Part 2 — NOTES TO CHAPTER XIV PART II

APPENDIX I

In many legends death by lightning makes the victim holy and raises him to godlike (everlasting) life. We need only remember the story of Semele who now ζώει ἐν Ὀλυμπίοις ἀποθανοῖσα βρόμῳ κεραυνοῦ (Pi., O. ii, 27), or that of Herakles and his vanishing from the pyre of wood lighted by Zeus’ flash of lightning (see partic. D.S. 4, 38, 4–5), or the parallel accounts of the translation or death by lightning of Erechtheus (above, chap. iii, n. 39). The primitive, popular belief finds unusually clear expression in the words of Charax ap. Anon. de Incred. xvi, p. 325, 5 ff. West., who says of Semele, κεραυνοῦ κατασκήψαντος ἠφανίσθη· ἐκείνην μὲν οὖν, ὁποῖα ἐπὶ τοῖς διοβλήτοις λέγεται, θείας μοίρας λαχεῖν ᾠήθησαν. (In this account Semele is immediately raised to heaven by the flash of lightning—a version of the story frequently given by later authors: Ζεὺς τὴν Σεμέλην ἐκ τῆς γῆς εἰς τὸν Ὄλυμπον κομίζει διὰ πυρός, Aristid. 1, p. 47 Dind. [O. 41, 3 K.]. Cf. Philostr., Imag. i, 14; Nonnus, D. viii, 409 ff. The passage of Pindar quoted above would also admit of a similar interpretation.) Generally speaking, ὁ κεραυνωθεὶς ὡς θεὸς τιμᾶται (Artem. 2, 9, p. 94, 26) as one ὑπὸ Διὸς τετιμημένος (ib. 93, 24). The belief in such elevation of a mortal through the disruption and purification of his body by the sacred fire of lightning (a πῦρ καθάρσιον of the highest kind—see chap. i, n. 41) need not be of late origin simply because it so happens that only late authorities speak of it in unmistakable terms (as Wilamowitz thinks, Ind. Schol. Götting. hib. 1895, pp. 12–13). Such lofty conceptions were by this time no longer the product of popular imagination. Besides, it is quite clearly referred to in the above-mentioned story of Semele (see esp. D.S. 5, 52, 2) and in those of Herakles, Erechtheus, Asklepios. In the same way lightning struck the tomb of Lykourgos (as afterwards that of Euripides) as θεοφιλέστατος καὶ ὁσιώτατος (Plu., Lyc. 31). When the statues of the Olympic victor Euthymos at Locri and Olympia are struck by lightning it shows that he has become a Hero: Pliny, NH. vii, 152. The body of the person struck by lightning remains uncorruptible: dogs and birds of prey dare not touch it: Plu., Smp. 4, 2, 3, p. 665 B; it must be buried in the place where the lightning struck it (Artem., p. 95, 6; cf. Fest., p. 178b, 21 ff.; Plin., NH. ii, 145). Every detail shows plainly that the διόβλητος was regarded as holy. This, however, does not prevent death by lightning from being regarded on other occasions as the punishment of crime—as in the cases of Salmoneus, Kapaneus, etc.; though in some even of these cases the idea is occasionally present that the lightning’s victim is raised to a higher existence. This is distinctly so when Euripides in Suppl. makes a character call Kapaneus, who has been killed by lightning, a ἱερὸς νεκρός (935) and his τύμβος (rogus) ἱερός too (981). ἱερός never means “accursed” like the Lat. sacer: it is invariably a title of honour. Kapaneus is here called “holy” just as Astakides, on his translation to everlasting life, is ἱερός in Kallimachos; and as Hesiod speaks of the ἱερὸν γένος ἀθανάτων (with τύμβος ἱερός cf. S., OC. 1545, 1763). We must not fail to observe that in this passage, where a friend of Kap. is supposed to be speaking, the latter is certainly not regarded by Eurip. as an impious person (as he is generally in Tragedy, and by Eurip. himself in Phoen., and even in Suppl. the enemy so regards him (496 ff.), though acc. to this speaker Amphiaraos too is snatched away in atonement for his crime). Euripides in fact makes him highly praised by Adrastos (861 ff.) as the very opposite of a ὑβριστής; and it is obvious that Euadne’s sacrifice of her life which immediately follows is not intended to be offered for the benefit of a criminal and enemy of the gods. For these reasons Euripides ennobles the character of Kapaneus and, consequently, the death of the Hero by lightning can no longer stand for his punishment, but is on the contrary a distinction. He becomes a ἱερὸς νεκρός. This, however, could not have been done by Eurip. unless the view that such a death might in certain circumstances bring honour on the victim and elevate him to a higher plane of being, had been at that time widespread and generally recognized. Eurip. therefore provides the most distinct evidence for the existence of such a belief in his time. (As one of the exalted dead Kapaneus is to be separated from the rest of the dead and burnt παρ’ οἴκους τούσδε: 935, 936, 1009—i.e. before the ἀνάκτορον of the Goddesses at Eleusis: 88, 290.)—Finally Asklepios, in all the stories that are told of his death by lightning (and already in Hes. fr. 109 Rz.), is never regarded as entirely removed from this life: he lives on as Hero or god for all time, dispensing blessings. Zeus allows him to live on for ever immortal (Luc., DD. 13), and acc. to later versions of the story, in the constellation Ophiuchus (Eratosth. καταστ. 6; Hygin., Astron, ii, 14); the real and primitive conception evidently being that he was transported to everlasting life by Zeus’ lightning-flash. So Min. Fel. 22, 7, says quite rightly: Aesculapius, ut in deum surgat, fulminatur.

APPENDIX II μασχαλισμός

ἐμασχαλίσθη is the word used by Aesch., Cho. 439, of the murdered Agamemnon. Soph., El. 445, says ὑφ’ ἧς (Κλυταιμνήστρας) θανὼν ἄτιμος ὥστε δυσμενὴς ἐμασχαλίσθη—also of Agamemnon. What particular abomination was meant by this brief statement must have been immediately understood by the Athenian public of the day. A more detailed account is given by Phot. and Suid. μασχαλίσματα (cf. Hesych. s.v.; Apostol., Pr. xi, 4), and they give Aristophanes of Byzantium as their authority. (Not from Aristophanes—for they differ in many particulars—but from a closely related source come the two versions of the Scholion to Soph., El. 446 and EM. 118, 22 f.) According to their authority μασχαλισμός is something done by the murderer (οἱ φονεύσαντες ἐξ ἐπιβουλῆς—Aristoph.) to the corpse of the murdered man. He cuts off the extremities of his victim, strings the severed parts on a chain and puts them on.—On whom? on himself? or the murdered man? Aristophanes’ words are undecisive: the Schol. Soph., El. 445, speaks in the first version of “himself” (ἑαυτοῖς, p. 123, 17 Papag.) and in the second of “him”, i.e. the murdered man: περὶ τὴν μασχάλην αὐτοῦ ἐκρέμαζον αὐτά [τὰ ἄκρα], p. 123, 23; cf. 124, 5. This too is probably the meaning of Schol. Ap. Rh. iv, 477; EM. 118, 28–9, speaks distinctly of hanging the chain round the neck of the dead man. This is, in fact, the most probable version. The murderer hung the limbs, strung together on a rope, round the neck of his victim and then drew the rope under the armpits (μασχάλαι): a proceeding which is far from being “impossible” (as has been said), as anyone may discover by trying it for himself. The murderer then crossed the ends of the rope over the breast of his victim and after drawing them under the armpits fastened them behind his back. From this process of drawing under the armpits the whole procedure is called μασχαλισμός, and the μόρια of the dead man thus fastened to his body are his μασχαλίσματα (Aristoph.).

Anyone who wishes to reject this description of μασχαλισμός (as some have done recently) must first of all show from what source Aristophanes of Byzantium—whom no one who knows him would accuse of improvizing such details or of concealing his ignorance by invention—can have got his information if not from actual report and historical tradition. The possibility that he arrived at it by straining the meaning and giving a private interpretation of his own to the words μασχαλίζειν and μασχαλισμός is excluded by the nature of these words. They offer no hint whatever in the direction of the special meaning suggested by his account. We cannot indeed say (as Wilamowitz does on A., Cho. 439) that “grammar” forbids us to accept the explanation of what happened in μασχαλίζειν given by Aristoph. To say: ἐμασχαλίσθη, “he had to suffer μασχαλίζειν, μασχαλισμός,” is equally correct whatever sense we give to the process of μασχαλισμός. But the word itself does not testify, by its mere form, to the absolute or exclusive correctness of Aristophanes’ interpretation: it denotes without distinction absolutely any proceeding in which the μασχάλαι figure at all. Verbs in -ιζειν, derived from the names of parts of the body, can denote according to the circumstances the utmost variety of actions done to or with the part of the body concerned: cf. κεφαλίζειν, αὐχενίζειν, τραχηλίζειν, λαιμίζειν, ὠμίζειν, ῥαχίζειν, χειρίζειν, δακτυλίζειν, γαστρίζειν, σκελίζειν (and even πυγίζειν). What particular sort of activity applied to the μασχάλαι is indicated by the verb μασχαλίζειν cannot be decided from the mere form of the verb. This only makes it the more necessary to adhere to Aristophanes’ interpretation, which must have been derived from some other source, i.e. from actual knowledge. It may be true that μασχαλίζειν, considered simply from the point of view of its form, might conceivably mean to tear the arm from the shoulder at the armpits (as Benndorf suggests, Monument von Adamklissi, p. 132 A)—though such an ἐκμοχλεύειν τὸν βραχίονα ἐκ τῆς μασχάλης should rather be ἀπομασχαλίζειν or ἐκμασχαλίζειν. But that out of its many possible meanings the verb should have just this particular one is not suggested by anything: least of all by the sculptured relief on which the gods appear to be tearing out the right arms of their defeated enemies. Such scenes according to Benndorf represent μασχαλισμός. But can the Greeks really have attributed to the gods this much execrated practice of cowardly murderers? We are not told by anyone that this scene represents μασχαλισμός—that is only a conclusion drawn from an apparent agreement between the representation and the view (itself as yet unproved) of what happened in μασχαλίζειν. Is the correctness of the meaning assigned to the word to be proved in its turn from its agreement with the representation? A most palpable argument in a circle!

There is no valid reason for rejecting the statement of Aristophanes; and there must be very good reason indeed for so doing before we may discredit such an authority. He gives his information with no uncertain voice and no suggestion of hesitation, and it must be regarded as the simple account of well-established facts. It would receive additional confirmation—if it needed any—from the very meaning and conception of the word μασχάλισμα. μασχαλίσματα must be the product of μασχαλισμός; they are, in fact, the severed μόρια of the murdered man, with which too Aristophanes identifies them. Σοφοκλῆς ἐν Τρωΐλῳ πλήρη μασχαλισμάτων εἴρηκε τὸν μασχαλισμόν (probably a mere oversight for τὸν τράχηλον): Suid. s.v. ἐμασχαλίσθη (Soph. fr. 566 = 623 P.). If μασχαλίζειν had consisted in the dislocation of the arm from its socket, it would be impossible to say what such μασχαλίσματα might be. They are without doubt identical with what are otherwise called, in descriptions of mutilations of the corpse of a murdered man, ἀπάργματα (Jason after the murder of Apsyrtos ἀπάργματα τάμνε θανόντος, A.R. iv, 477; cf. Schol. and EM. 118, 22 ff.), ἀκρωτηριάσματα, τόμια (τὰ ἀποτμήματα καὶ ἀκρωτηριάσματα τοῦ νεκροῦ, Hesych.). These expressions allow us to conclude that the whole procedure is intended to offer the murdered man as a sacrifice to some sort of ἀποτρόπαιοι. The μασχαλίσματα are the ἀπαρχαί of this sacrificial victim. Indeed, Aristoph. of Byzantium, ap. Phot. [Suid.] μασχαλίσματα, definitely states that μασχαλίσματα was the name given to τὰ τοῖς μηροῖς ἐπιτιθέμενα ἀπὸ τῶν ὠμῶν (not ὤμων as the edd. give; as also Nauck, Arist. Byz., p. 221) κρέα ἐν ταῖς τῶν θεῶν θυσίαις. This refers—though it does not seem to have been remarked by those who have hitherto dealt with the passage—to the parts of the body which were cut off from the raw flesh of the ἱερεῖον before the sacrifice, laid on the severed μηροί of the victim, and burnt up completely with these: the ὠμοθετεῖν in fact so often mentioned in Homer (A 460 i.; Β 423 f.; γ 456 ff.; μ 360 f.; ξ 427 f.). If these ὠμοθετούμενα could also be called (in a comparison) μασχαλίσματα, that again shows that at the μασχαλισμός there was no tearing out of an arm from its socket, but that in reality the extremities of the murdered man (—ἀκρωτηριάσαντες μόρια τούτου) were hewn off and a piece cut off ἐκ παντὸς μέρους τοῦ σώματος as the grammarians following Aristophanes say. Only in this case is the proceeding like that which took place at the ὠμοθετεῖν when the sacrificers ἔκοψαν μικρὸν ἀπὸ παντὸς μέλους (Aristonic. in Schol. A 461; Apollon., Lex. Hom. 171, 8; lex. Rhet. ap. Eust. A 461, p. 134, 36: ὠμοθέτησαν· τὸ ἀφ’ ἑκάστου μέλους τοῦ ἱερείου ἀπετέμοντο καὶ ἀπήρξαντο ἀπ’ ὠμοῦ [so the last word should be written here too, though Eustath. found—and was surprised—ὤμου] καὶ ἐνέβαλον εἰς τὰ μηρία κατὰ τὴν θυσιάν). So too it is said of Eumaios: ὁ δ’ ὠμοθετεῖτο συβώτης, πάντων ἀρξάμενος μελέων, ξ 427 f. (this is the passage in which ἡρμήνευσε [ὁ ποιητής], τί ἐστι τὸ ὠμοθετεῖν: Schol., B.L. A 461; it is this passage, and not A 461, which is meant by Hesych. too s.v. ὠμοθετεῖν, when he says ἐξηγεῖται δ’ αὐτὸς Ὅμηρος; cf. also Dion. Hal. 7, 72, 15).

μασχαλισμός was then essentially an offering intended to avert evil or, what comes to the same thing, a kathartic offering (i.e. a symbol indicating such an offering). It was consummated by murderers ἐπὶ ταῖς καθάρσεσιν (Sch. S., El. 445); ὑπὲρ τοῦ τὴν μῆνιν ἐκκλίνειν as Aristoph. Byz. says (p. 221 N.); τὸ ἔργον ἀφοσιούμενοι as we are told by Apostolius, Prov. xi, 4. All these mean the same thing. But besides these there may still have been another intention present in the minds of the superstitious. The mutilation of the murdered man took place according to Sch. S., El. 445 (in the second version; there is something similar even in the first, p. 123, 18 f.) ἵνα, φασίν, ἀσθενὴς γένοιτο πρὸς τὸ ἀντιτίσασθαι τὸν φονέα. The mutilation of the corpse was transferred to the ψυχή that was leaving the body—such is the ancient conception to which Homer too is not a stranger (cf. e.g. λ 40 ff.). If the dead man is mutilated he will not, for example, be able to hold or throw the spear which in Athens was borne before the murdered man at his funeral (if he left no kinsman as avenger behind him) and was then set up beside his grave ([D.] 47, 69: Eur., Tro. 1147 f.: Poll. viii, 65; Ister ap., EM. 354, 33 ff.; AB. 237, 30 f.)—certainly for no other purpose than that of supplying the dead man himself with a weapon with which to take vengeance on his own account since no one else would βοηθεῖ him. (Thus among the Tasmanians a spear was planted on the grave of the dead that he might have a weapon ready for fighting: Quatrefages, Hommes fossiles et hommes sauvages, p. 346.) Probably the Greek murderer when he ἐμασχάλιζεν, calculated in exactly the same fashion as the Australian negro who cuts off the thumb from the right hand of his fallen foe in order that his soul may no longer be able to hold a spear (Spencer, Princ. of Sociol. i, p. 212).

In Soph., El. 446, the murderer after the μασχαλισμός also wipes the bloody instrument of death on the head of the murdered man. Murderers did this ὥσπερ ἀποτροπιαζόμενοι τὸ μύσος τὸ ἐν τῷ φόνῳ (Schol.). There are passages in the Odyssey which allude to the custom (μέγα ἔργον, ὃ σῇ κεφαλῇ ἀναμάξεις, τ 92) as well as in Herodotos and Demosthenes (see Schneidewin on Electra). Their meaning is quite correctly given in Eust. on Od. τ 92: ὡς εἰς κεφαλὴν δῆθεν ἐκείνοις (τοῖς πεφονευμένοις) τρεπομένου τοῦ κακοῦ. Evidently a mimic version of εἰς κεφαλὴν σοί. Something similar is intended when the murderer sucks the blood of the murdered man three times and spits it out again three times. Ap. Rh. describes such a scene (iv, 477 f.); and something similar occurred in Aesch. (fr. 354; EM. refers to this in immediate connexion with μασχαλισμός). Here too the object is the κάθαρσις of the murderer, the expiation of the impious deed. (ἣ θέμις αὐθέντῃσι δολοκτασίας ἱλέασθαι, A.R.; ἀποπτύσαι δεῖ καὶ καθήρασθαι στόμα, A.) Spitting three times is a regular feature in magic charms and counter-charms: in this case the blood of the murdered man and with it the power of vengeance that rises up out of the blood, is averted, (despuimus comitiales morbos, hoc est, contagia regerimus, Plin., NH. 28, 35.)—What “savage” tribe ever had more primitive ideas or a more realistic symbolism than the Greek populace—and perhaps not populace only—of classical times in the sinister backwaters of their life into which we have here for a moment descended?

APPENDIX III ἀμύητοι, ἄγαμοι AND DANAÏDES IN THE UNDERWORLD

In Polygnotos’ picture of the underworld were to be seen the figures τῶν οὐ μεμυημέων, τῶν τὰ δρώμενα Ἐλευσῖνι ἐν οὐδενὸς θεμένων λόγῳ—an old man, a παῖς, a young and an old woman, who bear water to a πίθος in broken pitchers: Paus. 10, 31, 9–11. The myth is evidently founded upon an etymological play on words—those who have neglected the “completion” of the holy τέλη and are ἀτελεῖς ἱερῶν (h. Cer. 482) must perform the vain labour in the realm of Persephone of carrying water in broken vessels: the Δαναΐδων ὑδρείας ἀτελεῖς (Axioch. 371 E). It can only have been an oversight that made Pausanias forget to say that the πίθος is τετρημένος, for this is essential to the story (see Pl., Gor. 493 BC; Philetair. ap. Ath. 633 F, 18 [2, p. 235 K.]; Zenob., Prov. ii, 6, etc.), and certainly cannot, as Dieterich, Nekyia, 70, imagined, be replaced by the κατεαγότα ὄστρακα. That the οὐ μεμυημένοι, the ἀμύητοι, as the inscription on the picture called them (Paus. § 9), were in fact those who had neglected the Eleusinian mysteries is only a conclusion of Pausanias’ (or of his authority), as we see from the way he speaks in § 11; but it is probably the right conclusion. The Orphics took over the Eleusinian fable, but exaggerated it to the point of absurdity: they τοὺς ἀνοσίους καὶ ἀδίκους κοσκίνῳ ὕδωρ ἀναγκάζουσι φέρειν in Hades (Pl., Rp. 363 D; Gor. 493 BC). In this they followed a hint given by a popular proverb—representing one of the ἀδύνατα—κοσκίνῳ ὕδωρ φέρειν (which is also Roman: cf. Plaut., Pseud. 102; as an “ordeal”: Plin., NH. 28, 12). It is not until later (nor in surviving literature before the Axiochus, 371 E: though perhaps a little earlier on vase paintings from South Italy) that the story occurs in which it is the daughters of Danaos who are punished in Hades by having to fill the leaking vessel. The reason given for this punishment is their murder of the sons of Aigyptos in the marriage bed: but why did the punishment take this particular form? Clearly in the case of the Danaides their non-fulfilment of an important τέλος is requited in the ever ἀτελεῖς ὑδρεῖαι. Their marriage union was uncompleted through their own choice (thus marriage itself was often called a τέλος and the wedding was preceded by προτέλεια and compared with the τέλη of the mysteries). In this it is certainly implied that their deed had not been expiated, and they themselves had not found other husbands, but had as it were immediately after their impious deed been sent down to Hades (cf. Sch. Eur., Hec. 886, p. 436, 14 Dind.). The daughters of Danaos came to the underworld as ἄγαμοι. To die before marriage was regarded as the height of ill-luck by the common people (cf. Welcker, Syll. ep., p. 49): the essential reason being that those who die thus leave behind them nobody who is called upon to keep up the cult of their souls (E. Tro. 380). Other ideas may have been vaguely combined with this. Thus, on the graves of ἄγαμοι a λουτροφόρος was set up—a figure of a παῖς or a κόρη λουτροφόρος, or a vessel called the λουτροφόρος which has been identified with certain bottomless vases (see Furtwängler, Samml. Sabouroff, on Pl. lviii–lix; cf. Wolters, Ath. Mitth. xvi, 378 ff.). Can this have referred to a similar fate awaiting the ἄγαμοι after their death, a fate such as was imputed to the Danaides in particular as mythical types of those who are ἄγαμοι by their own fault?—an ever unsuccessful carrying of water for the λουτρόν of the bridal bath. (Dieterich, Nekyia, 76, with some probability takes this as the reason for the water-carrying.)

Of these two myths, was the one which appears later in order of time—the story of the Danaids—merely a subsequent development out of the earlier one (even said to occur on a black-figured vase), which told of the vain water-carrying of the ἀμύητοι? I cannot be so sure of this as I once was. I cannot indeed admit (with Dümmler, Delphica, 18 ff., who, however, fails to prove an earlier date for the story of the Danaids’ jar) that it would be difficult to imagine how a special class of human beings came to be replaced later on by certain mythical representatives such as the Danaids were. But it is a very suspicious fact that the Danaids do not as a matter of fact represent the particular class of mankind—the ἀμύητοι—whose place they are supposed to have taken as their mythological representatives. They are not ἀμύητοι at all, but ἄγαμοι. The ἄγαμοι and their ἀτελεῖς ὑδρεῖαι in Hades must have been familiar in popular belief: in addition to this the mystical fable of the similar behaviour of those who had neglected the τέλος of initiation may have sprung up, but certainly not as the model of the ἄγαμοι story, more probably as a subsequent rehandling of it for the purposes of mystical edification. (The story of the ἄγαμοι has a much more primitive and popular flavour; and it alone gives a definite relation between the special labour of water-carrying in Hades and the nature of their default on earth.) The mythical fate of the ἄγαμοι was then forgotten owing to the competing interest of the story of the ἀμύητοι, which, in fact, absorbed it, when a poet—for a poet it must have been—took up what still-surviving custom and its accompanying legend applied to the ἄγ. in general and transferred it to the Danaides. This version of the myth was then victorious in the general consciousness both over the popular tradition about the ἄγαμοι and the mystery-fable of the ἀμύητοι.—It remains to be said that the Danaids (and the ἀμύητοι too in a lesser degree) were supposed to be punished by their ἀτελεῖς ὑδρεῖαι, This, so long as it was a matter of the ἄγαμοι simply, cannot have been the meaning of that fate of purposeless toil in their case any more than it was in the case of Oknos. Even Xenophon, Oec. vii, 40, lets us see that the vain toilers are not as a matter of fact intended to inspire horror, as sinners, but rather pity. His words are: οὐχ ὁρᾷς, οἱ εἰς τὸν τετρημένον πίθον ἀντλεῖν λεγόμενοι ὡς οἰκτίρονται, ὅτι μάτην πονεῖν δοκοῦσι; νὴ Δί’, ἔφη ἡ γυνή, καὶ γὰρ τλήμονές εἰσιν, εἰ τοῦτό γε ποιοῦσιν. This gives us the attitude of mind from which the whole story originally grew up.

APPENDIX IV THE TETRALOGIES OF ANTIPHON.

I ought not to have admitted the doubt suggested in chap. v, n. 176, as to the genuineness of the Tetralogies traditionally ascribed to Antiphon. I have examined more carefully the well-known linguistic variations between the Tetralogies and speeches i, v, and vi of Antiphon, and also the recently noticed divergences (see Dittenberger, Hermes, 31; 32) of the Tetralogies from Athenian law (for which the author, like the declamation-writers of later times, substitutes occasionally a “ius scholasticum”—a purely fanciful creation but one more suited to pleading in utramque partem). All these objections seem to me, on maturer consideration, insufficient to make us reject the identity—otherwise so well established—of the author of the Tetralogies with the author of the Speeches.

APPENDIX V RITUAL PURIFICATION EFFECTED BY RUNNING WATER, RUBBING WITH ANIMAL OR VEGETABLE SUBSTANCES (σκίλλα, FIGS), ABSORPTION OF THE materia peccans INTO EGGS.

For the purpose of ritual purification it is necessary to have water drawn from running springs or streams, or from the sea: θάλασσα κλύξει πάντα τἀνθρώπων κακά, Eur., IT. 1193. (Hence in the exalted semi-oracular language of bardic poetry ἡ ἀμίαντος = θάλασσα, Aesch., P. 578. At a sacrifice ὁ ἱαρεὺς ἀπορραίνεται θαλάσσᾳ, sacrificial calendar from Kos: Inscr. Cos, 38, 23.) Various details on this point in Lomeier, De lustrat. c. 17. In the water thus drawn from running sources the power of washing off and carrying away the evil still seemed to be inherent. When the pollution is unusually severe it has to be purged by the water from several running springs: κρηνάων ἀπὸ πέντε, Emped. 452 M. = 143 D.; ἀπὸ κρηνῶν τριῶν, Menand., Δεισ. 530, 22 K.; Orestes se apud tria flumina circum Hebrum ex response purificavit (from the stain of matricide), Lamprid., Heliog. vii, 7—or else at Rhegion in the seven streams which combine to form one river: Varro ap. Prob., ad Verg., p. 3, 4 Keil; Sch. Theoc., prol., p. 1, 3 ff. Düb. (and cf. Hermann, Opusc. ii, 71 ff.). Even water from fourteen different springs might be used at a purification of murder: Suid. 476 BC Gaisf. (ἀπὸ δὶς ἑπτα κυμάτων, conclusion of an iambic or trochaic line). In all this the remarkable persistence of Greek ritual performances is shown once more. Even in a late period the same kathartic rules prevail. An order of the Klarian oracle of about the third century A.D. (ap. Buresch, Klaros, p. 9) commands those who seek its aid ἀπὸ Ναϊάδων ἑπτα ματεύειν καθαρὸν πότον ἐντύνεσθαι, ὅν θειῶσαι πρόσοθεν (taken from Il. Ψ 533, but understood in a temporal sense) ἐχρῆν καὶ ἐπεσσυμένως ἀφύσασθαι ῥῆναί τε δόμους κτλ. And in a magical papyrus (about fourth century), ap. Parthey, Abh. Berl. Ak. 1865, p. 126, l. 234–5, instructions are given to collect ὕδωρ πηγαῖον ἀπὸ ζʹ πηγῶν for magic purposes. (Then again in mediæval superstition: for the purposes of hydromantia “water must be taken from three running streams, a little from each”, etc.—Hartlieb ap. Grimm, p. 1770—probably a survival from classical antiquity: cf. Plin., NH. 28, 46, e tribus puteis, etc.) Cf. also and in general the completely analogous use of water in old Indian ceremonies of purification: Oldenberg, Rel. Veda, 423 ff.; 489.—περιμάττειν, ἀπομάττειν: wiping-off of the uncleanness: see Wyttenb. ad Plu., Mor. vi, pp. 1006–7. In this use περιψῆν also occurs: in a transferred sense a φαρμακός is called a περίψημα = περικάθαρμα, Ep. ad Cor. 1, 4, 13. Washing-off with bran, earth, etc., is often mentioned. Otherwise the σκίλλα is used or the bodies of sacrificed dogs: ἐκάθηρέ τέ με καὶ ἀπέμαξε καὶ περιήγνισε δᾳδίοις (with περιήγν.) καὶ σκίλλῃ, Luc., Necyom. 7. The Superstitious Man is accustomed ἱερείας καλέσας σκίλλῃ ἢ σκύλακι κελεῦσαι αὑτὸν περικαθᾶραι, Thphr., Ch. 28 (16) fin. All sorts of medicinal properties were attributed to the σκίλλα. (The idea is elaborated farcically in the pamphlet of “Pythagoras” περὶ σκίλλης [D.L. viii, 47? κήλης Cobet], an extract of which is given by Galen π. εὐπορίστ. 3, vol. xiv, 567–9 K.) But above all it is regarded as καθάρσιος: Artem. iii, 50; καθαρτικὴ πάσης κακίας, Sch. Theoc. v, 121, and cf. Cratin., Χείρ. 232 K. Hence it is also ἀλεξιφάρμακον, ὅλη πρὸ τῶν θυρῶν κρεμαμένη, Diosc. ii, 202 fin. (see Hermes, 51, 628); such also was the teaching of “Pythagoras”: Plin., NH. 20, 101; or it may be buried at the threshold: Ar. Δαναΐδ. fr. 8 [255 H.-G.]. It is also λύκων φθαρτική: Artem. iii, 50 (cf. Gp. 15, 1, 6, with notes of Niclas). As being able to keep off daimones (in wolf-form) it was then used in religious “purification”.—Figs are also used for the purpose of religious cleansing and scouring (black figs particularly inferum deorum et avertentium in tutela sunt, Macr. 3, 20, 2–3). Figs used ἐν καθαρμοῖς: Eustath., Od., p. 1572, 57 (? is this the meaning of the περιμάττειν of the eyes with figs in Pherecr. ap. Ath. 3, 78 D [132 K.]). Hence Ζεὺς συκάσιος = καθάρσιος (Eustath.). Figs the best ἀλεξιφάρμακον: Arist. ap. Jul., Ep. 24, p. 505, 7 ff. From the specially magic properties of the fig comes the idea that fig-trees are never struck by lightning: Plu., Smp. 5, 9, p. 684 C; Gp. 11, 2, 7; Theoph. Nonn. 260, 288 (and cf. Rh. Mus. 50, 584); Lyd., Mens. fr. fals. 1, p. 181 W.; 4, 4, p. 69 W. The φαρμακοί at the Thargelia (above, chap. ix, n. 26) wear strings of figs round their necks (Hellad. ap. Phot., Bibl., p. 534a, 5 ff.), and are beaten with branches of the fig-tree (κράδαι) and with σκίλλαι (Hippon. frr. 4, 5, 8; Hsch. κραδίης νόμος): here again the figs have a kathartic purpose (Müller mistakes this, Dorians, i, 346), as is shown also by the presence of σκίλλαi as well (cf. in general Theoc. vii, 107; v, 121). Before the φαρμακοί were driven out of the city as scapegoats they were thus “purified” with the above-mentioned κράδαι and σκίλλαi. The same thing is said in the story of the ravens which parodies this expiatory rite. The ravens are offered up to Λοιμός as a sort of φαρμακοί—περικαθαίροντας ἐπῳδαῖς ἀφιέναι ζῶντας, καὶ ἐπιλέγειν τῷ Λοιμῳ· φεῦγ’ ἐς κόρακας (Arist. fr. 454 [496 Tbn.]; for a similar ἀποτροπιασμός (εἰς αἶγας ἀγρίας) see the commentators on Macar. iii, 59, Diogen. v, 49; cf. τὴν νόσον (regarded as a daimon), φασίν, ἐς αἶγας τρέψαι, Philostr., Her. 179, 8 Kays.).—Rubbing-off of the “impurity” was effected also with the dead bodies of puppies (σκίλλη ἢ σκύλακι, Thphr., Ch. 28 [16]). Those ἁγνισμοῦ δεόμενοι were rubbed down with the bodies of puppies (which had been sacrificed to Hekate): περιμάττονται, and this is περισκυλακισμός, Plu., Q. Rom. 68, p. 280 C.

It was believed that these materials (wool and the skins of animals were also employed) received into themselves the harmful and polluting substance. This is why eggs are also used as καθάρσια: e.g. in P. Mag. Lond., n. 121, l. 522 ap. Kenyon, Greek papyri in BM. i, p. 101 (1893): γράφε τὸ ὄνομα εἰς ᾠὰ δύο ἀρρενικὰ καὶ τῷ ἑνὶ περικαθαίρεις (sic) σεαυτὸν κτλ. More in Lomeier, Lustr. (ed. 2 Zutph. 1700), p. 258 f. They were meant to absorb the impurity. ἀνελάμβανον τὰ τοῦ περικαθαρθέντος κακά, Auct. π. δεισιδ. ap. Clem., Str. vii, p. 844 P.

APPENDIX VI HEKATE AND THE Ἑκατικὰ φάσματα, GORGYRA, GORGO, MORMOLYKE, MORMO, BAUBO, GELLO, EMPOUSA, ETC.

Hekate herself is addressed as Γοργὼ καὶ Μορμὼ καὶ Μήνη καὶ πολύμορφε: Hymn. ap. Hipp., RH. iv, 35, p. 102, 67 D.-S. Sch. A.R. iii, 861, says of Hek. λέγεται καὶ φάσματα ἐπιπέμπειν (cf. Eur., Hel. 569; D. Chr. iv, p. 73 M. [i, p. 70 Arn.]; Hsch. ἀνταία), τὰ καλούμενα Ἑκάταια (φάσματα Ἑκατικά, Marin., V. Procl. 28) καὶ πολλάκις αὐτὴ μεταβάλλειν τὸ εἶδος διὸ καὶ Ἔμπουσαν καλεῖσθαι. Hekate-Empousa also in Ar. Tagen. fr. 500–1: Sch. Ar., Ran, 293; Hesych. Ἔμπουσα. Thus Hekate is the same as Gorgo, Mormo, and Empousa. Baubo also is one of her names: H. Mag., p. 289 Abel. (Baubo probably identical with the Βαβώ mentioned among other χθόνιοι in an inscr. from Paros: Ἀθήναιον, v, 15; cf. the male personal names Βαβώ, Βαβείς. Βαυβώ can hardly be etymologically connected with βαυβών unpleasantly familiar in Herond. (though the mistake has been repeated in Roscher, Myth. Lex. ii, 3025); one does not see how a female daimon could be named after a male ὄλισβος. The nature of Hekate makes its more probable that she got her name from βαύ the noise of the baying hound: cf. βαυκύων, P. Mag. Par. 1911.) Baubo, too, is elsewhere the name of a gigantic nocturnal spectre: Orph. fr. 216 Ab.; Lob., Agl. 823.—Elsewhere these ἐπικλήσεις, or forms in which Hekate, Gorgo, Mormo, etc., appear, are found as the names of separate infernal spirits. Γοργύρα· Ἀχέροντος γυνή Apollod. π. θεῶν ap. Stob., Ecl. i, 49, p. 419, 15 W.; cf. [Apollod.] 1, 5, 3. Γοργώ is probably only the shortened form of this daimon (she is alluded to as an inhabitant of Hades as early as Od. λ 634; in the κατάβασις of Herakles [Apollod.] 2, 5, 12; χθονία Γοργώ, Eur., Ion, 1053). Acheron, whose consort she is, must have been regarded as the lord of the underworld. We also hear of a mother of the underworld god: in Aesch., Ag. 1235, Kassandra calls Klytaimnestra θύουσαν Ἅιδου μητέρα. In this very striking phrase it is impossible to take ᾅδου in its generalized sense (as Lob. does: Aj.³, p. 292), and the whole phrase as merely metaphorical = αἰνομήτορα. Why μητέρα in particular? And, above all, what would be the point of θύουσαν? Klytaimnestra, of course, it goes without saying, is only metaphorically called the “raging mother of Hades”, i.e. a true she-devil; but the thing with which she is compared, from which the metaphor is taken, must have been a real figure of legend. In exactly the same way, in Byz. Greek, τῶν δαιμόνων μήτηρ is a figurative expression for a wicked woman: see Καλλίμ. καὶ Χρυσορρόη 2579 ed. Lambros; cf. ib., 1306, τῶν Νηρηίδων μάμμη. In German too “the devil’s mother”, or grandmother, or the devil’s wife or bride, are of frequent occurrence in a metaphorical sense: Grimm, p. 1007; 1607. But in all these cases the comparison invariably implies the existence of real legendary figures to which the comparison refers: and often enough in mediæval and modern Greek folk-lore these creatures actually occur. We may therefore conclude that the θύουσα Ἅιδου μήτηρ was a real figure of Greek legend. “Hades” in this connexion cannot be the god of the underworld, common in Homer and a regular poetic character elsewhere, the brother of Zeus and Poseidon. In that case his mother would be Rhea who certainly cannot be identified with the θύουσα Ἅιδου μήτηρ. In local mythology there were numerous other underworld gods any of whom might be loosely called Ἅιδης, the word being used as a general name for such deities. But the “raging” mother of the underworld god has the most unmistakable resemblance to Hekate who flies about by night on the wind (see above, chap. ix, p. 297 f.; below, App. vii) ψυχαῖς νεκύων μέτα βακχεύουσα (Reiss, Rh. Mus. 49, 181 n., compares her less well with the “huntsman of Hades”). It seems almost as if the two were identical: local legend could quite well have made Hekate the mother of the underworld god (just as she was the daughter of Admetos, or of Eubouleus, i.e. of Hades). If she is the same as Μορμώ (cf. the Hymn. ap. Hipp., RH. iv, 35) then she was also known to folk-lore as the foster-mother of Acheron. This title is applied to Μορμολύκα· τιθήνη of Acheron in Sophron fr. 9 Kaibel. But Μορμώ is simply the abbreviated form of Μορμολύκη as Γοργώ is of Γοργύρα, and cf. also Μομμώ Hsch., and with metathesis of ρ, Μομβρώ id. (Μορμολ. is mentioned together with Λαμιά, Γοργώ, Ἐφιάλτης as a legendary creature in Str., p. 19, and see Ruhnken, Tim. Lex., p. 179 ff., Μορμολύκειον.) Μορμώ also in plural: ὥσπερ μορμόνας παιδάρια (φοβοῦνται), Xen., HG. 4, 4, 17; Hsch. μορμόνας· πλάνητας δαίμονας (i.e. “wandering”, as in Hesiod, and like the Erinyes in the Pythagorean σύμβολον, and the ἀλάστωρ, the unquiet and wandering soul whose name is derived from ἀλᾶσθαι—so Lob., Paralip. 450). Besides this we have Ἑκάτας too in the plural: Luc., Philops. 39 fin. (perhaps only generalizing); τρισσῶν Ἑκατῶν, P. Mag. Par. 2825 f.; Ἔμπουσαι (with ἄλλα εἴδωλα), D.P. 725, etc., to say nothing of Γοργόνες. Μορμώ as a bogey to frighten children: Μορμὼ δάκνει, Theoc. xv, 40 (cf. [ἀνά]κλησις Μορμο[ῦς], a theatrical piece, probably a farce: IGM. Aeg. i, 125g). So too is the monster Λάμια that kidnaps children: Duris, fr. 35 (2 FHG); D.S. 20, 41; Heraclit., Incred. 34, etc. Some details in Friedländer, Darstell. a. d. Sitteng.⁴, i, 511 f. (as a nickname Λαμώ: Sch. Ar., Eq. 62). Mormo herself is called Lamia, Μορμοῦς τῆς καὶ Λαμίας, Sch. Greg. Nz. ap. Ruhnken, Tim. Lex., p. 182a. With Mormo and Lamia Γελλώ is also identified (Sch. Theoc. xv, 40), a ghost that kidnaps children mentioned already by Sappho, fr. 44; Zenob. iii, 3, etc. Καρκώ, too, is the same as Λάμια (Hesych.). Lamia is evidently the general name (see above, chap. iv, n. 115), while Mormo, Gello, Karko, and even Empousa, are particular Lamiai, who also merge into one another. Just as Mormo and Gello coincide, so also do Gello and Empousa: Γελλὼ εἴδωλον Ἐμπούσης, Hsch. (Empousai, Lamiai, and Mormolykai the same: Philostr., V. Ap. 4, 25, p. 145, 16 K.). Empousa, who appears in continually changing shapes (Ar., Ran. 289 ff.), is seen by human beings at night (νυκτερινὸν φάσμα ἡ Ἔμπουσα, V. Aeschin. init.; Philostr. V. Ap. 2, 4), but even more commonly at midday (like the Hekate of Lucian): μεσημβρίας ὅταν τοῖς κατοιχομένοις ἐναγίζωσιν, Sch. Ar., Ran. 293. She is, in fact, the daemonium meridianum known to Christian writers as Diana (Lob., Agl. 1092; Grimm, 1162). For devils appearing at midday see Rochholz, Glaube u. Br., i, 67 ff.; Mannhardt, Ant. Wald u. Feldc. ii, 135 f.; Haberland, Ztschr. Völkerpsych. xiii, 310 ff.; Drexler in Myth. Lex. ii, 2832 ff; Grimm, 1661. Hekate, in so far as she appears as an εἴδωλον in the upper world is identical with Emp. and with Borbo, Gorgo, Mormo, as well as Gello, Karko, Lamia. (Acc. to Sch. A.R. iv, 828 Stesichoros, ἐν τῇ Σκύλλῃ εἴδους [Εἰδοῦς Bergk on Stes. fr. 13 quite unconvincingly] τινὸς Λαμίας τὴν Σκύλλαν φησὶ θυγατέρα εἶναι. Here Hek. herself seems to be described as “a kind of Lamia”, for she was generally regarded as the mother of Skylla, e.g. by Akousilaos [73 B, 27 Vors.], in the Hesiodic Eoiai, 172 Rz. [Sch. A.R.], and even in A.R. himself who in iv, 829, explains the Homeric Krataiis [μ 124] as merely a name of Hekate.)—The vagueness of feature and confusion of personality is characteristic of these ghostly and delusive apparitions. In reality the individual names (in some cases onomatopoeic formations to suggest terror) were originally the titles of local ghosts. In the long run they all come to suggest the same general idea and are therefore confused with each other and are identified with the best known of them, Hekate. The underworld and the realm of ghosts is the proper home of these feminine daimones as a whole and of Hekate too; most of them, with the possible exception of Empousa, give way entirely to Hekate in importance and are relegated to children’s fairy-tales. In the case of Gorgyra (Gorgo) and Mormolyke (Mormo) this fact is clearly attested. Lamia and Gello carry off children and also ἀώρους from this life, like other daimones of the underworld, Keres, Harpies, Erinyes, and Thanatos himself. The Lamiai rise to the light from their underground lairs—λαμίας τινὰς ἱστοροῦντες (the oldest writers of histories) ἐν ὕλαις καὶ νάπαις ἐκ γῆς ἀνιεμένας, D.H., Thuc. 6. Empousa appears on earth at midday because that was the time when sacrifice was offered to the dead (Sch. Ar., Ran. 293; sacrifice to Heroes at midday: above, chap. iv, n. 9). She approaches the offerings to the creatures of the lower world because she herself is one of their number. (In the same way the chthonic character of the Seirenes—they are closely related to the Harpies—is shown by the fact that they too appear like Empousa at midday and oppress sleepers, etc., according to the popular demonology. See Crusius, Philol. 50, 97 ff.)

APPENDIX VII

The Hosts of Hekate cause fear and sickness at night: εἴτ’ ἔνυπνον φάντασμα φοβῇ χθονίας θ’ Ἑκάτης κῶμον ἐδέξω, Trag. Incert. fr. 375 (Porson suggested Aesch.). They form the νυκτίφαντοι πρόπολοι Ἐνοδίας, Eur., Hel. 570. (These πρόπολοι τᾶς θεοῦ are probably also referred to in the defixio CIG. 5773; Wünsch, Tab. Defix., p. ixb.) They are nothing else than the restless souls of the dead wandering in the train of Hekate. Nocturnal terrors are produced by Ἑκάτης ἐπιβολαὶ καὶ ἡρώων ἔφοδοι, Hp., Morb. Sacr. (vi, 362 L.). Hence Orph., H. i, 1, calls Hekate ψυχαῖς νεκύων μέτα βακχεύουσαν. The souls which thus wander about with Hekate are in part those of the ἄωροι, i.e. of those who have died before the completion of their “destined” period of life, πρὶν μοῖραν ἐξήκειν βίου, Soph., Ant. 896; cf. Phrynich. in AB. 24, 22, and πρόμοιρος ἁρπαγή, Inscr. Cos, 322. Thanatos has acted unjustly towards them ἐν ταχυτῆτι βίου παύων νεοήλικας ἀκμάς, Orph., H. 87, 5–6. The period of conscious existence on earth which they had left incomplete they must now fulfil as disembodied “souls”: aiunt immatura morte praeventas (animas) eo usque vagari istic, donec reliquatio compleatur aetatum quas tum pervixissent si non intempestive obiissent, Tert., An. 56. (They haunt the place of their burial: ἥρωες ἀτυχεῖς, οἳ ἐν τῷ δεῖνι τόπῳ συνέχεσθε, P. Mag. Par. 1408; cf. CIG. 5858b.) For this reason it is often mentioned on gravestones (and elsewhere: Eur., Alc. 168 f.) as something specially to be lamented that the person there buried had died ἄωρος—see Epigr. Gr. 12; 16; 193; 220, 1; 221, 2; 313, 2–3: ἄτεκνος ἄωρος, 236, 2; and cf. 372, 32; 184, 3; CIG. 5574 (see also App. iii and chap. xiv, pt. ii, n. 155, ἄγαμοι). Gello who herself παρθένος ἀώρως ἐτελεύτησε then becomes a φάντασμα, slays children and causes τοὺς τῶν ἀώρων θανάτους, Zenob. iii, 3; Hsch. Γελλώ. The souls of the ἄωροι cannot rest but must continually wander: see Plaut., Most. 499. They (ἀνέμων εἴδωλον ἔχοντες, H. Hec., l. 15: Orph., p. 290 Ab.) are the creatures which accompany Hekate in her nocturnal wanderings. The Hymn. to Hekate, p. 289 Ab. (cf. P. Mag. Par. 2727 ff.) addresses Hek. thus (10 ff.): δεῦρ’ Ἑκάτη τριοδῖτι, πυρίπνοε, φάσματ’ ἔχουσα (ἄγουσα Mein.), ἥ τ’ ἔλαχες δεινὰς μὲν ὁδοὺς (δεινάς τ’ ἐφόδους?) χαλεπάς τ’ ἐπιπομπάς, τὴν Ἑκάτην σε καλῶ σὺν ἀποφθιμένοισιν ἀώροις κεἴ τινες ἡρώων θάνον ἀγναῖοί τε (καὶ Mein., but this position of τέ is a regular Hellenistic usage; occurs frequently in Orac. Sibyll.) ἄπαιδες κτλ. Thus the ἄωροι became the typical haunting spirits κατ’ ἐξοχήν. Just as in this Hymn. they are summoned (with Hek.) for unholy purposes of magic, so an ἄωρος is sometimes expressly invoked in the defixiones which were placed in graves (esp. in those of ἄωροι: see the instructions given in P. Mag. Par. 332 ff., 2215, 2220 f.; P. Anastasy, l. 336 ff.; 353): λέγω τῷ ἀώρῳ τῷ κ[ατὰ τοῦτον τὸν τόπον, etc.]: Roman defixio, I. Sic. et It. 1047; ἐξορκίζω σε, νεκύδαιμον ἄωρε, leaden tablet from Carth., BCH. 1888, p. 299 (Tab. Defix., p. xvi); cf. also P. Mag. Par. 342 f.; 1390 ff.; παράδοτε (the victim) ἀώροις, leaden tablet from Alexandria, Rh. Mus. 9, 37, l. 22; a lead tablet from Phrygia (BCH. 1893, p. 251) has: γράφω πάντας τοὺς ἐμοὶ ἀντία ποιοῦντας μετὰ τῶν ἀώρων· Ἐπάγαθον Σαβῖναν, etc. In the curses of Epigr. Gr., p. 149, the Ἑκάτης μελαίνης δαίμονες alternate with ἄωροι συμφοραί; see also Sterrett, Amer. Sch. Athens, ii, 168.—Everything that has been said of the ἄωροι applies also to the βιαιοθάνατοι (or βίαιοi, a term found in the magical papyri; cf. also βιοθάνατον πνεῦμα, P. Mag. Par. 1950); they are a special kind of ἄωροι: they find no rest, see above, chap. v, n. 147; Tert., An. 56–7; Serv., A. iv, 386, quoting the physici; cf. also Heliod., 2, 5, p. 42, 20 ff. Bk. A βιαιοθάνατος, who has thus been deprived of his life, has to make special supplication for admission into Hades: Epigr. Gr. 625; cf. Verg., A. iv, 696 ff. Such souls become ἀλάστορες, wandering spirits: see above, Append. vi, p. 592; wandering of a βιαιοθάνατος, Plu., Cim. 1.—Finally the souls of unburied persons who have no share in the cult of the souls or home in the grave are also condemned to wander (cf. Eur., Hec. 31–50): see above, chap. v, p. 163. The ἄταφος is detained ἐνθάδε: Soph., Ant. 1070, and wanders about the earth: ἀλαίνει, Eur., Tro. 1083; cf. Tert., An. 56. Hence the souls of these ἄταφοι could be forced to appear and answer the sorcerer: Heliod., p. 177, 15 ff. Bk.; rite conditis Manibus the wanderings of the soul cease: Plin., Ep. 7, 27, 11; Luc., Philops. 31 fin.—The art of the μάντις and of the καθαρτής (and of the ἀπομάκτρια γραῦς, Plu., Superst. 3, p. 166 A) is supposed to keep off such nocturnal terrors; it is “purification” precisely because it drives away such unholy beings. It is also a kind of καθάρσιον that is employed when ἀπομαγδαλίαι (instead of to the dogs: Ath. 409 D) are thrown out ἐν τοῖς ἀμφόδοις γινομένοις νυκτερινοῖς φόβοις (Harmodios of Leprea ap. Ath. 149 C), i.e. to Hekate and her rout which also appears as a pack of hounds.

APPENDIX VIII DISINTEGRATION OF CONSCIOUSNESS AND REDUPLICATION OF PERSONALITY

In that period of extreme excitement the Greeks must have had frequent experience of the abnormal but by no means unusual psychical state in which a division of consciousness takes place and becomes apparent. The single personality splits up into two (or more) distinct centres of consciousness; and these give rise to two personalities (succeeding each other, or contemporaneous), with a double will and a double intellect appearing in one man. Even unprejudiced psychological observers of our own time are unable to describe such phenomena, which appear (spontaneously or produced experimentally) in certain neuropathic conditions, except as a reduplication or multiplication of personality. A second self comes into being, a second centre of consciousness following or by the side of the first and normal personality, which is generally unaware of the existence of its rival. (Probably the most complete and cautious account of these matters is that given by Pierre Janet in L’automatisme psychologique, Paris, 1889.) When such phenomena appear in conjunction with marked religious or spiritualistic tendencies they are naturally explained in accordance with these intellectual preconceptions. The appearance in a man or woman of an intelligent will, unguided or unperceived by the normally dominant personality, is conceived as the entrance of a foreign personality into the individual; or as the expulsion of the real soul of the individual by such a demonic or spiritual visitor. Nothing, however, is commoner, in all ages, than the religious or spiritualist preconceptions that lead to such an explanation; and so what the Greeks called ἔκστασις or κατέχεσθαι ἐκ θεοῦ has been a very frequent explanation of such mysterious occurrences from the earliest times (and in the present day). It has appealed just as much to the person affected by such “reduplication of personality” as to those round about him (unless they have been scientifically educated). The actual experience of such phenomena is generally a fact; fancy begins only with the explanation offered. For the Greeks the Pythia was always the best known example of such “possession” of a human being by a foreign will or spirit which seemed to enter violently and from outside into the human individual, having little correspondence (as it usually happened) with the character or the intellect of the “medium” in his or her normal state of consciousness. The Sibyls, Bakides, Βάκχοι, the seers and priests of purification, Epimenides, Aristeas, and so many others, were further cases of the ascent of the soul to the divine or the entrance of a god into the soul. It was inevitable that the idea of an immediate relation between the soul and the divine, and of the divine nature of the soul itself, should grow up in connexion with such cases as these, and seem to be authenticated in them more than in any other way. Greece is not the only place where this has happened.

APPENDIX IX THE GREAT ORPHIC THEOGONY

The information about a coherent Orphic Theogony and Anthropogony which has come down to us from the statements of Neoplatonic philosophers and their contemporaries, is derived, as Lobeck very rightly concluded, from the ἐν ταῖς ῥαψῳδίαις Ὀρφικαῖς θεολογία, ἣν καὶ οἱ φιλόσοφοι διερμηνεύουσιν (Damasc., Princ., p. 380 K.). This last statement means that they were explained in lectures given by the heads of the Platonic school since the time of Syrianos (Ὀρφικαὶ συνουσίαι of Syrian.: Procl., in Tim. 96 B; Scholia of Proclus on Orpheus, εἰ καὶ μὴ εἰς πάσας τὰς ῥαψῳδίας: Marin., V. Procl. 27). Written commentaries were also published, more particularly in order to prove the συμφωνίαν Ὀρφέως, Πυθαγόρου καὶ Πλάτωνος (Syrianos wrote a book with this title, wrongly ascribed to Proclus by Suidas: see R. Schöll on Procl. in Rp., p. 5. Probably the work of Syr. εἰς τὴν Ὀρφέως θεολογίαν is the source of Orph., frr. 123–4, which are traced back in the Θεοσοφία, § 50, to Συριανὸς ἐν τοῖς ἑαυτοῦ πονήμασιν. From Syr. also probably comes the citation from Orpheus ἐν τῇ τετάρτῃ ῥαψῳδίᾳ, ib., § 61). The older Neoplatonists before Syrianos took little notice of the Orphica. Plotinos gives no quotation at all (though perhaps an allusion in 4, 3, 12; see Lob., p. 555), Iamblichos quotes nothing from immediate acquaintance, Porphyrios, who read everything, gives a little (frr. 114; 123 Euseb. from Porph.; 211) and what he does give certainly comes from the Rhapsodiai. In fact, the Neoplatonics as a whole when they quote Orpheus from their own knowledge (and do not, for example, simply write “Orpheus” instead of “Pythagoras”: see above, chap. x, n. 9) use the Rhapsodiai only, as Lobeck rightly maintains, p. 466 (Abel did not realize this, to the detriment of his collection of the frr.). The title of the poem they used can hardly have been Θεογονία. (This seems to occur as a title in fr. 188 [Clem. Al. from auct. π. κλοπῆς]. In fr. 108 it is only a description of contents; fr. 310 is spurious. In Suidas, Gaisford’s MSS., we do indeed read of a θεογονία, ἔπη ͵ασʹ: but the figure indicating the number of lines corresponds most suspiciously with that of the previous ὀνομαστικόν, and in any case would be insufficient for the great length of the ῥαψῳδίαι.) It seems extremely probable (as Lobeck already suspected, p. 716, 726) that the simple description: an Orphic poem divided into several Rhapsodiai, ἱεροὶ λόγοι ἐν ῥαψῳδίαις κδʹ (Suid.), was the real title of the poem, which consisted of several ῥαψῳδίαι. This ἱερὸς λόγος (the plural only means that there were several books) is, however a different one (Lobeck missed this, p. 716) from the ἱερὸς λόγος which Epigenes (ap. Clem. Al., Str. i, 21, p. 144 P.) attributed to the Pythagorean Kerkops. (And again when Suid. attributes the 24 Rhaps. to the Thessalian Theognetos or to Kerkops he also means the old ἱερὸς λόγος not divided into Rhaps., and confuses this with the later and much extended ἱερὸς λόγος.) The older ἱερὸς λόγος is that alluded to by Cic., ND. i, 107, and prob. also by Plu., Smp. 2, 3, 2, p. 636 D (fr. 42); the quotation in EM. (fr. 44) from the 8th Bk. refers to the later ἱερὸς λόγος. But it is certain that the ἱερὸς λόγος in 24 Bks., the poem possessed by the Neoplatonists, from which by far the greater number of our fragments are taken, was not a work of the sixth century, written for instance (as Lobeck was inclined to think, 683 f.) by Onomakritos. It is even untrue—regrettably enough we might add—that as the Neoplatonists presumed (and Lobeck believed in consequence: p. 508, 529 f., 602, 613) Plato knew and made use of the “Rhapsodies”. (This emerges with particular plainness from Gruppe’s study of the question in Jb. Philol. Supp. xvii, 689 ff.). And when this is gone no other evidence for the earlier date of the Orphic Theogony in this form is left. And in the very few passages in which a real coincidence (and not a doubtfully assumed one) exists between the Rhapsodies and Pherekydes, Herakleitos, Parmenides (see Lob., p. 532; Kern, Theogon., p. 52; Gruppe, p. 708) or Empedokles, the poet of the Rhapsodies is the borrower not the creditor. The age in which he lived cannot be precisely determined; the fact that Neoplatonic writers are the first to quote him does not settle the question; it is uncertain whether he lived after (as I think) or before the (otherwise unknown) Hieronymos whose statement about an Orphic Theogony is quoted by Damasc., Princ. 381 f. K. In any case Gruppe (p. 742) has correctly appreciated the character of the bulky poem (equalling or even surpassing the length of the Iliad), when he says that it consists in the main of a loosely connected patchwork of older Orphic tradition. There are many points in which agreement between the Rhapsodies and older Orphic teaching and poetry is still demonstrable; lines from older Orphic poems were taken over unaltered; subjects from older Orphic Theogonies were combined, sometimes without regard for their divergent character; different versions of the same motif occur together. Thus we have the κατάποσις (modelled eventually upon Hesiod) twice over: in the first version Zeus swallows Phanes, in the second the heart of Zagreus. Both mean the same thing; the devouring of the heart of Zagreus may perhaps belong to the older Orphic legendary material, the devouring of Phanes to the later. The personality of Φάνης, however, cannot have been unknown even to the older stratum of Orphic poetry. D.S. 1, 11, 3, quotes a line of “Orpheus”, which certainly was not taken from the Rhaps., in which Φάνης is mentioned (and identified with Dionysos). And in a gold tablet, folded up with the tablet bearing an inscription of Orphic character, I. Sic. et It. 642, and found in the same grave near Sybaris, there occurs in addition to other (illegible) matter a list of divine names which includes that of Φάνης (and also Πρωτόγονους here apparently distinguished from Φάνης with whom this figure of Orphic theology is generally identified): see Comparetti, Notizie degli scavi di antichità, 1879, p. 157; 1880, p. 156. This establishes the existence of this figure of Orphic mythology as early as the third cent. B.C. (the prob. date of these tablets).—We may therefore employ the facts derived from the Rhapsodies with some confidence for the reconstruction of Orphic poetry and doctrine at those points at least in which coincidence with older Orphic teaching and the fantastic creatures of Orphic theology can still be proved. [I leave these remarks exactly as they stood in the first edition of this book, for they still fully correspond to my own opinion. Others in the meanwhile have expressed divergent views, esp. Gomperz, Greek Thinkers, i, p. 539. But that Gruppe’s proof of the fact that Plato did not know the Rhapsodist Theogony is “wholly unsuccessful”, is something which no one has yet sought to show upon intelligible grounds. Until such a disproof is forthcoming the belief in the early date of the Rhapsodies has no real ground on which to stand.]

APPENDIX X PREVIOUS LIVES OF PYTHAGORAS. HIS DESCENT TO HADES

Pythagoras’ miraculous power of remembering what had happened long ago in previous lives seems to be already alluded to in the lines of Empedokles, 430 ff. M. = fr. 129 D. The legend in which it was related how Pythag. showed that he had once been Euphorbos the son of Panthous who had been slain by Menelaos in the Trojan war, must, at any rate, have been put forward at an early period. The story is often told or alluded to: D.S. 10, 6, 1–3; Sch. V. on Ρ 28: Max. Tyr. 16 (i, 287 f. R.); Porph., VP. 26–7; Iambl., VP. 63; Philostr., V. AP. 1, 1, 1; 8, 7, 4; Her. 17, p. 192, 23 ff. Ks.; Tatian, Gr. 25; Hor., C. 1, 28, 10; Ov., M. 15, 160 ff.; Hygin. 112; Lact., Inst. 3, 18, 15; cf. also Call., fr. 83a (completely misunderstood by Schneider) who even calls Pythag. “Euphorbos”, as Hor. does and Luc., DM. 20, 3. The story is always told in such a way as to imply that no intermediate ἐνσωματώσις of his soul had taken place between Pythag. himself and Euphorbos (they are definitely excluded in Luc., Gall. 17).—Why was Euphorbos in particular selected? The fact that through his father Panthous he had a special connexion with Apollo, like Pythagoras (a true ψυχὴ Ἀπολλωνιακή: cf. also Luc., Gall. 16), can hardly have been sufficient reason (as Göttling, Opusc. 210; Krische, Soc. Pythag. 67 f. suggest).—Euphorbos was taken up and made one of a whole series of previous incarnations (Aithalides—Euphorbos—Hermotimos—Pyrrhos the Delian fisherman—Pythagoras) by Herakleides Pont.: D.L. viii, 4–5 (with which agree Hippol., RH. 1, 2, p. 12, 54 f. D.-S.; Porph., VP. 45; Tert., An. 28, 31; Sch. Soph., El. 62). Starting with Aithalides (to whom Herakleides was perhaps the first to ascribe the gift of miraculous memory in addition to other miraculous powers) the power of ἀνάμνησις in life and death was transmitted through all the links in the chain down to Pythag. himself. (The story of the shield of Euphorbos was now transferred to Hermotimos for obvious reasons.) According to D.L. Herakleides φησὶν περὶ αὑτοῦ τάδε λέγειν (τὸν Πυθαγόραν). It is very possible that the language is here inexact and Herakleides did not (as the words of D.L. would strictly suggest) appeal to a statement of Pythagoras (in a book) but represented him as saying all this (in a dialogue). If this is correct, apart from the incarnation as Euphorbos which he took over from the tradition, Herakleides invented all the rest, according to his own fancy. The fable was then taken up with variations by others: in Sch. A.R. i, 645, two versions derived from the fiction of Herakl. but diverging in some points are mentioned (one being supported by οἱ Πυθαγορικοί, the other by Pythagoras himself—in a book? Πυθαγόρας φησίν are the actual words). What Gellius 4, 11, 14, has to say on the authority of Klearchos and Dikaiarchos differs (except in the matter of Euphorbos) entirely from Herakleides (and the names given should not be altered). But it may, nevertheless, be essentially the same fable over again, this time in the form of a parody of Herakl. (which is not very likely in the case of Klearchos but suits Dikaiarch. very well). Encouraged by these predecessors Lucian in the Cock (19-20) carried still further the parody of the fabulous tale. The story of Herakleides seems to be seriously used in the γραφή in which Pythagoras αὐτός φησι δι’ ἑπτὰ καὶ διηκοσίων ἐτῶν ἐξ ἀίδεω παραγεγενῆσθαι ἐς ἀνθρώπους, D.L. viii, 14. As Diels, Archiv. f. Gesch. Philos. iii, 468 f., shows to be very probable, this was in the ps.-Pythagorean book written in the Ionic dialect, not before the third century and divided into three parts, which D.L. quotes and makes use of (viii, 6; 9; 14; cf. also Sch. Pl., Rp. 600 B). Pyth. here states that he appears on earth from the underworld “every 207 years”, and the calculation may possibly be based on the series of lives invented by Herakleides and the Chronology of Apollodoros (in which case it could not be before the last century B.C.), thus: Pythag. born 572, Pyrrhos 779, Hermotimos 986, Euphorbos 1193 (in the first year of the Τρωικά acc. to Eratosthenes and Apollodor.), Aithalides 1490. It must indeed be admitted that this method of reckoning makes the gross error of calculating from birth to birth instead of from the death of A to the birth of B. (Other intervals are given in Theologum. Arithm., p. 40 Ast [216 = 6³: D.L. viii, 14, should not be altered to suit this as I once proposed]; Sch. Bern. Lucan, ix, 1, p. 289, 12 Us. [462, ? an error for 432 = 2 × 216; cf. Theol. Arith., p. 40, 30])—The existence of a Pythagorean writing belonging to the period before Herakleides, in which these previous lives of Pythag. were mentioned cannot be certainly proved. It might be supposed (as I once supposed: Rh. Mus. 26, 558) that the conjunction of the legend of Pythagoras’ previous lives with the descent of P. to Hades, which appears in Sch. Soph., El. 62, and Tert., An. 28, is ancient and original; in which case the previous lives would have been described in a Pythagorean κατάβασις εἰς ᾅδου. But the conjunction is quite arbitrary and is not such as would be likely in a Pythagorean book on the descent: the descent is, in fact, told as a parody, the form which had been given to it by Hermippos, and with the implication that it is untrue. Nor is it very likely that the previous lives would be described in connexion with a descent to Hades, considering that Pyth. remembered them while alive on earth and not in a condition of ecstasy, and did not learn of them in Hades. It would be more natural that, vice versa, an account of the previous lives should also include something about τὰ ἐν ᾅδου—the ἀνάμνησις included that also: cf. D.L. viii, 4 fin. (see the decisive objections to my previous view raised by G. Ettig, Acheruntica, Leipz. Stud. 13, 289 f.). This applies equally to the view of Diels1 (Archiv, p. 469) that Herakleides (in his work π. τῶν ἐν ᾅδου) told of the previous lives of P. in connexion with the descent of P. to Hades and that Herakl. was the first to make P. go down to Hades. There is nothing to prove that Herakl. did this or to make it even probable. Without any grounds for doing so Diels supposes that what Pythagoras (acc. to Sch. Ambros. on α 371) “φησίν”· ἔξω γενόμενος τοῦ σώματος ἀκήκοα ἐμμέλους ἁρμονίας, was said by Pythag., not in a book going under his name, but in a dialogue by Herakleides (who is not even mentioned in that Schol.). There is no reason at all to doubt that these words (as Lobeck supposed, 944) came from a book ascribed to Pythagoras himself, in which he described his ekstasis and ecstatic visions (cf. Sch. Arist. 496b, 1 f., 13 ff. Br.). There is no further definite evidence for the existence of such a Pythagorean Κατάβασις εἰς ᾅδου (for the γραφή of D.L. viii, 21, has another and better interpretation, as already remarked). But a fairly early date for the origin of at least a legend about a descent of P. to Hades (and of quite definite statements about it with a propagandist aim) is attested by Hieronymos of Rhodos ap. D.L. viii, 21. (But we should not without more definite reason ascribe the invention of the fable itself to Hieron., as is done by Hiller, Hier. Rh. frag., p. 25. What reason could Hieron. have had for inventing anything of the kind?) Further, the lines of the comic poet Aristophon ap. D.L. viii, 38 [fr. 12 K.], already suggest that such legends were in existence in the third century B.C. Whether the work on the subject of Pythagoras’ descent to Hades called forth the legend or whether the legend was already current and called forth the book, must remain undecided. But in any case the book included no account of the previous lives of Pythagoras: these (apart from the older legend of P. and Euphorbos) were first put forward by Herakleides Pont. (but not the Descent of P. to Hades).

APPENDIX XI INITIATION CONSIDERED AS ADOPTION BY THE GOD

The Mystes whose soul is speaking in the first of the gold tablets found at Sybaris (Diels, No. 18) says, l. 7–8: ἱμερτοῦ δ’ ἐπέβαν στεφανοῦ ποσὶ καρπαλίμοισι, δεσποίνας δ’ ὑπὸ κόλπον ἔδυν χθονίας βασιλείας. This ὑπὸ κόλπον ἔδυν . . . can hardly mean anything else than: I seek (as ἱκέτης) the protection of her maternal bosom (or lap). It would certainly be attractive to take this (with Dieterich, de hymn. Orph., p. 38) as referring to a symbolical act, corresponding to the ceremony in which in Greece and elsewhere, the adoption of a boy, his reception into a new γένος, was symbolically represented. (D.S. 4, 39, 2, in particular records the process: see Wesseling’s learned note there; cf. also Preller, Gr. Mythol.⁴ i, 702.) But such a symbolical proceeding if it was to bring about the association of the μύστης with the goddess must have taken place already in the ὄργια once held upon earth—here we are in Hades, and it is to say the least of it difficult to believe that this διέλκεσθαι τοῦ κόλπου can have been supposed to occur in Hades in the neighbourhood of the goddess herself (a fact which made a merely symbolical act of the kind supposed quite unnecessary).—Apart from this the views of Dieterich are quite sound: the ceremony was essentially regarded as an adoption of the μύστης by the goddess or the god, as a reception of the initiated into the divine γένος. The δράκων (who represents the god himself) διελκόμενος τοῦ κόλπου in the Sabazia seems actually to have had this meaning. Further the μύστης is sometimes called renatus, or in aeternum renatus (Apul., M. xi, 21; CIL. vi, 510; 736); the day of his initiation is his natalis sacer (Apul., M. xi, 24, where natalem sacrum should be read): in these circumstances we may venture to recall that the above-mentioned solemn rites of adoption also represented a new birth of the θετὸς υἱός from the womb of his new mother (see D.S. l.c. Hence Hera is called the δευτέρα τεκοῦσα of Herakles whom she adopted: Lycophr. 39; and hence also the adopted is called δευτερόποτμος, i.e. reborn: Hsch. s.v. ad fin.) This conception also provides the simplest explanation of the fact that the μυῶν, who has received the νέος μύστης into the divine γένος to which he himself already belongs, can be called the pater or parens of the μύστης (Apul., M. xi, 25; Tert., Apol. 8; ad Nat. i, 7)—he effects the entrance of the new member into his own family. (In Greek the name for such a mystic “father” seems to have been πατρομύστης, CIG. 3173, 3195.)—This conception of a new birth by initiation reminds us of the Christian idea of rebirth by baptism (which in its turn is developed from older Jewish ideas: see Anrich, Ant. Mysterienwesen, p. 111, n.). It is nevertheless one which the Greeks themselves had at an early date. The μύσται of the Eleusinia seem to have been not far from regarding initiation as an adoption into the divine γένος.

In the ps.-Platonic Axiochus, p. 371 D, we read in the description of the χῶρος εὐσεβῶν: ἐνταῦθα τοῖς μεμυημένοις ἐστί τις προεδρία καὶ τὰς ὁσίους ἁγιστείας κἀκεῖσε συντελοῦσι· πῶς οὖν οὐ σοὶ πρώτῳ μέτεστι τῆς τιμῆς, ὄντι γεννήτῃ τῶν θεῶν; καὶ τοὺς περὶ Ἡρακλέα τε (perhaps δέ would be better) καὶ Διόνυσον κατιόντας εἰς Ἅιδου πρότερον λόγος ἐνθάδε (i.e. at Athens) μυηθῆναι καὶ τὸ θάρσος τῆς ἐκεῖσε πορείας παρὰ τῆς Ἐλευσινίας ἐναύσασθαι.—Here Axiochos (for it is to him that Sokrates is speaking) is plainly described as γεννήτης τῶν θεῶν simply and solely because he belongs to the μεμυημένοι. According to Wilamowitz (Gött. Gel. Anz., 1896, p. 984) he is called γεννήτης τῶν θεῶν only as a member of the γένος of the Εὐπατρίδαι to which he apparently belonged. But that anyone just on the strength of the by no means uncommon fact that he belonged to a γένος that happened to trace its earliest origin from a god (nor is it certain even that the Εὐπατρίδαι did this)—that anyone on this account should have dared to call himself a “member of the same family as the gods” is to say the least of it difficult to parallel. In this case at any rate nothing of the kind can be meant. From the general principle that the initiated have a προεδρία in Hades it is deduced, simply as conclusion from premiss, with a “surely then”—(πῶς οὖν οὐ—), that Axiochos too may hope to enjoy this same honour (τῆς τιμῆς—). It is then entirely impossible that, to account for this hope, a reason should be implied and expressed which, like the supposed descent of Axiochos from the gods, had nothing to do with the mysteries and the privileges of the μύσται. If it was the (alleged) descent of Axiochos from the gods which secured him τιμή in Hades it would be quite meaningless to accompany the mention of the τιμή thus secured to Axiochos with an allusion to the τιμή obtained on quite different grounds by the μεμυημένοι (which yet is mysteriously equivalent to that obtained by right of birth). This allusion, moreover, is put in such a way that it quite unambiguously includes the special case of Axiochos in the common denomination of the μεμυημένοι of whom he is said to be one. The fact, indeed, that the privileges of the μεμυημένοι is the only subject alluded to throughout is shown also by the third and last sentence: the famous cases of the initiation of Herakles and Dionysos are only mentioned as emphasizing still further the importance of μυηθῆναι for those εἰς ᾅδου κατιόντας.

Here then Axiochos can only be called γεννήτης τῶν θεῶν in so far as he is μεμυημένος. Why, indeed, he πρῶτος, before other μεμυημένοι, should have a claim to the honour of προεδρία is something that our text does not say and that can hardly be extracted from it. It certainly appears that Axiochos has a special privilege beyond that of other Mystai. Had he reached a specially high stage of the τέλη which was not open to everyone and at which kinship with the gods was first fully assured? Did the family of the Εὐπατρίδαι undertake some active part in the μύησις which gave them a closer relation to the gods? In any case his claim to be regarded as γεννήτης τῶν θεῶν must have depended on his having been initiated at Eleusis.

Now this kinship with the gods to which he thus attains can only be made intelligible, if, in accordance with the analogies adduced above, we regard the μύησις (or perhaps only its highest stages) as a symbolic adoption by the divinities, suggesting or representing entrance into the divine γένος. No one will maintain that γεννήτης τῶν θεῶν is a “very unnatural phrase” (Wil.) for one who has been “adopted” by the gods, who will recall the fact that at Athens the adopted person was inscribed εἰς τοὺς γεννήτας of the adopter (Is. 7, 13; 15; 17; 43), or, which is precisely the same thing, εἰς τοὺς συγγενεῖς of the adopter (Is. 7, 27; 1). Thereby he becomes himself γεννήτης of the members of the γένος into which he thus enters; he is now their γεννήτης, or, as it is once expressed in an absolutely equivalent phrase, their συγγενὴς κατὰ τὴν ποίησιν ([Dem.] 44, 32).

Thus the fully initiated is γεννήτης of the divine family, κατὰ τὴν ποίησιν.

APPENDIX XII MAGICAL EXORCISMS OF THE DEAD ON LATE κατάδεσμοι, φιμωτικά, ETC.

Invocations and conjurings of ἄωροι and other νεκυδαίμονες of an earlier period are mentioned above (p. 594 f.). To a later period belong the defixiones found at Cyprus (Kurion) and edited in the Proc. of the Soc. of Bibl. Archaeology, p. 174 ff. The defixiones are there called παραθῆκαι, φιμωτικαὶ τοῦ ἀντιδίκου (i, 39, and frequently), or φιμωτικὰ καταθέματα (iv, 15, etc.). φιμοῦν and φιμωτικόν in this rude Egypto-Syrian Greek are equivalent to the terms, otherwise usual for such magic charms, καταδεῖν, κατάδεσμος (see above, chap. ix, n. 107). See also P. Mag. Lond. (Kenyon, Greek Pap. in BM., p. 114), l. 967 ff.: in an appeal to a god (δεῦρό μοι καὶ) φίμωσον, ὑπόταξον, καταδούλωσον τὸν δεῖνα τῷ δεῖνι κτλ.—ib., p. 97, l. 396 ff.: φιμωτικὸν καὶ ὑποτακτικὸν γενναῖον καὶ κάτοχος· λαβὼν μόλυβον ἀπὸ ψυχροφόρου σωλῆνος ποίησον λάμναν καὶ ἐπίγραφε χαλκῷ γραφείῳ (bronze is a magic metal), ὡς ὑποκεῖται, καὶ θὲς παρὰ ἄωρον (see above, p. 594 f.) here follows the rest of the barbarous text.—On these Cypriote defixiones among the other invocations regularly appear those addressed to the souls of the unquiet dead, to the δαίμονες πολυάνδριοι (vi, 17. adds πεπελεκισμένοι καὶ ἐσ[ταυρωμένοι or ἐσκολοπισμένοι? cf. Luc., Philops. 29]) καὶ βιοθάνατοι καὶ ἄωροι καὶ ἄποροι ταφῆς (τῆς ἱερᾶς ταφῆς iv, 18): thus i, 30 f., and frequently. The δαίμονες πολυάνδριοι were probably the souls of executed criminals whose bodies were thrown out into the common burial grounds—as at Melite in Athens: Plu., Themist. 22—the πολυάνδρια (cf. Perizon. on Ael., VH. 12, 21). βιοθάνατοι εἴτε ξένοι εἴτε ἐντόπιοι are invoked, iv, 4. Invocation is made in common to: τύμβε πανδάκρυτε καὶ χθόνιοι θεοὶ καὶ Ἑκάτη χθονία καὶ Ἑρμῆ χθόνιε καὶ Πλούτων καὶ Ἐρινύες ὑποχθόνιοι καὶ ὑμεῖς οἱ ὧδε κατῳκημένοι ἄωροι καὶ ἀνώνυμοι (see Rh. Mus. 50, 20, 3): i, 35, and frequently repeated with the same formula. What we have here is of frequent occurrence: a dead person is called upon to carry out a curse. An early example is CIG. 539: καταδῶ αὐτοὺς (the persons to be cursed) σοί, Ὀνήσιμε (Attica, fourth century B.C.). The tablet in Böckh, i, p. 487, admits the reading Ὀνήσιμε as well as Ὀνήσιμη. The latter (as a nominative) is preferred by Wünsch, Tab. Defix., p. ivb, p. 25 (n. 100), simply in order to expel every example of the invocation of a dead person to carry out a curse. But this is only a petitio principii; and if we accepted Ὀνήσιμη (as the name of the curser) at least the addition of some word like ἐγώ after αὐτοὺς σοί would be necessary—for which there is no room on the tablet. It will be necessary to retain the generally accepted vocative Ὀνήσιμε (to which the coming πάντας . . . τηρεῖν, l. 5–8, is much better suited than to the following Ἑρμῆ, l. 8, as in Wünsch’s version). There is nothing remarkable in the invocation here of the individual νεκυδαίμων by name (thus doubling the force of compulsion exerted; cf. Kroll, Rh. Mus., 52, 345 f.) to complete and carry out the curse: parallels are given above, p. 594 ff., and in the above-mentioned Cypriote φιμωτικά: cf. also CIG. 5858b, δαίμονες καὶ πνεύματα (i.e. “souls”) ἐν τῷ τόπῳ τούτῳ θηλυκῶν καὶ ἀρρενικῶν, ἐξορκίζω ὑμᾶς.

The custom of burying such magic defixions was astonishingly widespread. Defigi diris deprecationibus nemo non metuit, Plin., NH. 28, 19. In the places where Latin was spoken such abominations were indeed even more common than in Greek-speaking countries. (The Latin defixiones are collected now by Wünsch, Tab. Defix. xxv f.) The practice had a long life and is not quite dead even to-day. On the Roman side examples from the seventh and eighth centuries are by no means rare: see e.g. [Aug.] Hom. de Sacrileg., § 20. For a Greek example see e.g. the story ap. Sophronius, SS. Cyri et Ioannis Miracula (saec. vi), chap. 55, p. 3625 Migne: magical objects were buried under the doorstep of the victim’s house; were discovered and dug up; whereupon the death immediately followed of—not the victim but—the magician.

12th August, 1897 (= 2nd German Ed.).