. 115 B, ~to\ pseu/sasthai/ ti kata\ tô=n
teteleukêko/tôn kai\ to\ blasphêmei=n ouch ho/sion hôs kata\
beltio/nôn kai\ kreitto/nôn ê/dê gegono/tôn~ (Chilon ap. Stob.,
_Fl._ 125, 15 M.: ~to\n teteleukêko/ta mê\ kakolo/gei alla\
maka/rize~). A very extreme form of outrage is ~pseu/sasthai kata\
tou= teleutê/santos~: Is. 9, 6; 23; 26. (The ~kakolo/gos~ is
particularly liable to ~kaka\ eipei=n peri\ tô=n teteleutêko/tôn~,
Thphr., _Char._ 28.) The heir of the dead man has the duty of
carrying out the cult of the dead man's soul, and this includes the
legal prosecution of slanderers of the dead: see Meier and Schömann,
_Att. Process_^2, p. 630.]
[116\5: Ar., _Tagenist. fr._ **485, 12, says of the dead, ~kai\
thu/ome/n g' autoi=si toi=s enagi/smasin, hô/sper _theoi=sin_ ktl.~]
[117\5: ~krei/ttones~ Hesych. Phot. s.v. Arist. ap. Plu., _C.
Apoll._ 27, p. 115 C.]
[118\5: ~hi/leôs e/chein (tou\s teleutê/santas)~: Pl., _Rp._ 427 B.]
[119\5: That the ~hê/rôes duso/rgêtoi kai\ chalepoi\ toi=s
empela/zousi gi/gnontai~ (Sch. Ar., _Av._ 1490) applies equally to
the "Heroes" properly so called--see above, chap. iv, § 11, the
legends of the Hero Anagyros, the Hero of Temesa, etc.--and to those
who gradually came to be called "Heroes" in later times by an
extension of the term, viz. the souls of the dead in
general--~chalepou\s kai\ plê/ktas tou\s hê/rôas nomi/zousi, kai\
ma=llon nu/ktôr ê\ meth' hême/ran~: Chamaileon ap. Ath. 461 C (and
hence the precautions taken against nocturnal {203} apparitions:
Ath. 149 C). Cf. Zenob. v, 60. Hesych. Phot. s. ~krei/ttones~.--That
the ~hê/rôes~ do, and are responsible for, evil _only_ and never
good (Sch. Ar., _Av._ 1490; Babr. 63) is a late belief; it does not
apply either to Heroes or ordinary dead in the conceptions of
earlier ages. Originally the "gods", just as much as Heroes and the
dead, shared in the violent and malignant nature of the unseen. This
was later confined more and more to the lower classes of the
~krei/ttones~ and came to be attached to them so exclusively that it
could in the end be regarded as a sufficient ground of distinction
between them and the gods (as it certainly had not been to start
with) that malice is excluded from the nature of the gods and
benevolence on the contrary from that of Heroes and the dead.]
[120\5: Ar., _Tagenist. fr._ **485, 13: ~kai\ choa/s ge cheo/menoi~
(to the dead) ~aitou/meth' autou\s ta\ _kala\_ deu=r' _anie/nai_~
(intended as a ~paroimi/a~ or at any rate imitated from a
tragedian--apostrophe to a dead woman ~ekei= ble/pousa, deu=r'
ani/ei tagatha/~, Sch. Ar., _Ran._ 1462--and reproduced in this
passage by the interpolator of Aristoph.). This "sending-up
blessings from below" is to be understood in the widest sense (cf.
A., _Pers._ 222); but it is natural to be reminded by such a prayer
to ~anie/nai tagatha/~ of Demeter ~anêsidô/ra~ (Paus. 1, 31, 4;
Plu., _Smp._ 9, 14, 4, p. 745 A), and of ~Gê= anêsidô/ra. dia\ to\
_karpou\s_ anie/nai~ (Hesych.); S., _OT._ 269, ~eu/chomai theou\s
mê/t' a/roton autoi=s gê=s anie/nai tina/~.--That the dead who dwell
beneath the ground were really expected to assist the growth of the
soil we may learn especially from a very interesting statement in
the Hippocratic work ~peri\ enupni/ôn~ (ii, p. 14 Kühn; vi, p. 658
Littré [~p. diai/tês~ iv, 92]). If a person in his dream sees
~apothano/ntas~ dressed in white, offering something, that is a good
omen: ~apo\ ga\r tô=n apothano/ntôn hai trophai\ kai\ auxêsies kai\
spe/rmata gi/nontai~. There was a custom at Athens of strewing seeds
of all kinds over the newly-made grave: Isigon., _Mir._ 67; Cic.,
_Lg._ ii, 63. The reason for this (evidently religious) is variously
given (another, no more convincing, is suggested by K. O. Müller,
_Kl. Schr._ ii, 302 f.). It seems most natural to suppose that the
seed of the earth is put under the protection of the souls of dead
who have now themselves become spirits inhabiting the earth. (Note
besides the entirely similar custom in ancient India, Oldenberg,
_Rel. d. Veda_, 582.)]
[121\5: Electra in A., _Ch._ 486 ff., makes a vow to the soul of her
father: ~kagô\ _choa/s_ soi tê=s emê=s pagklêri/as oi/sô patrô/|ôn
ek do/môn _gamêli/ous_; pa/ntôn de\ prô=ton to/nde presbeu/sô
ta/phon~.--As chthonic powers the Erinyes also send blessings on
agriculture and the bringing-up of children. _Rh. Mus._ 50, 21.
Prayer was also made to ~Gê=~ by those who desired to have
children.]
[122\5: ~Phano/dêmo/s phêsin ho/ti mo/noi Athênai=oi thu/ousin kai\
eu/chontai autoi=s hupe\r gene/seôs pai/dôn, ho/tan gamei=n
me/llôsin~, Phot. Suid. ~tritopa/tores~.]
[123\5: The form of the word itself shows that the ~tritopa/tores~
are simply ~pro/pappoi~. ~tritopa/tôr~ is the earliest ancestor, ~ho
pa/ppou ê\ tê/thês patê/r~ (Arist. ap. Poll. 3, 17). Just as
~mêtropa/tôr~ is ~ho mêtro\s patê/r~ and ~patropa/tôr ho patro\s
patê/r~ (Poll. 3, 16), ~propatô/r~ the forefather, ~pseudopa/tôr =
pseudê\s patê/r, epipa/tôr~ the stepfather (~mêtromê/têr = mêtro\s
mê/têr~)--in the same way ~tritopa/tôr~ is the third forefather, the
father of the ~patropa/tôr~, i.e. the ~pro/pappos~. The
~tritopa/tores~ have an alternative form ~tritopa/trei=s~, Philoch.
ap. Suidas ~tritopa/tores~: _SIG._ 443; _Leg. Sacr._ i, p. 49, l.
32, 52: in Orphic _verse_ this form alone, and not ~tritopa/tores~,
could be used: see Lobeck, _Agl._ 764. They were in fact the
~tri/toi pate/res~ (just as {204} the ~trite/ggonoi~ are the
~tri/toi e/ggonoi~, the ~e/ggonoi~ of the third generation). But the
"third forefathers" are in fact the first ancestors (Lobeck, 763
f.), ~hoi propa/tores~ (Hesych.), ~hoi prô=toi _archêge/tai_~ (_AB._
307, 16)--the ancestors of the individual first of all, his bodily
~gonei=s~ (the series of whom was not generally counted beyond the
~pro/pappos~--Is. 8, 32--i.e. the ~tritopa/tôr~), and then the
"ancestors" of the human race in general (acc. to the explanation of
Philoch. ap. Phot. Suid. ~tritop.~; cf. Welcker, _Götterl._ iii,
73).--We cannot do more than refer here to the completely analogous
ideas of the ancient Indians about the "three-fathers": the father,
grandfather, great-grandfather, as the Sapinda-fathers beyond whom
the line of ancestry was not traced (Kaegi, _Neunzahl_, pp. 5, 6).]
[124\5: The Tritopatores are most distinctly referred to as
~a/nemoi~: Demon ap. Phot. Suid. ~tritop.~ cf. ~despo/tai ane/môn~
Phot. ~tritopa/tôr~; Tz. Lyc. 738. Orphic poetry made them
~thurôrou\s kai\ phu/lakas tô=n ane/môn~. This is already a free
interpretation; the Attic belief, expressed by Demon, knows nothing
about this. It can only have been learned invention that limited
their number to three (as in the case of the originally unlimited
number of Horai, Erinyes, etc.), and gave them definite names
(Amalkeides, etc., Orph. _fr._ 240, Ab.) or identified them with the
three Hekatoncheires (Kleidemos in the ~Exêg.~). The genuine and
ancient belief about them can still be discerned through all the
confusion of misinterpretation and misunderstanding, and according
to this the ~tritopa/tores~ were the souls of ancestors who were
also wind-spirits. People prayed for children to these spirits: and
Lobeck, _Agl._ 755 ff., is right in connecting with this custom the
Orphic doctrine that the soul of man comes into him from without
with the wind. Even this, however, is only a speculative
embellishment of the popular belief about the Tritopatores (which
the Orphics cannot, as Welcker thinks, _Götterl._ iii, 71, have
"invented": they only explained it after their fashion and
consequently must have found it already existing). When we have
stripped off all speculative accretions we find the Tritopatores to
have been the souls of ancestors who have become wind-spirits and
travel in the wind like other ~psuchai/~ (whose name even is derived
from the breath of the wind). From these as from real ~pnoiai\
zô|ogo/noi~ their descendants hope for aid where the entry into life
of a new ~psuchê/~ is concerned. It is not hard to understand the
connexion between souls and wind-spirits; it is merely that such
conceptions were rare among the Greeks and for that reason these
isolated wind-spirits surviving in popular belief were turned into
individual daimones--the Tritopatores no less than the Harpies (see
_Rh. Mus._ 50, 3 ff.).]
[125\5: The words of Orestes in A., _Ch._ 483, give very naive
expression to the belief. He calls to the soul of his father:
~hou/tô~ (if thou sendest me aid) ~ga\r a/n soi dai=tes e/nnomoi
brotô=n ktizoi/at'; ei de\ mê/, par' eudei/pnois e/sei a/timos
empu/roisi knisôtoi=s chthono/s~. Thus we see that the belief
ridiculed by Luc., _Luct._ 9, was true of earlier times as well:
~tre/phontai de\ a/ra~ (the dead) ~tai=s par' hêmi=n choai=s kai\
toi=s kathagizome/nois epi\ tô=n ta/phôn; hôs ei/ tô| mê\ ei/ê
kataleleimme/nos hupe\r gê=s phi/los ê\ suggenê/s, a/sitos hou=tos
nekro\s kai\ limô/ttôn en autoi=s politeu/etai~.]
[126\5: Epicurus devotes by will certain definite ~pro/sodoi~ to the
yearly offering of ~enagi/smata~ to his parents, his brothers, and
himself: D.L. x, 18.--To the end of the third century belongs the
"Testament of Epikteta", i.e. the inscription recording the
foundation by Epikteta (who came from Thera as we know now for
certain: ~Eph. Arch.~ 1894, p. 142) of a three-day sacrificial feast
to be performed every year for {205} the Muses and "the Heroes",
i.e. for her husband, herself, and her sons; and the institution for
this special purpose of a ~koino\n tou= andrei/ou tô=n suggenô=n~
(together with women of the family). The inscr. gives also the rules
of this sacrificial society (Michel n. 1001; _CIG._ 2448).--The
offerings to the dead in this case (vi, 6 ff.) consist of a
~hierei=on~ (i.e. a sheep) and ~hiera/~, especially ~ellu/tai~ of
five choinikes of wheaten flour and a stater of dry cheese (~ell.~
are a kind of sacrificial cake specially offered to the deities of
the lower world, as for ex. to Trophonios at Lebadeia: _GDI._ 413
with n., p. 393), and in addition to these garlands are mentioned.
The following are to be sacrificed: the customary parts of the
victim, an ~ellu/tês~, a loaf, a ~pa/rax (= ba/rax, bê/rêx~:
interchange of tenuis and media as frequently) and some ~opsa/ria~
(i.e. small fishes: cf. the ~apopuri/s~ for the dead, _GDI._ 3634
Kos). The rest was probably consumed by the religious society: these
special portions the person offering the sacrifice, we are told,
~_karpôsei=_~, i.e. (he shall offer them to the Heroes by burning
them entire. Cf. Phot. ~kausto/n; _karpôto/n_, ho\ enagi/zetai toi=s
teteleutêko/sin (karpô=sai, ka/rpôma, holoka/rpôsis~, etc., are
frequent in the LXX) and Phot. ~holokarpou/menon~ and
~holokautismo/s. karpou=n = holokautou=n~ in the sacrificial
calendar from Kos, _GDI._ 3636; cf. Stengel, _Hermes_, 27, 161 f.]
[127\5: See Is. 1, 10.]
[128\5: In manumission records it is sometimes definitely enjoined
that the freed persons shall at the death of their masters
~thapsa/ntô kai\ ta\ _hô/ria_ autô=n poiêsa/tôsan~: thus on the
insc. from Phokis, _SIG._ 841. (Instructions of this kind as esp.
frequent in the records of emancipation from Delphi: see
Büchsenschütz, _Bes. u. Erw._, 178 Anm. 3-4.) ~ta\ _hô/ria_~ when
applied to the dead (_GDI._ 1545-6; ~hôrai/ôn tuchei=n~ E., _Sup._
175) means the ~kath' hô/ran suntelou/mena hiera/~ (Hesych.
~hôrai=a~; funeral ordinance of the Labyadai, l. 49 ff.: ~ta\s d'
a/llas thoi/nas kat' ta\n hô/ran agage/sthai~), i.e. the sacrifices
to be celebrated periodically (~tai=s hiknoume/nais hême/rais~, n.
138; cf. ~teletai\ hô/riai~, Pi., _P._ ix, 98 ff.). This doubtless
means in particular the ~eniau/sia hiera/~ (cf. nn. 81, 89, 92 of
this chap.). Garlanding of graves ~kat' eniauto\n tai=s hôri/ois~
(sc. ~hame/rais~), _GDI._ 1775, 21; ~kat' eniauto\n hôrai=a hiera\
apete/loun~ (to the Heroes), Pl., _Cri._ 116 C.]
[129\5: The foll. are the expressions occurring in the speeches of
Isaeus which conclusively warrant what is said above. The childless
Menekles ~esko/pei ho/pôs mê\ e/soito a/pais, all' e/soito autô=|
ho/stis zô=nta gêrotrophê/soi kai\ teleutê/santa tha/psoi auto\n
kai\ eis to\n e/peita chro/non ta\ nomizo/mena autô=| poiê/soi~, 2,
10. To be cared for in old age, buried after death, and to have
permanent attention paid to one's soul is a single unified
conception, in which ritual burial at the hands of one's own
~e/kgonoi~ (thus securing the cult of the family) does not form the
least important part (cf. Pl., _Hipp. ma._ 291 DE: it is
~ka/lliston~ for a man--according to the popular view--~aphikome/nô|
es gê=ras tou\s hautou= gone/as teleutê/santas kalô=s peristei/lanti
hupo\ tô=n hautou= ekgo/nôn kalô=s kai\ megaloprepô=s taphê=nai~.
Medea says to her children in E., _Med._ 1032 ~ei=chon elpi/das
polla\s en humi=n gêroboskê/sein t' eme\ kai\ katthanou=san chersi\n
eu= peristelei=n, zêlôto\n anthrô/poisin~). That he may share in
this attention to the souls of the dead a man must leave behind him
a son; upon a son alone this will fall as a sacred duty. Hence a man
who has no son takes the chosen heir of his possessions into his own
_family_ by adoption. Inheritance and adoption invariably accompany
each other in such cases (and even in the first speech, where,
though nothing is actually said of adoption, it is certainly implied
throughout). The {206} _motive_ of adoption is said in the clearest
possible terms to be the desire on the part of the adopter for a
permanent care of his own soul at the hands of his adopted son: 2,
25, 46; 6, 51, 65; 7, 30; 9, 7, 36. There is consequently a close
connexion between ~ei=nai klêrono/mon kai\ epi\ ta\ mnê/mata
ie/nai, cheo/menoi kai\ enagiou=nta~ (6, 51). It is a mark of the
heir ~ta\ nomizo/mena poiei=n, enagi/zein, chei=sthai~ (6, 65); cf.
also D. 43, 65. Duties towards the soul of the dead consist in the
son and heir's provision for a solemn funeral, the erection of a
handsome grave-monument and in his offering of the ~tri/ta~ and
~e/nata kai\ ta=lla ta\ peri\ tê\n taphê/n~: 2, 36, 37; 4, 19; 9, 4.
After that he is responsible for the regular continuation of the
cult and of sacrifice to the dead, ~enagi/zesthai kath' he/kaston
_eniauto/n_~ (2, 46), and generally, ~kai\ eis to\n _e/peita_
chro/non ta\ nomizo/mena poiei=n~ (2, 10). Then, just as he has to
carry on for the dead man his family worships, his ~hiera\ patrô=|a~
(2, 46: e.g. for Zeus Ktesios: 8, 16); so also he must, as the dead
man once did, make regular offering to the ~_pro/gonoi_~ of the
house: 9, 7. In this way the family cult secures its own
continuity.--Everything in this reminds us in the strongest way of
what is done for the continuation of the cult of the dead, esp. by
adoption, in the country where ancestor-worship reaches its greatest
height--China. Desire to perpetuate the _family_ name, the strongest
motive with us in the adoption of male children, could not be so
strong in Greece when only individual names were usual. Even this,
however, occurs as a motive for the adoption of a son, ~hi/na mê\
anô/numos ho oi=kos autou= ge/nêtai~, 2, 36, 46; cf. Isocr. 19, 35
(and Philodem., _Mort._, p. 28, 9 ff. Mekl.). The "house" at any
rate is called after its ancestors (like those ~Bouseli/dai~ of whom
Dem. speaks), and if the house has no male heir this common name
will disappear. Apart from this, the adopted person will call
himself the son of his adoptive father, and will ensure the
preservation of the latter's name, in the well-known fashion, by
giving this name to the eldest (Dem. 39, 27) of his own sons. (A
similar perpetuation of a name is probably intended in E., _IT._
695-8.)]
[130\5: Appealing to ~phê=mai, pollai\ kai\ spho/dra palaiai/~,
Plato asserts, _Lg._ 927 A, ~hôs a/ra hai tô=n teleutêsa/ntôn
psuchai\ _du/namin_ e/chousi/ tina teleutê/sasai, hê=| tô=n kat'
anthrô/pous pragma/tôn epimelou=ntai~. Hence the ~epi/tropoi~ of
orphaned children ~prô=ton me\n tou\s a/nô theou\s phobei/sthôn . .
. ei=ta ta\s tô=n kekmêko/tôn psucha/s, hai=s estin en tê=| phu/sei
_tô=n hautô=n ekgo/nôn kê/desthai diaphero/ntôs_, kai\ timô=si/ te
autou\s eumenei=s kai\ atima/zousi dusmenei=s~. It is only the
circle of influence belonging to the ~psuchai/~ which is here
limited (and the circle of worship in consequence, not the potency
of that influence.]
[131\5: This is true at least of the Greeks, as ancient philosophy
was already aware: Arist., _Pol._ i, 2; Dicaearchus ap. St. Byz.
~pa/tra~ (who apparently thinks of the ~pa/tra~ as held together by
"endogamous" marriage). The whole development of Greek law and
politics--this much at least may be conceded to the analysis of
Fustel de Coulanges (_La Cité antique_)--points to the conclusion
that the division into the smallest groups goes back to the
beginning of Greek life. The Greeks were even then divided into
families and groups of kinsfolk, from the combination of which the
later Greek state grew up; they never (as happened elsewhere) lived
the community life of the tribe or the horde. And yet, can we
imagine the Greek gods without the tribal community that worshipped
them?]
[132\5: The idea of the _Lar familiaris_ can be translated into
Greek not inadequately by the words ~ho kat' oiki/an hê/rôs, hê/rôs
oikouro/s~, as is done by Dionys. Hal., and Plutarch in their
accounts of the story {207} of Ocrisia (D.H. 4, 2, 3; Plu. _Fort.
Rom._ 9, p. 323 C). But this was not an idea current among the
Greeks. The Latin _genius generis_ = _Lar familiaris_ (Laber. 54
Rib.) is most nearly approached by the remarkable expression ~hê/rôs
suggenei/as~, _CIA._ iii, 1460. Inside the house, at the family
hearth (in whose ~muchoi/~, "dwells" Hekate: E., _Med._ 397), the
Greeks worshipped--no longer the spirits of the ancestors--but the
~theoi\ patrô=|oi, ktê/sioi, mu/chioi, herkei=oi~. These were
compared with the Roman Penates (D.H. 1, 67, 3; cf. Hyg. ap. Macr.
3, 4, 13), but their relationship to the spirits of the house and of
the family is considerably less apparent than in the case of the
Penates. (It is simply imitation of Roman custom that makes the
dying Peregrinus call upon the ~dai/mones patrô=|oi kai\ mêtrô=|oi~:
Luc., _Peregr._ 36. ~Ste/phanos toi=s tou= patro\s hautou=
dai/mosin~, ins. from Lykia, _CIG._ 4232 = _BCH._ xv, 552, n. 26.
~toi=s dai/mosi tê=s apothanou/sês gunaiko/s~, Philo, _Leg. ad G._
65, ii, p. 555 M. More in Lob., _Agl._ 769 n.)]
[133\5: The ~_agatho\s dai/môn_~ of which Attic writers in
particular often speak has very indefinite features. Those who used
the word combined ideas--no longer fully intelligible--of a divine
being of fairly definite nature and shape with this name which in
itself was altogether too liable to generalization. Modern writers
have declared that it was originally a daimon of the fertility of
crops. But there is just as little ground for believing this as
there is for identifying it with Dionysos, as was done by the
physician Philonides in connexion with an absurd story which he has
invented on his own account (Ath. 675 B). There is much, however,
that points to the connexion of the ~agatho\s dai/môn~ with chthonic
powers. He appears as a snake (Gerhard, _Akad. Abh._ ii, 24) like
all ~chtho/nioi~. (On a snake on a talisman the words are written
~to\ o/noma tou= agathou= dai/monos~: _P. Mag. Par._ 2427 ff.)
~agathodai/mones~ was the name given to a special kind of
non-poisonous snake (described after Archigenes, in the Vatican
iologus brought to light by myself: _Rh. Mus._ 38, 278; cf. Photius,
~parei=ai o/pheis~, and again esp. s.v. ~o/pheis parei/as~, 364, 1).
Sacrifice was made to them in Alexandria on the 25th Tybi as ~toi=s
agathoi=s dai/mosi toi=s _pronooume/nois tô=n **oikiô=n_~: [Callisth.]
i, 32 (cod. A, or as "penates dei" as the words are translated by
Jul. Valer., p. 38, 29 ff. (Kuebl.). In this instance the ~ag. d.~
is evidently a good spirit who protects the house. Only with this in
mind can we understand how anyone could consecrate his house
~agathô=| dai/moni~, as Timoleon did at Syracuse (~_agathô=|
dai/moni~_, Plu., _Ips. Laud._, 11, p. 542 E; ~tê\n oiki/an
_hierô=|_ dai/moni kathie/rôsen~, Plu., _Timol._ 36, where ~hierô=|~
is evidently an ancient copyist's error). Cf. also the saying of
Xeniades, D.L. vi, 74. Such guardian spirits of the house are of
course familiar enough in our own popular superstition, but in their
case "the transition from souls of the dead to kindly house-spirits
or kobolds is still demonstrable" (Grimm, p. 913). At the household
meal the first few drops of unmixed wine belong by right to the
~agatho\s dai/môn~ (Hug, _Plat. Symp._^2, p. 23); then follows the
libation to Zeus Soter. But sometimes it was the "Heroes" and not
the ~ag. d.~ who preceded Zeus Soter (Sch. Pi., _I_ v, 10; Gerhard,
p. 39): they have taken the place of the ~ag. d.~, which itself
reveals the connexion between the ~ag. d.~ and these "souls".
Another fact pointing in the same direction is the worship of the
~agatho\s dai/môn~ in common with many other deities of chthonic
nature in the temple of Trophonios at Lebadeia (Paus. 9, 39, 5). In
this case it is mentioned by the side of Tyche and these two are
sometimes met with together in grave-inscriptions (e.g. _CIG._ 2465
f.) and Tyche herself appears with such chthonic deities as
Despoina, Plouton, and Persephone (_CIG._ {208} 1464 Sparta). In
epitaphic inscriptions ~daimo/nôn agathô=n~ sometimes occurs as
completely equivalent to _Dis Manibus_: e.g. ~Daimo/nôn agathô=n
Poti/ou~, _CIG._ 2700 b.c. (Mylasa); ~daimo/nôn agathô=n Arte/mônos
kai\ Ti/tou~, _Ath. Mitt._ '90, p. 110 (Mylasa); cf. the inscr. from
Mylasa in _Ath. Mitt._ '90, pp. 276-7 (nn. 23-5, 27). The singular
is rare: ~Dai/monos agathou= Ariste/ou ktl.~ _BCH._ '90, p. 626
(Karia). (~dai/mosin heautou= te kai\ Laititi/as tê=s gunaiko\s
autou=~ = Dis Manibus suis et Laetitiae uxoris in the bilingual ins.
from Beroea, _CIG._ 4452: cf. 4232 and 5827.) All these have come
under Roman influence, but it is worth noticing, all the same, that
the ~agatho\s d.~ was identified with the _Di Manes_; which means
that it was regarded as a daimon that had once been a disembodied
human soul.--The subject might be dealt with more fully than would
be in place here.]
[134\5: In Boeotia (and elsewhere, particularly in Thessaly) the
designation of the dead as ~hê/rôs~--always an indication of a
higher conception of its spirit nature--is especially frequent on
tombstones. More will be found on this subject below. The
inscriptions are for the most part of late date. But even in the
fifth century (at all events at the beginning of the fourth) the
custom of "heroizing" the ordinary dead was current. To this Plato
Com. (i, p. 622 K.) alludes in the "Menelaos", ~ti/ ouk apê/gxô,
hi/na Thê/bêsin hê/rôs ge/nê|~; (Zenob. vi, 17, etc. The
Paroemiogrr. connect this with the Theban custom of refusing the
honours of the dead to those who committed suicide. This is
certainly wrong and contradicts Pl.'s intention. Keil shows this
clearly, _Syll. Insc. Boeot._, p. 153).]
[135\5: Among the Epizephyrian Locrians ~odu/resthai ouk e/stin epi\
toi=s teleutê/sasin, all' epeida\n ekkomi/sôsin, euôchou=ntai~,
Heraclid., _Pol._ 30, 2. In Keos the men never wear any sign of
mourning, though women mourn for a year for a son who dies young;
ib. 9, 4 (see Welcker, _Kl. Schr._ ii, 502). The funeral regulation
of Iulis (_SIG._ 877) published in imitation of Athenian usage
implies rather a tendency to exaggerated display of mourning, at
least among the common people.]
[136\5: e.g. Is. 2, 47: ~boêthê/sate kai\ hêmi=n kai\ ekei/nô| _tô=|
en Ha/idou o/nti_~. Strictly speaking no one can ~boêthei=n~ the
departed in Hades. Few nations have entirely escaped such
contradictions between a cult of the dead in the house or at a grave
and the conception of the relegation of the soul to an inaccessible
other world. They arise from two simultaneously existing mental
attitudes (representing also different stages of culture) towards
these obscure subjects. The naive theology of the common people
reconciles such discrepancies by attributing two souls to men, one
of which goes down to Hades while the other remains beside the
still-animated body and receives the offerings of the family: e.g.
North American Indians: Müller, _Ges. d. Amer. Urrel._ 66; cf.
Tylor, i, 434. These two souls are in reality the creation of two
mutually incompatible modes of thought.]
[137\5:--idne testamento cavebit is qui nobis quasi oraculum
ediderit nihil post mortem ad nos pertinere? Cic., _Fin._ ii,
102.--Besides Epic., Theophrastos seems to have made some
arrangement for the regular celebration of his memory (by the
associates of the Peripatos?). Harp. 139, 4 ff.: ~mê/pote de\
hu/steron neno/mistai to\ epi\ timê=| tinas tô=n _apothano/ntôn_
sunie/nai kai\ _orgeô=nas_ homoi/ôs ônoma/sthai; hôs e/sti sunidei=n
ek tô=n Theophra/stou diathêkô=n~. The will of Thphr. preserved by
D.L. 5, 2, 14, is silent on the point.] {209}
III
[138\5: Oracle ap. D. 43, 66 (cf. 67) ~toi=s apophthime/nois en
hiknoume/na| hame/ra| (en tai=s kathêkou/sais hême/rais, § 67)
telei=n tou\s kathê/kontas katta\ hagême/na.--ta\ hagême/na = ta\
nomizo/mena~ "the customary things" (Buttmann, _Ausf. Gramm._, § 113
n. 7, 1, p. 84 Lob.).]
[139\5: Inquiry, at sacrifices to the dead, of an ~exêgêtê/s~: Is.
8, 39; of the ~exêgêtai/~ (who give detailed instructions and
advice: [D.] 47, 68 ff. Harp. ~exêgêtê/s; e/sti de\ kai\ ha\~ (perh.
~ho/te ta\~) ~pro\s tou\s katoichome/nous nomizo/mena exêgou=nto
toi=s deome/nois~. Tim. Lex. ~exêgêtai/; trei=s gi/nontai
putho/chrêstoi~ (there is no need to understand this other than
literally, i.e. that the college of the ~putho/chr. exêg.~ consisted
of three members: Schöll, _Hermes_, 22, 564), ~hoi=s me/lei
kathai/rein tou\s a/gei tini\ enischêthe/ntas~. The purification of
the ~enagei=s~ is closely connected with the cult of the souls. It
is true that prescriptions for such purification were to be found
also ~en toi=s tô=n Eupatridô=n~ (so Müller, _Aesch. Eum._ 163 A. 20
[152 n. E.T.]) ~patri/ois~: Ath. 9, 410 A, and it may be that the
college of the ~ex Eupatridô=n exêgêtai/~ may have also given
decisions in such cases. Still, that does not prevent the statement
of Timaeus in regard to the ~exêg. putho/chr.~ from being true.
(Expiations belong principally if not exclusively to the Apolline
cult.)]
[140\5: Plu., _Ser. Num._ 17, p. 650 C.D. expressly appeals for
confirmation of the belief in a continued existence of the soul
after the death of the body to utterances of the Delphic god:
~a/chri tou= polla\ toiau=ta prothespi/zesthai, ouch ho/sio/n esti
tê=s psuchê=s katagnô=nai tha/naton~.]
[141\5: That already in Homer the circle of the ~agchistei=s~ (in
the Athenian legal sense) was called upon to prosecute the blood-feud
is certainly probable in itself; it cannot, however, be proved from
examples occurring in Homer. Leist's statements in _Graecoital.
Rechtsges._, p. 42, are not quite exact. The facts are: a father is
called upon to avenge his son, and a son his father, and a brother
to avenge his brother (~g~ 307; ~I~ 632 f.; ~ô~ 434); once the
avengers are the ~kasi/gnêtoi/ te e/tai te~ of the murdered man, ~o~
273. ~e/tai~ has a very wide sense and is not even confined to
kinship; at any rate it is not simply "cousins" (~e/tai kai\
anepsioi/~ side by side. ~I~ 464).--In Attic law, too, in certain
cases the duty of prosecuting the murderer extended beyond the
limits of the ~anepsiadoi=~ to more distant relatives and even to
the ~phra/tores~ of the murdered man (Law ap. D. 43, 57).]
[142\5: Flight, indeed ~aeiphugi/a~, on account of ~pho/nos
akou/sios~: ~Ps~ 85 ff. (The fugitive becomes the ~thera/pôn~ of the
person who receives him into his house in the foreign land: l. 90;
cf. ~O~ 431 f.; this must have been the rule.)--Flight on account of
~pho/nos hekou/sious (lochêsa/menos~ 268) ~n~ 259 ff. And so
frequently.]
[143\5: ~I~ 632 ff. ~kai\ me/n ti/s te kasignê/toio phonê=os
**poinê\n ê\ hou= paido\s hede/xato tethnêô=tos; kai/ rh' ho me\n en
dê/mô| me/nei autou= po/ll' apoti/sas tou= de/ t' erêtu/etai kradi/ê
kai\ thumo\s agê/nôr poinê\n dexame/nou~. Here it is very plainly
represented that all that is required is to appease "the heart and
spirit" of the receiver of the ~poinê/~: the murdered man is not
considered.]
[144\5: It is very natural to suppose that the ~poinê/~ (as K. O.
Müller suggests in _Aesch. Eum._ 145 [122 E T.]) may have arisen out
of the substitution of a vicarious sacrifice instead of that of the
murderer himself, who should strictly have been offered to the dead
man. In this way primitive human sacrifice has in many cases been
replaced by sacrifice of animals. In that case the ~poinê/~ too must
have originally been offered to the murdered man: in Homeric times
{210} only the satisfaction of the living avenger was thought
of.--In any case it is a mistake to look upon the permission to buy
off the blood-feud as a mitigation of primitive severity in the
taking of vengeance due to the intervention of the State. The State
in this case mitigated nothing since it took no interest at all (in
Homer) in the treatment of murder cases. Of course, legal
proceedings can be taken to decide whether a stipulated ~poinê/~ has
been paid or not (~S~ 497 ff.), as in the case of any other
~sumbo/laion~. But the prosecution of the murderer in all its
departments is left entirely in the hands of the family of the
murdered man.]
[145\5: We have very few details on this point. In Sparta ~hoi
ge/rontes (dika/zousi) ta\s phonika\s (di/kas)~, Arist., _Pol._ 3, 1,
p. 1275b 10 (and in Corinth, too, D.S. 16, 65, 6 ff.). Involuntary
homicide is punished by exile and (in this being more severe than at
Athens) perpetual exile as it appears. The Spartiate Drakontios
serving in the army of the Ten Thousand ~e/phuge _pai=s_ ô\n
oi/kothen pai=da a/kôn **katakanô\n~ (like Patroklos in fact, ~Ps~
87), ~xuê/lê| pata/xas~, Xen., _An._ 4, 8, 25. If his banishment had
been only temporary the period must have expired long before.--In
Kyme there are vestiges of _legal_ prosecution of murder (with
witnesses): Arist., _Pol._ 1269a, 1 ff.--In Chalkis ~epi\ Thra/kê|~
the laws of Androdamas of Rhegion were in force ~peri/ te ta\
_phonika\_ kai\ ta\s epiklê/rous~, Arist., _Pol._ 2, 8, p. 1274b 23
ff.--In Lokri were used the laws of Zaleukos in combination with
Cretan, Spartan and Areopagite institutions; these last undoubtedly
dealing with homicide, which must therefore have been regulated
constitutionally. (Str. vi, 260, following Eph.)]
[146\5: The limits of those qualified to inherit extends in Athenian
law ~me/chri **anepsiadô=n pai/dôn~ (Law ap. D. 43, 51; cf. § 27) as
did the duty of avenging murder ~mechri\ anepsiadô=n~: D. 47, 72
(~ento\s anepsio/têtos~, which must mean the same thing, Law ap. D.
43, 57). The circle of persons thus united in the right of
inheritance and the duty of taking vengeance for murder constituted
the ~_agchistei/a_~, the body of kinsfolk tracing their descent (in
the male line only) from the same man, the father, grandfather, or
great-grandfather of them all. This is the limit to which the
~gonei=s~ are traced: Is. 8, 32; cf. above, note 123. Many nations
of the earth are familiar with a similar limitation of the narrower
body of kinsfolk composing a "house": as to the underlying reasons
for the practice many conjectures are made by H. E. Seebohm, _On the
Structure of Greek Tribal Society_ (1895).]
[147\5: As to the restless wandering of the ~biaiotha/natoi~ more
details will be given below [Append. vii]. In the meantime it will
be enough to refer to A., _Eum._ 98, where the still unavenged soul
of the murdered Klytaimnestra complains ~aischrô=s _alô=mai_~. A
later authority uses words that correspond well with ancient belief:
Porph., _Abst._ ii, 47, ~tô=n anthrô/pôn hai tô=n bi/a|
apothano/ntôn (psuchai\) kate/chontai pro\s tô=| sô/mati~, like the
souls of the ~a/taphoi~.]
[148\5: In Homeric times the injured dead becomes a ~_theô=n_
mê/nima~ to the evil-doer (~Ch~ 358, ~l~ 73). Later times believed
that the soul of the dead man himself angrily pursued the murderer
with its terrors till it drove him beyond its own boundaries: ~ho
thanatôthei\s thumou=tai tô=| dra/santi ktl.~, Pl., _Lg._ 865 DE,
appealing to ~palaio/n tina tô=n archai/ôn mu/thôn lego/menon~; cf.
X., _Cyr._ 8, 7, 18: A., _Cho._ 39 ff., 323 ff. If the next-of-kin
whose duty it is to avenge the death of his relative shirks the duty
incumbent on him the anger of the dead man is turned upon the
latter: Pl., _Leg._ 9, 866 B--~tou= patho/ntos prostrepome/nou tê\n
pa/thên~. The indignant soul becomes _~prostro/paios~_.
~prostro/paios~ probably {211} applies only in a derivative sense to
a ~dai/môn~ who takes the part of the dead man (esp. ~Zeu\s
prostro/paios~); it is strictly speaking an epithet of the soul
itself in its longing for vengeance. Thus in Antiphon _Tetral._ 1,
~g~ 10, ~hêmi=n me\n prostro/paios ho apothanô\n ouk e/stai~. 3, ~d~
10, ~ho apoktei/nas~ (or rather ~ho tethnêkô\s~) ~toi=s aiti/ois
prostro/paios e/stai~. So, too, A., _Cho._ 287, ~ek prostropai/ôn en
ge/nei peptôko/tôn~. _EM._ 42, 7, ~Êrigo/nên, anartê/sasan heautê/n,
prostro/paion toi=s Athênai/ois gene/sthai~. We can, however, see
particularly well from this case how easily the change came about
from a soul in a special condition to a similar _daimonic_ being
which takes the place of the soul of the dead. The same Antiphon
speaks also of ~hoi tô=n apothano/ntôn prostro/paioi, ho
prostro/paios tou= apothano/ntos~ as something distinct from the
dead man himself: _Tetr._ 3, ~a~ 4; 3, ~b~ 8; cf. ~ho Murti/lou
prostro/paios~, Paus. 2, 18, 2, etc.; cf. Zacher, _Dissert. phil.
Halens._, iii, p. 228. The injured dead himself becomes ~_arai=os_~,
Soph., _Tr._ 1201 ff. (cf. _fr._ 367; E., _IT._ 778; _Med._ 608);
later his place is taken by ~dai/mones arai=oi~. What terrible evils
the unavenged soul can bring upon the person who is called upon to
take vengeance are painted for us by Aesch. in _Cho._ 278 ff. (or
else as some think an ancient interpolator of A.). Sickness and
trouble might be sent over several generations by such ~palaia\
mêni/mata~ of the dead: Pl., _Phdr._ 244 D (see Lobeck's account,
_Agl._ 636 f.). True to ancient beliefs an Orphic hymn prays to the
Titanes ~_mê=nin_ chalepê\n apope/mpein, ei/ tis _apo\ chthoni/ôn
progo/nôn_ oi/koisi pela/sthê~, _H._ 37, 7 f.; cf. 39, 9-10.]
[149\5: ~chreô/n estin _hupexelthei=n_ tô=| _patho/nti to\n
dra/santa_ ta\s hô/ras pa/sas tou= eniautou=, kai\ erêmô=sai pa/ntas
tou\s oikei/ous to/pous xumpa/sês tê=s patri/dos~, Pl., _Lg._ ix,
865 E. The law says in the case of the criminal convicted of murder
~ei/rgein me\n tê=s tou= patho/ntos patri/dos, ktei/nein de\ ouch
ho/sion hapantachou=~, D. 23, 38.]
[150\5: When the victim was a citizen, and also in wilful murder of
a non-citizen. See Mei. and Sch., _Att. Proc._^2, p. 379, n.
520.--When the citizenship of a city rested upon conquest the lives
of the subjects belonging to the older subject population were of
less account. In Tralles (Karia) the murder of one of the Leleges by
an (Argive) full citizen might be bought off by payment of a bushel
of peas (a purely symbolical ~poinê/~) to the relations of the
victim: Plu., _Q.Gr._ 46, p. 302 B.]
[151\5: On the expiry of the legally appointed period of banishment
the relations of the dead man do not seem to have been allowed to
refuse ~ai/desis~. See Philippi, _Areop. u. Epheten_, 115 f.]
[152\5: Law ap. D. 43, 57.]
[153\5: D. 37, 59. See Philippi, op. cit., p. 144 ff. Cf. E.,
_Hipp._ 1435 f., 1442 f., 1448 f.]
[154\5: Such prohibition against taking a ~poinê/~ for murder is
made by the Law ap. D. 23, 28: ~tou\s d' andropho/nous exei=nai
apoktei/nein . . . lumai/nesthai de\ mê/, _mêde\ apoina=n_~ (cf. §
33 ~to\ de\ mêd' apoina=n; mê\ chrê/mata pra/ttein, ta\ ga\r
chrê/mata a/poina ôno/mazon hoi palaioi/~). In spite of this Meier
and others unjustifiably conclude that murder could be indemnified
by payment of money, from the illegal practice mentioned in [D.] 58,
29: this speaks rather for the contrary. They have more appearance
of justification when they appeal to Harp. (Phot. Suid., _E.M._ 784,
26; _AB._ 313, 5 ff.), s.v. ~hupopho/nia; ta\ epi\ pho/nô| dido/mena
chrê/mata toi=s oikei/ois tou= phoneuthe/ntos, hi/na mê\
epexi/ôsin~. On the strength of this Hermann, _Gr. Staatsalt._^5
104, 6, says, "even intentional murder could be absolutely
indemnified." Nothing is actually said of ~pho/nos hekou/sios~ here
nor do we anywhere learn that the payment of ~hupopho/nia~ {212} on
the occasion of a murder was ever a formally _legalized_ proceeding.
It remains possible, and even in the circumstances more probable,
that Dinarch. and Thphr. in the passages on ~hupopho/nia~ quoted by
Harp. referred to the practice as one _forbidden_ by law, though it
might be, on occasion, an actual fact. If we had only the gloss of
Suidas--~a/poina; lu/tra, ha\ di/dôsi/ tis hupe\r pho/nou ê\
sô/matos. hou/tôs So/lôn en no/mois~--we might have concluded that
payment of such blood-money was allowed in Athens and mentioned in
Solon's laws as allowable. This would be quite as justifiable as to
argue as above from Harp. s. ~hupopho/nia~. We know, in fact, that
the law referred to the ~a/poina~ and ~apoina=n~ as _forbidden_
things, from the passages already quoted from Dem. (23, 28-33). From
these the gloss was itself probably derived.]
[155\5: We cannot, however, believe on the poor authority of Sch.
Dem, p. 607, 16 ff., that the ~hieropoioi\ tai=s Semnai=s theai=s~
were selected out of the whole Athenian citizen body by the
Areiopagos. ("Three" were chosen out of all the Athenians: D. 21,
115; at other times "ten": Dinarch. ap. _EM._ 469, 12 ff.; an
indefinite number: Phot. ~hieropoioi/~.) According to all analogies
we should rather expect this selection to have been made by the
popular Assembly.]
[156\5: ~hai diômosi/ai kai\ ta\ to/mia~, Antiphon, _Herod._ 88. In
more detail D. 23, 67-8. Those who had to take an oath swore by the
~Semnai\ theai/~ and other gods: Dinarch., _adv. Demosth._ 47. Both
sides had to swear to the justice of their case in respect of the
material facts in dispute (Philippi, _Areop._, pp. 87-95). Such a
compulsory oath taken by both parties could not of course in any
circumstances serve as proof: one side at least must be perjured.
Nor can the Athenians themselves have failed to see this. It is
surely doing them an injustice not to see the simple explanation of
this strange sort of preliminary oath-taking and to dismiss the
matter with a reference to the Athenians as "not a legally-minded
people" (as Philippi does, p. 88). It is much more natural to
suppose that this double oath, taken under circumstances of peculiar
solemnity, was not regarded as a juridical matter at all, but had a
purely religious sense (as it had in the quite similar cases
mentioned by Meiners, _Allg. Gesch. d. Relig._ ii, 296 f.). The
oath-taker invokes a dreadful curse upon himself if he breaks his
oath and devotes ~hauto\n kai\ ge/nos kai\ oiki/an tê\n hautou=~
(Antiphon, _Herod._ 11) to the Curse-Goddesses, the ~Arai/~ or the
~Erinu/es hai/ th' hupo\ gai=an anthrô/pous ti/nuntai, ho/tis k'
epi/orkon omo/ssê|~ (~T~ 259 f.)--and to the Gods who are to punish
his children and his whole kith and kin on earth (Lycurg., _Leocr._
79). If the court discovers the perjured party the punishment due to
his action overtakes him (or if he is the plaintiff, he fails in his
purpose) and at the same time the justice of heaven punishes him for
his broken oath (cf. D. 23, 68). But the court may make a mistake
and not find out the perjurer; in which case the perjurer is still
punished for he becomes a victim of the gods to whom he has devoted
himself--who do not err. Thus the double oath is an _addition_ to
the judicial inquiry, and heavenly punishment stands side by side
with that of men. The two may coincide, but this need not be so, and
in this way the guilty is punished whatever happens. (How familiar
such ideas were in antiquity we see from expressions used by
orators: Isoc. 18, 3; D. 19, 239-40; Lycurg., _Leocr._ 79.) The
oath, being an appeal to a higher court, supplemented human justice,
or rather the legal processes of men supplemented the oath-taking,
for in this partnership the appeal to an oath must have been the
older member.] {213}
[157\5: Poll. 8, 117, ~kath' he/kaston de\ mê=na triô=n hêmerô=n
edi/kazon~ (the judges on the Areiopagos) ~ephexê=s, teta/rtê|
phthi/nontos, tri/tê|, deute/ra|~.]
[158\5: ~hoi Areopagi=tai trei=s pou tou= mê=nos hême/ras ta\s
phonika\s di/kas edi/kazon, heka/stê| tô=n theô=n mi/an hême/ran
apone/montes~, Sch. Aeschin. 1, 188, p. 282 Sch. This certainly
implies that the limitation of the number of the Erinyes to three
(and not two for example--which first appears in Eurip., but was
certainly not his own invention--was officially current in the
worship of the city.--Since these three days were sacred to the
Erinyes, as goddesses of Hades, they counted as ~apophra/des
hême/rai~: _EM._ 131, 16 f.; _Et. Gud._ 70, 5 (the thirtieth day of
the month is for that reason ~phau/lê pa=sin e/rgois~ acc. to
"Orpheus" _fr._ 28 Ab.).]
[159\5: Paus. 1, 28, 6.]
[160\5: The Erinyes are the accusers of Orestes not only in
Aeschylus (and thence in Eurip. too, _IT._ 940 ff.), but also in the
varying accounts derived from different sources, in which the twelve
gods served as judges ap. D. 23, 66 (cf. 74, and Dinarch., _adv.
Dem._ 87).]
[161\5: The Erinyes are said ~apo\ zô=ntos rhophei=n eruthro\n ek
mele/ôn pe/lanon~, A., _Eum._ 264 f.; cf. 183 f.; 302; 305. In this
they closely resemble the "vampires" which we hear of especially in
Slav popular mythology, and the Tii of the Polynesians, etc. These,
however, are the _souls of the dead_ returned from the grave and
sucking men's blood.]
[162\5: The Erinyes say to Orestes: ~emoi\ traphei/s te kai\
kathierôme/nos kai\ zô=n me dai/seis oude\ pro\s bômô=| sphagei/s~,
A., _Eum._ 304 f. The matricide is divis parentum (i.e. their Manes)
sacer, their sacrificial victim (~_thu=ma_ katachthoni/ou Dio/s~
D.H. 2, 10, 3), in the older belief of Greece, too.]
[163\5: See _Rh. Mus._ 50, 6 ff.]
[164\5: The fact that after receiving the ~ai/desis~ of the dead
man's relatives the agent of a ~pho/nos akou/sios~ was still
required to offer the expiatory sacrifice as well as undergo
purification (~hilasmo/s~ and ~katharmo/s~) is alluded to by Dem.
23, 72-3, in the double expression ~thu=sai kai\ katharthê=nai,
hosiou=n kai\ kathai/resthai~ (cf. Müller, _Aesch. Eum._, p. 144
[122, n. 2, E.T.]).]
[165\5: See Philippi, _Areop. u. Eph._ 62.]
[166\5: In the Iliad and the Odyssey there is a total absence not
only of all reference to purification from blood-guiltiness but of
the necessary conditions for it. The murderer goes freely among men
without there being any fear of others suffering from a ~mi/asma~
attaching to him. Cf. the case especially of Theoklymenos, ~o~
271-8. Lobeck rightly emphasizes this, _Agl._ 301. K. O. Müller's
attempts to prove in spite of everything that purifications from the
stain of murder were a Homeric custom, are failures. See Nägelsbach,
_Hom. Theol._^2, p. 293.--The oldest examples of purifications from
murder in the literature are (Lobeck 309): purification of Achilles
from the blood of Thersites in the ~Aithiopi/s~, p. 33 Kink.;
refusal of Neleus to purify Herakles from the murder of Iphitos:
Hesiod ~en katalo/gois~, Sch., Il. ~B~ 336.--Mythical exx. of such
purifications in later accounts: Lob., _Agl._ 968-9.]
[167\5: E g. offering of cakes, sacrifice of drink-offerings without
wine, burning of the materials of sacrifice; cf. the description of
~hilasmo/s~ (in this place clearly distinguished from ~katharmo/s~)
in A.R. iv, 712 ff. Similar account (offerings without wine, etc.)
of the ~hilasmo/s~ (which is, however, improperly called
~katharmo/s~, l. 466) of the Eumenides at Kolonos which the chorus
recommends to Oedipus, S., _O.C._ 469 ff. No one might eat of the
expiatory sacrifice: Porph., _Abst._ 2, 44. It is burnt completely:
Stengel, _Jahrb. f. Phil._ 1883, p. 369 ff.--The {214} clash of
bronze was used ~pro\s pa=san aphosi/ôsin kai\ apoka/tharsin~:
Apollod. _fr._ 36 (and in offerings to Hekate, Theoc. ii, 36; as
protection against ghosts, Luc., _Philops._ 15; Sch. Theoc. ii, 36;
Tz., _Lyc._ 77. Clash of bronze in this apotropaic sense occurs,
too, in the dance of the Kouretes, etc.; see below). The ritual of
expiation was affected in many ways by admixture of foreign
superstitions from Phrygia and Lydia. Its chief source is to be
found in the _Cretan_ worship of the (chthonic) Zeus. Thence it
seems to have spread all over Greece assisted by the Apolline oracle
of Delphi. This is why the ram, the peculiar victim of ~Zeu\s
chtho/nios~, is the principal victim in expiatory sacrifices, its
fleece, the ~Dio\s kô/dion~, receiving the various materials of
expiation, etc.]
[168\5: On the chthonic character of the deities of expiation see in
gen. K. O. Müller, _Aesch. Eum._, p. 139 ff. (112 ff.). Chief among
them is ~Zeu\s meili/chios~ (a euphemistic title; cf. above, n. 5),
who is unmistakably a ~chtho/nios~. Hence, like all ~chtho/nioi~ he
is represented as a snake on the votive tablet to ~Z. meil.~
discovered in the Peiraeus (certainly the Athenian god and not a
foreign deity identified with this god whom all Athenians knew well
from the feast of the Diasia): _BCH._ 7, 507 ff.; _CIA._ ii, 1578 ff.
On a votive insc. from Lykia we have, side by side with the chthonic
Hekate, ~Dii\ Meilichi/ô| kai\ Enodi/a|~, _BCH._ 13, 392. Other
~theoi\ meili/chioi~ in Lokris were worshipped with _nocturnal_
sacrifice (as regularly in the case of underworld deities): Paus.
10, 38, 8. The ~dai/mones meili/chioi~ as ~chtho/nioi~ are
contrasted with the ~maka/ressin ourani/ois~ in the oracle verses
ap. Phlegon, _Macr._ iv, p. 93, 5 Kel.: deis milicheis _Acta Lud.
Saecul._ Tab. A l. 11 [= _CIL._ vi, 32, 323; see Mommsen, _Ges.
Schr._ viii, 570].--Then come the ~apotro/paioi~: their nature can
be guessed from the fact that they were worshipped together with the
dead and Hekate on the thirtieth day of the month (see above, n.
88). After a bad dream offerings were made to the ~apotro/paioi~, to
Ge and the Heroes: Hp., _Diaet._ 4, 8, vi, p. 652 L. ~Zeu\s
apotro/paios~ must have been a ~chtho/nios~, but we have side by
side with him an ~Athêna= apotropai/a~ (and an Apollo ~apotr.~ too):
ins. from Erythrai, _SIG._ 600, 69; 115: the provinces of
~Olu/mpioi~ and ~chtho/nioi~ were not always kept absolutely
distinct.--An ancient and hereditary service of the propitiation
deities belonged to the Attic family of the Phytalids who had once
purified and offered expiatory sacrifice for Theseus after the
murder of Skiron and others (~hagni/santes kai\ meili/chia
thu/santes~): Plu., _Thes._ 12. The gods to whom this family offered
sacrifice were Demeter and Zeus Meilichios: Paus. 1, 37, 2-4.--Isoc.
5, 117, makes a clear distinction between the ~theoi\ Olu/mpioi~ and
the gods to whom only an apotropaic cult, ~apopompa/s~, was offered;
these being the gods of expiation (cf. ~apodiopompei=sthai~ in
propitiatory sacrifices; ~apopompai=oi theoi/~: Apollod. ap. Harp.
~apopompa/s~. Cf. also ~apopompê/~ of evil daimones in contrast to
the ~epipompê/~ of the same: Anon. _Vir. Herb._ xxii, 165. See
Hemsterhuys, _Lucian_ ii, p. 255 Bip.; Lob., _Agl._ 984, ii).]
[169\5: e.g. in the description of the ~hilasmo/s~ of Medea by Kirke
in A.R. iv, 712 ff.]
[170\5: K. O. Müller, _Dorians_, i, 328, 336; cf. the same ancient
custom of flight for nine years and penance for the slaying of a man
in the legend and cult of Zeus Lykaios; cf. H. D. Müller, _Myth. d.
gr. St._ ii, 105. See below.]
[171\5: _Cho._ 1055-60. _Eum._ 237 ff., 281 ff., 445 ff., 470.]
[172\5: The Delphinion, the court for trying ~pho/nos di/kaios~, and
the ancient dwelling of Aegeus (Plu., _Thes._ 12), was at the same
time {215} (and perhaps originally) an expiation site. Expiatory
sacrifice was there made for Theseus after his fights with the
Pallantidai and the highway robbers (~aphosiou/menos to\ a/gos~,
Poll. viii, 119).]
[173\5: Plu., _Ser. Num._ 17, p. 560 EF. Note the expressions:
~_hila/sasthai_ tê\n tou= Archilo/chou psuchê/n, _hilasasthai_ tê\n
Pausani/ou psuchê/n~. Suid. ~Archi/lochos~, from Aelian:
~_meili/xasthai_ tê\n tou= Telesiklei/ou paido\s psuchê/n, kai\
_praü=nai_ choai=s~.]
[174\5: The three ~exêgêtai\ putho/chrêstoi, hoi=s me/lei
kathai=rein tou\s a/gei tini\ enischêthe/ntas~, Tim. **_Lex._ p. 109
R.]
[175\5: Pl., _Lg._ 865 B: the agent in a ~pho/nos akou/sios~ (of a
special kind) ~katharthei\s kata\ to\n ek Delphô=n komisthe/nta
peri\ tou/tôn no/mon e/stô katharo/s~.]
[176\5: I set down here the expressions occurring in the speeches
and the (at any rate contemporary [see Appendix iv]) Tetralogies of
Antiphon, which throw light on the religious ideas lying behind the
procedure in trials for murder. In the prosecution of the murderer
the following are concerned: ~ho tethneô/s, hoi no/moi~, and ~theoi\
hoi ka/tô~, _Or._ 1, 31. The vigorous prosecution of the case on the
part of the relations of the dead is ~_boêthei=n_ tô=| tethneô=ti~:
1, 31. _Tetr._ 1 ~b~, 13. The condemnation of the murderer is
~timôri/a tô=| adikêthe/nti~, his personal revenge: 5, 88 = 6, 6.
The accusing relatives come before the court as representatives of
the dead man, ~_anti\_ tou= patho/ntos episkê/ptomen humi=n~, as
they say to the judges, _Tetr._ 3 ~g~, 7. The duty of accusing as
well as the ~ase/bêma~ of the deed of bloodshed rests upon them
until satisfaction is made for it: _Tetr._ 1 ~a~, 3. But the
~mi/asma~ of the deed attaches to the whole city in which the
murderer lives. All who sit at table with him, or live under the
same roof, even the temples he walks in, are polluted by his mere
presence: hence come ~aphori/ai~ and ~dustuchei=s pra/xeis~ on the
city. It is to the greatest interest of the judges to avert this
pollution by giving a propitiatory judgment: _Tetr._ 1 ~a~, 10;
_Or._ 5, 11, 82; _Tetr._ 1 ~a~, 3; 1 ~g~, 9, 11; 3 ~g~, 6, 7. Above
all it is necessary to find the real criminal and to punish him. If
the relatives of the dead prosecute some one other than the real
doer of the deed, it is they, and not the judges (on account of
their wrong decision), who will have to bear the wrath of the dead
man and of the avenging spirits: _Tetr._ 1 ~a~, 3; 3 ~a~, 4; 3 ~d~,
10; for in this case the murdered man is deprived of his ~timôri/a~:
3 ~a~, 4. But perjured witnesses and unjust judges are liable to a
~mi/asma~, too, which they then introduce into their own houses:
_Tetr._ 3 ~a~, 3; or at least, if they give a false condemnation
(but not a false acquittal) of the accused, they incur the ~mê/nima
tô=n alitêri/ôn~ acc. to _Tetr._ 3 ~b~, 8--i.e. that of the falsely
condemned person (whereas the murdered man still continues angry
with his own relatives). If they _knowingly_ acquit the murderer
contrary to justice, the murdered man becomes ~enthu/mios~ to the
judges and no longer to his relatives: _Tetr._ 1 ~g~, 10.--The
source of the resentment is said to be the dead man himself:
~prostro/paios ho apothanô/n~, _Tetr._ 1 ~g~, 10; cf. 3 ~d~, 10;
where he is parallel with ~to\ mê/nima tô=n _alitêri/ôn_~. The
murdered man leaves behind him ~tê\n tô=n alitêri/ôn dusme/neian~
(and _this_ is what the ~mi/asma~ really is--not as some modern
writers have imagined, any sort of "moral" pollution--as is clearly
stated in this passage: ~tê\n tô=n alit. dusme/neian, ê\n . . .
mi/asma . . . eisa/gontai~): _Tetr._ 3 ~a~, 3; cf. Again 3 ~b~, 8; 3
~g~, 7. In this case the avenging spirits substitute themselves for
the soul of the dead man (just as in the case where a ~prostro/paios
tou= apothano/ntos~ is spoken of: cf. above, n. 148). The
~prostro/paioi tô=n apothana/ntôn~ become themselves ~deinoi\
alitê/rioi~ of the dilatory relatives: {216} _Tetr._ 3 ~a~, 4. There
is no essential distinction between the two (cf. Poll. 5, 131).
Elsewhere we hear of ~to\ prostro/paion~ as the special attribute or
feeling of the murdered man himself: _Tetr._ 2 ~d~, 9. Thus also we
have the alternatives ~enthu/mios ho apothanô/n~ (1 ~g~, 10) and
~to\ _enthu/mion_~ (2 ~a~, 2; 2 ~d~, 9). In this connexion it is
clear that ~enthu/mion~ (as the fixed and conventional expression
for these superstitions) means the indignant memory, the longing for
revenge of the murdered man (--~enthu/mion e/stô Da/matros kai\
Kou/ras~, _GDI._ 3541, 8). The proper understanding of this word
will help us to see what is meant by the expression ~_oxuthu/mia_~
used of the meal offered to the dead and Hekate, and the almost
identical purificatory offerings, that after the religious cleansing
of a house were thrown out at the cross-roads (Harp. s.v. Phot. s.v.
Art. 1, 2, 3; _AB._ 287, 24, 288, 7; _EM._ 626, 44 ff.). They are
intended to appease the easily awakened anger of the souls (and of
their patroness Hekate), their ~oxu/thumon~, a stronger version of
~enthu/mion~, by apotropaic sacrifice.]
[177\5: See Appendix ii (~maschalismo/s~).]
[178\5: Xen., _Cyr._ 8, 7, 17 ff.: ~ou ga\r dê/pou tou=to/ ge
saphô=s dokei=te eide/nai hôs oude/n eimi egô\ e/ti, epeida\n tou=
anthrôpi/nou bi/ou teleutê/sô; oude\ ga\r nu=n toi tê/n g' emê\n
psuchê\n heôra=te . . . ta\s de\ tô=n a/dika patho/ntôn psucha\s
ou/pô katenoê/sate, hoi/ous me\n pho/bous toi=s miaipho/nois
emba/llousin, hoi/ous de\ palamnai/ous~ (which means first the
criminal and then, as here, the punishing spirit that avenges the
criminal deed, exactly like ~prostro/paios, alitê/rios, ala/stôr,
mia/stôr~: see Zacher, _Dissert. phil. Halens._ iii, 232 ff.) ~toi=s
anosi/ois epipe/mpousi? toi=s de\ phthime/nois ta\s tima\s
diame/nein e/ti a\n dokei=te, ei mêdeno\s autô=n hai psuchai\
ku/riai ê=san? ou/toi e/gôge, ô= pai=des, oude\ **tou=to pô/pote
epei/sthên, hôs hê psuchê/, he/ôs me\n a\n en thnêtô=| sô/mati ê=|,
zê=|, ho/tan de\ tou/tou apallagê=|, te/thnêken~. Then follow other
popular arguments for the belief in the continued existence of the
soul after its separation from the body.]
{{217}}
CHAPTER VI
THE ELEUSINIAN MYSTERIES
The cult of the dead, thus pursued in unhampered freedom, preserved
and encouraged certain ideas of the life of the soul after death; of
the soul as a conscious and powerful being which though separated
from the body has not been parted for ever from the scene of its
earthly existence. To the Greeks such ideas had become strange and
unfamiliar--strange, at least, to the Ionian Greeks of the Homeric
age.
But from such a cult no dogmatic or distinctly outlined picture of
the life of the departed soul could have been deduced, nor ever was
deduced. Everything in this connexion dealt with the relation of the
dead to the living. Families by means of sacrifice and religious
acts sought to nourish the souls of their own dead. But the cult was
in itself chiefly precautionary (apotropaic) in character, and as a
consequence men preferred rather to avoid investigation into the
nature and condition of the dead themselves, except in so far as
they came into the life of the living.
This is the point at which the cult of the souls and belief in the
existence of souls stopped short among many of the so-called
"savage" peoples who have no history. Nor can there be much doubt
that it had reached this stage of development in Greece, too, before
the time of Homer; though temporarily overshadowed, it continued to
exist for it was rooted firmly in the united life of the family and
its traditional practices.
Such traditional beliefs, however, left the nature of the
disembodied soul vague and undefined; they viewed it purely from the
standpoint of the living and almost entirely in its relations with
this world; and resting on such foundations it is not very
surprising if they yielded unresistingly and sank into
insignificance once the feeling of the influence exercised by the
dead upon the living began to weaken, or if anything happened to
cause the decline or discredit of the cult of the dead. When the
living withdrew their support and reverence from the departed soul
the latter ceased to present any clear picture to the minds of
men--it became a mere evanescent shadow--unsubstantial--little more
than nothing. This is what {218} happened in the period of Ionic
culture, in which Homer lived.
The poetry of that period, however, had of its own accord given rise
to aspirations after a fuller and more definite picture of the long,
unbounded future in the life to come. These aspirations had been
given shape in the pictures of the _translation_ of individual
mortals to Elysium and the Islands of the Blest.
Such things, however, were, and continued to be, matters of poetry,
not of religious faith. Even the poetical fancy dealt with the
marvellous past and with exceptional heroes chosen out long ago by
the special favour of the gods; such favour was not extended to
include the living generations of men. The desire, once it was
awakened, for a more hopeful prospect of the life to come beyond the
grave and for something more than the mere negative existence of the
ancestors worshipped in family cults, must look to other sources for
its satisfaction. Such desires began to be felt by many, but their
originating source and the secret forces that set them going must
remain for us hidden behind the obscurity that lies over the most
important period of Greek development, the eighth and seventh
centuries. Nor does it help us very much when historians try to stop
the gaps of our knowledge with platitudes or the barren offspring of
their own imagination. The existence of such desires and their
growing strength is shown by the fact that they were able to create
for themselves a means of satisfaction (a peculiarly limited
satisfaction it is true) in a direction that immediately occurs to
everyone as soon as the subject of future blessedness or belief in
immortality among the Greeks is mentioned--the Eleusinian Mysteries.
§ 2
Wherever the cult of the gods of the earth and the lower world, and
particularly of Demeter and her daughter, was at its height it was
not difficult for hopes of a better fate in the kingdom of souls
below the earth, where those deities ruled, to become attached to
participation in their cult. The tendency to connect closely such
hopes with the worship of these gods may have existed in many
different localities. In Eleusis alone, however (and in the cults,
mostly of later origin, affiliated to Eleusis), we see this
connexion carried out as a fully organized institution. We can
follow at least in general outline the gradual advance of the
Eleusinian religious organization. The Homeric _Hymn to Demeter_
tells us the origin {219} of the cult according to the national
legends of Eleusis. In the country of the Eleusinians the divine
daughter of Demeter, after being carried down to the lower world by
Aïdoneus, came up once more to the light of day, and was restored to
her mother. Before ascending to Olympos and the company of the other
immortals, in accordance with the wish of Zeus, Demeter fulfilled
her promise, and when the Eleusinians had erected a temple to her
outside the city, over the spring Kallichoros, she founded the
sacred worship whereby men should do honour to her in the future.
She herself instructed the princes of the land "in the performance
of the cult and taught them her sacred _Orgia_", which respect for
the goddess does not allow them to communicate to others.[1\6] This
primitive Eleusinian cult of Demeter, then, is the religious service
of a close corporation. Knowledge of the holy ritual, carrying with
it the priesthood of the two goddesses is confined to the
descendants of the four Eleusinian princes to whom Demeter once gave
her ordinances as an inheritance. The cult is therefore a "secret"
one: not more so, indeed, than a great many cult-societies of
Greece, participation in which was strictly forbidden to all
unauthorized persons.[2\6] It differs from them, however, in the
solemn promise which is made to the participants in its worship.
"Blessed is the man who has beheld these holy acts; but he that is
uninitiated and has no share in the holy ceremonies shall not enjoy
a like fate after his death, in the gloomy darkness of Hades." To
those who share in the Eleusinian worship a privileged fate is
promised after death; but even in his lifetime, we read further
on,[3\6] he is highly blessed whom the two goddesses love: they send
him Ploutos, the giver of good things, to be a beloved partner of
his hearth and home. On the other hand, whosoever honours not Korê,
the queen of the lower world, with gifts and sacrifice, shall do
penance everlastingly (368 ff.).
The narrow circle of those to whom such a tremendous promise was
made began to be extended after the time when Eleusis was united
with Athens (which may have taken place some time in the seventh
century), and when the Eleusinian worship was raised to the position
of an official cult of the Athenian state. Nor was it Attica alone,
but the whole of Greece which became interested in the Eleusinian
festival, when Athens became the chief centre of Greek life. A
solemn "truce of God" was proclaimed which assured the peaceful and
undisturbed performance of the sacred ritual, and distinguished the
Eleusinia, like the great games and Fairs of Olympia, the Isthmus,
etc., as a Pan-Hellenic festival. At {220} the height of Athenian
power (about 440)[4\6] a decree of the people was passed which
required the yearly offering of first fruits of the fields to the
Eleusinian temple from Athenian citizens and allies, and invited
similar offerings from _all_ Greek states. The decree could appeal
in so doing to ancient and ancestral custom, and to an utterance of
the Delphic god who had authorized these things.[5\6] The inner
history of the development of the Eleusinian festival is a matter of
some obscurity. The holy rites continued to be performed at Eleusis;
Eleusinian noble families still took part[6\6] in the worship of the
goddesses, which was yet directed by the Athenian government. On the
other hand, a good deal must have been altered in the course of
time. The popular decree mentioned above acquaints us with the names
of two triads, each composed of two divine personages and a Hero,
who were worshipped at Eleusis at that time. Demeter and Korê occur
together with Triptolemos, and also "the god, the goddess, and
Eubouleus".[7\6] The Homeric hymn gives no hint of the very
important position here (and in innumerable other accounts, as well
as pictorial representations) attributed to Triptolemos, nor of the
other addition to the Eleusinian group of divinities. It is evident
that in the course of years many different local figures and modes
of worship have been added to and fused with the old cult of the two
goddesses; and that in these local figures we have always the one
type of chthonic godhead expressing itself anew in ever varied and
differentiated forms. Their number is not exhausted by the six
already mentioned.[8\6] The most important addition to the
Eleusinian circle of deities was Iakchos, the son of Zeus
(Chthonios) and Persephone. This god was himself an underworld
deity, quite distinct from that Dionysos, with whom other Athenian
cults confused him, and with whom he was in fact commonly
identified.[9\6] It is a very probable supposition that this god,
who soon came to be regarded as the central figure of the group of
deities worshipped at Eleusis,[10\6] was the contribution of Athens
to that circle: his temple was situated in Athens not Eleusis;[11\6]
in the Athenian suburb Agrai the "Little Mysteries" were celebrated
in his honour in the spring as a sort of prelude to the greater
festival. At the Eleusinia itself, the sacred procession, in which
the picture of the youthful god was borne from Athens to Eleusis,
formed the link between the part of the festival already performed
at Athens and that still to take place at Eleusis. The introduction
of Iakchos into the festival of Eleusis did not merely make an
external addition to the group of divinities that already shared in
it; it added {221} an act[12\6] to the sacred story, the
representation of which was the goal and summit of the festival; and
thereby in all probability enriched it internally in meaning and
substance. It is, indeed, quite impossible for us even to hazard a
guess as to the exact meaning and essence of the change which came
over the festival thus enlarged in the course of time. We can,
however, be sure of this much; there is no ground at all for
entertaining the commonly held view that it was the private
mysteries of Orphic conventicles which exercised such a transforming
influence on the public mysteries of the Athenian state. Those who
are not content with solemn and mysterious jargon about "Orphics"
and the like, but keep clearly in mind the well-known and quite
distinctive features of the Orphic doctrine about gods and the souls
of men, will easily recognize that everything points to the
unlikelihood of even a single one of these having entered the circle
of ideas current at Eleusis.[13\6] They could only have shattered
such ideas to pieces.
If the festival, then, grew of its own accord in inward meaning and
outward circumstance, the circle of those who came to take part in
it grew as well. Originally this festival, so rich in promised
blessings, admitted only the citizens of Eleusis, perhaps only the
members of certain noble Eleusinian families--and may have appeared
to its members an even greater privilege through this very
exclusiveness. In this respect it changed completely, admission to
it was thrown open to all Greeks--not merely Athenians, but every
Greek without distinction of race or country, whether man or woman,
was welcomed at Eleusis (and even hetairai, who were still excluded,
e.g. from the Demeter-festival of the Athenian women; to say nothing
of children and slaves).[14\6] The generosity of Athens--such was
the glorious boast--wished the unexampled salvation which this
festival promised to its worshippers to be made accessible to all
Greeks.[15\6] What contrast to the exclusive cult-unions into which
a man had to be born in order, as citizen of a state, member of a
_phratria_, clan, or family, to participate in the advantages they
offered! The society of the Eleusinian mystery-festival, once just
as exclusive as the rest, had thrown open its doors so widely that
this almost unconditional freedom of access became its principle and
distinguishing characteristic. The attraction of membership was even
heightened by the fact that just by his own unhampered free will and
choice the individual could enter the great society through the
mediation of one of the two families to whom the highest priesthood
of the festival {222} was committed.[16\5] The only condition made
was ritual purity, and murderers, for whom this was an
impossibility--as it was even for those who were only accused of the
shedding of blood--were as such excluded from the mysteries: as,
indeed, they were from all the religious ceremonies of the
state.[17\6]
Religious purification of the worshippers preceded and accompanied
the holding of the festival; to many of the believers it may have
appeared that the whole festival itself was principally a great
purification and religious dedication of unusual solemnity, by which
the members ("the Pure"[18\6] as they called themselves) were made
worthy of the favour of the goddesses.
§ 3
As to the actual details of what went on at the long-drawn-out
festival itself our knowledge hardly extends beyond the most
external circumstances, and is even so most incomplete. A few
notices in late and often untrustworthy writers give us a very
inadequate picture of what took place inside the great temple of
initiation and of the essential Mystery. The secret which was
committed[19\6] to the Mystai and Epoptai has been well kept.
Considering the enormous number of worshippers indiscriminately
admitted to the festival, this would, indeed, have been a real
miracle, if the secret to be kept had taken the form of dogma
expressed in concept and words and capable of being communicated
verbally to others. Since the labours of Lobeck, however,
drastically reducing to order the confusion of opinions on this
subject, no reasonable person believes that this was the case. It
was difficult to let out the "secret" for there was essentially no
secret to let out. Profanation could only come through actions,
through "the Mysteries being acted",[20\6] as they were in the year
415 in the house of Poulytion. The Mystery was a dramatic
performance, or, more strictly, a religious Pantomime, accompanied
by sacred songs[21\6] and formal speeches; a representation, as
Christian authors let us see, of the Rape of Korê, the wanderings of
Demeter, and the final reunion of the goddesses. This in itself
would not have made the mysteries remarkable; a similar dramatic
reproduction of the circumstances attending the life of a god, which
had led to the foundation of the festival in question, was a very
widespread cult-practice in Greece; it was part of the festivals of
Zeus, Here, Apollo, Artemis, Dionysos, and, above all, of other
festivals in honour of Demeter herself. But the Eleusinia was
distinguished from all other such festivals, even from the equally
secret festivals of Demeter known as the Thesmophoria and the Haloa,
by reason {223} of the hopes which it inspired in the minds of the
initiated. The Hymn to Demeter tells us that the pious worshipper of
the Goddess at Eleusis might hope for riches upon earth and a better
fate after death. Later authorities also speak of the success in
this life which initiation at Eleusis gave good ground for
expecting. But far more emphatic are the statements, made by
innumerable witnesses from Pindar and Sophokles onwards, that only
they who have been initiated into these mysteries may entertain a
joyful expectation of the life to come. To them only is it granted
to have real "life" in Hades; nothing but evil awaits others in that
place.[22\6]
It was these promises of a blessed immortality that for centuries
drew so many worshippers to the Eleusinian festival. Nowhere else
could such promises be obtained with such distinctness and
assurance. The injunction commanding secrecy must obviously have
referred to quite other matters; it cannot have applied to this, the
greatest boon anticipated from initiation at Eleusis. Everyone
speaks out aloud and without restraint about it. At the same time,
all our information is so completely at one on the point and so free
from doubt or uncertainty that we must perforce believe that the
performances that were to be preserved so secret were, in reality,
for the believers the source of an assurance which was not held as
the mere probable conjecture of individuals, but as fixed and
certain truth beyond question or need of interpretation.
How this was brought about certainly remains obscure. Since the
discrediting of "symbolism" in the sense made familiar by Creuzer or
Schelling, many of our modern mythologists and historians of
religion have been all the more eager to assert that the
performances at the Eleusinian mysteries were in reality the true
and mystic celebration of the Greek "Religion of Nature" as
discovered by themselves. Demeter, in this view, would be the earth;
Korê-Persephone, her daughter, the seed of corn; the Rape and Return
of Korê would mean the sowing of the seed in the earth and the rise
of the young grain from beneath the soil; or, in a more general
sense, "the yearly decay and renewal of vegetation." In some way or
other the Mystai must have had revealed to them the real meaning of
the "nature-symbolism" hidden in the mystical performances.
Witnessing these performances they are supposed to have learnt that
the fate of the seed of corn, represented by Persephone, its
disappearance beneath the earth and eventual rebirth, is an image of
the fate of the human soul, which also disappears that it may {224}
live again. This, then, must be the real content of the holy
Mystery.
It remains, however, first and foremost, to be proved that the
Greeks[23\6] themselves would have regarded such symbolistic
mummery, in which the phenomena and processes of nature appear under
the guise of anthropomorphic gods, as religious at all, or would
have recognized their own religion in such things. Still
further--admitting for the sake of argument the possibility of such
an interpretation--the identification of Korê with the seed of corn
and its fate leads at once, if we try to get beyond the vaguest
generalities, to intolerable absurdity. It is difficult to see,
however (and this would be the main point at issue), how such an
analogy between the soul and the grain of seed could have led to a
faith in immortality that was not to be had, it would seem, in a
more direct fashion. What possible effect could have been produced
by such a far-fetched and arbitrary parallel between the phenomena
of two such wholely different provinces of existence? If a
reasonably plausible deduction was to be made from the visible and
unmistakable (the condition of the grain) to the invisible and
unknown (the condition of the soul) surely the first and simplest
requisite would be that a real causal connexion between the two
should be plainly demonstrated. These may seem dull and pedantic
considerations where the sublimest forebodings of the heart are
concerned; but I should not have supposed that it would have been so
easy to tempt the Greeks with vague surmises from the path of logic
and lucidity, or that such surmises would have afforded them such
extremity of "bliss".
Lastly, the analogy, even if it proved anything, is false. It would
only hold if the soul, like the grain, after a temporary
disappearance below the earth, were promised a new life upon the
earth--if a _palingenesia_ in fact were promised. That this,
however, was not a belief supported by the officially conducted
mysteries of Athens, is admitted on all hands.
Equally untenable is the view that the dramatic presentation at the
mysteries of the Rape and Return of Korê (regarded this time as a
divine personage, not as the personified grain of corn) was intended
to inspire hopes of an analogous fate for the human soul, by virtue
of a mystic unification of the life of man with the life of the
godhead to whom he swears allegiance.[24\6] Even so the hope based
upon the typical fate of Korê could only have led to a hope for the
palingenesia of mankind in general, not (what was and always
remained the real belief of Eleusis) to the hope of a specially
{225} favoured after-life for the Mystai in the kingdom below the
world. Indeed, we must not look to the Eleusinian mysteries for the
ecstatic exaltation of the soul to the recognition of its own
godhead--though such exaltation was the motive force and the
essential core of Greek _mysticism_, as of all mysticism and mystic
religion. From the mysteries of Eleusis, however, it remained far
removed; the belief there fostered, with its absolute division and
distinction between the divine and the human, never transgressed the
bounds of popular Greek religion, over whose portals stood the
universally prescriptive words: ~he\n andrô=n, he\n theô=n
ge/nos~--"the race of men is one, and the race of gods is another."
Nor was Eleusis any exception to this rule; the mysteries did not
point the way to mysticism.
§ 4
Inquiry is on the wrong track when a deeper meaning is sought for in
the mimic presentation of the sacred myth at Eleusis whereby the
human soul was to obtain the blessed hope of immortality. The
conviction that the human soul was immortal in its own right, by
reason of its own nature, was not a conviction that was obtained at
Eleusis. That is why we may dismiss such fanciful analogies as those
between the human soul and the seed of corn or the goddess of the
earth's life. Such analogies, if they proved anything, would prove
at most the complete indestructibility, in spite of all vicissitude,
of the life of the human soul--of every human soul. But this was not
Eleusinian doctrine. The continued conscious existence of the soul
after its separation from the body was not a doctrine but a
presupposition of Eleusis; and it could be thus presupposed because
it was the basic idea of the popular and widespread cult offered to
the souls of the departed.[25\6] The advantage obtained by the
initiated at Eleusis was that a livelier and fuller _content_ was
given to the bare existence of the disembodied soul, which was all
that the current worship of the souls essentially contemplated. We
are assured that only the initiated at Eleusis will have a real
"life" after death; that evil will be the fate of "the
others".[26\6] Not _that_ the soul, relieved of the presence of the
body, will live hereafter, but _how_ it will live was what Eleusis
taught men. With the calm assurance common to all close and confined
religious associations, the Eleusinian society divided mankind into
two classes: the "Pure", that is those who had been initiated at
Eleusis, and the innumerable multitude of the uninitiated. Only for
the members in {226} communion with the mystery of Eleusis was
salvation assured. Salvation was theirs as a reversionary right, but
salvation such as theirs was a privilege and could only be obtained
by participation in the bounteous festival of the Athenian State and
in its ceremonial. Centuries of large-minded tolerance in admitting
to the mysteries extended this privilege to an immense number of
Greeks (and of Romans, too, in later times). But the prospect of a
blessed hereafter never became a matter of course; not as man, not
even as a virtuous and pious man did such a privilege come to
anyone. It was granted solely to the member of the Eleusinian
religious society and the participator in the divine service of the
goddesses.[27\6]
What were the means employed to impress this hope--this certain
expectation rather--of a blessed hereafter in Hades upon the Mystai?
We must frankly admit that we cannot, unfortunately, say anything
definite in answer to this question. Only to the suggestion that
these hopes were grounded upon _symbolic_ representations of any
kind may we give a decided denial. And yet this is the generally
accepted opinion. "Symbols" there may have been, as an assistance to
the dramatic or pantomimic representation of the Rape and Return of
Korê;[28\6] but hardly in any other sense than that of typical
_condensations_--the part being put for the whole, or the whole
understood in the part--of scenes impossible to represent in their
entirety. It is true that with the lapse of centuries, and in the
absence of any official written interpretation of the inner meaning
and intention of the ritual many of these symbols became
unintelligible--a disadvantage which belonged to all other
departments of Greek religion as well. As soon as independent
reflexion on matters of religion began to arise, many sorts of
allegorical or symbolical interpretations began to be applied to the
details of the performances at the mysteries. Does it follow from
this that the mysteries of the Earth divinities, as some are
inclined to believe, bore a symbolical or allegorical character from
the outset, and differed in this respect from all other Greek
worship of the gods?[29\6] Similar interpretations were applied by
philosophers or would-be philosophers to the fables of the gods in
Homeric or popular mythology; the mysteries did not by any means
hold a peculiar position in the minds of connoisseurs of
myth-interpretation in antiquity. If a "deeper meaning" was attached
by preference to the performances at Eleusis, that only shows that
much in these performances was no longer understood, or in its real
meaning no longer satisfied the spirit of the philosophic centuries.
But it shows also that for this {227} festival of unexampled
splendour, where night and the injunction of secrecy awakened awed
expectancy,[30\6] performed according to an archaic ritual of
ever-increasing perfection and attended by the whole of Greece, an
unusual sympathy was felt. It offered something to the eye and the
ear which was attractive to all men, and they exerted themselves to
find a satisfactory meaning in its sights and sounds. Finally, it is
likely enough that the "meaning" which they themselves had
arbitrarily bestowed upon them was what made the mysteries specially
attractive to many. To this extent it is legitimate to say that
symbolism was a real and historical factor in the constitution of
the mysteries.
Even supposing, however, that much in the presentation of this
mystic festival was consciously ordered and disposed by the founders
of it with a view to symbolic interpretation, and consequently to
the possibility of an ever-increasing idealization of its
significance, yet this cannot have extended to the hopes of a
blessed immortality revealed to the Mystai. Symbolist or
allegorizing modes of interpretation must always have been the
private concern of individuals and therefore liable to much
uncertainty and variety.[31\6] Our authorities, however, from the
most diverse periods, speak with far too great distinctness and
unanimity about the blessed hereafter vouchsafed to the initiated in
the mysteries, for it to be credible that this can have been the
outcome of any interpretation of complexities, or of any
metaphorical application of the hopes derived from events in the
life of the gods to a quite different province, the life of the
human soul. What every witness speaks of in the plainest and
simplest language without any special "mystery"--the hope of future
blessedness--must have been offered to the participants in the
mysteries in the most unequivocal fashion. It is natural, above all,
to suppose that the exhibition of the "mystic drama" included
particularly the final scene as it is sketched in the 2nd Homeric
Hymn: the foundation of the Eleusinian festival by the goddess
herself--what had once been revealed to the little city-community
must have been proclaimed to the great company of those admitted to
the common festival of Eleusis:[32\6] the highest reward of
participation in this unparalleled act of worship is what the
Homeric Hymn distinctly puts forth as such--the peculiar favour of
the gods of the lower world and a future life of blessedness within
their kingdom. The statues of the goddesses were seen radiantly
illuminated;[33\6] at this festival of grace in remembrance of their
trials, their happiness, and their beneficent acts, they {228}
themselves--as it seemed to the faithful believer--were invisibly
present. What further need of warrant was there for the promises of
future blessedness?
§ 5
In spite of many extravagant statements from antiquity, we have no
means of estimating how widely participation in the Eleusinian
mysteries (whether of those celebrated at Eleusis itself or in the
numerous associated festivals) was extended in Greece. Still, it is
probable that large numbers, not from Athens alone but from the
whole of Greece, sought eagerly to enter the state of grace
vouchsafed to the worshippers at Eleusis. In this way the more
lively conception of the state of the soul in the hereafter may have
gradually become the common property of Greek imagination.
On the whole, we must be on our guard against attributing too great
an importance to these mysteries. There can hardly have been any
question of moral influence--the ancients themselves in their most
exaggerated eulogies of the mysteries and their greatness, say
almost nothing of this.[34\6] Nor is it easy to see what part of the
mysteries could have served as a vehicle of moral influence.[35\6]
Distinct dogma in the religious sense was never provided by the
mysteries any more than by other worships of the gods in Greece. Nor
was there anything exclusive about the cult of the mysteries; side
by side with that cult and after it the Mystai took part in other
worships of the gods, according to the usages prevailing in their
own homes. The great festival when it was over left no sting behind
in the hearts of the initiated. No requirement of a new manner of
life, no new and peculiar condition of conscience was theirs on its
account; no strange revaluation of values, contradicting the general
opinions of the time, was learnt there. There was a total absence of
that which (if we rightly understand the word) gives to the
doctrines of sectarian religion their force and
persuasiveness--_paradox_. Even the prospect of future bliss opened
to the initiated did not divert them from the normal tenor of their
existence. It was a genial prospect; not a compelling demand drawing
all things to itself and turning men away from ordinary life. The
light that fell from beyond was not so blinding that it made all
things on this earth seem dark and mean. If in the decadence of
Greek culture--and even among the people of Homer--ideas hostile to
this life made their appearance and in many places acquired weight
and influence; if some men began to think death superior {229} to
life, and this life, of which alone we can be assured, as merely a
preparation, a land of passage to a higher life in the world
invisible--for all this the mysteries were not responsible. It was
not they, nor the feelings and surmises awakened by their pictures
and performances, that dulled the beauty of this earth for the
enthusiasts "intoxicated with other-worldliness", or made them
strangers to the instincts of life and sanity prevailing in older
and unspoiled ages of Greek life.
NOTES TO CHAPTER VI
[1\6: _H. Cer._ 270 ff. (Demeter speaks) ~all' a/ge moi nêo/n te
me/gan kai\ bômo\n hup' autô=| teucho/ntôn pa=s dê=mos hupai\ po/lin
aipu/ te tei=chos, Kallicho/rou kathu/perthen, epi\ prou/chonti
kolônô=|. _o/rgia d' autê\ egô\n hupothê/somai_, hôs a\n e/peita
euage/ôs e/rdontes emo\n me/nos hila/skêsthe~. Building of the
temple: 298 ff., and following that the instructions of the goddess
as to the ~drêsmosu/nê hierô=n~ and the ~o/rgia~, 474 ff.]
[2\6: See Lobeck, _Agl._ 272 ff.]
[3\6: 487 ff. I will not stop to answer the attacks made on the
concluding part of the hymn nor to defend the many lines which
editors have rejected. None of the attacks seem to me justified.]
[4\6: Körte, _Ath. Mitt._ 1896, p. 320, dates the decree in the year
418.]
[5\6: ~kata\ ta\ pa/tria kai\ tê\n mantei/an tê\n ek Delphô=n~,
_SIG._ 20, l. 5; 26 f.; 35 [_IG._ i, _Supp._, p. 59, 27_b_]. In
Sicily the Eleusinia are already well known in the time of
Epicharmos: Epich. ~en Odussei= automo/lô|~ ap. Ath. 374 D = 100
Kaib. _EM._ 255, 2; cf. K. O. Müller, _Kl. Schr._ ii, 259.]
[6\6: We can only state this definitely of the Eumolpidai who
provided the male and female hierophants. Severely as the genealogy
of this family has suffered on all sides through fictitious
accretions and combinations there can be no doubt of its Eleusinian
origin. On the other hand, it is a striking fact that none of the
~ge/nê~ who are known to have shared in the direction of the Eleus.
mysteries derived their origin from the Eleusinian princes mentioned
in _h. Cer._ 475-6 as receiving with Eumolpos the instructions of
the goddess (Triptolemos, Diokles, Keleos). The Krokonidai and
Koironidai did, it is true, claim Triptolemos as their ancestor, but
their connexion with the sacred festival is obscure and dubious (see
K. O. Müller, _Kl. Schr._ ii, 255 f.). The Kerykes (in whose family
the posts of Dadouchos, Herald of the Mysteries, Priest ~epi\
bômô=|~, etc., were hereditary) were only connected with Eumolpos by
a tradition which the family itself regarded as apocryphal (Paus. 1,
38, 3); they themselves traced their descent from Hermes and Herse
the daughter of Kekrops (s. Dittenberger, _Hermes_, xx, 2), and
therefore evidently regarded themselves as an Athenian family. We
know too little of these relationships to venture to say that this
claim was unjustified (as Müller, p. 250 f., is inclined to do).
Nothing need prevent us from supposing that this is one of the many
innovations introduced at and after the union of Eleusis and its
festival with Athens--many of them are quite evident--and that in
addition to the old Eleusinian priestly families the Athenian family
of the Kerykes was given a regular part in the ~drêsmosu/nê
hierô=n~. This would then be part of the compromise (~sunthê=kai~,
Paus. 2, 14, 2) between Athens and Eleusis upon which the whole
relationship between the two states and their religious cults
rested.]
[7\6: See above, chap. v, n. 18.]
[8\6: It is doubtful what part the goddess Daeira played in the
Eleusinia: that she played some part must be regarded as certain
from the fact that among the official priesthoods of the festival a
~daeiri/tês~ is expressly mentioned (Poll. i, 35). She stands in a
certain opposition to Demeter: but though she is nevertheless
identified by Aesch. {231} and others with Persephone (K. O. Müller,
_Kl. Schr._ ii, 288) the most we may deduce from this is that she
also was a chthonic deity. (Acc. to the sacrificial calendar of the
Attic Tetrapolis, _Leg. Sacr._ i, p. 48, B. 12. ~Dai/ra| hoi=s
kuou=sa~ was offered. This does not point to the identity of this
goddess with Persephone--as the editor, p. 52, points out. Pregnant
animals were by preference offered to Demeter, though occasionally
to Artemis and Athene too.) Daeira seems from all the indications to
belong to the ~chtho/nioi~. (Meaning of the name uncertain: ? "the
knowing one" or "the (torch) burning one": cf. Lobeck, _Pathol.
prol._ 263.) In Eust. on ~Z~ 378, p. 648, 24, among the notices
collected from the lexicographers there is one in which Pherekydes
makes her the sister of Styx (it is not Pherekydes but the
over-subtle scholar to whom Eust. owes his note, who thinks that
Daeira signified the ~hugra\ phu/sis~ to the ancients; so also Ael.
Dionys. quoting ~hoi peri\ teleta\s kai\ mustê/ria~ in his Lexicon,
ap. Eust. 648, 41. This is a worthless allegorical
interpretation).--For which reason some made her the daughter of
Okeanos (Müller, pp. 244, 288 )--~tine\s de\ phu/laka Persepho/nês
hupo\ Plou/tônos apodeichthê=nai/ phasi tê\n Da/eiran~ (648, 40).
According to this she would be a Hades-daimon keeping guard over the
wife of Aidoneus (cf. the guardian ~Kôkutou= peri/dromoi ku/nes~ in
Ar., _Ran._ 472, quoting Eurip.). In this case we can see the origin
of Demeter's hostility. Did this Daeira also play a part (as a
character) in the Eleusinian ~dra=ma mustiko/n~? Ap. Rh. makes her
the same as Hekate, who, however, in the _h. Cer._ (and on
vase-paintings) is the helper rather than the enemy of Demeter.]
[9\6: So also in the recently discovered Paean (fourth century B.C.)
of Philodamos of Skarpheia addressed to Dionysos (_BCH._ 1895, p.
403), where in the third section we are told how Dionysos, the son
of Thyone, born in Thebes, went from Delphi to Eleusis where he was
called Iakchos by the mortals to whom he had (in the mysteries)
revealed ~po/nôn ho/rmon a/lupon~.--The attempt at historical
synthesis, bringing together as many as possible of the different
relations and ramifications of the Dionysos nature, is particularly
evident in the whole composition of this hymn. The cult of Dionysos
was established in Attica by the Delphic oracle--so much is certain;
and that is enough for the poet who now makes Iakchos, too, come
from Delphi to the people of Attica. Such a conception has no
historical significance.]
[10\6: ~I/akchos~ (there clearly distinguished from ~Dio/nusos) tê=s
Dê/mêtros dai/môn~ is described as ~ho archêge/tês tô=n mustêri/ôn~
in Str. 468 (cf. Ar., _Ran._ 398 f.).]
[11\6: The ~Iakchei=on~ (Plu., _Arist._ 27. Alciphr. iii, 59, 1).]
[12\6: Was the birth of Iakchos any part of the spectacle at the
mysteries? It might be thought so from what we are told by Hippol.,
_RH._ 5, 8, p. 162 D.-S.: the hierophant ~nukto\s en Eleusi=ni hupo\
pollô=| puri\ telô=n ta\ mustê/ria boa=| kai\ ke/krage le/gôn;
hiero\n e/teke po/tnia kou=ron Brimô\ brimo/n~. This statement,
however, suffers from the disadvantage belonging to all information
given by Christian writers on the subject of mysteries when not
confirmed by earlier evidence; such information is admissible at
most for the actual time of the writer. (Immediately combined with
this in Hippol. comes the remarkable assertion that the hierophant
was ~eunouchisme/nos dia\ kônei/ou~. Of this Epict. for example (3,
21, 16) knows nothing, but only speaks of the ~hagnei/a~--probably
confined to the time of the festival and its preparation--of the
hierophant. Still, Jerome, _adv. Jovin._ 1, 49, p. 320 C Vall.,
speaks of the cicutae sorbitionis castrari of the hierophant.
Likewise Serv., _A._ vi, 661.)] {232}
[13\6: An opportunity of speaking in more detail of Orphic doctrine
will occur later on. Here I will only point out in passing that the
ancients themselves never suggested for a moment that Orpheus--the
master of every kind of mysticism--had anything in particular to do
with the Eleusinia; as Lob. _Agl._ 239 shows.]
[14\6: As to the admission of slaves to the Eleusinian initiation
ceremonies K. O. Müller, _Kl. Schr._ ii, 56, opposes Lobeck (_Agl._
19) and suggests a doubt. His main objection is that on the great
inscr. dealing with the regulation of the Eleusinia (_CIA._ i, 1)
_side by side_ with ~mu/stai kai\ epo/ptai~ there is mention _also_
of ~ako/louthoi~ (but not of ~dou=loi~, Ziehen, _Leg. Sacr._
[Diss.], p. 14 f.)--i.e. presumably slaves, not themselves Mystai,
belonging to the ~mu/stai~. But if slaves were initiated that would
not prevent there being other slaves, ~ako/louthoi~ of the
~mu/stai~, uninitiated and not reckoned among the ~mu/stai~. It is
definitely stated on the official record of building expenses at
Eleusis dating from the year 329/8, _CIA._ ii, 834, b, col. 2, 71,
~mu/êsis duoi=n tô=n dêmosi/ôn~ (the state slaves employed in the
building operations) ~D D D~ (cf. l. 68). Initiation of the
~dêmo/sioi~ also in _CIA._ ii, 834 c, 24. On this view, when the
comic poet Theophilos (ii, p. 473 K.) makes someone speak of his
~agapêto\s despo/tês~ by whom he ~emuê/thê theoi=s~, it will not be
necessary to suppose that a freedman (as Meineke, _Com._ 3, 626) is
speaking and not a slave.--The generosity implied was all the
greater since in many of the most sacred feasts of the gods at
Athens slaves were expressly excluded: cf. Philo, _Q. omn. Prob._
20, ii, p. 467 M. Casaubon on Ath., vol. 12, p. 495 Schw.]
[15\6: Isoc. 4, 28, ~Dê/mêtros ga\r aphikome/nês eis tê\n chô/ran .
. . kai\ dou/sês dôrea\s ditta/s, hai/per me/gistai tugcha/nousin
ou=sai, tou/s te karpou\s kai\ tê\n teletê/n, . . . hou=tôs hê
po/lis hêmô=n ou mo/non theophilô=s alla\ kai\ philanthrô/pôs
e/schen, hô/ste kuri/a genome/nê tosou/tôn agathô=n ouk ephtho/nêse
toi=s a/llois, all' hô=n e/laben _ha/pasi_~ (he means all _Greeks_:
cf. 157) ~mete/dôken~.]
[16\6: ~muei=n d' ei=nai toi=s ou=si Kêru/kôn kai\ Eumolpidô=n~ as
the law appoints, _CIA._ i, 1 (more exactly _Supp._ p. 3 f.), ll.
110-11. Thus the ~mu/êsis~ belonged exclusively to the members of
the ~ge/nê~ of the Eumolpidai and Kerykes (but to all the members,
not merely those serving as officers at the particular festival
concerned). Cf. Dittenberger, _Hermes_, 20, 31 f. The Emperor
Hadrian, in order to be able to hold the festival in a more
sumptuous manner, had himself made ~a/rchôn~ of the ~Eumolpidô=n
ge/nos~, having already been made a member of that ~ge/nos~: ins.
from Eleusis, _Ath. Mitt._ 1894, p. 172.--There is no reference to
the Eleusinia in what is said about the ~muei=n~ of a priestess
belonging to the family of the Phyllidai in Phot. ~Phillei=dai~: see
Töpffer, _Att. Geneal._ 92.--The exx. of ~mu/êsis~ collected by
Lobeck (_Agl._ 28 ff.) do not contradict this law: in the case of
Lysias who ~hupe/scheto muê/sein~ the hetaira Metaneira [D.] 59, 21,
~muei=n~ merely means defray the cost of initiation (quite correctly
explained by Müller, review of _Aglaoph._, _Kl. Schr._ ii, 56). So,
too, in the case of Theoph. (ii, p. 473 K.) ~emuê/thên theoi=s~,
i.e. at the expense of my master.]
[17\6: The ~pro/rrêsis~ of the Basileus and the proclamations of the
hierophant and dadouchos excluded all ~andropho/noi~ from those
taking part in the mysteries: Lob., _Agl._ 15. They were also, it is
true, excluded from all other sacred rites: Lob. 17. Even ~toi=s en
aiti/a|~ the Archon gave warning ~ape/chesthai mustêri/ôn kai\ tô=n
a/llôn nomi/môn~ (Poll. 8, 90): in fact, the person accused of
murder was in any case, as "unclean", excluded from _all_ ~no/mima~:
Antipho, vi, 36 (in _AB._ 310, 8 read ~nomi/môn~).] {233}
[18\6: ~_ho/sioi_ mu/stai~, Ar., _Ran._ 336. (So, too, the Mystai of
the Orphic mysteries are called ~hoi ho/sioi~: Pl., _Rp._ 363 C;
Orph., _H._ 84, 3.) ~ho/sios~ is probably here used in its primitive
sense = "clean" (~ho/siai chei=res~, etc.). [Pl.] _Axioch._ 371 D
refers to ~ta\s hosi/ous agchistei/as~ of the Eleus. Mystai. In the
same way ~hosiou=n~ was used of ritual purification and expiation:
~phugai=sin hosiou=n~ the murder, E., _Or._ 515; ~hosiou=n~ the
returned homicide, D. 23, 73; (of the Bacchic mysteries ~ba/kchos
eklê/thên hosiôthei/s~, E. _fr._ 472, 15). Thus the ~ho/sioi~ are
identical with the _~kekatharme/noi~_ as the initiated are called:
Pl. _Phd._ 69 C, and frequently. It would be hazardous to suppose
that the Mystai called themselves ~ho/sioi~ as the _only_ pious and
righteous people (though that is what ~ho/sios a/nthrôpos~ and the
like mean elsewhere). Their spiritual self-satisfaction hardly went
as far as that, and indeed they did not ascribe so much _personal_
merit to themselves at all.]
[19\6: In a solemn announcement of the Keryx as it seems: the latter
acc. to Sopater ~diai/r. zêtêm.~ (Walz, _Rhet. Gr._ viii, 118, 24
f.) ~dêmosi/a| epita/ttei tê\n siôpê/n~ at the commencement of the
sacred ritual.]
[20\6: ~ta\ mustê/ria poiei=n~, Andoc., _Myst._ 11-12.--The more
clearly descriptive expression, ~exorchei=sthai ta\ mustê/ria~ does
not seem to occur before Aristides, Lucian, and the latter's
imitator Alciphron. [Lys.] 6, 51: ~hou=tos endu\s stolê/n,
mimou/menos ta\ hiera\ **epedei/knue toi=s amuê/tois kai\ ei=pe tê=|
phônê=| ta\ apo/rrêta~. The ~apor.~ thus divulged were the sacred
formulæ uttered by the hierophant.]
[21\6: At least in later ages there was plenty to hear: ~eis
epha/millon kate/stê tai=s akoai=s ta\ horô/mena~, Aristid.,
_Eleus._ I, 415 Di. [ii, 28 Ke.]. We frequently hear of the
beautiful voices of the hierophants, of ~hu/mnoi~ ringing out, etc.]
[22\6: The well-known statements of Pindar, Sophokles, Isokrates,
Krinagoras, Cicero, and others are collected by Lobeck, _Agl._ 69
ff. There is a reminiscence of Isocr. in Aristid. _Eleus._ I 421 Di.
[ii, 30 Ke.] ~alla\ mê\n to/ ge ke/rdos tê=s panêgu/reôs ouch ho/son
hê parou=sa euthumi/a . . . alla\ kai\ peri\ tê=s teleutê=s hêdi/ous
e/chein ta\s elpi/das~. id. _Panath._ I, 302 Di. ~ta\s arrê/tous
teleta\s hô=n toi=s metaschou=si kai\ meta\ tê=n tou= bi/ou
teleutê\n belti/ô ta\ pra/gmata gi/gnesthai dokei=~. Cf. also
Welcker's account, _Gr. Götterl._ ii, 519 ff., in which, however,
there is a good deal mixed up which has nothing to do with the
mysteries.]
[23\6: That is, in the time of still vital religion and in the
circles which still retained an unspoilt feeling for it. Apart from
these it is true that the allegorical interpretation of myths was
already familiar in antiquity, and in learned circles the gods and
the stories of the gods were transformed and disintegrated ~eis
pneu/mata kai\ rheu/mata kai\ spo/rous kai\ aro/tous kai\ pa/thê
gê=s kai\ metabola\s hôrô=n~ as Plutarch complains, _Is. et O._ 66,
p. 377 D. These allegorical interpreters from Anaxagoras and
Metrodoros onwards are the real ancestors of our modern "nature"
mythologists. No one doubts, however, that from their
interpretations nothing can be learnt except what the real sense of
Greek belief in the gods certainly was _not_. It is worth noticing
that Prodikos, because he said that ~hê/lion kai\ selê/nên kai\
potamou\s kai\ leimô=nas kai\ karpou\s kai\ pa=n to\ toioutô=des~
were the real essence of the Greek gods, was looked upon as one of
the ~a/theoi~ (S.E., _M._ 9, 51-2 = B 5 Diels). Quam tandem
religionem reliquit? asks the Greek whom Cicero is reproducing in
_ND._ i, 118, with reference to this ancient prophet of Greek
"nature-religion".--For the ancient allegorists Persephone, too, is
nothing but ~to\ dia\ tô=n karpô=n phero/menon pneu=ma~ (so
Kleanthes: Plu. as above). Acc. to Varro Persephone "means"
fecunditatem seminum, {234} carried off by Orcus on the occasion of
some crop-failure, etc. (Aug., _CD._ vii, 20). In Porph. ap. Eus.,
_PE._ 3, 11, 7-9. we actually have the very interpretation which has
been recently restored to so much favour--that ~Ko/rê~ is nothing
else but a (feminine) personification of ~ko/ros~ = young plant,
shoot.]
[24\6: A hint of such an explanation occurs in Sallustius, _de Dis_
iv, ~kata\ tê\n enanti/an isêmeri/an~ (i.e. the autumnal) ~hê tê=s
Ko/rês harpagê\ **muthologei=tai gene/sthai; ho\ dê\ ka/thodo/s hesti
tô=n psuchô=n~ (from the standpoint of this Neoplatonist at any rate
the analogy might be carried through). So, too, Sopater ~diai/r.
zêt.~ in Walz, _Rh. Gr._ viii, 115, 3, speaks of ~to\ tê=s psuchê=s
pro\s to\ thei=on suggene/s~ as if it were confirmed in the
(Eleusinian) mysteries.]
[25\6: It may be mentioned here by anticipation that a real doctrine
of the indestructibility of the human soul was first traditionally
attributed in antiquity to the Greek philosophers such as Thales or
to the _theosophoi_ such as Pherekydes (and Pythagoras too). In what
sense this can be regarded as true we shall learn in the course of
our inquiry. The mysteries of Eleusis, from which many modern
critics would like to derive the belief in immortality among the
Greeks, are mentioned by no ancient authority as among the sources
of that belief or of such a doctrine. In which they were quite
right.]
[26\6: Soph. _fr._ 753 N. [791 P.] ~hôs tri\s o/lbioi kei=noi
brotô=n, hoi\ tau=ta derchthe/ntes te/lê mo/lôs' es Ha/idou; toi=sde
ga\r mo/nois ekei= zê=n e/sti, toi=s d' a/lloisi pa/nt' ekei=
kaka/~.]
[27\6: The privileged position of the initiated is exhibited with
striking vigour in the well-known outburst of Diogenes: ~ti/
le/geis, e/phê, krei/ttona moi=ran he/xei Pataiki/ôn ho kle/ptês
apothanô\n ê\ Epameinô/ndas, ho/ti memu/êtai?~ Plu., _Aud. Poet._
iv, p. 21 F; D.L. vi, 39; Jul., _Or._ vii, 238 A (p. 308 Hert.).--A
homiletic application of Diogenes' saying is made by Philo, _Vict.
Off._ 12, ii, p. 261 M. ~sumbai/nei polla/kis tô=n me\n agathô=n
andrô=n mêde/na muei=sthai, lê|sta\s de\ e/stin ho/te kai\
katapontista\s kai\ gunaikô=n thia/sous bdeluktô=n kai\ akola/stôn,
epa\n argu/rion para/schôsi toi=s teloi=si kai\ hierophantou=si~.
Cf. _Spec. Leg._ 3, 7, i, p. 306 M.]
[28\6: Of this nature were the ~hiera/~ which the hierophant
"showed" and the other things that were employed in the festival:
pictures of gods, relics, and paraphernalia of all sorts (e.g. the
~ki/stê~ and the ~ka/lathos~: O. Jahn, _Hermes_, 3, 327 f.): see
Lob., _Agl._ 51-62.]
[29\6: Preller, for example (stimulated by K. O. Müller), is fond of
dwelling on the special character and meaning of the worship of the
chthonic deities as something quite distinct from other Greek
worships of the gods. An example may be found in Pauly-Wissowa^1,
s.v. _Eleusis_, iii, p. 108: "The department of religion to which
the Eleusinian cult belongs is that of the chthonic deities, which
had been indigenous in Greece from the earliest times and was a
widely popular cultus. In this cultus ideas of the generous
fruitfulness of the earth's soil and of the fruitfulness of
death--whose seat seems to be beneath the earth like the Old
Testament Sheol--were interwoven in a mysteriously suggestive way: a
way which essentially resisted all efforts at clear and distinct
comprehension, and could not help leading to mystical or occult
suggestions and obscure symbolistic expression." This and further
amplifications in the same sense all rest upon the unprovable axiom
that the activities of the ~chtho/nioi~ as gods of the soil and as
gods of the kingdom of the souls were "interwoven": the suggestive
haze of the rest follows naturally. But what in all this is Greek?]
[30\6: ~hê kru/psis hê mustikê\ tô=n hierô=n semnopoiei= to\
thei=on, mimoume/nê tê\n phu/sin autou= pheu/gousan hêmô=n tê\n
ai/sthêsin~. Str. 467.] {235}
[31\6: In fact the ancient allegorical interpretations of the
mysteries differed widely among themselves: Lob., _Agl._
136-40.--Even Galen attributed an allegorical sense to the mysteries
of Eleusis, but he thinks ~_amudra\_ ekei=na pro\s e/ndeixin hô=n
speu/dei dida/skein~ (iv, p. 361 K.). This cannot have been true of
the assurances given to the Mystai of a blessed future in Hades.]
[32\6: Such proclamations may have occurred in the ~hieropha/ntou
rhê/seis~ (Sop. ~diai/r. zêt.~ Walz, viii, 123, 29; cf. Lob., _Agl._
189).]
[33\6: Lob., _Agl._ 52, 58 f.]
[34\6: No one says anything of any kind of moral obligation
undertaken by the Mystai or of any consequent moral influence of the
festival: not even Andokides in whose warnings addressed to the
college of judges composed of Mystai (_Myst._ 31) the words ~hi/na
timôrê/sête me\n tou\s asebou=ntas ktl.~ are not to be taken with
the previous ~memu/êsthe kai\ heôra/kate toi=n theoi=n ta\ hiera/~
but with ~hoi/tines ho/rkous mega/lous ktl., kai\ arasa/menoi ktl.~
He speaks, in fact, of the moral obligation of the jury who have
taken the oath, as _judges_ not as Mystai. In Ar., _Ran._, 455 ff.,
the words ~ho/soi memuê/metha~ stand loosely side by side with
~eusebê= diê/gomen tro/pon peri\ tou\s xe/nous kai\ tou\s idiô/tas~.
(Of the Samothrakian mysteries Diodoros says, 5, 49, 6: ~gi/nesthai
de/ phasi kai\ eusebeste/rous kai\ dikaiote/rous kai\ kata\ pa=n
belti/onas heautô=n tou\s tô=n mustêri/ôn koinônê/santas~--as it
seems without effort on their part by a pure act of grace.)]
[35\6: Formal or verbal instruction of a theological or moral kind
was not supplied at Eleusis; so much may be stated without fear of
contradiction since the work of Lobeck. Thus, the three commandments
of Triptolemos, which acc. to Xenokrates ~diame/nousi Eleusi=ni~
(Porph., _Abs._ 4, 22) cannot be regarded as moral precepts
proclaimed at the mysteries: indeed, there is nothing to lead one to
conclude that they had anything to do with the mystery festival at
Eleusis. In character these very simple precepts seem related to the
laws of Bouzyges, with whom Triptolemos is sometimes confused
(Haupt, _Opusc._ iii, 505) and were very likely, like them, recited
at some agricultural festival. Supposing further that the third
"law" of Triptolemos: ~zô=|a mê\ si/nesthai~ was really (as Xenokr.
seems to have understood it) intended to recommend a complete
~apochê\ empsu/chôn~, then it certainly cannot have been proclaimed
at the Eleusinia (though this is what Dieterich thinks happened,
_Nekyia_, 165). It is surely unthinkable that the Mystai at Eleusis
were, after the Orphic model, absolutely forbidden to eat flesh for
the rest of their lives. It remains a possibility that the precept
had quite a different meaning--it does not definitely speak of the
killing of animals--and that it belongs to some simple farmer's
festival (not to the great festival of Eleusis, but rather, e.g. the
Haloa) at which the farmer was recommended to spare his live stock
(just as the third of the three laws of Demonassa at Cyprus forbade
the farmer ~mê\ apoktei=nai bou=n aro/trion~, D. Chr. 64, 3 [329 R.,
148 Arn.]; Attic law ap. Ael. _VH._ 5, 14, etc.).--In any case to
bring all this into connexion with the mystery festival of Eleusis
is absolutely without justification.]
{{236}}
CHAPTER VII
IDEAS OF THE FUTURE LIFE
Certain allusions in Plutarch and Lucian[1\7] would lead us to
suppose that the "mystery-drama" of Eleusis included also a visual
exhibition of the underworld and its blest, or unblest, inhabitants.
But these contemporaries of a final and luxuriant flowering of
mystery-religions of every kind can serve as reliable witnesses only
for their own period. In their day the Eleusinian festival, in
competition it may be with other secret worships which were invading
the Greco-Roman world in ever-increasing numbers, seems to have
undergone a considerable alteration and extension of its primitive
and traditional shape. We may doubt whether in earlier, classical
times the Eleusinia can have attempted to bind the imagination with
what were always petty details, or confine within formal limits what
lay beyond all human experience. Still the solemn promise of future
blessedness made in the mystic festival may, at any rate, have
stimulated the imagination of its worshippers and given a more
definite turn to their own natural efforts to picture the life to
come. The ideas cultivated at Eleusis unmistakably contributed to
the process by which the picture of Hades acquired colour and
distinctness. Even without such stimulus, the natural instinct of
the Greeks at all periods to give form even to what was essentially
formless, worked in the same direction. The limits set by Homeric
beliefs about the future world had made the Odyssean description of
a descent to Hades seem a risky experiment only to be undertaken
with the greatest caution. Now, however, since the re-establishment
of the belief in a conscious after-life of the disembodied soul,
such imaginative bodyings-forth of the invisible realm of shadows
had become apparently the most natural and innocent employment of
poetic fancy.
The story of Odysseus' journey to Hades and its expansion in
conformity with the gradually increasing distinctness with which the
life after death was conceived, was followed at an early period in
the development of Epic poetry by further accounts of such journeys
undertaken by other heroes. A Hesiodic poem described the descent of
Theseus and Peirithoös to the underworld.[2\7] A Nekyia, the details
of which are unknown, occurred in the poem of the _Return_ of the
heroes {237} from Troy. The epic which went by the name of the
"Minyas" seems to have given considerable space to a descent to
Hades.[3\7] The ancient fable of Herakles' descent to Hades and
conflicts in the underworld received embellishment at more than one
poet's hand.[4\7] As a result of such repeated and rival
interpretations of the story the stock of characters and events
associated with Hades was gradually and continually being enlarged.
Accident has preserved to us the fact about the little-known
_Minyas_ that it, too, added to the details of the picture. To what
extent popular imagination and mythology, on the one hand, and
poetic inventiveness, on the other, may have been responsible for
all this we can hardly say. It seems probable that here, as in the
development of so many Greek myths, on the whole the balance of
invention lay on the side of the poets. Purely poetic visions or
pictures like that of the _translation_ of individual heroes to
Elysium may have gradually won their way to popular acceptance.
"Dearest Harmodios," said the Athenian Skolion, "thou art not dead
indeed, but livest yet, men say, in the Islands of the Blest." Not
that there was anything fixed or dogmatic on the point. In a funeral
oration Hyperides represents Leosthenes and his companions in battle
as meeting in Hades, among the illustrious dead, the Tyrannicides,
Harmodios and Aristogeiton.[5\7]
Much that may have been the invention of poets for the filling up or
furnishing of the desert region so stamped itself upon the general
mind that it almost seemed the natural growth of authentic popular
belief. Everyone was familiar with the guardian of the gate of
Plouton, the malignant hound of Hades who admits everyone but lets
no one out again. He is the same creature, long known from the
adventure of Herakles, which is already named Kerberos by
Hesiod.[6\7] Like the gate and the gate-keeper, the waters that
divide Erebos from the world of the living are already known to
Homer. Now they have a Ferryman added to them, the churlish old man
Charon, who, like a second Kerberos, safely transports everyone
across the water, but lets no one return.[7\7] The _Minyas_ is the
first to mention him: that he became a real figure of popular belief
(as he is still in Greece to this day, though with altered
significance is shown by pictures on the Attic vases that were put
into the graves with the dead. These represent the soul as it stands
upon the sedgy bank and meets the ferryman who will carry it over to
the other side whence no man returns.[8\7] The custom of burying the
dead with a small coin fixed between the teeth was also explained as
provision for the passage-money that would have to be paid to
Charon.[9\7] {238}
§ 2
The soul, then, being safely arrived on the other bank and Kerberos
passed by--what awaited it there? Those who had been initiated into
the mysteries now counted upon enjoying the glad future that their
hopes had formerly pictured. In reality this blessed future,
vouchsafed by the grace of the deities who rule below, was not very
hard to obtain. So many were initiated and recommended to divine
favour that the picture of Hades, once so gloomy, began to assume a
more genial aspect. Quite early we meet with the general name of
"Blessedness" as applied to the future life; while the dead without
much distinction are called the "Blessed".[10\7]
Of course, anyone who had been so foolish as to neglect or despise
initiation has "not the same fate below", as the _Hymn to Demeter_
discreetly puts it. Only the initiated have life, says Sophokles:
the uninitiated, with whom it goes ill in the land below, can hardly
have been thought of otherwise than as floating in the glimmering
half-life of the shadows in the Homeric Erebos. Well-meaning modern
efforts to read a moral meaning into things Greek have sought to
prove that the Greeks, too, had a genuine popular belief in a future
judgment and recompense for the past deeds and character of the
dead. Homer makes hardly the most distant allusion to such a belief.
The perjurer alone suffers in Homer the punishment at the hands of
the gods of the underworld which he had invoked upon himself in his
oath. Even the "Sinners" and their punishment which later imitation
added to the story of Odysseus' Journey to Hades, considered without
prejudice, do not support the opinion that Homeric poetry knew of a
belief in retribution hereafter. Later poets were only following
this model when they made other enemies of the gods endure eternal
punishment in Hades--Thamyris, for example, or Amphion (as the
_Minyas_ related), and later Ixion in particular.[11\7] All this
does not, even in the slightest degree, suggest a general belief in
future rewards and punishment. Of course, there is the judgment that
is given in Hades by "One" according to Pindar (_Ol._ ii, 65), but
this occurs in connexion with a description of the "last things"
which the poet has borrowed from the teachings of mystic
separatists. Aeschylus[12\7] knows of a judgment pronounced by Hades
himself; but his thoughts about divine retribution both on earth and
hereafter are derived from his own religious temperament which was
entirely opposed to the popular beliefs of his day and more inclined
to accept the speculative doctrines of the theologians. The {239}
first precise account of the three judges in Hades, Minos,
Rhadamanthys, and Aiakos, who judge the deeds of men done in their
lifetime upon earth occurs in Plato in a description of the other
world which reproduces anything rather than the popular beliefs of
the time.[13\7] Later on, the picture of the judges in Hades (to
whom Triptolemos was also added),[14\7] like many other details of
the Platonic eschatological myths, became a real part of popular
fancy, as allusions in later literature and even, perhaps, pictures
of the underworld on vase-paintings from Southern Italy, bear
witness. But the idea that in the supreme period of Greek culture
the belief in a judgment and judges in Hades, who passed sentence on
the deeds of men done on earth, had really any root in popular
belief, is quite unproved and can be shown to be erroneous from the
argument _ex silentio_. And where there are no judges no judgment
can take place.
We often see it asserted that the belief in a future state of
compensation for the good and evil deeds of this world was obtained
by the Greeks from the Eleusinian mysteries. In reality the opposite
is true; if and in so far as the Greeks ever received or entertained
such a belief in future rewards and punishments the mysteries of
Eleusis had nothing whatever to do with the matter. We have only to
remember the simple fact that the Eleusinian mysteries admitted to
initiation, with the single exception of those stained by the crime
of murder, Greeks of all sorts without any inquiry into their past
life and actions, or even their character. The initiated were
promised a blessed life hereafter; a gloomy fate awaited the
uninitiated. The difference was not made by goodness or badness;
"Pataikion the thief will have a better fate after his death because
he has been initiated at Eleusis than Agesilaos or Epameinondas"
sneered Diogenes the Cynic. Not political or moral worth but
"spiritual" merit alone is decisive. Nor will anyone be very
surprised at that. It is so in most religions. But in any case, the
idea of a sentence passed on virtue or vice in Hades had been
forestalled by the system of rewards and punishments in the lower
world which the mysteries had already formulated from quite a
different point of view. Where the mysteries were seriously and
conscientiously taken they would rather have thrown their weight
into the scales against any such idea, if it began to make itself
felt, of compensation for good and evil deeds in Hades; they
certainly contained nothing that fostered such a belief.
No doubt in the long run, among a spiritually alert people, {240}
the morality inculcated by religion allied itself freely and without
reluctance to the morality of the citizen in its independent
development. Only in this way could the former maintain its
ascendancy. Thus, in the minds of many of the Greeks the idea of
religious justification (through the mysteries) may have lent its
support to the idea of civic just dealing; and, at the same time,
the company of the unblest who had neglected the sacred mysteries
and their future salvation as well, was increased by the not
unimportant body of those who receive the wages of sin in Hades and
expiate their crimes against the gods, the family, and the civil
society of men. Those who have taken a false oath, parricides,
violators of the laws of hospitality are made by Aristophanes (in
the _Frogs_) to "lie in the mud"--a form of penalty originally
anticipated for the uninitiated in some Orphic private mysteries,
but now transferred by him to those guilty of moral
misdemeanours.[15\7] The inconsistency with the promises made in the
mysteries themselves involved in such conceptions may have been the
less observed just because the idea of a future system of
compensation in accordance with the requirements of morality was
never seriously or fully developed, but remained merely a matter of
vague suggestion. In circumstances of real need that ideal never
satisfied anyone in Greece. Men expected to see the retributive
power of the gods visibly active upon earth; those in whom
experience weakened this belief would not have derived much comfort
from the idea of compensation hereafter. Everyone knows the typical
case of Diagoras, the "Atheist".[16\7]
§ 3
The picturing of the future life, however seriously it might be
carried on by adherents of certain mystical sects, remained for the
poets and the public at Athens in the fifth century little more than
an amusement of idle fancy in which a man might indulge his own whim
with perfect freedom. The comic poets from Pherekrates onwards
regarded a Descent into the Unknown country as a suitable framework
for a burlesque play.[17\7] According to their fancy a Paradise,
like that of the golden age on earth when Kronos still ruled,
awaited the "Blessed" in the world below;[18\7] a "City of
Delight"[19\7] such as men hoped to meet with at the ends of the
world, or even somewhere upon the real world. It is from a comedy,
the _Frogs_ of Aristophanes, in connexion with the Descent to Hades
of a typical commonplace Athenian citizen, who for the time being
plays the part of Dionysos, that we get a clearer outline of the
geography of the lower regions. Beyond {241} the Acherousian Sea
with its cross-grained ferryman dwell snakes and monsters of all
kinds. Having passed by the darkness and putrescence of the slough
in which wallow perjurers and those who have committed crimes
against father or stranger, the way leads to the palace of Plouton,
near which lives the chorus of those who have been initiated into
the mysteries. For them even in Hades the sun dispenses a brilliant
light; they dance in myrtle groves and sing to the sound of the
flute hymns of praise to the gods of the underworld.[20\7] A
separation of the inhabitants of the lower regions into two classes
as taught by the mysteries, is here also carried through: at least
clear consciousness is implied in the case of the Mystai which in
itself marks clearly the change which has taken place since the
Nekyia of the Odyssey. Then there are other regions in Hades besides
the places where the initiated and the impious dwell. There is a
reference to the plain of Lethe,[21\7] and to the place where Oknos
is plaiting the rope which his she-ass gnaws to pieces as fast as he
plaits it. This is a parody, half humorous, half pathetic, of the
Homeric figures of Sisyphos and Tantalos; a sort of bourgeois
counterpart of that Homeric aristocracy of the enemies of heaven,
whose punishment, as Goethe remarked, is a type of ever-unrewarded
labour. But, we may ask, what had honest Oknos done to deserve this
fate of eternally fruitless toil? He is only a man like other men,
but he "typifies all human endeavour." That anyone could have
introduced such quaint inventions of innocent humour into the realm
of Hades shows how far all this was from theological seriousness.
§ 4
We ought to be able to observe the change which had come over the
conception of the future life since the days of Homer from a
consideration of the picture of the Underworld which Polygnotos of
Thasos painted on one of the walls of the Hall of the Knidians at
Delphi. The details of this picture are precisely known to us from
the account given by Pausanias. The first impression that we get
from it is the extraordinary vagueness and undeveloped state of the
mythology of the underworld at this period, about the middle of the
fifth century. On the wall was represented the questioning of
Teiresias by Odysseus; the companies of heroes, the men and women of
poetry, occupied the greater part of the space. The divine judgment
of heaven was illustrated by the figures of the Homeric "Sinners",
Tityos, Tantalos, and Sisyphos. Outside the ranks of the Heroic
company is Oknos and his {212} she-ass. But where is the reward of
virtue, the punishment of wickedness? In expiation of the worst
excesses, those committed against gods and parents, a temple-robber
receives a cup of poison from a sorceress,[22\7] and an undutiful
son is being choked by his own father.[23\7] Apart from these
evil-doers are the "uninitiated", those who have made light of the
Eleusinian mysteries. Because they have missed the "completion" of
the initiation they are now forced, men and women, to pour water
from broken pitchers into a (perforated) jar in ever-unavailing
endeavour.[24\7] There is no sign anywhere of a judge who should
separate the souls into two classes; and of the monsters of the
underworld there only appears the corpse-devouring daimon Eurynomos
who must have been known to the artist from some local legend.[25\7]
Of the reward of the "virtuous" there is not a trace, and even the
hopes of the initiated in the mysteries are only vaguely alluded to
in the casket which Kleoboia, as she crosses the river in Charon's
boat with Tellis, is holding on her knee.[26\7] This is a symbol of
the sacred mysteries of Demeter which Kleoboia once brought from
Paros to Thasos, the home of Polygnotos.
With this series of pictures, hardly altered at all from
Homer,[27\7] contrast for a moment the scenes of torment represented
in Etruscan pictures of the Underworld, or the pedantic details of
the trial of the dead on the day of judgment as the Egyptians
elaborated them in picture and writing. From such gloomy severity,
from the rigid and overpowering dogmatism that a people without
imagination had constructed for itself out of religious speculations
and visions won by much labour and thought, the Greeks were
fortunately preserved by their own genius. Their fancy is a winged
god whose nature it is to pass lightly over things--not to fall
heavily to earth and there remain ponderously prostrate. Nor were
they very susceptible during their best centuries to the infectious
malady of a "sick conscience". What had they to do with pictures of
an underworld of purgatory and torment in expiation of all imaginary
types and degrees of sin, as in Dante's ghastly Hell? It is true
that even such dark fancies of the Christian Hell are in part
derived from Greek sources. But it was only the misguided fancy of
particular isolated sects that could call forth such pictures as
these, and recommend itself to a philosophic speculation which in
its worst excesses violently contradicted all the most fundamental
principles of Greek culture. The people and the religion of Greece,
the mysteries which her cities organized and deemed holy, may be
freely acquitted of all such aberrations.
NOTES TO CHAPTER VII
[1\7: Plu. (the MSS. wrongly give Themistios) _de An. fr._ 6 ap.
Stob., _Fl._ iv, 52 b, 48 H. = p. 107, 27 ff. Mein.; Luc., _Catapl._
23.]
[2\7: Paus. 9, 31, 5.]
[3\7: The remains in Kinkel, _Frag. Epic._ i, 215 ff. This ~Minua/s~
was identified by K. O. Müller, _Orchom_^2., p. 12, with the Orphic
~kata/basis eis Ha/idou~, and this suggestion has been followed,
though with hesitation, even by Lobeck, _Agl._ 360, 373. It rests
solely on the fact that the Orphic ~kata/basis~ was very doubtfully
ascribed according to Clemens to Prodikos of Samos, according to
Suidas to Herodikos of Perinthos (or to Kerkops, or to Orpheus of
Kamarina); while the Minyas, according to Paus. 4, 33, 7, was very
doubtfully ascribed to Prodikos of Phokaia. Müller first identified
Prodikos of Samos with Herodikos of Perinthos, and then both of them
with Prodikos of Phokaia. The justification of such a procedure is
by no means "self-evident" and the identification--entirely
depending upon this quite arbitrary view--of the Orphic ~kata/basis
eis Ha/idou~ with the Minyas is in the last degree hazardous. Such
an alternative title to an ancient narrative poem can only be
defended by fictitious and quite untenable parallels. The name
~Minua/s~ has no parallel in Orphic literature, and suggests rather
a poem dealing with heroic adventure in which the Nekyia would only
be an episode. If we are to believe in the double title we require
at least to be told how the name (Minyas) could possibly have been
given to a poem whose contents as implied by the title ~kata/basis
eis Ha/idou~ plainly consisted in a descent to Hades--made by
Orpheus himself (as Lobeck also understands, p. 373). Besides,
everything we learn about the Nekyia of the Minyas differs widely
from the temper and doctrine of Orphism, which should have
manifested themselves very distinctly in such a vision of the life
to come. Nor is anything from the Minyas given elsewhere under the
name of Orpheus, like so many of the details of underworld
mythology. There is nothing to suggest that it was Orpheus who
sought the _atra atria Ditis_: an unprejudiced interpretation of
_fr._ 1 (ap. Paus. 10, 28, 2) would suggest that it was rather
Theseus and Peirithoos whose descent to Hades supplied the framework
for the Hades episode in the poem. There is then not the slightest
justification for including the Minyas in the list of Orphic poems
or for citing what is known of its contents as Orphic mythological
doctrine (which last Lobeck himself did not do: he knew too well the
real nature and meaning of Orphism). Cf. Dümmler, _Delphika_, p. 19
(Bas. 1894).]
[4\7: Allusions in the Iliad and Odyssey presuppose the existence of
an old poem on the journey to Hades of Herakles: how he was
commissioned by Eurystheus, conducted by Athene (and Hermes), went
down below and wounded Hades himself and carried off the dog of
Hades. Many hands must subsequently have taken part in filling in
the details of the adventure: we cannot, however, definitely name
the poet who gave its final form and character to the whole. As far
as the individual features of the poem are known to us (esp. from
the survey given in [Apollod.], 2, 12. _Myth. Gr._, 2, 122 ff. W.,
combining both early and late mythological characteristics), they
are rather the features of a vigorous story of heroic adventure,
full of movement and tending to the gruesome and the
extravagant--not of a static or {244} tranquil narrative that would
allow of the calm reception of pictures illustrating the quiet
ordinary life and events of frequent occurrence in the mysterious
world of darkness. In this respect the ~kata/basis~ of Herakles in
its traditional form must have differed noticeably from the Nekyia
in ~l~, as well as from the Minyas. In fact, not one of the fabulous
details current in later times about Hades can be traced back to a
description in the Herakles adventure (even "Kerberos" seems to have
got his name elsewhere.]
[5\7: Hyperides, _Epit._ § 35-9 = p. 92 f. (Blass^3): Leosthenes
will meet ~en Ha/idou~ the Heroes of the Trojan war, the Persian
war, and also Harmodios and Aristogeiton. This is a stereotyped
rhetorical idea: cf. Pl., _Ap._ 41 A-C. An epigram from Knossos on a
Cretan who has distinguished himself in a cavalry battle (_BCH._
1889, p. 60, ll. 1-2, after Simon., _Ep._ 99, 3-4 Bgk.), ll. 9-10:
~tou/neka/ se phthime/nôn kath' homê/gurin ho kluto\s Ha/dês i/se
polissou/chô| su/nthronon Idomenei=~.]
[6\7: Kerberos is first named in Hes., _Th._ 311, and he is the same
hound of Hades which Homer knows and leaves unnamed, as Hesiod does,
_Th._ 769 ff. According to this account he admits everyone, fawning
about them and wagging his tail: but anyone who tries to slip out of
Hades again he devours. That Kerberos inspires terror in those who
enter Hades is therefore a conception of later ages (when his name
was sometimes derived from the fact that he ~ta\s kê=ras, ho\ dêloi=
ta\s psucha/s, e/chei bora/n~: Porph. ap. Eus., _PE._ 3, 11, 11, p.
110 A, etc.): the superstitious are afraid ~tô=| Kerbe/rô|
diada/knesthai~ (Plu., _N.P._ _Suav. Ep._ 1105 A; cf. Verg., _A._
vi, 401; Apul., _Met._ i, 15 fin.). The honey cakes given to those
who enter Hades are intended to pacify him (Sch. Ar., _Lys._ 601;
Verg., _A._ vi, 420; Ap., _Met._ vi, 19). It cannot be proved that
this is an _ancient_ conception (certainly not from the absurd
invention of Philochoros, _fr._ 46, to which Dieterich, _Nekyia_,
49, appeals). Ar., _Lys._ 601, speaks of the ~melitou=tta~ for the
dead without suggesting any such purpose; and in fact honeycakes
would hardly be a satisfactory bait to a dog: they rather suggest
offerings for underworld snakes (as in the cave of Trophonios, Ar,
_Nu._ 507; for the Asklepios-snake, Herond. iv, 90-1) and for
spirits appearing as snakes (and hence customary at offerings for
the dead, and even e.g. according to the precepts of the
~rhizoto/moi~ when digging up medicinal plants, Thphr., _HP._ 9, 8,
7). In the lines of Sophokles, _OC._ 1574 ff., Löschcke, _Aus der
Unterwelt_, p. 9 (Progr. Dorpat, 1888) finds an expression of the
idea that there was need of pacifying Kerb. in his rage against
souls entering Hades. In reality nothing of the kind is even
suggested there. The traditional text is unintelligible, and is
emended and interpreted with probable correctness by Nauck (~do/s~
instead of ~ho/n~). Adopting this correction the words express a
prayer of the Chorus addressed to a child of Tartaros and Ge, who is
called ~ho aie/nupnos~, which must mean "who sends to everlasting
sleep" (not "who sleeps for ever")--(or to separate ~pai=s Ga=s kai\
Tarta/rou~ from ~aie/nupnos~ as the Schol. would do, is impossible.
The ~aie/nupnos~, as the Schol. has already noticed, can hardly be
anyone else than Thanatos (it would be an unintelligible epithet for
Hesychos, of whom L. thinks). Thanatos, however, is nowhere else
called son of Tartaros and Ge (nor is Hesychos, while Typhon and
Echidna are, though the adj. would not suit them; who else besides
Soph., _OC._ 40, calls the Erinyes daughters of Ge and Skotos?). The
Chorus pray to him (acc. to Nauck's correction) to grant Oedipus a
safe passage in his journey to Hades. Terrors of all kinds were to
be met with on the way there, ~o/pheis kai\ thêri/a~ (Ar., _Ra._ 143
ff., 278 ff.; we may also remember Verg., {245} _A._ vi, 273 ff.,
285 ff., etc.): that Kerberos is among these terrors is suggested by
Soph. as little as it is by Aristoph. in the _Frogs_. In fact, Soph.
had spoken of him a few lines before (1569 ff.) in words which
suggest anything rather than danger to those who enter Hades.
Sophokles, then, cannot be made to serve as witness for the view
that the Greeks thought of Kerberos after the manner of the two
piebald dogs of the Indian Yama that terrify and drive back the
dead. Further, there is no good evidence for a Greek tradition of
_two_ hounds of Hell. Nor can it be proved by the case adduced by
Löschcke: the picture on a sarcophagus from Klazomenai of a naked
boy holding a cock in each hand and standing between two (female
dogs that leap round him (in a manner suggesting play rather than
anger). The picture can hardly have a mythical sense. This cannot
give support to the view (as old as Wilford) that ~Ke/rberos~ is no
other than one of the two piebald (çabala) dogs of Yama and a
creation of primitive Indo-Germanic times. In any case, the evidence
is weak enough. See Gruppe, _Gr. Culte u. Mythen_, i, 113-14;
Oldenberg, _Rel. d. Veda_, 538 [= 459 Fr. T.].]
[7\7: Agatharch. p. 115, 14 ff. Müll., says that it is a popular
belief ~tô=n ouke/ti o/ntôn tou\s tu/pous en porthmi/di diaplei=n,
e/chontas Cha/rôna nau/klêron kai\ kubernê/tên, _hi/na mê\
katastraphe/ntes ekphora=s epide/ôntai pa/lin_~.]
[8\7: Cf. v. Duhn, _Arch. Zeit._ 1885, 19 ff.; _Jahrb. arch. Inst._
ii, 240 ff.]
[9\7: Charon's fare (2 obols instead of the otherwise usual one--the
difference not satisfactorily explained) is first mentioned in Ar.,
_Ran._ 140, 270. That this is the purpose of the money that was
inserted between the teeth of the dead is frequently asserted by
later authors. The many different names which were given to this
"Charon's penny" (~karka/dôn~, cf. Lobeck, _Prol. Path._ 351;
~katitê/rion, dana/kê~ and simply ~nau=lon~: see Hemsterh. _Lucian_,
ii, 514 ff.) show that this idea and the symbolism underlying it was
a favourite subject of speculation. In spite of this we may doubt
whether the custom of supplying the dead with a small coin has
really arisen out of the wish to give them the fare-penny for the
underworld ferryman. It is extremely doubtful whether Charon and his
boat can have been figures of such clear dogmatic fixity as to have
given rise to such a remarkable custom expressing itself in such a
literal fashion. The custom itself, now, it seems, attested in
Greece only from graves of a late period (see Ross. _Archäol. Aufs._
i, 29, 32, 57 Anm.; Raoul Rochette, _Mém. de l'Inst. de Fr., Ac. des
Ins._ xiii, p. 665 f.) must be ancient (though no older than the use
of coined money in Greece), and has held its own with the most
remarkable tenacity in many parts of the Roman Empire to a late
age--even through the Middle Ages to our own time (cf. among others
Maury, _La magie et l'astrol. dans l'antiq._ 158, 2). It is not very
hard to understand that it might be ingeniously connected with the
poetical story of the ferryman of the dead, and this plausible
explanation of the strange custom might then become a part of
popular belief. The custom itself ought rather to have been brought
into connexion with the practice common in many lands of satisfying
the requirements of the dead by the gift of some diminutive and all
but symbolical object which is offered at burial and put in the
grave (see something of the kind in Tylor, i, 193-4). Parva petunt
Manes: pietas pro divite grata est munere; non avidos Styx habet ima
deos. The obol may be the last symbolical vestige of the entire
property of the dead which the ancient law of the dead required to
be placed undiminished in their graves. ~tethnê/xê| . . . ek pollô=n
obolo\n {246} mou=non enegka/menos~: the epigram of Antiphanes
Maced. (_AP._ xi, 168) expresses more nearly perhaps, though in
sentimental language, the original and primitive intention of the
gift of an obol, than does the fable of Charon's penny (cf. _AP._
xi, 171, 7; 209, 3). According to German superstition "money should
be laid in the mouth of the dead man so that if he has buried a
treasure he may not return", Grimm, p. 1785, n. 207. Here the
undoubtedly ancient conception is quite clearly betrayed: that by
giving a coin the property of the dead was _bought up_. The evidence
for this first and proper meaning of the custom has been preserved
in the strangest fashion, together with the custom itself, even down
to the eighteenth century, when J. Chr. Männlingen voices it,
_Albertäten_ 353 (summarized in A. Schultz, _Alltagsleben e. d. Frau
im_ 18 _Jh._, p. 232 f.): this custom, common both to heathendom and
Christianity, of putting a penny in the coffin of the dead "means
that men buy up the property of the dead, whereby they think they
will have good luck in their life".]
[10\7: Ar., _Tagenist. fr._ 488, 9: ~dia\ tau=ta ga/r toi kai\
kalou=ntai (hoi ne/kroi\) maka/rioi; pa=s ga\r le/gei tis, _ho
makari/tês_ oi/chetai ktl., makari/tês~, then, was already, by that
time, a common expression for the dead which had lost its full sense
and value, just like the German "selig" (which is borrowed from
Greek). Strictly speaking it means a condition approaching the
existence of the ~ma/kares theoi\ aie\n eo/ntes~. The full meaning
still appears in the appeal to the heroized Persian monarch:
~makari/tas _isodai/môn_ basileu/s~, Aesch., _Pers._ 633 (~nu=n d'
esti\ ma/kaira dai/môn~, E., _Alc._ 1003); cf. also Xen., _Ages._
xi, 8, ~nomi/zôn tou\s eukleô=s teteleutêko/tas makari/ous~. Such
passages allow us to see that ~maka/rios, makari/tês~ were not used
of the dead in any sense ~kat' anti/phrasin~, as ~chrêsto/s~
sometimes is (Plu., _Q. Gr._ v, p. 292 B; though on grave inscr. it
is generally meant in its proper sense); cf. ~eukrinê/s~, Phot. Suid.
~makari/tês~ frequently occurs as applied to one lately dead in late
writers: see Ruhnken, _Tim._, p. 59. Lehrs, _Popul. Aufs_^2., p. 344.
Doric form ~zameri/tas~: Phot. ~makari/tas~. _~makari/a~_
"Blessedness", the land of the Blessed, i.e. the dead, is only used
in a humorous sense in such phrases as ~a/pag' es makari/an~ (Ar.
_Eq._ 1151), ~ba/ll' es makari/an~. So, too, is ~_es olbi/an_. hôs
eis makari/an; to\ eis ha/|dou~, Phot. (~makari/a~, the name of a
sacrificial cake--Harp. ~neê/lata~--occurs in modern Greek usage as
a cake used at funerals, Lob., _Agl._ 879).]
[11\7: The punishment of Ixion for his ingratitude to Zeus consisted
according to the older form of the story in his being fastened to a
winged wheel and then being whirled through the air. That Zeus
~etarta/rôsen~ him (Sch. Eur., _Ph._ 1185) must then be a later
story or one which did not become current till later: not until A.R.
iii, 61 f., is there any mention of Ixion in Hades, though after him
frequently; cf. Klügmann, _Annali d. Inst._, 1873, pp. 93-5. (The
analogy with the punishment of Tantalos and its displacement from
the upper world to Hades is obvious; see Comparetti, _Philol._ 32,
237.)]
[12\7: Aesch., _Eum._ 273 f.; cf. _Supp._ 230 f. The fact that in
this passage the poet says ~ekei= dika/zei ta\mplakê/math', _hôs
lo/gos_, Zeu\s a/llos~ simply shows that he is not simply following
his own ideas in this fancy of a judgment in the other world (~ouk
emo\s ho mu=thos~). It does not in the least suggest (as Dieterich,
_Nek._ 126, seems to think) that he is reproducing popular tradition
or could be so doing. Only theological doctrines, at that time at
least, knew anything of such a judgment in the future life upon the
deeds of this: it is _their_ ~lo/gos~ that Aesch. is following (in
this one point). See below, p. 425.]
[13\7: _Gorg._ 523 A ff. (whence _Axioch._ 371 B ff., etc.). When
Plato {247} keeps closer to popular belief, in _Ap._ 41 A, he speaks
of the judges in Hades, Minos, Rhadamanthys, Aiakos ~kai\
Tripto/lemos kai\ a/lloi ho/soi tô=n hêmithe/ôn di/kaioi ege/nonto
en tô=| heautô=n bi/ô|~. He says nothing of a judgment given on the
deeds done in this life, and clearly does not imply any decision as
to the good or evil deserts of those who have just left the upper
world and come down to Hades. We should be much rather led to
suppose that those ~alêthô=s dikastai/, hoi/per kai\ le/gontai ekei=
dika/zein~ exercise their powers as judges among the dead, too, and
decide between them in their disputes just as Minos does in the
Nekyia of ~l~ 568-71, and as Rhadamanthys still does in Pi., _O._
ii, 83 ff., on the ~maka/rôn na=sos~. Only the number of those who
have this wide authority below is extended (in Plato) almost
indefinitely. The process seems to have been as follows: the
allusions in the Odyssey were taken up and in the course of the
elaboration of the picture of Hades the number was enlarged of those
who like Minos are patterns of justice among the dead and give
judgment among them. Then philosophico-poetical speculation (perhaps
not without Egyptian influence) about a judgment in the next world
handed over to this increased number of judges in Hades the office
of judging the conduct during their lifetime of those who have just
entered Hades.--The selection of judges is not hard to understand.
Aiakos, Rhadamanthys, and Minos are regarded as patterns of justice:
Dem. 18, 127. Minos as judge in Hades was taken from ~l~ 568 ff.
Rhadamanthys is known to ~d~ 564 as dwelling among those who have
been translated alive to Elysion. There he is--not judge: there is
nothing there to judge, but--~pa/redros~ of Kronos, acc. to Pi.,
_O._ ii, 83. As soon as men began to transfer Elysion to Hades (of
which more later) Rhad. also found his place there. His fame as the
most just of judges (see Cratin., ~Chei/rônes~, 231 [i, p. 83 K.];
Pl., _Lg._ 948 B, etc.; cf. also Plu., _Thes._ 16 ad fin.) allowed
him easily to find his place next to Minos as judge over the dead.
Aiakos, too, as a model of ~euse/beia~ (Isoc. 9, 14, etc.), lawgiver
to Aegina, arbitrator among the gods themselves (Pi., _I._ viii, 24
f.), seemed naturally called to be a judge among the dead. His
position as judge, however, was never so secure as that of Minos and
Rhadamanthys. Pindar, though he often speaks of Aiakos and the
Aiakidai gives no hint of a special position held by Aiakos in the
next world. Isoc. 9, 15, ~le/getai para\ Plou/tôni kai\ Ko/rê|
megi/stas tima\s e/chôn paredreu/ein ekei/nois~ where nothing is
implied as to his office of judge but merely to the honour done to
Aiakos in being given a seat near the ruling pair (cf. Pi., _O._ ii,
83, of Rhad.; Ar., _Ra._ 765, there is a rule in Hades that the best
artist ~lamba/nei thro/non tou= Plou/tônos hexê=s~. Proedria of the
Mystai in Hades, etc.). Aiakos is ~kleidou=chos~ of Hades;
[Apollod.] 3, 12, 6, 10; _Epigr. Gr._, 646, 4; _P. Mag. Par._ 1264
ff.; ~pulôro/s~ (cf. Hades himself as ~pula/rtês~, ~Th~ 368) in
Luc., _D. Mort._ 13, 3; 20, 1, 6; 22, 3; _De Luct._ 4; _Philops._ 25
and Philostr., _VA._ 7, 31, p. 385 K. "Holder of the Key" is an
office of high distinction (suggested in the case of Aiakos perhaps
by the cult offered to him together with chthonic powers): keys
belong to many of the gods--Plouton himself, Paus. 5, 20, 3, and
others; see Tafel and Dissen on Pi., _P._ 8, 4; in _P. Mag. Par._
1403 comes the trimeter, ~kleidou=che Perse/phassa Tarta/rou ko/rê~.
It is difficult to believe that the attribution of this remarkable
office of distinction to Aiakos was a later invention than the
apparently commonplace office of judge. It seems, in fact, that
Eurip. in the _Peirithoos_ (_fr._ 591 N.) made Aiakos the first to
meet Herakles as he entered Hades, i.e. probably at the gate itself.
It can hardly be anything but a {248} reminiscence of Eurip. that
suggested (not to Aristoph. himself--see Hiller, _Hermes_ viii,
455--but to a well-read _grammaticus_) the name "Aiakos" as that of
the person who meets Herakles at the very gate of Plouton in the
_Frogs_ (l. 464). Just because the story of Aiakos' position as
holder of the key at the gate of Hades was an old one and mentioned
by respected authorities, the belief in his position as judge never
quite prevailed, in spite of Plato.]
[14\7: This is obviously Attic invention. Plato certainly mentions
Triptolemos in _addition_ to Minos and the other judges. But it
seems that to the Athenians Minos was unacceptable as a type of
justice (he was, especially on the stage, the object of bitter
attacks as an enemy of the country; see Plu., _Thes._ 16). and they
tried to _substitute_ their own Triptolemos for him in the triad of
judges. Thus we find Triptolemos not beside Minos but in his place
in a picture of the underworld on a vase from Altamura (Tript. Aiak.
Rhad.), and in an analogous picture on an amphora at Karlsruhe
(Aiak. Tript., the left side is broken off but prob. represented
Rhadamanthys not Minos). Cf. Winkler, _Darst. d. Unterwelt auf
unterital. Vasen_, p. 37. For the rest, nothing suggests that the
three judges on these vase-pictures pass judgment on the deeds of
men done in their _lifetime_: in strictness nothing is implied about
their giving judgments. What is certain is simply that they, as
types of justice, ~epi\ tai=si tou= Plou/tônos oikou=sin thu/rais~
(like the Mystai in Ar., _Ra._ 163): they enjoy the rights of
~pa/redoi~ of the divine pair, and hence they are _seated_ on
~thro/noi~ or ~di/phroi~.]
[15\7: Ar., _Ra._ 145 ff., 273 ff. "Darkness and mud," ~sko/tos kai\
bo/rboros~, as manner and place of punishment for ~amu/êtoi kai\
ate/lestoi~, are derived from _Orphic_ teaching: Pl., _Rp._ 363 D;
Olympiod. on Pl., _Phd._ 69 C. By an inaccurate extension of meaning
this fate was said to threaten _all_ ~ate/lestoi~ without
distinction: Plu. ~p. psuchê=s~ ap. Stob. _Fl._ 120, 28 (4, 108, 2
Mein.); Aristid., _Eleus._, p. 421 D. = ii, 30 Keil; Plot., 1, 6, 6.
Plotinos undoubtedly has the right interpretation of the reason for
this strange form of punishment: the mud in which the uninitiated
lie marks them out as ~mê\ kekatharme/nous~ who have not shared in
the purifications such as were offered by the Orphic initiation
ceremonies. Hence they remain fixed for ever in their original
foulness (and in darkness because of their ignorance of the
~thei=a~). It is, in fact, an _allegorical_ punishment which has no
meaning outside the range of Orphic doctrines of _katharsis_ and
atonement. Aristoph. transfers it to those who have seriously
transgressed the laws of city or religion, for whom it was
unsuitable: this only shows that an appropriate penalty in Hades for
crimes against civil society had not yet been invented. It had
evidently been thought sufficient to say generally that the
~asebei=s~ (or at least the more heinous offenders) would be
punished in Hades. This commonplace form of the opinion is probably
to be regarded as a final echo of some definite theological doctrine
which had become vulgarized and emptied of distinct meaning among
the general public of the profane. The author of the first speech
against Aristogeiton ([D.] 25) who speaks of the ~eis tou\s asebei=s
ôsthê=nai~ in Hades (53), confesses himself an adherent of Orpheus
(11).--The ~memuême/noi~ dwell in Hades next to the palace of
Plouton himself: Ar., _Ra._ 162 f., where they have the privilege of
~proedri/a~, D.L., vi, 39. When a distinction between a ~chô=ros
eusebô=n~ and a ~chô=ros asebô=n~ in Hades began to be made, the
initiated, in order that they might not be deprived of their
privileged position, were given ~proedri/a~ in the ~ch. eusebô=n~.
In this way, e.g. the author of the _Axioch._ 371 D (who {249} can
hardly have written before the third century) tries to reconcile the
hopelessly contradictory pretensions of the ~eusebei=s~ and
~memuême/noi~ to reward in Hades.]
[16\7: Sex. Emp., _M._ ix, 53. Suid. ~Diago/ras~.]
[17\7: Descents to Hades occurred in the ~Krapa/taloi~ of Pherecr.
(i, p. 167 K.); the ~Ba/trachoi~ and ~Gêruta/dês~ of Ar.; [Pherecr.]
~Metall.~ (i, p. 174 K.); and probably also in the ~Trophô/nios~ of
Cratin., etc.--On a vase from Eretria, fifth century, there is a
representation of a repulsive scene of torture; an old woman, naked
and tied to a tree, is being tortured by three satyrs. This,
according to J. Zingerle, _Archäol. epigr. Mittheil. a.
Oesterreich_, 18, 162 ff., is a parody of some incident from a
comedy of the time, the plot of which was laid in Hades. But nothing
in the picture suggests that the lower regions are the scene of this
gruesome affair; and what would the satyrs be doing there?]
[18\7: Utopian existence in Hades; see in partic. [Pherecr.]
~Metall.~ (i, p. 174 K.). A pretext for such parodies was perhaps
given by the Orphic promise of an everlasting carouse for the
initiated at the ~sumpo/sion tô=n hosi/ôn~ in Hades (Pl., _Rp._ ii,
263 C, ~maka/rô=n euôchi/a~, Ar., _Ra._ 85). Many details were
borrowed from the descriptions of the reign of bliss upon earth in
the golden age under Kronos' rule which had long been a familiar
subject of comedy (cf. Pöschel, _Das Märchen vom Schlaraffenland_, 7
ff.). The golden age in the dim past and the land of Elysion in the
future always had many features in common. (See above, chap. ii, n.
49.) From these traditional pictures of a spirit-world only to be
met with in the long-vanished past or in the next world, the whole
Greek literature of imaginary Utopias drew its sustenance (see my
_Griech. Roman_, ii, § 2, 3). That literature was really an attempt
to transpose those early fantasies of a land of spirits into real
life and on to the inhabited world.]
[19\7: ~e/sti g' eudai/môn po/lis para\ tê\n eruthra\n tha/lattan~,
Ar., _Av._ 144 f. (cf. _Griech. Roman_, 201 ff.).]
[20\7: ~li/mnê~ (the Acherousian lake: Eur., _Alc._ 443, and often
afterwards). Charon: Ar., _Ra._ 137 ff., 182 ff., 185 ff.--~sko/tos
kai\ bo/rboros~ 144 ff., 278 ff., 289 ff. Abode and life of the
Mystai: 159, 163, 311 ff., 454 ff.]
[21\7: ~to\ Lê/thês pedi/on~, l. 186. This is the earliest reference
to Lethe of which we can be quite sure; but it is made so casually
that it is obvious that Aristoph. is merely alluding to a story well
known to his audience. Plato makes use of the ~Lê/thês pedi/on~
together with the ~Ame/lês potamo/s~ (hence 621 C: ~Lê/thês
potamo/s~) in the myth at the close of the _Republic_, x, 621 A,
which is intended to illustrate and support the theory of
_palingenesia_. Of course, this ingenious fancy was eminently
suitable for use by adherents of the doctrine of metempsychosis; but
there is nothing to show that it had been actually _invented_ for
the special benefit of this doctrine, i.e. by Orphics or
Pythagoreans--as many have supposed. It is probable that it was
nothing more originally but an attempt to explain symbolically the
unconscious condition of the ~amenêna\ ka/rêna~. Does Theognis
already (704, 705) refer to it?--~Persepho/nên . . . hê/te bro/tois
pare/chei _lê/thên_, bla/ptousa no/oio~. Other references to the
~Lê/thês pu/lai, La/thas do/moi, Lê/thês hu/dôr~ are all later; the
~Lê/thês thro/nos~ in the account of Theseus' journey to Hades in
[Apollod.] _Epit._ i, 24, is perhaps taken from older legendary
material. (Bergk's assertion, _Opusc._ ii, 716: "The conception of
Lethe's fountain and stream is _certainly_ ancient and popular: the
well of Lethe is nothing but the fountain of the gods: whoever
drinks of it forgets all sorrows, etc.," {250} is entirely devoid of
foundation in fact.) The river of Lethe was in later times localized
on earth like Acheron and Styx; in the R. Limia of Gallaecia--far
away on the western sea--men rediscovered the _Oblivionis flumen_
(account of the year 137 B.C.: Liv., _Epit._ 55; Flor. 1, 33, 12;
App., _Hisp._ 72: Plu., _QR._ 34, p. 272 D; cf. Mela, 3, § 10;
Plin., _NH._ 4, § 115. Absurd aetiology in Strabo, p. 153).]
[22\7: This is presumably the meaning of the words which Pausanias
(10, 28, 5) uses: his absurd mannerism makes him talk round the
incident instead of simply describing it. (Much too artificial
explanation of the circumstance in Dümmler, _Delphika_, p. 15
[1894].)]
[23\7: Paus. 10, 28, 4.]
[24\7: See Appendix iii.]
[25\7: Eurynomos: dark-blue body like a bluebottle, with prominent
teeth, sitting on a vulture's skin, Paus. 10, 28, 7. There seems to
be no mention of him in literature: whether the statement of
Pausanias that he was a ~dai/môn tô=n en Ha/idou~ who eats the flesh
of corpses off their bones, is anything more than a guess, we cannot
tell. The vulture-skin indeed suggests that the nature of the Daimon
who sits on it was related to the vulture. The fact that the vulture
eats the flesh of corpses was often observed by the ancients **(see
Plu., _Rom._ 9, etc.: Leemans on Horapollo, p. 177). Welcker (_Kl.
Schr._ v, 117) sees in Eurynomos nothing but the "corruption" of the
body, in which case he would be a purely allegorical figure. On the
contrary he is much more likely to be one of those very concretely
imagined spirits of Hell (only with a euphemistic name, like the
lesser spirits Lamia, Mormo, Gorgyra, Empousa, etc. (a word about
them will be found below, Append. vi). The artist must have known him
from some local tradition. He devours the flesh of the corpse: thus
a late epigram (_Epigr. Gr._ 647, 16) calls the dead ~luprê\n dai=ta
Cha/rôni~. Even in Soph., _El._ 542, we have; ~Ha/idês hi/meron
te/knôn tô=n ekei/nês e/sche _dai/sasthai_~ (Welcker, _Syll._, p.
94).]
[26\7: Paus. 10, 28, 3. Cf. O. Jahn, _Hermes_, iii, 326.]
[27\7: The third century vase-paintings from Southern Italy also as
a rule keep within the limits of the epic Nekyia. In addition to the
few special types of the sinners undergoing punishment in Hades
(Sisyphos, Tantalos, the Danaids) we have allusions to the journeys
to Hades of Theseus, Peirithoos, Herakles, and Orpheus. All attempts
to read mystical or edifying intentions into these (as in
Baumeister's _Denkm._ 1926-30) are now regarded as completely
mistaken. (Orpheus appears there not as founder and prophet of his
mysteries but simply as the mythical singer who goes down to the
underworld to rescue Eurydike with his singing. This is rightly
maintained by Milchhöfer, _Philol._ 53, 385 ff., 54, 750 f., against
Kuhnert, _Arch. Jahrb._ viii, 104 ff.; _Philol._ 54, 193.) Nothing
at all is suggested as to the fate of mankind in general. On a vase
from Canosa a father and mother with a boy stand on the left of
Orpheus: this, too, must belong to the region of mythology. (They
cannot, however, be Dionysos and Ariadne as Winkler suggests,
_Darst. d. Unterw. auf unterit. Vasen_, 49. But it is difficult to
imagine that they can be a family of Mystai as Milchhöfer
supposes.)]
PART II
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