Chapter XI · ORPHIC ESCHATOLOGY. (continued 2)
Reading edition
‘Argos, waterless once, the Danai made well-watered.’
Long before the tragedy about their husbands, the Danaides were at work watering, fertilizing thirsty Argos. The Danaides, as merely Danaides, might fitly be represented as filling a great well-pithos.
But, it must next be observed, the Danaides belong to the old stratum of the population, the same stratum as Tantalos, as Sisyphos, as Tityos: they are of the old matriarchal order, their prayer persistently iterated is:
‘We, the great seed of a Holy Mother, ah me! Grant us that we Unwed, unsubdued, from marriage of men may flee[1530].’
In the Suppliants of Aeschylus it is from a marriage they deem lawless that the Danaides flee, and their act is justified. Behind the legend we seem to discern, though dimly, the reflection of some shift of old to new, some transition from matriarchal freedom to patriarchal marriage enactments. In any case, in the late orthodox form of the myth, we meet the Danaides as criminals, and their crime is clearly not only that of murder, but of rejection of marriage. What was justified by the old order was criminal in the new. Here was an opportunity for the moralist. Of old the Danaides carried water because they were well-nymphs; the new order has made them criminals, and it makes of their fruitful water-carrying a fruitless punishment—an atonement for murder[1531].
It will readily be seen that the well-nymphs, regarded by the new order as guilty maidens seeking purification, offered just the mythological prototype needed for the uninitiated water-carriers. Once the analogy was seized, many further traits of resemblance would eagerly be added. At the lake of Lerna, near which was the spring known as Amymone, expiatory purifications were, Strabo[1532] tells us, actually performed. Hence, he says, arose the expression ‘a Lerna of ills.’ It was the custom no doubt at Lerna as in many another swamp and lake to bury ‘purifications’ (καθάρματα). Such rites of the old order were the ‘mysteries’ of primitive religion. Herodotus[1533] expressly tells us that it was the Danaides who taught to the Pelasgian women the sacred rites of Demeter, which the Greeks called Thesmophoria, and of which Herodotus dares not disclose the full details. The Danaides, who later became types of the Uninitiated, were, it would seem, the prime Initiators. So does theology shift.
Another ritual fact helped out the fusion and confusion. To the Roman Church marriage is a sacrament, to the Anglican still ‘an excellent mystery.’ In like fashion to the Greeks marriage was conceived of as a rite of initiation, and through initiation of consummation; the word τέλη in its plural form was used of all mysteries, the singular form was expressly applied to marriage. Pollux[1534], in discussing wedding ceremonies, says, ‘and marriage is called τέλος, i.e. a rite that completes, and those who have been married are called complete, and on this account the Hera of marriage is called Teleia, the Complete One.’ It has already been seen (p. 533) that one special rite of purification, the Liknophoria, was common to marriage and the mysteries. The same is true of the Loutrophoria, carrying of the bath. Is it surprising that in the figures of the well-nymphs some ingenious person saw the Danaides as ἀτελεῖς γάμου, ‘uninitiated in marriage,’ and therefore condemned to carry for ever in vain the water for their bridal bath in Hades? The more so as, if we may trust Eustathius[1535], it was the custom to place ‘on the grave of those who died unmarried a water jar called Loutrophoros[1536] in token that the dead had died unbathed and without offspring.’ Probably these vases, as Dr Frazer[1537] suggests, were at first placed on the graves of the unmarried with the kindly intent of helping the desolate unmarried ghost to accomplish his wedding in the world below. But once the custom fixed, it might easily be interpreted as the symbol of an underworld punishment.
Some versions of the story say that the water was carried in a sieve (κοσκίνῳ). This notion may have arisen from another ritual practice. It is noticeable that the sieves of the stone age seem to have been simply pierced jars. Sieve and pithos were one and the same. Carrying water in a sieve was an ancient test of virginity. Pliny[1538] tells us that the test of the sieve was applied to the Vestal Tuccia. If the water-carrying of the Danaides was conceived as a virginity test, the forty-nine sisters married before the murder would fail at the test, and Hypermnestra alone would carry the water in the leaky sieve:
‘Splendide mendax et in omne virgo Nobilis aevum[1539].’
Finally, it will be remembered (p. 575) that the Orphics had their Well of Memory, which was in effect a Well of Life. It would not escape a mystic who saw the figures of the water-carriers that these were drawing water for ever but in vain from the Well of Life. So the scholiast[1540] to Aristides in quaint fashion interprets the myth: ‘the pierced pithos of the Danaides,’ he says, ‘signifies that the Danaides after the murder of their dearest can never obtain from another man the grace of the living water of marriage.’ The notion of a ‘Water of Life’ haunts him, but he knows the real gist of the symbolism, for he adds: they have ‘become suspected on account of their pollution.’ Of the making of such mysticism there is clearly no end.
The symbolism of marriage, of virginity tests, of living water might, doubtless did, gather about the figures of the Danaides, but the primary notion that fitted them to be mythical prototypes of the ‘Uninitiated’ was that they were polluted, uncleansed. They are Choephoroi, but in vain; the libations that they pour into the grave-pithoi of their husbands are a χάρις ἄχαρις, an attempted offscouring, ἀπόνιμμα, but no real purification. Of such a vain Choephoria performed by Clytaemnestra Electra[1541] says:
‘It is not right or meet By law of gods or men that from a hateful wife Grave-dues and washings should be brought my father. Give them the winds, or in the deep dug earth Go hide them.’
The water-carriers in Hades have been discussed at some length[1542], because they afford an instance typical of the methods of Orphic procedure. In discussing the mysteries it has been repeatedly seen that Orphism did not invent new rites, but mysticized and moralized old ones. In like fashion when Orphism developes eschatology, it takes for its material the mythology of the older stratum[1543], invents no new figures but gives to the old ones an intensified and moralized significance.
The Orphic tablets showed us the heights to which Orphism could rise. If we are inclined to estimate over highly the general level of the Orphic faith, the Lower Italy vases may correct the error. They mirror Orphism as it seemed to the many. In the matter of doctrine, instead of or at best in addition to purification, we have vindictive punishment; in the matter of theology, in place of what was practically monotheism on the tablets, the vases restore the old popular polytheism.
It is natural to ask, Is this the end? Did Orphism create no new figure, make no new god in its own purified image? The answer to this question will be found in our concluding enquiry as to the nature of Orphic Cosmogony.