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Title: Psyche

Subtitle: The Cult of Souls and Belief in Immortality among the Greeks

Author: Erwin Rohde

Release Date: October 17, 2021 [EBook #66555]

Language: English

*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK ***

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.

μασχαλισμός

582

III.

ἀμύητοι, ἄγαμοι   , Danaids in the lower world

586

IV.

The Tetralogies of Antiphon

588

V.

Ritual Purification

588

VI.

Hekate and the Ἑκατικὰ φάσματα

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

[INDEX]

607

[Transcriber’s Note and Extended List of Abbreviations]

end

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 εὐσέβεια. 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 εὐσέβεια 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 καθ’ ἑαυτήν relieved of the body, in ἐνθουσιασμοί and μαντεῖαι.) 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 μέτρον αὔταρκες, 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.

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.

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.

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. i 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

CHAPTER I

ΒELIEFS 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 times1) 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” (εἴδωλον). 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 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—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 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 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 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 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 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 body9 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

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 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 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 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 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 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 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 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 indeed, a funeral is the only occasion19 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 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 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 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 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 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 the body is washed and anointed, and after being wrapped in a clean linen cloth is laid upon a bier,26 and the funeral dirge begins.27 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 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 We cannot 18 tell to what extent the duty of offering to the dead all his movable possessions30 (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 (περίδειπνα) 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 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 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

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 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 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 Grimm36 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 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 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 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 Of the purifying effects of the fire implied in this conception, the Greeks knew nothing until the idea was revived in later times.41 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 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 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 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 Homer45—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 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 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 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 Remains of burnt sacrificial animals (sheep and goats) have also been found in the graves at Nauplia and elsewhere.50 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

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 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 (βωμός) such as was in use in the worship of the gods above, but a sacrificial hearth (ἐσχάρα) 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 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 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 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 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—29not 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 (μοῖρα). 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” (φρήν, φρένες) to most of the phenomena of will or feeling and even to those of the intellect. The “heart” (ἦτορ, κῆρ) 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 And so we often find mentioned side by side with the “midriff” and in the closest conjunction with it, the θυμός, 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 (νόος-νοεῖν-νόημα, βουλή, μένος, μῆτις) 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 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 It is essentially the same mode of thought that leads him to say “midriff” (φρένες) 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

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 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 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 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 Kimmerians64 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 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 lamentation, and sorrow.67 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 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 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 body70 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 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’ sword72 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 (αἱμακουρία) 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 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 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 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 Iliad76 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 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 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” (εἴδωλα) 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 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 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 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 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 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 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 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 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 they will then, if this is properly done, follow the caller to their distant home, where an “empty grave” awaits them.88 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 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]   E. Kammer, Einheit d. Odyssee, 510 ff.

[2]   E.g. Il. Α 3, πολλὰς δ’ ἰφθίμους ψυχὰς (κεφαλάς Apol. Rhod., as in Λ 55: mistakenly) Ἄϊδι προΐαψεν ἡρώων, αὐτοὺς δὲ ἑλώρια τεῦχε κύνεσσιν. Ψ 105, παννυχίη γὰρ μοι Πατροκλῆος δειλοῖο ψυχὴ ἐφεστήκει . . . ἔϊκτο δὲ θέσκελον αὐτῷ (cf. 66).

[3]   E.g. Λ 262, ἔνθ’ Ἀντήνορος υἷες ὑπ’ Ἀτρείδῃ βασιλῆι πότμον ἀναπλήσαντες ἔδυν δόμον Ἄϊδος εἴσω. The ψυχή 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: Ἐλπῆνορ, Τειρεσίη, μῆτερ ἐμή, etc. And cf. such expressions as: Ψ 244, εἰς ὅ κεν αὐτὸς ἐγὼ Ἄϊδι κεύθωμαι, or Ο 251, καὶ δὴ ἔγωγ’ ἐφάμην, νέκυας καὶ δῶμ’ Ἀίδαο ἤματι τῷδ’ ἵξεσθαι . . . or Ξ 456 f., etc.

[4]   The first view is Nägelsbach’s, the second that of Grotemeyer.

[5]   And of civilized peoples, too, in antiquity. Just such a second self, an εἴδωλον 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]   ὑποτίθεται (sc. Homer) τὰς ψυχὰς τοῖς εἰδώλοις τοῖς ἐν τοῖς κατόπτροις φαινομένοις ὁμοίας καὶ τοῖς διὰ τῶν ὑδάτων συνισταμένοις, ἃ καθάπαξ ἡμῖν ἐξείκασται καὶ τὰς κινήσεις μιμεῖται στερεμνιώδη δὲ ὑπόστασιν οὐδεμίαν ἔχει εἰς ἀντίληψιν καὶ ἁφήν, Apollod. π. θεῶν ap. Stob., Ecl. i, p. 420 W.

[7]   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]   Τὸν δ’ ἔλιπε ψυχή . . . αὖτις δ’ ἀμπνύνθη, Ε 696 f. Τὴν δὲ κατ’ ὀφθαλμῶν ἐρεβεννὴ νὺξ ἐκάλυψεν, ἤριπε δ’ ἐξοπίσω, ἀπὸ δὲ ψυχὴν ἐκάπυσσεν . . . ἔπει οὖν ἄμπνυτο καὶ ἐς φρένα θυμὸς ἀγέρθη—X 466 ff., 475; and ω 348: ἀποψύχοντα.

[9]   Speaking of suspirium (= λειποψυχία), Sen., Ep. liv, 2, says, medici hanc “meditationem mortis” vocant. faciet enim aliquando spiritus ille quod saepe conatus est.

[10]   A remarkable idea seems to be obscurely suggested in an expression such as that of ξ 207, ἀλλ’ ἤτοι τὸν Κῆρες ἔβαν θανάτοιο φέρουσαι εἰς Ἀΐδαο δόμους; cf. Β 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]   Of the dead we read in λ 219, οὐ γὰρ ἔτι σάρκας τε καὶ ὀστέα ἶνες ἔχουσι. 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: ἀλλὰ τὰ μέν τε πυρὸς κρατερὸν μένος αἰθομένοιο δαμνᾷ, ἐπεί κε πρῶτα λίπῃ λεύκ’ ὀστέα θυμός, ψυχὴ δ’ ἠΰτ’ ὄνειρος ἀποπταμένη πεπότηται. How, then, could the fire help destroying the sinews too?

[12]   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 ὁλοκαύτωμα for χθόνιοι 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 κταμένοιο χολωθείς (Ψ 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 θεοὶ χθόνιοι. 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]   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, Ψ 218–22) is sacrificial in character, like all similar χοαί. 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 (Ψ 170; cf. ω 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]   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]   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]   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 ψυχὴν κικλήσκων Πατροκλῆος δειλοῖο 221. The person thus called upon is evidently supposed to be still close at hand. This is not contradicted by the formula χαῖρε . . . καὶ εἰν Ἀΐδαο δόμοισι (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 ἐν ποταμῷ “by the river”, etc.). In the same way εἰς Ἀΐδαο δόμον often only means towards the house of Hades (Ameis on κ 512).

[17]   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]   Funeral games for Amarynkeus, Ψ 630 ff., for Achilles, ω 85 ff. Such games are referred to as being quite the usual custom in ω 87 ff. Later poetry is full of descriptions of such ἀγῶνες ἐπιτάφιοι of the heroic age.

[19]   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]   Cf. Ψ 274, εἰ μὲν νῦν ἐπὶ ἄλλῳ ἀεθλεύοιμεν Ἀχαιοί, i.e. in honour of Patroklos; cf. 646: σὸν ἑταῖρον ἀέθλοισι κτερέϊζε. κτερεΐζειν means to give the dead man his κτέρεα, 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]   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]   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 ἀμοιβὴ ἀγακλειτῆς ἑκατόμβης, γ 58–9 (cf. ἀμοιβὰς τῶν θυσιῶν from the side of the gods, Pl. Smp., 202 E).

[23]   τοῦτό νυ καὶ γέρας οἷον ὀϊζυροῖσι βροτοῖσιν, κείρασθαί τε κόμην βαλέειν τ’ ἀπὸ δάκρυ παρειῶν, δ 197 f.; cf. ω 188 f., 294 f.

[24]   οὐ γὰρ ἔτ’ αὖτις νίσομαι ἐξ’ Ἀΐδαο ἐπήν με πυρὸς λελάχητε, Ψ 75 f.

[25]   —ἰόντι εἰς Ἀΐδαο χερσὶ κατ’ ὀφθαλμοὺς ἐλέειν σύν τε στόμ’ ἐρεῖσαι, λ 426; cf. Λ 453, ω 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 ἄχρις ὅτου ψυχήν μου μητρὸς χέρες εἶλαν ἀπ’ ὄσσων, Epigr. Gr., 314, 24. Was there originally some idea of the “soul” being released by these means?—Seat of the soul in the κόρη of the eye: ψυχαὶ δ’ ἐν ὀφθαλμοῖσι τῶν τελευτώντων, 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 εἴδωλον 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). ψυχή 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]   And even ἀνὰ πρόθυρον τετραμμένος, Τ 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]   The details of the procedure until the funeral dirge are given in Σ 343–55.

[28]   τύμβος and στήλη, Π 457, 675, Ρ 434, Λ 371, μ 14. A heaped-up σῆμα as the burial-place of Eetion round which the Nymphs plant elms: Ζ 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]   κτέρεα κτερεΐζειν in the formula σημά τέ οἱ χεῦαι καὶ ἐπὶ κτέρεα κτερεΐζειν, α 291, β 222. Here the κτερεΐζειν comes after the heaping up of the grave-mound—possibly the κτέρεα are to be burnt on or at the grave-mound. Schol. B on Τ 212 is, however, mistaken in the rule deduced from these cases: προὐτίθεσαν, εἶτα ἔθαπτον, εἶτα ἐτυμβοχόουν, εἶτα ἐκτερέϊζον. All the cases refer to the ceremonial at empty graves. Where the body was obtainable the relatives or friends would have burnt the κτέρεα 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 ἐν πυρὶ κήαιεν καὶ ἐπὶ κτέρεα κτερίσαιεν, Ω 38, and again ὄφρ’ ἕταρον θάπτοι καὶ ἐπὶ κτέρεα κτερίσειεν, γ 285.

[30]  —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, καὶ διὰ τοῦτο πένητες ζῶσιν οὐδὲν πατρῷον ἔχοντες, 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]   Examples given by O. Jahn, Persius, p. 219 fin.

[32]   ψυχὴ δ’ ἐκ ῥεθέων πταμένη Ἄϊδόσδε βεβήκει, ὃν πότμον γοόωσα λιποῦσ’ ἀνδροτῆτα καὶ ἥβην, Π 756. Χ 362 cf. Υ 294, Ν 415. ψυχὴ δ’ Ἀϊδόσδε κατῆλθεν, κ 560, λ 65. Complete departure into the depths of the kingdom of Hades is more clearly expressed in such words as βαίην δόμον Ἄϊδος εἴσω, Ω 246, κίον Ἄϊδος εἴσω, Ζ 422, etc. Again, in λ 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 ψυχὴ μὲν ἔβη δόμον Ἄϊδος εἴσω—now at last it goes back again into the depths of the Kingdom of Hades.

[33]   Aristonikos on Ψ 104: ἡ διπλῆ ὅτι τὰς τῶν ἀτάφων ψυχὰς Ὅμηρος ἔτι σωζούσας τὴν φρόνησιν ὑποτίθεται. (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 οὐ γάρ πω ἐτέθαπτο, λ 52. His ψυχή 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]   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]   Only once is there any mention of taking home the burnt bones, Η 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 Δ 174; Sch. EMQ., γ 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 ἱστορία (derived from Andron) of Sch. A on Α 52.

[36]   Kl. Schr. ii, 216, 220.

[37]   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]   Cf. esp. Ψ 75–6, λ 218–22.

[39]   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]   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]   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, περιῄρει τὰς θνητὰς σάρκας, ἔφθειρεν ὃ ἦν αὐτῷ θνητόν, 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]   Nothing else than this is implied by the words of Η 409–10, οὐ γὰρ τις φειδὼ νεκύων κατατεθνηώτων γίγνετ’, ἐπεί κε θάνωσι πυρὸς μειλισσέμεν ὦκα. 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]   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]   It is natural to think of Asiatic influence. Cremation hearths have recently (1893) been discovered in Babylonia.

[45]   See Helbig, D. Hom. Epos aus d. Denkm. erl., 42 f.

[46]   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]   See Schliemann, Mycenae, E.T., 155, 165, 213–14.

[48]   Helbig. Hom. Epos^2, p. 52.

[49]   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]   Also in the domed grave of Dimini: Ath. Mitth., xii, 138.

[51]   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, 92η), is quite in accordance with popular belief. 50

[52]   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]   ἐσχάρα is essentially ἐφ’ ἧς τοῖς ἥρωσιν ἀποθύομεν, Poll. i, 8; cf. Neanthes ap. Ammon., Diff. Voc., p. 34 V. Such an altar rested directly on the ground without anything intervening (μὴ ἔχουσα ὕψος ἀλλ’ ἐπὶ γῆς ἱδρυμένη), it is round (στρογγυλοειδής) and hollow (κοίλη): cf. esp. Harp., 87, 15 ff. Phot., s.v. ἐσχάρα (2 glosses); AB. 256, 32; EM., 384, 12 ff.; Sch. on ζ 52; Eust., Od., p. 1939 (ψ 71): Sch. Eur., Ph., 284. It is evident that the ἐσχάρα is not very far removed from the sacrificial trench of the cult of the dead: thus it is actually called also βόθρος; Sch. Eur., Ph., 274 (σκαπτή S. Byz., 191, 7 Mein.).

[54]   Stengel has a different view (Chthon. u. Todt., 427, 2).

II

[55]   It is doubtful whether Homer even knew of dream-oracles (which would be closely related to oracles of the dead). That in Α 63 ἐγκοίμησις is “at least alluded to” (as Nägelsbach, Nachhom. Theol., 172, thinks) is by no means certain. The ὀνειροπόλος would not be a priest who intentionally gave himself up to prophetic sleep and thus ὑπὲρ ἑτέρων ὀνείρους ὁρᾷ, but rather an ὀνειροκρίτης—an interpreter of other men’s unsought dream-visions.

[56]   Even the river-gods and Nymphs who are usually confined to their own homes are called to the ἀγορά of all the gods in Olympos, Υ 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, ε 169 f., εἴ κε θεοί γ’ ἐθέλωσι, τοὶ οὐρανὸν εὐρὺν ἔχουσιν, οἵ μευ φέρτεροί εἰσι νοῆσαί τε κρῆναί τε. 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]   Exx. in Nägelsbach, Hom. Theol.2, 387 f. (φρένες), W. Schrader, Jb. f. Philol. 1885, p. 163 f. (ἦτορ).

[58]   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 θυμός—a word supposed to be derived from the steam rising from freshly shed and still warm blood—a second soul in addition to the ψυχή: 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 θυμός of Homer cannot be called a “soul” or a double of the ψυχή. Again and again the θυμός is clearly referred to as a mental faculty of the living body; either thinking or willing or merely feeling (θυμῷ νοέω, θυμῷ δεῖσαι, γηθήσει θυμῷ, ἐχολώσατο θυμῷ, ἤραρε θυμὸν ἐδωδῇ, etc.) is conducted by its means. It is the seat of the emotions (μένος ἔλλαβε θυμόν) and belongs to the body of the living man, and is especially enclosed in the φρένες. 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, Η 131, the θυμός is spoken of, instead of ψυχή 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 θυμός but μένος, νόος, μῆτις, βουλή. Yet it only acquires life when supplemented by the ψυχή, 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 θυμός as to νόος. Gomperz thinks that θυμός, etc., were at first the only recognized faculties of the body and that ψυχή 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]   περὶ ψυχῆς θέον, X 161; περὶ ψυχέων ἐμάχοντο, χ 245; ψυχὴν παραβαλλόμενος, I 322; ψυχὰς παρθέμενοι, γ 74, ι 255; ψυχῆς ἀντάξιον, I 401; and cf. ι 523: αἲ γὰρ δὴ ψυχῆς τε καὶ αἰῶνός σε δυναίμην εὖνιν ποιήσας πέμψαι δόμον Ἄϊδος εἴσω. No one strictly speaking can go into Hades bereft of his ψυχή, for it is the ψυχή alone which goes there. Thus ψυχή here clearly = life, as is shown also by the addition of the words καὶ αἰῶνος for the sake of clearness. It is more doubtful whether this is the explanation of ψυχῆς ὄλεθρος, X 325, or of ψυχὰς ὀλέσαντες, Ν 763, Ω 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 ψυχή: e.g. Ε 696 ff., Θ 123, σ 91, etc.

III

[60]   A more detailed statement and documentation of the following analysis of the Nekyia in Od. λ will be found in Rh. Mus. 1, 600 ff. (1895). [Kl. Schr. ii, 255.]

[61]   The information given by Teiresias, λ 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, μ 127, was already known to the poet who did not wish to repeat this word for word.

[62]   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”, ω 19 ff. The composer of these lines has understood quite correctly the meaning and purpose of his model, the original Nekyia of λ, though his continuation of it is certainly very clumsy.

[63]   κ 539–40 is borrowed from δ 389–90, 470.—I find after writing this that Kammer had already suggested imitation of δ in the Nekyia: Einheit d. Od., 494 f.

[64]   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, κ 509–15, is not afterwards repeated but merely recalled to the memory of the reader in a few words (λ 21–2).

[65]   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 ω 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]   Sch. H.Q., κ 514, Πυριφλεγέθων, ἤτοι τὸ πῦρ τὸ ἀφανίζον τὸ σάρκινον τῶν βροτῶν, cf. Apollodor., π. θεῶν, ap. Stob., Ecl. i, p. 420, 9 W. Πυριφλεγέθων εἴρηται ἀπὸ τοῦ πυρὶ φλέγεσθαι τοὺς τελευτῶντας.

[67]   Acheron, too, seems to be regarded as a river. The soul of the unburied Patroklos, which has already departed, ἀν’ εὐρυπυλὲς Ἄϊδος δῶ, and has therefore passed over Okeanos, is prevented by the other souls from passing over “the river”, Ψ 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.). κ 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]   Cf. λ 206 ff., 209–393 ff., 475.

[69]   See Π 851 ff. (Patroklos), X 358 ff. (Hektor), λ 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., Π 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 στοχάζεσθαι (cf. Sch. B.V., X 359)—X 359 at the most may go beyond this point.

[70]   λ 218–24.

[71]   ὄϊν ἀρνειὸν ῥέζειν, θῆλύν τε μέλαιναν, εἰς Ἔρεβος στρέψας, κ 527 f. From the word μέλαιναν the ὄϊν ἀρνειὸν is also to be understood ἀπὸ κοινοῦ as being, more precisely, black (and so again in 572)—the ram offered to the gods (or Souls) of the underworld is regularly black. εἰς Ἔρεβος στρέψας, i.e. bending the head downwards (not towards the west) = ἐς βόθρον, λ 36—as Nitzsch rightly explains it. Everything corresponds to the regular ἔντομα of later times for the underworld beings (cf. Stengel, Ztsch. f. Gymn., 1880, p. 743 f.).

[72]   κοινή τις παρὰ ἀνθρώποις ἐστὶν ὑπόληψις ὅτι νεκροὶ καὶ δαίμονες σίδηρον φοβοῦνται, Sch. Q., λ 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]   The idea that the Thesprotian νεκυομαντεῖον 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 η) does not at all prove that this was the oldest of all such oracles.

[74]   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]   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 στεῖρα βοῦς, ἄγονα τοῖς ἀγόνοις (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]   Ω 592 ff. Achilles says to the dead Patroklos μή μοι Πάτροκλε σκυδμαινέμεν αἴ κε πύθηαι εἰν Ἄϊδός περ ἐὼν ὅτι Ἕκτορα δῖον ἔλυσα πατρὶ φίλῳ, ἔπει οὔ μοι ἀεικέα δῶκεν ἄποινα. σοὶ δ’ αὖ ἐγὼ καὶ τῶνδ’ ἀποδάσσομαι ὅσσ’ ἐπέοικεν. The possibility that the dead in Hades may be able to know what is happening in the upper world is referred to only hypothetically (αἴ κε)—not so, however, the intention of giving the dead man a share in the gifts of Priam (δι’ ἐπιταφίων εἰς αὐτὸν ἀγώνων 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]   40–1. This is not un-Homeric, cf. esp. Ξ 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]   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 φάτο 236, φῆ 237, εὔχετο 261, φάσκε 306. But the whole section is little more than a review at which Odysseus assists without taking any real part.

[79]   Cf. Rh. Mus. 1, 625 ff. The nearest parallel to such a distinction between an εἴδωλον and the fully animated αὐτός 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 εἴδωλον. Prob. this latter story gave rise to the insertion of these lines, λ 602 ff.

[80]   Cf. 623 ff.

[81]   Welcker, Gr. Götterl. i, 818, and others following him.

[82]   [Apollod.] 1, 9, 3, 2; Sch., Α 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 Σίσυφος δραπέτης [Sch., Ζ 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 Ζ 153 he is called κέρδιστος ἀνδρῶν as praise and not blame: so Aristarch. rightly maintained and supported his case by clear ἀναφορά to the line of the Nekyia (see Sch., Ζ 153, Κ 44, Lehrs, Aristarch.3, p. 117 and λ 593). The idea that the adj. refers to the κακότροπον of S. is merely a misunderstanding of Porph. ap. Sch., λ 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]   Γ 279, Τ 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]   K. O. Müller, Aeschylus Eumenides, p. 167 = E.T., 1853, p. 159.

[85]   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, Δ 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]   The oath as a bond in favour of the oath-gods: Thgn., 1195 f., μήτι θεοὺς ἐπίορκον ἐπόμνυθι, οὐ γὰρ ἀνυστὸν ἀθανάτους κρύψαι χρεῖος ὀφειλόμενον. Perjury would be εἰς θεοὺς ἁμαρτάνειν, Soph. fr. 431 (472 P.).

[87]   Eust., Od., p. 1614–15, has understood this. He calls attention to Pi., P. 4, 159, κέλεται γὰρ ἑὰν ψυχὰν κομίζαι Φρίξος ἐλθόντας πρὸς Αἰήτα θαλάμους—on which passage the Sch. refers us back again to Homer. Both passages imply the same belief: τῶν ἀπολομένων ἐν ξένῃ γῇ τὰς ψυχὰς εὐχαῖς τισιν ἐπεκαλοῦντο ἀποπλεόντες οἱ φίλοι εἰς τὴν ἐκείνων πατρίδα καὶ ἐδόκουν κατάγειν αὐτοὺς πρὸς τοὺς οἰκείους (Sch. ι 65 f., Sch. Η, ι 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]   The command of Athene to Telem., α 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, δ 584.

[89]   δ 584, χεῦ’ Ἀγαμέμνονι τύμβον ἷν’ ἄσβεστον κλέος εἴη. λ 75 f., σῆμά τέ μοι χεῦαι πολιῆς ἐπὶ θινὶ θαλάσσης, ἀνδρὸς δυστήνοιο, καὶ ἐσσομένοισι πύθεσθαι. Achilles in the second Nekyia, ω 30 ff., says to Agam.: Would thou hadst died before Troy, for then the Achaeans would have set up a tomb for thee and καὶ σῷ παιδὶ μέγα κλέος ἤρα’ ὀπίσσω (cf. 93 f., where Agam. says to Achilles ὡς σὺ μὲν οὐδὲ θανὼν ὄνομ’ ὤλεσας ἀλλά τοι αἰεὶ πάντας ἐπ’ ἀνθρώπους κλέος ἔσσεται ἐσθλὸν Ἀχιλλεῦ). The words of Hektor, Η 84 ff., show how the σῆμα ἐπὶ πλατεῖ Ἑλλησπόντῳ served to remind sailors as they passed, ἀνδρὸς μὲν τόδε σῆμα πάλαι κατατεθνηῶτος κτλ. 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.

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 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 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 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 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 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 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 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

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 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 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

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 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 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 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 and its delights that we are forced to believe that he did not himself originate so enticing a vision.16 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 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 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 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 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 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 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 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 share24 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 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. Phœnician 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

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 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 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 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

§ 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 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 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 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 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 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 invisibly36 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 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 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 (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 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 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 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

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 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 word45 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 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 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 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 other49 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]   It is not for nothing that what is here said of the “climate”, if one may so call it, of the Elysian plain, δ 566–8, reminds us so strikingly of the description of the abode of the Gods on Olympos, ζ 43–5.

[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]   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, Γ 380 ff.; Aeneas, by Apollo, Ε 344 f.; Idaios, son of Dares, the priest of Hephaistos, by Heph., Ε 23; Hektor, by Apollo, Υ 443 f.; Aeneas, by Poseidon, Υ 325 ff.; Agenor, by Apollo, Φ 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, Υ 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, Λ 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 (Π 436), but refrains owing to the warning of Hera (440 ff.).

[4]   The wish to die quickly is expressly contrasted with the wish to be carried off by the Harpies, 63 ἢ ἔπειτα—“or if not,” i.e. if quick death is denied to me. (v. Rh. Mus. 50, 2, 2.) Again 79–80: ὡς ἔμ’ ἀϊστώσειαν Ὀλύμπια δώματ’ ἔχοντες ἠέ μ’ ἐϋπλόκαμος βάλοι Ἄρτεμις. Thus the Harpies (= θύελλα 63) in this case do not bring death but carry away men alive (ἀναρπάξασα οἴχοιτο 63 f., ἅρπυιαι ἀνηρείψαντο 77 = ἀνέλοντο θύελλαι 66, and they carry them off κατ’ ἠερόεντα κέλευθα 64 to the προχοαὶ ἀψορρόου Ὠκεανοῖο 65 ἔδοσαν στυγερῇσιν Ἐρινύσιν ἀμφιπολεύειν 78). At the “mouths of Okeanos” (where it goes into the sea) is the entrance to the world of the dead; κ 508 ff., λ 13 ff. To be carried off by the storm-spirits used proverbially as a wish: Ζ 345 ff. ὧς μ’ ὄφελ’ ἤματι τῷ ὅτε με πρῶτον τέκε μήτηρ οἴχεσθαι προφέρουσα κακὴ ἀνέμοιο θύελλα εἰς ὄρος ἢ εἰς κῦμα πολυφλοίσβοιο θαλάσσης (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.—ὑπὸ πνευμάτων συναρπαγέντα ἄφαντον γενέσθαι is a reason for τιμαὶ ἀθάνατοι, in the only half-rationalized story of Hesperos in D.S. 3, 60, 3.

[5]   One would like to know more of this strange story, but what we learn elsewhere of Pandareos and his daughters (Sch. υ 66–7; τ 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 (τ 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]   The Erinyes live normally in Erebos, as is shown esp. by I 571 f.; Τ 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: λ 278—for “working at a distance” seems impossible—as in Hes., Op., 803 f.—Ἐρινύσιν ἀμφιπολεύειν (78) cannot be anything but “serve the Erinyes”, “become their ἀμφίπολοι”. 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 Ἐρινύσι joined closely with ἀμφ. (θεαῖς ἀμφιπολῶν Soph., O.C., 680, is different.)

[7]   “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]   On the Harpies, see Rh. Mus., 50, 1–5.

[9]   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]   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]   Only temporary translation (ἀνήρπασε) of Marpessa by Apollo I 564.

[12]   Ganymedes, ἀνήρπασε θέσπις ἄελλα, h. Ven., 208, as the θύελλα (= Ἅρπυια) did the daughters of Pandareos. The eagle is the addition of later poetry.

[13]   Λ 1; ε 1.

[14]   Ἠὼς . . . ἀπ’ Ὠκεανοῖο ῥοάων ὤρνυθ’, ἵν’ ἀθανάτοισι φόως φέροι ἠδὲ βροτοῖσιν, Τ 1 f.: cf. ψ 244 (h. Merc., 184 f.). So also h. Ven., 224 ff., says of Tithonos: Ἠοῖ τερπόμενος χρυσοθρόνῳ ἠριγενείῃ ναῖε παρ’ Ὠκεανοῖο ῥοῇς ἐπὶ πείρασι γαίης, in good Homeric style. It seems that the magic island Aiaia was considered the home of Eos (and of Tithonos): μ 3: νῆσόν τ’ Αἰαίην, ὅθι τ’ Ἠοῦς ἠριγενείης 82 οἰκία καὶ χοροί εἰσι ἀντολαὶ ἠελίοιο. 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]   Among innumerable unsuccessful attempts made by the ancients at finding an etymological derivation for the word Ἠλύσιον (Sch., δ 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: παρὰ τὴν ἔλευσιν, ἔνθα οἱ εὐσεβεῖς παραγίνονται. 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 Ἠλύσιον from the fact that there the ψυχαὶ λελυμέναι τῶν σωμάτων διάγουσι: 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 ψυχή 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: Ἠλύσιον οὐλύσιον, ὅτι οὐ διαλύονται ἀπὸ τῶν σωμάτων αἱ ψυχαί. Hesych. (cf. E.M., 428, 34–5; Sch., δ 563; Procl. on Hes., Op., 169).

[16]   οὐ μὴν φαίνεταί γε (ὁ ποιητής) προαγαγὼν τὸν λόγον ἐς πλέον ὡς εὕρημα ἄν τις οἰκεῖον, προσαψάμενος δὲ αὐτοῦ μόνον ἅτε ἐς ἅπαν ἤδη διαβεβοημένου τὸ Ἑλληνικόν—to adopt the words that Pausanias (10, 31, 4) uses of a similar case.

[17]   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 η 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: πρότερον δὲ ἔτι Ῥαδάμανθυν ἐνταῦθα ἥκειν; 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]   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: γενέσθαι ἀφανῆ 83 (τὸν Ξίσουθρον) μετὰ τῶν θεῶν οἰκήσοντα, Beros. ap. Sync., p. 55, 6, 11 Di.; θεοί μιν ἐξ ἀνθρώπων ἀφανίζουσι, Abydenus ap. Syncell., p. 70, 13. Of Enoch we read, Gen. 5^24: οὐχ εὑρίσκετο ὅτι μετέθηκεν αὐτὸν ὁ θεός (μετετέθη, Ecclus., 44^16; Hebr. 11^5); ἀνελήφθη ἀπὸ τῆς γῆς, Ecclus. 49^14; ἀνεχώρησε πρὸς τὸ θεῖον, Jos., AJ. i, 3, 4 (of Moses: ἀφανίζεται, 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]   μαλθακὸς αἰχμητής, Ρ 588.

[20]   Ξ 321–2.

[21]   One might even suspect that Menelaos is translated to everlasting life not merely because he has Helen, Zeus’ daughter, to wife: οὕνεκ’ ἔχεις Ἑλένην 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. 149a, 37 Bk.; 42; 149b, 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]   Cf. Tylor, ii, 85: J. G. Müller, Ges. d. Americ. Urrelig., 660 f.; Waitz, Anthrop. v, 2, 114; vi, 302, 307.

[23]   We are told that Rhadamanthys was once conveyed by the Phaeacians to Euboea ἐποψόμενος Τιτυὸν Γαιήϊον υἱόν (η 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]   The possessor of ἀθανασία did not necessarily possess also δύναμιν ἰσόθεον (Isoc. 10, 61).

[25]   To identify Ὀρτυγίη, ο 404, with Delos, and Συρίη 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 ὅθι τροπαὶ ἠελίοιο 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]   Ἄρτεμις δὲ αὐτὴν ἑξαρπάξασα εἰς Ταύρους μετακομίζει (cf. the μετέθηκεν αὐτὸν ὁ θεός of Enoch, Gen. 5^24) καὶ ἀθάνατον ποιεῖ, ἔλαφον δὲ ἀντὶ τῆς κόρης παρίστησι τῷ βωμῷ, Procl., Chrest. ap. Kinkel Epic. Fr., p. 19: [Apollod.] Epit. iii, 22. Wagn.

[27]   τούτῳ (τῷ Μέμνονι) Ἠὼς παρὰ Διὸς αἰτησαμένη ἀθανασίαν δίδωσι says Proclus with regrettable brevity (p. 33, Kinkel).

[28]   It cannot be doubted (in spite of Meier, Annali dell’ Inst. Arch., 1883, p. 217 ff.) that the story given in Π 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 θύελλα, ἄελλα, Ἅρπυια, 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 ὕπνος ἔχει σε, μάκαρ . . . καὶ νέκυς οὐκ ἐγένου. 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 Διὸς ἀπάτη, Ξ 231.

[29]   ἐκ τῆς πυρᾶς ἡ Θέτις ἀναρπάσασα τὸν παῖδα εἰς τὴν Λευκὴν νῆσον διακομίζει, Procl., Chrest., p. 34, Kink. Then he continues, οἱ δὲ Ἀχαιοὶ τὸν τάφον χώσαντες ἀγῶνα τιθέασιν. Thus a grave-mound is set up though the body of Achilles has been translated: evidently a concession to the older narrative (ω 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 χῶμα made for him, though no bones were found upon the πυρά, 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]   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]   The Aithiopis is later than the Hades scenes in ω, and consequently later still than the Nekyia of λ. The prophecy of the Translation of Menelaos in δ is likewise later than the Nekyia but to all appearance older than the Aithiopis. 85

[32]   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]   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]   It does not seem to me absolutely necessary to strike out lines 124 f. (οἵ ῥα φυλάσσουσίν τε δίκας καὶ σχέτλια ἔργα, ἠέρα ἑσσάμενοι πάντη φοιτῶντες ἐπ’ αἶαν). 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]   Plu., D.O., 10, p. 415 B, in obvious error, takes Hesiod’s δαίμονες for such an intermediate class of beings; he supposes that Hesiod distinguishes four classes τῶν λογικῶν, θεοί, δαίμονες, ἥρωες, ἄνθρωποι. In this Platonist division the ἥρωες would correspond rather with Hesiod’s δαίμονες 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 δαίμονες and the Platonic. Plato himself is very decided about the difference (Crat. 397 E–398 C).

[36]   ἠέρα ἑσσάμενοι 125 (cf. 223; Ξ 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]   These daimones are called ἐπιχθόνιοι in contrast (not to the ὑποχθόνιοι of l. 141, but) to the θεοὶ ἐπουράνιοι, as Proclus on l. 122 rightly remarks. Thus in Homer we have ἐπιχθόνιοι regularly used as an adjective, or, standing alone, as an equivalent of men as distinguished from gods. Then the ὑποχθόνιοι of 141 are brought in to form another and secondary contrast with the ἐπιχθόνιοι.

[38]   ρ 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. Ἐπίκληρ., Mein. Com. iii, p. 543 f. (ii, p. 420 K.).

[39]   τιμὴ καὶ τοῖσιν ὀπηδεῖ 142. τιμή in the sense not of simple honour but of practical worship, as frequently in Homer, e.g. in such phrases as: τιμὴ καὶ κῦδος ὀπηδεῖ, Ρ 251; τιμῆς ἀπονήμενος, ω 30: τιμὴν δὲ λελόγχασιν ἶσα θεοῖσιν, λ 304; ἔχει τιμήν, λ 495, etc. In the same way here, l. 138: οὕνεκα τιμὰς οὐκ ἐδίδουν μακάρεσσι θεοῖς.

[40]   Light and dark, i.e. good and bad, δαίμονες 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]   l. 141: τοὶ μὲν ὑποχθόνιοι (ἐπιχθόνιοι all MSS. except one, see Köchly’s Apparatus; also Tz.) μάκαρες θνητοὶ καλέονται.—φύλακες θνητοὶ was read and explained by Proclus. This is clearly wrong, and is corrected to φύλακες θνητῶν (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. μάκαρες does not look like a corruption; it is more likely that φύλακες is an accidental alteration. ὑπ. μάκαρες θνητοῖς καλέονται is the reading of the latest editor: but here to say the least of it the addition of θνητοῖς is superfluous. We should rather try to understand and explain the traditional text and show how the poet came by the remarkable expression.

[42]   When philosophers and philosophizing poets of a later age occasionally refer to the soul when freed from the body as a δαίμων, the expression has a totally different sense.

[43]   Similarly, though the oxymoron is much less daring in his case, Isocrates, 9, 72, has δαίμων θνητός. In order to describe a daimon who has originally been a mortal later ages boldly invented the compound ἀνθρωποδαίμων which corresponds fairly well with the Hesiodic μάκαρ θνητός: [Eur.] Rhes., 971; Procop., An. 12, p. 79, 17 D. (νεκυδαίμων 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) θεὸν βροτὸν ἀνθρώποισιν.

[44]   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, ἐπὶ Κρόνου ὅτ’ οὐρανῷ ἐμβασίλευεν (l. 111); and in this sense “Orpheus” understood the words of Hesiod when he τοῦ ἀργυροῦ γένους βασιλεύειν φησὶ τὸν Κρόνον (Proclus on l. 126). But it would be very difficult to reconcile l. 138 Ζεὺς Κρονίδης κτλ. 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]   νώνυμνοι 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]   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. ζ 204 (compared with δ 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 Σχερίη, connected with σχερός, 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]   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]   λῦσε δὲ Ζεὺς ἄφθιτος Τιτᾶνας 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]   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 Ἀλκμεωνίς, 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.)

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 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

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 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 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 A few more examples of the same type might be produced,6 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 chambers7—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 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 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 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 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 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 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 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

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 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 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 Amphiaraos, too, is once called Zeus Amphiaraos and more often a god.19 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 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 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 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 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 The Zeus that dwelt in Ida was worshipped in a mystical cult;25 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 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 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 The idea—always strange to the Greeks29—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 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 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 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 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 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 where the Athenians every year honour him with sacrifice of sheep and bulls.36 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 Erechtheus dwells below the ground in a crypt of this temple,38 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 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 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 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 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 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 but as a grown man (of whose daughters indeed other legends make mention).45 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 Hyakinthos was given offerings that were otherwise peculiar to the gods that ruled the lower world.47 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 feast48—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 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

§ 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 regions51 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 future52—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.53 101 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 Many peculiarities of the worship paid to him show clearly the original character of Asklepios as an ancient god living below the earth.55 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 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 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]   Pi., N. ix, 24 ff., x, 8 f., [Apollod.] iii, 6, 8, 4 (σὺν τῷ ἅρματι καὶ τῷ ἡνιόχῳ Βάτωνι . . . ἐκρύφθη καὶ Ζεὺς ἀθάνατον αὐτὸν ἐποίησεν) etc. The expressions used to describe the translation and continued conscious existence of A. are noteworthy: κατὰ γαῖ’ αὐτόν τέ νιν καὶ φαιδίμους ἵππους ἔμαρψεν, Pi., O. vi, 14. Ζεὺς κρύψεν ἅμ’ ἵπποις, N. ix, 25. γαῖα ὑπέδεκτο μάντιν Οἰκλείδαν, x, 8. μάντις κεκευθὼς πολεμίας ὑπο χθονός, A., Th., 588. ἐδέξατο ῥαγεῖσα Θηβαία κόνις, S. fr., 873 (= 958 P.). θεοὶ ζῶντ’ ἀναρπάσαντες ἐς μύχους χθονὸς αὐτοῖς τεθρίπποις εὐλογοῦσιν ἐμφανῶς, E. Supp., 928 f. ἥρπασεν χάρυβδις οἰωνοσκόπον, τέθριππον ἅρμα περιβαλοῦσα χάσματι, 501 f. (Eriphyle) Ἀμφιάραον ἔκρυψ’ ὑπὸ γῆν αὐτοῖσι σὺν ἵπποις, Oracle in Ephorus ap. Ath., 232 F. Ἀμφιαράου ζῶντος τὸ σῶμα καταδέξασθαι τὴν γῆν, Agatharch., p. 115, 21 Mü. ἐπεσπάσατο ἡ γῆ ζῶντα, Philostr., V. Ap., 2, 37, p. 79, 18 Kays. ἀφανισμός of A., St. Byz. s. Ἅρπυια.—πάμψυχος ἀνάσσει, S., El., 841; ἀεὶ ζῶν τιμᾶται, Xen., Cyn. i, 8.

[2]   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 ποθέω στρατιᾶς ὀφθαλμὸν ἐμᾶς, ἀμφότερον, μάντιν τ’ ἀγαθὸν καὶ δουρὶ μάρνασθαι. That this famous lament was taken ἐκ τῆς κυκλικῆς Θηβαΐδος, fr. 5 Kinkel, p. 12, is proved by the testimony of the ancient scholia on ποθέω κτλ., 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 ἀμφότερον κτλ. 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. ὄλετ’ ἐν Θήβῃσι ο 247; θάνεν Ἀμφιάραος 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 ἔθανε, whereas he really was like Amphiaraos translated alive (ἄσκοποι πλάκες ἔμαρψαν 1681).

[3]   Pi., fr. 167, A.R. i, 57–64 (ζωός περ ἔτι . . . ἐδύσετο νειόθι γαίης). Orph., Arg., 171–5 (φασὶν . . . ζωόν τ’ ἐν φθιμένοισι μολεῖν ὑπὸ κεύθεσι γαίης). Agatharch., p. 114, 39–43 Mü. (εἰς τὴν γῆν καταδῦναι ὀρθόν τε καὶ ζῶντα). Schol. and Eust. on Α 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., Α 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]   Althaimenes, son of Katreus (cf. Rh. Mus. 36, 432 f.), εὐξάμενος ὑπὸ χάσματος ἐκρύβη [Apollod.], iii, 2, 2, 3. Rationalistic version of Zeno of Rhodos ap. D.S., 5, 59, 4, who says, however, ὕστερον κατὰ χρησμόν τινα τιμὰς ἔσχε παρὰ Ῥοδίοις ἡρωϊκάς, 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 Ἀλθαιμενίς, whose ἥρως ἐπώνυμος must have been Althaimenes.

[5]   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 δαιμόνια which ἱδρυμένα ἔν τινι τόπῳ τοῦτον οἰκοῦσιν, Orig., c. Cels. iii, 34, pp. 293–4 L. The same author says of Amph. Mopsos and others, ἀνθρωποειδεῖς θεωρεῖσθαι θεούς, vii, 35, p. 53.

[6]   Laodike, daughter of Priam [Apollod.], Epit. v, 25; Nicol. Prog. ii, 1.—Aristaios, who ἄφαντος γίγνεται in M. Haemus and is now honoured ἀθανάτοις τιμαῖς, D.S. iv, 82, 6. (Cf. Hiller v. Gärtr., Pauly-Wiss. ii, 855, 23 ff.)

[7]   The regular expression for these subterranean dwelling-places is μέγαρα. 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 μέγαρα (Lob., Agl., 830; μέγαρα = χάσματα, 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”, μέγαρον, in which the spirit lives (in the form of a snake) and dwells.

[8]   κ 492 ff., ψυχῇ χρησομένους Θηβαίου Τειρεσίαο, μάντηος ἀλαοῦ τοῦ τε φρένες ἔμπεδοί εἰσιν· τῷ καὶ τεθνηῶτι νόον πόρε Περσεφόνεια, οἴῳ πεπνῦσθαι· τοὶ δὲ σκιαὶ ἀΐσσουσιν. His φρένες being undestroyed the most important and distinguishing feature of death is absent. His body, indeed, is destroyed and hence he is called τεθνηώς like all the other dwellers in Hades, though it is still difficult to see how the φρένες 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 χρηστήριον Τειρεσίου, 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]   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, Θηβαίων οὐδενὶ ἔξεστι μαντεύεσθαι αὐτοθί. 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 (μεθιδρύθη, Str. 404); to suppose that it had always been confined to Oropos is contrary to all the traditional evidence.

[10]   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 (βόθρος): Paus. 9, 39, 6; to Amphiaraos, after a considerable fast (Philos., VA., 2, 37, pp. 79, 19 ff. K.) and the provision of a καθάρσιον, 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 Ἐπίγονοι. It was thus customary to knock on the ground in calling upon A., as in the case of other καταχθόνιοι (Ἀμφιάραε χθόνιε 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 γῆν τύπτων ἀνεκαλεῖτο τὰς Ἐρινύας, Plu., AN. 3, p. 774 B. In his grief for the loss of his daughter Herodes Atticus threw himself on the ground τὴν γῆν παίων καὶ βοῶν· τί σοι, θύγατερ, καθαγίσω; τί σοι ξυνθάψω; Philostr., VS. 2, 1, 10. Pythagoras ὅταν βροντήσῃ τῆς γῆς ἅψασθαι παρήγγειλεν, Iamb., VP. 156.

[11]   That the dream-oracle of Trophonios had a much older influence is implied by the story of the inquiry made of it by the Βοιωτοὶ ἁλόντες ὑπὸ Θρᾳκῶν in Phot. (Suid.) λύσιοι τελεταί.

[12]   Trophonios himself was supposed to appear in the cave at Lebadeia. The inquirer goes down to it δεόμενος συγγενέσθαι τῷ δαιμονίῳ (Max. Tyr. 14, 2, p. 249 R.); indications were sought from sacrifice εἰ δὴ τὸν κατιόντα εὐμενὴς καὶ ἵλεως δέξεται (Trophonios), Paus. 9, 36, 6. Saon, the discoverer of the oracle and founder of the cult, had after entering the μαντεῖον met Trophonios himself in person, τὴν ἱερουργίαν . . . διδαχθῆναι παρὰ τοῦ Τροφωνίου φασί (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 ἐγκατοικῆσαν δαιμόνιον 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) τὸ θεῖον ἡμίτομον of Trophonios χρᾷ ἐν Βοιωτίᾳ. 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: ὄφις ἦν ὁ μαντευόμενος, Schol. Ar., Nub. 508: cf. Suidas Τροφώνιος. It was this personal contact between the god and the inquirer which specially distinguished the oracle of Tr. μόνον ἐκεῖνο (τὸ μαντεῖον) δι’ αὐτοῦ χρᾷ τοῦ χρωμένου. Philostr., VA. 8, 19, p. 335, 30 K. Of course, many only heard without seeing: τις καὶ εἶδεν καὶ ἄλλος ἤκουσεν, Paus. 9, 39, 11. But it was the god they heard.

[13]   Speaking of Zalmoxis among the Getae (cf. Str. 297 f.; 762; Hdt. iv, 95–6. EM. Ζάλμ.), 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 ἀγάλματα as δαιμονίοις οὐκ οἶδ’ ὅπως ἱδρυμένοις ἔν τινι τόπῳ, ὃν . . . οἰκοῦσιν. They dwell within this ἕνα κεκληρωμένον τόπον, 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.: ἔνθα φησὶν ἀνθρωποειδεῖς θεωρεῖσθαι θεοὺς καὶ οὐ ψευδομένους ἀλλὰ καὶ ἐναργεῖς. . . . ὄψεταί τις αὐτοὺς οὐχ ἅπαξ παραρρυέντας . . . ἀλλ’ ἄει τοῖς βουλομένοις ὁμιλοῦντας (and so ever present there). Aristid. i, p. 78 Di. [38, 21 K.], Ἀμφιάραος καὶ Τροφώνιος ἐν Βοιωτίᾳ καὶ Ἀμφίλοχος ἐν Αἰτωλίᾳ χρησμῳδοῦσι καὶ φαίνονται. 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 ἐπιφαίνονται, ἐπιφοιτῶσιν, in certain other temples as well (cf. for example, the account of the ἐπιφάνειαι of Machaon and Podaleirios in Adrotta given by Marin., V. Procli, 32; cf. Suid. Εὐστέφιος, 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 ἄδυτον (or else in the form of a snake Ἐφ. Ἀρχ. ’83, p. 215 f., ll. 113–19), sometimes accompanied by his ὑπήρεται (the Asklepiadai), cf. Ἐφ. Ἀρχ. ’85, p. 17 ff. ll. 38 ff., 111 f. In the old miracle of Aristagora of Troezen (Ἐφ. Ἀρχ. ’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 οὐκ ἐπιδαμοῦντος αὐτοῦ ἀλλ’ ἐν Ἐπιδαύρῳ ἐόντος. Only in the following night did Asklepios himself appear to her ἱκὼν ἐξ Ἐπιδαύρου. 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]   The ὑποφῆται of the Dodonian Zeus the Σελλοί, ἀνιπτόποδες χαμαιεῦναι, Π 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. χαμαιεῦναι, which is not, however, to be separated from ἀνιπτόποδες. But since ἀνιπτόποδες can have no connexion with Incubation neither then can χαμαιεῦναι. Both epithets refer obviously to the special severity and simplicity of the life of the Σελλοί, the (ritual) reason for which it is true we do not know and have no means of guessing.

[15]   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]   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]   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]   Διὶ Τρεφωνίοι Insc. from Lebadeia, Meister, Böot. Insc. 423 (GDI. i, p. 163); otherwise only Τρεφωνίοι (n. 407, 414, καταβὰς ἐν Τρεφώνιον BCH. 1890, p. 21), Τροφωνίῳ (n. 413); and side by side occur τῦ Δὶ τῦ Βασιλεῖι κὴ τῦ Τρεφωνίυ, etc. (n. 425, 429, 430). Διονύσω εὐσταφύλω κατὰ χρησμὸν Διὸς Τροφωνίου 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: Λεβάδεια ὅπου Διὸς Τροφωνίου μαντεῖον ἵδρυται. 108 Liv. 45, 27, 8, Labadiae templum Iovis Trophonii adiit. Obs. 50 (= 110) Lebadiae Eutychides in templum Iovis Trophonii degressus—. Διὸς μαντεῖον is the name given to the oracle of Tr. in Phot. also and Hesych. Λεβάδεια.

[19]   Διὸς Ἀμφιαράου ἱερόν (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. ὁ θεός (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. θεός: DO. 5, p. 412 A. Acc. to Paus. 1, 34, 2, however, Amph. was first honoured as a god in Oropos.

[20]   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.: μοχθηρῶν δαιμόνων καὶ τόπους ἐπὶ γῆς προκατειληφότων, ἐπεὶ τῆς καθαρωτέρας οὐ δύνανται ἐφάψασθαι χώρας καὶ θειοτέρας. He says of Asklepios, 5, 2 (p. 169 L.), θεὸς μὲν ἂν εἴη ἀεὶ δὲ λαχὼν οἰκεῖν τὴν γῆν καὶ ὡσπερεὶ φυγὰς τοῦ τόπου τῶν θεῶν.

[21]   Διὸς μεγάλου ὀαριστής. The word implies quite as much familiar conversation as well as general intimacy with Zeus. The obscure ἐννέωρος need not be considered here. In any case it is to be taken closely with βασίλευε, next to which it stands, and not with Διὸς μ. ὀαριστής (as many even ancient writers have done).

[22]   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]   Birth of Zeus in the cave: Αἰγαίῳ ἐν ὄρει Hes., Th. 481 ff. Thence his mother bore him ἐς Λύκτον 482 (cf. 477), which would be near Ida:—ἐς Δίκτην 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 τὸ τοῦ Δικταίου Διὸς ἱερόν: 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]   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, ἐν Κρήτῃ σὺν Ἐπιμενίδῃ κατῆλθεν εἰς τὸ Ἰδαῖον ἄντρον. Pyth. in the Idaian cave, Porph., VP. 17.

[25]   Schol. Plat., Leg. i, introd. (p. 372 Herm.) and Leg. 625 B, see Lob., Agl. 1121. (Διὸς Ἰδαίου μύστης, 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 ἐν τῷ στομίῳ τοῦ ἄντρου (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]   Porph., VP. 17, p. 25 N.: εἰς δὲ τὸ Ἰδαῖον καλούμενον ἄντρον καταβὰς ἔρια ἔχων μέλανα τὰς νομιζομένας τρὶς ἐννέα (cf. Nauck on S., OC. 483) ἡμέρας ἐκεῖ διέτριψεν καὶ καθήγισεν τῷ Διί, τόν τε στορνύμενον αὐτῷ κατ’ ἔτος θρόνον ἐθεάσατο. 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 Χαρώνιον at Acharaka, Plu., Gen. Soc. 21, 590 B., of the cave of Trophonios. It was necessary also to spend several days in the οἴκημα Δαίμονος ἀγαθοῦ καὶ Τύχης in preparation for the descent into the cave: Paus. 9, 39, 5. The (to Zeus) στορνύμενος κατ’ ἔτος θρόνος has nothing to do with the Korybantic θρονισμός (see Hiller, Hermes, 21, 365). What is meant is in any case a lectisternium: thus in Athens it was usual to κλίνην στρῶσαι τῷ Πλούτωνι, CIA. ii, 948–50; to Asklepios (CIA. ii, 453b 11): to Attis, CIA. ii, 622; (in Cos at the ξενισμός of Herakles, Ins. Cos 36b, 22), etc. The θρόνος (στρωνύειν θρόνους δύο for a goddess CIA. ii, 624, 9, 10) appearing instead of a κλίνη 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 κλίνη. 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]   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 γέρων ἀλαζών and his ἄδικα βιβλία (fr. 86).

[28]   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]   Hence the story of the grave of Zeus (when not denied outright as by Call.) was allegorized; Celsus hinted at τροπικὰς ὑπονοίας: Or., Cels. iii, 43, p. 307 L.; cf. Philostr., VS. p. 76, 15 ff. K. 110

[30]   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 ἄγριοι θεοί (or θεοὶ ἀγρεῖς? JHS. 10, 57, 55) who “were made immortal” on Mt. Kragos in Lykia (St. Byz. Κράγος): they, too, were thought of as sleeping, and not “dead”, as Eust. on D.P. 847 expresses it.

[31]   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 ὀμφαλός 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 χάσμα γῆς 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 ὀμφαλοί (of φιάλαι) καὶ τῶν βαλανείων οἱ θόλοι παρόμοιοι, Ath. 501 D. E. (cf. Hesych. Βαλανειομφάλους, AB. 225, 6). It was called ὀμφαλός Γῆς 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]   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 ὀμφαλός was Pythonis tumulus (Varro, LL. vii, 17, p. 124 Sp.), τάφος τοῦ Πύθωνος (Hesych. s. Τοξίου βουνός). Dionysos, on the other hand, was buried at Delphi, παρὰ τὸν Ἀπόλλωνα τὸν χρυσοῦν (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 ἄδυτον (cf. Paus. 10, 24, 5), or, what comes to the same thing, παρὰ τὸ χρηστήριον (Plu., Is. et O. 35, 365 A.), παρὰ τὸν τρίποδα (Call. ap. Tz. Lyc. 208; cf. E.M. Δελφοί). The tripod stood in the Adyton (D.S. 16, 26; Str. 419; cf. Hdt. vii, 140). Whether the ὀμφαλός 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.]: ὁ ὀμφαλὸς τάφος ἐστὶ Διονύσου, 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]   That the snake killed by Apollo was the guardian of the old μαντεῖον χθόνιον we have on unimpeachable authority (testim. collected by Th. Schreiber, Apollo Pythoktonos, p. 3): esp. Eur., IT. 1245 ff. Call., fr. 364; ποιηταί acc. to Paus. 10, 6, 6, who say that (τὸν Πύθωνα) ἐπὶ τῷ μαντείῳ φύλακα ὑπὸ Γῆς τετάχθαι κτλ. That the struggle was for the oracle is shown briefly and plainly by [Apollod.] 1, 4, 1, 3: ὡς δὲ ὁ φρουρῶν τὸ μαντεῖον Πύθων ὄφις ἐκώλυεν αὐτὸν (Ἀπόλλωνα) παρελθεῖν ἐπὶ τὸ χάσμα (the oracular cleft), τοῦτον ἀνελών τὸ μαντεῖον παραλαμβάνει. 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 δράκων is the embodiment of the pre-Apolline oracle-daimon. Thus Hesych. says exactly Πύθων δαιμόνιον μαντικόν (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]   An instructive parallel may be added. In [Clem.] Hom. 5, 22, p. 70, 32 Lag., there is mention of a grave of Plouton ἐν τῇ Ἀχερουσίᾳ λίμνῃ. This may be explained as follows. At Hermione Hades under the name of Klymenos was honoured together with Demeter Χθονία and Kore (CIG. 1197, 1199). Pausanias knew well that Klymenos was a titular name (ἐπίκλησις) 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 χωρία ἃ καλοῦσιν Ἑρμιονεῖς τὸ μὲν Κλυμένου, τὸ δὲ Πλούτωνος, τὸ τρίτον δὲ αὐτων λίμνην Ἀχερουσίαν. At this λίμνη Ἀχερουσία 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]   κὰδ δ’ ἐν Ἀθήνῃσ’ εἶσεν, ἑῷ ἐνὶ πίονι νηῷ. These words may be kept in mind in order to explain the mysterious narrative in Hesiod Th. 987 ff. of Phaethon whom Aphrodite ὦρτ’ ἀνερειψαμένη καί μιν ζαθέοις ἐνὶ νήοις νηοπόλον μύχιον ποιήσατο, δαίμονα δῖον. 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. μύχιον may mean this. θεοὶ μύχιοι are those that rule over the μυχός of a house, e.g. over the θάλαμος as the inmost chamber: thus Ἀφροδίτη μυχία (Ael., HA. x, 34). Λητὼ μυχία (Plu. ap. Eus., PE. iii, 1, 3, p. 84 c.). A goddess called simply Μυχία, ins. fr. Mytilene, GDI. 255. But μύχιοι could also mean dwellers in the depths of the earth (μυχῷ χθονὸς εὐρυοδείης, Hes., Th. 119; more commonly in the plural μυχοὶ χθονός, see Markland on Eur., Sup. 545; cf. Ἄϊδος μυχός, AP. vii, 213, 6 (Archias); also μυχὸς εὐσεβέων, ἀθανάτων under the earth, Epigr. Gr. 241 a, 18; 658 a; Rh. Mus. 34, 192). Thus (of the Erinyes) Orph. H. 69, 3, μύχιαι, ὑπὸ κεύθεσιν οἰκί’ ἔχουσαι ἄντρῳ ἐν ἠερόεντι. Phot. 274, 18, μυχόπεδον· γῆς βάθος, Ἅιδης.

[36]   That the μίν 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 θήλεα τῇ Ἀθηνᾷ θύουσιν. And, in fact, cows, not bulls, were offered to Athene; cf. P. Stengel, quaest. sacr., p. 4–5, Berl. 1879.

[37]   See Wachsmuth, Ber. sächs. Ges. Wiss., p. 399 ff., 1887. 112

[38]   Thus there was, at the temple of Palaimon on the Isthmus, an ἄδυτον καλούμενον, κάθοδος δὲ ἐς αὐτὸ ὑπόγεως, ἔνθα δὴ τὸν Παλαίμονα κεκρύφθαι (i.e. not dead and buried) φασίν. Paus. 2, 2, 1.

[39]   χάσμα κρύπτει χθονός, Eur. Ion, 292.—Erechtheus ab Iove Neptuni rogatu fulmine est ictus, Hyg. 46. That is only another kind of translation.

[40]   We need not here speak of the relationship between Erechtheus and Poseidon, with whom he was eventually merged.

[41]   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 Κεκρόπιον known from insc. CIA. i, 322, and τὸ τοῦ Κέκροπος ἱερόν on the citadel (Decree honouring the Epheboi of the tribe Kekropis in the year 333: BCH. ’89, p. 257. l. 10).

[42]   Ὑακινθίοις πρὸ τῆς τοῦ Ἀπόλλωνος θυσίας ἐς τοῦτον Ὑακίνθῳ τὸν βωμὸν διὰ θύρας χαλκῆς ἐναγίζουσιν· ἐν ἀριστερᾷ δέ ἐστιν ἡ θύρα τοῦ βωμοῦ. 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 μέγαρα of Demeter and Kore, etc.).

[43]   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 ἠϊθέοιο, v. 15 perhaps κείνου δὴ σταθμόν]). 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]   Certainly not as Apollo’s ἐρώμενος (as which Hauser, Philol. 52, 218, in spite of the beard, regards the Hyakinthos of the Amyklaian altar). Bearded παιδικά 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]   The Ὑακινθίδες 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. Λουσία; Harp. 113 Ὑακινθίδες; [Apollod.] 3, 15, 8, 5–6; Hyg. 238 (Phanodemos ap. Suid. Παρθένοι arbitrarily identifies the Ὑακινθίδες with the Ὑάδες 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 (πρωθήβην Ὑάκινθον, Nic., Th. 905). Paus. § 5, expressly raises a doubt as to the truth of the traditional fable about H.’s death.

[46]   πρὸ τῆς τοῦ Ἀπόλλωνος θυσίας 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 (προθύεσθαι): 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 Ὑάκινθος 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]   Ὑακίνθῳ ἐναγίζουσιν, Paus. 3, 19, 3.

[48]   The second day of the festival was sacred to Apollo and not to Hyakinthos: τὸν θεὸν ᾄδουσιν Ath. 139 E. (It has been rightly said that this was when the παιάν 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 τῶν Ὑακινθίων θυσία διὰ τὸ πένθος τὸ γενόμενον (γινόμενον?) περὶ τὸν Ὑάκινθον 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]   Hesych. Πολύβοια· θεός τις ὑπ’ ἐνίων Ἄρτεμις, ὑπὸ δὲ ἄλλων Κόρη. Cf. K. O. Müller, Dorians, i. 361 (Ἄρτεμις there probably as Hekate).

[50]   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]   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]   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 π. θεῶν ap. Macrob. 1, 20, 4, puts it 114 distinctly: scribit quod Aesculapius divinationibus et auguriis praesit. Celsus calls Asklepios εὐεργετοῦντα καὶ τὰ μέλλοντα προλέγοντα ὅλαις πόλεσιν ἀνακειμέναις ἑαυτῷ, Or., Cels. iii, 3, pp. 255–6 L.

[53]   See Appendix I.

[54]   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]   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). ὄφις, Γῆς παῖς (Hdt. i, 78); deities who dwell in the earth, and afterwards “Heroes” (in the later sense), appear in the form of snakes as χθόνιοι. 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 ἡρῷα at Athens were frequented by the priests of Asklepios (CIA. ii, 453 b); cf. Köhler, Ath. Mitth. vol. ii, 245 f. (Sacrificial pit, βόθρος, for this chthonic worship in the Asklepieion at Athens? see Köhler, ib. 254.)

[56]   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 Ἰασώ 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, Ἄλκανδρος the son of Trophonios (Charax. ap. Schol. Ar., Nub., 508, p. 500 Bk.) seems to be the same as Ἄλκων, 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]   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 Ἐφ. Ἀρχ., 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 θεοί who ἐγίνοντο ἐξ ἀνθρώπων; so too Varro ap. Serv. A. viii, 275; cf. Apul., D. Soc. 15 fin.; also Philo, Leg. ad Gaium, § 78, ii, p. 557 M.

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

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 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 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 it is to the gods and Heroes of Greece that the pious attribute the victory over the Barbarians.5 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.6 116

§ 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 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 They differ in time, place, and character. Sacrifice was made to the gods in broad daylight, to Heroes towards evening or at night;9 and not on raised altars, but on low, and sometimes hollow, sacrificial hearths close to the ground.10 For them were slain animals of black colour and male sex,11 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 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 The carcass was completely burnt, for no living man might taste of it.14 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 On special occasions a sacrificial meal of cooked food was prepared, to which the Hero was invited as a guest.16 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 But Homer knew nothing of their repetition, and certainly not of an annual recurrence of such funeral celebrations.18 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 Even in historical times, generally on the command of the Delphic oracle, annual contests were instituted in honour of Heroes.20 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 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

§ 3

The Heroes are, then, spirits of the dead, and not a species of inferior deities or “demigods”;23 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 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 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 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 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 For Hesiod the “Heroes” are by no means the transfigured dead of past generations.29 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 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 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 Where his grave is, there the Hero is fast bound; that is his 122 dwelling-place.33 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 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 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 and not until they were buried in the Theseion was Theseus properly attached to Athens.

Since the possession of the corporeal remains37 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 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 In such cases the Hero was perhaps thought of as bound by a spell to that place.40 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 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 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 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 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 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 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 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 (γένη, πάτραι). 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

§ 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 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 phylai50 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 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 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 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

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 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 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 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 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 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 At Athens there was a Hero Physician, a Hero General, and a Hero Garland-bearer.61 Many a Hero may have been known to the neighbourhood which worshipped him simply as “the Hero”.62 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 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 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 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 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 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 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

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 and even representatives of poetic genius from Homer down to Aeschylus and Sophokles,71 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 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 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 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 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

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 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 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 oracle79 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

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 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

§ 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 At Marathon, also, those who had once fallen in battle and been buried there were worshipped as Heroes.84

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 Pindar85 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 Asklepios is sometimes a Hero and sometimes a god, as he had been originally.87 Then many other Heroes began to receive sacrifice as gods,88 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 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 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 “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 Machaon’s son, too, Polemokrates, healed sicknesses in his temple of Eua in Argolis.93 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 Another Hero Iatros, whose name is given as Aristomachos, had an oracle of healing at Marathon.95 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 Besides these Odysseus, too, had a dream-oracle among the Eurytanes in Aetolia,97 Protesilaos one at his grave-monument at Elaious in the Thracian Chersonnese,98 Sarpedon in Cilicia and another (alleged) in the Troad,99 Menestheus, the Athenian leader, far away in Spain,100 Autolykos in Sinope,101 and perhaps also Anios in Delos.102 A Heroine called Hemithea had a dream-oracle, from which she dispensed cures in sickness, at Kastabos in Karia;103 Pasiphaë gave prophecies in dreams at Thalamai on the Laconian coast.104 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.105 134

§ 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 Tanagra106 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 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 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 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 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 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 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 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 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 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

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 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 The statue of Theagenes, indeed, cured fevers even in later ages,119 as did the statue of another famous boxer, Polydamas of Skotoussa.120 An Achæan Olympic victor, Oibotas of Dyme, had for centuries prevented the Achæans from winning in any contest by a curse.121 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

§ 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 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 In the war against Xerxes Delphi was preserved by two of the local Heroes of the land against a Persian raid.125 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 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 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 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 After the battle everyone was fully persuaded that they owed their victory to the gods and Heroes.130 As Xenophon puts it, it was the Heroes and their aid which “made Greece unconquerable” in the fight against the barbarians.131 Less frequently we hear of the active participation of national Heroes in the fights of one Greek state against another.132

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 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 The heroön of this Astrabakos was situated by the door of Ariston’s house,135 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

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 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 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]   Porph., Abst. 4, 22, p. 268, 23 Nauck.

[2]   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 Μενέλαν τε καὶ ἄλλους ἀθανάτους ἥρωας, οἳ ἐν Λακεδαίμονι δίῃ—is certainly quite late, later than the ἥκεις ὦ Λυκόοργε 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 Γοήτων φώρα 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. δ).

[3]   One Daites ἥρωα τιμώμενον παρὰ τοῖς Τρωσίν is mentioned by Mimn. fr. 18. Still earlier Alc. seems to refer to the cult of Achilles as a Hero, fr. 48 b: Ἀχίλλευ, ὃ γᾶς Σκυδίκας μέδεις (see Wassner, de her. cult., p. 33).

[4]   θεοὶ ὅσοι γῆν τὴν Πλαταιΐδα ἔχετε καὶ ἥρωες, ξυνίστορές ἐστε, Thuc. ii, 74, 2; μάρτυρας θεοὺς καὶ ἥρωας ἐγχωρίους ποιήσομαι, Th. iv, 87, 2; cf. Th. v, 30, 2–5.

[5]   Hdt. viii, 109: τάδε γὰρ οὐκ ἡμεῖς κατεργασάμεθα ἀλλὰ θεοί τε καὶ ἥρωες.

[6]   Hdt. vii, 43.

[7]   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: ἐναγίζειν can never have been derived from θύειν 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]   θεῶν ἄλλοις ἄλλαι τιμαὶ πρόσκεινται καὶ ἥρωσιν ἄλλαι, καὶ αὗται ἀποκεκριμέναι τοῦ θειοῦ, Arr., Anab. iv, 11, 3.

[9]   Sacrifice to Heroes ἐν δυθμαῖσιν αὐγᾶν and throughout the night, Pi., I. iv, 65 ff. ὑπὸ κνέφας, Ap. Rh. i, 587 (= περὶ ἡλίου δυσμάς, Schol.). τῷ μὲν (Ἀλεξάνορι) ὡς ἥρωϊ μετὰ ἥλιον δύνατα ἐναγίζουσιν Εὐαμερίωνι δὲ ὡς θεῷ θύουσιν, Paus. 2, 11, 7. νύκτωρ κατὰ ἔτος ἐναγίζουσιν, (the Pheneatai) to Myrtilos, Paus. 8, 14, 11. By night Solon sacrificed to the Salaminian Heroes, Plu., Sol. 9.—After noon, ἀπὸ μέσου ἡμέρας, must sacrifice be made to the Heroes, D.L. viii, 33; τοῖς κατοιχομένοις ἀπὸ μεσημβρίας, EM. 468, 34 (cf. Procl. in Hes. Op. 763, Eust., Θ 65, p. 698, 36). The Heroes also are among the κατοιχόμενοι: τοῖς ἥρωσιν ὡς κατοιχομένοις ἔντομα ἔθυον, ἀποβλέποντες κάτω ἐς γῆν, Schol. A.D., Α 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 (Ψ 218 ff.), always towards evening or at night.

[10]   ἐσχάρα, see above, Ch. I. n. 53.

[11]   Cf. Stengel, Jb. f. Phil., 1886, pp. 322, 329.

[12]   Schol. A.D., Α 459. Schol., Ap. Rh. i, 587. ἐντέμνειν, see Stengel, Zt. f. Gymn., 1880, p. 743 ff.

[13]   αἱμακουρία, 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]   Rightly (as against Welcker) Wassner, de h. cult., p. 6, maintains that the ἐναγίσματα for Heroes were ὁλοκαυτώματα.

[15]   ἐναγίζειν to heroes, θύειν to gods. Pausanias in particular is careful in his use of the words, but even he, and Herodotos, too, occasionally says θύειν where ἐναγίζειν would have been correct (e.g. Hdt. vii, 117, τῷ Ἀρταχαίῃ θύουσι Ἀκάνθιοι ὡς ἤρωι). Others frequently say θύειν instead of ἐναγίζειν, which as the more special idea could easily be included in θύειν the more generic word for making sacrifice.

[16]   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]   See above, Ch. I, p. 14 ff.—ἐπὶ Ἀζᾶνι τῷ Ἀρκάδος τελευτήσαντι ἆθλα ἐτέθη πρῶτον· εἰ μὲν καὶ ἄλλα οὐκ οἶδα, ἱπποδρομίας δὲ ἐτέθη, Paus. 8, 4, 5.

[18]   The same is implied by the observation of Aristarchos that Homer knows no ἱερὸς καὶ στεφανίτης ἀγών, see Rh. Mus. 36, 544 f. (as to the observation there put forward that Homer in fact did not know the word στέφανος or its use, cf. further Schol. Pi., Nem. intr., pp. 7, 8 ff., Abel; see also Merkel, Ap. Rh. proleg., p. cxxvi: ἐϋστέφανος derived from στεφάνη not from στέφανος: Schol. Φ 511).

[19]   Many such Agones for Heroes are mentioned, esp. by Pindar.

[20]   e.g. on the command of the oracle an ἀγὼν γυμνικὸς καὶ ἱππικός 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]   At the Iolaia in Thebes μυρσίνης στεφάνοις στεφανοῦνται οἱ νικῶντες· μυρσίνῃ δὲ στεφανοῦνται διὰ τὸ εἶναι τῶν νεκρῶν στέφος, Sch. Pi., I. iii, 117. (The myrtle τοῖς χθονίοις ἀφιέρωτο, Apollod. ap. Sch. Ar., Ran. 330; as adorning graves, Eur., El. 324, 511.)

[22]   General statement: ἐτελοῦντο οἱ παλαιοὶ πάντες ἀγῶνες ἐπὶ τισι τετελευτηκόσι, Sch. Pi., I, p. 349 Ab. (τὰς ἐπιτυμβίους ταυτασὶ πανηγύρεις, Clem. Alex. calls the four great games, Protr. ii, p. 29 P.). The Nemean as an ἀγὼν ἐπιτάφιος 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 ἐπὶ τιμῇ τῶν κατοιχομένων, ib., p. 10 (parsley on graves: Schneidewin on Dgn. viii, 57; see below. σελίνου στέφανος πένθιμος . . . Δοῦρις ἐν τῷ περὶ ἀγώνων, Phot. 506, 5). Black dress of the judges, ib., p. 11, 8 ff. Schol. Arg., N. iv, v.—Isthmian games as ἐπιτάφιος ἀγών 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 ἀγὼν ἐπιτάφιος 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]   “Half-gods,” ἡμίθεοι. 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 ἡμίθεοι; 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, ἡμιθέων γενομένων [on earth] αἱ ψυχαί).—The ἡμίθεοι are a species of men not of spirits or daimones; they are those οἳ πρότερόν ποτ’ ἐπέλοντο, θεῶν δ’ ἐξ ἀνάκτων ἐγένονθ’ υἷες ἡμίθεοι (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 ἡμίθεοι, 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]   μάκαρ μὲν ἀνδρῶν μέτα, ἥρως δ’ ἔπειτα λαοσεβής, Pi., P. v, 94 f.

[25]   τίνα θεόν, τίν’ ἥρωα, τίνα δ’ ἄνδρα; Pi., O. ii init. οὔτε θεοὺς οὔτε ἥρωας οὔτε ἀνθρώπους αἰσχυνθεῖσα, 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 θεοί, δαίμονες, ἥρωες, 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 ὑψηλότερόν τι τάγμα τῶν δαιμόνων and this is the relation of οἱ ἥρωες πρὸς τοὺς λοιποὺς ἀνθρώπους, ὑψηλότεροί τινες δοκοῦντες καὶ ὑπερέχοντες.

[26]   Aristarchos’ remark that in Homer not only kings but πάντες κοινῶς are designated as ἥρωες, was directed against the mistaken limitation of the word by Ister; see Lehrs, Aristarch.3, p. 101. Before Aristarch., however, the mistaken idea that οἱ ἡγεμόνες τῶν ἀρχαίων μόνοι ἦσαν ἥρωες, οἱ δὲ λαοὶ ἄνθρωποι seems to have been general: it is expressed in the [Arist.] Probl. 19, 48, p. 922b, 18; Rhianos, too, held it, see Schol. Τ 41 (Mayhoff, de Rhiani stud. Hom., p. 46).—It is incorrect to say that in the supposed “later” parts of the Odyssey ἥρως is no longer used of all free men, but only of the aristocracy (Fanta, Staat in Il. u. Od., 17 f.). In δ 268, θ 242, ξ 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 ἥρως unmistakably appears in its wider sense also in other parts of the poem equally and rightly supposed to be late (α 272, θ 483, ω 68, etc.).

[27]   So for example esp. when Pausanias speaks of the καλούμενοι ἥρωες, 5, 6, 2; 6, 5, 1; 7, 17, 1; 8, 12, 2; 10, 10, 1, etc.

[28]   ἀνδρῶν ἡρώων θεῖον γένος, Hes., Op. 159.

[29]   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]   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 ἐν τῷ πρυτανείῳ καί μιν ἵδρυσε ἐνθαῦτα ἐν τῷ ἰσχυροτάτῳ, Hdt. v, 67. Themistokles had a μνημεῖον in the market at Magnesia on the Maiander. Th. 1, 138, 5; i.e. a ἡρῷον (see Wachsmuth, Rh. Mus. lii, 140).

[31]   τύμβον ἀμφίπολον ἔχων πολυξενωτάτῳ παρὰ βώμῳ, 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]   Grave built in the gateway: ἐν αὐτῇ τῇ πυλῇ 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 Ἠλείας ἐπὶ τῷ πέρατι as the insc. stated: Paus. 8, 26, 4. Grave of Koroibos, son of Mygdon, ἐν ὅροις Φρυγῶν Στεκτορηνῶν, Paus. 10, 27, 1.

[33]   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 καλοῦσιν ἐπὶ τὰς σπονδάς the hero Aras and his sons, looking while so doing towards the graves of these Heroes: Paus. 2, 12, 5. 143

[34]   This hero (Xanthippos or Phokos) ἔχει ἐπὶ ἡμέρᾳ τε πάσῃ τιμάς, καὶ ἄγοντες ἱερεῖα οἱ Φωκεῖς τὸ μὲν αἷμα δι’ ὀπῆς ἐγχέουσιν ἐς τὸν τάφον κτλ. 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]   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 τῶν καλουμένων ἡρώων, 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 Ὀρόντην εἶναι, γένους δὲ αὐτὸν εἶναι τοῦ Ἰνδῶν, Paus. 8, 29, 4; Philostr., H. 669 p. 138, 6–19 K.

[36]   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 (μνημεῖον τοῦ Ῥήσου in Amphipolis: Marsyas ὁ νεώτερος 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]   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 μνῆμα τῶν Αἰγύπτου παίδων, while the rest of their bodies were in Lerne, Paus. 2, 24, 2.

[38]   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: ἀποθανεῖν αὐτὸν οὐκ ἐθέλουσιν (οἱ Τροιζήνιοι) συρέντα ὑπὸ τῶν ἵππων οὐδὲ τὸν τάφον ἀποφαίνουσιν εἰδότες· τὸν δὲ ἐν οὐρανῷ καλούμενον ἡνίοχον τοῦτον εἶναι νομίζουσιν ἐκεῖνον (ἐκεῖνοι?) Ἱππόλυτον, τιμὴν παρὰ θεῶν ταύτην ἔχοντα 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]   A few examples: κενὸν σῆμα 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]   Perhaps by ἀνάκλησις of the ψυχή? see above, Ch. I, n. 86 (at the foundation of Messene ἐπεκαλοῦντο ἐν κοινῷ καὶ ἥρωάς σφισιν ἐπανήκειν συνοίκους, Paus. 4, 27, 6).

[41]   καὶ τεθνεὼς καὶ τάριχος ἐὼν δύναμιν πρὸς θεῶν ἔχει τὸν ἀδικέοντα τίνεσθαι, Hdt. ix, 120.

[42]   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]   See Helbig, D. hom. Epos aus Denkm.1, p. 41.

[44]   See above, p. 23.

[45]   Β 603 οἳ δ’ ἔχον Ἀρκαδίην ὑπὸ Κυλλήνης ὄρος αἰπύ, Αἰπύτιον παρὰ τύμβον.—Cf. Paus. 8, 16, 2–3.—In the Troad the frequently mentioned Ἴλου σῆμα, the σῆμα πολυσκάρθμοιο Μυρίνης which “men” call Βατίεια, were similar monuments.

[46]   The ceremonial announcement of death, the καταμιαίνεσθαι 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 νόμοι by these funeral rites οὐχ ὡς ἀνθρώπους ἀλλ’ ὡς ἥρωας τοὺς Λακεδαιμονίων 145 βασιλεῖς προτετιμήκασιν, Xen., Rep. Lac. xv, 9. King Agis I ἔτυχε σεμνοτέρας ἢ κατ’ ἄνθρωπον ταφῆς, 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 τῶν βασιλέων κηδευομένων προηγεῖτο πυρριχίζων ὁ στρατός (as at the funeral of Patroklos, Ψ 131 ff.), Arist. ap. Schol. V., Ψ 130.

[47]   Εὐπατρίδαι, οἱ . . . μετέχοντες τοῦ βασιλικοῦ γένους, EM. 395, 50.—Thus the Bakchiadai in Corinth were descendants of the royal family of the house of Bakchis. The Βασιλίδαι, 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 ἐκ τοῦ γένους of Androklos at Ephesos, Stra. 633.—The Aigid Admetos, priest of Apollo Karneios at Thera was descended Λακεδαίμονος ἐκ βασιλήων, Epigr. Gr. 191; 192.

[48]   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 πόλις 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 πόλις and its component parts (κρῖν’ ἄνδρας κατὰ φῦλα κατὰ φρήτρας Ἀγάμεμνον) 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]   Those worshipped by a γένος regarded as its progenitors, γονεῖς: AB. 240, 31 (τὰ θύματα δίδωσιν) εἰς τὰ γονέων (ἱερὰ) τὰ γένη.—Physical relationship between the γεννῆται, originally a fact though afterwards only occasionally demonstrable, is indicated by the ancient name ὁμογάλακτες applied to the members of the same clan (Philoch. fr. 91–4) and meaning strictly παῖδες καὶ παίδων παῖδες (Arist., Pol. 1252b, 18).—The word πάτρα with the same meaning as γένος (Μιδυλιδᾶν πάτρα, 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. πάτρα.

[50]   Whose names were chosen by the voice of the Delphic oracle out of a hundred submitted to the Pythia. Arist. Ἀθπ. 21, 6. Cf. Mommsen, Philol., N.F. i, 456 f.

[51]   Instead of the common ἐπώνυμοι we also find the word ἀρχήγεται used of the Heroes of the phylai: Ar. Γῆρας, 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 φυλή when he is called ἀρχηγός: thus Oineus was the ἀρχηγός of the Oineïdai, Kekrops the ἀρχηγός of the Kekropidai, Hippothoön ἀρχηγός of the Hippothoöntidai in [Dem.] 60, 30–1. The ἀρχηγὸς τοῦ γένους is its physical forebear and progenitor, Poll. iii, 19: thus Apollo ἀρχηγὸς τοῦ γένους of the Seleucids, CIG. 3595, 26; cf. Isocr. 5, 32. Thus too the members of a phyle are actually described as the συγγενεῖς of their Hero eponymos: [Dem.] 60, 28.

[52]   Thus we know of both δῆμος and γένος 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 ἀπὸ τῶν κτισάντων, others ἀπὸ τῶν τόπων: Arist. Ἀθπ. 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 πύργοι (= δῆμοι) and συμμορίαι (= γένη), e.g. Κολωτίων, τοῦ Ἀλκίμου πύργου, Ἀλκιμίδης (also names which differ Ναίων, τοῦ Μηράδου πύργου, Βρυσκίδης), CIG. 3064, where see Böckh II, p. 651. In Rhodos a πάτρα as well as its larger inclusive group (κτοίνα) is called Ἀμφινεῖς: IGM. Aeg. i, 695, Ἀμφινέων πάτραι· Εὐτελίδαι, Ἀμφινεῖς, etc. (Ancestor worship προγονικὰ ἱερά in the Rhodian κτοῖναι is vouched for by Hesych. κτύναι: see Martha, BCH. iv, 144.)

[53]   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 Βακχίδαι, Αἰπυτίδαι, not Ἡρακλεῖδαι (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 ἀρχηγέται: 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]   [Arist.] Mirab. 106. 147

[55]   See Paus. 10, 4, 10. In an oracle ap. Plu., Sol. 9: ἀρχηγοὺς χώρας θυσίαις ἥρωας ἐνοίκους ἵλασο.

[56]   Plu., Arist. 11, names seven ἀρχηγέται Πλαταιέων; Clem. Al., Protr. ii, 35 P., gives four of these (Κυκλαῖος seems to be a mistake). Androkrates seems to have been the most prominent; his τέμενος is mentioned by Hdt. ix, 25, his ἡρῷον Thuc. iii, 24, 1; it stood in a thick grove, Paus. loc. cit.

[57]   Paus. 6, 24, 9–10.

[58]   A.R. ii, 835–50, says that this Hero was Idmon the prophet, others called him Agamestor. Sch. ad 845: λέγει δὲ καὶ προμαθίδας, ὅτι διὰ τὸ ἀγνοεῖν ὅστις εἴη ἐπιχώριον ἥρωα καλοῦσιν οἱ Ἡρακλεῶται. 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]   Paus. 6, 20, 15–19. It was a round altar, according to many τάφος ἀνδρὸς αὐτόχθονος καὶ ἀγαθοῦ τὰ ἐς ἱππικήν—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 κενὸν ἠρίον 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 ἀνὴρ Αἰγύπτιος given by Paus. l.c. as a last resort. Acc. to Hesych. ταράξιππος it belonged to Pelops himself, acc. to Lyc. 42 f. to a giant called Ischenos (see Sch. and Tz.). Besides all this a ταράξιππος 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 ταράξιππος. Cf. Pollak, Hippodromica, p. 91 ff., 1890.

[60]   ἥρως εὔοδος, CIG. 4838b, cf. Welcker, Rhein. Mus., N.F. vii, 618—καλαμίτης ἥρως (Dem. 18, 129, with Sch. and Hesych. s.v.)—ἥρως τειχοφύλαξ ἐν Μυρίνῃ, Hesych.—ἥρως ἐπιτέγιος, CIA. iii, 1, 290, and 1, 194–206, see Hiller v. Gärt., Philol. 55, 180 f.—With place-names ὁ ἐπὶ βλαύτῃ ἥρως, Poll. vii, 87—ἥροιν ἐμ πεδίῳ, Att. ins. ap., Leg. Sacr. i, p. 5.—In Epidauros on an architrave occurs the inscr. ἥρωος κλαϊκοφόρου, F. d’Epid. i, n. 245. τῷ κλαϊκοφόρῳ also occurs in an inscr. from Mt. Ithome, Leg. Sacr., p. 36 (n. 15, l. 11).—Probably to this class belongs the ἥρως πάνοψ at Athens, Pl. Lys. init.; Hesych. Phot. s.v.

[61]   ἥρως ἰατρός in Athens, CIA. ii, 403–4, see below.—A ἥρως στρατηγός is mentioned by a (late) ins. Ἐφ. Ἀρχ., 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 Στεφανηφόρου ἡρῷον was mentioned by Antiph., στεφανήφορος ἥρως 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]   In Phaleron there was an altar, καλεῖται δὲ “ἥρωος”—the learned declared it to be an altar of Androgeos the son of Minos: Paus. 1, 1, 4.—Cf. 10, 36, 6: Χαραδραίοις (at Charadra in Phocis) Ἡρώων καλουμένων (i.e. they were called “the Heroes”) εἰσὶν ἐν τῇ ἀγορᾷ βωμοί, καὶ αὐτοὺς οἱ μὲν Διοσκούρων, οἱ δὲ ἐπιχωρίων φασὶν εἶναι ἡρώων.—ἡρωι, ἡρωΐνῃ a sacrifice is offered at Marathon: sacrificial Calendar of the Attic Tetrapolis (fourth century B.C.) in Leg. Sacr. i, p. 48. ἡρωι, ἡρωΐνῃ, ib., p. 2; CIA. i, 4: fifth century.—Decree ordering a record to be set up in the Peiraeus παρὰ τὸν ἥρω, SIG. 834, 26; CIA. ii, 1546–7: ἥρῳ ἀνέθηκεν ὁ δεῖνα. Roehl, IG. 148 Ant. 29: (Mykenai) τοῦ ἥρωός ἠμι, cf. Furtwängler, Ath. Mitth. 1896, p. 9; ib. 323; ἀνέθηκαν τῷ ἡρωι (Locris).—On the different superimposed layers of stucco on the so-called Heroön west of the Altis at Olympia were the ins. Ἥρωος, Ἥρωορ, and once also Ἡρώων. 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 ἥρωες ἐπιχώριοι, 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 ἥρως σιγηλός, Str. 404. On the other hand, it was a special form of respect, at the sacrifice to a Hero, to call out his name: τῷ Ἀρταχαίῃ θύουσι Ἀκάνθιοι ἐκ θεοπροπίου ὡς ἥρωϊ ἐπουνομάζοντες τὸ οὔνομα, Hdt. vii, 117. Ὕλᾳ θύουσιν καὶ αὐτὸν ἐξ ὀνόματος εἰς τρὶς ὁ ἱερεὺς φωνεῖ κτλ. Anton. Lib. 26 fin. Cf. Paus. 8, 26, 7; ἐπικαλούμενοι τὸν Μυίαγρον.—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, ἄγνωστοι θεοί, as at Olympia, Paus. 5, 14, 8, and elsewhere. At Phaleron βωμοὶ θεῶν τε ὀνομαζομένων ἀγνώστων καὶ ἡρώων (sc., ἀγνώστων?) Paus. 1, 1, 4. (ἀγνῶτες θεοὶ Poll. viii, 119. Hesych. s.v.: βωμοὶ ἀνώνυμοι in Attica D.L. i, 110.)

[63]   Τλαπολέμῳ ἀρχαγέτᾳ Pi., O. vii, 78; P. v, 56. The regular custom is mentioned by Ephorus ap. Str. 366: οὐδ’ ἀρχηγέτας νομισθῆναι· ὅπερ πᾶσιν ἀποδίδοται οἰκισταῖς.

[64]   Δημοκλείδην δὲ καταστῆσαι τὴν ἀποικίαν αὐτοκράτορα. Official decree about Brea: CIA. i, 31 [Hicks and Hill^2, n. 41, l. 8].

[65]   Pi., P. v, 87 ff.

[66]   Hdt. vi, 38.

[67]   D.S. 11, 66, 4.

[68]   Hdt. i, 168.

[69]   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 οἱ πολῖται αὐτοῦ ὡς ἄνδρα ἀγαθὸν κομισάμενοι ἔθαψάν τε ἐν τῇ ἀγορᾷ καὶ ὡς ἀρχηγέτην τῆς πόλεως σέβονται, Xen., HG. 7, 4, 12.

[70]   Worship of the law-givers of Tegea as Heroes: Paus. 8, 48, 1.

[71]   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 Δεξίων: 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 ὀργεῶνες τοῦ Δεξίωνος 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]   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]   Plu. Cim. 19—his authority is Nausikrates ὁ ῥήτωρ the pupil of Isokrates. The god ordered μὴ ἀμελεῖν Κίμωνος. Kimon’s spirit was thus expressing its anger at the “neglect” by sending pestilence and γῆς ἀφορία—he wanted a cult.

[74]   Appearance at the battle of Marathon, command of the oracle τιμᾶν Ἐχετλαῖον ἥρωα, Paus. 1, 32, 5.—Swarm of bees in the severed head of Onesilos at Amathos; the oracle orders his head to be buried Ὀνησίλῳ δὲ θύειν ὡς ἥρωι ἀνὰ πᾶν ἔτος, Hdt. v, 114.

[75]   Before the battle of Plataea: Plu., Arist. 11. Before the occupation of Salamis the oracle ordered Solon ἀρχηγοὺς ἥρωας ἵλασο, Plu. Sol. 9.

[76]   The Persian Artachaies, of the family of the Achaimenidai, was given a burial of great pomp after his death, by Xerxes at Akanthos: θύουσι Ἀκάνθιοι ἐκ θεοπροπίου ὡς ἡρωι ἐπουνομάζοντες τὸ οὔνομα, Hdt. vii, 117 (—the Ἀρταχαίου τάφος 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]   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]   Kleomedes μοίρᾳ τωὶ δαιμονίᾳ διέπτη ἀπὸ τῆς κιβωτοῦ, Cels. ap. Orig., Cels. iii, 33, p. 293 L. Oinom. ap. Euseb., PE. 5, 34, 1, (p. 296 Giff.): οἱ θεοὶ ἀνηρείψαντό σε ὥσπερ οἱ τοῦ Ὁμήρου τὸν Γανυμήδην. Thus the gods, acc. to the popular opinion derided by Oinom., gave Kleomedes immortality, ἀθανασίαν ἔδωκαν, p. 297 Giff.

[79]   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 ἔθυσαν Πεδιοκράτῃ τινὶ ἥρωι προστάξαντος αὐτοῖς τοῦ ἐκ Παλικῶν χρηστηρίου.—This Hero is probably the same as Pediakrates, one of the six στρατηγοί of the ἐγχώριοι Σικανοί in Sicily who were slain by Herakles and μέχρι τοῦ νῦν ἡρωϊκῆς τιμῆς τυχάνουσιν. D.S. 4, 23, 5: from Timaeus?

[80]   The lines of the oracle about Kleomedes may very well be ancient (ἔσχατος ἡρώων κτλ.) 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]   οὗτος γὰρ ὁ θεὸς περὶ τὰ τοιαῦτα πᾶσιν ἀνθρώποις πάτριος ἐξηγητὴς ἐν μέσῳ τῆς γῆς ἐπὶ τοῦ ὀμφαλοῦ καθήμενος ἐξηγεῖται, in the words of Plato, Rp. 427 C.

[82]   γίνεται ἐν Δελφοῖς ἥρωσι ξένια, ἐν οἷς δοκεῖ ὁ θεὸς ἐπὶ ξένια καλεῖν τοὺς ἥρωας, Sch. Pi. N. vii, 68.

[83]   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, καὶ ὡς ἥρωσιν αὐτοῖς ἐναγίζουσιν ἀνὰ πᾶν ἔτος, Paus. 8, 41, 1.

[84]   Paus. 1, 32, 4: σέβονται δὲ οἱ Μαραθώνιοι τούτους, οἳ παρὰ τὴν μάχην ἀπέθανον ἥρωας ὀνομάζοντες. 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—χαλεποὶ δὲ θεοὶ φαίνεσθαι ἐναργῶς. As to the results of seeing a Hero cf. the story in Hdt. vi, 117.

[85]   Pi., I. iv, 26 ff.; cf. N. iv, 46 ff.

[86]   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: καὶ δοκέουσι δέ μοι οὗτοι ὀρθότατα Ἑλλήνων ποιέειν, οἳ διξὰ Ἡράκλεια ἱδρυσάμενοι ἔκτηνται καὶ τῷ μὲν ὡς ἀθανάτῳ Ὀλυμπίῳ δὲ ἐπωνυμίην θύουσι, τῷ δὲ ἑτέρῳ ὡς ἥρωϊ ἐναγίζουσι. Combination of θύειν and ἐναγίζειν in one sacrifice to Herakles, at Sikyon: Paus. 2, 10, 1. Herakles ἥρως θεός Pi., N. iii, 22.

[87]   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 Ἄσπετος, 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 ἐκ μαντείας, and where at his annual festival at sunset the women κόπτεσθαι νομίζουσιν, i.e. lament over him as dead. Paus. 6, 23, 3.

[88]   I shall not multiply examples and only note Plu., M. Virt., p. 255 E: τῇ Λαμψάκῃ πρότερον ἡρωϊκὰς τιμὰς ἀποδιδόντες, ὕστερον ὡς θεῷ θύειν ἐψηφίσαντο.

[89]   In the well-known lines ἥκεις ὦ Λύκόοργε κτλ. Hdt. i, 65.

[90]   Thus Eupolis calls the Hero Akademos θεός, as Sophokles does the Hero Kolonos, and others do the same, see Nauck on Soph., OC. 65.

[91]   οἱ ἥρωες καὶ αἱ ἡρωίδες τοῖς θεοῖς τὸν αὐτὸν ἔχουσι λόγον (i.e. for dream-interpretation), πλὴν ὅσα δυνάμεως ἀπολείπονται, Artemid. iv, 78.—Paus. 10, 31, 11: the ancients considered the Eleusinian mysteries as τοσοῦτον ἐντιμότερον than all other religious ceremonies ὅσῳ καὶ θεοὺς ἐπίπροσθεν ἡρώων.

[92]   Machaon’s μνῆμα and ἱερὸν ἅγιον 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 ἡρῷον lay at the foot of the λόφος Δρίον by Mt. Garganus 100 stades from the sea, ῥεῖ δὲ ἐξ αὐτοῦ ποτάμιον πάνακες πρὸς τὰς τῶν θρεμμάτων νόσους, 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]   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]   Sanctuary of Ἥρως ἰατρός 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) Ἰατρός 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 ἥρως στρατηγός, στεφανηφόρος, κλαϊκοφόρος—this last in two different places, like ἥρως ἰατρός, see above, n. 61). Acc. to 151 his view Ἰατρός was given the adj. title ἥρως to distinguish him from a θεὸς Ἰατρός. But this would only be possible if there existed a god who was not merely an ἰατρός and so called by this title, like Ἀπόλλων, Ποσειδῶν ἰατρός, but whose proper name was Ἰατρός. But there was no such god. Usener (151) infers the existence of a god Ἰατρός out of the proper name Ἰατροκλῆς. But this would only be justifiable if there were not a whole host of proper names compounded with -κλῆς, 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 ἥρως ἰατρός differently from the analogous ἥ. στρατηγός, ἥ. τειχοφύλαξ, etc.—There existed besides even νύμφαι ἰατροί, περὶ Ἠλείαν. Hesych.

[95]   CIA. ii, 404, distinguishes the Hero referred to by the decree as the ἥρως ἰατρὸς ὁ ἐν ἄστει. This clearly implies a second ἥρως ἰατρός, outside Athens. But the Rhet. Lex. in AB. 262, 16 f. (cf. Sch. Dem., p. 437, 19–20 Di.), speaks of a ἥρως ἰατρός called Aristomachos ὅς ἐτάφη ἐν Μαραθῶνι παρὰ τὸ Διονύσιον, who it is clear cannot be the ἥρως ἰατρὸς that Demosthenes meant—for he is ὁ ἐν ἄστει; but the description applies very well to the Hero Physician worshipped in Attica outside the ἄστυ. See L. v. Sybel, Hermes, xx, 43.

[96]   Cenotaph of Kalchas in Apulia near the heroön of Podaleirios, Lyc. 1047 ff.—his body was said to be buried in Kolophon: Νόστοι; Tz. Lyc. 427; Schol. D.P. 850. ἐγκοίμησις 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 Σωσθένιον: see Malal., pp. 78–9 Bonn.; Soz., HE. ii, 3.

[97]   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 κενὸν σῆμα of Odysseus in Aetolia (as in the case of Kalchas).

[98]   Grave of Prot.: Hdt. ix, 116 ff.; Lyc. 532 ff. ἱερὸν τοῦ Πρωτεσιλάου 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]   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 Ζ 199. Indeed, Homer knows no other brother of Minos except Rhadamanthys: Ξ 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 γενεαί, cf. Schol. V., Ζ 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 Ἀπόλλων Σαρπηδόνιος; so too in Tarentum—brought thither from Sparta and Amyklai—there was a τάφος παρὰ μέν τισιν Ὑακίνθου προσαγορευόμενος, παρὰ δέ τισιν Ἀπόλλωνος Ὑακίνθου (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]   The inhabitants of Gadeira sacrificed to Men.; Philostr., VA. 5, 4, p. 167, 10 K. τὸ Μενεσθέως μαντεῖον on the Baetis is mentioned by Str., p. 140. How it got there we do not know.

[101]   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]   For Anios see Meineke, An. Alex. 16–17; Wentzel in Pauly-Wissowa Anios. Apollo taught him the mantic art and gave him great τιμάς: D.S. 5, 62, 2. He is called μάντις 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 δαίμονας ἐπιχωρίους, Clem. Al., Protr. ii, p. 35 P., mentions also παρὰ δ’ Ἠλείους Ἄνιον, which Sylburg corrected to παρὰ Δηλίοις. A priest of Anios ἱερεὺς Ἀνίου at Delos is given CIA. ii, 985 D 10; E 4, 53.

[103]   D.S. 5, 63, 2. There she is identified with Molpadia, daughter of Staphylos. In that case ἡμιθέα 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]   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 μαντεῖον τῆς Πασιφίλης is also mentioned by Apollon., Mir. 49: see also Müller, FHG. ii, 288 [see Keller, Paradoxogr., p. 55, 15].

[105]   Something of the kind seems to be suggested by Pi., P. viii, 57: I praise Alkmaion γείτων ὅτι μοι καὶ κτεάνων φύλαξ ἐμῶν ὑπάντασέ τ’ ἰόντι γᾶς ὀμφαλὸν παρ’ ἀοίδιμον μαντευμάτων τ’ ἐφάψατο συγγόνοισι 153 τέχναις. Those much-discussed words I can only interpret as follows. Alkmaion had a ἡρῷον 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” (τέχναις to be connected with ἐφάψ., 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]   Plu., Q. Gr., 40, 300 D.

[107]   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]   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 ἄγαλμα ἀρχαῖον of Enyalios was kept in fetters. About this the γνώμη τῶν Λακεδαιμονίων was that οὔποτε τὸν Ἐνυάλιον φεύγοντα οἰχήσεσθαί σφισιν ἐνεχόμενον ταῖς πέδαις, 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 πέτραν ἔχον εἴδωλον.

[109]   Hdt. vii, 169–70.

[110]   Hdt. vii, 134–7.

[111]   Sanctity of trees and groves dedicated to a Hero: Ael., VH. v, 17: Paus. 2, 28, 7; but esp. 8, 24, 7.

[112]   The story of the wrath of the Hero of Anagyros is told, with a few variations in detail, by Jerome ap. Suid. Ἀνάγ. δαίμων = 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 δαίμων Κιλίκιος, Αἴνειος, are implied but not related by Macarius, iii, 18 (ii, p. 155 Gött.).

[113]   The story in Suid. goes back to Hieron. Rhod. περὶ τραγῳδιοποιῶν (fr. 4 Hill.), who compared the story with the theme of the Euripides Phoenix.

[114]   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. δεκάζων. 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]   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 Ποίνη 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 Ἑτεροιούμενα, 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, Σύβαρις being apparently the special name of this particular Lamia) and the ghostly “Hero” of Temesa.

[116]   Paus. 6, 6, 7–11, the main source; Str. 255; Ael., VH. viii, 18; Plut. Paroem. ii, 31; Suid. Εὔθυμος. The “translation” occurs in Paus. Ael., and Suid. According to Aelian he went to the River Kaikinos near his old home Locri and disappeared: ἀφανισθῆναι. (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]   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]   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 περὶ τῶν ἀψύχων τῶν ἐμπεσόντων τινὶ καὶ ἀποκτεινάντων: Poll. viii, 120, after Dem. 23, 76, cf. Arist. Ἀθπ. 57, 4. Such judgments cannot originally have been merely symbolical in meaning.

[119]   Luc., D. Conc. 12; Paus. 6, 11, 9.

[120]   Luc., l.c. On Polydamas see Paus. 6, 5, and among many others Eus. Chron. Olympionic., Ol. 93, p. 204 Sch.

[121]   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]   Paus. 7, 17, 13–14.

[123]   Plu., Thes. 35.

[124]   Paus. 1, 15, 3; 32, 5.

[125]   Hdt. viii, 38–9.

[126]   Hdt. viii, 64. The difference should be noted: εὔξασθαι τοῖσι θεοῖσι καὶ ἐπικαλέσασθαι τοὺς Αἰακίδας συμμάχους. So, too, we are told in Hdt. v, 75, that both the Tyndaridai ἐπίκλητοι εἴποντο the Spartans into the field. (The Aeginetans sent the Aiakidai to the help of the Thebans, but as they proved unprofitable the Thebans τοὺς Αἰακίδας ἀπεδίδοσαν. Hdt. v, 80).

[127]   Plu., Them. 15.

[128]   Hdt. viii, 121.

[129]   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 οἱ παλαιοὶ μάλιστα τῶν ζώων τὸν δράκοντα τοῖς ἥρωσι συνῳκείωσαν, Plu., Cleom. 39. The temple snake, 155 the Κυχρείδης ὄφις 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]   Themistokles in Hdt. viii, 109.

[131]   Xen., Cyn. i, 17.

[132]   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]   Hdt. vi, 61 (hence Paus. 3, 7, 7); grave of Helen at Therapne, Paus. 3, 19, 8.

[134]   Hdt. vi, 69. Thus, too, the Theagenes mentioned above was regarded in Thasos not as the son of Timosthenes, τοῦ Θεαγένους δὲ τῇ μητρὶ Ἡρακλέους συγγενέσθαι φάσμα ἐοικὸς Τιμοσθένει, 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 ἐγκοίμησις. A big snake approaches her and she has a child. Ἐφ. Ἀρχ. 1885, pp. 21–2, l. 129 ff.

[135]   ἐκ τοῦ ἡρωίου τοῦ παρὰ τῇσι θύρῃσι τῇσι αὐλείῃσι ἱδρυμένου, Hdt. vi, 69.

[136]   Hero ἐπὶ προθύρῳ, Callim., Ep. 26; a Hero πρὸ πύλαις, πρὸ δόμοισιν, late epigram from Thrace, Epigr. Gr. 841; ἥρωας πλησίον τῆς τοῦ ἰδόντος οἰκίας ἱδρυμένους, Artemid. iv, 79, p. 248, 9 H. This, too, is how Pindar’s words about the Hero Alkmaion as his γείτων 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 ἥρωά τις ἐπὶ τῆς οἰκίας ἔχων τούτῳ πολυτελῶς ἔθυεν, 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]   Κύπρῳ ἔνθα Τεῦκρος ἀπάρχει. Aias ἔχει Salamis and Achilles his island in the Pontus; Θέτις δὲ κρατεῖ Φθίᾳ, and so, too, Neoptolemos in Epirus: Pi., N. iv, 46–51; ἀμφέπει used of a Hero, P. ix, 70; τοῖς θεοῖς καὶ ἥρωσι τοῖς κατέχουσι τὴν πόλιν καὶ τὴν χώραν τὴν Ἀθηναίων: Dem. 18, 184.

[138]   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.

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 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 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

But, more frequently than under this most general and exalted title,4 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 Thus Hades had many flattering titles and special names.6 So, too, in many places Zeus of the underworld was worshipped as Zeus Eubouleus or Bouleus,7 at other places, especially Hermione, as Klymenos.8 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 gods9 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 him10; 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 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 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 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 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 Her temples remained in honour, especially at Athens and at the primeval centre of ancient worship of the gods, Olympia.16 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 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 At other places Plouton and these two goddesses were worshipped together, or Zeus Eubouleus and the same two, etc.19 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 crops20; she stands apart indeed from the rest of the Olympians, but no reference to a close association with her daughter is ever made.21 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 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 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 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 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 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 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 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 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” (ἄγος). 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 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 Condemned criminals, indeed, are thrown by the state, unburied, into a pit;32 the sacrilegious and traitors to their country are denied burial in the ground of that country.33 This is a formidable punishment, for even though the outlaw is buried in a foreign country,34 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

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 and also four broken-off vine branches; in the grave, also, the corpse lay on vine branches.37 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 Cypress branches fixed upon the house door outside warned the scrupulous that a corpse was in the house.39 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

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 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 The violent expression of grief, the tearing of the cheeks, beating the breast and head, was forbidden,43 as also was the singing of “poems”,44 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 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 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 dead47 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 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

The lying-in-state of the body seems invariably to have lasted for one day only.50 In the early morning of the third day51 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 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 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 The admission of hired companies of Karian women and men, singing the national dirges, seems at Athens not to have been forbidden.55 At Keos and elsewhere, the laws ordered processions to the grave to be conducted in silence.56 On the whole, the discipline of respectable city life reduced the “excessive and barbaric”,57 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 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 bones59 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 wood60—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 at other times, if the nature of the ground allows, it may rest unburied in a rock-chamber, upon a bed of stonework.62

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 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 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 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 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 To bury the dead within the walls of the city, at least, was considered unobjectionable in later times by certain Dorian states.68 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 Where a country estate belonged to a family, this generally also included the graves of its ancestors.70

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 trees and sometimes a complete 167 grove surrounded the grave, as they did so often the altars and temples of the gods.72 These were intended to serve as pleasant retreats for the souls of the beloved dead.73

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 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 At Keos, permission is just as expressly given for a “preliminary sacrifice to be offered at the funeral in accordance with ancestral custom”.76 When the funeral ceremony is over, the members of the family, after a solemn rite of religious purification,77 put on garlands (they had previously avoided this78) and begin the funeral feast.79 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 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 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 grave82 on the third and on the ninth day after the funeral.83 On the ninth day it appears that ancient usage brought the period of mourning to an end.84 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 At Athens, in addition to the sacrifice on the third and ninth days, another funeral feast which might be repeated several times,86 was held on the thirteenth day.87

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” (τὰ νόμιμα) 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 Besides this, every year at the “Genesia”, when the birthday of the dead came round, the occasion was regularly celebrated with sacrifice.89 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 We hear also of the Nemesia as a feast of the dead in Athens91 (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 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 unsuited to the business of city life. The temples of the gods were closed during that period.94 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 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 dead96 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 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 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 “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

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 Sometimes the living seek to give pleasure to the spirit of the dead by the performance of music.102 Gifts, too, of cakes, fruit, and wine are being made—but the blood of the sacrificial animals is never spilt.103 There was a time when more solemn—and less comfortable—thoughts prevailed;104 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 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 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

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 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 It is not a good thing to attract its attention; it is best to pass by the graves of the dead in silence.110 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 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 Sometimes, indeed, the souls become visible, and then, like the underworld gods and the Heroes, they prefer the shape of a snake.113 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 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 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 gods116 and Heroes, because they regarded them as invisible Powers,117 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 or at least to avert their easily awakened displeasure.119 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 earth120 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 The Tritopatores also, who were invoked at wedding celebrations in Attica that the marriage might prove fruitful,122 were nothing else than the souls of the ancestors.123 We know them also to have been referred to as wind-spirits,124 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 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 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 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 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

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 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 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 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

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 Boeotia134 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 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—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 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 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 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

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 man141 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 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 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 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 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 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 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 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—his life is thereby saved, even if he himself is not justified. This alone is meant by the permission of such voluntary exile. Involuntary homicide150 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 If they voted for it unanimously152 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 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 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 At the commencement of the proceedings both parties take an oath in the name of the Erinyes.156 Each of the three days at the end of the month, upon which legal proceedings in these courts took place,157 was sacred to one of the three goddesses.158 To them sacrifice was made by those who were acquitted in those courts;159 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 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 he is her destined victim.162 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

§ 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 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 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 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 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 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 expiations169—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 At Delphi, 181 too, according to Aeschylus, Apollo himself purified Orestes the matricide from the pollution of his crime.171 At Athens one of the oldest propitiatory sites was called after one of Apollo’s titles, the Delphinion.172 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 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 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

§ 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 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 customs177 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 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]   This dual efficacy of the χθόνιοι 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]   Ζεὺς καταχθόνιος, I 457. θεοῦ χθονίου . . . ἰφθίμου Ἀΐδεω, Hes. Th. 767 f. Evidently there is no distinction here between καταχθόνιος and χθόνιος, as Preller, Dem. u. Pers. 187, wishes to make out.

[3]   Hes. Op. 465, εὔχεσθαι δὲ Διὶ χθονίῳ Δημήτερί θ’ ἁγνῇ κτλ. It is impossible even by far-fetched methods of interpretation (such as Lehrs makes use of, Popul. Aufs.2 298 f.) to make this Ζεὺς χθόνιος into anything else than a Zeus of the underworld. The god of the lower world, totally distinct from the Olympian Zeus (Ζεὺς ἄλλος, 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: ὑπὲρ καρπῶν (καμπῶν on the stone) Διὶ Χθόνίῳ Γῇ Χθονίῃ ΔΕΡΤΑ μέλανα ἐτήσια; ξένῳ οὐ θέμις (where δερτὰ = hostias pelle spoliatas, see Prott, Leg. Sacr. i, p. 17; though the addition of the colour of the no longer visible skin seems remarkable)—ὑπὲρ καρπῶν here belongs to Διί, etc., as the division-mark on the stone before ὑπὲρ 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 χθόνιοι 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]   Ζεὺς χθόνιος at Corinth, Paus. 2, 2, 8; at Olympia, 5, 14, 8.

[5]   Thus Persephone is called Ἁγνή, Δέσποινα, etc. (Lehrs, Pop. Aufs.2 288), also Μελιτώδης, Μελίβοια; Μελινδία, consort of Hades, Malalas, p. 62, 10, Di. [8th ed., Bonn.] (? Μελίνοια, as Hekate is Μειλινόη, Orph., H. 71). Ἀρίστη χθονία, P. Mag. Par. 1450.—Hekate is Καλλίστη, Εὐκολίνη (κατ’ ἀντίφρασιν ἡ μὴ οὖσα εὖκολος, EM.), the Erinyes Σεμναί, Εὐμενίδες; their mother Εὐωνύμη (= Γῆ): Ister ap. Sch. Soph., OC. 42 (from a similar source, Sch. Aeschin. i, 188), etc. Cf. Bücheler, Rh. Mus. 33, 16–17.

[6]   Πολυδέκτης, Πολυδέγμων, Ἀγησίλαος (Epigr. Gr. 195; see Bentley ad Callim., Lav. Pall. 130; Preller, Dem. u. Pers. 192; Welcker, Götterl. ii, 482), Εὐκλῆς (Bücheler, Rh. Mus. 36, 332 f.).—Εὔκολος (corresponding to the Εὐκολίνη above) as a title of Hades must be rejected if Köhler’s correction of CIA. ii, 3, 1529, is right: Ἡδύλος—Εὐκόλου. 184

[7]   Cult of Ζεὺς Εὐβουλεύς at Amorgos, Paros (insc. cit. by Foucart, BCH. vii, 402), of Ζεὺς Βουλεύς at Mykonos, SIG. 615 (Ζεὺς Βουλαῖος, Ins. Perg. i, 246, l. 49, does not belong here); of Εὔβουλος (original title of Hades: Orph., H. xviii, 12) in Eleusis (side by side ὁ θεός, ἡ θεά): 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.) Εὐβουλεύς simply = Hades: Nic., Al. 14; epitaph from Syros, Epigr. Gr. 272, 9, and frequently. So, too, the Ζεὺς Εὐβουλεύς (Hesych. s. Εὐβ.) worshipped in Kyrene must have been a Ζεὺς χθόνιος. 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 Εὐβουλῆα)? 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 εὔβουλος in Pi., P. iii, 92; so also I. vii, 32: εὔβουλος Θέμις.

[8]   Lasos fr. 1 (PLG. iii, 376), etc.—Consecration to Κλύμενος from Athens: CIG. 409.—Hesych. Περικλύμενος· ὁ Πλούτων (it is no accident that gave the name Periklymenos to the magically gifted son of Neleus). Klymenos = Hades, Epigr. Gr. 522 a 2.

[9]   The name Τρεφώνιος, Τροφώνιος itself also points to the fact that assistance to the fertility of the earth was expected of this Ζεὺς χθόνιος. In the later cult of Trophonios not a trace of such a belief survives.

[10]   ἐν οὐδεμιᾷ πόλει Ἅιδου βωμός ἐστιν. Αἰσχύλος φησίν· μόνος θεῶν γὰρ Θάνατος οὐ δώρων ἐρᾷ κτλ. (fr. 161 Sidg.): Schol., AB. on A 158.

[11]   In Elis ἱερὸς τοῦ Ἅιδου περίβολός τε καὶ ναός, Paus. 6, 25, 2. Cult of Demeter and Kore and of Hades in the very fertile Triphylia, Str. 344.

[12]   Kaukones from Pylos, the Nelidai at their head, reach Attica: connexion with the cult of the χθόνιοι 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]   Ἅιδης . . . τοῖς ἐνθάδε τοσαῦτα ἀγαθὰ ἀνίησιν: Pl., Crat. 403 E. ὁ Ἅιδης οὐ μόνον τὰς ψυχὰς συνέχει, ἀλλὰ καὶ τοῖς καρποῖς αἴτιός ἐστιν ἀναπνοῆς καὶ ἀναδόσεως καὶ αὐξήσεως: Schol. B.L., Ο 188.

[14]   οἱ πολλοὶ φοβούμενοι τὸ ὄνομα Πλούτωνα καλοῦσιν αὐτόν (τὸν Ἅιδην), Pl., Crat. 403 A.

[15]   At the Genesia (Nekysia) sacrifice for Ge and the dead, Hesych. Γενέσια.—χοαὶ Γῇ τε καὶ φθιτοῖς, 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 Γῆ κάτοχος on defixiones: CIG. 538–9.

[16]   Γαῖος 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 μόνη θεῶν, Ant. Lib. 15 (acc. to Boios). Side by side with Ζεὺς Χθόνιος was worshipped Γῆ χθονίη at Mykonos, SIG. 615, 26.

[17]   πότνια Γῆ Ζαγρεῦ τε, θεῶν πανυπέρτατε πάντων, Alkmaionis fr. 3 (Kink.).

[18]   Cult of Klymenos and Demeter Χθονία (her festival Χθόνεια: see also Ael. HA. xi, 4) in Hermione, Paus. 2, 35, 4 ff. Pausanias also thinks (3, 14, 5) that the cult of Dem. Χθονία was brought to Sparta 185 from Hermione, which may be right. Kore as Μελίβοια 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 Δάματρι, Κλυμένῳ. 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]   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 χθόνιοι worshipped in conjunction, τὼ θεώ once more joined with Triptolemos, and a second triad: ὁ θεός, ἡ θεά, 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 θεός and θεά 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 ὁ θεός, ἡ θεά and Eubouleus, were called Hermes, Ge, and Plouton. But the correlation of these divinities worshipped there in conjunction with the Σεμναί (acc. to Paus. 1, 28, 6) with the Eleusinian group depends entirely upon the identification of the Σεμναί 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 Εὐβουλεύς, 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 ὁ θεός, ἡ θεά we may compare the appeal on a defixio from Athens, CIG. 1034: δαίμονι χθονίῳ καὶ τῇ χθονίᾳ καὶ τοῖς χθονίοις πᾶσι κτλ.

[20]   Cf. Mannhardt, Mythol. Forsch. 1884, p. 225 ff.

[21]   It cannot, however, be denied that already in Homer Persephone is the daughter of Demeter and Zeus. Adducing Ξ 326 and λ 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]   The cult of Demeter is old in Phthiotis too (—Πύρασον, Δήμητρος τέμενος, Β 695 f.—ἔχουσαι Ἀντρῶνα πετρήεντα, 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]   Aornon and νεκυομαντεῖον (ψυχοπομπεῖον Phot. Θεοὶ Μολοττικοί cf. Append. prov. iii, 18 L.-S.; Eust. κ 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 ψυχομαντεῖον: 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; καταβάσιον ᾅδου at Aigialos = Sikyon: Call. fr. 110.—At Phigaleia in Arcadia a ψυχομαντεῖον at which King Pausanias inquired, Paus. 3, 17, 9.—More famous is the ψυχομαντεῖον 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 Πλουτώνιον and ψυχομαντεῖον 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 τι ψυχομαντεῖον, Plu., Cons. Apoll. 14, p. 109 C).—Next the Asiatic Πλουτώνια and Χαρώνεια: at Acharaka in Karia, Str. 649–50; at Magnesia on the Maiander, ἄορνον σπήλαιον ἱερόν, Χαρώνιον λεγόμενον, Str. 636; at Myous, Str. 579. This is what τὸ ἐν Λάτμῳ ὄρυγμα must have been, mentioned among other Χαρώνια by Antig. Caryst. 123; the Κίμβρος καλούμενος ὁ περὶ Φρυγίαν βόθυνος also mentioned there, may very well have been the place in Phrygia spoken of by Alkman ap. Str. 580: βόθυνος Κερβήσιος ἔχων ὀλεθρίους ἀποφοράς (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 καταβάσιον ᾅδου, accessible at least to the faithful τετελεσμένοι: 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: νέρτερος Ἔχιδνα, 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, τόθι περ πύλαι εἰσ’ Ἀΐδαο, Orph., H. 18, 15, Paus. 1, 38, 5; at Kolonos, Sch. S., OC. 1590–3; at Lerna, Paus. 2, 36, 7; at Pheneos (a χάσμα ἐν Κυλλήνῃ: Conon 15), and probably in Crete too (cf. Bacch. fr. 53 Jebb, ap. Sch. Hes., Th. 914); at Enna in Sicily a χάσμα κατάγειον: 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]   The Σεμναί live there in a χάσμα χθονός, Eur., El. 1266 f., on the eastern slope of the hill.

[25]   Paus. 2, 35, 10. The precinct of the temple was an Asylon, Phot. Ἑρμίονη; AB. 256, 15; Znb. ii, 25 (Ar. Βαβυλ.).—Kerberos is brought up from below at Hermione: Eur., HF. 615. An Acheron, and even an Ἀχερουσιὰς λίμνη, 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]   Strabo viii, 373—the same is reported by Call. fr. 110 of the inhabitants of Αἰγιαλός (prob. = Sikyon, where there was a cult of Demeter, Paus. 2, 11, 2–3; cf. 2, 5, 8. Hesych. ἐπωπίς· Δημήτηρ παρὰ Σικυωνίοις), where, at any rate, there was a καταβάσιον ᾅδου.—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 οἰκουμένη) there dwell γένη δικαιοτάτων ἀνθρώπων, οἷσιν ἀποφθιμένοις ἄνεσις ναύλοιο τέτυκται, 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: Ἑρμιόνη· καὶ ἡ Δημήτηρ καὶ ἡ κόρη ἐν Συρακούσαις. Was there a place called Hermione there too? See Lob., Paralip. 299.

II

[27]   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—ἀποθανόντα δ’ αὐτὸν θαπτέτω καὶ τἆλλα ποιείτω τὰ νομιζόμενα: Solonian law ap. Aeschin., Tim. 13.

[28]   Dem. 43, 57–8.

[29]   Sch. Soph., Ant. 255. Philo ap. Euseb., PE. viii, 358 D; 359 A. See Bernays, Berichte Ber. Ak. 1876, p. 604, 606 f.

[30]   Ψ 71 ff.

[31]   Isoc. 14, 55.

[32]   The βάραθρον at Athens, the Καιάδας 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]   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 αὐτόχειρες. 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 Ἰλιὰς μικρά Aias after taking his own life was buried, not burnt, διὰ τὴν ὀργὴν τοῦ βασιλέως—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 ὅσιον, is taken out of an ancient poem; as Welcker does Kl. Schr. ii, 291.)

[34]   Cf. the words of Teles περὶ φυγῆς 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 ὅμως δὲ τὸ ἐπὶ ξένης ταφῆναι ὄνειδος. 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 περὶ φυγῆς. At least this is not done by the Stoic Musonius or the Platonizing Plutarch. Cf. also Philodem. Mort., p. 33–4 Mekl.

[35]   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]   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]   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 ἄμπελος does not seem to have lustral effect.

[38]   λήκυθοι, τοὔστρακον: Ar., Ec. 1032 f.; χέρνιψ ἐπὶ φθιτῶν πύλαις: Eur., Al. 98 ff. The bowl was called ἀρδάνιον: Sch. Ar., Ec. 1033; Poll. viii, 65 (cf. Phot. 346, 1 ὀρδάνιον). It contained water fetched from another house: Hesych, ὄστρακον—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. ἀρδάνια, cf. 189 πηγαῖον, πηγαῖον ὕδωρ. A laurel branch (as holy-water sprinkler, as commonly in lustrations) was placed in it: Sch. Eur., Al. 98.

[39]   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 δεισιδαίμων, οὔτε ἐπιβῆναι μνήματι, οὔτε ἐπὶ νεκρὸν οὔτ’ ἐπὶ λεχὼ ἐλθεῖν ἐθελῆσαι, Thphr., Ch. 16. This at least was the reason given at Rome for a similar custom: Serv., A. 3, 64; 4, 507.

[40]   Crowning of the dead with garlands, afterwards a general custom, is first mentioned in the Ἀλκμαιωνίς (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 χθόνιοι, 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 σέλινον, 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: στέφανος ἐδίδοτο τοῖς νεκροῖς ὡς τὸν βίον διηγωνισμένοις.

[41]   Pl., Lg. 959 A. Poll. iii, 65. A still stranger reason added ap. Phot. πρόθεσις.

[42]   Permission to attend either the πρόθεσις of the corpse (and the funeral lamentation) or the funeral procession (the ἐκφορά) given only to women of kinship μεχρὶ ἀνεψιότητος: Law ap. Dem. 43, 62–3: i.e. within the ἀγχιστεία, to which alone the duty of the cult of the dead belonged in principle. Only these women of the immediate kin are μιαινόμεναi 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 ἀγχιστεία. (From l. 22 μὴ ὑποτιθέναι, etc., the law speaks of the πρόθεσις, even though at the beginning only the ἐκφορά is in question.)

[43]   ἀμυχὰς κοπτομένων ἀφεῖλεν. 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 κόπτεσθαι ἐπὶ τεθνηκότι 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]   τὸ θρηνεῖν πεποιημένα, Plu., Sol. 21: by which is meant funeral hymns carefully prepared beforehand and perhaps ordered from professional θρήνων σοφισταί, not spontaneous expressions of grief breaking out as though involuntarily.

[45]   Plu., Sol. 21: καὶ τὸ κωκύειν ἄλλον ἐν ταφαῖς ἑτέρων ἀφεῖλεν. 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. (ἑτέρων is only used for variety after ἄλλον and simply = ἄλλων: as frequently by Attic writers: μὴ προϊέμενον ἄλλον ἑτέρῳ τὴν ἀλλαγὴν, Pl., Lg. viii, 849 E: ἕτερον—ἄλλον 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 πατρία of the Λαβυάδαι at Delphi (fifth–fourth century B.C.), BCH. ’95, p. 11, l. 39 ff. τῶν δὲ πρόστα τεθνακότων ἐν τοῖς σαμάτεσσι μὴ θρηνεῖν μηδ’ ὀτοτύζεν (at the funeral of another person). Was Homer thinking of something of the kind in Τ 302: Πάτροκλον πρόφασιν—?

[46]   In Athens it had once been the custom ἱερεῖα προσφάττειν πρὸ τῆς ἐκφορᾶς, i.e. while still in the house of the dead person: [Pl.] Min. 315 C. Such a sacrifice before the ἐκφορά (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: προσφάζεται μὲν αἷμα πρῶτα νερτέροις—where προσφάγιον is used inaccurately of sacrifice at the grave, in which case the πρό is meaningless; as also in the insc. from Keos (SIG. 877, 21). πρόσφαγμα is also thus used, Eur., Hec. 41. Plu. (Sol. 21) says of Solon: ἐναγίζειν δὲ βοῦν οὐκ εἴασεν. Possibly Solon forbade the sacrifice of animals before the ἐκφορά, since the author of the Ps.-Platonic Minos seems also to refer to such a prohibition.

[47]   The Solonian restrictions says Plu. (Sol. 21) have been for the most part adopted in our (i.e. the Boeotian) νόμοι—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 πατρία of the Λαβυάδαι in Delphi in the τεθμός published in the BCH. ’95, p. 9 ff.

[48]   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]   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: μέχρι τίνος ὀδυρόμεθα; ἔασον ἀναπαύσασθαι τοὺς τοῦ μακαρίου δαίμονας.—In Pl., Mx. 248 B, the dead say δεόμεθα πατέρων καὶ μητέρων εἰδέναι ὅτι οὐ θρηνοῦτες οὐδὲ ὀλοφυρόμενοι ἡμᾶς ἡμῖν μάλιστα χαριοῦνται—thus violent grief is intended in Greece, too, to please the dead: see last note—ἀλλὰ . . . οὕτως ἀχάριστοι εἶεν ἂν μάλιστα: while acc. to “Charondas”, Stob., Fl. iv, 2, 24, p. 153 H.: ἀχαριστία ἐστὶ πρὸς δαίμονας χθονίους λύπη ὑπὲρ τὸ μέτρον γιγνομένη.

[50]   ἐκφέρειν τὸν ἀποθανόντα τῇ ὑστεραίᾳ ᾗ ἂν προθῶνται, πρὶν ἥλιον ἐξέχειν, Solonian law in D. 43, 62; cf. Antipho, Chor. 34. Klearch. ap. Proclus in Pl. Rp. ii, 114 Kroll: Kleonymos in Athens, τεθνάναι δόξας τρίτης ἡμέρας οὔσης κατὰ τὸν νόμον προὐτέθη, i.e. it was the morning of the third day, immediately before the ἐκφορά, the πρόθεσις 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 τεθνάναι δόξας, 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, τριταῖος, ἤδη περὶ τὰς ταφὰς αὐτάς, ἀνήνεγκε (Philostr., VA. 3, 38, p. 114, 28 K.: the wife of the man who has just died περὶ τὴν εὐνὴν ὕβρισε, τριταίου κειμένου [sc. τοῦ ἀνδρός] γαμηθεῖσα ἑτέρῳ: i.e. immediately before the ἐκφορά, 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.]: ἡμέρᾳ δὲ τριτῃ τὸ σῶμα προήνεγκαν εἰς ἐμφανές (εἰς τοὐμφανές?) οἱ προσήκοντες. Further, acc. to Plato’s view as given in Lg. 959 A, there should be τριταία πρὸς τὸ μνῆμα ἐκφορά.

[51]   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: ἦ κακὸς κακῶς ταφήσῃ, νυκτὸς οὐκ ἐν ἡμέρᾳ, Eur., Tro. 448.

[52]   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.: στρῶμα δὲ ἓν ὑποβαλέτω καὶ ποικεφάλαιον ἓν ποτιθέτω (for the dead).

[53]   Reproduced Monum. dell’ Instituto, ix, 391 [and in Rayet-Collignon, Céramique grecque, Pl. i].

[54]   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 ἐκκομιδή Solon had not forbidden ἐπ’ ἀλλότρια μνήματα βαδίζειν—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 ἀπῖμεν ϝοἴκαδε ἕκαστον, ἔχθω ὁμεστίων καὶ πατραδελφεῶν καὶ πενθερῶν κἠκγόνων καὶ γαμβρῶν, i.e. the next-of-kin of the dead in ascending and descending order.

[55]   This is referred to as still-existing custom by Plato, Lg. 800 E; cf. Sch. ad loc.; Hesych. Καρῖναι. Menand. Καρίνη, Mein., Com. iv, p. 144 (Karo-phrygian funeral-flutes: Ath. 174 F: Poll. iv, 75–9).

[56]   τὸν θανόντα δὲ φέρεν κατακεκαλυμμένον σιωπῇ μέχρι ἐπὶ τὸ σῆμα, SIG. 877, 11. Funeral-law of Labyad., l. 40 ff. τὸν δὲ νεκρὸν κεκαλυμμένον φερέτω σιγᾷ, κὴν ταῖς στροφαῖς (“at the street-corners”) μὴ καττιθέντων μηδαμεῖ, μηδ’ ὀτοτυζόντων ἔχθος τᾶς ϝοικίας πρίγ κ’ ἐπὶ τὸ σᾶμα ἵκωντι· τηνεῖ δ’ ἔναγος ἔστω κτλ. (the last not yet satisfactorily explained).

[57]   Solon diminished (under the alleged influence of Epimenides) at funerals τὸ σκληρὸν καὶ τὸ βαρβαρικὸν ᾧ συνείχοντο πρότερον αἱ πλεῖσται γυναῖκες, Plu., Sol. 12.

[58]   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. οὐκ εἴασεν (Solon) συντιθέναι πλέον ἱματίων τριῶν, and Plu., Lyc. 27, συνθάπτειν οὔδεν εἰασεν (Lycurg.) ἀλλὰ ἐν φοινικίδι καὶ φύλλοις ἐλαίας θέντες τὸ σῶμα περιέστελλον: cf. Th. i, 134, 4. Cremation, on the other hand, is implied as the more common in Athens (fourth century) by Is. 4, 19: οὔτ’ ἔκαυσεν οὐτ’ ὠστολόγησεν; so, too, the will (third century) of the Peripatetic Lykon (D.L. v, 70): περὶ δὲ τῆς ἐκφορᾶς καὶ 192 καύσεως ἐπιμεληθήτωσαν κτλ. Cf. Also Teles ap. Stob. 40, 8, i, p. 747, 5 H.; τί διαφέρει ὑπὸ πυρὸς κατακαυθῆναι—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]   ὠστολόγησεν, Is. 4, 19.

[60]   The custom of ἐκφορά on an open κλίνη 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 ἐκφορά.

[61]   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 ἐν φοινικίδι καὶ φύλλοις ἐλαίας θέντες τὸ σῶμα περιέστελλον (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: ἔχει γάρ τινα τὸ πορφυροῦν χρῶμα συμπάθειαν πρὸς τὸν θάνατον 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 θάνατος is called πορφύρεος. But even Homer Ω 796 makes Hektor’s bones wrapped πυρφυρέοις πέπλοισι—the bones only in this case instead of the whole body: clearly a vestige of an older custom which survived unchanged in Sparta. Similarly Ψ 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 φοινικίδι ἐκαλυψάτην καὶ ἐθαψάτην 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 ἄραι 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 χθόνιοι), 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, Ἐφ. Ἀρχ., ’88, p. 136; ’89, p. 152.)

[62]   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 κλῖναι (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]   As though the dead had not entirely departed καὶ ὅπλα καὶ σκεύη καὶ ἱμάτια συνήθη τοῖς τεθνηκόσιν συνθάπτοντες ἥδιον ἔχουσιν Plu., Ne Suav. Ep. 26, p. 1104 D. Restrictions in Law of the Labyad. (l. 19 ff.) ὅδ’ ὁ τεθμός περ τῶν ἐντοθηκῶν· μὴ πλέον πέντε καὶ τριάκοντα δραχμᾶν ἐνθέμεν, μήτε πριάμενον μήτε ϝοίκω.

[64]   Helbig, Hom. Epos. 41.

[65]   βελτίονες καὶ κρείττονες. Arist., Eudem. 37 [44] ap. Plu., Cons. Apoll. 27, p. 115 BC.

[66]   [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 ἐνθεμένη τῷ κόλπῳ τὰ ὀστᾶ καὶ κομίσασα νύκτωρ εἰς τὴν οἰκίαν κατώρυξε παρὰ τὴν ἑστίαν, 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]   This occurs among the New Zealanders, Eskimos, etc.; cf. Lubbock, Prehistoric Times, pp. 465, 511, etc.

[68]   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 πρὸ τῶν θυρῶν of their houses and στῆλαι 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 πρὸ τῶν θυρῶν into πρὸ τῶν πυλῶν in order to avoid this difficulty, is obviously rendered untenable by the previous ἑκάστη τῶν οἰκιῶν ὅσους κτλ. The legend is evidently a fiction and these διόβλητοι (to whom it appears, as Heroes, neither the funeral dirge nor the usual χοαί 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]   The μνῆμα κοινὸν πᾶσι τοῖς ἀπὸ Βουσέλου γενομένοις was a πολὺς τόπος περιβεβλημένος, ὥσπερ οἱ ἀρχαῖοι ἐνόμιζον: D. 43, 79. The Bouselidai composed not a γένος, but a group of five οἶκοι bound together by definitely traceable ties of kinship. The members of a γένος in its political sense no longer held graves in common possession: see Meier, de gentil. Att. 33; Dittenb., Hermes, 20, 4. The Κιμώνεια 194 μνήματα 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]   The speaker in Dem. 55, 13 ff., mentions the παλαιὰ μνήματα of the πρόγονοι of the earlier possessors of his χωρίον (country-estate). This custom of burying the family dead in the private ground of the family καὶ τοῖς ἄλλοις χωρίοις συμβέβηκε. Timarchos is asked by his mother τὸ Ἀλωπέκῃσι χωρίον (which lay 11 or 12 stades away from the city walls) ἐνταφῆναι ὑπολιπεῖν αὐτῇ (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 Ἀριστείδου χωρίον ἐν ᾧ τέθαπται in Phaleron.

[71]   Restriction of the growing magnificence of grave columns in Athens made by Demetr. Phal., Cic., Lg. ii, 66. (Penal clauses εἴ τίς κα θά[πτῃ ἢ ἐπί]σταμα ἐφιστᾷ κτλ. 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]   Cf. Curtius, Z. Ges. Wegebaus Gr., p. 262.

[73]   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 ὄφρα καὶ εἰν Ἄϊδι τερπνὸν ἔχοιμι τόπον, Epigr. Gr. 546, 5–14.

[74]   Cf. the ins. from Keos, SIG. 877, 8–9. Eur. IT. 633 ff.: ξανθῷ τ’ ἐλαίῳ σῶμα σὸν κατασβέσω, καὶ . . . γάνος ξουθῆς μελίσσης ἐς πυρὰν βαλῶ.

[75]   ἐναγίζειν δὲ βοῦν οὐκ εἴασεν, Plu., Sol. 21.

[76]   προσφαγίῳ (at the funeral) χρῆσθαι κατὰ τὰ πάτρια, 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]   Cf. esp. the ins. from Keos, l. 15 ff., 30. The ἐγχυτρίστριαι 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 μιαινόμενοι 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]   περὶ τὰ πένθη . . . ὁμοπαθείᾳ τοῦ κεκμηκότος κολοβοῦμεν ἡμᾶς αὐτοὺς τῇ τε κουρᾷ τῶν τριχῶν καὶ τῇ τῶν στεφάνων ἀφαιρέσει, Arist. fr. 108 (101) Rose.

[79]   περίδειπνον. 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, παρὰ τοῖς Λόκροις ὀδύρεσθαι οὐκ ἔστιν ἐπὶ τοῖς τελευτήσασιν, ἀλλ’ ἐπειδὰν ἐκκομίσωσιν εὐωχοῦνται.

[80]   ἡ ὑποδοχὴ γίγνεται ὑπὸ τοῦ ἀποθανόντος, Artemid. 5, 82, p. 271, 10 H.

[81]   Cic., Lg. ii, 63 (cf. λέγειν ἐπιδέξια ἐπὶ τεθνηκότι, Anaxandr. ap. Ath. 464 A.). On the other 195 hand, mentiri nefas erat. And yet εἰώθεσαν οἱ παλαιοὶ ἐν τοῖς περιδείπνοις τὸν τελευτηκότα ἐπαινεῖν, καὶ εἰ φαῦλος ἦν, 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. μηδὲ τᾷ ὑστεραίᾳ (after the burial, on which day the περίδειπνον was held) μηδὲ ἐν ταῖς δεκάταις μηδ’ ἐν τοῖς ἐνιαυτοῖ[ς] (we should expect rather ἐν τ. ἐνιαυτίοις, cf. nn. 88–92 of this chap.) μήτ’ οἰμώζεν μήτ’ ὀτοτύζεν.

[82]   These meals given to the dead took place at the grave itself. Ar., Lys. 612 f. ἥξει σοι . . .; Is. 8, 39, τὰ ἔνατα ἐπήνεγκα.

[83]   The τρίτα and ἔνατα, 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 τρίτα had taken place on the third day after death it would have coincided with the ἐκφορά 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 qua sepultus est). This is also deducible from Vg., A. v, 46 ff., and 105; cf. also Ap., M. ix, 31.

[84]   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]   A χρόνος πένθους 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]   Lex. Rh., in AB. 268, 19 ff.; Phot. a little differently: καθέδρα· τῇ τριακοστῇ (πρώτῃ Phot.: Α instead of Λ) ἡμέρᾳ τοῦ ἀποθανόντος οἱ προσήκοντες συνελθόντες κοινῇ ἐδειπνοῦν ἐπὶ τῷ ἀποθανόντι—καὶ τοῦτο καθέδρα ἐκαλεῖτο (Phot. adds: ὅτι καθεζόμενοι ἐδείπνουν καὶ τὰ νομιζόμενα ἐπλήρουν·) ἦσαν δὲ καθέδραι τέσσαρες (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 τριακάδες. 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 καθέδραι, 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 εἰκάδες for Epicurus in acc. with his will, D.L. x, 18; cf. Cic., Fin. ii, 101; Plin. 35, 5; κατὰ μῆνα 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]   The Lexicographers, Harp., Phot., etc. (AB. 308, 5, is ambiguous, too), speak of the τριακάς 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 (ἡ τριακοστὴ ἡμέρα διὰ τοῦ θανάτου Harp., Phot. μετὰ θάνατον is the correction of Schömann on Is., p. 219, but διὰ θανάτου is formed, not quite correctly, on the analogy of διὰ χρόνου, διὰ μέσου [even διὰ προγόνων “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 τριακάδες corresponding with the τρίτα and ἔνατα, took place on the thirtieth day after burial. So, too, the ins. from Keos, SIG. 877, 21, ἐπὶ τῷ θανόντι τριηκόστια μὴ ποιεῖν. For Argos see Plu., Q. Gr. 24, p. 296 F. It is evident that the τριακάδες were not so firmly established in Athens (at least in the fourth century) as the τρίτα and ἔνατα: e.g. Isaeus generally only refers to these last as the indispensable νομιζόμενα: 2, 36–7; 8, 39. It appears also that it is wrong to regard the τριακάδες as otherwise exactly on a footing with the τρ. and ἔνατα, as is generally done. The last-mentioned pair were sacrifices to the dead, the τριακάδες 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]   τὰ νεκύσια τῇ τριακάδι ἄγεται: 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 (ἀλλαθεάδες, GDI. 1731, 10; 1775, 29; 1796, 6) twice monthly, at the νουμηνία 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 ἀποφράδες: 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 καὶ τοῖς ἀποτροπαίοις (Plu., Symp. 7, 6, p. 709 A). The souls of the dead were then not forgotten. Sch. Pl., Lg. vii, 800 D, ἀποφράδες ἡμέραι ἐν αἷς τοῖς κατοιχομένοις χοὰς ἐπιφέρουσιν. 197

[89]   The son ἐναγίζει καθ’ ἕκαστον ἐνιαυτόν to his dead father, Is. 2, 46. This sacrifice to the dead, celebrated once every year (θυσία ἐπέτειος offered by a παῖς πατρί), is the festival of the Γενέσια, 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 ἐναγίζουσι 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 τὰ γενέθλια τοῦ βασιλέως (one of the deified Attalids) καθ’ ἕκαστον μῆνα: SIG.1 246, 36. Celebration of the ἔμμηνος γενέσιος 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, κατὰ νουμηνίαν, γενέθλιον ἀποθέωσιν, Clem. Al., Str. iii, p. 511 P.

[90]   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, γενέθλια (which did not become common till later), he calls the Γενέσια, Ἀθήνησιν ἑορτή [πένθιμος add. Meursius; cf. Hesych. γενέσια; 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 ἄξονες and Philochoros) that the ἑορτὴ δημοτελής of the Γενέσια 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]   The Νεμέσεια 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 (μήποτε—) 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. νεμέσια). 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 Γενέσια. I see no reason at all for supposing so.—The name νεμέσεια characterizes it as a festival dedicated to the “wrath” of the dead, to the νέμεσις τῶν θανόντων, Soph., El. 792; φθιμένων ὠκυτάτη νέμεσις, Epigr. Gr. 119; cf. 195—this easily becomes a personified Νέμεσις: ἔστι γὰρ ἐν φθιμένοις Νέμεσις μέγα, 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]   At Apollonia in Chalcidice there was a yearly custom to τὰ νόμιμα συντελεῖν τοῖς τελευτήσασιν in early times in Elaphebolion, later in Anthesterion: Hegesand. ap. Ath. 334 F.—ἐνιαύσια, a yearly festival of the dead (but perhaps rather to be taken as sacra privata) in Keos: SIG. 878.—There is a month called Νεκύσιος in Knossos (and common to the whole of Crete acc. to the Ἡμερολόγιον Flor. [Corsini, Fast. Att. ii, 428]). It took its name from a feast of the dead (νεκύσια is mentioned along with περίδειπνα, as a regular expression by Artemid. 198 iv, 81, p. 249, 9 H.): for this see “Treaties of Kretan cities”, BCH. 1879, 294, l. 56 f.—There was a month Ἀγριώνιος or Ἀγριάνιος in Boeotia and even in Byzantium, Kalymna, Kos, Rhodos: Hesych. Ἀγριάνια· νεκύσια παρὰ Ἀργείοις καὶ ἀγῶνες ἐν Θήβαις (as to the Agon at the A. see the ins. from Thebes, Ath. Mitt. vii, 349).—ἐτελεῖτο δὲ καὶ θυσία τοῖς νεκροῖς ἐν Κορίνθῳ, δι’ ἣν τῆς πόλεως ἐν τοῖς μνήμασιν οὔσης ἐπέρχεται ὁ Ἀλήτης κτλ. Sch. Pi. N. vii, 155.

[93]   Hesych. μιαραὶ ἡμέραι. Phot. μιαρὰ ἡμέρα.

[94]   συγκλεισθῆναι τὰ ἱερὰ during the Choes: Phanodem. ap. Ath. 437 C.

[95]   Phot. μιαρὰ ἡμέρα· ἐν τοῖς Χουσὶν Ἀνθεστηριῶνος μηνός, ἐν ᾧ (ἐν οἷς?) δοκοῦσιν αἱ ψυχαὶ τῶν τελευτησάντων ἀνιέναι, ῥάμνον ἕωθεν ἐμασῶντο, καὶ πίττῃ τὰς θύρας ἔχριον. Ῥάμνος· φυτόν, ὃ ἐν τοῖς Χουσὶν ὡς ἀλεξιφάρμακον ἐμασῶντο ἕωθεν· καὶ πίττῃ ἐχρίοντο τὰ σώματα (leg. δώματα)· ἀμίαντος γὰρ αὕτη· διὸ καὶ ἐν ταῖς γενέσεσι τῶν παιδίων χρίουσι τὰς οἰκίας εἰς ἀπέλασιν τῶν δαιμόνων.—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 ἄσφαλτος: 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 καθαρμοί: but that is a different matter.—τὰ καθάρσια· ταῦτα δέ ἐστι δᾷδες καὶ θεῖον καὶ ἄσφαλτος, Zos. ii, 5, p. 67, 19 Bk.). Better known is the magic protective power of the ῥάμνος. It is of use against φάρμακα and φαντάσματα, and is therefore hung up on the doors ἐν τοῖς ἐναγίσμασι: 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. (ῥάμνος also frightens away poisonous beasts: Diosc. iii, 12. In the same way marjoram and scilla are equally available against daimones and ἰοβόλα.) 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. 245a, 3 Mü.], and this is purgationis causa: Varro ap. Charis., p. 144, 22 K.).—At the Choes the ῥάμνος (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 καὶ οὕτω τὴν ἡμέραν περιπατεῖ: also at the Choes? Thphr., Ch. 16. The laurel in addition to its other marvellous properties can also drive off spirits: ἔνθα ἂν ᾗ δάφνη, ἐκποδὼν δαίμονες, Gp. 11, 2, 5–7. Lyd., Mens. 4, 4, p. 68, 9 Wü.

[96]   Sch. Ar., Ach. 961, p. 26, 8 ff. Dübn.—At the νεκρῶν δεῖπνα the souls of the departed members of the family are summoned by the προσήκοντες 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 νεκύσια in Bithynia by Arr. ap. Eust., ι 65, p. 1615). The same thing must have happened at the Anthesteria.

[97]   Worshippers offered the χύτραν πανσπερμίας to Hermes ἱλασκόμενοι τὸν Ἑρμῆν καὶ περὶ τῶν ἀποθανόντων, Sch. Ar., Ach. 1076 (Didymus from Theopomp.)—τοὺς τότε παραγενομένους (read περιγινομένους, viz. from the Flood) ὑπὲρ τῶν ἀποθανόντων ἱλάσασθαι τὸν Ἑρμῆν, 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 Ἑκάτης δεῖπνα were similar, and particularly the offerings to the Erinyes: τὰ πεμπόμενα αὐταῖς ἱερὰ πόπανα καὶ γάλα ἐν ἄγγεσι κεραμείοις, Sch. Aeschin. i, 188. 199

[98]   EM. 774, 56: Ὑδροφόρια· ἑορτὴ Ἀθήνησι πένθιμος (so far Hesych. too, s.v.) ἐπὶ τοῖς ἐν τῷ κατακλυσμῷ ἀπολομένοις. 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 Γῆ Ὀλυμπία: Paus. 1, 18, 7. Pausanias adds, ἐσβάλλουσιν ἐς αὐτὸ (the chasm) ἀνὰ πᾶν ἔτος ἄλφιτα πυρῶν μέλιτι μάξαντες. 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 Γῆ in the Γενέσια too: Hesych. s.v.—Ὑδροφόρια 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]   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 ξενικοὶ θεοί of the Kaunians: Hdt. i, 172. Compare with this the prayers addressed to Herakles in the Orphic Hymns (reproducing ancient superstitions as frequently): ἐλθὲ μάκαρ . . . ἐξέλασον δὲ κακὰς ἄτας, κλάδον ἐν χερὶ πάλλων, πτηνοῖς τ’ ἰοβόλοις κῆρας χαλεπὰς ἀπόπεμπε (12, 15–16). It will be clear how near such personified ἆται and κῆρες are to the angry “souls”, from which in fact they have arisen; cf. besides, Orph., H. 11, 23; 14, 14; 36, 16; 71, 11.—κῆρας ἀποδιοπομπεῖσθαι, Plu., Lys. 17.

[100]   θύραζε Κῆρες, οὐκ ἔτ’ Ἀνθεστήρια. This is the correct wording of the formula; Κᾶρες the form common later and explained with mistaken ingenuity. Photius has it right and explains, ὡς κατὰ τὴν πόλιν τοῖς Ἀνθεστηρίους τῶν ψυχῶν περιερχομένων.—Κῆρες—is clearly a most primitive equivalent for ψυχαί which has become almost completely obscured in Homer, though it dimly appears in Β 302, ξ 207, where the Κῆρες are spoken of as those who carry away other ψυχαί to Hades. Aeschylus knew it (presumably from old Attic speech) and simply substituted ψυχαί for the Keres in the fate-weighing scene in Homer, thus turning the Kerostasia into a Ψυχοστασία (to the surprise of the Schol. A, Θ 70; A.B. X 209). See O. Crusius in Ersch-Gruber, “Keren,” 2, 35, 265–7 [Aesch. fr. 279 Sidg.].

[101]   Cf. the collections in Pottier, Les lécythes blancs attiques à représ. funér., p. 57, 70 ff.

[102]   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]   See Benndorf, Sicil. u. unterital. Vasenb., p. 33.

[104]   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 χθόνιοι; 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]   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 συμπόσιον 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. πυραμίδες 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 χθόνιοι from the Hymn to Demeter; the pig and ram are the main constituents of sacrifice made to the χθόνιοι 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 χθόνιοι (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]   The χοαί, ἅπερ νεκροῖσι μειλικτήρια, 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 (μελίκρατον) were always the chief ingredients: cf. Stengel, Philolog. 39, 378 ff.; Jahr. f. Phil. 1887, p. 653. The ritual at the pouring of an ἀπόνιμμα—essentially a cathartic libation-sacrifice but also offered εἰς τιμὴν τοῖς νεκροῖς is described by Kleidemos ἐν τῷ Ἐξηγητικῷ (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 χθόνια λουτρὰ τοῖς νεκροῖς ἐπιφερόμενα, Zenob. vi, 45, etc. These things have nothing to do with the Ὑδροφόρια, as some have thought.

[107]   The regular animal used as victim in ἐναγίσματα 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. καυστόν· καρπωτὸν ὃ ἐναγίζεται τοῖς τετελευτηκόσιν (cf. Hesych. καυτόν).—The σέλινον (a plant sacred to the dead; see above, n. 40) probably served as food for the dead at the τρίτα and other banquets “of the dead”, and was not used as food for the living at the περίδειπνον; 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 ἀνακτοτελέσται had a special reason of their own for forbidding parsley αὐτόριζον ἐπὶ τραπέζης τιθέναι, Clem. Al., Protr. ii, p. 16 P.)

[108]   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 (ἐλθὲ δ’ ὡς πίῃς): E., Hec. 535 ff. It was the general opinion that ὁ νεκρὸς πίεται of the drink offerings (AP. xi, 8; Epigr. Gr. 646, 12), αἱ γὰρ χοαὶ παραψυχή τις εἰσεφέρετο τοῖς εἰδώλοις τῶν τετελευτηκότων κτλ. Lyd., Mens. 4, 31, p. 90 Wü.

[109]   It feels when friends or enemies approach its grave: Is. 9, 4, 19.

[110]   Sch. Ar., Av. 1490 (referring to the Τιτανόπανες of Myrtilos, a poet of the Old Comedy). Phot. κρείττονες (Hesych. κρείττονας) οἱ ἥρωες· δοκοῦσι δὲ κακωτικοὶ εἶναι· δι’ ὃ καὶ οἱ τὰ ἡρῷα παριόντες σιωπῶσιν. (ἥρωες and ἡρῷα here, in accordance with the usage common in later times, simply = τετελευτηκότες and μνήματα 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, ἥρως Σιγηλός: 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]   Pl., Phd. 81 CD. The ψυχή . . . ὥσπερ λέγεται περὶ τὰ μνήματά τε 202 καὶ τοὺς τάφους κυλινδομένη· περὶ ἃ δὴ καὶ ὤφθη ἄττα ψυχῶν σκιοειδῆ φαντάσματα, κτλ.

[112]   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]   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 χθόνιοι 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 ἥρως ποικίλος—διὰ τὸ τοὺς ὄφεις ποικίλους ὄντας ἥρωας καλεῖσθαι.

[114]   What falls to the ground belongs to the ἥρωες (= souls of the dead): Ar. Ἥρωες fr. 305 H. and G. τοῖς τετελευτηκόσι τῶν φίλων ἀπένεμον τὰ πίπτοντα τῆς τροφῆς ἀπὸ τῶν τραπεζῶν (alluded to by Eur. in the Belleroph. [Stheneb. fr. 667 Din.]), ap. Ath. 427 E. This is the origin of the Pythagorean σύμβολον—as usual founded on ancient belief about the soul—τὰ πεσόντα ἀπὸ τραπεζῆς μὴ ἀναιρεῖσθαι, D.L. viii, 34. Suid. Πυθαγόρα τὰ σύμβολα. This superstition is also the reason for the νόμος said to have been current in Kroton, τὸ πεσὸν ἐπὶ τὴν γῆν κωλύων ἀναιρεῖσθαι, 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]   Solonian law: D. 20, 104; 40, 49. Plu., Sol. 21, Σόλωνος ὁ κωλύων νόμος τὸν τεθνηκότα κακῶς ἀγορεύειν. καὶ γὰρ ὅσιον τοὺς μεθεστηκότας ἱεροὺς νομίζειν. This reminds us of the words of Arist., Eudem. fr. 37 [44] given in Plu., C. Apoll. 27, p. 115 B, τὸ ψεύσασθαί τι κατὰ τῶν τετελευκηκότων καὶ τὸ βλασφημεῖν οὐχ ὅσιον ὡς κατὰ βελτιόνων καὶ κρειττόνων ἤδη γεγονότων (Chilon ap. Stob., Fl. 125, 15 M.: τὸν τετελευκηκότα μὴ κακολόγει ἀλλὰ μακάριζε). A very extreme form of outrage is ψεύσασθαι κατὰ τοῦ τελευτήσαντος: Is. 9, 6; 23; 26. (The κακολόγος is particularly liable to κακὰ εἰπεῖν περὶ τῶν τετελευτηκότων, 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]   Ar., Tagenist. fr. 485, 12, says of the dead, καὶ θύομέν γ’ αὐτοῖσι τοῖς ἐναγίσμασιν, ὥσπερ θεοῖσιν κτλ.

[117]   κρείττονες Hesych. Phot. s.v. Arist. ap. Plu., C. Apoll. 27, p. 115 C.

[118]   ἵλεως ἔχειν (τοὺς τελευτήσαντας): Pl., Rp. 427 B.

[119]   That the ἥρωες δυσόργητοι καὶ χαλεποὶ τοῖς ἐμπελάζουσι γίγνονται (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—χαλεποὺς καὶ πλήκτας τοὺς ἥρωας νομίζουσι, καὶ μᾶλλον νύκτωρ ἢ μεθ’ ἡμέραν: Chamaileon ap. Ath. 461 C (and hence the precautions taken against nocturnal 203 apparitions: Ath. 149 C). Cf. Zenob. v, 60. Hesych. Phot. s. κρείττονες.—That the ἥρωες 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 κρείττονες 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]   Ar., Tagenist. fr. 485, 13: καὶ χοάς γε χεόμενοι (to the dead) αἰτούμεθ’ αὐτοὺς τὰ καλὰ δεῦρ’ ἀνιέναι (intended as a παροιμία or at any rate imitated from a tragedian—apostrophe to a dead woman ἐκεῖ βλέπουσα, δεῦρ’ ἀνίει τἀγαθά, 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 ἀνιέναι τἀγαθά of Demeter ἀνησιδώρα (Paus. 1, 31, 4; Plu., Smp. 9, 14, 4, p. 745 A), and of Γῆ ἀνησιδώρα. διὰ τὸ καρποὺς ἀνιέναι (Hesych.); S., OT. 269, εὔχομαι θεοὺς μήτ’ ἄροτον αὐτοῖς γῆς ἀνιέναι τινά.—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 περὶ ἐνυπνίων (ii, p. 14 Kühn; vi, p. 658 Littré [π. διαίτης iv, 92]). If a person in his dream sees ἀποθανόντας dressed in white, offering something, that is a good omen: ἀπὸ γὰρ τῶν ἀποθανόντων αἱ τροφαὶ καὶ αὐξησιες καὶ σπέρματα γίνονται. 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]   Electra in A., Ch. 486 ff., makes a vow to the soul of her father: κἀγὼ χοάς σοι τῆς ἐμῆς παγκληρίας οἴσω πατρῴων ἐκ δόμων γαμηλίους· πάντων δὲ πρῶτον τόνδε πρεσβεύσω τάφον.—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 Γῆ by those who desired to have children.

[122]   Φανόδημός φησιν ὅτι μόνοι Ἀθηναῖοι θύουσιν καὶ εὔχονται αὐτοῖς ὑπὲρ γενέσεως παίδων, ὅταν γαμεῖν μέλλωσιν, Phot. Suid. τριτοπάτορες.

[123]   The form of the word itself shows that the τριτοπάτορες are simply πρόπαπποι. τριτοπάτωρ is the earliest ancestor, ὁ πάππου ἢ τήθης πατήρ (Arist. ap. Poll. 3, 17). Just as μητροπάτωρ is ὁ μητρὸς πατήρ and πατροπάτωρ ὁ πατρὸς πατήρ (Poll. 3, 16), προπατώρ the forefather, ψευδοπάτωρ = ψευδὴς πατήρ, ἐπιπάτωρ the stepfather (μητρομήτηρ = μητρὸς μήτηρ)—in the same way τριτοπάτωρ is the third forefather, the father of the πατροπάτωρ, i.e. the πρόπαππος. The τριτοπάτορες have an alternative form τριτοπάτρεῖς, Philoch. ap. Suidas τριτοπάτορες: SIG. 443; Leg. Sacr. i, p. 49, l. 32, 52: in Orphic verse this form alone, and not τριτοπάτορες, could be used: see Lobeck, Agl. 764. They were in fact the τρίτοι πατέρες (just as 204 the τριτέγγονοι are the τρίτοι ἔγγονοι, the ἔγγονοι of the third generation). But the “third forefathers” are in fact the first ancestors (Lobeck, 763 f.), οἱ προπάτορες (Hesych.), οἱ πρῶτοι ἀρχηγέται (AB. 307, 16)—the ancestors of the individual first of all, his bodily γονεῖς (the series of whom was not generally counted beyond the πρόπαππος—Is. 8, 32—i.e. the τριτοπάτωρ), and then the “ancestors” of the human race in general (acc. to the explanation of Philoch. ap. Phot. Suid. τριτοπ.; 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]   The Tritopatores are most distinctly referred to as ἄνεμοι: Demon ap. Phot. Suid. τριτοπ. cf. δεσπόται ἀνέμων Phot. τριτοπάτωρ; Tz. Lyc. 738. Orphic poetry made them θυρωροὺς καὶ φύλακας τῶν ἀνέμων. 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 Ἐξηγ.). The genuine and ancient belief about them can still be discerned through all the confusion of misinterpretation and misunderstanding, and according to this the τριτοπάτορες 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 ψυχαί (whose name even is derived from the breath of the wind). From these as from real πνοιαὶ ζῳογόνοι their descendants hope for aid where the entry into life of a new ψυχή 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]   The words of Orestes in A., Ch. 483, give very naive expression to the belief. He calls to the soul of his father: οὕτω (if thou sendest me aid) γὰρ ἄν σοι δαῖτες ἔννομοι βροτῶν κτιζοίατ’· εἰ δὲ μή, παρ’ εὐδείπνοις ἔσει ἄτιμος ἐμπύροισι κνισωτοῖς χθονός. Thus we see that the belief ridiculed by Luc., Luct. 9, was true of earlier times as well: τρέφονται δὲ ἄρα (the dead) ταῖς παρ’ ἡμῖν χοαῖς καὶ τοῖς καθαγιζομένοις ἐπὶ τῶν τάφων· ὡς εἴ τῳ μὴ εἴη καταλελειμμένος ὑπὲρ γῆς φίλος ἢ συγγενής, ἄσιτος οὗτος νεκρὸς καὶ λιμώττων ἐν αὐτοῖς πολιτεύεται.

[126]   Epicurus devotes by will certain definite πρόσοδοι to the yearly offering of ἐναγίσματα 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: Ἐφ. Ἀρχ. 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 κοινὸν τοῦ ἀνδρείου τῶν συγγενῶν (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 ἱερεῖον (i.e. a sheep) and ἱερά, especially ἐλλύται of five choinikes of wheaten flour and a stater of dry cheese (ἐλλ. 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 ἐλλύτης, a loaf, a πάραξ (= βάραξ, βήρηξ: interchange of tenuis and media as frequently) and some ὀψάρια (i.e. small fishes: cf. the ἀποπυρίς 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, καρπωσεῖ, i.e. (he) shall offer them to the Heroes by burning them entire. Cf. Phot. καυστόν· καρπωτόν, ὃ ἐναγίζεται τοῖς τετελευτηκόσιν (καρπῶσαι, κάρπωμα, ὁλοκάρπωσις, etc., are frequent in the LXX) and Phot. ὁλοκαρπούμενον and ὁλοκαυτισμός. καρποῦν = ὁλοκαυτοῦν in the sacrificial calendar from Kos, GDI. 3636; cf. Stengel, Hermes, 27, 161 f.

[127]   See Is. 1, 10.

[128]   In manumission records it is sometimes definitely enjoined that the freed persons shall at the death of their masters θαψάντω καὶ τὰ ὥρια αὐτῶν ποιησάτωσαν: 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.) τὰ ὥρια when applied to the dead (GDI. 1545–6; ὡραίων τυχεῖν E., Sup. 175) means the καθ’ ὥραν συντελούμενα ἱερά (Hesych. ὡραῖα; funeral ordinance of the Labyadai, l. 49 ff.: τὰς δ’ ἄλλας θοίνας κατ’ τὰν ὥραν ἀγαγέσθαι), i.e. the sacrifices to be celebrated periodically (ταῖς ἱκνουμέναις ἡμέραις, n. 138; cf. τελεταὶ ὥριαι, Pi., P. ix, 98 ff.). This doubtless means in particular the ἐνιαύσια ἱερά (cf. nn. 81, 89, 92 of this chap.). Garlanding of graves κατ’ ἐνιαυτὸν ταῖς ὡρίοις (sc. ἁμέραις), GDI. 1775, 21; κατ’ ἐνιαυτὸν ὡραῖα ἱερὰ ἀπετέλουν (to the Heroes), Pl., Cri. 116 C.

[129]   The foll. are the expressions occurring in the speeches of Isaeus which conclusively warrant what is said above. The childless Menekles ἐσκόπει ὅπως μὴ ἔσοιτο ἄπαις, ἀλλ’ ἔσοιτο αὐτῷ ὅστις ζῶντα γηροτροφήσοι καὶ τελευτήσαντα θάψοι αὐτὸν καὶ εἰς τὸν ἔπειτα χρόνον τὰ νομιζόμενα αὐτῷ ποιήσοι, 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 ἔκγονοι (thus securing the cult of the family) does not form the least important part (cf. Pl., Hipp. ma. 291 DE: it is κάλλιστον for a man—according to the popular view—ἀφικομένῳ ἐς γῆρας τοὺς αὑτοῦ γονέας τελευτήσαντας καλῶς περιστείλαντι ὑπὸ τῶν αὑτοῦ ἐκγόνων καλῶς καὶ μεγαλοπρεπῶς ταφῆναι. Medea says to her children in E., Med. 1032 εἶχον ἐλπίδας πολλὰς ἐν ὑμῖν γηροβοσκήσειν τ’ ἐμὲ καὶ κατθανοῦσαν χερσὶν εὖ περιστελεῖν, ζηλωτὸν ἀνθρώποισιν). 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 εἶναι κληρονόμον καὶ ἐπὶ τὰ μνήματα ἰέναι, χεόμενοι καὶ ἐναγιοῦντα (6, 51). It is a mark of the heir τὰ νομιζόμενα ποιεῖν, ἐναγίζειν, χεῖσθαι (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 τρίτα and ἔνατα καὶ τἆλλα τὰ περὶ τὴν ταφήν: 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, ἐναγίζεσθαι καθ’ ἕκαστον ἐνιαυτόν (2, 46), and generally, καὶ εἰς τὸν ἔπειτα χρόνον τὰ νομιζόμενα ποιεῖν (2, 10). Then, just as he has to carry on for the dead man his family worships, his ἱερὰ πατρῷα (2, 46: e.g. for Zeus Ktesios: 8, 16); so also he must, as the dead man once did, make regular offering to the πρόγονοι 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, ἵνα μὴ ἀνώνυμος ὁ οἶκος αὐτοῦ γένηται, 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 Βουσελίδαι 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]   Appealing to φῆμαι, πολλαὶ καὶ σφόδρα παλαιαί, Plato asserts, Lg. 927 A, ὡς ἄρα αἱ τῶν τελευτησάντων ψυχαὶ δύναμιν ἔχουσί τινα τελευτήσασαι, ᾗ τῶν κατ’ ἀνθρώπους πραγμάτων ἐπιμελοῦνται. Hence the ἐπίτροποι of orphaned children πρῶτον μὲν τοὺς ἄνω θεοὺς φοβείσθων . . . εἶτα τὰς τῶν κεκμηκότων ψυχάς, αἷς ἐστιν ἐν τῇ φύσει τῶν αὑτῶν ἐκγόνων κήδεσθαι διαφερόντως, καὶ τιμῶσί τε αὐτοὺς εὐμενεῖς καὶ ἀτιμάζουσι δυσμενεῖς. It is only the circle of influence belonging to the ψυχαί which is here limited (and the circle of worship in consequence), not the potency of that influence.

[131]   This is true at least of the Greeks, as ancient philosophy was already aware: Arist., Pol. i, 2; Dicaearchus ap. St. Byz. πάτρα (who apparently thinks of the πάτρα 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]   The idea of the Lar familiaris can be translated into Greek not inadequately by the words ὁ κατ’ οἰκίαν ἥρως, ἥρως οἰκουρός, 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 ἥρως συγγενείας, CIA. iii, 1460. Inside the house, at the family hearth (in whose μυχοί, “dwells” Hekate: E., Med. 397), the Greeks worshipped—no longer the spirits of the ancestors—but the θεοὶ πατρῷοι, κτήσιοι, μύχιοι, ἑρκεῖοι. 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 δαίμονες πατρῷοι καὶ μητρῷοι: Luc., Peregr. 36. Στέφανος τοῖς τοῦ πατρὸς αὑτοῦ δαίμοσιν, ins. from Lykia, CIG. 4232 = BCH. xv, 552, n. 26. τοῖς δαίμοσι τῆς ἀποθανούσης γυναικός, Philo, Leg. ad G. 65, ii, p. 555 M. More in Lob., Agl. 769 n.)

[133]   The ἀγαθὸς δαίμων 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 ἀγαθὸς δαίμων with chthonic powers. He appears as a snake (Gerhard, Akad. Abh. ii, 24) like all χθόνιοι. (On a snake on a talisman the words are written τὸ ὄνομα τοῦ ἀγαθοῦ δαίμονος: P. Mag. Par. 2427 ff.) ἀγαθοδαίμονες 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, αρεῖαι ὄφεις, and again esp. s.v. ὄφεις παρείας, 364, 1). Sacrifice was made to them in Alexandria on the 25th Tybi as τοῖς ἀγαθοῖς δαίμοσι τοῖς προνοουμένοις τῶν οἰκιῶν: [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 ἀγ. δ. is evidently a good spirit who protects the house. Only with this in mind can we understand how anyone could consecrate his house ἀγαθῷ δαίμονι, as Timoleon did at Syracuse (ἀγαθῷ δαίμονι, Plu., Ips. Laud., 11, p. 542 E; τὴν οἰκίαν ἱερῷ δαίμονι καθιέρωσεν, Plu., Timol. 36, where ἱερῷ 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 ἀγαθὸς δαίμων (Hug, Plat. Symp.2, p. 23); then follows the libation to Zeus Soter. But sometimes it was the “Heroes” and not the ἀγ. δ. who preceded Zeus Soter (Sch. Pi., I v, 10; Gerhard, p. 39): they have taken the place of the ἀγ. δ., which itself reveals the connexion between the ἀγ. δ. and these “souls”. Another fact pointing in the same direction is the worship of the ἀγαθὸς δαίμων 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 δαιμόνων ἀγαθῶν sometimes occurs as completely equivalent to Dis Manibus: e.g. Δαιμόνων ἀγαθῶν Ποτίου, CIG. 2700 b.c. (Mylasa); δαιμόνων ἀγαθῶν Ἀρτέμωνος καὶ Τίτου, 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: Δαίμονος ἀγαθοῦ Ἀριστέου κτλ. BCH. ’90, p. 626 (Karia). (δαίμοσιν ἑαυτοῦ τε καὶ Λαιτιτίας τῆς γυναικὸς αὐτοῦ = 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 ἀγαθὸς δ. 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]   In Boeotia (and elsewhere, particularly in Thessaly) the designation of the dead as ἥρως—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”, τί οὐκ ἀπήγξω, ἵνα Θήβησιν ἥρως γένῃ; (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]   Among the Epizephyrian Locrians ὀδύρεσθαι οὐκ ἔστιν ἐπὶ τοῖς τελευτήσασιν, ἀλλ’ ἐπειδὰν ἐκκομίσωσιν, εὐωχοῦνται, 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]   e.g. Is. 2, 47: βοηθήσατε καὶ ἡμῖν καὶ ἐκείνῳ τῷ ἐν Ἅιδου ὄντι. Strictly speaking no one can βοηθεῖν 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]  —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.: μήποτε δὲ ὕστερον νενόμισται τὸ ἐπὶ τιμῇ τινας τῶν ἀποθανόντων συνιέναι καὶ ὀργεῶνας ὁμοίως ὠνομάσθαι· ὡς ἔστι συνιδεῖν ἐκ τῶν Θεοφράστου διαθηκῶν. The will of Thphr. preserved by D.L. 5, 2, 14, is silent on the point. 209

III

[138]   Oracle ap. D. 43, 66 (cf. 67) τοῖς ἀποφθιμένοις ἐν ἱκνουμένᾳ ἁμέρᾳ (ἐν ταῖς καθηκούσαις ἡμέραις, § 67) τελεῖν τοὺς καθήκοντας καττὰ ôγημένα.—τὰ ôγημένα = τὰ νομιζόμενα “the customary things” (Buttmann, Ausf. Gramm., § 113 n. 7, 1, p. 84 Lob.).

[139]   Inquiry, at sacrifices to the dead, of an ἐξηγητής: Is. 8, 39; of the ἐξηγηταί (who give detailed instructions and advice): [D.] 47, 68 ff. Harp. ἐξηγητής· ἔστι δὲ καὶ ἃ (perh. ὅτε τὰ) πρὸς τοὺς κατοιχομένους νομιζόμενα ἐξηγοῦντο τοῖς δεομένοις. Tim. Lex. ἐξηγηταί· τρεῖς γίνονται πυθόχρηστοι (there is no need to understand this other than literally, i.e. that the college of the πυθόχρ. ἐξηγ. consisted of three members: Schöll, Hermes, 22, 564), οἷς μέλει καθαίρειν τοὺς ἄγει τινὶ ἐνισχηθέντας. The purification of the ἐναγεῖς is closely connected with the cult of the souls. It is true that prescriptions for such purification were to be found also ἐν τοῖς τῶν Εὐπατριδῶν (so Müller, Aesch. Eum. 163 A. 20 [152 n. E.T.]) πατρίοις: Ath. 9, 410 A, and it may be that the college of the ἐξ Εὐπατριδῶν ἐξηγηταί may have also given decisions in such cases. Still, that does not prevent the statement of Timaeus in regard to the ἐξηγ. πυθόχρ. from being true. (Expiations belong principally if not exclusively to the Apolline cult.)

[140]   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: ἄχρι τοῦ πολλὰ τοιαῦτα προθεσπίζεσθαι, οὐχ ὅσιόν ἐστι τῆς ψυχῆς καταγνῶναι θάνατον.

[141]   That already in Homer the circle of the ἀγχιστεῖς (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 (γ 307; I 632 f.; ω 434); once the avengers are the κασίγνητοί τε ἔται τε of the murdered man, ο 273. ἔται has a very wide sense and is not even confined to kinship; at any rate it is not simply “cousins” (ἔται καὶ ἀνεψιοί side by side. I 464).—In Attic law, too, in certain cases the duty of prosecuting the murderer extended beyond the limits of the ἀνεψιαδοῖ to more distant relatives and even to the φράτορες of the murdered man (Law ap. D. 43, 57).

[142]   Flight, indeed ἀειφυγία, on account of φόνος ἀκούσιος: Ψ 85 ff. (The fugitive becomes the θεράπων of the person who receives him into his house in the foreign land: l. 90; cf. Ο 431 f.; this must have been the rule.)—Flight on account of φόνος ἑκούσιους (λοχησάμενος 268) ν 259 ff. And so frequently.

[143]   I 632 ff. καὶ μέν τίς τε κασιγνήτοιο φονῆος ποινὴν ἢ οὗ παιδὸς ἑδέξατο τεθνηῶτος· καί ῥ’ ὁ μὲν ἐν δήμῳ μένει αὐτοῦ πόλλ’ ἀποτίσας τοῦ δέ τ’ ἐρητύεται κραδίη καὶ θυμὸς ἀγήνωρ ποινὴν δεξαμένου. Here it is very plainly represented that all that is required is to appease “the heart and spirit” of the receiver of the ποινή: the murdered man is not considered.

[144]   It is very natural to suppose that the ποινή (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 ποινή 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 ποινή has been paid or not (Σ 497 ff.), as in the case of any other συμβόλαιον. But the prosecution of the murderer in all its departments is left entirely in the hands of the family of the murdered man.

[145]   We have very few details on this point. In Sparta οἱ γέροντες (δικάζουσι) τὰς φονικὰς (δίκας), 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 ἔφυγε παῖς ὢν οἴκοθεν παῖδα ἄκων κατακανὼν (like Patroklos in fact, Ψ 87), ξυήλῃ πατάξας, 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 ἐπὶ Θράκῃ the laws of Androdamas of Rhegion were in force περί τε τὰ φονικὰ καὶ τὰς ἐπικλήρους, 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]   The limits of those qualified to inherit extends in Athenian law μέχρι ἀνεψιαδῶν παίδων (Law ap. D. 43, 51; cf. § 27) as did the duty of avenging murder μεχρὶ ἀνεψιαδῶν: D. 47, 72 (ἐντὸς ἀνεψιότητος, 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 ἀγχιστεία, 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 γονεῖς 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]   As to the restless wandering of the βιαιοθάνατοι 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 αἰσχρῶς ἀλῶμαι. A later authority uses words that correspond well with ancient belief: Porph., Abst. ii, 47, τῶν ἀνθρώπων αἱ τῶν βίᾳ ἀποθανόντων (ψυχαὶ) κατέχονται πρὸς τῷ σώματι, like the souls of the ἄταφοι.

[148]   In Homeric times the injured dead becomes a θεῶν μήνιμα to the evil-doer (X 358, λ 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: ὁ θανατωθεὶς θυμοῦται τῷ δράσαντι κτλ., Pl., Lg. 865 DE, appealing to παλαιόν τινα τῶν ἀρχαίων μύθων λεγόμενον; 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—τοῦ παθόντος προστρεπομένου τὴν πάθην. The indignant soul becomes προστρόπαιος. προστρόπαιος probably 211 applies only in a derivative sense to a δαίμων who takes the part of the dead man (esp. Ζεὺς προστρόπαιος); it is strictly speaking an epithet of the soul itself in its longing for vengeance. Thus in Antiphon Tetral. 1, γ 10, ἡμῖν μὲν προστρόπαιος ὁ ἀποθανὼν οὐκ ἔσται. 3, δ 10, ὁ ἀποκτείνας (or rather ὁ τεθνηκὼς) τοῖς αἰτίοις προστρόπαιος ἔσται. So, too, A., Cho. 287, ἐκ προστροπαίων ἐν γένει πεπτωκότων. EM. 42, 7, Ἠριγόνην, ἀναρτήσασαν ἑαυτήν, προστρόπαιον τοῖς Ἀθηναίοις γενέσθαι. 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 οἱ τῶν ἀποθανόντων προστρόπαιοι, ὁ προστρόπαιος τοῦ ἀποθανόντος as something distinct from the dead man himself: Tetr. 3, α 4; 3, β 8; cf. ὁ Μυρτίλου προστρόπαιος, Paus. 2, 18, 2, etc.; cf. Zacher, Dissert. phil. Halens., iii, p. 228. The injured dead himself becomes ἀραῖος, Soph., Tr. 1201 ff. (cf. fr. 367; E., IT. 778; Med. 608); later his place is taken by δαίμονες ἀραῖοι. 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 παλαιὰ μηνίματα 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 μῆνιν χαλεπὴν ἀποπέμπειν, εἴ τις ἀπὸ χθονίων προγόνων οἴκοισι πελάσθη, H. 37, 7 f.; cf. 39, 9–10.

[149]   χρεών ἐστιν ὑπεξελθεῖν τῷ παθόντι τὸν δράσαντα τὰς ὥρας πάσας τοῦ ἐνιαυτοῦ, καὶ ἐρημῶσαι πάντας τοὺς οἰκείους τόπους ξυμπάσης τῆς πατρίδος, Pl., Lg. ix, 865 E. The law says in the case of the criminal convicted of murder εἴργειν μὲν τῆς τοῦ παθόντος πατρίδος, κτείνειν δὲ οὐχ ὅσιον ἁπανταχοῦ, D. 23, 38.

[150]   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 ποινή) to the relations of the victim: Plu., Q.Gr. 46, p. 302 B.

[151]   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 αἴδεσις. See Philippi, Areop. u. Epheten, 115 f.

[152]   Law ap. D. 43, 57.

[153]   D. 37, 59. See Philippi, op. cit., p. 144 ff. Cf. E., Hipp. 1435 f., 1442 f., 1448 f.

[154]   Such prohibition against taking a ποινή for murder is made by the Law ap. D. 23, 28: τοὺς δ’ ἀνδροφόνους ἐξεῖναι ἀποκτείνειν . . . λυμαίνεσθαι δὲ μή, μηδὲ ἀποινᾶν (cf. § 33 τὸ δὲ μηδ’ ἀποινᾶν· μὴ χρήματα πράττειν, τὰ γὰρ χρήματα ἄποινα ὠνόμαζον οἱ παλαιοί). 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. ὑποφόνια· τὰ ἐπὶ φόνῳ διδόμενα χρήματα τοῖς οἰκείοις τοῦ φονευθέντος, ἵνα μὴ ἐπεξίωσιν. On the strength of this Hermann, Gr. Staatsalt.5 104, 6, says, “even intentional murder could be absolutely indemnified.” Nothing is actually said of φόνος ἑκούσιος here nor do we anywhere learn that the payment of ὑποφόνια 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 ὑποφόνια 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—ἄποινα· λύτρα, ἃ δίδωσί τις ὑπὲρ φόνου ἢ σώματος. οὕτως Σόλων ἐν νόμοις—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. ὑποφόνια. We know, in fact, that the law referred to the ἄποινα and ἀποινᾶν as forbidden things, from the passages already quoted from Dem. (23, 28–33). From these the gloss was itself probably derived.

[155]   We cannot, however, believe on the poor authority of Sch. Dem. p. 607, 16 ff., that the ἱεροποιοὶ ταῖς Σεμναῖς θεαῖς 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. ἱεροποιοί.) According to all analogies we should rather expect this selection to have been made by the popular Assembly.

[156]   αἱ διωμοσίαι καὶ τὰ τόμια, Antiphon, Herod. 88. In more detail D. 23, 67–8. Those who had to take an oath swore by the Σεμναὶ θεαί 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 αὑτὸν καὶ γένος καὶ οἰκίαν τὴν αὑτοῦ (Antiphon, Herod. 11) to the Curse-Goddesses, the Ἀραί or the Ἐρινύες αἵ θ’ ὑπὸ γαῖαν ἀνθρώπους τίνυνται, ὅτις κ’ ἐπίορκον ὀμόσσῃ (Τ 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]   Poll. 8, 117, καθ’ ἕκαστον δὲ μῆνα τριῶν ἡμερῶν ἐδίκαζον (the judges on the Areiopagos) ἐφεξῆς, τετάρτῃ φθίνοντος, τρίτῃ, δευτέρᾳ.

[158]   οἱ Ἀρεοπαγῖται τρεῖς που τοῦ μῆνος ἡμέρας τὰς φονικὰς δίκας ἐδίκαζον, ἑκάστῃ τῶν θεῶν μίαν ἡμέραν ἀπονέμοντες, 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 ἀποφράδες ἡμέραι: EM. 131, 16 f.; Et. Gud. 70, 5 (the thirtieth day of the month is for that reason φαύλη πᾶσιν ἔργοις acc. to “Orpheus” fr. 28 Ab.).

[159]   Paus. 1, 28, 6.

[160]   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]   The Erinyes are said ἀπὸ ζῶντος ῥοφεῖν ἐρυθρὸν ἐκ μελέων πέλανον, 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]   The Erinyes say to Orestes: ἐμοὶ τραφείς τε καὶ καθιερωμένος καὶ ζῶν με δαίσεις οὐδὲ πρὸς βωμῷ σφαγείς, A., Eum. 304 f. The matricide is divis parentum (i.e. their Manes) sacer, their sacrificial victim (θῦμα καταχθονίου Διός D.H. 2, 10, 3), in the older belief of Greece, too.

[163]   See Rh. Mus. 50, 6 ff.

[164]   The fact that after receiving the αἴδεσις of the dead man’s relatives the agent of a φόνος ἀκούσιος was still required to offer the expiatory sacrifice as well as undergo purification (ἱλασμός and καθαρμός) is alluded to by Dem. 23, 72–3, in the double expression θῦσαι καὶ καθαρθῆναι, ὁσιοῦν καὶ καθαίρεσθαι (cf. Müller, Aesch. Eum., p. 144 [122, n. 2, E.T.]).

[165]   See Philippi, Areop. u. Eph. 62.

[166]   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 μίασμα attaching to him. Cf. the case especially of Theoklymenos, ο 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 Αἰθιοπίς, p. 33 Kink.; refusal of Neleus to purify Herakles from the murder of Iphitos: Hesiod ἐν καταλόγοις, Sch., Il. Β 336.—Mythical exx. of such purifications in later accounts: Lob., Agl. 968–9.

[167]   E g. offering of cakes, sacrifice of drink-offerings without wine, burning of the materials of sacrifice; cf. the description of ἱλασμός (in this place clearly distinguished from καθαρμός) in A.R. iv, 712 ff. Similar account (offerings without wine, etc.) of the ἱλασμός (which is, however, improperly called καθαρμός, 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 πρὸς πᾶσαν ἀφοσίωσιν καὶ ἀποκάθαρσιν: 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 Ζεὺς χθόνιος, is the principal victim in expiatory sacrifices, its fleece, the Διὸς κώδιον, receiving the various materials of expiation, etc.

[168]   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 Ζεὺς μειλίχιος (a euphemistic title; cf. above, n. 5), who is unmistakably a χθόνιος. Hence, like all χθόνιοι he is represented as a snake on the votive tablet to Ζ. μειλ. 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, Διὶ Μειλιχίῳ καὶ Ἐνοδίᾳ, BCH. 13, 392. Other θεοὶ μειλίχιοι in Lokris were worshipped with nocturnal sacrifice (as regularly in the case of underworld deities): Paus. 10, 38, 8. The δαίμονες μειλίχιοι as χθόνιοι are contrasted with the μακάρεσσιν οὐρανίοις 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 ἀποτρόπαιοι: 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 ἀποτρόπαιοι, to Ge and the Heroes: Hp., Diaet. 4, 8, vi, p. 652 L. Ζεὺς ἀποτρόπαιος must have been a χθόνιος, but we have side by side with him an Ἀθηνᾶ ἀποτροπαία (and an Apollo ἀποτρ. too): ins. from Erythrai, SIG. 600, 69; 115: the provinces of Ὀλύμπιοι and χθόνιοι 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 (ἁγνίσαντες καὶ μειλίχια θύσαντες): 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 θεοὶ Ὀλύμπιοι and the gods to whom only an apotropaic cult, ἀποπομπάς, was offered; these being the gods of expiation (cf. ἀποδιοπομπεῖσθαι in propitiatory sacrifices; ἀποπομπαῖοι θεοί: Apollod. ap. Harp. ἀποπομπάς. Cf. also ἀποπομπή of evil daimones in contrast to the ἐπιπομπή of the same: Anon. Vir. Herb. xxii, 165. See Hemsterhuys, Lucian ii, p. 255 Bip.; Lob., Agl. 984, ii).

[169]   e.g. in the description of the ἱλασμός of Medea by Kirke in A.R. iv, 712 ff.

[170]   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]   Cho. 1055–60. Eum. 237 ff., 281 ff., 445 ff., 470.

[172]   The Delphinion, the court for trying φόνος δίκαιος, 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 (ἀφοσιούμενος τὸ ἄγος, Poll. viii, 119).

[173]   Plu., Ser. Num. 17, p. 560 EF. Note the expressions: ἱλάσασθαι τὴν τοῦ Ἀρχιλόχου ψυχήν, ἱλασασθαι τὴν Παυσανίου ψυχήν. Suid. Ἀρχίλοχος, from Aelian: μειλίξασθαι τὴν τοῦ Τελεσικλείου παιδὸς ψυχήν, καὶ πραῧναι χοαῖς.

[174]   The three ἐξηγηταὶ πυθόχρηστοι, οἷς μέλει καθαῖρειν τοὺς ἄγει τινὶ ἐνισχηθέντας, Tim. Lex. p. 109 R.

[175]   Pl., Lg. 865 B: the agent in a φόνος ἀκούσιος (of a special kind) καθαρθεὶς κατὰ τὸν ἐκ Δελφῶν κομισθέντα περὶ τούτων νόμον ἔστω καθαρός.

[176]   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: ὁ τεθνεώς, οἱ νόμοι, and θεοὶ οἱ κάτω, Or. 1, 31. The vigorous prosecution of the case on the part of the relations of the dead is βοηθεῖν τῷ τεθνεῶτι: 1, 31. Tetr. 1 β, 13. The condemnation of the murderer is τιμωρία τῷ ἀδικηθέντι, his personal revenge: 5, 88 = 6, 6. The accusing relatives come before the court as representatives of the dead man, ἀντὶ τοῦ παθόντος ἐπισκήπτομεν ὑμῖν, as they say to the judges, Tetr. 3 γ, 7. The duty of accusing as well as the ἀσέβημα of the deed of bloodshed rests upon them until satisfaction is made for it: Tetr. 1 α, 3. But the μίασμα 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 ἀφορίαι and δυστυχεῖς πράξεις on the city. It is to the greatest interest of the judges to avert this pollution by giving a propitiatory judgment: Tetr. 1 α, 10; Or. 5, 11, 82; Tetr. 1 α, 3; 1 γ, 9, 11; 3 γ, 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 α, 3; 3 α, 4; 3 δ, 10; for in this case the murdered man is deprived of his τιμωρία: 3 α, 4. But perjured witnesses and unjust judges are liable to a μίασμα, too, which they then introduce into their own houses: Tetr. 3 α, 3; or at least, if they give a false condemnation (but not a false acquittal) of the accused, they incur the μήνιμα τῶν ἀλιτηρίων acc. to Tetr. 3 β, 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 ἐνθύμιος to the judges and no longer to his relatives: Tetr. 1 γ, 10.—The source of the resentment is said to be the dead man himself: προστρόπαιος ὁ ἀποθανών, Tetr. 1 γ, 10; cf. 3 δ, 10; where he is parallel with τὸ μήνιμα τῶν ἀλιτηρίων. The murdered man leaves behind him τὴν τῶν ἀλιτηρίων δυσμένειαν (and this is what the μίασμα really is—not as some modern writers have imagined, any sort of “moral” pollution—as is clearly stated in this passage: τὴν τῶν ἀλιτ. δυσμένειαν, ἢν . . . μίασμα . . . εἰσάγονται): Tetr. 3 α, 3; cf. Again 3 β, 8; 3 γ, 7. In this case the avenging spirits substitute themselves for the soul of the dead man (just as in the case where a προστρόπαιος τοῦ ἀποθανόντος is spoken of: cf. above, n. 148). The προστρόπαιοι τῶν ἀποθανάντων become themselves δεινοὶ ἀλιτήριοι of the dilatory relatives: 216 Tetr. 3 α, 4. There is no essential distinction between the two (cf. Poll. 5, 131). Elsewhere we hear of τὸ προστρόπαιον as the special attribute or feeling of the murdered man himself: Tetr. 2 δ, 9. Thus also we have the alternatives ἐνθύμιος ὁ ἀποθανών (1 γ, 10) and τὸ ἐνθύμιον (2 α, 2; 2 δ, 9). In this connexion it is clear that ἐνθύμιον (as the fixed and conventional expression for these superstitions) means the indignant memory, the longing for revenge of the murdered man (—ἐνθύμιον ἔστω Δάματρος καὶ Κούρας, GDI. 3541, 8). The proper understanding of this word will help us to see what is meant by the expression ὀξυθύμια 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 ὀξύθυμον, a stronger version of ἐνθύμιον, by apotropaic sacrifice.

[177]   See Appendix ii (μασχαλισμός).

[178]   Xen., Cyr. 8, 7, 17 ff.: οὐ γὰρ δήπου τοῦτό γε σαφῶς δοκεῖτε εἰδέναι ὡς οὐδέν εἰμι ἐγὼ ἔτι, ἐπειδὰν τοῦ ἀνθρωπίνου βίου τελευτήσω· οὐδὲ γὰρ νῦν τοι τήν γ’ ἐμὴν ψυχὴν ἑωρᾶτε . . . τὰς δὲ τῶν ἄδικα παθόντων ψυχὰς οὔπω κατενοήσατε, οἵους μὲν φόβους τοῖς μιαιφόνοις ἐμβάλλουσιν, οἵους δὲ παλαμναίους (which means first the criminal and then, as here, the punishing spirit that avenges the criminal deed, exactly like προστρόπαιος, ἀλιτήριος, ἀλάστωρ, μιάστωρ: see Zacher, Dissert. phil. Halens. iii, 232 ff.) τοῖς ἀνοσίοις ἐπιπέμπουσι; τοῖς δὲ φθιμένοις τὰς τιμὰς διαμένειν ἔτι ἂν δοκεῖτε, εἰ μηδενὸς αὐτῶν αἱ ψυχαὶ κύριαι ἦσαν; οὔτοι ἔγωγε, ὦ παῖδες, οὐδὲ τοῦτο πώποτε ἐπείσθην, ὡς ἡ ψυχή, ἕως μὲν ἂν ἐν θνητῷ σώματι ᾖ, ζῇ, ὅταν δὲ τούτου ἀπαλλαγῇ, τέθνηκεν. Then follow other popular arguments for the belief in the continued existence of the soul after its separation from the body.

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 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 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 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 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 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 part6 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 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 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 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 was the contribution of Athens to that circle: his temple was situated in Athens not Eleusis;11 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 act12 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 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 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 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 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

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 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 committed19 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 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 songs21 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

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 Greeks23 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 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: ἓν ἀνδρῶν, ἓν θεῶν γένος—“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 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 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

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 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 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 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 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 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 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 Nor is it easy to see what part of the mysteries could have served as a vehicle of moral influence.35 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]   H. Cer. 270 ff. (Demeter speaks) ἀλλ’ ἄγε μοι νηόν τε μέγαν καὶ βωμὸν ὑπ’ αὐτῷ τευχόντων πᾶς δῆμος ὑπαὶ πόλιν αἰπύ τε τεῖχος, Καλλιχόρου καθύπερθεν, ἐπὶ προὔχοντι κολωνῷ. ὄργια δ’ αὐτὴ ἐγὼν ὑποθήσομαι, ὡς ἂν ἔπειτα εὐαγέως ἔρδοντες ἐμὸν μένος ἱλάσκησθε. Building of the temple: 298 ff., and following that the instructions of the goddess as to the δρησμοσύνη ἱερῶν and the ὄργια, 474 ff.

[2]   See Lobeck, Agl. 272 ff.

[3]   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]   Körte, Ath. Mitt. 1896, p. 320, dates the decree in the year 418.

[5]   κατὰ τὰ πάτρια καὶ τὴν μαντείαν τὴν ἐκ Δελφῶν, SIG. 20, l. 5; 26 f.; 35 [IG. i, Supp., p. 59, 27b]. In Sicily the Eleusinia are already well known in the time of Epicharmos: Epich. ἐν Ὀδυσσεῖ αὐτομόλῳ ap. Ath. 374 D = 100 Kaib. EM. 255, 2; cf. K. O. Müller, Kl. Schr. ii, 259.

[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 γένη 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 ἐπὶ βωμῷ, 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 δρησμοσύνη ἱερῶν. This would then be part of the compromise (συνθῆκαι, Paus. 2, 14, 2) between Athens and Eleusis upon which the whole relationship between the two states and their religious cults rested.

[7]   See above, chap. v, n. 18.

[8]   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 δαειρίτης 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. Δαίρᾳ οἷς κυοῦσα 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 χθόνιοι. (Meaning of the name uncertain: ? “the knowing one” or “the (torch) burning one”: cf. Lobeck, Pathol. prol. 263.) In Eust. on Ζ 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 ὑγρὰ φύσις to the ancients; so also Ael. Dionys. quoting οἱ περὶ τελετὰς καὶ μυστήρια 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)—τινὲς δὲ φύλακα Περσεφόνης ὑπὸ Πλούτωνος ἀποδειχθῆναί φασι τὴν Δάειραν (648, 40). According to this she would be a Hades-daimon keeping guard over the wife of Aidoneus (cf. the guardian Κωκυτοῦ περίδρομοι κύνες 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 δρᾶμα μυστικόν? 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]   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 πόνων ὅρμον ἄλυπον.—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]   Ἴακχος (there clearly distinguished from Διόνυσος) τῆς Δήμητρος δαίμων is described as ὁ ἀρχηγέτης τῶν μυστηρίων in Str. 468 (cf. Ar., Ran. 398 f.).

[11]   The Ἰακχεῖον (Plu., Arist. 27. Alciphr. iii, 59, 1).

[12]   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 νυκτὸς ἐν Ἐλευσῖνι ὑπὸ πολλῷ πυρὶ τελῶν τὰ μυστήρια βοᾷ καὶ κέκραγε λέγων· ἱερὸν ἔτεκε πότνια κοῦρον Βριμὼ βριμόν. 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 εὐνουχισμένος διὰ κωνείου. Of this Epict. for example (3, 21, 16) knows nothing, but only speaks of the ἁγνεία—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 sorbitione castrari of the hierophant. Likewise Serv., A. vi, 661.) 232

[13]   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]   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 μύσται καὶ ἐπόπται there is mention also of ἀκόλουθοι (but not of δοῦλοι, Ziehen, Leg. Sacr. [Diss.], p. 14 f.)—i.e. presumably slaves, not themselves Mystai, belonging to the μύσται. But if slaves were initiated that would not prevent there being other slaves, ἀκόλουθοι of the μύσται, uninitiated and not reckoned among the μύσται. 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, μύησις δυοῖν τῶν δημοσίων (the state slaves employed in the building operations) Δ Δ Δ (cf. l. 68). Initiation of the δημόσιοι also in CIA. ii, 834 c, 24. On this view, when the comic poet Theophilos (ii, p. 473 K.) makes someone speak of his ἀγαπητὸς δεσπότης by whom he ἐμυήθη θεοῖς, 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]   Isoc. 4, 28, Δήμητρος γὰρ ἀφικομένης εἰς τὴν χώραν . . . καὶ δούσης δωρεὰς διττάς, αἵπερ μέγισται τυγχάνουσιν οὖσαι, τούς τε καρποὺς καὶ τὴν τελετήν, . . . οὗτως ἡ πόλις ἡμῶν οὐ μόνον θεοφιλῶς ἀλλὰ καὶ φιλανθρώπως ἔσχεν, ὥστε κυρία γενομένη τοσούτων ἀγαθῶν οὐκ ἐφθόνησε τοῖς ἄλλοις, ἀλλ’ ὧν ἔλαβεν ἅπασι (he means all Greeks: cf. 157) μετέδωκεν.

[16]   μυεῖν δ’ εἶναι τοῖς οὖσι Κηρύκων καὶ Εὐμολπιδῶν as the law appoints, CIA. i, 1 (more exactly Supp. p. 3 f.), ll. 110–11. Thus the μύησις belonged exclusively to the members of the γένη 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 ἄρχων of the Εὐμολπιδῶν γένος, having already been made a member of that γένος: ins. from Eleusis, Ath. Mitt. 1894, p. 172.—There is no reference to the Eleusinia in what is said about the μυεῖν of a priestess belonging to the family of the Phyllidai in Phot. Φιλλεῖδαι: see Töpffer, Att. Geneal. 92.—The exx. of μύησις collected by Lobeck (Agl. 28 ff.) do not contradict this law: in the case of Lysias who ὑπέσχετο μυήσειν the hetaira Metaneira [D.] 59, 21, μυεῖν 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.) ἐμυήθην θεοῖς, i.e. at the expense of my master.

[17]   The πρόρρησις of the Basileus and the proclamations of the hierophant and dadouchos excluded all ἀνδροφόνοι 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 τοῖς ἐν αἰτίᾳ the Archon gave warning ἀπέχεσθαι μυστηρίων καὶ τῶν ἄλλων νομίμων (Poll. 8, 90): in fact, the person accused of murder was in any case, as “unclean”, excluded from all νόμιμα: Antipho, vi, 36 (in AB. 310, 8 read νομίμων). 233

[18]   ὅσιοι μύσται, Ar., Ran. 336. (So, too, the Mystai of the Orphic mysteries are called οἱ ὅσιοι: Pl., Rp. 363 C; Orph., H. 84, 3.) ὅσιος is probably here used in its primitive sense = “clean” (ὅσιαι χεῖρες, etc.). [Pl.] Axioch. 371 D refers to τὰς ὁσίους ἀγχιστείας of the Eleus. Mystai. In the same way ὁσιοῦν was used of ritual purification and expiation: φυγαῖσιν ὁσιοῦν the murder, E., Or. 515; ὁσιοῦν the returned homicide, D. 23, 73; (of the Bacchic mysteries βάκχος ἐκλήθην ὁσιωθείς, E. fr. 472, 15). Thus the ὅσιοι are identical with the κεκαθαρμένοι as the initiated are called: Pl. Phd. 69 C, and frequently. It would be hazardous to suppose that the Mystai called themselves ὅσιοι as the only pious and righteous people (though that is what ὅσιος ἄνθρωπος 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]   In a solemn announcement of the Keryx as it seems: the latter acc. to Sopater διαίρ. ζητημ. (Walz, Rhet. Gr. viii, 118, 24 f.) δημοσίᾳ ἐπιτάττει τὴν σιωπήν at the commencement of the sacred ritual.

[20]   τὰ μυστήρια ποιεῖν, Andoc., Myst. 11–12.—The more clearly descriptive expression, ἐξορχεῖσθαι τὰ μυστήρια does not seem to occur before Aristides, Lucian, and the latter’s imitator Alciphron. [Lys.] 6, 51: οὗτος ἐνδὺς στολήν, μιμούμενος τὰ ἱερὰ ἐπεδείκνυε τοῖς ἀμυήτοις καὶ εἶπε τῇ φωνῇ τὰ ἀπόρρητα. The ἀπορ. thus divulged were the sacred formulæ uttered by the hierophant.

[21]   At least in later ages there was plenty to hear: εἰς ἐφάμιλλον κατέστη ταῖς ἀκοαῖς τὰ ὁρώμενα, Aristid., Eleus. I, 415 Di. [ii, 28 Ke.]. We frequently hear of the beautiful voices of the hierophants, of ὕμνοι ringing out, etc.

[22]   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.] ἀλλὰ μὴν τό γε κέρδος τῆς πανηγύρεως οὐχ ὅσον ἡ παροῦσα εὐθυμία . . . ἀλλὰ καὶ περὶ τῆς τελευτῆς ἡδίους ἔχειν τὰς ἐλπίδας. id. Panath. I, 302 Di. τὰς ἀρρήτους τελετὰς ὧν τοῖς μετασχοῦσι καὶ μετὰ τῆν τοῦ βίου τελευτὴν βελτίω τὰ πράγματα γίγνεσθαι δοκεῖ. 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]   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 εἰς πνεύματα καὶ ῥεύματα καὶ σπόρους καὶ ἀρότους καὶ πάθη γῆς καὶ μεταβολὰς ὡρῶν 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 ἥλιον καὶ σελήνην καὶ ποταμοὺς καὶ λειμῶνας καὶ καρποὺς καὶ πᾶν τὸ τοιουτῶδες were the real essence of the Greek gods, was looked upon as one of the ἄθεοι (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 τὸ διὰ τῶν καρπῶν φερόμενον πνεῦμα (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 Κόρη is nothing else but a (feminine) personification of κόρος = young plant, shoot.

[24]   A hint of such an explanation occurs in Sallustius, de Dis iv, κατὰ τὴν ἐναντίαν ἰσημερίαν (i.e. the autumnal) ἡ τῆς Κόρης ἁρπαγὴ μυθολογεῖται γενέσθαι· ὃ δὴ κάθοδός ἑστι τῶν ψυχῶν (from the standpoint of this Neoplatonist at any rate the analogy might be carried through). So, too, Sopater διαίρ. ζητ. in Walz, Rh. Gr. viii, 115, 3, speaks of τὸ τῆς ψυχῆς πρὸς τὸ θεῖον συγγενές as if it were confirmed in the (Eleusinian) mysteries.

[25]   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]   Soph. fr. 753 N. [791 P.] ὡς τρὶς ὄλβιοι κεῖνοι βροτῶν, οἳ ταῦτα δερχθέντες τέλη μόλωσ’ ἐς Ἅιδου· τοῖσδε γὰρ μόνοις ἐκεῖ ζῆν ἔστι, τοῖς δ’ ἄλλοισι πάντ’ ἐκεῖ κακά.

[27]   The privileged position of the initiated is exhibited with striking vigour in the well-known outburst of Diogenes: τί λέγεις, ἔφη, κρείττονα μοῖραν ἕξει Παταικίων ὁ κλέπτης ἀποθανὼν ἢ Ἐπαμεινώνδας, ὅτι μεμύηται; 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. συμβαίνει πολλάκις τῶν μὲν ἀγαθῶν ἀνδρῶν μηδένα μυεῖσθαι, λῃστὰς δὲ ἔστιν ὅτε καὶ καταποντιστὰς καὶ γυναικῶν θιάσους βδελυκτῶν καὶ ἀκολάστων, ἐπὰν ἀργύριον παράσχωσι τοῖς τελοῖσι καὶ ἱεροφαντοῦσι. Cf. Spec. Leg. 3, 7, i, p. 306 M.

[28]   Of this nature were the ἱερά 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 κίστη and the κάλαθος: O. Jahn, Hermes, 3, 327 f.): see Lob., Agl. 51–62.

[29]   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 χθόνιοι 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]   ἡ κρύψις ἡ μυστικὴ τῶν ἱερῶν σεμνοποιεῖ τὸ θεῖον, μιμουμένη τὴν φύσιν αὐτοῦ φεύγουσαν ἡμῶν τὴν αἴσθησιν. Str. 467. 235

[31]   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 ἀμυδρὰ ἐκεῖνα πρὸς ἔνδειξιν ὧν σπεύδει διδάσκειν (iv, p. 361 K.). This cannot have been true of the assurances given to the Mystai of a blessed future in Hades.

[32]   Such proclamations may have occurred in the ἱεροφάντου ῥήσεις (Sop. διαίρ. ζητ. Walz, viii, 123, 29; cf. Lob., Agl. 189).

[33]   Lob., Agl. 52, 58 f.

[34]   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 ἵνα τιμωρήσητε μὲν τοὺς ἀσεβοῦντας κτλ. are not to be taken with the previous μεμύησθε καὶ ἑωράκατε τοῖν θεοῖν τὰ ἱερά but with οἵτινες ὅρκους μεγάλους κτλ., καὶ ἀρασάμενοι κτλ. 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 ὅσοι μεμυήμεθα stand loosely side by side with εὐσεβῆ διήγομεν τρόπον περὶ τοὺς ξένους καὶ τοὺς ἰδιώτας. (Of the Samothrakian mysteries Diodoros says, 5, 49, 6: γίνεσθαι δέ φασι καὶ εὐσεβεστέρους καὶ δικαιοτέρους καὶ κατὰ πᾶν βελτίονας ἑαυτῶν τοὺς τῶν μυστηρίων κοινωνήσαντας—as it seems without effort on their part by a pure act of grace.)

[35]   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 διαμένουσι Ἐλευσῖνι (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: ζῷα μὴ σίνεσθαι was really (as Xenokr. seems to have understood it) intended to recommend a complete ἀποχὴ ἐμψύχων, 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 μὴ ἀποκτεῖναι βοῦν ἀρότριον, 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.

CHAPTER VII

IDEAS OF THE FUTURE LIFE

Certain allusions in Plutarch and Lucian1 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 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 The ancient fable of Herakles’ descent to Hades and conflicts in the underworld received embellishment at more than one poet’s hand.4 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

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 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 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 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.9 238

§ 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

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 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. Aeschylus12 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 Later on, the picture of the judges in Hades (to whom Triptolemos was also added),14 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 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

§ 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 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 a “City of Delight”19 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 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 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 242 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 and an undutiful son is being choked by his own father.23 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 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 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 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 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]   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]   Paus. 9, 31, 5.

[3]   The remains in Kinkel, Frag. Epic. i, 215 ff. This Μινυάς was identified by K. O. Müller, Orchom^2., p. 12, with the Orphic κατάβασις εἰς Ἅιδου, and this suggestion has been followed, though with hesitation, even by Lobeck, Agl. 360, 373. It rests solely on the fact that the Orphic κατάβασις 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 κατάβασις εἰς Ἅιδου 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 Μινυάς 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 κατάβασις εἰς Ἅιδου 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]   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 κατάβασις of Herakles in its traditional form must have differed noticeably from the Nekyia in λ, 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]   Hyperides, Epit. § 35–9 = p. 92 f. (Blass^3): Leosthenes will meet ἐν Ἅιδου 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: τοὔνεκά σε φθιμένων καθ’ ὁμήγυριν ὁ κλυτὸς Ἅδης ἴσε πολισσούχῳ σύνθρονον Ἰδομενεῖ.

[6]   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 τὰς κῆρας, ὃ δηλοῖ τὰς ψυχάς, ἔχει βοράν: Porph. ap. Eus., PE. 3, 11, 11, p. 110 A, etc.): the superstitious are afraid τῷ Κερβέρῳ διαδάκνεσθαι (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 μελιτοῦττα 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 ῥιζοτόμοι 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 (δός instead of ὅν). Adopting this correction the words express a prayer of the Chorus addressed to a child of Tartaros and Ge, who is called ὁ αἰένυπνος, which must mean “who sends to everlasting sleep” (not “who sleeps for ever”)—(or to separate παῖς Γᾶς καὶ Ταρτάρου from αἰένυπνος as the Schol. would do, is impossible. The αἰένυπνος, 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, ὄφεις καὶ θηρία (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 Κέρβερος 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]   Agatharch. p. 115, 14 ff. Müll., says that it is a popular belief τῶν οὐκέτι ὄντων τοὺς τύπους ἐν πορθμίδι διαπλεῖν, ἔχοντας Χάρωνα ναύκληρον καὶ κυβερνήτην, ἵνα μὴ καταστραφέντες ἐκφορᾶς ἐπιδέωνται πάλιν.

[8]   Cf. v. Duhn, Arch. Zeit. 1885, 19 ff.; Jahrb. arch. Inst. ii, 240 ff.

[9]   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” (καρκάδων, cf. Lobeck, Prol. Path. 351; κατιτήριον, δανάκη and simply ναῦλον: 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. τεθνήξῃ . . . ἐκ πολλῶν ὀβολὸν 246 μοῦνον ἐνεγκάμενος: 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]   Ar., Tagenist. fr. 488, 9: διὰ ταῦτα γάρ τοι καὶ καλοῦνται (οἱ νέκροὶ) μακάριοι· πᾶς γὰρ λέγει τις, ὁ μακαρίτης οἴχεται κτλ., μακαρίτης, 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 μάκαρες θεοὶ αἰὲν ἐόντες. The full meaning still appears in the appeal to the heroized Persian monarch: μακαρίτας ἰσοδαίμων βασιλεύς, Aesch., Pers. 633 (νῦν δ’ ἐστὶ μάκαιρα δαίμων, E., Alc. 1003); cf. also Xen., Ages. xi, 8, νομίζων τοὺς εὐκλεῶς τετελευτηκότας μακαρίους. Such passages allow us to see that μακάριος, μακαρίτης were not used of the dead in any sense κατ’ ἀντίφρασιν, as χρηστός sometimes is (Plu., Q. Gr. v, p. 292 B; though on grave inscr. it is generally meant in its proper sense); cf. εὐκρινής, Phot. Suid. μακαρίτης frequently occurs as applied to one lately dead in late writers: see Ruhnken, Tim., p. 59. Lehrs, Popul. Aufs^2., p. 344. Doric form ζαμερίτας: Phot. μακαρίτας. μακαρία “Blessedness”, the land of the Blessed, i.e. the dead, is only used in a humorous sense in such phrases as ἄπαγ’ ἐς μακαρίαν (Ar. Eq. 1151), βάλλ’ ἐς μακαρίαν. So, too, is ἐς ὀλβίαν. ὡς εἰς μακαρίαν· τὸ εἰς ᾅδου, Phot. (μακαρία, the name of a sacrificial cake—Harp. νεήλατα—occurs in modern Greek usage as a cake used at funerals, Lob., Agl. 879).

[11]   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 ἐταρτάρωσεν 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]   Aesch., Eum. 273 f.; cf. Supp. 230 f. The fact that in this passage the poet says ἐκεῖ δικάζει τὰμπλακήμαθ’, ὡς λόγος, Ζεὺς ἄλλος simply shows that he is not simply following his own ideas in this fancy of a judgment in the other world (οὐκ ἐμὸς ὁ μῦθος). 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 λόγος that Aesch. is following (in this one point). See below, p. 425.

[13]   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 καὶ Τριπτόλεμος καὶ ἄλλοι ὅσοι τῶν ἡμιθέων δίκαιοι ἐγένοντο ἐν τῷ ἑαυτῶν βίῳ. 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 ἀληθῶς δικασταί, οἵπερ καὶ λέγονται ἐκεῖ δικάζειν exercise their powers as judges among the dead, too, and decide between them in their disputes just as Minos does in the Nekyia of λ 568–71, and as Rhadamanthys still does in Pi., O. ii, 83 ff., on the μακάρων νᾶσος. 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 λ 568 ff. Rhadamanthys is known to δ 564 as dwelling among those who have been translated alive to Elysion. There he is—not judge: there is nothing there to judge, but—πάρεδρος 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., Χείρωνες, 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 εὐσέβεια (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, λέγεται παρὰ Πλούτωνι καὶ Κόρῃ μεγίστας τιμὰς ἔχων παρεδρεύειν ἐκείνοις 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 λαμβάνει θρόνον τοῦ Πλούτωνος ἑξῆς. Proedria of the Mystai in Hades, etc.). Aiakos is κλειδοῦχος of Hades; [Apollod.] 3, 12, 6, 10; Epigr. Gr., 646, 4; P. Mag. Par. 1264 ff.; πυλωρός (cf. Hades himself as πυλάρτης, Θ 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, κλειδοῦχε Περσέφασσα Ταρτάρου κόρη. 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]   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, ἐπὶ ταῖσι τοῦ Πλούτωνος οἰκοῦσιν θύραις (like the Mystai in Ar., Ra. 163): they enjoy the rights of πάρεδοι of the divine pair, and hence they are seated on θρόνοι or δίφροι.

[15]   Ar., Ra. 145 ff., 273 ff. “Darkness and mud,” σκότος καὶ βόρβορος, as manner and place of punishment for ἀμύητοι καὶ ἀτέλεστοι, 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 ἀτέλεστοι without distinction: Plu. π. ψυχῆς 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 μὴ κεκαθαρμένους 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 θεῖα). 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 ἀσεβεῖς (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 εἰς τοὺς ἀσεβεῖς ὠσθῆναι in Hades (53), confesses himself an adherent of Orpheus (11).—The μεμυημένοι dwell in Hades next to the palace of Plouton himself: Ar., Ra. 162 f., where they have the privilege of προεδρία, D.L., vi, 39. When a distinction between a χῶρος εὐσεβῶν and a χῶρος ἀσεβῶν in Hades began to be made, the initiated, in order that they might not be deprived of their privileged position, were given προεδρία in the χ. εὐσεβῶν. 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 εὐσεβεῖς and μεμυημένοι to reward in Hades.

[16]   Sex. Emp., M. ix, 53. Suid. Διαγόρας.

[17]   Descents to Hades occurred in the Κραπάταλοι of Pherecr. (i, p. 167 K.); the Βάτραχοι and Γηρυτάδης of Ar.; [Pherecr.] Μεταλλ. (i, p. 174 K.); and probably also in the Τροφώνιος 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]   Utopian existence in Hades; see in partic. [Pherecr.] Μεταλλ. (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 συμπόσιον τῶν ὁσίων in Hades (Pl., Rp. ii, 263 C, μακάρῶν εὐωχία, 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]   ἔστι γ’ εὐδαίμων πόλις παρὰ τὴν ἐρυθρὰν θάλατταν, Ar., Av. 144 f. (cf. Griech. Roman, 201 ff.).

[20]   λίμνη (the Acherousian lake: Eur., Alc. 443, and often afterwards). Charon: Ar., Ra. 137 ff., 182 ff., 185 ff.—σκότος καὶ βόρβορος 144 ff., 278 ff., 289 ff. Abode and life of the Mystai: 159, 163, 311 ff., 454 ff.

[21]   τὸ Λήθης πεδίον, 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 Λήθης πεδίον together with the Ἀμέλης ποταμός (hence 621 C: Λήθης ποταμός) 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 ἀμενηνὰ κάρηνα. Does Theognis already (704, 705) refer to it?—Περσεφόνην . . . ἥτε βρότοις παρέχει λήθην, βλάπτουσα νόοιο. Other references to the Λήθης πύλαι, Λάθας δόμοι, Λήθης ὕδωρ are all later; the Λήθης θρόνος 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]   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]   Paus. 10, 28, 4.

[24]   See Appendix iii.

[25]   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 δαίμων τῶν ἐν Ἅιδου 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 λυπρὴν δαῖτα Χάρωνι. Even in Soph., El. 542, we have; Ἅιδης ἵμερον τέκνων τῶν ἐκείνης ἔσχε δαίσασθαι (Welcker, Syll., p. 94).

[26]   Paus. 10, 28, 3. Cf. O. Jahn, Hermes, iii, 326.

[27]   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

CHAPTER VIII

ORIGINS OF THE BELIEF IN IMMORTALITY

THE THRACIAN WORSHIP OF DIONYSOS

The popular conception of the continued existence of the souls of the dead, resting upon the cult of the dead, grew up and coalesced with a view of the soul derived from Homeric teaching on the subject, which was in essential, though unrecognized, contradiction with the cult of souls. The popular conception, unchanged in all essentials, remained in force throughout the coming centuries of Greek life. It did not contain within itself the seeds of further development; it did not make any demand for better and deeper ideas of the character and condition of the soul in its independent life after its separation from the body. Still more, it had nothing in it that could have led beyond the belief in the independent future life of those souls to the conception of an everlasting, indestructible, immortal life. The continued life of the soul, such as was implied in and guaranteed by the cult of souls, was entirely bound up with the remembrance of the survivors upon earth, and upon the care, the cult, which they might offer to the soul of their departed ancestor. If that memory dies out, if the venerating thoughtfulness of the living ceases, the soul of the departed is at once deprived of the sole element in which it still maintained its shadow of an existence.

It was impossible, then, that the cult of the souls should produce out of itself the idea of a true immortality of the soul or of the independent life of the soul indestructible by its very nature. Greek religion as it existed among the people of Homer could not shape such a belief of its own accord, and even if it were offered from outside could not have accepted it. It would have meant giving up its own essential character.

If the soul is immortal, it must be in its essential nature like God; it must itself be a creature of the realm of Gods. When a Greek says “immortal” he says “God”: they are interchangeable ideas. But the real first principle of the religion of the Greek people is this—that in the divine ordering of the world, humanity and divinity are absolutely divided in place and nature, and so they must ever remain. A deep 254 gulf is fixed between the worlds of mortality and divinity. The relations between man and God promoted by religion depend entirely upon this distinction. The ethical ideas of the Greek popular conscience were rooted in the frank admission of the limitations proper to human capacity which was conditioned by an existence and a fate so different from that enjoyed by the gods; in the renunciation of all human claims to happiness and independence. Poetic fancies about the “Translation” of individual mortals to an unending life enjoyed by the soul still united to the body might make their appeal to popular belief; but such things remained miracles in which divine omnipotence had broken down the barriers of the natural order on a special occasion. It was but a miracle, too, if the souls of certain mortals were raised to the rank of Heroes, and so promoted to everlasting life. The gulf between the human and the divine was not made any narrower on that account; it remained unbridged, abysmal. The bare idea that the gulf did not in reality exist, that actually in the order of nature the inner man, the “Soul” of man belonged to the realm of gods; that as a divine being it had everlasting life—such an idea would involve further consequences about which no one can be in much doubt: it would have contradicted every single idea of Greek popular religion. It never could have become widely held and believed in by the Greek populace.

Nevertheless, at a certain period in Greek history, and nowhere earlier or more unmistakably than in Greece, appeared the idea of the divinity, and the immortality implicit in the divinity, of the human soul. That idea belonged entirely to mysticism—a second order of religion which, though little remarked by the religion of the people and by orthodox believers, gained a footing in isolated sects and influenced certain philosophical schools. Thence it has affected all subsequent ages and has transmitted to East and West the elementary principles of all true mysticism: the essential unity of the divine and the human spirit; their unification as the aim of religion; the divine nature of the human soul and its immortality.

The theory and doctrine of mysticism grew up in the soil of an older cult-practice. Greece received from abroad a deeply emotional religious cult, accompanied by practices that stimulated mysterious and extraordinary imaginings. The sparks of momentary illumination struck out by this faith were fed and fanned by mysticism till they became a vivid and enduring flame. For the first time, clearly 255 discernible through its mystical wrappings, we meet with the belief in the indestructibility and eternal life of the soul: we meet it in the doctrines of a mystical sect which united in the worship of Dionysos. The worship of Dionysos must have sown the first seed of the belief in an immortal life of the soul. To explain how this may have happened; to make clear to the mind of the reader how the essence and inner reality of that worship was bound to stir up the belief in an immortal life—such is our next task.

§ 2

In the spiritual life of men and nations, it is not by any means the extravagant or, in one sense or another, the abnormal that is most difficult for our sympathetic understanding to grasp. By clinging to a traditional and too narrow formula for the Greek spirit we make difficulties for ourselves; but it is not really a matter of serious perplexity, if we reflect upon it, to understand how Greek religion at the height of its development regarded “madness” (μανία) as a religious phenomenon of wide-reaching importance. Madness, in this sense, is a temporary destruction of physical balance, a condition in which the self-conscious spirit is overwhelmed, “possessed” by a foreign power, as our authorities explain it to us. This madness “which comes not from mortal weakness or disease, but from a divine banishment of the commonplace”1 found effective application in the mantic and telestic arts. Its effects were so common and well recognized that the truth and importance of such religious madness (entirely distinguishable from bodily disease) was treated as a fact of experience not merely by philosophers, but by the doctors themselves.2 For us it only remains obscure how such “divine mania” was fitted into the regular working order of the religious life; the sensations and experiences themselves belonging to this condition are made intelligible enough by a whole host of analogies. In fact if the truth were told we should rather have to admit that it is easier for us to sympathize with such overflowing of sensation and all that goes with it than with the opposite pole of Greek religious life, the calm and measured composure with which man lifted up heart and eye to the gods, as the patterns of all life and the patrons of a serenity as brilliant and unmoved as that of the clear heavens themselves.

But how came it that in the character of a single people such extravagance of emotion was combined with a fast-bound and regulated equilibrium of temper and behaviour? The answer is that these opposing features sprang from two 256 different sources. They were not originally combined in Greece. The Homeric poems hardly give any hint of that overflowing of religious emotion which later Greek peoples knew and honoured as a heaven-sent madness. It spread among the Greeks themselves in the train of a religious agitation, we might almost say revolution, of which Homer records, at most, only the first faint essays. It had its origin in the religion of Dionysos, and in company with this religion enters as something new and strange into Greek life.

The Homeric poems do not recognize Dionysos as belonging to the gods of Olympos, but they are aware of his existence. It is true they nowhere plainly3 refer to him as the wine-god honoured in joyful festivals, but we read (in the narrative of Glaukos’ meeting with Diomedes) of the “frenzied” Dionysos and his “Nurses” who were attacked by the Thracian Lykourgos.4 The Mainas, the frenzied woman of the Dionysos-cult, was such a well-known phenomenon, so familiar in men’s minds, that the word could be used in a simile to explain the meaning of something else.5 In this form the worship of the god first came to the notice of the Greeks; this was the origin of all the other festivals of Dionysos that later Greece developed in so many different directions.6 They learnt to know Dionysos Bakcheios, “who makes men frenzied,”7 as he was worshipped in his own country.

That the original home of Dionysos-worship was in Thrace, that his cult, popular among many of the Thracian peoples,8 was particularly honoured among the southernmost of the Thracian stocks who were best known to the Greeks and lived on the coast between the mouths of the rivers Hebros and Axios and in the mountainous country behind—to all this the Greeks themselves bore frequent and manifold witness.9 The god whose name the Greeks knew in its Greek form “Dionysos” had, it appears, among the numerous and divided Thracian peoples various appellations of which those most familiar to the Greeks were Sabos and Sabazios.10 The Greeks must have known and remarked on the nature and worship of the god at an early period of their history. They may have met with him in Thrace itself. At all periods they had an extensive and varied intercourse with this country and must in the early days of their wanderings have passed through it on their way to their future home. They may have had further opportunities of knowing it from the Thracian races or tribes who, according to a few isolated legends, had dwelt in primitive times in certain localities of Central Greece. The ethnographical material of these 257 legends was regarded as founded on fact by the great historians of the fifth and fourth centuries.11

The cult of this Thracian divinity differed in every particular from anything that we know of from Homer as Greek worship of the gods. On the other hand, it was closely related to the cult paid by the Phrygians, a people almost identical with the Thracians, to their mountain-mother Kybele. It was thoroughly orgiastic in character. The festival was held on the mountain tops in the darkness of night amid the flickering and uncertain light of torches. The loud and troubled sound of music was heard; the clash of bronze cymbals; the dull thunderous roar of kettledrums; and through them all penetrated the “maddening unison” of the deep-toned flute,12 whose soul Phrygian aulêtai had first waked to life. Excited by this wild music, the chorus of worshippers dance with shrill crying and jubilation.13 We hear nothing about singing:14 the violence of the dance left no breath for regular songs. These dances were something very different from the measured movement of the dance-step in which Homer’s Greeks advanced and turned about in the Paian. It was in frantic, whirling, headlong eddies and dance-circles15 that these inspired companies danced over the mountain slopes. They were mostly women who whirled round in these circular dances till the point of exhaustion was reached;16 they were strangely dressed; they wore bassarai, long flowing garments, as it seems, stitched together out of fox-skins;17 over these were doeskins,18 and they even had horns fixed to their heads.19 Their hair was allowed to float in the wind;20 they carried snakes sacred to Sabazios21 in their hands and brandished daggers or else thyrsos-wands, the spear-points of which were concealed in ivy-leaves.22 In this fashion they raged wildly until every sense was wrought to the highest pitch of excitement, and in the “sacred frenzy” they fell upon the beast selected as their victim23 and tore their captured prey limb from limb. Then with their teeth they seized the bleeding flesh and devoured it raw.

It is easy enough, by following poets’ descriptions and plastic representations of such scenes, to elaborate still further the picture of this nocturnal festival of fanatic enthusiasm. But, we must ask, what was the meaning of it all? We shall get nearest to the truth if we will exclude as far as possible all theories imported from unrelated provinces of thought and fix our attention solely on what, for the participants, was the result of it all—the result anticipated and consciously proposed by them, and therefore the recognized object, or, at least, one 258 of the recognized objects of these strange proceedings. The participators in these dance-festivals induced intentionally in themselves a sort of mania, an extraordinary exaltation of their being. A strange rapture came over them in which they seemed to themselves and others “frenzied”, “possessed”.24 This excessive stimulation of the senses, going even as far as hallucination,25 was brought about, in those who were susceptible to their influence, by the delirious whirl of the dance, the music and the darkness, and all the other circumstances of this tumultuous worship.26 This extreme pitch of excitement was the result intended. The violently induced exaltation of the senses had a religious purpose, in that such enlargement and extension of his being was man’s only way, as it seemed, of entering into union and relationship with the god and his spiritual attendants. The god is invisibly present among his inspired worshippers. At any rate, he is close at hand, and the tumult of the festival is to bring him completely into their midst.27 There are various legends about the disappearance of the god into another world and his return thence to mankind.28 Every second year his return is celebrated, and it is just this Appearance, this “Epiphany” of the god, that gives the reason and the motive of the festival. The Bull-God, in the most ancient and primitive form of the belief, appeared in person among the dancers,29 or else the imitated roaring of a bull produced by hidden “Mimes of Terror” served to suggest the invisible Presence.30 The worshippers, too, in furious exaltation and divine inspiration, strive after the god; they seek communion with him. They burst the physical barriers of their soul. A magic power takes hold of them; they feel themselves raised high above the level of their everyday existence; they seem to become those spiritual beings who wildly dance in the train of the god.31 Nay, more, they have a share in the life of the god himself; nothing less can be the meaning of the fact that the enraptured servants of the god call themselves by the name of the god. The worshipper who in his exaltation has become one with the god, is himself now called Sabos, Sabazios.32 The superhuman and the infra-human are mingled in his person; like the frenzied god33 he throws himself upon the sacrificial animal to devour it raw. To make this transformation of their nature outwardly manifest, the participants in the dance-festival wear strange dress: they resemble in their appearance the members of the wild thiasos of the god;34 the horns they set on their heads recall the horned, bull-shaped god himself, etc.35 The whole might be called a religious drama, since 259 everything is carefully arranged so as to suggest to the imagination the actual presence of the mysterious figures from the spirit world. At the same time, it is something more than mere drama, for it can hardly be doubted that the players themselves were possessed by the illusion of living the life of a strange person. The awe-inspiring darkness of night, the music, especially that of the Phrygian flute, to which the Greeks attributed the power of making its hearers “full of the god”,36 the vertiginous whirl of the dance—all these may very well, in suitably disposed natures,37 have really led to a state of visionary exaltation in which the inspired person saw all external objects in accordance with his fancy and imagination. Intoxicating drinks, to which the Thracians were addicted, may have increased the excitement;38 perhaps they even used the fumes derived from certain seeds, with which the Scythians and Massagetai knew how to intoxicate themselves.39 We all know how even to day in the East the smoke of hashish may make men visionaries and excite religious raptures40 in which the whole of nature is transformed for the enthralled dreamer. “Only when thus possessed did the Bakchai drink milk and honey out of the rivers; their power ceased when they came to themselves again,” says Plato.41 For them the earth flowed with milk and honey, and the air was filled with the sweet odours of Syria.42 Hallucination was accompanied by a state of feeling in which pain itself was only an added stimulus to sensation or in which the visionary became completely insensible to pain, as is not unusual in such states of exaltation.43

Every detail confirms the picture of a condition of wild excitement in which the limitations of ordinary life seemed to be abolished. These extraordinary phenomena transcending all normal experience were explained by saying that the soul of a person thus “possessed”44 was no longer “at home”45 but “abroad”, having left its body behind. This was the literal and primitive meaning understood by the Greek when he spoke of the “ekstasis” of the soul in such orgiastic conditions of excitement.46 This ekstasis is “a brief madness”, just as madness is a prolonged ekstasis.47 But the ekstasis, the temporary alienatio mentis of the Dionysiac cult was not thought of as a vain purposeless wandering in a region of pure delusion, but as a hieromania,48 a sacred madness in which the soul, leaving the body, winged its way to union with the god.49 It is now with and in the god, in the condition of enthousiasmos; those who are possessed by this are ἔνθεοι; they live and have their being in the god.50 While still retaining 260 the finite Ego, they feel and enjoy to the full the infinite powers of all life.

In ekstasis the soul is liberated from the cramping prison of the body; it communes with the god and develops powers of which, in the ordinary life of everyday, thwarted by the body, it knew nothing. Being now a spirit holding communion with spirits it is able to free itself from Time and see what only the spiritual eye beholds—things separated from it in time and space. The enthusiastic worship of the Thracian servants of Dionysos gave birth to the inspiration mantikê,51 a form of prophecy which did not (like prophecy as it invariably appears in Homer) have to wait for accidental, ambiguous and external signs of the god’s will, but on the contrary entered immediately into communion with the world of gods and spirits and in this heightened spiritual condition beheld and proclaimed the future. This power belonged to men only in ekstasis, in religious madness, when “the God enters into men”. The Mainads are the official exponents of this mantikê of inspiration.52 It is simple and intelligible enough that the Thracian cult of Dionysos, which was throughout a means of stimulating men to a condition of extreme exaltation that they might enter into direct communion with the spirit-world, also encouraged the prophesying of inspired seers, who in their rapt exaltation and frenzy became clairvoyant. Among the Thracian Satrai there was a tribe called the Bessoi who produced prophêtai, and these were in charge of an oracle of Dionysos situated on the top of a high mountain. The prophetess of this temple was a woman who gave prophecies like the Pythia at Delphi, that is to say, in a state of rapt ecstasy. This, at least, is what Herodotos says,53 and we have many other accounts of Thracian mantikê and its close connexion with the orgiastic cult of Dionysos.54

§ 3

The Greek type of religion, perhaps from its very origin, certainly at the earliest period of its development in which it becomes accessible to our observation—the period to which the Homeric poems belong—had no leaning to anything resembling an excited emotional worship like that practised by the Thracians in their orgiastic cult of Dionysos. The whole movement wherever it came to their notice must have struck the Greeks of Homer as something strange and barbaric, attractive only through the interest ever attached to the unknown. And yet—the fact is certain—the thrilling tones 261 of this “enthusiastic” worship awoke an answering chord deep in the hearts of many Greeks; in spite of all that was strange they must have recognized a familiar accent in it—something that, however outlandishly expressed, could appeal to the common nature of mankind.

This enthusiastic Thracian cult was in fact only a special expression, conforming to their peculiar national characteristics, of a religious impulse that is to be found all over the earth, and which breaks out in every stage of civilization. It must, indeed, answer to an instinctive need of human nature, and be rooted in the physical and psychical constitution of man. In moments of supreme exaltation man felt the presence above him and around him of mighty powers that seemed to express themselves even in his own personal life. These he was no longer to confront in pious and fearful awe, passively confined within the limits of his own separate personality: he was to break down every barrier and clasp them to his heart, making them his own in unconditional surrender. Mankind needed not to wait for that strange product of poetry and thought, Pantheism, before it could experience this instinctive need to lose its own private existence, for a moment, in the divine. There are whole races of men, not otherwise among the most distinguished members of the human family, who have a special tendency and gift for such expansion of the human consciousness into the supra-personal. They have an urgent impulse to such rapt and visionary states, and they regard the enticing or horrifying visions that visit them in those states as actual experiences of another world into which their “souls” have for a brief while been transported. In every part of the world there are peoples who regard such ecstatic exaltation as the only true religious act, the only way of intercourse with the spirit-world available to man, and base their religious performances principally upon such ceremonial as experience has shown to be most capable of inducing the ecstasies and visions. The means most commonly adopted by such peoples to produce the desired intensity and stimulation of feeling is a violently excited dance prolonged to the point of exhaustion, in the darkness of night, to the accompaniment of tumultuous music. Sometimes whole companies of the people induce in themselves a state of religious excitement by wild and furious dancing.55 More often selected individuals, specially susceptible to such impressions, suffer their “souls” to be drawn out by music and dancing and every other sort of stimulating influence, and made to visit the world of spirits and gods.56 Such “magicians” and priests who can place 262 themselves in immediate contact of soul with the spirit world, are to be found all over the globe. The shamans of Asia, the “medicine men” of North America, the Angekoks of Greenland, the Butios of the Antilles, the Piajes of the Caribbees are merely special cases of a universal type, essentially the same in all its different manifestations. Africa, Australia, and the island world of the Pacific are equally familiar with them. Both their performances and the range of ideas that lie behind them belong to a type of religious experience that occurs with the regularity of a natural phenomenon, and must therefore not be regarded as abnormal. Even among Christian peoples of long standing, the smouldering fires of this primitive and emotional type of religion are ever ready to burst out again in renewed flames, and those who feel their warmth are kindled to a more than human sense of life and vigour.57 Conventionality and traditionalism, even the substitution of a cold and spurious mimicry for real feeling, are of course quite compatible with a form of religion which consists so much in the display of emotion. But even so, the most cautious observers58 have declared that by such violent stimulation of every sense the “magicians” are thrown into a state of quite unfeigned exaltation. In accordance with the character and content of their normal modes of thought, the hallucinations to which the magicians are subject differ in different cases; but as a general rule their frenzy opens to them a way of immediate intercourse, frequently of complete communion of being, with the gods. This is the only explanation which will account for the fact that, like the inspired Bakchantes of Thrace, the magicians and priests of so many peoples are called by the name of the divinity to whom their “enthusiastic” worship elevates them.59 The impulse to union with God, the extinction of the individual in the divine—these are what form the fundamental points of contact between the mysticism of the most highly cultivated and talented people and the emotional religion of primitive “savages”. Even the external machinery of excitement and stimulation are not always dispensed with by the mystics:60 they are always the same as those with which we are already familiar in the orgiastic religion of primitive peoples—music, the giddy whirl of the dance, narcotic stimulants. Thus (to take the most striking example out of many that might be given) the dervishes of the Orient whirl round in their violent dances to the rattle of drums, and the sound of flutes till the last stages of excitement and exhaustion are reached. The purpose of it all is vividly expressed by the 263 most fearless of all the mystics, Jelaleddin Rumi, in the words: “He that knows the power of the dance dwells in God; for he has learnt that Love can slay.61 Allah hu! . . .”

§ 4

Wherever a cultus of this kind, making its aim and object the evocation of ecstatic raptures, has taken root—whether in whole races of men or in religious communities—there we find in close alliance with it, whether as cause or effect or both, a peculiarly vital belief in the life and power of the soul of man after its separation from the body. Our comparative glance over the analogous phenomena of other lands has shown us that the exalted worship offered to “Dionysos” among the Thracians was only a single variety of a method, familiar to more than half the human race, of getting into touch with the divine by a religious “enthousiasmos”. We therefore expect to find among the Thracians a specially strong and well-developed belief in the life of the “soul”. And in fact we find Herodotos telling us of a Thracian tribe, the Getai, whose belief “made men immortal”.62 They had only one god, Zalmoxis by name.63 To this god, who dwelt in a cavernous mountain, all the dead of their race, they believed, would one day be gathered and have immortal life.64 The same belief was held by other Thracian tribes, too.65 This creed seems to have had in view the “transplantation”66 of the dead to a blessed life in the hereafter. But, it would seem, this transplantation was not perhaps for ever. We hear of the belief that the dead would “return”67 from the other world; and that this idea existed among the Getai is implied (though the narrator does not clearly understand this) by the absurd pragmatizing fable which Herodotos got from the Greek settlers on the Hellespont and the Pontos.68 In this story (as often in later accounts too) Zalmoxis is actually a slave and pupil of Pythagoras of Samos. Whoever invented this fairy-tale was led to it by observing the close relationship between the Pythagorean doctrine of the soul and the Thracian belief. In the same way later observers of the same fact reversed the positions and made Pythagoras the pupil of the Thracian.69 In any case the fact cannot to be doubted that in Thrace people thought they had found again the special doctrine of Pythagoras as to the transmigration of souls. The belief in the “return” of the soul must be interpreted as meaning that the souls of the dead return to life in new bodies and resume their life on earth, to this extent being 264 “immortal”. Only so interpreted could it have been held for a moment without coming into conflict with obvious appearances. An allusion in Euripides seems to regard as Thracian such a belief in a recurrent incarnation of the soul.70

We should be justified in expecting to find an inner connexion between this Thracian belief in immortality, which seems to have made such an impression on our Greek informants, and the religion and “enthousiastic” worship of the same people. Nor are traces lacking of a close association of the Thracian worship of Dionysos and Thracian cult of the Souls.71 But if we ask why the religion of the Thracian Dionysos was attended by a belief in the independent, indestructible life of the soul, a life not confined to the period of its sojourn in the body which at present envelopes it, the answer must be sought not in the nature of the god to whom the cult was offered (that nature being, in fact, insufficiently known to us) but in the nature of the cult itself. The object of that cult—we might almost say its special task—was to exalt its worshippers to a state of “ekstasis” in which their “souls” should be forcibly delivered from the normal circle of their human and circumscribed being, and raised as pure spirits to communion with the god and his company of spirits. The true “Bakchai”72—those who were really cast into a state of religious madness—found in the rapture of these orgies a new province of experience open before them: they experience things of which they could give no account in the fully conscious light of ordinary day. There can be no doubt that the experiences and visions that their “ekstasis” gave them were regarded by them as the plainest and most literally real of facts.73 The belief in the existence and life of a second self distinct from the body and separable from it was already encouraged by the “experiences” of the separate existence and independent behaviour of that self in dreams and fainting fits.74 How much more strongly and vividly must this belief have been confirmed for those who in the intoxication of those delirious dances had “experienced” for themselves how the soul, freed from the body, could participate in the joys and terrors of the divine existence; not indeed the whole man, body and soul together, but the soul by itself and in separation from the body—the spiritual being invisibly living within the man. The sense of its own divinity, its eternity, which had been blindingly revealed to it in “ekstasis”, might be developed by the soul into a lasting persuasion that it was indeed of a divine nature, and called to a divine life which it would enjoy for ever as soon as it was freed from the body, 265 just as it had then enjoyed it for a moment. No mere intellectual arguments could give such powerful support to a spiritualism of this kind as the personal experience itself which, even in this life supplied a foretaste of what the individual was one day to enjoy as his own for ever.

In some such way as this, the persuasion of an independent, continued existence of the soul after the death of its body was developed into a belief in the divinity and immortality of the soul. In all such cases it was almost inevitable that the naive distinction between “body” and “soul”, natural to simple-minded peoples and individuals, should harden into an opposition between the two. The descent from the heights where the ecstatic and emancipated soul enjoyed its thrilling delights was too sudden; the body could not but seem a burden and a hindrance, almost an enemy of the heaven-born soul. Disparagement of the ordinary existence of every day, a turning aside from this life—these are the natural results of such an advanced spiritualism, even though it may have no speculative basis, when it influences so profoundly the religious temperament of a people as yet untroubled by the subtleties of a scientific culture. A trace of such a depreciation of the earthly life of mankind in comparison with the joys of a free spirit-existence is to be found in what Herodotos and other narrators tell of certain Thracian tribes75 who receive the new-born among their kinsfolk with mourning, and bury their dead with joyful acclamation, for the latter are now beyond the reach of all pain, and are living “in perfect happiness”.76 The cheerfulness with which the Thracians faced death in battle77 was explained by the persuasion which they held that death was only an entrance into a higher life for the soul. They were even credited with a real desire for death, for to them “dying seemed so fair”.78

§ 5

Further than this the Thracians—who never quite outgrew a sort of semi-animated torpor of the intellect—could not go on the way marked out for them. The seed of a mystical form of religion that existed in the ecstatic dance-orgies of Dionysos-worship never came to fruition. We never feel with them that we are being taken beyond the region of vague unconscious emotion; it is but a passing illumination that for a moment of wild excitement reveals the near presence of overwhelming spirit-forces.

Not until the flames of such ecstatic worship were fed and nourished by a people of more independent and developed spiritual life, could fitful suggestions be welded into deep and 266 enduring thought. Reflexion upon the nature of the world and of God, the changing and deceptive flow of appearance with the indestructible One Reality behind it; the conception of a divinity that is One, a single light that, divided into a thousand rays and reflected from everything that is, achieves its unity again in the soul of man; such thoughts as these, allied to the dim half-conscious impulse of an enthusiastic dance-worship, might allow the pure waters of the stream of mysticism to run clear at last, freed from the turbid and unsatisfying enthusiasm of popular religious practices.

Thus, for example, among the stern and rigid-minded peoples of Islam, with their stiff, uncompromising Monotheism, there arose, no one knows whence, the inspired dance-orgies of the Dervishes, which then spread far and wide carrying with them the mystical doctrine of the Sûfis, that child of the profound mind of India. Man is God; God is All: such was the pronouncement of the inspired poetry—the special contribution in particular of Persia to this religion of mystic ecstasy—now in the most transparent simplicity, now in the most gorgeous magnificence of imagery. In the ecstatic dance, which in this case remained in organic connexion with the mystical doctrine (as the soil of the maternal earth with the flowers which she puts forth) new strength was ever being added to the spiritual superstructure. Mystical theory was invigorated by the practical experience, in heightened consciousness, of an internal and unquenchable source of undying power and might. The veil of the world was torn aside for the inspired worshipper; the All-One became sensible and intelligible for him; it poured into his own being; the “deification” of the Mystai was realized in him. “Who knows the power of the Dance dwells in God”. . .

Many years before all this, a process of development was completed on Greek soil which has no closer parallel than the special phase of Oriental religion just referred to. Greek religion never indeed (so long at least as the independence of Greek life lasted) went to the extravagant lengths of Oriental mysticism. Even the sense of the infinite had to be expressed by the Greek imagination in plastic form. But for all that, on Greek soil, in the ecstatic Cult of Dionysos, under the influence of Greek reflexion upon God, the world and mankind, the seeds which previously lay undeveloped in the womb of that cult were unfolded in a mystical doctrine, whose guiding principle was the divinity of the human soul and the infiniteness of its life in God. It was from this source that Greek philosophy found the courage to advance a doctrine of the immortality of the soul.

NOTES TO CHAPTER VIII

[1]   Pl., Phdr. 265 A.

[2]   e.g. Cael. Aurel. (i.e. Soranos), Morb. Chr. i, § 144 ff.; Aret. Chron. Pass. i, 6, p. 84 Kühn [vol. 24].

[3]   Even the late interpolated passages Ξ 325, ω 74, are not quite conclusive. Apart from these the statement of Sch. ι 198 applies strictly throughout both poems: τὸ μὴ παραδιδόναι Ὅμηρον Διόνυσον οἴνου εὑρετήν, Lehrs, Arist.3, p. 181.

[4]   Ζ 132 ff. The scene is evidently meant to be a Bacchic festival. This is shown by the θύσθλα, which the Διωνύσοιο τιθῆναι let fall out of their hands. All the rest is obscure. Even in antiquity no one knew who the τιθῆναι of Dionysos really were, and hence alternative suggestions were all the more numerous: cf. Nauck, Fr. Trag.2, p. 17. Voigt, in Roscher’s Mythol. Lex. i, 1049. It can hardly be necessary (with Sch. A on Z 129) to deduce from the reference to τιθῆναι that Dionysos himself was regarded as νήπιος ἔτι καὶ παῖς. His former τιθῆναι follow him in the Bacchic festival even after he has grown up, exactly as in h. Hom. xxvi, 3, 7–10. αἱ Διονύσου τροφοί as the frenzied mob worshipping the god, τῷ θεῷ ὀργιάζουσαι (in Thessaly), come in D.S. 5, 50, 4, in a parallel narrative to the story of Lykourgos and the Mainads. With the conception of the god as λικνίτης neither his leap into the sea (Ζ 135 ff.), nor esp. the adj. μαινομένοιο (132) are in harmony. This last word does certainly give us pause. The accounts provided by later ages of the madness of Dionysos are obviously made up from the lines of Homer and are therefore of no use to us (already ap. Eumelos in the Εὐρωπία, Schol. AD. Ζ 131; then Pherekydes, Achaios ἐν Ἴριδι: Phld., Piet., p. 36 [Nauck, Fr. Trag.2, p. 751]; E., Cyc. 3. [Apollod.] iii, 5, 1, is prob. derived from Pherec. as are also Philistos fr. 57, FHG. i; Pl., Lg. 672 B; Nic. Ὀφιακ. fr. 30 Schn., etc.). Scholastic interpreters even thought of a hypallage: μαινομένοιο = μανιοποιοῦ, βακχείας παρασκευαστικοῦ, Schol. A, Ζ 132; cf. Sch. B, p. 182a, 43 f. Bk. And, indeed, there is certainly in this case a sort of mythological or sacramental hypallage: the state of mind brought about by the god in those who surround him is reflected back on to the god himself (μαινόμενοι Σάτυροι, E., Ba. 130; cf. the mad nurses of Dionysos, Nonn., D. ix, 38 ff.). It would not be hard to parallel this (e.g. Dionys. who makes men drunk is represented as himself drunk, Ath. 428 E, etc.).

[5]   Ξ 460, μεγάροιο διέσσυτο μαινάδι ἴση, παλλομένη κραδίην. The evidence of this passage for the familiarity of Homer’s audience with the nature of the Mainads cannot be set aside as Lob., Agl. 285, tries to do. The word could only be used as an εἰκών if the thing were often before men’s eyes. μαινάς, indeed, is even something different from, and more specialized than μαινομένη (Ζ 389).

[6]   The view that μαίνεσθαι was primitive in the cult of D., the wine, etc., being added later, was definitely put forward in 1825 by O. Müller (Kl. Schr. ii, 26 ff.) arguing against J. H. Voss. But it is only in quite recent times that in tracing the origin of the religion of Dionysos occasional inquirers have taken this view as their starting point: cf. esp. Voigt in his noteworthy treatment of Dionysos in Roscher’s Myth. Lex. i, 1029 ff.

[7]   ὃς μαίνεσθαι ἐνάγει ἀνθρώπους, Hdt. iv, 79. 268

[8]   E.g. the Odrysai, who, however, lived further north in the Hebros valley; Mela, ii, 17, mentions distinctly the mountain chains of Haimos, Rhodope, and Orbelos as sacris Liberi patris et coetu Maenadum celebratos.

[9]   Lob., Agl. 289 ff.

[10]   Sabazios: Σαβάζιον τὸν Διόνυσον οἱ Θρᾷκες καλοῦσιν Sch. Ar., Ves. 9; cf. Sch. Ar., Lys. 388; D.S. 4, 4, 1; Harp. Σαβοί; Alex. Polyh. ap. Macr. i, 18, 11 (Sebadius: cf. Apul., M. viii, 25, p. 150, 11 Ey. The original form of this name seems to have been Savos, Savadios, Kretschmer, Einleitung in. d. Gesch. d. griech. Spr. 195 f.; Usener, Götternamen 44). Sabos, Phot. p. 495, 11–12 Pors. Hesych. s.v.; Orph., H. 49, 2, etc. The fact that others could call Sabazios a Phrygian god (Amphitheos π. Ἡρακλείος βʹ ap. Sch. Ar., Av. 874; Str. 470; Hsch. s.v.), only serves to bring out more clearly the opinion, unanimously held even in antiquity, that the Thracians and the Phrygians were closely related. Sabazios (besides being identified with Helios: Alex. Polyh. l.c.; cf. Soph. fr. 523 N.), as the supreme and almighty god of the Thracians, was even called Ζεὺς Σαβάζιος (Val. Max. i, 3, 2), esp. on inss. (a few are given in Rapp, Dionysoscult [Progr.] p. 21; cf. also ins. from Peiraeus Ἐφ. Ἀρχ. 1883, p. 245; Ins. Pergam. i, 248, 33, 49: from Pisidia, Papers of the Amer. School at Athens, ii, p. 54, 56. Jovi Sabazio, Orelli, Ins. 1259). We even find Ζεὺς Βάκχος, Ζεὺς Ἥλιος (BCH. vi, 189).—The name Σαβάζιος was derived from σαβάζειν = εὐάζειν, διὰ τὸν γενόμενον περὶ αὐτὸν εὐασμόν (θειασμόν): Sch. Ar., Av. 874; Lys. 388. So, too, Βάκχος was on this view only another way of expressing the same meaning; since this name also was derived by the ancients from βάζειν = εὐάζειν (it is really from the root ϝαχ (ἀχέω) Βάκχος, with “affrication”; a reduplicated form of it is ϝιϝαχος, Ἴακχος, ἰαχέω, ἰακχέω; cf. Curtius, Griech. Etym.5, p. 460, 576). Other names of the Thracian Dionysos are the following: Βασσαρεύς (Βάσσαρος, Orph., H. 45, 2), derived from βασσάρα the long dress (made of skin?) worn by the Βασσαρίδες = Θρᾴκιαι βάκχαι, AB. 222, 26 f.; Hsch. s.v. Βασσάραι and EM. s.v. (the last compiled from Orion and Sch. Lyc. 771). Other accounts (not contradicting in this point the statement of Hsch.) made it the dress worn by the god himself: Sch. Pers. i, 101. (The Βασσαρεύς was generally described as bearded and even senili specie, like the representation of Dionysos himself in the oldest Greek art: Macr. i, 18, 9.) If Βασσαρεύς means “the wearer of the long fox-skin” we should be strongly reminded of the—also Thracian—god Ζάλμολξις (Ζάλμοξις), whose name was derived from ζαλμός = δορὰ ἄρκτου (Porph., VP. 14, though this comes only from Antonius Diogenes 6), and probably means “he who is cloaked in the bearskin” (see Fick, Spracheinh. d. Indog. Europ., p. 418; Hehn, Culturpflanz. 428 E.T.).—Γίγων a name of Dionysos, EM. 231, 28: perhaps a name given to the god in the city Gigonos mentioned in the same passage, and the ἄκρα Γίγωνις at the western end of the Thracian Chalkidike.—EM. 186, 32, is too short to be intelligible: βαλιά· διαποίκιλος. καὶ τὸν Διόνυσον Θρᾷκες.—Δύαλος Διόνυσος παρὰ Παίοσιν, Hesych.

[11]   At any rate the people whom Thuc., Ephoros, and others call Thracians and regarded as having been once settled in Phokis, Boeotia, etc., are undoubtedly to be considered Thracians—and not the impossibly honest and exemplary people, a creation of the fancy, the “Thracians of the Muses”, alleged to be quite distinct from the real Thracian peoples, of whom we have heard so much since K. O. 269 Müller (Orchom. 379 ff.) introduced the idea. Antiquity only knew of one kind of Thracian. In the Homeric poems they are not so different from the Greeks in civilization as they were in later times, when we know them from the accounts of Herod. and Xen. For all that they are the same people. They seem in the course of time to have degenerated, or rather they have not shared in the progress made by others and so have remained backward (even behind their Phrygian relatives who wandered to Asia Minor and achieved a higher culture under Semitic influence). In fact, like the Keltoi, they were never able to get beyond a condition of semi-civilization.

[12]   μανίας ἐπαγωγὸν ὁμοκλάν. Aesch. in the Ἠδωνοί ap. Str. 470–1 (fr. 57), is the locus classicus for the music in the Thracian festival of Dionysos. Apart from this it is impossible to distinguish in the accounts given by our ancient authorities, between the strictly Thracian festival and the ideal generalized festival of Dionysos (not the mitigated ceremonial actually used in the festival in Greece). They merge completely into each other.

[13]   σαβάζειν = εὐάζειν, Schol. Ar., Av. 874; Lys. 388.

[14]   αἱ Βάκχαι σιγῶσιν. Diogen., Prov. iii, 43.

[15]   Complete revolution round one’s own axis, as in the dance of a dervish, is known at least only in the more fanatic dance-festivals of antiquity: στροφὴν ὁλοσώματον ὥσπερ οἱ κάτοχοι δινεύοντες, Heliod. 4, 17, p. 116, 1 Bk. δίνησις τῶν θεοφορήτων in Phrygia: Horus ap. EM. 276, 32. Crusius, Philol. 55, 565, compares besides Verg., A. vii, 377 ff.; Alex. Aphr., Prob., p. 6 Us. In the Spartan dance διαμαλέας (?) Seilenoi and Satyrs appeared ὀρχούμενοι ὑπότροχα [περίτροχα acc. to Meineke: perhaps better]. Poll. 4, 104.

[16]   E., Ba. 116 ff., 664 ff. Thracian: assiduis Edonis fessa choreis qualis in herboso concidit Apidano, Prop. 1, 3, 5 f.

[17]   Bassaris: Thracian acc. to Sch. Pers. i, 101; worn by βάκχαι Hsch. βασσάραi. Lydian, too: ὅστις χιτῶνας βασσάρας τε Λυδίας ἐχει ποδήρεις, A. ἐν Ἠδωνοῖς, fr. 59; cf. Poll. 7, 59. “Perhaps a Phrygian word that has penetrated into Lydia,” Kretschmer, Einleitung, 390. The worship of Dionysos which had also presumably come from Phrygia, was esp. popular in Lydia.

[18]   Familiar in the Bacchic ceremonial of Greece; but occurring already in Thrace: Aesch. ἐν Ἠδωνοί (dealing entirely with Thracian customs) mentions the νεβρίδες, and in the same place has αἰγίδας as well (fr. 64).

[19]   The Βάκχαι of Macedonia and the Μιμαλλόνες, in all respects resembling the Thracian Bacchants, κερατοφοροῦσι κατὰ μίμησιν Διονύσου: Sch. Lyc. 1237 (Λαφυστίας κερασφόρους γυναῖκας).

[20]   Mentis inops rapitur, quales audire solemus Threicias passis Maenadas ire comis, Ov., F. iv, 457 f.

[21]   Thphr. Ch. 16 (28, p. 141 Jebb); Artemid. 2, 13, p. 106, 9 H.

[22]   Snakes and daggers are found in the hands of the μιμαλλόνες καὶ βασσάραι καὶ λυδαί in the train of Ptol. Philad.: Kallixenos ap. Ath. 198 E. Snakes and θύρσοι belong to the paraphernalia of the ἔνοχοι τοῖς Ὀρφικοῖς καὶ τοῖς περὶ τὸν Διόνυσον ὀργιασμοῖς γυναῖκες in Macedonia, and of the Κλώδωνες καὶ Μιμαλλόνες who πολλὰ τοῖς Ἠδωνίσι καὶ ταῖς περὶ τὸν Αἷμον Θρῄσσαις ὅμοια δρῶσιν, Plu., Alex. 2 (in connexion with the snake of Olympias. She was especially given to the Thrako-Dionysian mysteries: cf. the letter of Olympias to Alexander, Ath. 659 F).—θύρσοι of the Macedonian Μιμαλλόνες: Polyaen. 4, 1; Sch. Pers. 1, 99.—“Even now” the thyrsos wands are decked with ivy in the Thraciae populis sollemnibus sacris, Plin., 270 NH. xvi, 144.—The νάρθηξ of the thyrsos is really a shepherd’s staff: Clem. Al., Protr. ii, p. 14 P.

[23]   Eur., Ba. 735 ff. and frequently.

[24]   κατοχαὶ καὶ ἐνθουσιασμοί in the Thrako-Macedonian worship of Dionysos: Plu., Alex. 2. (The Mimallones imitantur furorem Liberi, Sch., Pers. i, 99.) οἱ τῷ Σαβαζίῳ κάτοχοι: Porph. ap. Iamb. de Myst. 3, 9, p. 117, 16. βάκχος· ὁ μανιώδης, Eust. δ 249; β 16. Κλώδωνες is the name given to the μαινάδες καὶ βάκχαι ἀπὸ τοῦ κατόχους γινομένας κλώζειν, EM. 521, 50. οἱ κάτοχοι τοῖς περὶ τὸν Διόνυσον ὀργιασμοῖς, Plu., Is. et Os. 35, p. 364 F.

[25]   οἱ βακχευόμενοι καὶ κορυβαντιῶντες ἐνθουσιάζουσι μέχρις ἂν τὸ ποθούμενον ἴδωσιν, Philo, Vit. Cont. 2, ii, p. 473 M.

[26]   So too the wild shaking and whirling-round of the head, which acc. to innumerable literary and pictorial descriptions was a regular feature of the Bacchic dance and cult, must have contributed—and was so intended—to bring about the condition of ecstasy and frenzy (ῥιψαύχενι σὺν κλόνῳ, Pi., fr. 208; κρᾶτα σεῖσαι, E., Ba. 185, etc.).—How such fanatic shaking of the head, if kept up for along time, is by itself sufficient, in persons naturally predisposed to it, to bring on complete religious ἔκστασις, may be learnt from a remarkable account in Moreau du hachisch, p. 290 ff., derived from personal observation in the East.

[27]   The object of the trieteric festival of Dionysos (repeated every second year) held in so many places in Greece (cf. Weniger, Dionysosdienst in Elis, Progr. 1883, p. 8) was to celebrate the presence of the god. This is clearly shown by D.S. 4, 3, 2, who also attributes the trieteric festival to the Thracians: τοὺς Βοιωτοὺς καὶ τοὺς ἄλλους Ἕλληνας καὶ Θρᾷκας . . . καταδεῖξαι τὰς τριετηρίδας θυσίας Διονύσῳ καὶ τὸν θεὸν νομίζειν κατὰ τὸν χρόνον τοῦτον ποιεῖσθαι τὰς παρὰ τοῖς ἀνθρώποις ἐπιφανείας. At this time women and maidens celebrated τὴν παρουσίαν τοῦ Διονύσου. (In the archaic song of the Elean women the Bull-god is thus called upon: Plu., QG. 36, 299 A; Is. et Os. 35, p. 364 F; whereupon the Eleans believed that τὸν θεόν σφισιν ἐπιφοιτᾶν ἐς τῶν Θυίων τὴν ἑορτήν: Paus. 6, 26, 1.)—For Bakchos amongst the dancers see E., Ba. 185 ff., 306 f., and often. At the trieteric festival at Delphi Διόνυσος . . . Παρνασὸν κατὰ πηδᾷ χορεύει παρθένοις σὺν Δελφίσιν, E., Hypsip. fr. 752. And so often in poetry: see Nauck on S., OT. 213; Ant. 1126 ff.—Thracian trieteric festival: tuo motae proles Semeleia thyrso Ismariae celebrant repetita triennia bacchae, Ov., M. ix, 641 f.; tempus erat, quo sacra solent trieterica Baccho Sithoniae celebrare nurus; nox conscia sacris, etc., vi, 587.

[28]   ἀφανισμός followed by ἐπιφάνεια of Dionysos represent, as we frequently learn, the varying relationship of the god with mankind. These are alternating and periodically repeated, and they are reflected in the trieteric period of the festivals. It is customary to explain this disappearance and return of the god as an allegorical typification of the destruction and restoration of vegetation. There is no reason at all to believe this, except for those who regard the doctrines of the Greek “Religion of Nature” as infallible axioms. The god is simply, and in the literal sense of the words, regarded as removed for a time from the world of men, during which period he is in the world of spirits. In the same way Apollo, according to the Delphic legend, is carried away from the human world for certain periods: he lives during that time among the Hyperboreans, whose land is inaccessible to mortal foot or ship. We ought not to be afraid to make use of the light thrown on these matters by parallel legends of the temporary disappearance 271 of gods among uncivilized peoples (the god may be sometimes asleep or under constraint; cf. Plu., Is. et Os., 69 fin. 378 F); cf. what we are told in Dobrizhoffer’s Gesch. d. Abip. ii, p. 63 (E.T.), about the beliefs held by the Abipones of Paraguay; or, again, what is said of the negro races of West Africa, according to whom the god normally lives in the depths of the earth, but at regularly recurring intervals comes up to visit men; whereupon the members of a mystical society build him a house, receive his oracles, etc.; Réville, Rel. des peuples non-civil. i, 110–11. Thus Dionysos, too, is for a time in the underworld, in the world of spirits and the souls. This is clearly presupposed by the festival at Lerna, in which Dionysos is called up out of the bottomless spring Alkyonia by which there was an entrance to Hades (just as the inhabitants of Kos every year ἀνακαλοῦνται Hylas out of his spring, i.e. from the underworld: H. Türk, De Hyla, p. 3 f.; Welcker, Kl. Schr. i, 12; and see Maass, Litt. Ztg. 1896, 7–8). Hence also in Lerna a lamb was offered as a victim τῷ πυλαόχῳ, i.e. to Hades himself, and was thrown into the spring (Plu., Is. et Os. 35, p. 368 F, quoting Sokrates περὶ τῶν Ὁσίων; Smp. 4, 6, 2, p. 671 E; Paus. 2, 36, 7; 37, 5–6). Because he is in the realm of the dead a pragmatical myth represented him as slain by Perseus and thrown into the spring of Lerna: Lob., Agl. 574. In Delphi, too, something was known of the death and reawakening of Dionysos, but we have in Orph., H. 53, a quite unambiguous expression of the real conception, acc. to which D. “rested in the house of Persephone”, and appears again in the upper world at the time of the trieteric festival when he ἐγείρει his κῶμον, εὐάζων κινῶν τε χορούς. We may be all the more certain that the same idea is to be attributed to the trieteric festival in Thrace, since the same belief exactly occurs again in the legend of the Thracian (Getic) god Zalmoxis (see below)—he was believed to have disappeared into his infernal kingdom among the spirits and souls and to have made periodical returns to the world of the living. The reason why Dionysos, as worshipped both in Thracian and Greek trieteric festivals, stops for a time in the underworld of the souls, is clear enough: that too was his realm. We can now understand why it is that Dionysos is also ruler over the souls and can be called Ζαγρεὺς, Νυκτέλιος, Ἰσοδαίτης: i.e. he is simply given names of Hades himself (Plu., E ap. D. ix, p. 389 A). His real character of master of the souls and spirits (ἄναξ, ἥρως), as it had been originally in the Thracian cult, was thus preserved, in spite of much alteration in its Greek form, partly in Greek local cults, partly in the Orphic cult of Dionysos.—There is a legend which is based on a reminiscence of this periodic disappearance of Dionysos to the underworld, viz. the thoroughly Greek story of his descent on a single occasion into Hades in order to bring back Semele. Elsewhere his disappearance into the realm of the spirits gave rise to the legend of his escape and flight to the Muses; this was spoken of in the Agrionia at Chaironeia (Plu., Smp. 8 Praef.).

[29]   Cf. Eur., Ba. 920 ff., 1020 f.

[30]   ταυρόφθογγοι δ’ ὑπομυκῶνταί ποθεν ἐξ ἀφανοῦς φοβεροὶ μῖμοι: A. Ἠδωνοί describing the Thracian worship of D. (fr. 57). This was “certainly intended to increase for the participants in the festival the feeling of the god’s presence and thus to add to the wildness of their orgies”, as Rapp, Dionysosc., 19, very rightly observes. The invisible bellowing bull is the god himself. (Dionysos appears as a bull to the insane Pentheus: E., Ba. 920 ff.).—“The Batloka, a tribe in the Northern Transvaal, hold a yearly festival of the dead in which 272 hidden magicians make weird sounds with flutes which the people take for the voice of spirits; they say ‘Modimo is there’.” Schneider, Relig. d. Afrikan. Naturv. 143.

[31]   The women taking part in the trieteric festival of the god play the part of the μαινάδες in his train; D.S. 4, 3, 3. Imitation of the Νύμφαι τε καὶ Πᾶνες καὶ Σειληνοὶ καὶ Σάτυροι in the βακχεία: Pl., Lg. 815 C. What was afterwards merely a piece of traditional ritual was originally without doubt a real hallucination of the κάτοχοι.—The idea that a throng, θίασος, of wood-spirits Satyrs and Seilenoi danced about the God must also have been common in the Thracian cult (συγχορευεταὶ Διονύσου, Ael., VH. iii, 40; ὁ τῷ Διονύσῳ παρεπόμενος ὄχλος, Ath. 362 E). σαυάδαι (obviously related to Σαβάζιος; cf. Usener, Götternamen, 44 f.) was the name given to οἱ σειληνοί by the Macedonians, who in the practice of Dionysos-worship were entirely dependent upon the Thracians. Hsch. s.v., cf. Hdt. viii, 138 fin.

[32]   The βακχεύοντες τῷ θεῷ (i.e. Sabazios, Sabos) are called σάβοι καὶ σάβαι καὶ σαβάζιοι: Phot. σαβούς; cf. Eust., β 16, p. 1431, 46. Harp. (Phot.) s. σάβοι; Phot. παρασαβάζειν (p. 383, 16 Pors.); Sch. Ar., Av. 874. This identification of the god with his ecstatic worshippers belongs to the Phrygian cult of Kybele as well. Just as the goddess is called Κυβήβη so ὁ κατεχόμενος τῇ μητρὶ τῶν θεῶν is called Κύβηβος: Phot. Κύβηβος, κύβηβον, Eust. β 16. Thus the Greeks in calling the ecstatic worshippers of Bakchos by the name of the god were only adopting the conceptions and vocabulary of the Thracian religion of inspiration into their Dionysos-worship which was modelled on the Thracian cult. Βάκχος is their name for the ὀργιαστὴς τοῦ θεοῦ (etymologically connected is βαβάκτης [κραύγασος, ὅθεν καὶ Βάκχος Hsch.] a Phrygian word for the frenzied priest of Kybele: and therefore = Κύβηβος; cf. Ribbeck, Alazon, p. 86). It appears that the βάκχοι of Dionysos were often called by the old Thracian name σάβοι: σάβους καὶ νῦν ἔτι πολλοὶ τοὺς βάκχους καλοῦσιν, Plu., Smp. 4, 6, 2, p. 671 F (Λαφύστιοι is also a name given, after Διόνυσος Λαφύστιος, to the Βάκχοι who worship him: Lyc. 1237 with Sch.).

[33]   Διόνυσος ὠμάδιος (Porph., Abs. ii, 55), ὠμηστής (Plu., Them. 13), λαφύστιος, ταυροφάγος (Soph. fr. 607 N.).—At other times we catch a glimpse of the idea that the god himself is the torn and devoured bull (just as in many ancient worships the proper victim of the god is the animal most homogeneous with him): this is evidently the most primitive form of ἐν-θουσιασμός, the primeval symbolism of a mystic worship that, like all mysticism, desires to take personal possession of the God.

[34]   Dionysos himself also carries the thyrsos (as often in sculpture): E., Hyps. fr. 752, etc.

[35]   See above, n. 19 (ὁ βούκερως Ἴακχος, Soph., fr. 874, ταυρόκερως θεός, E., Ba. 100). The Greek Dionysos is often described as bull-shaped and horned: this, too, in imitation of Thracian belief. It is Sabazios whom they κεραστίαν παρεισάγουσι, D.S. 4, 4, 2; cf. 3, 64, 2. Ὕῃ ταυροκέρωτι, Euphor. fr. 14.—An allusion in D.S. 4, 4, 2, seems to suggest that the god, the μυριόμορφος, was also (like Attis) regarded as a herdsman. Something of the sort may be referred to in the unintelligible lines quoted by Cl. Al., Prot. ii, p. 14 P., apparently in connexion with the Sabazios mysteries. So Dionysos, too, is sometimes thought of as a βουκόλος: ποιμένι δ’ ἀγραύλων ταύρων, Διὸς αἰγιόχοιο υἱέι κισσοχίτωνι are words used of him in [Orph.] Lith. 260. Again, in imitation of the god himself his μύσται are βουκόλοι on the inscriptions from Asia Minor (Ins. Perg. ii, 485–8) and Thrace, of 273 which R. Schöll speaks, de commun. et coll. Graecis (Satura philol. Saupp.), p. 178 ff. βουκολικός occurs among the cult officials in the Iobakcheia at Athens: Ath. Mitth., 1894, p. 260, l. 122; archibucolus dei Liberi on inscriptions of the city of Rome. βουκόλος and βουκολεῖν occur in connexion with Bacchic worship as early as Kratinos, Aristoph., and Eurip.: νυκτιπόλου Ζαγρέως βούτας, E., Cret. fr. 472, 11 (acc. to Diels). See Crusius, Rh. M. 45, 266 f.; Dieterich de hymnis Orph. (Marb. 1891), p. 3 ff.

[36]   The special flute-melodies going under the name of Olympos were called θεῖα ([Pl.] Min. 318 B); κατέχεσθαι ποιεῖ (Pl., Smp. 215 C); ὁμολογουμένως ποιεῖ τὰς ψυχὰς ἐνθουσιαστικάς (Arist., Pol. 1340a 10). Cic., Div. i, 114: ergo et ei quorum animi, spretis corporibus, evolant atque excurrunt foras, ardore aliquo incitati atque inflammati, cernunt illa profecto quae vaticinantes praenuntiant: multisque rebus inflammantur tales animi qui corporibus non inhaerent: ut ei qui sono quodam vocum et Phrygiis cantibus incitantur. An unmistakable description of what was meant by ἔκστασις and Korybantic frenzy (see below).

[37]   i.e. those who are ἐνθουσιασμοῦ κατακώχιμοι, as Aristotle knew them; certain μανικαὶ διαθέσεις are known to Plato. Somewhat similar is the φύσις θειάζουσα which according to Demokritos [D. Chr. 36, 1] fr. 21 Diels, belongs to the inspired poet.

[38]   The drunkenness of the Thracians and their ancient cultivation of the vine are well known. They even brewed beer from barley: Ath. 547 BC (cf. Hehn, Culturpflanzen, p. 121 E.T.). The prophetai (prophesying in “enthusiasm”) of a Thracian oracle prophesied plurimo mero sumpto, Aristot. ap. Macr. 1, 18, 1.—Even the women drank unmixed wine in Thrace: Pl., Lg. 637 E.

[39]   Mela, 2, 21 (and from him Solin. 10, 5, p. 75, 16 Mom.) says of the Thracians epulantibus ubi super ignes quos circumsident quaedam semina ingesta sunt, similis ebrietati hilaritas ex nidore contingit (cf. [Plu.] de Flu. 3, 3). There can be no doubt that it was hemp-seed (κάνναβις) which had this effect. Hdt. iv, 74, says expressly that the Thracians knew hemp. It was thus with a sort of hashish that they intoxicated themselves (hashish is an extract of cannabis indica). The Scythians did something similar: Hdt. tells of their vapour-baths in tightly closed huts (iv, 75): they produced a smoke by laying hempseeds on red-hot stones and—though Hdt. does not say so—must necessarily have got into a state of wild intoxication. This may have been a religious performance. Drunkenness is generally regarded by savage tribes as a religiously inspired condition. Further, the Scythian practice has the most striking parallel in the use of “vapour-huts” among the North American Indians, in which case the religious intention is certain (see the account in Klemm, Culturg. ii, 175–8; J. G. Müller, Amerik. Urrelig. 92). Hdt. i, 202, also mentions intoxication from the fumes of certain “fruits” among the Massagetai; these last, after they had completely bemused themselves, stood up to dance and sing. The Thracians, too, may very well have used intoxication through hashish-fumes as a means of exciting themselves to their ecstatic religious dances.—The ancients were quite familiar with the practice of inhaling aromatic smoke to produce religious hallucinations: [Galen] ὅρ. ἰατρ. 187 (xix, p. 462 K) ἐνθουσιασμός ἐστι καθάπερ ἐξίστανταί τινες ἐπὶ (ὑπὸ?) τῶν ὑποθυμιωμένων ἐν τοῖς ἱεροῖς, <φάσματα (om. edd.)> ὁρῶντες ἢ τυμπάνων ἢ αὐλῶν ἢ συμβόλων (scr. κυμβάλων) ἀκούοντες; cf. odorum delenimento potest animus humanus externari, Apul., Ap. 43.—For the use of smoke in the 274 Korybantic ceremonies see below.—The γαγάτης λίθος ὑποθυμιαθείς is useful as an ἐπιληπτικῶν ἔλεγχος (Dioscor. v, 145); it brings on the convulsions of the victim of ἱερὰ νόσος (epilepsy) [Orph.] L. 478 ff. (cf. further Damigeron, de Lap. 20, p. 179 Ab.; Plin., NH. 36, 141; and also Gal. xii, p. 203 K.).

[40]   Polak, Persien, ii, 245 ff.—We have only to read the accounts derived from personal experience of the sensations and hallucinatory states accompanying hashish-smoking—such as those given, for instance, by Moreau (de Tours) Du hachisch et de l’aliénation mentale (Paris, 1845), esp. pp. 23 ff., 51 ff., 59 ff., 90, 147 ff., 151 ff., 369 ff.—to have a complete parallel to the condition which underlay Bacchic excitement. There, too, is the complete ἔκστασις of the spirit, a waking dream-state, an ὀλιγοχρόνιος μανία. It only requires the special tone and character given to the hallucinations and illusions by deep-rooted religious or fanciful conceptions—and the external machinery for cultivating such illusions—to make them an exact equivalent of the delirious condition of the real βάκχοι at the nightly festival of Dionysos. (The helpless state of impressionability to outward—e.g. musical—and inward influences is a marked feature of the intoxication and fantasia of hashish.) Other narcotics also have similar effects (Moreau, p. 184 ff.).

[41]   Pl., Ion, 534 A (perhaps an allusion to the words of Aischines Socr. in the Ἀλκιβιάδης [Aristid. Rh. ii, 23 f. Dind.]).

[42]   E., Ba. 142 f., 706 ff. (144 Συρίας δ’ ὡς λιβάνου καπνός).

[43]   Anaesthesia of the Bakchai: ἐπὶ δὲ βοστρύχοις πῦρ ἔφερον οὐδ’ ἔκαιεν, Ba. 757 f.—suum Bacche non sentit saucia volnus, dum stupet Edonis exululata iugis, Ov., Tr. 4, 1, 41 f. qualis deo percussa maenas . . . atque expers sui volnus dedit nec sensit, Sen., Troad. 682 ff. Similar insensibility to pain (certainly not always feigned) was shown in their ekstasis by the self-wounding galli of Kybele, the priests and priestesses of Mâ (Tibull. 1, 6, 45 ff.)—something of the sort is reported of the prophets of Baal (1 Kings xviii, 28). See in general on the subject of anaesthesia and the ὀρθῶς κατεχόμενοι ὑπὸ τῶν θεῶν, Iamb., Myst. 3, 4, p. 110 Par. In the case of the shamans, the Indian Yogis, the dervishes, and the natives of North America the existence of such states of insensibility in religious excitement has been actually observed.

[44]   κατεχόμενος ἐκ τοῦ θεοῦ (Pl., Men. 99 D; X., Sym. i, 10. κατεχόμενοι ὥσπερ αἱ βάκχαι, Pl., Ion, 534 A; Sym. 215 C. μανέντι τε καὶ κατασχομένῳ, Phdr. 244 E). ἡ δ’ ἀφρὸν ἐξιεῖσα καὶ διαστρόφους κόρας ἑλίσσουσ’, οὐ φρονοῦσ’ ἃ χρῆν φρονεῖν, ἐκ Βακχίου κατείχετο, E., Ba. 1122 ff. κάτοχοι above, n. 24.

[45]   ἔνθεός τε γίγνεται καὶ ἔκφρων καὶ ὁ νοῦς οὐκέτι ἐν αὐτῷ ἔνεστιν, Pl., Ion, 534 B (where it is applied to the inspired poet but properly belongs to the Bakchai).

[46]   ἔκστασις, ἐξίστασθαι is often used of the inspired state. μαίνεσθαι, ἐνθουσιᾶν, ἔνθεον γίνεσθαι, ἐκστῆναι are all used in the same sense and apply to the “inspired” prophets (Βάκιδες, Σίβυλλαι) and the poets: Arist., Prob. 30, 1, p. 954a, 34–9. ἐξίσταται καὶ μαίνεται, Arist. HA. 6, 22, p. 577a, 12. The religious ὀργιασμοί, ἐκστάσιας ψυχᾶς ἐπάγοντι: Phintys ap. Stob., Fl. iv, 23, 61a, p. 593 H. ἔκστασις is a state in which the soul seems estranged from itself; when the οἰκεῖαι κινήσεις οὐκ ἐνοχλοῦνται ἀλλ’ ἀπορραπίζονται (Arist., Pa. Nat. 464a, 25). The word became weak and commonplace enough in later usage, but it was evidently meant, originally, to express the “exit” of the “soul” from its body. In the same way the phrase used of one who 275 goes off into a faint: τὸν δ’ ἔλιπεν ψυχή originally meant the same thing and was so understood, see above (chap. i, n. 8). The same idea occurs again in P. Mag. Par., l. 725, p. 63 Wessely: ὑπέκλυτος δ’ ἔσει τῇ ψυχῇ καὶ οὐκ ἐν σεαυτῷ ἔσει ὅταν σοι ἀποκρίνηται [the god conjured up].

[47]   ἔκστασις ἐστιν ὀλιγοχρόνιος μανία [Galen] ὅρ. ἰατρ. 485 (xix, p. 462). μανίη ἔκστασίς ἐστι χρόνιος Aretaeus, Chr. Pass. 1, 6, p. 78 K.

[48]   Διόνυσον μαινόλην ὀργιάζουσι βάκχοι, ὠμοφαγίᾳ τὴν ἱερομανίαν ἄγοντες, καὶ τελίσκουσι τὰς κρεωνομίας τῶν φόνων ἀνεστεμμένοι τοῖς ὄφεσιν ἐπολολύζοντες εὐάν, Clem. Al., Protr. ii, p. 11 P.

[49]   The ἐνθουσιῶντες ἐκ θεοῦ τινος become like the god, λαμβάνουσι τὰ ἔθη καὶ τὰ ἐπιτηδεύματα (τοῦ θεοῦ), καθόσον δυνατὸν θεοῦ ἀνθρώπῳ μετασχεῖν, Pl., Phdr. 253 A. More boldly ἑαυτῶν ἐκστάντας ὅλους ἐνιδρῦσθαι τοῖς θεοῖς καὶ ἐνθεάζειν, Procl. in Rp. ii, 108, 23 Kr.—οὐκ ἔκστασις ἅπλως οὕτως ἐστίν, ἀλλὰ (in its positive sense) ἐπὶ τὸ κρεῖττον ἀναγωγὴ καὶ μετάστασις, Iamb. Myst. 3, 7, p. 114, 9 Parth.

[50]   ἔνθεοι γυναῖκες of the Bakchai, S. Ant. 963. αἱ Βάκχαι ὅταν ἔνθεοι γένωνται—Aesch. Socr. ap. Aristid., Rh. (ii, 23 Dind.). ἔνθεος ἤδε ἡ μανίη (the religious sort) Aret., p. 84 K. The essential meaning of ἔνθεον εἶναι (plenum esse deo) is clearly defined in Sch., E., Hip. 141: ἔνθεοι λέγονται οἱ ὑπὸ φάσματός τινος ἀφαιρεθέντες τὸν νοῦν, καὶ ὑπ’ ἐκείνου τοῦ θεοῦ τοῦ φασματοποιοῦ κατεχόμενοι καὶ τὰ δοκοῦντα κείνῳ ποιοῦντες. The ἔνθεος is completely in the power of the god; the god speaks and acts through him. The ἔνθεος has lost his consciousness of himself; like the θεῖοι ἄνδρες (which phrase in Plato has the same meaning as ἔνθεοι ἄνδρες) esp. the θεομάντεις, λέγουσι μὲν ἀληθῆ καὶ πολλά, ἴσασι δ’ οὐδὲν ὧν λέγουσι, Pl., Men. 99 C. (Philo, Spec. Leg. ii, p. 343 M., says of the inspired prophet: ἐνθουσιᾷ γεγονὼς ἐν ἀγνοίᾳ, μετανισταμένου μὲν τοῦ λογισμοῦ . . . ἐπιπεφοιτηκότος δὲ καὶ ἐνῳκηκότος τοῦ θείου πνεύματος καὶ πᾶσαν τῆς φώνης ὀργανοποιΐαν κρούοντος κτλ.; cf. Iamb., Myst. 3, 4, p. 109.)

[51]   ἔνθεοι μάντεις (Bakides, Sibyllai) Arist., Prb. 30, 2, 954a, 37. θεομάντεις Pl., Men. ad fin. μαντικὴ κατὰ τὸ ἔνθεον, ὅπερ ἐστὶν ἐνθεαστικόν [Plu.] Plac. Phil. 5, 1, 1 [Dox., p. 415].

[52]   μάντις δ’ ὁ δαίμων ὅδε (Dionysos)· τὸ γὰρ βακχεύσιμον καὶ τὸ μανιῶδες μαντικὴν πολλὴν ἔχει· ὅταν γὰρ ὁ θεὸς εἰς τὸ σῶμ’ ἔλθῃ πολύς, λέγειν τὸ μέλλον τοὺς μεμηνότας ποιεῖ, E., Ba. 298 ff. Here the inner relationship of the inspiration mantikê and the “possession” which took place in ecstatic frenzy is expressed with all possible clearness (drunkenness is surely not referred to!). This is how Plu., Smp. 7, 10, p. 716 B, also understood Eur. Prophesying Mainads: μαινάδας θυοσκόους E., Ba. 224—οὐδεὶς ἔννους ἐφάπτεται μαντικῆς ἐνθέου καὶ ἀληθοῦς, ἀλλ’ ἢ καθ’ ὕπνον τὴν τῆς φρονήσεως πεδηθεὶς δύναμιν ἢ διὰ νόσον ἢ διά τινα ἐνθουσιασμὸν παραλλάξας, Pl., Ti. 71 E. νοσήματα μαντικὰ ἢ ἐνθουσιαστικά make inspired μάντεις what they are: Arist. Prob. 954a, 35. Such mantikê takes place in the state of furor, cum a corpore animus abstractus divino instinctu concitatur, Cic., Div. i, 66. A famous case is that of Kassandra from whom the deus inclusus corpore humano, non iam Cassandra loquitur, § 67; cf. the Sibyl who prophesies μαινομένῳ στόματι (Heraclit. fr. 12 By. = 92 D.) and the Pythia at Delphi prophesying in a state of μανία. For the prophecy of Korybantic Phrygians possessed and “frenzied”, see Arrian ap. Eust., on D.P. 809.

[53]   Hdt. vii, 111 (for Hdt. the Βησσοί seem to be a division, perhaps a clan, of the Satrai. Polyb., Strabo, Pliny, Dio C., and others know them as an independent Thracian tribe): πρόμαντις γυνὴ χρέουσα κατάπερ ἐν Δελφοῖσι—which means that she prophesied in ecstasy, for that is what the Pythia at Delphi did. (See Sch. Ar., Plut. 39; 276 Plu., Def. Or. 51, p. 438 B. Lucan vi, 166 ff., clearly describes the phenomena supposed to attend their religious ekstasis: artus Phoebados irrupit Paean, mentemque priorem expulit, atque hominem toto sibi cedere iussit pectore. bacchatur demens aliena, etc.)

[54]   ὁ Θρῃξὶ μάντις Διόνυσος, E., Hec. 1267. Rhesos dwelling in Mt. Pangaios is Βάκχου προφήτης, Rh. 972. ἀφικέσθαι τοῖς Λειβηθρίοις παρὰ τοῦ Διονύσου μάντευμα ἐκ Θρᾴκης, Paus. 9, 30, 9. Aristoteles qui Theologumena scripsit, apud Ligyreos (?) ait in Thracia esse adytum Libero consecratum, ex quo redduntur oracula. Macr. 1, 18, 1. The wife of Spartacus, herself a Thracian, was μαντική τε καὶ κάτοχος τοῖς περὶ τῶν Διόνυσον ὀργιασμοῖς, Plu., Crass. 8. Octavian in Thrace consulted in Liberi patris luco barbara caerimonia, i.e. an oracle: Suet., Oct. 94. Even in 11 B.C. the Bessoi still had a ἱερεὺς τοῦ Διονύσου, Vologeses, who by means of prophesyings (πολλὰ θείασας) and τῇ παρὰ τοῦ θεοῦ δόξῃ stirred up his people to rebel against the Odrysai: D.C. 54, 34, 5. In 29 B.C. M. Crassus had handed over to the Odrysai the piece of land occupied by the Bessoi ἐν ᾗ καὶ τὸν θεὸν ἀγάλλουσι, D.C. 51, 25, 5.—The spirit of the old Thracian ecstatic cult reappeared in the character of the Bacchic worship introduced from Greece into Italy whose excesses (in 186 B.C.) are narrated by Livy: 39, 8 ff.: among these being viros velut mente capta cum iactatione fanatica corporis vaticinari: 39, 13, 12.

[55]   Compare, for example, what we are told of the religious dances of the Ostiaks (Erman, Travels in Siberia, ii, 45 f., E. T., Cooley), the Haokah dance of the Dakota, the “medicine-dance” of the Winnebago in North America (Schoolcraft, Indian Tribes, iii, 487 ff., 286 ff.), the dance of voodoo negroes in Haiti (Nouv. annales des voyages, 1858, iii, p. 90 ff.). For the violent religious dances of the people in ancient Peru see Müller, Amerik. Urrelig. 385; in Australia, R. Brough-Smith, Aborigines of Victoria, i, 166 ff. (1878). Among the Veddas of Ceylon there was a dance of the “devil’s priests” (called Kattadias) dressed up as demons: see Tennent, Ceylon, i, 540 f.; ii, 442.—In antiquity the following have the closest relationship to the ecstatic cult of the Thracians: the dance festivals in honour of the “Syrian Goddess”, of the Kappadocian Mâ, of the Phrygian Mountain Mother, and of Attis (the last having much the same origin as the Thracian festival, but being more strongly affected by Semitic influences, and perhaps by the religious practices of the prehistoric inhabitants of Asia Minor). Besides these we may remember the account given by Poseidonios ap. Strabo, 198, D.P. 570 ff., of the excited nocturnal festival celebrated in honour of “Dionysos” in an island at the mouth of the Loire by the women of the Namnites (Samnites, Amnites) Διονύσῳ κατεχόμεναι in the wildest delirium (λύττα).

[56]   This is regularly the meaning of such excesses practised by “magicians”. The shaman (with his “soul”) voyages out into the spirit-world; see the remarkably vivid account of Radloff, Siberien, ii, 1–67; and also Erman, Zschr. f. Ethnologie, ii, 324 ff.; A. Krause, Tlinkitindianer, p. 294 ff., 1885. So does the Lapp magician (Knud Leem, Lappen in Finmarken [E.T. in Pinkerton’s Voyages]). The Angekok enters into communion with his Torngak (Cranz, Hist. of Greenland, i, p. 194, E.T., 1820); the Butio with the Zemen (Müller, Amerik. Urrelig., 191 f.); the Piajes with the spirits (Müller, 217). Thus, too, communication with the divine “grandfather” of the people is established by means of dances, etc., among the Abipones (Dobrizhoffer, Abipones, ii, 64, E.T.). The expulsion of the soul to visit the spirit-world is also practised (in their convulsions) by the 277 magicians of the North American Indians, the people of the Pacific Islands (Tylor, ii, 133), etc. Such practices start out from a commonly held conception of the nature of body and soul and of their relations with the unseen. The magicians believe “that in their ecstatic condition they can break through the barrier between this world and the next”, Müller 397. To facilitate this process they employ the various means alluded to of stimulating their senses.

[57]   The most remarkable case of this is provided by the history of a religious sect of our own day widely spread in Russia, who call themselves “the Christs”, i.e. sons of God. The sect was founded by a holy man named Philippov in whose body God one day took up his abode; after which the man spoke as the living God himself and gave commandments. The sect particularly stood for the idea that the divine dwells in mankind, Christ in men and Mary in women, and that the sense of their presence can be awakened in men by the action of the Holy Ghost, through the force of strong belief, by saintliness and by religious ecstasy. To produce the ecstasy dances are held in common. About midnight, after long prayers, hymns, and religious addresses, the participators in the secret festival, both men and women, dressed in strange costumes begin to dance. Soon the ranks and circles of the dancers and singers break up; individuals begin to turn round and round, revolving on their own axis with incredible speed, balancing meanwhile on their heels. The excitement of the dancing and leaping crowd grows continually greater. Finally one of them calls out “He comes; He is near—the Holy Ghost”. The wildest ecstasy takes hold of every one. Details may be found in N. Tsakni’s La Russie sectaire, p. 63 ff. (cf. what is said in the same work, p. 80 ff., of the religious dances of the Skopzes, and p. 119 f. of the sect of the “Leapers”).—All this is true Bacchanalia christiana and therefore mentioned here.

[58]   e.g. Mariner, Tonga Islanders, i, 108 (1817); Wrangel, Reise in Siberien, i, 286 (i, 267 f., French trans.); Radloff, Siberien, ii, 58. Even the respectable Cranz, whose own point of view made it impossible for him to appreciate properly the Angekok practices so clearly observed by him, admits that many of them really saw visions that suggested “something supernatural” to them: Hist. of Greenland, p. 197 E.T. Something similar is said about ecstatically dancing dervishes by Lane, Modern Egyptians, ii, 197.

[59]   Magicians called by the name of the god (Keebet) among the Abipones: Dobrizhoffer, ii, 248. Similar cases elsewhere: Müller, 77. In Tahiti the person inspired by the god so long as the “inspiration” lasted (several days sometimes) was himself called “god” or given the name of some particular god: Waitz, Anthropol. vi, 383. In the case of an African tribe dwelling on the banks of Lake Nyanza the chief spirit sometimes takes temporary possession of one of the magicians (man or woman) who then bears the name of the spirit: Schneider, Relig. d. Afrik. Naturv. 151. Sometimes the identity of the magician with the god is expressed by the wearing of the god’s distinguishing dress and imitation of his outward appearance (in the manner of the Thracian Βάκχοι); cf. the devil-dancers in Ceylon, etc.

[60]   When it acquires a more philosophical temper mysticism seeks its unification with the highest (the ἔλλαμψις τῆς φύσεως τῆς πρώτης) more by means of the completest passivity of mind and body. It employs the εἰς αὑτὴν ξυλλέγεσθαι καὶ ἀθροίζεσθαι of the soul (Plato), or its withdrawal from all that is finite and particular (the recojimiento of the Spanish mystics). The profoundest quietude of spirit brings 278 about the unification with the One behind all multiplicity; cf. the Neoplatonic mystics, the Buddhists, etc. Sometimes both are found together; absorption and passivity of the spirit side by side with wild excitement. Both methods were practised by the Persian Sufis. Chardin, Voyage en Perse, iv, 458 (cd. Langlés) says of them, cependant ils se servent plus communément du chant de la danse et de la musique, disant qu’ils produisent plus sûrement leur extase. It may be that the cult of religious exaltation is always the real origin of these ecstatic states. Though the cult sometimes falls into decay itself, its offspring the ἔκστασις survives.

[61]   In the language of these mystics the words mean: he knows that the passionate longing for reunion with God, the Soul of the universe, breaks down the individual personality and its limitations—“for where Love awakes to life the Self dies, that gloomy tyrant.”

[62]   Γέται οἱ ἀθανατίζοντες, Hdt. Iv, 93–4 (ἀπαθανατίζοντες, Plato and others, see Wesseling on D.S. i, p. 105, 32).

[63]   . . . οὐδένα ἄλλον θεὸν νομίζοντες εἰ μὴ τὸν σφέτερον (the Zalmoxis just mentioned) Hdt. iv, 94 fin. There we are told that the Getai πρὸς βροντήν τε καὶ ἀστραπὴν τοξεύοντες ἄνω ἀπειλεῦσι τῷ θεῷ, οὐδένα κτλ. If it were true (as most people seem to think) that the god (ὁ θεός) threatened by the Getai during thunder was their own god Zalmoxis, then it certainly is difficult, or, indeed, impossible, to understand the point of explaining the threatening of this god by the statement that they hold him for the only true god. The truth is that the τῷ θεῷ refers simply to the “sky” during a thunderstorm. The usage is common in Greek and is only transferred to the Getai by a rather awkward extension. This thundering θεός is not Zalmoxis at all (hence Z. is not as some have thought a “sky-god”). The Getai regarded Zalmoxis as the only god: the Thunderer is no real god to them (at the most a bad demon or a magician or something of the kind). To show that they are not afraid of him they shoot arrows against him, probably in the hope of breaking the thundercloud. (Parallels in other countries: Grimm, p. 1088; Dobrizhoffer, ii, 78. In India, Oldenberg, 491–4. Excitement during an eclipse of the moon: Weissenborn on Livy, 26, 5, 9. Reminiscence of such customs in the myth of Herakles: [Apollod.] 2, 5, 10, 5. From Hdt. by indirect channels comes Isig., Mir. 42 [p. 162 West.]; cf. also the account of D.C. 59, 28, 6 about Caligula.—Pallad., RR. i, 35 [contra grandinem].)

[64]   ἀθανατίζουσι δὲ τόνδε τὸν τρόπον . . . οὔτε ἀποθνήσκειν ἑωυτοὺς νομίζουσι, ἰέναι τε τὸν ἀπολλύμενον παρὰ Ζάλμοξιν δαίμονα (οἱ δὲ αὐτῶν τὸν αὐτὸν τοῦτον οὐνομάζουσι Γεβελέϊζιν), Hdt. iv, 94. Here, as regularly in Greek use of the words, we must not understand by ἀθάνατον εἶναι a mere shadowy (if timeless) survival of the soul after death as in the Homeric Hades. Such a belief if it had been held by the Getai would not have struck Hdt. or his readers as remarkable in the slightest degree. It must therefore imply an unending and fully conscious existence, in this last respect resembling the life on earth.

[65]   ἀθανατίζουσι δὲ καὶ Τέριζοι (τερετιζοι Phot.) καὶ Κρόβυζοι καὶ τοὺς ἀποθανόντας ὡς Ζάλμοξίν φασιν οἴχεσθαι, Phot. Suid., EM. Ζάμολξις. The Krobyzoi are a well-known Thracian stock. The Terizoi are not elsewhere mentioned; perhaps they may be placed in the neighbourhood of Τίριστις, Τίριξις ἄκρα = C. Kaliakra (cf. C. Müller on Arrian, P. Eux. 35); there we also hear of a Τίριστις πόλις, Ptolem. With this Tomaschek also agrees (D. alten Thraker, Ber. Wien. Ak.> 128, iv, p. 97). In this case they would be neighbours of the Krobyzoi. 279

[66]   οὐκ ἀποθνῄσκειν ἀλλὰ μετοικίζεσθαι νομίζοντες is what we hear of the Getai in Julian, Caes. 327 D. animas (putant) non extingui sed ad beatiora transire, Mela, ii, 18.

[67]   . . . τοὺς ἀποθανόντας ὡς Ζάλμοξίν φασιν οἴχεσθαι, ἥξειν δὲ αὖθις. καὶ ταῦτα ἀεὶ νομίζουσιν ἀληθεύειν. θύουσι δὲ καὶ εὐωχοῦνται ὡς αὔθις ἥξοντος τοῦ ἀποθανόντος, Phot. Suid., EM. Ζάμολξις. Mela, ii, 18: alii (among the Thracians) redituras putant animas obeuntium.

[68]   Hdt. iv, 95, Zalmoxis, a slave of Pythagoras in Samos, is set free and comes back a rich man to his poverty-stricken country. He collects together the leading men of the race in a room, where he entertains them and seeks to persuade them of the belief that neither he nor they nor their descendants will die but that they will all come after death to a place where they will enjoy all good things in abundance. Thereupon he withdraws into a secret underground chamber and lives there for three years. In the fourth year he comes to light again and “the Thracians are persuaded of the truth of what Zalmoxis had told them.” This implies—though Hdt. omits to say so, and so does [Hellan.] π. νομ. βαρβ. (following Hdt.) ap. Phot., etc., s. Ζάμολξις—that he had also promised that he and his adherents should return to earth alive after the expiry of a definite period (three years). That such a belief in the “return” of the dead was actually held by the Thracians is clear enough from the quotations given in the last note. The story of Zalmoxis’ trick (which was perhaps intended humorously by its inventors) seemed suspicious even to Hdt., but it is not pure invention (any more than the analogous stories about Pythagoras, Trophonios, and later Empedotimos): it is rather a euhemerist version of a miraculous legend. The disappearance of Zalmoxis into a subterranean chamber is a distortion of the belief in his permanent abode in a hollow mountain-side, an ἀντρῶδές τι χώριον in Mt. Kogaionon of which Str. 298 speaks plainly enough. In that mountain the god dwells; just as Rhesos κρυπτὸς ἐν ἄντροις τῆς ὑπαργύρου χθονός of Mt. Pangaios, dwells there as an ἀνθρωποδαίμων [E.], Rh. 970; cf. chap. iv, n. 36. He lives there undying like the Βάκχου προφήτης, who has become a god, to whom the tragedy obscurely alludes in ll. 972 f. as living on Mt. Pangaios (this may perhaps refer to Lykourgos—see G. Hermann, Op. v, 23 f.—surely not to Orpheus as Maass, Orpheus, p. 68 [1895], suggests). The obvious parallel is Amphiaraos and Trophonios in their caves, and Orig., Cels. iii, 34 (see above, chap. iii, n. 13), puts them and Zalmoxis together. We may safely complete Hdt.’s account of how the ἀπολλύμενοι of the Getai go away and have everlasting life παρὰ Ζάλμοξιν δαίμονα (iv, 94), by saying that they reach this same hollow mountain, a subterranean place of delight where they dwell with the god. Mnaseas compares Zalmoxis with Kronos (FHG.; Phot. Suid. EM., as before) and the similarity doubtless resides in the fact that both rule over the spirits of the blest in another world. But besides this the Thracian belief must also have included the idea of a periodical appearance of the god in the upper world. Hdt.’s story of the trick practised by Zalmoxis shows this (the return of the souls to which the story also points, is a sort of counterpart of this). Are we to suppose that the ἐπιφάνεια of the god was expected after the expiry of three years (just as it was after two years in the Dionysos festival; see above, n. 27)? We do not know whether these Thracian tribes celebrated the ἐπιφάνεια of the god with “enthusiastic” worship. Such an element in the cult of Zalmoxis seems to be suggested by the fact that we hear of “physicians of Zalmoxis” (Pl., Charm. 156 D) and of mantikê—which is generally closely bound up with ἰατρική—280 in the cult of this god. This must be the meaning of calling Zalm. himself μάντις: Str. 762, 297; cf. also the otherwise valueless account of Ant. Diog. ap. Porph. VP. 14–15. Finally, the enthusiastic character of the cult seems to be implied in the identifying of the priest with the god by the Getai (as in the similar cases mentioned above, notes 32 and 59). Thus, the high priest is himself called “god”: Str. 298 (he has authority over both king and state: cf. the ἱερεὺς τοῦ Διονύσου among the Bessoi, above, n. 53; cf. Jordanes, Get. 71). This made it easy for the “god” Zalmoxis, whom even Hdt. quite rightly regarded as δαίμων τις Γέτῃσι ἐπιχώριος (iv, 96) to be metamorphosed into a man of the historical past (he is this in D.S. 1, 94, 2; Str. vii, 297; cf. Jordanes, Get. 39). If the contemporary priest was called “god” it might naturally be concluded that the “god” Zalmoxis was once only a priest too.

[69]   Hermip. ap. Jos., Ap. i, 22.

[70]   In E., Hec. (1265 ff.) the Thracian Polymestor prophecies to Hekabe that she shall become a dog after her death, πύρσ’ ἔχουσα δέργματα. Hekabe asks πῶς δ’ οἶσθα μορφῆς τῆς ἐμῆς μετάστασιν; Pol.: ὁ Θρῃξὶ μάντις εἶπε Διόνυσος τάδε. It looks as if Eur. in this allusion to a belief in metempsychosis was intending to give a realistic touch of Thracian national character. He was well informed in such matters.

[71]   The connexion between Thracian Dionysos-worship and the belief in immortality and cult of the dead is vouched for, acc. to Rapp, Dionysosc. 15 ff., by the insc. found by Heuzey in Thracian districts. An epitaph found at Doxato (near Philippi) says of one who has died young (ll. 12 ff.): reparatus vivis in Elysiis. Sic placitum est divis aeterna vivere forma qui bene de supero lumine sit meritus.—nunc seu te Bromio signatae (see Anrich, Antike Mysterienwesen, 123 f.) mystides ad se florigero in prato congregem uti Satyrum, sive canistriferae poscunt sibi Naïdes aeque, qui ducibus taedis agmina festa trahas . . . (CIL. iii, 686). It is true that this remarkable fantasy contains nothing directly alluding to specifically Thracian worship. On the other hand this is certainly suggested and both the Thracian god and his connexion with a cult of the dead is implied in the use of the local cult-title of Dionysos in an offering made by Bythos and Rufus to the thiasi Liberi patris Tasibasteni of 300 denarii ex quorum reditu annuo rosalibus (and so at the yearly festival of the dead) ad monimentum eorum vescentur. CIL. iii, 703; cf. 704. Even the conjunction by E., Hec. 1265 ff., of the belief in palingenesia with the oracle of the Thracian Dionysos seems to imply a connexion between that belief and the cult of Dionysos.

[72]   πολλοὶ μὲν ναρθηκοφόροι, παῦροι δέ τε Βάκχοι ap. Pl., Phd. 69 C. The strict meaning of this Orphic verse (Lob., Agl. 813 ff.) is that out of the multitudes who take part in the Bacchic festival only a few have any real right to call themselves by the name of the god—as having become one with him through their ecstasy and exaltation. A special morbid state was necessary for that: the same state which in other circumstances made the real shamans, Piajes, etc.

[73]   Even when their ἔκστασις had ceased the ecstatic worshippers still regarded as real the visions which they had enjoyed in that condition: οἷον συνέβη Ἀντιφέροντι τῷ Ὠρείτῃ καὶ ἄλλοις ἐξισταμένοις. τὰ γὰρ φαντάσματα ἔλεγον ὡς γενόμενα καὶ ὡς μνημονεύοντες, Arist. π. μνήμης, 1, p. 451a, 8. “Magicians who had subsequently been converted to Christianity were still convinced of the reality of their earlier visions: they thought they had seen something perfectly real.” 281 Müller, Amerik. Urrelig. 80. Add: Tylor, ii, 131; Cranz, Greenland, p. 197.

[74]   See above, chap. i, p. 7 ff.

[75]   Hdt. v, 4 (speaking of the Τραυσοί. Hsch. has the same, s.v. Τραυσός). The story was then added to the regular list of νόμιμα βαρβαρικά used for illustrating the variability of νόμος. It was soon after told of the Κρόβυζοι: Isig., Mir. 27 (they were also regarded as strong adherents of a belief in immortality; see above, n. 65); then of the Καυσιανοί: Nic. Dam., Mir. 18 West. Zenob., Prov. v, 25, p. 128, 5 L.-Schn. (Καύσιοι, Καυσιανοί). It occurs again in a fragment of some collection of νόμιμα βαρβαρικά written before the third century (there is no reason to ascribe it to Aristotle) given by Mahaffy, On the Flinders Petrie Papyri, Transcript., p. 29: Καυσιανοῖς δὲ νόμιμον τοὺς μὲν γιγνομένους θρηνεῖν τοὺς δὲ τελευτῶντας εὐδαιμονίζειν ὡς πολλῶν κακῶν ἀναπεπαυμένους (κακῶν as above or πόνῶν must be supplied to fill the gap; cf. the well-known fragment of Eur. Cresph.: ἐχρῆν γὰρ ἡμᾶς . . . fr. 449, which perhaps alludes to Hdt.’s account). It is told of Thracians in general, or of some tribe not particularly named, by S. E., P. iii, 232; Val. Max. 2, 6, 12 (both clearly drawing on collections of νόμιμα βαρβαρικά); Mela, ii, 18; AP. ix, 111 (Archias). There were thus three sources of the story: Besides Hdt.’s, two in which either the Krobyzoi or the Kausianoi were named as the Thracian tribe instead of Hdt.’s Trausoi.

[76]   ὅσων κακῶν ἐξαπαλλαχθεὶς ἔστι ἐν πάσῃ εὐδαιμονίῃ, Hdt. v, 4.

[77]   See Jul., Caes. 327 D, Mela, ii, 18. Likewise of the Καυσιανοί in Anon. ap. Mahaffy (see n. 75), p. 29, 10–12. Iamb., VP. 173: as a result of the (Pythagorean) doctrine of immortality taught by Zalmoxis ἔτι καὶ νῦν οἱ Γαλάται (because they had been instructed by Zalm.; from a similar fabulous source comes Hippol., RH. i, 2, p. 14, 93 D.-S.) καὶ οἱ Τράλεις καὶ πολλοὶ τῶν βαρβάρων τοὺς αὑτῶν υἱοὺς πείθουσιν ὡς οὐκ ἔστι φθαρῆναι τὴν ψυχήν . . . καὶ ὅτι τὸν θάνατον οὐ φοβητέον, ἀλλὰ πρὸς τοὺς κινδύνους εὐρώστως ἑκτέον.—Τράλλεις Scaliger for the MS. τραλις, rightly as far as sense goes. But we find the name ΤΡΑΛΕIΣ given to the Pergamene mercenaries called after the Thracian tribes: Ins. Perg. i, n. 13, 23, 59. These had already served as infantry in 331 in the army of Alexander the Great: D.S. 17, 65, 1; cf. Hsch. Τραλλεῖς. They were a south Thracian tribe: Plu., Ages. 16; Ap. Lac. 42; Str. 649 (where read Τραλλέων); Tralli Thraeces, Liv. 38, 21, 2, who elsewhere calls them Illyriorum genus, 27, 32, 4; 31, 35, 1. It appears that a branch of the Thracian tribe of the Tralles reached Illyria in their wanderings; there Theopompos, too, knew them: Steph. Byz. Τραλλία; cf. also s. vv. Βῆγις, Βόλουρος (cf. Tomaschek, Sitzb. Wien. Ak., 128, iv, p. 56 f.).

[78]   Appetitus maximus mortis, Mart. Cap. 6, 656. The Thracians esp. are meant by Galen when he speaks of βαρβάρων ἐνίοις who entertained the belief ὅτι τὸ ἀποθνήσκειν ἐστὶ καλόν (xix, p. 704 K).

CHAPTER IX

DIONYSIAC RELIGION IN GREECE

ITS AMALGAMATION WITH APOLLINE RELIGION. ECSTATIC PROPHECY. RITUAL PURIFICATION AND EXORCISM. ASCETICISM

The Greeks received from the Thracians and assimilated to their own purposes the worship of Dionysos, just as, in all probability, they received the personality and worship of Ares and the Muses. Of this assimilation we cannot give any further particulars; it took place in a period lying before the beginnings of historical tradition. In this period a multiplicity of separate tendencies and conceptions, freely mingled with features borrowed from foreign creeds, were welded together to form the religion of Greece.

Homer is already acquainted with the fanatical worship of Dionysos; the god is called by the name under which Greek worshippers made themselves familiar with the stranger.1 But in Homer, Dionysos appears only once or twice for a moment in the background. He is not the bountiful giver of wine; he does not belong to the Round Table of the great gods assembled on Olympos. Nowhere in the story told in either of the Homeric poems does he influence the life and destiny of human beings. There is no need to seek far for the reason of Dionysos’ subordinate position in the Iliad and the Odyssey. Homer’s silence makes it quite plain that at that time the Thracian god had not yet emerged from a position of insignificance or merely local importance in the life and faith of Greece. Nor is this hard to understand; the cult of Dionysos only gradually won recognition in Greece. Many legends tell of the battles that had to be fought by the new worship and of the opposition that met the invader. We hear how the Dionysiac frenzy and the ekstasis of the Dionysiac dance-festival took possession of the whole female population of many districts of Central Greece and the Peloponnese.2 Sometimes a few women would venture to join the wandering choruses of wild Bacchants who danced upon the mountain tops; here and there the king of the land would oppose the progress of this tumultuous worship. Such stories are told of the daughters of Minyas in Orchomenos, of Proitos in Tiryns, of King Pentheus at Thebes, and Perseus at Argos;3 their opposition to the Dionysiac form of worship, occurring in 283 reality at no precise date, assumed a deceptive distinctness in the artificial systems of the mythologists and developed the character of historical events. In reality what we are told of these individuals—how the opponents of Dionysos themselves fell into even wilder frenzy and in Bacchic delirium slew and tore in pieces their own children instead of the victim-animal, or (as in the case of Pentheus) became themselves the victim slain and torn in pieces by the raging women—all this belongs to the class of ætiological myth. They are legends in which special features of worship (for example, the existing or dimly remembered sacrifice of human beings at the feasts of Dionysos) are provided with a mythical prototype in the supposed historical past of mythology, and thus receive their justification.4 Still, there remains a substratum of historical fact underlying such stories. They all presuppose that the cult of Dionysos arrived from abroad and entered into Greece as something foreign. This presupposition notoriously corresponds to the actual facts of the case, and we are bound to assume that the account which they immediately proceed to give of the violent opposition which this cult, and only this cult, met with in many parts of Greece, is not pure fiction.5 We are obliged to recognize that such stories preserved a trace of real historical memory expressed in the one form which was invariably assumed by the earliest Greek tradition, namely mythology, in which all the accidents and varieties of earthly experience were condensed into types of universal applicability.

It was then not without opposition, it appears, that the worship of Dionysos, descending from the north into Boeotia, spread from thence to the Peloponnese and at an early period invaded even some of the islands as well. In truth, even if we had no evidence at all on the point, we should have expected the Greeks to feel a profound repugnance to this disorderly and tumultuous Thracian worship; a deep-seated instinct must in their case have resisted such extravagance of emotional excitement and refused to lose itself in the limitless abyss of mere feeling. This unchecked roaming over the mountain sides in nocturnal revelry might be suitable enough for Thracian women-folk, but respectable Greek citizens could not give themselves up to such things without a struggle-—without, indeed, a break with all inherited propriety and decorum.6 It seems to have been the women who were the first to give in to the invading worship,7 carried away in a real frenzy of inspired enthusiasm, and the new cult may really have owed its first success chiefly to them. What we are told of the irresistible progress and widespread success8 of the 284 Bacchic dance-worship and its exaltation reminds us of the phenomena which have attended similar religious epidemics such as have in more recent times occasionally burst out and overflowed whole countries. We may in particular recall to mind the accounts which we have of the violent and widespread dance-madness which, soon after the severe mental and physical shock suffered by Europe in the Black Death of the fourteenth century, broke out on the Rhine and for centuries could not be entirely stamped out. Those who were attacked by the fever were driven by an irresistible impulse to dance. The bystanders, in convulsions of sympathetic and imitative fury joined in the whirling dance themselves. Thus the malady was spread by contagion, and soon whole companies of men, women, and girls, wandered dancing through the country. In spite of the insufficiency of the surviving records, the religious character of this dance-enthusiasm is unmistakably apparent. The Church regarded it as a “heresy”. The dancers called upon the name of St. John or of “certain demons”; hallucinations and visions of a religious nature accompanied their ecstasies.9 Can it have been another such popular religious malady which attacked Greece—perhaps in the train of the disturbance of spiritual equilibrium caused by the destructive migrations which take their name from the Dorians? The circumstances of the time must have predisposed men’s minds in that direction and made them ready to accept the Thracian Dionysos and his enthusiastic dance-worship. In any case this invasion did not, like its mediæval counterpart, break down by coming into conflict with a well-established religion and an exclusive ecclesiastical organization of a very different temper from its own. In the deceptive twilight of myth we can only dimly discern the arrival and progress of the Dionysiac religion in Greece. But so much at least is evident: the Bacchic cult, though it had to overcome many obstacles, at last established itself in Greece and triumphantly overran both mainland and islands, until in the course of time it obtained a profound and far-reaching importance in Greek life of which Homer could scarcely give a hint.

§ 2

It was no longer simply the old Thracian Dionysos who now took his place beside the other great gods of the Greek Olympos as one of themselves. He had become Hellenized and humanized in the meantime. Cities and states celebrated him in yearly festivals as the giver of the vine’s inspiring fruit, as 285 the daimonic patron of vegetation, and the whole of Nature’s rich and flourishing growth. He was worshipped as the incarnation of all natural life and vigour in the fullest and widest sense: as the typical exponent of the most eager enjoyment of life. Even Art, the highest expression of the courage and pride of life, drew much of its inspiration and its aspiration towards the infinite from the worship of Dionysos; and the drama, that supreme achievement of Greek poetry, arose out of the choruses of the Dionysiac festival.

Now the art of the actor consists in entering into a strange personality, and in speaking and acting out of a character not his own. At bottom it retains a profound and ultimate connexion with its most primitive source—that strange power of transfusing the self into another being which the really inspired participator in the Dionysiac revels achieved in his ekstasis. The essential features of the god as he first arrived in Greece from foreign lands, in spite of much alteration and transformation of the primitive type, were thus not entirely lost. There remained also, in addition to the cheerful festivity of the daylight worship of Dionysos, as it was celebrated more particularly in Athens, certain vestiges of the old ecstatic worship which drove men and women over the mountains in nocturnal revelry. In many places there were still celebrated the trieteric festivals10 in which at recurrent intervals the “Epiphany” of Dionysos, his appearance in the world of men and ascent from the underworld, was solemnized by night. The primitive character of Dionysos the Lord of Spirits and of the Souls of the dead—a very different figure indeed from the tender and delicate Wine-God of later times—was still obscurely present in many features of the Dionysiac festivals, in those of Delphi especially, but even to some extent at Athens too.11 The ecstasy and the violence, even the dark savagery of the ancient cult did not quite die out in the midst of all the refinements of Greek civilization; recognizable traces of such things were preserved in the Nuktelia and Agrionia and in the various trieteric festivals that were offered to the god in many different localities.12 In Greece the awful god received the blood of human victims.13 Nor did the outward signs of delirious frenzy, such as the eating of raw flesh, the killing and tearing in pieces of snakes, entirely disappear.14 So little indeed, did the Bacchic frenzy that could exalt and lift the worshipper to communion with the god and his train, disappear before the gentler attractions of the gracious wine-god and his festival, that the raving and “possession” which characterized the cult of Dionysos were 286 now actually regarded by foreign peoples as the essentially Hellenic form of the worship of the god.15

Thus, a sympathetic understanding of the orgiastic cult and its tremendous capabilities lived on. The “Bacchants” of Euripides still preserves for us a breath of its magic, a trace of the enthusiasm and exaltation that overwhelmed the senses and enthralled the will and consciousness of those who gave themselves up to the powerful Dionysiac influence. Like an irresistible current that overwhelms a swimmer or like the mysterious helplessness that frustrates the dreamer, the magic power emanating from the neighbourhood of the god took complete possession of the worshipper and drove him whither it willed. Everything in the world was transformed for him; he himself was altered. Every character in the play falls under the spell as soon as he enters into the magic circle. Even the modern reader who turns over the pages of Euripides’ poem feels something of that strange power to subdue the soul wielded by the Dionysiac mysteries and experiences in his own person a faint reflexion of these extraordinary states of mind.

Probably as a result of this profound Dionysiac fever which had once raged through Greece like an epidemic and was liable to periodic returns in the nocturnal festivals of the god, there remained in the constitution of the Greek people a certain morbid weakness, a susceptibility to suddenly appearing and as suddenly disappearing crises in which the normal powers of perceiving and feeling were temporarily overthrown. A few stray accounts have come down to us in which we read how such brief attacks of passing insanity ran through whole cities like an infectious disease.16 The Korybantic form of the malady, which was religious in character17 and took its name from the daimonic companions of the Phrygian Mountain Mother, was a phenomenon quite well-known to doctors and psychologists. Those affected by such fevers saw strange figures that corresponded to no objective reality, and heard the sound of invisible flutes, until at last they were excited to the highest pitch of frenzy and were seized with a violent desire to dance.18 The initiation festivals of the Phrygian deities were specially directed to the discharge and so eventually to the cure and “purgation” of such emotional states; the means employed being principally dance and music—more especially the music composed for the flute by the old Phrygian masters; music that could fill the soul with inspiration in suitably disposed natures.19 By such methods the ecstatic element was not simply suppressed or expelled, it was taken 287 up as a special disciplinary process by the physician-priesthood who recognized in it a vital movement and added it to the regular worship of the god.

In a similar fashion Greece in its most enlightened period accepted and practised the “enthusiastic” cult of Dionysos. Even the tumultuous night-festivals of the Thracian god—festivals closely related to those of Phrygia from which they had borrowed and to which they had given so many features—were made to serve the “purgation” of the ecstatically exalted soul. The worshipper in such festivals “initiated his soul into the company of the god in holy purifications, while he raged over the mountains in Bacchic frenzy”.20 The purification consisted in this case, too, of violent excitement in which the soul was stimulated to the highest pitch of religious ecstasy. Dionysos as “Bakcheus” awoke the holy madness which he himself again, after it had reached its highest point of intensity, stilled and tranquillized as Lysios and Meilichios.21 The old Thracian cult of ecstasy has here been modified in a fashion that belonged only to Greek soil and to Greek modes of thought. Legend, allegorizing the facts, threw back this final development of the Dionysiac worship into the remotest antiquity. Even Hesiodic poems22 related how the daughters of King Proitos of Tiryns wandered in the holy frenzy of Dionysos23 over the mountain of Peloponnesus, until at last they and all the multitude of women who had joined them were healed and “purified” by Melampous the Seer of Pylos famed in legend.24 The cure was effected through the intensification of the Dionysiac frenzy “with loud crying and inspired dancing,”25 and, further, by the use of certain special purificatory devices.26 Melampous did not put an end to the Dionysiac cult and its “enthusiasm”; he rather regulated and developed it. For this reason Herodotus can even call him the “Founder” of the Dionysiac cult in Greece.27 Legend, however, always recognized in this “founder” of the Dionysiac festival an adherent of the specifically Apolline form of religion. “Apollo had favoured him especially,” and bestowed upon him the Seership which became ancestral in his family.28 Legend used him as a type in which the reconciliation between the Apolline and the Dionysiac was figuratively expressed. The reconciliation is an historical fact, but it did not happen in the primitive past of legend.

It is a fact, however, that Apollo did at last, doubtless after prolonged resistance, enter into the closest alliance with this remarkable divine brother of his, the Hellenized Dionysos. 288 The covenant must have been made at Delphi. There at least on the heights of Parnasos, in the Korykian Cave, the trieteric festival of Dionysos was held every second year in the close neighbourhood of Apollo the Lord of Delphi. Nay, more, in Apollo’s own temple the “grave” of Dionysos was shown,29 and at this grave, while the Thyiades of the god rushed over the mountain heights, the priests of Apollo celebrated a secret festival of their own.30 The festal year of Delphi was divided, though unequally it is true, between Apollo and Dionysos.31 To such an extent had Dionysos taken root at Delphi,32 so closely were the two gods related, that while the front pediment of the temple showed the form of Apollo, the back pediment represented Dionysos—and the Dionysos of the nocturnal ecstatic revels. Apollo, too, shared in the trieteric festival of Dionysos,33 while Dionysos in later times at the penteteric festival of the Pythia, received, as well as Apollo, his share of sacrifice and the contests of cyclic choruses.34 The two divinities have many of their titles and attributes in common; in the end the distinction between them seems to disappear entirely.35

Antiquity never forgot that at Delphi, the radiating centre of his cult, Apollo was an intruder. Among the older deities whom he supplanted there, the name of Dionysos also occurred;36 but the Delphic priesthood thought it wise to tolerate the Thracian god and his ecstatic cult that at first seemed so opposed to that of their own deity. Dionysos may have been too vigorous a spirit to allow his worship to be suppressed like that of the Earth divinity who sent the prophetic dreams. Apollo is the “Lord of Delphi”; but the priesthood of the Delphic Apollo, following in this the tendency to religious syncretism which is so recognizable in them, took the worship of Dionysos under their protection. The Delphic Oracle in fact introduced Dionysos into localities where he had hitherto been a stranger, and nowhere so successfully or with such momentous consequences as at Athens.37 It was this promoting of the Dionysiac form of religion by the great corporation which had the leadership in Greece in all matters of religion, that did more than anything else to secure for the god and his worship that profound, wide-reaching influence on Greek religion that Homer, who knows little even of the Delphic Oracle, completely ignores.

But it was a gentler and more civilized Dionysos whom Delphi popularized and even helped to re-shape; the extravagance of his ecstatic abandonment was pruned and moderated 289 to suit the more sober temper of ordinary city-life, and the brighter, daylight festivals of urban and countryside worship. Hardly a trace of the old Thracian worship of ecstasy and exaltation is discoverable in the Dionysiac worship of Athens. In other places, and especially in the districts ruled over by the Delphic Apollo himself, Dionysiac worship preserved more of its primitive nocturnal wildness. Even Athens, in obedience to an oracular command, sent a religious embassy of elected women to the Delphic Trieteria. It is plain enough however, that in all this there was nothing but a dim counterpart of the former tumultuous mountain-worship of the god, and its profound soul-stirring ceremonies; the worship of Athens and Delphi had reduced all that to a vague ritual traditionalism.38

§ 3

But in spite of all attempts to moderate and civilize it outwardly, the cult of Dionysos retained as its most enduring feature a tendency to the ecstatic and the extravagant that was continually breaking out in threatening or alluring guise. So strong indeed was the ecstatic element in Dionysiac worship, that when the Apolline and Dionysiac forms of religion became united, as at Delphi, it was the Apolline worship—once so hostile to anything in the nature of ecstasy—that had to accept this entirely novel feature.

The “prophecy of inspiration”, deriving its knowledge of the unseen from an elevation of the human soul to the divine, was not always a part of Greek religion. Homer, of course, knows of the prophetic art in which specially instructed seers explained such signs of the gods’ will as occurred accidentally or were purposely sought out by men, and by this means claimed to discover the will of heaven both at the moment and for the future. This is, in fact, the sort of prophecy that Apollo bestowed upon his seers.39 But the prophecy of which there was no “art” and which “no man could be taught”40 (for it came in a moment by “inspiration”)—of this Homer shows no trace.41 In addition to professional and independently working prophets the Odyssey, and even the Iliad, too, are aware of the enclosed oracular institutions belonging to the temple of Zeus at Dodona and that of Apollo at Pytho.42 Both these used the names of the gods with whose service they were concerned to increase the effect and the credit of their utterances. In the Odyssey (but not the Iliad) there is a reference to the influence wielded by the oracle of Apollo in the more important circumstances of a people’s 290 life. But whether at that time it was an inspired prophetess who gave replies at Delphi we cannot be sure from the poet’s words. There must have been oracles of sortilege43 at that place from an early period under the protection of the god and it is these we should naturally expect a poet to mean who nowhere44 shows any knowledge of the striking phenomena of ecstatic mantikê.45

In any case this new mantikê of inspired prophets, which subsequently enjoyed such enormous development and gave the Delphic oracle such peculiar power, was a late-coming innovation in the Apolline cult. Over the chasm in the rock at Pytho, out of which arose a strange and potent vapour from the depths of the earth, there had once existed an oracle of Gaia at which perhaps inquirers had received their instruction through the means of premonitory dreams by night.46 The earth-goddess was displaced by Apollo here as at many other oracular sites.47 The accuracy of this tradition is confirmed by the Delphic temple legend which speaks of the overthrow of the oracular earth-spirit Python by Apollo.48 The change may have been gradually brought about; in any case, where once the earth-divinity had spoken directly in dreams to the souls of men, there Apollo now prophesied—no longer indirectly through the intervening medium of signs and omens, but directly answering those who, in open-eyed wakefulness, inquired of him, and speaking to them out of the mouth of his ecstatically inspired prophetess.

This Delphic prophecy of inspiration is as far removed from the old Apolline art of interpreting omens as it is closely allied to the mantikê which we found attached from the earliest times to the Thracian cult of Dionysos.49 It appears that in Greece Dionysos but rarely obtained an official priesthood that could have organized or maintained a permanent oracular institute attached to a particular place or temple. In the one Dionysiac oracle in Greece, however, of which we have certain knowledge a priest gave prophecies in a state of “enthusiasm” and “possession” by the god.50 Enthusiasm and ecstasy are invariably the means of the Dionysiac prophecy just as they were the means of all Dionysiac religious experience. When we find Apollo in Delphi itself—the place where he most closely allied himself with Dionysos—deserting his old omen-interpretation and turning to the prophecy of ekstasis, we cannot have much doubt as to whence Apollo got this new thing.51

With the mantic ekstasis, Apollo received a Dionysiac element into his own religion. Henceforward, he, the cold, 291 aloof, sober deity of former times, can be addressed by titles that imply Bacchic excitement and self-abandonment. He is now the “enthusiastic”, the Bacchic god: Aeschylus strikingly calls him “ivy-crowned Apollo, the Bacchic-frenzied prophet” (fr. 341). It is now Apollo, who more than any other god, calls forth in men’s souls the madness52 that makes them clairvoyant and enables them to know hidden things. At not a few places there are founded oracular sites at which priests or priestesses in frenzied ecstasy utter what Apollo puts into their mouths. But the Pythian oracle remained the pattern of them all. There, prophecy was uttered by the Pythia, the youthful priestess who sat upon the tripod over the earth-chasm and was inspired by the intoxicating vapour that arose from it, until she was filled with the god, and with his spirit.53 The god, so ran the belief, entered into the earthly body; or else the soul of the priestess, “released” from her body, received the heavenly revelation with spiritual sense.54 What she then “with frenzied mouth” proclaimed, that the god spoke out of her; when she said “I”, Apollo was speaking of himself and of what concerned him.55 It is the god who lives, thinks, and speaks in her so long as the madness lasts.

§ 4

A profound and compelling tendency of the human mind must have been the source of the great religious movement that could succeed in establishing, with the ecstatic prophecy of the Delphic priestess, a seed of mysticism in the very heart of Greek religion. The introduction of ekstasis into the ordered stability of the Delphic mode of religion was only a symptom of that religious movement and not its cause. But now, confirmed by the god himself, and by the experience which the mantic practice seemed to make so evident, the new belief, so long familiar to Dionysiac religion and worship, must have at last invaded the older and original type of Greek religion, and taken hold of it in spite of that religion’s natural antipathy to anything of the kind. And this belief was that a highly exalted state of feeling could raise man above the normal level of his limited, everyday consciousness, and could elevate him to heights of vision and knowledge unlimited; that, further, to the human soul it was not denied, in very truth and not in vain fancy, to live for a moment the life of divinity. This belief is the fountain-head of all mysticism, and tradition still records a few traces of the way in which it grew and spread at that time. 292

It is true that the formal and official worship of the gods in Greece (where their cults were not obviously affected by foreign influence) remained as fast-bound as ever within the confines of order and lucidity. We hear very little of the entrance of ecstatic exaltation into the constitution of the older cults.56 The irresistible religious impulse to such things found an outlet through other channels. Men and women began to appear who on their own initiative began to act as intermediaries between the gods and the needs of individual men. They were natures, we must suppose, of unusual susceptibility to “enthusiastic” exaltation; having a strange capacity for projecting themselves into the infinite. Nothing in the organization of Greek religion prevented such men and women, if they could not obtain authority from any religious community of the state itself, from acquiring a real influence in religious matters simply from their own experience of divine favour,57 their own inward communion with divine powers.

In the darkness and ferment of this period of growth, from the eighth to the sixth centuries, we can vaguely discern many such shadowy figures; they look uncommonly like those strange products of the earliest infancy of Christianity when prophets, ascetics, and exorcists wandered from land to land, called to their work by nothing but the immediate grace of god (χάρισμα), and not attached to any permanent religious community. It is true that what we hear of Sibyls and Bakides—men and women who wandered from land to land prophesying the future, independently of and uncommissioned by any particular oracular institute—is mostly legend; but these are the sort of legends that preserve real historical tradition condensed into single types and pictures. The nomenclature itself tells us much: Sibyls and Bakides are not individual names, but titles belonging to various types58 of ecstatic prophet, and we are entitled to suppose that the types so named once existed. The appearance in many places of Greek Asia Minor and the old mainland of Greece of such divinely inspired prophets is among the distinguishing marks of a clearly defined period in Greek history; the age of promise that came immediately before the philosophic period of Greece. The later age, entirely given up as it was to the pursuit of philosophic enlightenment, made so little claim to the inheritance in their own time of the divine favour that had once enabled the Sibyls and Bakides to see their visions and utter their wisdom, that there actually began to appear in large numbers prophets at second-hand, who were satisfied 293 with preserving the traditional wisdom of the inspired prophets of the past, and with the judicious interpretation of their treasures.59 The age of enthusiastic prophets was evidently a thing of the past. The very literature of Sibylline and Bakid oracles, which began to appear just at that time and showed itself capable of an almost indefinite extension, was itself largely responsible for the veil of myth and legend which completely enveloped the original bearers of the prophetic title. Earlier and earlier became the historic events of the past which they had foretold; further and further into the mythical past, before the time of the events prophesied, receded the imaginary period of the great prophets.60 In spite of which the scientific chronologists of antiquity, who were far from being imposed upon by the delusive anticipations of prophetic poems, found reason for fixing the date of particular Sibyls—which means for our purpose the whole prophetic age of Greece—in the fully historical period of the eighth and seventh centuries.61

We may recognize, in what we hear of these prophets, the shadowy representatives of a once real and living past; they are reminiscences of a striking and therefore never quite forgotten phase of Greek religious life. The Bakids and Sibyls were independent agents—though not entirely without connexion with the regular worship of the gods, they were not attached to any particular temple—who wandered from land to land according to the needs of those who sought their counsel. In this respect, at least, they resembled the Homeric omen-interpreters,62 and continued their work; but they differed from them profoundly in the mode of their prophesying. They were “seized by the god” and in ecstatic clairvoyance saw and proclaimed unseen things. It was no academic skill that they possessed, enabling them to interpret the meaning of signs and omens that anyone could see—they saw what was visible only to God and to the soul of man filled with God.63 In hoarse tones and wild words64 the Sibyl gave utterance to what the divine impelling power within her and not her own arbitrary fancy suggested; possessed by the god, she spoke in a divine distraction. An echo of such daimonic possession, and of the horrible reality and terror that it had for the possessed, can still be heard in the cries and convulsions which Aeschylus in the Agamemnon gives to his Kassandra—a true picture of the primitive Sibyl, and a type that the poets of that prophetic generation had reflected backwards into the earlier past of legend.65 294

§ 5

The activity of the seer was not confined to foreseeing and foretelling the future. We hear of a “Bakis” who “purified” and delivered the women of Sparta from an attack of madness that had spread like an epidemic among them.66 The prophetic age of Greece must have seen the origin of what later became part of the regular duties of the “seer”: the cure of diseases, especially those of the mind;67 the averting of evil of every kind by various strange means, and particularly the supply of help and counsel by “purifications” of a religious nature.68 The gift or art of prophecy, the purification of “the unclean”, the healing of disease, all seem to be derived from one source. Nor can we be long in doubt as to what the single source of this threefold capacity must have been. The world of invisible spirits surrounding man, which ordinary folk know only by its effects, is familiar and accessible to the ecstatic prophet, the Mantis, the spirit-seer. As exorcist he undertakes to heal disease;69 the Kathartic process is also essentially and originally an exorcism of the baleful influences of the spirit-world.

The wide popularity and elaboration given to the notion—hardly hinted70 at as yet in Homer—of the universally present menace of “pollution”, which is only to be averted or got rid of by means of a religious process of purification—this is one of the chief distinguishing features of the over-anxious piety that marked the post-Homeric age when men could no longer be content with the means of salvation handed down to them by their fathers. If we confined our attention to the fact that now we find purification required for such actions as murder and the spilling of blood which seem to imply a moral stain to the doer of them,71 we might be tempted to see in the development of Kathartic practices a fresh step in the history of Greek ethics, and to suppose that the new practices arose out of a refinement and deepening of the “conscience” which now desired to be free from the taint of “sin” by the help of religion. But such an interpretation of Katharsis (favourite as it is) is disposed of by a consideration of the real essence and meaning of the thing. In later times the methods of Katharsis were nearly always in competition and conflict (rarely in friendly alliance) with “conscience”, with the independently developed ethical thought that based itself upon the unchanging requirements of a moral law transcending all personal will and feeling, and even the will of daimonic powers. In its origin and essence Katharsis 295 had nothing whatever to do with morality or with what we should call the voice of conscience. On the contrary, it usurped the place which in a more advanced and morally developed people would have belonged to a true morality based on an inner feeling for what is right. Nor did it fail to hinder the free and unfettered development of such a morality. Kathartic practices required and implied no feeling of offence, of personal guilt, of personal responsibility. All that we know of these practices serves to bring this out and set the matter in a clearer light.

Ceremonies of “purification” accompany every step of a man’s life from the cradle to the grave. The woman with child is “unclean” and so is anyone who touches her; the new-born child is unclean;72 marriage is fenced about with a series of purificatory rites; the dead, and everything that approaches them, are unclean. Now, in these instances of the common and almost daily occurrence of purification ceremonies, there can be no moral stain involved that requires to be washed off, not even a symbolical one. Equally little can there be any when ritual purifications are employed after a bad dream,73 the occurrence of a prodigy,74 recovery from illness, or when a person has touched an offering made to deities of the lower world or the graves of the dead; or when it is found necessary to purify house and hearth,75 and even fire and water76 for sacred or profane purposes. The purification of those who have shed blood stands on exactly the same footing. It was necessary even for those who had killed a man with just cause, or had committed homicide unknowingly or unwillingly; the moral aspect of such cases, the guilt or innocence of the doer, is ignored or unperceived. Even in the case of premeditated murder, the remorse of the criminal or his “will to amend”77 is quite superfluous to the efficacy of purification.

It could not be otherwise. The “stain” which is wiped out by these mysterious and religious means is not “within the heart of man”. It clings to a man as something hostile, and from without, and that can be spread from him to others like an infectious disease.78 Hence, the purification is effected by religious processes directed to the external removal of the evil thing; it may be washed off (as by water from a running spring or from the sea), it may be violently effaced and obliterated (as by fire or even smoke alone), it may be absorbed (by wool, fleece of animals, eggs),79 etc.

It must be something hostile and dangerous to men that is thus removed; since this something can only be attacked by 296 religious means, it must belong to the daimonic world to which alone Religion and its means of salvation have reference. There exists a population of spirits whose neighbourhood or contact with men renders then “unclean”, for it gives them over to the power of the unholy.80 Anyone who touches their places of abode, or the offerings made to them, falls under their spell; they may send him sickness, insanity, evils of every kind. The priest with his purifications is an “exorcist” who sets free those who have fallen victims to the surrounding powers of darkness. He certainly fulfils this function when he disperses diseases, i.e. the spirits who send the diseases, by his ministrations;81 when he employs in his purificatory ritual hymns and incantatory formulæ which regularly imply an invisibly listening being to whom they are addressed;82 when he uses the clang of bronze instruments whose well-known property it is to drive away ghosts.83 Where human blood has been shed and requires “purification” the Kathartic priest accomplishes this “by driving out murder with murder”,84 i.e. he lets the blood of a sacrificed animal fall over the hands of the polluted person. Here, the purification is plainly in the nature of a substitution-sacrifice (the animal being offered instead of the murderer).85 In this way the anger of the dead is washed away—for this anger is itself the pollution that is to be removed.86 The famous scapegoats were nothing but sacrifices offered to appease the anger of the Unseen, and thereby release a whole city from “pollution”. At the Thargelia or on extraordinary occasions of need in Ionic cities, and even in Athens, unfortunate men were in ancient times slain or stoned to death or burnt “for the purification of the city”.87 Even the materials of purification that in private life served to free the individual and his house from the claims of invisible powers, were thought of as offerings to these powers: this is proved clearly enough by the custom of removing such materials, when they had served their purpose as “purifications”, to the cross-roads, and of making them over to the unearthly spirits who have their being there. The materials of purification so treated are in fact identical with offerings to the dead or even with “Hekate’s banquets”.88 In this case we can see most clearly what the forces are which Kathartic processes essentially aim at averting. In them no attempt was made to satisfy a heartfelt consciousness of sin or a moral sense that has become delicate; they were much rather the result of a superstitious fear of uncanny forces surrounding men and stretching out after them with a thousand threatening hands in the darkness. 297 It was the monstrous phantasies of their own imagination that made men call upon the priests of purification and expiation for much-needed aid and protection.

§ 6

It is simply the invasion of human life by the sinister creatures of the daimonic world that the clairvoyant mantis is supposed to avert with his “purifications”. Among these sinister influences Hekate and her crew are particularly noticeable. This is without doubt an ancient product of religious phantasy—though it is not mentioned by Homer—which did not till a late period emerge from the obscurity of local observance and obtain general popularity: even then it only here and there ceased to be a private and domestic cult and reached the dignity of public city-worship.89 The cult of Hekate fled the light of day, as did the wild farrago of weird and sinister phantoms that surrounded her. She is chthonic, a goddess of the lower world,90 where she is at home; but, more easily than other lower-world creatures, she finds her way to the living world of men. Wherever a soul is entering into partnership with a body—at birth or in child bed—she is at hand;91 where a soul is separating from a body, in burials of the dead, she is there. Amidst the dwelling-places of the departed, the monuments of the dead and the gloomy ritual of their worship, she is in her element.92 She is the queen of the souls who are still fast bound to the upper world. It shows her deep-seated connexion with the primeval worship of the dead at the household hearth,93 when we hear of Hekate as dwelling “in the depth of the hearth”,94 and being honoured together with the underworld Hermes, her masculine counterpart, among the domestic gods who “were left to us by our forefathers”.95

This domestic cult may be a legacy from times when in familiar intercourse with the lower world men did not yet fear “pollution” therefrom.95a To later ages Hekate was the principal source and originator of all that was ghostly and uncanny. Men came upon her suddenly and to their hurt by night, or in the dreamy solitudes of midday’s blinding heat; they see her in monstrous shapes that, like the figures in a dream, are continually changing.96 The names of many female deities of the underworld of whom the common people had much to say—Gorgyra (Gorgo), Mormo, Lamia, Gello or Empousa, the ghost of midday—denote in reality so many different personifications and variations of Hekate.97 298 She appeared most frequently by night, under the half-light of the moon, at the cross-roads. She is not alone but is accompanied by her “crew”, the hand-maidens who follow in her train. These are the souls of those who have not had their share of burial and the holy rites that accompany it; who have been violently done to death, or who have died “before their time”.98 Such souls find no rest after death; they travel on the wind now, in the company of Hekate and her daimonic pack of hounds.99 It is not without reason that we are reminded of the legends of “wild hunters” and the “furious host”, so familiar in modern times in many countries.100 Similar beliefs produced similar results in each case; perhaps there is even some historical connexion between them.101 These night-wandering spirits and souls of the dead bring pollution and disaster upon all who meet them or fall into their hands; they send evil dreams, nightmares, nocturnal apparitions, madness and epilepsy.102 It is for them, the unquiet souls of the dead and Hekate their queen, that men set out the “banquets of Hekate” at the cross-roads.103 To them men consign with averted faces the remains of the purificatory sacrifices104 that they may not come too close to human dwelling places. Puppies, too, were sacrificed to Hekate for “purifications”, i.e. “apotropaic” sacrifices.

Gruesome inventions of all kinds were easily attached to this province of supernaturalism: it is one of the sources which, with help from other Greek conceptions and many foreign creations of fancy, let loose a stream of anxious and gloomy superstitiousness that spread through the whole of later antiquity and even reached through the Middle Ages to our own day.

Protection and riddance from such things were sought at the hands of seers and “Kathartic priests” who, in addition to ceremonies of purification and exorcism had other ways of giving help—prescriptions and recipes of many strange sorts which were originally clear and natural enough to the fantastic logic of superstition and were still credited and handed down as magic and inexplicable formulæ after their real meaning had been entirely forgotten. Others, again, were driven by a fearful curiosity to attempt to bring the world of surrounding spirits—of whose doings such strange stories were told in legend105—even closer to themselves. By magic arts and incantations, they compelled the wandering ghosts and even Hekate herself to appear before them:106 the magic power forces them to do the will of the spirit-raiser or to harm his enemies.107 It was these creatures of the spirit-world that 299 magicians and exorcists claimed to banish or compel. Popular belief was on their side in this, but it is hardly possible that they never resorted to deceit and imposture in making good their claims.

§ 7

The mantic and Kathartic practices, together with what arose out of them, are known to us almost exclusively as they were in the time of their decay. Even in the brief sketch just attempted of this notable by-way of Greek religion, many details have had to be taken from the accounts left to us by later ages that had quite outgrown the whole idea of mantic and Kathartic procedure. Compared on the one hand with science, seriously engaged in studying the real and inward sources of being and becoming throughout the world, together with the limitations of man’s estate, and on the other hand with the practical and cautious medical study of the physical conditions of human life in health and sickness, the mantic and Kathartic practices and all the myriad superstitions arising from them seemed like a legacy from a forgotten and discredited past. But such things persisted in many circles of old-fashioned and primitive-minded people, though by the emancipated and cultured they were despised as the silly and dangerous quackery of mendicant priests and wizards.

But this product of the religious instinct cannot always have appeared in such a light; it certainly was not so regarded when it first came into prominence. A movement that was zealously taken up by the Delphic oracle, which influenced many Greek states in the organization of their religious cults, must have had a period when its right to exist was incontestable. It must have answered to the needs of a time when the dawning sense of the profound unity and interconnexion of all being and becoming in the world still contented itself with a religious explanation of what seemed mysterious, and when a few chosen natures were seriously credited with the power to communicate with the all-embracing spirit-world. Every age has its own ideal of Wisdom; and there came a time when the ideal of the Wise Man, who by his own innate powers has achieved a commanding spiritual position and insight, became embodied in the persons of certain great men who seemed to fulfil the highest conceptions of wisdom and power that were attributed to the ecstatic seer and priest of purification. The half-mythical stories in which later ages preserved the memory of the times lying just before the 300 age of the philosophic exploration of nature tell us of certain great masters of a mysterious and occult Wisdom. It is true that they are credited with powers over nature of a magical kind rather than with a purely intellectual insight into the laws of nature; but even in the scanty accounts of them which have come down to us there are clear indications that their work already included the first attempts at a mode of study based on theory. We cannot call them philosophers—not even the forerunners of Greek philosophy. More often their point of view was one which the real philosophic impulse towards self-determination and the freedom of the soul consciously and decisively rejected, and continued to reject, though not indeed without occasional wavering and backsliding. These men must be counted among the magicians and exorcists who so often appear in the earliest dawn of the spiritual history of civilized nations, and, as primitive and marvellous types of the spirit of inquiry, precede the philosophers. They all belong to the class of ecstatic seers and Kathartic priests.

Legend related how, out of the country of the Hyperboreans, that distant Wonderland where Apollo hid himself in winter, there came to Greece one Abaris, sent by the god himself. He was a saint and needed no earthly food. Carrying in his hand the golden arrow, the proof of his Apolline origin and mission, he passed through many lands dispelling sickness and pestilence by sacrifices of a magic kind, giving warning of earthquakes and other disasters. Even in later times prophecies and “purifications”, going under his name, were still to be read.108—This man, and also another like him, called Aristeas, were already mentioned by Pindar (fr. 271). Aristeas, a man of high rank in his native city of Prokonnesos, had the magic gift of prolonged ekstasis. When his soul left his body behind, being “seized by Phoibos”, it (as his second self made visible) was seen in distant places.109 As Apollo’s attendant he also appeared together with the god in Metapontum. A bronze statue in the market-place of that city remained to testify to his presence there, and to the astonishment awakened by his inspired utterances.110 But among all these examples of the type,111 Hermotimos of Klazomenai is the most striking. His soul could desert his body “for many years”, and on its return from its ecstatic voyages, brought with it much mantic lore and knowledge of the future. At last, enemies set fire to the tenantless body of Hermotimos when his soul was away, and the latter returned no more.112

The greatest master of all these magically gifted men was, 301 according to tradition, Epimenides. His home was in Crete, an ancient centre of Kathartic wisdom,113 where Epimenides was instructed in this lore as an adherent of the cult of the underworld Zeus.114 Through a mist of legend and fable we hear of his prolonged stay in the mysterious cave of Zeus on Mt. Ida, his intercourse with the spirits of the darkness, his severe fasting,115 the long ecstasy of his soul,116 and his final return from solitude to the light of day, much experienced and far-travelled in “enthusiastic wisdom”.117 Next he journeyed through many lands bringing his health-giving arts with him, prophesying the future as an ecstatic seer,118 interpreting the hidden meaning of past occurrences, and as Kathartic priest expelling the daimonic evils that arose from specially foul misdeeds of the past. The Kathartic activity of Epimenides in Delos and other Greek cities was famous.119 It was in particular never forgotten how in Athens at the end of the seventh century he brought to a satisfactory close the expiation of the godless murder of the followers of Kylon.120 With potent ceremonies of which his wisdom alone knew the secret, with sacrifice of animals and men, he appeased121 the anger of the offended spirits of the depth who in their rage were “polluting” and harming the city . . .

It was not without reason that later tradition, undeterred by questions of chronological possibility, brought all the names just mentioned into connexion with Pythagoras or his adherents,122 and was even accustomed to refer to Pherekydes of Syros, the latest of the band, as the teacher of Pythagoras. The practice, if not the philosophy, of the Pythagorean sect grew up among the ideas and what may be called the teaching of these men, and belongs to the epoch which honoured them as Wise Men. We still possess a few scraps of evidence to show that the conceptions guiding their life and work tended to reach some sort of unification in the minds of these visionaries who were yet something more than the mere practicians of a magical species of religion. We cannot, indeed, tell how far the fanciful pictures of the origin of the world of men which Epimenides123 and Pherekydes drew were connected with the business and professional activity of these men;124 but when it is related of Hermotimos that he, like his country-man Anaxagoras, attempted a distinction between pure “mind” and matter,125 we can see very clearly how this theory might arise out of his special “experiences”. The ecstasies of the soul of which Hermotimos himself and this whole generation had such ample experience seemed to point to the separability of the soul from the body126—and, indeed, to the superiority of 302 the soul’s essence in its separate state over that of the body—as to a fact of the most firmly established authenticity. In contrast with the soul the body could hardly help appearing as an encumbrance, an obstacle to be got rid of. The conception of an ever-threatening pollution and “uncleanness” which was nourished by the teaching and activities of those innumerable purification-priests of whom Epimenides is known to us as the supreme master, had gradually so penetrated the whole of the official religion itself with purification-ceremonies that it might very well have seemed as though, in the midst of this renovation and development of a type of religious thought that had been more than half forgotten in the Homeric period, Greek religion was fast approaching the condition of Brahmanism or Zoroastrianism and becoming essentially a religion of purification. Those who had become familiar with the contrast between body and soul, especially if they lived in the atmosphere of Kathartic ideas and their practical exercise, were almost bound to proceed to the idea that even the “soul” required to be purified from the polluting embarrassment of the body. That such ideas were almost a commonplace is shown by many stories and turns of phrase which represent the destruction of the body by fire as a “purification” of the man himself.127 Wherever these ideas—the precise opposite and contrary of the Homeric conception of the relation between body and soul-image—had penetrated more deeply they must have led to the idea that even in the lifetime of the body the purification of the soul should be prepared by the denial and inhibition of the body and its impulses. The first step was thus taken towards a purely negative system of morality, not attempting the inner reformation of the will, but aiming simply at averting from the soul of man a polluting evil threatening it from without—in fact to a morality of religious asceticism such as later became such an important and decisive spiritual movement in Greece. In spite of all the inadequacy of our information about these Wise Men of the early pre-philosophic period, we can still dimly make out the fact that their natural bent lay in this ascetic direction (the abstention from food practised by Abaris and Epimenides are distinct cases of it).128 How far, exactly, they went in this direction is indeed more than we can say.

Thus, the ascetic ideal was not absent even from Greece. It remained, however—in spite of the influence it had in some quarters—always a foreign thing in Greece, having its obscure home among sects of spiritualistic enthusiasts, and regarded in contrast with the normal and ruling view of life, as a paradox, 303 almost a heresy. The official religion itself is not entirely without the seeds of an ascetic system of morality; but the ascetic ideal, fully developed and distinguished from the simple and normal religious attitude, was in Greece found only among minorities who cut themselves off in closed and exclusive conventicles of a theological or philosophical temper. The “Wise Men” as idealized in the legends of Abaris. Epimenides, etc., were as individuals not far removed from the ideal of asceticism. Nor was it long before the attempt was made to use these ideals as the basis on which to found a society.

NOTES TO CHAPTER IX

[1]   We may safely take it for granted that Διόνυσος is the Greek name of the god, though a completely convincing etymology for the word has yet to be found. Recent attempts to derive it from the Thracian language are not very convincing. (Tomaschek, Sitzber. Wien. Ak. 130, 41; Kretschmer, Aus der Anomia, 22 f.; Einl. 241.) Acc. to Kretschmer a Thracian origin for the name is proved by the appearance of the form Δεόνυσο—on inss. found in a few Greek towns surrounded by Thracian influences, e.g. Abdera, Maroneia. Acc. to him the transition from ι to ε before a vowel is regular in Thrako-Phrygian, while on the other hand “it is completely incompatible with all the laws of Greek phonetics”. Others have disagreed with this view, e.g. G. Curtius, certainly an auctor probabilis, to whom the occasional appearance of the transition from ι to ε before a vowel (side by side with the much commoner reverse process) seemed quite compatible with the laws of Greek phonetics. He even counted Διόνυσος—Δεύνυσος (Anakreon) among the examples of this vowel change within the limits of the Greek language (Gr. Etym.5, p. 608 f.). At any rate Ἐάσων = Ἰάσων, and πατρουέαν = πατρωίαν are certain cases of it (see Meister, Gr. Dial. i, 294; G. Meyer, Gr. Gramm.2, p. 162). Kretschmer himself, Einl. 225, supplies Ἀσκληπεόδωρος, Δεί = Διί. To account for these forms he postulates the influence of Thracian surroundings on Greek pronunciation; but in the case of such a purely Greek word as Ἀσκληπιόδωρος the Thracian influence must have been a secondary phenomenon operating to cause the alteration of the old ιο into εο. Why should we not use the same explanation in accounting for the change from Διόνυσος to Δεόνυσος and (if Thracian influence is to be presumed—by no means probable in view of the statement of EM. 259, 30, Δεόνυσος, οὕτω γὰρ Σάμιοι προφέρουσιν) say that this Thracian influence was a secondary one acting upon the original Greek form of the name Διόνυσος?—It is evident that the ancients had no idea that Διόνυσος (Διώνυσος, Διόννυσος) was the indigenous name of the Thracian god, for they would in that case have said so without hesitation. They derived the conception, figure, and cult of the god from Thrace but not this particular name, which they regularly regard as the Greek name of the daimon whom the Thracians spoke of as Σαβάζιος or otherwise. (So too Hdt. regards Διόνυσος as the Greek name of the god whose essential nature is Egyptian.) This is by no means without importance; on the contrary, it provides cogent reason for doubting the (otherwise insecurely founded) derivation of the name from the Thracian.

[2]   The women in Boeotia ἐνθεώτατα ἐμάνησαν (cf. Eur., Ba.). ταῖς Λακεδαιμονίων γυναιξὶν ἐνέπεσέ τις οἶστρος βακχικὸς καὶ ταῖς τῶν Χίων, Ael., VH. iii, 42. Hdt. ix, 34, speaks inclusively of the madness of the women in Argos (τῶν ἐν Ἄργεϊ γυναικῶν μανεισέων), where others speak only of the frenzy attacking the daughters of Proitos. Neither is incompatible with the other; they simply represent two different stages of the story. The μαίνεσθαι which attacks the entire female population is not (as later accounts generally make out) the punishment sent by Dionysos: it is simply another way of expressing the general acceptance of his worship which essentially consisted in 305 μαίνεσθαι (= βακχεύειν in Ant. Lib. 10). The μαίνεσθαι of individual women who try to resist the contagious enthusiasm of the Dionysiac revelry going on around them (e.g. the daughters of Eleuther: Suid. μελαναιγ. Δίον.) is, however, a punishment sent by the angry god when it leads them to murder their own children.—The regular and widespread “mania” of the newly introduced cult of Dionysos is referred to also by D.S. 4, 68, 4; [Apollod.] 2, 2, 2, 5; Paus. 2, 18, 4; cf. also Nonn., D. 47, 481 ff.

[3]   Resistance of Perseus to Dionysos who in this account arrives with the Mainads from the islands of the Aegean Sea (so Paus.); victory of Perseus, followed, however, by a reconciliation with the god whose worship is established and a temple built for Dionysos Kresios: Paus. 2, 20, 4; 22, 1; 23, 7–8. So, too, Nonn., D. 47, 475–741; [Apollod.] 3, 5, 2, 3; Sch. V., Ξ 319; cf. Meineke, An. Alex. 51. (Dionysos is slain in the war with Perseus: Dinarchos “the poet” ap. Eus., Chr. ii, pp. 44–5 Sch. = an. 718 Abr.; Lob., Agl. 537 f.).—Lykourgos does not properly belong to this series: his legend, as told by [Apollod.] 3, 5, 1 (apparently following the direction given to it by Aesch.), is a late transformation of the story preserved by Homer, in which stories of Pentheus or the Minyads or the Proitides are imitated.

[4]   This is esp. clear in the legend dealing with Orchomenos; cf. the account in Plu., Q.Gr. 38, p. 293 D. It is very probable that the other stories, too, were founded upon sacrificial ritual; cf. Welcker, Gr. Götterl. i, 444 ff.

[5]   Cf. also Sch. Ar., Ach. 243.

[6]   Cf. Eur., Ba. 217 ff., 487, 32 ff. The daughters of Minyas ἐπόθουν τοὺς γαμέτας (see Perizon. ad loc.) καὶ διὰ τοῦτο οὐκ ἐγένοντο τῷ θεῷ μαινάδες, Ael., VH. iii, 42. Throughout all these legends the contrast between Dionysos and Hera, who is the patroness of marriage, is very marked.

[7]   ὀρσιγύναικα Δίονυσον—unknown poet ap. Plu., Exil. 17, p. 607 C; Smp. 4, 6, 1, p. 671 C; Ε ap. D. 9, 389 B. ἵλαθι, εἰραφιῶτα, γυναιμανές, h. Hom. 34, 17.

[8]   Like an infection or a conflagration. ἤδη τόδ’ ἐγγὺς ὥστε πῦρ ἐφάπτεται ὕβρισμα Βακχοῦ, ψόγος ἐς Ἕλληνας μέγας, Pentheus in E., Ba. 778.

[9]   See the accounts reported ap. Hecker, Epidemics of the M.A., pp. 88, 153 Babington, esp. those of Petrus de Herental (ap. Steph. Baluz., Vit. Pap. Avinion. i, 483): quaedam nomina daemoniorum appellabant. The dancer cernit Mariae filium et caelum apertum.—“The masters of the Holy Scripture who exorcized the dancers regarded them as being possessed by the devil.” (Limburg Chronicle; see Mon. Germ., Chron. iv, 1, ed. Tilemann: p. 64, ed. Wyss.)

[10]   Details given by Weniger, Dionysosdienst in Elis, p. 8 (1883).

[11]   At Delphi there was a festival called ἡρωΐς in which the Dionysiac Thyiades took part; a Σεμέλης ἀναγωγή was the chief feature of the δρώμενα φανερῶς (Plu., Q.Gr. 12). The name ἡρωΐς points to a general festival of the dead (cf. Voigt in Roscher’s Lex. i, 1048); for another general festival of “Heroes” at Delphi see chap. iv, n. 82. At Athens the great festival of the dead, the Choes and Chytrai (chap. v, p. 168) formed part of the Anthesteria. It is precisely in these ἀρχαιότερα Διονύσια (Thuc. ii, 15, 4) that Dionysos appears as he was in primitive belief, the “master of the souls”. Thus, too, in Argos one of the most ancient seats of the worship of Dionysos, the Dionysiac festival of the Agriania was at the same time a festival 306 of the dead, νεκύσια: Hsch., ἀγριάνια (it was specially ἐπὶ μιᾷ τῶν Προίτου θυγατέρων [Iphinoë: Apollod. 2, 22, 8], Hsch. s.v.: even so it was a festival of the dead).—In Plu., E ap. D. 9, 389 A, in view of the hopeless confusion shown by Plutarch in that chapter between Delphic cult-procedure and the opinions of certain unspecified θεολόγοι, it is unfortunately impossible to say with certainty whether it is the Delphians who Διόνυσον καὶ Ζαγρέα καὶ Νυκτέλιον καὶ Ἰσοδαίτην ὀνομάζουσιν or whether this only applies to the θεολόγοι (in which case they are probably Orphics).

[12]   The Agrionia to the “savage” god (ὠμηστὴς καὶ ἀγριώνιος as contrasted with the χαριδότης καὶ μειλίχιος, Plu., Ant. 24) were celebrated in Thebes and Argos. ἀγριώνια καὶ νυκτέλια ὧν τὰ πολλὰ διὰ σκότους δρᾶται are opposed to the ὀλύμπια ἱερά, by Plu., QR. 112, p. 291 A. Bacchic din, ψόφος, at the νυκτέλια, Plu., Smp. 4, 6, p. 672 A.—Temple of D. Νυκτέλιος at Megara: Paus. 1, 40, 6. Nocturnal festivities (νύκτωρ τὰ πολλὰ, Eur., Ba. 486) at the Dionysia at Lerna = Paus. 2, 37, 6, at the festival of Διόνυσος Λαμπτήρ in Pellone: Paus. 7, 27, 3. ὄργια of D. at Melangeia in Arcadia 8, 6, 5; at Heraia 8, 26, 1. The orgiastic cult of D. seems to have been preserved particularly in Sparta. We hear of the οἶστρος βακχικός that once attacked the women of Sparta from Aelian, VH. iii, 42; some lines of Alkman (fr. 34) allude to the fanatical Bacchic revels on the mountain tops (quite misunderstood by Welcker, Kl. Schr. iv, 49). It became proverbial: virginibus bacchata Lacaenis Taygeta, Vg., G. ii, 487. A special word is applied to the Bacchic fury of these Spartan Mainads: δύσμαιναι (Philarg. on Vg., G. ii, 487; Hsch. s.v.; Meineke, An. Alex. 360). In view of these ecstatic mountain-revels we need not be surprised at the prohibition of drunken roaming about the city and countryside, of which Pl., Lg. 637 AB speaks.

[13]   Welcker, Gr. Götterl. i, 444.—But human sacrifice in the Thracian worship of D. is nevertheless suggested by the remarkable story of Porph. (Abs. ii, 8) about the Βάσσαροι (whom he seems to take for a Thracian tribe).

[14]   Clem. Al., Arn., Firm. all speak of the ὠμοφαγία of the Bakchai as a still-prevailing cult-practice. Bernays, Heraklit. Briefe, 73. Galen, too, speaks in the same way of the tearing in pieces of snakes at the Bacchic festivals (quoted Lob., Agl. 271 a); to snare vipers κάλλιστός ἐστι καιρός, ὃν καὶ αὐτὸς ὁ Ἀνδρόμαχος (79 ff. of his poem) ἐδήλωσεν, ἡνίκα καὶ οἱ τῷ Διονύσῳ βακχεύοντες εἰώθασι διασπᾶν τὰς ἐχίδνας, παυομένου μὲν τοῦ ἧρος οὔπω δ’ ἠργμένου τοῦ θέρους (Antid. i, 8 = xiv, p. 45 K.). ἡνίκα—ἐχίδνας are Gal.’s words not Andromachos’. Cf. also Prud., Sym. i, 130 ff.

[15]   We need only recall the remarkable story of Hdt. (iv, 79) about the Scythian king who in Borysthenes was initiated into the mysteries of Dionysos Bakcheios ὃς μαίνεσθαι ἐνάγει ἀνθρώπους. His Scythian subjects took exception to this. For them the religion was specifically Greek, A Borysthenite says to the Scythians: ἡμῶν γὰρ καταγελᾶτε, ὦ Σκύθαι, ὅτι βακχεύομεν καὶ ἡμᾶς ὁ θεὸς λαμβάνει. νῦν οὗτος ὁ δαίμων καὶ τὸν ὑμέτερον βασιλέα λελάβηκε καὶ βακχεύει καὶ ὑπὸ τοῦ θεοῦ μαίνεται.

[16]   Cf. the remarkable account given by Plu., Mul. Virt. 11, p. 249 B; fr. de An. ap. Gell. 15, 10; Polyaen. 8, 63; and Lucian in H.Conscr. (25), 1.

[17]   Of a different description are the attacks of temporary insanity accompanied by similar features but not religious in complexion described by Aretaeus, p. 82 K., and Gal. vii, pp. 60–1 K. (the case of Theophilos). 307

[18]   Phenomena of κορυβαντιασμός: hearing the sound of flutes Pl., Crit. 54 D, Max. T., Diss. 38, 2, p. 220 R.; cf. Cic., Div. i, 114; seeing φαντασίαι, D.H., Dem. 22. It is this waking dream-condition, a condition related to hypnosis, which Pliny probably means: patentibus oculis dormiunt multi homines, quos corybantiare Graeci dicunt, NH. xi, 147. Excitement, beating heart, weeping: Pl., Smp. 215 E. Maddened dance: οἱ κορυβαντιῶντες οὐκ ἔμφρονες ὄντες ὀρχοῦνται, Ion, 534 A. “Sober drunkenness” μέθη νηφάλιος of the κορυβ., Philo, Mund. Op. 23, i, p. 16 M.—The name shows that those attacked by the disease were regarded as “possessed” by the Korybantes. κορυβαντιᾶν τὸ Κορύβασι κατέχεσθαι, Sch. Ar., V. 9. The Korybantes μανίας καὶ ἐνθειασμοῦ εἰσιν ἐμποιητικοί, ib. 8. ἔνθεος ἐκ σεμνῶν Κορυβάντων, E., Hip. 142; Sch. ad loc.: Κορύβαντες μανίας αἴτιοι. ἔνθεν καὶ κορυβάντιᾶν.—Arrian gives an unusually good account of the Korybantic frenzy of the Phrygians in a little noticed passage ap. Eust. on D.P. 809: μαίνονται τῇ Ῥέᾳ καὶ πρὸς Κορυβάντων κατέχονται, ἤγουν κορυβαντιῶσι δαιμονῶντες (i.e. possessed by the δαίμων, see Usener, Götternamen, 293). ὅταν δὲ κατάσχῃ αὐτοὺς τὸ θεῖον, ἐλαυνόμενοι καὶ μέγα βοῶντες καὶ ὀρχούμενοι προθεσπίζουσι τὰ μέλλοντα, θεοφορούμενοι καὶ μαινόμενοι. The complete similarity between this condition and that of the Bacchic worship is sufficiently obvious.

[19]   Use of dance and music to cure those who are attacked by Korybantic excitement: Pl., Lg. 790 DE, 791 A. More especially the melodies for the flute composed by Olympos, being θεῖα, were able to discover and cure those liable to Korybantic ekstasis (by means of the inspiring effect which they had on such persons). This is shown particularly by a passage in Plato (Smp. 215 C-E); where it is evident that the κορυβαντιῶντες of 215 E are not to be distinguished from the θεῶν καὶ τελετῶν δεόμενοι of 215 C (C states the general rule of which E is a particular application). This homoeopathic cure of the κορυβαντιῶντες by the intensification and subsequent discharge of the disorder is implied in all that we hear of the character of the Phrygian mode as ἐνθουσιαστική and of the μέλη Ὀλύμπου as exciting the souls of men to “enthousiasmos”; Arist., Pol. 1340b, 4, 5, 1342b, 1 ff., 1340a, 8; [Pl.], Min. 318 B; Cic., Div. i, 114. The κορυβαντιῶντες are also meant in Arist., Pol. 8, 7, 1342a, 7 ff . . . καὶ γὰρ ὑπὸ ταύτης τῆς κινήσεως (i.e. τοῦ ἐνθουσιασμοῦ) κατακώχιμοί τινές εἰσιν· ἐκ δὲ τῶν ἱερῶν μελῶν ὁρῶμεν τούτους, ὅταν χρήσωνται τοῖς ὀργιάζουσι τὴν ψυχὴν μέλεσι, καθισταμένους ὥσπερ ἰατρείας τυχόντας καὶ καθάρσεως. Plato’s analysis (Lg. 790 D ff.) is exactly parallel: the cure for the μανικαὶ διαθέσεις of the Korybantic patients is οὐχ ἡσυχία ἀλλὰ τοὐναντίον κίνησις, whereby they are assisted to regain their ἕξεις ἔμφρονες. (It is from this religio-musical procedure and not from strictly medical experience or practice that Aristotle, taking a hint from Plato, Rp. 606, derived his idea of the κάθαρσις τῶν παθημάτων by violent discharge of the emotions and transferred it to tragedy—not, as in the explanation to which some have recently returned, by a tranquilization of the emotions in “a final reconciliation”.) This κάθαρσις and ἰατρεία of the κορυβαντιῶντες is the object of the initiation ceremony of the Korybantes (whose true βάκχοι are the κορυβαντιῶντες, i.e. the worshippers who are in need of and capable of cure); of the Κορυβάντων μυστήρια which are held ἐπὶ καθαρμῷ τῆς μανίας (Sch. Ar., V. 119–20, ἐκορυβάντιζε); cf. the τελετὴ τῶν Κορυβάντων (Pl., Euthd. 277 D, including θρόνωσις: D. Chr. 12, p. 388 R., § 33 Arn.; Lob., Agl. 116, 369. There is a parody of θρόνωσις in the initiation scene of Ar., Nub. 254, where Streps. sits ἐπὶ τὸν ἱερὸν σκίμποδα. τεθρονισμένος τοῖς θεοῖς = initiated 308 in P. Mag. Lond. 747 f. = Kenyon, Greek Papyri in B.M. i, p. 108); and cf. the μητρῷα καὶ κορυβαντικὰ τέλη: D.H., Dem. 22. At the initiation ceremony (κορυβαντισμός· κάθαρσις μανίας Hsch.) held in the Κορυβαντεῖον (Hdn. Gr. 1, 375, 15 Lentz; App. Prov. ii, 23) the famous music of “inspiration” was played; there was also χορεία (Pl. Euthd.), ἦχοι e.g. the sound of τύμπανα (Ar., Ves. 120 f.; Luc. DD. 12, 1), and also it appears incense-burning: ὀσμαί, D.H., Dem. 22; cf. above, chap. viii, n. 39. All these stimulants intensified the pathological tendency of the κορυβαντιῶντες and gave them relief by the violent discharge of their emotions.—There is no need to doubt the actual occurrence of such pathological states and their medical treatment by music, etc. It was clearly the same type of psychopathical malady that invaded Italy in the Middle Ages under the name of Tarantism, repeating its attacks for several centuries; in this case, too, music (and even the sound of a particular melody) served both to excite and eventually to cure the violent dance-mania; cf. Hecker 172, 176 ff.—There seems to be a fabulous element in other stories current in antiquity about the cure of madness, love-passions, and even sciatica by the music of the flute (Pythagoras, Empedokles, Damon, Thphr. fr. 87). Such belief in the curative powers of music, esp. of the flute, seems to have been derived originally from actual experience of the καθάρσεις practised in Korybantic festivals, and then to have been exaggerated into a fable. Even doctors had no doubt that μανία was curable by the cantiones tibiarum; see Cael. Aur., Morb. Chr. i, 5, 175, 178 (Asklepiades); Cael. Aur. (i.e. Soranos), ib. 176, however, denies it. It depended entirely upon the theory, originally derived from κορυβαντισμός, of cure by intensification and discharge of the emotional state.

[20]   ὦ μάκαρ ὅστις . . . θιασεύεται ψυχάν, ἐν ὄρεσσι βακχεύων, ὁσίοις καθαρμοῖσιν, E., Ba. 72 ff.—dicunt sacra Liberi ad purgationem animae pertinere Serv. on Vg., G. ii, 389; cf. also on A. vi, 741.

[21]   Διόνυσος λύσιος (like Δ. μειλίχιος ἐλευθερεύς and σαώτης) is rightly taken as the “freer from orgiastic frenzy” (and not in the ordinary political sense) by Klausen, Orpheus, p. 26 [Ersch-Gruber] and Voigt in Roscher’s Lex. i, 1062. That this is the proper meaning of λύσιος is shown by its being contrasted with βακχεῖος, which by common consent means the god ὃς μαίνεσθαι ἐνάγει ἀνθρώπους (Hdt.); e.g. in Korinth, Paus. 2, 2, 6; Sikyon, Paus. 2, 7, 5–6. And Δ. βακχεύς and μειλίχιος in Naxos, Ath. iii, 78 C.

[22]   In the κατάλογος γυναικῶν as it seems; fr. 54 Rz. But perhaps also in the Melampodia (fr. 184 Kink.).

[23]   ἐμάνησαν, ὡς Ἡσίοδός φησιν, ὅτι τὰς Διονύσου τελετὰς οὐ κατεδέχοντο. [Apollod.] 2, 2, 2, 2, and cf. 1, 9, 12, 8. The same story (only with the name Anaxagoras substituted for that of his grandfather Proitos—doubtless on chronological grounds) with the words τὰς Ἀργείας γυναῖκας μανείσας διὰ τὴν Διονύσου μῆνιν: D.S. 4, 68, 4. (μανία—in the reign of Anaxagoras—Paus. 2, 18, 4; Eust., on Β 568, p. 288, 28).—Otherwise, it is generally Hera who sends the μανία Akousil. ap. [Apollod.] 2, 2, 2, 2 [fr. 14 Diels]. Pherekyd. ap. Sch. on ο 225. Probus and Serv. on Ecl. vi, 48. This is a later version of the legend depending upon a different interpretation of the “insanity”.

[24]   [Apollod.] 2, 2, 2. Acc. to Hdt. ix, 34, the treatment of Melamp. was applied generally to all the Ἀργεῖαι γυναῖκες (who acc. to [Apollod.] § 5, were also attacked by the madness); cf. D.S. 4, 68, 4. (. . . τὰς Ἀργείας ἢ ὥς τινες μᾶλλόν φασι, τὰς Προιτίδας Eustath. κατὰ τὴν ἱστορίαν). θεραπεύειν is D.S.’ word; ἐκάθηρεν, Sch. Pi., N. ix, 30; purgavit Serv. 309

[25]   Μελάμπους παραλαβὼν τοὺς δυνατωτάτους τῶν νεανιῶν μετ’ ἀλαλαγμοῦ καί τινος ἐνθέου χορείας ἐκ τῶν ὀρῶν αὐτὰς ἐς Σικυῶνα συνεδίωξε (i.e. the frenzied women who had eventually become very numerous: § 5, 6) [Apollod.] 2, 2, 2, 7. The account in Pl., Phdr. 244 D, E, corresponds closely with the proceedings of Melampous and perhaps refers to them: ἀλλὰ μὴν νόσων γε καὶ πόνων τῶν μεγίστων, ἃ δὴ παλαιῶν ἐκ μηνιμάτων ποθὲν ἔν τισι τῶν γενῶν ἡ μανία ἐγγενομένη καὶ προφητεύσασα οἷς ἔδει ἀπαλλαγὴν εὕρετο, καταφυγοῦσα πρὸς θεῶν εὐχάς τε καὶ λατρείας, ὅθεν δὴ καθαρμῶν τε καὶ τελετῶν τυχοῦσα ἐξάντη ἐποίησε τὸν ἑαυτῆς ἔχοντα πρός τε τὸν παρόντα καὶ τὸν ἔπειτα χρόνον, λύσιν τῷ ὀρθῶς μανέντι καὶ κατασχομένῳ τῶν παρόντων κακῶν εὑρομένη. This is a description of the remedial methods used in the Bacchic and Korybantic enthousiasmos but applied to special circumstances of the mythical past which are regarded as the standard of all later kathartic methods.

[26]   καθαρμοί [Apollod.] § 8. The regular kathartic materials are σκίλλα, ἄσφαλτος, water, etc.; Diphilus, fr. 126 K., employs them all for his own purpose, ap. Clem. Al., Str. vii, p. 844 P. The black hellebore (ἐλλέβορος μέλας) was popularly known as μελαμπόδιον because Melampous had first gathered and employed it for the purpose (Thphr., HP. 9, 10, 4), esp. when he cured and purified the Προίτου θυγατέρας μανείσας (Gal., Atrabile 7 = v, p. 132 K.; it can only be by mistake that he calls it the white hellebore; cf. also Diosc. 4, 149, where the old καθαρτής becomes Μελάμπους τις αἰπόλος [hence Plin., NH. 25, 47]; the reason may be elicited from Thphr., HP. 9, 10, 2). The place where the καθαρμοί took place and where the καθάρσια were thrown away differed acc. to the natural features of the locality and the convenience they offered: thus in Arcadia it was at Lousoi, in Elis at the river Anigros, etc.; Ov., M. xv, 322 ff.; Vitr. 8, 3, 21; Paus. 5, 5, 10; 8, 18, 7–8; cf. Call., H. Art. 233 f.; Str. 346, etc.

[27]   Melampous Ἕλλησιν ὁ ἐξηγησάμενος τοῦ Διονύσου τό τε οὔνομα καὶ τὴν θυσίην καὶ τὴν πομπὴν τοῦ φαλλοῦ, Hdt. ii, 49. Hdt.’s elaborate theory in this passage of a connexion between Mel. and Egypt, etc., is of course historically quite worthless, but the fact that he pitched upon Melamp. especially as the introducer of the Dionysiac religion can only have been due to the existence of ancient tradition (i.e. legendary tradition of course). There can be no doubt that he, like Hesiod, regarded as Dionysiac the frenzy in which the Argive women were said μανῆναι and to have been healed by Melamp. (ix, 34).

[28]   Μελάμπους φίλτατος ὢν Ἀπόλλωνι, Hes., Eoiai, (168 Rz.) ap. Sch. A.R. i, 118. φίλος Ἀπόλλωνι, D.S, 6, 7, 7 Dind. The poet of the family tree of the Melampodidai given in ο 244 ff. undoubtedly regarded Melamp. as an Apolline μάντις (like all μάντεις in Homer). This poet at least knows nothing of the Dionysiac side of Melampous’ activities. How Mel. met Apollo on the banks of the Alphaios and from him received his consecration as true μάντις, we learn from [Apollod.] 1, 9, 11, 3. The same is said of Polypheides, a descendant of Mel. ο 252: αὐτὰρ ὑπέρθυμον Πολυφείδεα μάντιν Ἀπόλλων θῆκε βροτῶν ὄχ’ ἄριστον, ἐπεὶ θάνεν Ἀμφιάρος. Another descendant of Melamp., Polyeidos, comes to Megara to purify Alkathoös from the murder of his son, and founds there a temple of Dionysos: Paus. 1, 43, 4.

[29]   See above, chap. iii, n. 32.

[30]   Plu., Is. et O. 35, p. 365 A. Sacrifice made by Agamemnon to Dionysos ἐν μυχοῖς Δελφινίου παρ’ ἄντρα κερδῴου θεοῦ, Lyc. 207 ff.

[31]   Plu., E ap. D. ix, p. 388 F. Three winter months were sacred to Dionysos (cf. the three chief Dionysiac festivals at Athens which 310 occurred in the months Gamelion, Anthesterion, Elaphebolion). Only during these three months is the god on earth. So, too, Kore shared her rule over the underworld with Aïdoneus for three months (or six); the rest of the year she is on earth παρὰ μητρὶ καὶ ἄλλοις ἀθανάτοισι.

[32]   Διονύσῳ τῶν Δελφῶν οὐδὲν ἧττον ἢ τῷ Ἀπόλλωνι μέτεστιν, Plu., E ap. D. ix, 384 D.

[33]   τὰ δὲ νεφῶν τέ ἐστιν ἀνωτέρω τὰ ἄκρα (τοῦ Παρνασοῦ), καὶ αἱ Θυιάδες ἐπὶ τούτοις τῷ Διονύσῳ καὶ τῷ Ἀπόλλωνι μαίνονται, Paus. 10, 32, 7. Parnasus gemino petit aethera colle, mons Phoebo Bromioque sacer, cui numine mixto Delphica Thebanae referunt trieterica Bacchae, Luc., v, 72 ff. We hear of a Delphos the son of Apollo and Thyia the first priestess and Mainad of Dionysos at Delphi: Paus. 10, 6, 4.

[34]   Apollo himself in an oracular command Πυθιάσιν πεντετήροισιν . . . ἔταξε Βάκχου θυσίαν χορῶν τε πολλῶν κυκλίαν ἄμιλλαν; so says Philodamos of Skarpheia in the Paian (second half fourth century B.C.) BCH. 1895, p. 408. We must suppose, too, that this command (i.e. decree of the Delphic priesthood) was actually carried out.

[35]   Δελφοὶ δὲ διπλῇ προσηγορίᾳ τιμῶσιν (σέ, i.e. Apollo), Ἀπόλλωνα καὶ Διόνυσον λέγοντες, Men. Rhet., p. 446, 5 Sp.

[36]   Arg., Sch. Pi., P., p. 297, Böckh [p. 2, 5 ff. Drch.]: . . . τοῦ προφητικοῦ τρίποδος (in Delphi) ἐν ᾧ πρῶτος Διόνυσος ἐθεμίστευσε. And again . . δάκτυλον (a part of the νόμος Πυθικός) ἀπὸ Διονύσου, ὅτι πρῶτος οὗτος δοκεῖ ἀπὸ τοῦ τρίποδος θεμιστεῦσαι. As it has been previously said that at the Delphic μαντεῖον πρώτη Νὺξ ἐχρησμῴδησεν, Dionysos seems to be here regarded as πρόμαντις of Nyx. Thus, at Megara there was a temple of Διόνυσος Νυκτέλιος in the immediate neighbourhood of, and in all probability closely associated with a Νυκτὸς μαντεῖον: Paus. 1, 40, 6.

[37]   Paus. 1, 2, 5; Ribbeck, Anf. d. Dionysoscult in Att., p. 8 (1869); cf. Dem. 21, 52. Regulation of a festival of Dionysos in Kolone by the Oracle: Paus. 3, 13, 7; in Alea, Paus. 8, 23, 1 (at which women were scourged, a substitution for primitive human sacrifice, as at the διαμαστίγωσις in Sparta, of which Paus. is reminded). Introduction of the worship of Διόνυσος Φαλλήν at Methymna by the oracle: Paus. 10, 19, 3.—At Magnesia on the Maeander a plane-tree split by a storm revealed a statue of Dionysos (a true Διόνυσος ἔνδενδρος). The Delphic oracle commanded the ambassadors sent by the city to build a temple to Dionysos (who had hitherto been without one in Magnesia) and put a priest in charge of it; then, for the institution of the cult they were to introduce from Thebes Mainads of the family of Ino: Μαινάδας αἳ γενεῆς Εἰνοῦς ἄπο Καδμηείης. (The cult of Dionysos was evidently traditional at Thebes in this family which traced its descent from Ino, the foster-mother of Dionysos.) The three Mainads obtained from Thebes (called Kosko, Baubo, and Thettale) instituted the cult of the god and founded three θίασοι arranged according to locality (there were three θίασοι in Thebes, too, E., Ba. 680 ff.). They themselves remained in Magnesia till their death and were buried with great ceremony by the city, Kosko on the “Hill of Kosko”, Baubo ἐν Ταβάρνει, Thettale πρὸς τῷ θέατρῳ. See the ἀρχαῖος χρησμός with explanatory notes in prose, restored by Ἀπολλώνειος Μοκόλλης, ἀρχαῖος μύστης (of Dionysos): Ath. Mitth. 15 (1890), p. 331 f.

[38]   See Rapp, Rhein. Mus. 27. In spite of his quite correct emphasis in general upon the ritual and purely formal character of this sacred embassy and the dance-festival that followed, Rapp makes the mistake of underestimating the ecstatic side of the Dionysiac festivals—a side 311 which was once predominant and was always liable to recur. (If this element had not been real there would have been no need for a symbolical ritualistic imitation of such ἔκστασις). How even in later times a true ekstasis and self-forgetfulness seized upon the Thyiades in their sacred night-festivals and in consequence of the numerous stimulating influences of the occasion, we can learn very clearly from Plutarch’s description of the Thyiads who wandered in their frenzy to Amphissa (Mul. Virt. 13, 249 E). Rapp., p. 22, tries in vain to upset the historical value of this account. Other points have already been mentioned incidentally.

[39]   ἣν διὰ μαντοσύνην τὴν οἷ πόρε Φοῖβος Ἀπόλλων Α 72.

[40]   τὸ ἄτεχνον καὶ ἀδίδακτον (τῆς μαντικῆς) τουτέστιν ἐνύπνια καὶ ἐνθουσιασμούς [Plu.] Vit. Poes. Hom. ii, 212. The only form known to Homer is ἡ τῶν ἐμφρόνων ζήτησις τοῦ μέλλοντος διά τε ὀρνίθων ποιουμένη καὶ τῶν ἄλλων σημείων (Pl., Phdr. 244 C).

[41]   The Ps.-Plutarch of the last note does, however, find in Theoklymenos’ position among the suitors, υ 345–57 (in any case a passage added by a later hand), a proof that he is an ἔνθεος μάντις, ἔκ τινος ἐπιπνοίας σημαίνων τὰ μέλλοντα. But in that story the abnormal state belongs rather to the suitors than the seer. See Lob., Agl. 264. Still less can we (with Welcker, Götterl. ii, 11) deduce Homer’s knowledge of ecstatic prophecy from Α 91 ff. or Η 34–53. The derivation of the word μάντις from μαίνεσθαι, frequently repeated since the time of Plato, would make the ecstatic element predominant in the idea of the prophet. But this derivation is quite uncertain and a connexion with μανύω is much more probable.

[42]   Pytho: θ 80, I 405. Dodona: Π 234, ξ 327 f., τ 296 f. An oracle is questioned perhaps in π 402 f. See Nägelsbach, Hom. Theol., p. 181 f.

[43]   See Lob., Agl. 814 f. (even the regular use of the expressions ἀνεῖλεν ὁ θεός, ἡ πυθία suffice to prove it). Cf. also Bgk., Gr. Lit. i, 334. h. Hom. Merc. in its own fashion (552-66) tells how the god deserted the “lot” oracle at Delphi as too unreliable and unworthy of the god.

[44]   Even the case of Helenos is no real example of this: Η 44 ([Plu.] Vit. Hom. ii, 212, seems to regard it as one). Cic., Div. i, 89, expressly distinguishes the prophesying of Helenos from the “enthusiastic” frenzy of Kassandra.

[45]   Even the h. Hom. Merc. to the Pythian Apollo, though it describes the institution of the cult and oracle of Apollo at Delphi, nowhere mentions the Pythia (as Lob., Agl. 264, very pertinently remarks). (Acc. to 306 f. we must suppose that at that time the prophesying was done exclusively by male μάντεις or προφῆται.)

[46]   See Eur., IT. 1234 ff. Oracles of earth-divinities were always given by Incubation. Even Cicero (Div. i, 38, following Chrysippos it seems) refers to vis illa terrae, quae mentem Pythiae divino afflatu concitabat (as something that has disappeared). It is often referred to by later authors. The placing of the tripod over the chasm from which the vapour of inspiration came, is certainly, with Welcker, Götterl. ii, 11, to be regarded as a reminiscence of the ancient method of the earth-oracle which was thus continued in the direct inspiration of Apollo. (The ἐνθουσιασμός does not exclude other stimulants. The Pythia drinks from the inspired spring—like the μάντεις at Klaros: Ath. Mitth. xi, 430—and thereupon becomes ἔνθεος: Luc., Herm. 60. The prophetess of Apollo Deiradiotes at Argos by drinking the sacrificial blood κάτοχος ἐκ τοῦ θεοῦ γίγνεται: Paus. 2, 24, 1. The Pythia chews the sacred laurel-leaves to become inspired: Luc., Bis Acc. 1; also 312 the δάφνη, ἧς ποτε γευσάμενος πετάλων ἀνέφηνεν ἀοιδὰς αὐτὸς ἄναξ σκηπτοῦχος: H. Mag. ap. Abel, Orphica, p. 288. The holy plant contains the vis divina which one absorbs into oneself by chewing. This is the crude, primitive idea underlying such actions, as plainly appears in a similar case mentioned by Porph., Abs. ii, 48.)

[47]   e.g. in Sparta: ἔστιν ἐπονομαζόμενον Γάσηπτον ἱερὸν Γῆς. Ἀπόλλων δ’ ὑπὲρ αὐτὸ ἵδρυται Μαλεάτης, Paus. 3, 12, 8.—The legend of Apollo and Daphne symbolizes the overthrow of the earth-oracle by Apollo and his own kind of prophecy.

[48]   See above, chap. iii, p. 97. Welcker, Götterl. i, 520 ff.

[49]   See above, p. 260 ff.

[50]   At Amphikleia in Phokis there was an oracle of Dionysos: πρόμαντις δὲ ὁ ἱερεύς ἐστι, χρᾷ δὲ ἐκ τοῦ θεοῦ κάτοχος, Paus. 10, 33, 11. The words of Cornutus probably refer to Greece (chap. xxx, p. 59, 20 Lang): καὶ μαντεῖα ἔσθ’ ὅπου τοῦ Διονύσου ἔχοντος . . . cf. Plu., Smp. 7, 10, 17, p. 716 B: οἱ παλαιοὶ τὸν θεὸν (Dionysos) μαντικῆς πολλὴν ἔχειν ἡγοῦντο μοῖραν.

[51]   Dionysos the first giver of oracles at Delphi: Arg., Pi. Pyth., p. 2, 7 Drch. (see above, n. 36). Voigt ap. Roscher, i, 1033–4, regards Apollo at Delphi as the heir of the Dionysiac mantikê; but he considers Dionysos to have been in the same condition as the Python who was overthrown and killed by Apollo—a view that can hardly be justified. My own view is that Apollo, after destroying the chthonic (dream) Oracle adopted from the mantikê of Dionysos the prophecy by furor divinus which had been hitherto unknown to him.—No one can seriously claim to have a clear certain insight into the intricate and kaleidoscopic changes of power and authority that finally led to the supremacy of the composite Apolline cult in the violently disputed centre of Greek religion.

[52]   . . . ὅσους ἐξ Ἀπόλλωνος μανῆναι λέγουσι (i.e. the ancient χρησμολόγους), Paus. 1, 34, 4. μανία τοῦ χρησμολόγου, Diogen., Pr. 6, 47. So, too, ἐπίπνοια: Sittl, Gebärden der Gr. u. R. 345. ὁ ἐνθουσιασμὸς ἐπίπνευσίν τινα θείαν ἔχειν δοκεῖ, Str. 467.—οἱ νυμφόληπτοι καὶ θεόληπτοι τῶν ἀνθρώπων, ἐπιπνοίᾳ δαιμονίου τινὸς ὥσπερ ἐνθουσιάζοντες, Eth. Eud. i, 1, 4, 1214a, 23.

[53]   Ecstatic condition of the Pythia: D.S. xvi, 26; misconstrued in a Christian sense, Sch. Ar., Plu. 39 (see Hemsterh. ad loc.). ὅλη γίγνεται τοῦ θεοῦ, Iamb., Myst. 3, 11, p. 126, 15 Parthey. Description of a case in which the prophesying Pythia became completely ἔκφρων: Plu., Def. Or., 51, p. 438 B.

[54]   In the inspired mantikê the soul becomes “free” from the body: animus ita solutus est et vacuus ut eo plane nihil sit cum corpore, Cic., Div. i, 113; cf. 70. (καθ’ ἑαυτὴν γίγνεται ἡ ψυχή in dreaming and μαντεῖαι: Arist. ap. S.E., M. 9, 21 [fr. 10 R.]. ἔοικε ἡ ἀρχὴ (of νοῦς) ἀπολυομένου τοῦ λόγου ἰσχύει μᾶλλον in enthousiasmos, EE. 1248a, 40; cf. 1225A, 28.) This is ἔκστασις of the understanding itself: see above, p. 260 ff. At other times it is said that the god enters into men and fills their souls; whereupon the man is ἔνθεος: see above, chap. viii, n. 50; cf. pleni et mixti deo vates, Minuc. 7, 6. The priestess at the oracle of Branchidai δέχεται τὸν θεόν, Iamb., M. 3, 11, p. 127, 7 Par.—ἐξοικίζεται ὁ ἐν ἡμῖν νοῦς κατὰ τὴν τοῦ θείου πνεύματος ἄφιξιν, κατὰ δὲ τὴν μετανάστασιν αὐτοῦ πάλιν ἐσοικίζεται κτλ: Philo, Q. rer. div. 53, i, p. 511 M., speaking of the ἔνθεος κατοχωτική τε μανία, ᾗ τὸ προφητικὸν γένος χρῆται (p. 509 M.); cf. also Spec. Leg. i, p. 343 M. This also was the idea prevailing at Delphi. Plu., Def. Or. 9, p. 414 E, rejects as εὔηθες, τὸ οἴεσθαι τὸν θεὸν αὐτόν, ὥσπερ τοὺς ἐγγαστριμύθους, 313 ἐνδυόμενον εἰς τὰ σώματα τῶν προφητῶν ὑποφθέγγεσθαι, τοῖς ἐκείνων στόμασι καὶ φωναῖς χρώμενον ὀργάνοις. But this was evidently the ordinary and deep-rooted opinion (τὸν θεὸν εἰς σῶμα καθειργνύναι θνητόν, Plu., Pyth. Or. 8, p. 398 A). The primitive idea is naively expressed by a late magic papyrus (Kenyon, Gk. Pap. in BM. i, p. 116 [1893], No. 122 [fourth century B.C.] l. 2 ff.): ἐλθέ μοι, κύριε Ἑρμῆ ὡς τὰ βρέφη εἰς τὰς κοιλίας τῶν γυναικῶν κτλ.—Neither in mantikê nor in ἔκστασις is any great distinction made between the out-going of the soul and the in-coming of the god: the two ideas merge together. The condition is regarded as one in which two persons are united and become one; the human being οἷον ἄλλος γενόμενος καὶ οὐκ αὐτός, θεὸς γενόμενος μᾶλλον δὲ ὤν, no longer experiencing a sense of division between himself and divinity μεταξὺ γὰρ οὐδέν, οὐδ’ ἔτι δύο ἀλλ’ ἕν ἄμφω (as the subtle mysticism of Plotinos describes ἔκστασις, 6, 9, 9–10; 6, 7, 34–5). In the above-mentioned magic invocation of Hermes the γόης who has conjured the god into himself says to the god (l. 36 ff., p. 117) σὺ (σοι MSS.) γὰρ ἐγὼ, καὶ ἐγὼ σύ (σοι MSS.)· τὸ σὸν ὄνομα ἐμὸν καὶ τὸ ἐμὸν σόν· ἐγὼ γάρ εἰμι τὸ εἴδωλόν σου κτλ. [Cf. Swinburne, Songs before Sunrise ii, 74 f.]

[55]   So Bergk, Gr. Lit. i, 335, n. 58. The verses of the oracle are regarded as the god’s own: Plu., Pyth. Or. v, 396 C ff. Since the god himself speaks out of her the Pythia can properly speaking only give true oracles οὐκ ἀποδάμου Ἀπόλλωνος τυχόντος, Pi., P. iv, 5; i.e. when Apollo is present at Delphi and not (as he is in winter) far away among the Hyperboreans. This was why oracles were originally only given in the spring month Bysios (Plu., Q. Gr. 9) in which apparently the θεοφάνια occurred (Hdt. i, 51). Just as in the case of the old oracular earth-spirits (see above, chap. iii, n. 12) who were confined to special localities, so in the case of the gods who work through the ἐνθουσιασμός of an inspired prophetess, their personal presence in the temple at the time of the prophesying is requisite. This presence is thought of as actual and corporeal in the primitive form of the belief (though it was got over and reinterpreted in later times), and therefore in the case of the gods can only be temporary. When, in summer, Apollo is in Delos (Vg., A. iv, 143 ff.), no χρηστήριον takes place in the temple of Apollo at Patara in Lykia (Hdt. i, 182). And so in general φυγόντων ἢ μεταστάντων (τῶν περὶ τὰ μαντεῖα καὶ χρηστήρια τεταγμένων δαιμονίων) ἀποβάλλει τὴν δύναμιν (τὰ μαντεῖα), Plu., DO. 15, p. 418 D.

[56]   The cult of Zeus in Crete was held μετ’ ὀργιασμοῦ: Str. 468. The same applies to the cult offered in many places to the various and very different female deities who were generally combined together under the name of Artemis: Lob., Agl. 1085 ff.; Meineke, An. Al. 361. In their case Asiatic influence was at work sometimes, but by no means always: Welcker, Götterl. i, 391; Müller, Dorians, i, 404 ff. The worship of Pan was also orgiastic. Otherwise we find it principally in foreign worships that had made their way at an early period into private cults: e.g. the Phrygian worship of Kybele, etc. These easily combined with the Bacchic worship and became almost indistinguishable from it; sometimes they even allied themselves with true Greek cults, with that of Pan, for example, which was closely assimilated both to the worship of Kybele and that of Dionysos. It remains obscure how far the Cretan cult of Zeus was affected by Phrygian elements.

[57]   A remarkable example is given by Herod. (ix, 94), who tells us of the blind Euenios in Apollonia who suddenly became possessed of 314 ἔμφυτος μαντική (not acquired by learning). He is a true θεόμαντις (Pl., Ap. 22 C).

[58]   The ancients knew quite well that Βάκις and Σίβυλλα were really common nouns denoting inspired χρησμῳδοί: thus the Σίβυλλα is the παρωνυμία of Herophile, Plu., P. Or. 14, p. 401 A, and Βάκις an ἐπίθετον of Peisistratos, Sch. Ar., Pax 1071. The words are clearly used to denote whole classes of individuals by Arist., Prob. 954a, 36: νοσήματα μανικὰ καὶ ἐνθουσιαστικά are liable to attack Σίβυλλαi καὶ Βάκιδες καὶ οἱ ἔνθεοι πάντες. And in general when the ancients speak in the singular of “the Sibyl” or “Bakis”, the word is generally meant as a class-name; just as for the most part when ἡ Πυθία, ἡ Πυθιάς occurs it is not a particular individual Pythia who is meant but the class-concept of “the Pythia” (or some particular member of the class actually functioning at the moment). Hence it is by no means certain that Herakleitos, etc., when they speak simply of ἡ Σίβυλλα, and Herod. when he says Βάκις were of the opinion that there was only one Sibyl and one Bakis.—It must be admitted that we do not know the real meaning of these adjectival words themselves, their etymology being quite uncertain. Was the ecstatic character of these prophets already expressed in their titles? σιβυλλαίνειν, of course = ἐνθέαζειν (D.S. 4, 66, 7), but the verb is naturally enough derived from the name Σίβυλλα, just as βακίζειν is from Βάκις, ἐρινύειν, from Ἐρινύς and not vice versa. Nor can we tell how far the personal names attached to certain Sibyls and Bakides have real historical significance. Sibyl names are Herophile, Demophile (abbreviated to Demo), Φυτώ or perhaps rather Φοιτώ; cf. φοιτὰς ἀγύρτρια, A., Ag. 1273 (so Lachmann on Tib. 2, 5, 68): the Arcadian Bakis was called Kydas or Aletes (cf. Φοιτώ) acc. to Philetas Eph. ap. Sch. Ar., Pa. 1071. It is impossible to extract from the by no means scanty materials any real element of historical fact with respect to these stories of individual Sibyls. Most untrustworthy of all in this as in all he says on this subject is Herakleides Pont. and his story of the Phrygian (or Trojan) Sibyl: we might be more inclined to believe what Eratosthenes reported acc. to the antiquis annalibus Samiorum of a Samian Sibyl (Varro ap. Lactant., Inst. 1, 6, 9)—if it had not included so entirely worthless a story as that preserved in Val. M. 1, 5, 9.—Clem. Al., Str. i, 21, p. 398 P., gives after Bakis a whole list of χρησμῳδοί with names: they evidently do not all belong to legend, but hardly one of them is otherwise known to us. The following are possibly real persons belonging to the prophetic period: Melesagoras of Eleusis who prophesied in Athens like another Bakis ἐκ νυμφῶν κάτοχος: Max. Tyr. 38, 3 (there is not a shadow of a reason for identifying him with Amelesagoras, the author of an alleged ancient Atthis: Müller, FHG. ii, 21); Euklos of Cyprus whose χρησμοί written in the old Cypriote language inspire a certain confidence (M. Schmidt, Kuhns Ztschr. 1860, p. 161 ff.): unfortunately he wrote before Homer: Paus. 10, 24, 3; Tat., Gr. 41, which makes his personality dubious again.

[59]   Of this description were the χρησμολόγοι of the fifth and fourth—even of the expiring sixth—centuries (Onomakritos belongs entirely to this class). Lob., Agl. 978 ff., 932. It is very rarely that we hear in these times of real prophets on their own account, prophesying in the furor divinus, like that Amphilytos of Acarnania who met Peisistratos as he returned from Eretria before the battle ἐπὶ Παλληνίδι and prophesied to him ἐνθεάζων (Hdt. i, 62 f.; he is an Athenian in [Pl.] Thg. 124 D—where he is mentioned side by side with Βάκις τε 315 καὶ Σίβυλλα—and in Clem. Al., Str. i, 21, p. 398 P.). In the same way occasional “Sibyls” occur even in late times (Phaennis, Athenais: see Alexandre, Or. Sib.1 ii, p. 21, 48).

[60]   Herakl. Pont. ap. Cl. Al., Str. i, 21, p. 384 P., seems to have been the first to speak definitely of two Sibyls, Herophile of Erythrai and the Phrygian Sibyl (whom he identifies with the Marpessian Sibyl or the S. of Gergis: Lact. 1, 6, 12, see Alexandre, ii, p. 25, 32. Philetas ap. Sch. Ar., Av. 962, follows him except that he adds a third, the Sardian). The Phrygian-Trojan Sibyl is dated by Herakleides in the times of “Solon and Cyrus” (Lact.); we cannot tell what date he assigned to the Erythraean. Perhaps it was only after his times that the χρησμοί of Herophile first appeared in which she prophesied the Τρωϊκά. From these verses it was now deduced that she lived before the Trojan war: so Paus. 10, 12, 2, and even Apollodoros of Erythrai (Lact. 1, 6, 9). Thenceforward the name of Herophile was associated with the idea of extreme antiquity. (The Libyan Sibyl of Paus. who is said to be the oldest of all is merely an invention of Euripides and never really obtained currency: Λίβυσσα = Σίβυλλα anagrammatically. See Alexandre, p. 74 f.) Herophile was identified also with the πρώτη Σίβυλλα who came to Delphi and prophesied there: Plu., P.Or. 9, 398 C; expressly so by Paus. 10, 12, 1, and Bocchus ap. Solin. 2, p. 38, 21–4 Mom. Acc. to Herakleides (ap. Clem. Al.) it was rather the Φρυγία who calling herself Artemis prophesied in Delphi (so, too, Philetas following Herakl. and see also Suid. Σιβ. Δελφίς). This is due to the local patriotism of the inhabitants of the Troad. Their Sibyl is the Marpessian (= the Φρυγία of Herakl.). The artificial sort of interpretation and forgery that enabled a local historian of the Troad (it cannot have been Demetrios of Skepsis) to identify the Marpessian Sibyl, who also called herself Artemis, with Herophile and turn her into the true ἐρυθραία, may be guessed from Paus. 10, 12, 2 ff. (The same source as that of Paus. is used by St. Byz. s. Μερμησσός, as Alexandre, p. 22, rightly remarks.) The Erythraean claim to Herophile was also disputed from other directions. The Erythraean is distinguished from Herophile as being later by Bocchus ap. Solin. 2, p. 38, 24; and in a different fashion the same is done by Mart. Cap. ii, 159. Acc. to Eus., Chr. 1305 Abr. (not Eratosthenes in this case) even the Samian Sibyl was identified with Herophile—to say nothing of the Ephesian Herophile in the fragg. of the enlarged Xanthos, FHG. iii, 406–8. From the fable of the Marpessian Herophile was later invented the story of her prophecy to Aeneas: Tib. 2, 5, 67; D.H. 1, 55, 4; Alexandre, p. 25.—In comparison with these different claimants to the name of Herophile (even the Cumaean Sibyl was said to be the same as Herophile) the rest of the Sibyls were hardly able to obtain a real footing in tradition.

[61]   The Erythraean Sibyl was dated by Eusebius in Ol. 9, 3 (the absurd addition ἐν Αἰγύπτῳ belongs only to the author of the Chron. Pasc. and not to Eus.: Alexandre, p. 80); he dated the Samian in Ol. 17, 1 (it is quite arbitrary to refer this view to Eratosthenes). Acc. to Suid. Σίβυλλα Ἀπόλλωνος καὶ Λαμίας the Erythraean lived 483 years after the fall of Troy: i.e. Ol. 20, 1 (700 B.C.). Herakleides put the Phrygo-Trojan Sib. in the times of Solon and Kyros (to which Epimenides also belongs and to which Aristeas and Abaris were supposed to belong). We can no longer discover or guess at the reasons for these datings. In any case the Chronologists to whom they go back evidently regarded the Sibyls as later than the earliest Pythia at Delphi. Even the Cumaean Sibyl was not to be distinguished 316 from the Erythraean: [Arist.] Mirab. 95, which perhaps comes from Timaeus; Varro ap. Serv. A. vi, 36; cf. D.H. 4, 62, 6. In spite of which she is a contemporary of Tarquinius Priscus (this was enough to distinguish the Cimmeria in Italia who prophesied to Aeneas from the Cumaean Sibyl: Naev. and Calp. Piso in Varro ap. Lact. 1, 6, 9). Naturally in these chronological straits recourse was had to the favourite device of such accounts—unnatural longevity. The Sibyl is πολυχρονιωτάτη [Arist.]: she lived a thousand years or thereabouts: Phleg., Macr. 4 (the oracle of this passage was also known to Plu.; cf. PO. 13, 401 B; a similar source inspires Ov., M. xiv, 132–53. In this case the Sibyl has already lived 700 years before the arrival of Aeneas, and she will live another 300, which would bring her—by a rather inexact calculation—to about the time of Tarquinius Priscus). In the verses found at Erythrae belonging to a statue of the Sibyl (Buresch, Woch. Klass. Phil. 1891, p. 1042; Ath. Mitt. 1892, p. 20), the Erythraean Sibyl is said to live 900 years—unfortunately one cannot be sure that this means till the time of the inscr. itself and of the νέος κτίστης of Erythrai in the age of the Antonines who is referred to at the close. If so the Sibyl would have been born about the year 700 B.C. (as in Suid.) or a little earlier. Perhaps, however, the lengthy period refers to the life time of the long since dead Sibyl herself, while the αὖθις δ’ ἐνθάδε ἐγὼ ἧμαι of l. 11 f. only applies to the statue. In which case the commencement and end of the Sibyl’s lifetime would be unknown.—Cumaeae saecula vatis became proverbial: Alexandre, p. 57. Finally the Sibyl was regarded as entirely forgotten by death, as in the story in Petronius 48 (cf. also—probably referring to Erythrai—Ampel., LM. viii, 15; Rh. Mus. 32, 639).

[62]   ρ 383 ff.

[63]   The Sibyl is overcome by the furor divinus in such a way ut quae sapiens non videat ea videat insanus, et si qui humanos sensus amiserit divinos assecutus sit, Cic., Div. ii, 110; cf. i, 34. νοσήματα μανικὰ καὶ ἐνθουσιαστικά of Sibyls and Bakids Arist. Prob. 30, 1, 954a, 36. The Sibyl prophesies μαντικῇ χρωμένη ἐνθέῳ, Pl., Phdr. 244 B. μαινομένη τε καὶ ἐκ τοῦ θεοῦ κάτοχος, Paus. 10, 12, 2. deo furibunda recepto, Ov., M. xiv, 107. There is in her divinitas et quaedam caelitum societas, Plin., NH. vii, 119. κατοχὴ καὶ ἐπίπνοια [Just.], Co. ad. Gr., 37, 36 A. So, too, in our collections of Sibylline oracles the S. often speak of their divine frenzy, etc.; e.g. ii, 4, 5; iii, 162 f., 295 f.; xi, 317, 320, 323 f.; xii, 294 f., etc. Frenzy of the Cumaean S.: Vg., A. vi, 77 f.—Bakis has his prophetic gift from the Nymphs (Ar., Pa. 1071), he is κατάσχετος ἐκ νυμφῶν, μανεὶς ἐκ νυμφῶν (Paus. 10, 12, 11; 4, 27, 4), νυμφόληπτος (cf. θεόληπτος, φοιβόληπτος, πανόληπτος, μητρόληπτος; Lymphati: Varro, LL. vii, p. 365 Sp., Paul. Fest., p. 120, 11 ff., Placid., p. 62, 15 ff. Deuerl.).

[64]   Σίβυλλα δὲ μαινομένῳ στόματι κτλ.: Herakleitos ap. Plu., Pyth. Or. 6, p. 397 A. fr. 12 By. = 92 Diels (the words χιλίων . . . θεοῦ are not H.’s but Plutarch’s. Cl. Al., Str. 1, 15, p. 358 P. uses only Plu.). To regard Herakleitos’ Sibyl as the Pythia (with Bgk., etc.) is absurd apart from the fact that the Pythia is never called Σίβυλλα. It is excluded by the way Plu. introduces the word in this passage, and connects chap. 9 with chap. 6. It is true, though, that Pl. draws a parallel between the nature of the Sibyl and that of the Pythia.

[65]   Homer knows Kassandra as one of the daughters of Priam and indeed as Πριάμοιο θυγατρῶν εἶδος ἀρίστην, Ν 365; probably that it why she is allotted to Agamemnon as his share of the spoil and why she is slain with him, λ 421 ff. The Κύπρια is the first to tell of her 317 prophetic skill. Was it the narrative of Ω 699 which first suggested to the νεώτεροι the idea of her knowledge of the future? (In reality that passage alludes rather to the συμπάθεια of the sister and daughter and not to mantikê: Sch. B. ad loc.) Her prophetic gifts were elaborated later in many stories: e.g. Bacchyl. xiv, 50 = fr. 29 Bgk. (Porph. on Hor. O. i, 15). Aesch. represents her as the type of the ecstatic prophetess (φρενομανής, θεοφόρητος, Ag. 1140, 1216). As such she is called by Eur. μαντιπόλος βάκχη, Hec. 121. φοιβάς 827. τὸ βακχεῖον κάρα τῆς θεσπιῳδοῦ Κασσάνδρας 676. She wildly shakes her head like the Bacchants ὅταν θεοῦ μαντόσυνοι πνεύσωσ’ ἀνάγκαι, IA. 760 ff.

[66]   About the Arcadian Bakis (Kydas or Aletes by name) Θεόπομπος ἐν τῇ θʹ τῶν Φιλιππικῶν ἄλλα τε πολλὰ ἱστορεῖ παράδοξα καὶ ὅτι ποτὲ τῶν Λακεδαιμονίων τὰς γυναῖκας μανείσας ἐκάθηρεν, Ἀπόλλωνος τούτοις τούτον καθαρτὴν δόντος, Sch. Ar., Pa. 1071. The story is closely parallel to that of Melampous and the Proitides, see above, nn. 22–5.

[67]   Cf. e.g. Hippocr. π. παρθενίων (ii, p. 528 K.; viii, 468 L.). Upon their recovery from hysterical hallucinations the women dedicate valuable ἱμάτια to Artemis κελευόντων τῶν μάντεων. This is the regular name for the μάγοι, καθαρταί, ἀγύρται (cf. Teiresias δόλιος ἀγύρτης, S., OT. 388; Kassandra is accused of being φοιτὰς ἀγύρτρια, A., Ag. 1273). Hp. speaks elsewhere also of their manner of healing epilepsy, i, p. 588 K. (vi, 354 L.).

[68]   καθαρμοὶ . . . κατὰ τὴν μαντικήν, Pl., Crat. 405 AB. The μάντεις are able e.g. to drive away by magic the mist that is so dangerous for the olive-trees: Thphr., CP. 2, 7, 5. The μάντεις καὶ τερατοσκόποι, ἁγύρται καὶ μάντεις possess the arts of μαγγανεύματα, ἐπῳδαί, καταδέσεις and ἐπαγωγαί which compel the gods to do their will, Pl., Rp. 364 BC; Lg. 933 CE. These μάντεις correspond in all essentials to the magicians and medicine men of savage tribes. Prophet, doctor, and magician are here united in a single person. A mythical prototype of these Greek “medicine men” is Apis, of whom we hear in Aesch., Sup. 260–70. (The μάντεις also officiate as sacrificial priests, esp. where the sacrifice is combined with a special sacrificial mantikê—quite unknown to Homer—in which the will of the gods is inquired: Eur., Hcld. 401, 819; Ph. 1255 ff. and frequently. Hermann Gottesdienstl. Alterth. 33, 9.)

[69]   The clearest evidence for this is Hp., Morb. Sacr. (vi, 352 L.). See below, n. 81. Assistance in the case of internal diseases is naturally sought in ancient times from magicians, for such diseases arise immediately from the action of a god: στυγερὸς δέ οἱ ἔχραε δαίμων, ε 396 (cf. κ, 64), is said of an invalid who lies δηρὸν τηκόμενος. Cf. νοῦσος Διὸς μεγάλου, ι 411. In such cases help is sought from the ἰατρόμαντις (A., Sup. 263) who is at once μάντις and τερατοσκόπος and καθαρτής like his divine prototype Apollo: A., Eum. 62–3. In a long illness King Kleomenes I of Sparta resorts to καθαρταὶ καὶ μάντεις, Plu., Ap. Lac. 11, p. 223 E.

[70]   Α 313 f.; χ 481 ff. Kathartic practices, however much they may contain a primitive core, were fairly late in attaining popularity in Greece (or in regaining a lost popularity): as is shown esp. by the all but total absence of any mention of such practices and the superstitions underlying them from Hesiod, Op., which otherwise preserves the memory of so much countryside superstition (something rather like it is perhaps to be found in Op. 733–6).

[71]   Nothing is said in Homer of the purification of the murderer or the homicide: see above, chap. v, n. 166.

[72]   Thus at the ἀμφιδρόμια all who have had anything to do with 318 the μαίωσις, ἀποκαθαίρονται τὰς χεῖρας (Suid. s.v.). But even the child is lustrated: it is carried in the arms of a grown-up who runs with it round the altar and the altar fire: clearly a vestige of the ἀποτροπιασμὸς καὶ κάθαρσις of the child by sacred fire of which so many relics have been observed: see Grimm, p. 625; Tylor, ii, 430 f.—Uncleanness of the pregnant woman until the fortieth day after the child is born: Welcker, Kl. Schr. iii, 197–9. At the birth of a child crowns of olive-branches or woollen fillets (ἔρια) were in Attica hung up on the house-door; just as cypress-branches were hung on the doors of houses where a corpse lay (see above, chap. v, n. 39): for kathartic purposes strings of onions (squills) were suspended on house-doors; see below): Hsch. στέφανον ἐκφέρειν. Both are lustral materials. Use of olive branches at καθαρμός: S., OC. 483 f.; Vg., A. 230. When a mother gives her child that is to be exposed a crown made of olive branches (as in Eur., Ion, 1433 ff.), this, too, has an apotropaic purpose as also has the Gorgon’s head on the embroidered stuff that also accompanies the child (l. 1420 f.): see on this O. Jahn, Bös. Blick, 60. The olive is also sacred to the χθόνιοι (hence its use as a bed for corpses: see above, chap. v, n. 61; cf. τοῖς ἀποθανοῦσιν ἐλαᾶς συνεκφέρουσιν: Artemid. iv, 57, p. 236, 20 H. κοτίνῳ καὶ ταινίᾳ the goddess crowns Chios in his dream and points the man thus dedicated to death to his μνῆμα: Chio, Epist. 17, 2). This makes the olive suitable for lustration and ἀποτροπιασμοί. The house in which the child lay was thus regarded as needing “purification”. The “uncleanness” felt to exist in this case is clearly expressed by Phot. ῥάμνος· ἀμίαντος ἡ πίττα· διὸ καὶ ἐν ταῖς γενέσεσι τῶν παιδίων (ταύτῃ) χρίουσι τὰς οἰκίας, εἰς ἀπέλασιν δαιμόνων (see above, chap. v, n. 95). It is the neighbourhood of these (chthonic) δαίμονες that cause the pollution.

[73]   A., Pers. 201 ff., 216 ff.; Ar., Ra. 1340; Hp., Insom. (ii, p. 10, 13 K. = vi, p. 654 L.); cf. Becker, Charicles, p. 133, n. 4 E.T.

[74]   Cf. Plu., Sept. Sap. Conv. iii, p. 149 D, and on this Wyttenb. vi, p. 930 f.

[75]   Purification of houses (χ 481 ff.); e.g. [D.] 47, 71. It was customary to purify οἰκίας καὶ πρόβατα with black hellebore: Thphr., HP. 9, 10, 4; Dsc. 4, 149 (hence the superstitious details of its gathering, Thphr., HP. 9, 8, 8, and Dsc.). The touching of the house by unholy daimones necessitates purification: Thphr., Ch. 28 (16), 15, of the δεισιδαίμων· καὶ πυκνὰ δὲ τὴν οἰκίαν καθᾶραι δεινὸς Ἑκάτης φάσκων ἐπαγωγὴν γεγονέναι.

[76]   Presence of a dead body in a house makes the water and fire unclean; “clean” water and fire must then be brought in from elsewhere. See Plu., QG. 24 (Argos), p. 297 A (see above, chap. v, n. 38). At a festival of the dead in Lemnos all the fires were put out (as unclean); “clean” fire was sought from Delos, and, after the completion of the ἐναγίσματα brought into the country and distributed. Philostr., H. 19, 14, p. 206–8, 7 K.—Alexander was following Greek, as well as Persian, customs when at the burial of Hephaistion he allowed τὸ παρὰ τοῖς Πέρσαις καλούμενον ἱερὸν πῦρ to go out, μέχρι ἂν τελέσῃ τὴν ἐκφοράν, D.S. 17, 114, 4.

[77]   “When a Greek saw anyone using expiatory rites, he presumed in that person the will to amend,” Nägelsbach, Nachhom. Theol., 363. If this was really so it is strange that we never see this “presumption” expressed in words. We do indeed read that the δεισιδαίμων mortifies himself and ἐξαγορεύει τινὰς ἁμαρτίας αὑτοῦ καὶ πλημμελείας, but in what do these ἁμαρτίαι consist?—ὡς τόδε φαγόντος ἢ πιόντος ἢ βαδίσαντος 319 ὁδὸν ἣν οὐκ εἴα τὸ δαιμόνιον, Plu., Superstit. 7, p. 168 D: merely ritual omissions in fact, not moral transgressions at all. It is the same everywhere in this domain. The conceptions underlying purificatory practice certainly did not correspond to the refined morality of later ages, but they continued in force so long as kathartikê remained popular: they are well expressed (though disapprovingly) by Ovid in the well-known lines which we shall, however, do well to recall: omne nefas omnemque mali purgamina causam credebant nostri tollere posse senes. Graecia principium moris fuit: illa nocentis impia lustratos ponere facta putat.—a! nimium faciles, qui tristia crimina caedis fluminea tolli posse putetis aqua, F. 2, 35 ff.; cf. Hp. i, p. 593 K., vi, 362 L.

[78]   We can only here allude to the remarkable parallel provided by the purificatory and expiatory ritual of India, which is completely analogous to the kathartikê of Greece and had a similar origin. Even in details Indian conceptions and procedure answer closely to Greek. They are both as far removed as possible from all idea of quieting a guilt-laden conscience and are directed solely towards effacing, expunging, or expelling an external μίασμα, a pollution arriving from without, a taint arising from contact with a hostile δαιμόνιον conceived as something in the nature of a daimonic fluid. Indian sources are on this point very rich and full: an excellent account of them is given by Oldenberg in his Religion des Veda (esp. Fr. tr. 243 ff.; 417 ff.). Greek and Indian practices illuminate each other. It would be a valuable experiment to take the highly elaborated kathartic ritual of the Avesta and compare it with the history and technique of purification and expiation in Greek religion. It would mean renewing Lomeier’s old book [Epimenides s. de lustrat. Zutphen 1700]: the materials are very scattered and the ground has never been thoroughly gone over since then. By the help also of the “comparative” method of religious study, which in this case is quite justified, it would then be possible to reconstruct a most important fragment of primitive religio—a fragment which had become almost entirely forgotten in Homeric times, which then recovered its ancient influence and continued to develop and was even transmitted to the ritual of the Christian church (cf. Anrich, D. ant. Mysterienw. 190 f.). We must be careful, however, to shut our ears to the otherwise very convincing people who are so anxious to introduce purely moral interests and conceptions into ancient religio. Morality is a later achievement in the life-history of the children of men: this fruit did not grow in Eden.

[79]   See Appendix v.

[80]   What the Greeks meant by μίασμα can be very clearly seen, e.g. in the conversation between Phaidra and her nurse in Eur. Hp. 316 ff. Phaidra’s distress of mind is not derived from a deed of blood: χεῖρες μὲν ἁγναί she says φρὴν δ’ ἔχει μίασμά τι. Does the Nurse think of any moral disgrace or defilement of the distressed woman in this φρενὸς μίασμα? Not at all: she only asks, μῶν ἐξ ἐπακτοῦ πημονῆς ἐχθρῶν τινος; in other words by “defilement of the mind” she can only conceive of an enchantment, something from without that comes, by ἐπαγωγὴ τινῶν δαιμονίων (see below, n. 108), a stain derived from the polluting neighbourhood of such daimones. This was the general and popular conception. (Taken literally Plato’s words also give expression to the popular conception: πολλῶν ὄντων καὶ καλῶν ἐν τῷ τῶν ἀνθρώπων βίῳ, τοῖς πλείστοις αὐτῶν οἷον κῆρες ἐπιπεφύκασιν, αἳ καταμιαίνουσί τε καὶ καταρρυπαίνουσιν αὐτὰ, Lg. 937 D.) 320

[81]   Diseases come παλαιῶν ἐκ μηνιμάτων, Pl., Phdr. 244 DE; i.e. from the rage of departed generations of souls or of χθόνιοι, Lob., Agl. 635–7. Esp. madness is a νοσεῖν ἐξ ἀλαστόρων, S., Tr. 1325, a τάραγμα ταρτάρειον, E., HF. 89. Cure of such diseases is undertaken not by doctors but by καθαρταί, μάγοι καὶ ἀγύρται, expiatory priests with magic proceedings—this is well shown by the treatment of the “sacred disease” in Hp., Morb. Sac., p. 587–94 K = vi, 352–64 L. Such people, introducing themselves as magicians in the strict sense (p. 358 L.), use no regular medicinal treatment (356), but operate partly with καθαρμοί and ἐπῳδαί, partly with various prescriptions of abstinence ἁγνεῖαι καὶ καθαρότητες. These last are explained by Hp. on dietetic grounds but the Kathartai themselves derived them from τὸ θεῖον καὶ τὸ δαιμόνιον (358). And such they were evidently in intention. The account of such prescriptions given on pp. 354–6 mostly refers to abstentions from plants and animals supposed to be sacred to the underworld. Noticeable also: ἱμάτιον μέλαν μὴ ἔχειν, θανατῶδες γὰρ τὸ μέλαν (all trees with black berries or fruit belong to the inferi: Macr. 3, 20, 3). Other superstitions are found with these: μηδὲ πόδα ἐπὶ ποδὶ ἔχειν, μηδὲ χεῖρα ἐπὶ χειρί· ταῦτα γὰρ πάντα κωλύματα εἶναι. The belief is familiar from the story of the birth of Herakles. See Welcker, Kl. Schr. iii, 191. Sittl, Gebärden 126. (Something of the kind in P. Mag. Par. 1052 ff., p. 71 Wess.) The source of the disease was, however, always supposed to be the direct influence of a δαίμων (360-2) which must therefore be averted. Acc. to popular belief it is always God who τὸ ἀνθρώπου σῶμα μιαίνει (cf. p. 362). For this reason the magicians purify, καθαίρουσι, the sick αἵμασι καὶ τοῖσιν ἄλλοισι which are used to purify people μίασμά τι ἔχοντας or on whom a curse has been laid. The καθάρσια are buried or thrown into the sea (καὶ εἰς ἅλα λύματ’ ἔβαλλον, A 314), or carried away into a deserted mountain district (p. 362). Such καθάρσια are now the resting place of the μίασμα that has been washed off, and so the magician drives εἰς ὀρέων κεφαλὰς νούσους τε καὶ ἄλγη, Orph. H. 36, 16. Similarly in India, Oldenberg 495.

[82]   Epôdai used for stopping the flow of blood, τ 457. Frequently mentioned in later times: particularly used in the magic cure of epilepsy, Hp. vi, 352–4; [D.] 25, §§ 79–80. When houses and hearths are purified by being sprinkled with hellebore συνεπᾴδουσί τινα ἐπῳδήν, Thphr. HP. 9, 10, 4 (comprecationem solemnem is Pliny’s trans., NH. 25, 49). Pains of childbirth prevented or alleviated by epôdai, Pl., Tht. 149 CD. (Much more of the kind in Welcker, Kl. S. iii, 64 ff.) The essential meaning of such epôdai is regularly an appeal or exorcism addressed to the daimonic creature (clearly an appeal when lions or snakes are appeased in this way: Welcker, iii, 70, 14–15). Epôdai accompanying ῥιζοτομία are ἐπικλήσεις of the δαίμων ᾧ ἡ βοτάνη ἀνιέρωται: P. Mag. Par. 2973 ff. The meaning of such “conjurings” addressed to diseases—when the daimon is exorcised—is clearly seen in what Plotin. says of the Gnostics: they claimed to heal the sick by means of ἐπαοιδαί, μέλη, ἦχοι, and καθαίρεσθαι νόσων, ὑποστησάμενοι τὰς νόσους δαιμόνια εἶναι, καὶ τὰ τοιαῦτα ἐξαιρεῖν λόγῳ φάσκοντες δύνασθαι, 2, 9, 14.

[83]   Clashing of bronze used at ἀποκαθάρσεις to drive away ghosts: see above, chap. v, n. 167; cf. also Macr. 5, 19, 11. Claud. iv. Cons. Hon. 149: nec te (like Juppiter) progenitum Cybeleius aere sonoro lustravit Corybas. The noise of bronze has a kathartic effect simply as averting ghosts. In the process of driving out the ghosts at the Lemuria, Temesaea concrepat aera, Ov., F. 5, 441. Hence (?) χαλκοῦ 321 αὐδὰν χθονίαν, E., Hel. 1346. At eclipses of the sun or moon κινοῦσι χαλκὸν καὶ σίδηρον ἄνθρωποι πάντες (cf. Plu., Aem. 17; Juv. vi, 443; Mart. xii, 57, 16 f., etc.) ὡς τοὺς δαίμονες ἀπελαύνοντες, Al. Aphr., Prb. 2, 46, p. 65, 28 Id. This is the object of the crepitus dissonus at eclipses of the moon: Plin., NH. ii, 54; Liv. xxvi, 5, 9; Tac., A. i, 28, and cf. Tib. i, 8, 21 f.; ob strias: [Aug.] Sacrileg. v, 16, with Caspari’s refs., p. 31 f.

[84]   φόνῳ φόνον ἐκνίπτειν, E., IT. 1233. Purgantur <cruore> cum cruore polluuntur . . . Heraclit. (p. 335, 5 Schust. [5 D. = 130 B.]).

[85]   A.R. iv, 703 ff. καθαρμοῖς χοιροκτόνοις . . .: A., Eum. 283, 449, αἵματος καθαρσίου; cf. Müller, Aesch. Eum. 124. Representation of the καθαρμός of Orestes on well-known vase-paintings: Mon. d. inst. iv, 48, etc.

[86]   The “purification” of the stain of blood in these and similar cases really consisted in a “substitution” sacrifice whereby the anger of the daimones was appeased: so much was, on the whole correctly, observed long ago by Meiners, Allg. Gesch. der relig. ii, 137. The μίασμα that clings to the murderer is in fact just the indignation of the murdered man or of the underworld spirits: this is plain in Antiph., Tet. 3α, 3 (see above, chap. v, n. 176). The thing that makes the son who has not avenged his father’s murder “unclean” and keeps him away from the altars of the gods is οὐχ ὁρωμένη πατρὸς μῆνις A., Ch. 293.—In the case of murder or homicide there is not only the contact with the sinister other-world that makes men unclean (this applies to all cases of “pollution”), but, besides this, there is also the anger of the murdered soul itself (and of its protecting spirits). Hence in this case, besides καθαρμός, ἱλασμός as well is necessary (see above, chap. v). It is evident, however, that it would be difficult to keep the two processes distinct and that they would easily merge into each other.

[87]   The φαρμακοί are put to death at the Thargelia of Ionic cities: Hipponax fr. 37. In other places on extraordinary occasions, but regularly at the Thargelia in Athens. This is denied by Stengel, Hermes, 22, 86 ff., but in the face of definite statements from antiquity general considerations can have no weight. In addition it was only a special mode of execution applied to criminals already condemned to death. (Two men, acc. to Harp. 180, 19: a man and a woman Hsch. φαρμακοί: the variation is explained by Hellad. ap. Phot., Bibl., p. 354a, 3 ff. Bk.) The φαρμακοί serve as καθάρσια to the city (Harp. 180, 19 Bk.): Hippon. fr. 4; Hellad. ap. Sch. Ar., Eq. 1136. φαρμακός = κάθαρμα, Phot., Lex. 640, 8 Pors. The φαρμακοί were either burnt (after being put to death) like other propitiatory victims: Tz., Ch. v, 736, prob. following Hippon. (the burning of the φαρμ. at Athens seems to be alluded to by Eup. Δῆμ. 120 [i, 290 K.]); or stoned: this form of death is implied (in the case of Athens) by the legend of Istros ap. Harp. 180, 23. Analogous customs (indicated by Müller, Dorians, i, 345) at Abdera: Ov., Ib. 465 f. (which acc. to the Sch. is taken from Call., who evidently transferred to Apollonios the pious wish directed by Hippon. against Boupalos); at Massilia (Petr. fr. 1 Bü., where the φαρμακός is either thrown down the cliff or saxis occidebatur a populo: Lact. ad Stat., Th. 10, 793). Apollonios of Tyana was clearly following ancient custom when he made the people of Ephesos stone an old beggar, who was evidently nothing but the plague-daimon itself, for the purification of the city: καθήρας τοὺς Ἐφεσίους τῆς νόσου, Philostr., VA. 4, 10–11. Was the stoning a sort of counter-enchantment? See Roscher, Kynanthropie, 38–9. 322

[88]   Among the ingredients of a Ἑκάτης δεῖπνον ἐν τῇ τριόδῳ was an ὠὸν ἐκ καθαρσίου: Luc., DM. 1, 1; or the testicles of a sucking pig that had been used as a victim: D., 54, 39. The ὀξυθύμια, sacrifices to Hekate and the souls of the dead (see above, chap. v, n. 176), are identical with the καθάρματα καὶ ἀπολύματα which were thrown out at the crossroads in the Ἑκαταῖα: Did. ap. Harp. ὀξυθύμια; cf. E.M. 626, 44. καθάρσια is the name of the purificatory offerings: καθάρματα of the same when they are thrown away: Ammon., p. 79 Valck. The dead bodies of dogs which had been used as victims at the “purification” were afterwards thrown τῇ Ἑκάτῃ μετὰ τῶν ἄλλων καθαρσίων, Plu., QR. 68, p. 280 C. Even the blood and water of the purificatory sacrifice, the ἀπόνιμμα, is also dedicated to the dead: Ath. 409 E ff. The fact that the καθάρματα are made over to the invisibly present spirits at the cross roads might be derived also from the necessity for throwing them out ἀμεταστρεπτί (see below, n. 104). Even the Argive custom of throwing the καθάρματα into the Lernaean lake (Znb., iv, 86; Dgn., vi, 7; Hsch. Λέρνη θεατῶν) shows that these kathartic materials are intended as a sacrifice to the underground spirits since the Lernaean lake was an entrance to the underworld (see above, chap. viii, n. 28).

[89]   Annual τελετή to Hekate in Aegina reputed to have been founded by Orpheus. Hekate and her καθαρμοί were there regarded as valuable against insanity (for she can remove what she herself has sent): Ar., Ves. 122; Lob., Agl. 242. This initiation festival lasted on into the fourth century A.D.—Paus. refers to only one other temple of Hekate in Argos: 2, 22, 7.—Indications of a rigorous worship of Hekate in Kos: GDI. 3624, iii, p. 345 fin. Hekate was patron-goddess of the city of Stratonikeia: Tac., A. iii, 62. Str., 660, and in other cities of Karia (as is known from inscr.). Possibly Hekate is there only a Greek title of a native Karian deity. The ancient cult of the χθόνιοι at the Triopion in Knidos was, however, Greek: Böckh on Sch. Pi., p. 314 f.; CIG. i, p. 45.

[90]   χθονία καὶ νερτέρων πρύτανις: Sophr. fr. 7 Kaib. ap. Sch. Theoc. ii, 12.—She is actually queen in Hades, sharing the throne of Plouton it seems: S., Ant. 1199. She is often called χθονία. She is Ἀδμήτου κόρη (i.e. of Hades, K. O. Müller, Introd. Scient. Myth. 245): Hsch. She is called ἀδμήτη herself in H. Mag. Hec., Abel, Orph., p. 289. She is the daughter of Euboulos, i.e. Hades: Orph. H., 72, 3 (elsewhere of course she has other origins). As χθονία she is often confused with Persephone (and both, as they are all thus united in several particulars, with Artemis). In the transcript of a metrical inscr. from Budrum (Cilicia) in JHS. xi, 252. there appears a Γῆ Ἑκάτη. This would certainly be very remarkable but on the stone itself the actual words are τὴν σεβόμεσθ’ Ἑκ[άτην]. [But cf. Tab. Defix., p. xiii, a 13.]

[91]   Hekate goddess of childbirth: Sophr. fr. 7. worshipped in Athens as κουροτρόφος, Sch. Ar., V. 804. Samian worship of the κουροτρόφος ἐν τῇ τριόδῳ (i.e. as Hek.), [Hdt.] V. Hom. 30; Hes., Thg. 450: θῆκε δέ μιν (Hek.) Κρονίδης κουροτρόφον. (Even as early as this κουρ. is the epithet of Hek. and not the name of an independ. feminine daimon which it may have been to begin with, and in isolated cases remained.) Γενετυλλίς goddess of childbirth is said to be ἐοικυῖα τῇ Ἑκάτῃ: Hsch. Γεν. The goddess Eileithyia to whom dogs were sacrificed in Argos is certainly a Hekate (Sokr. ap. Plu., Q. Rom. 52, p. 277 B—she was Artemis elsewhere). A consecration to Hekate ὑπὲρ παιδός: inscr. from Larisa, Ath. Mitth. xi, 450. Hek. is also a goddess of marriage: as such (ὅτι γαμήλιος ἡ Ἑκάτη, Sch.) she is called upon with Hymenaios 323 by Kassandra in Eur., Tr. 323. Hekate is γαμήλιος simply as χθονία: the χθόνιοι frequently take part in marriage as well as birth: see above, chap. v, p. 64 ff.; Gaia: see Welcker, Götterl. i, 327. Offering made πρὸ παίδων καὶ γαμηλίου τέλους to the Erinyes: A., Eum. 835.

[92]   Hekate present at funerals (rushing πρὸς ἄνδρας νεκρὸν φέροντας, Sophr. fr. 7) ἐρχομένα ἀνά τ’ ἠρία καὶ μέλαν αἷμα Theoc. ii, 13. χαίρουσα σκυλάκων ὑλακῇ καὶ αἵματι φοίνῳ ἐν νέκυσι στείχουσα κατ’ ἠρία τεθνηώτων, H. Hec. ap. Hipp., RH. iv, 35, p. 102, 64 f. D.-S.—Hekate present at all infamous deeds: see the remarkable formulae ap. Plu., Superst. 10, p. 170 B (Bgk., PLG^4 iii, p. 680).—Hek. regarded as devouring corpses (like Eurynomos, etc., above, chap. vii, n. 24): αἱμοπότις, καρδιόδαιτε, σαρκοφάγε, ἀωροβόρε are said of her in the Hymn. Magic, 5, ll. 53–4 (p. 294 Ab.). φθισίκηρε should be also read, ib., l. 44 (κῆρες = ψυχαί, see above, chap. v, n. 100); cf. ὠμοφάγοι χθόνιοι, P. Mag. Par. 1444. Ἑκάτη ἀκρουροβόρη on a defixio from Megara ap. Tab. Defix., p. xiiia, l. 7 Wünsch. Probably ἀωροβόρη should be read (Wünsch differently, p. xxb).

[93]   See above, chap. v, nn. 66, 132.

[94]   Medea in E., Med. 385 ff.: οὐ γὰρ μὰ τὴν δέσποιναν ἣν ἐγὼ (as magician) σέβω μάλιστα πάντων καὶ ξυνεργὸν εἱλόμην, Ἑκάτην, μυχοῖς ναίουσαν ἑστίας ἐμὴς.—Δήμητρος κόρη is addressed as πυρὸς δέσποινα, in company with Hephaistos, in E., Phaeth., fr. 781, 59. Probably Hekate is meant being here as frequently combined or confused with Persephone the daughter of Demeter (cf. Ion, 1048).

[95]   The pious man cleans and decorates every month τὸν Ἑρμῆν καὶ τὴν Ἑκάτην καὶ τὰ λοιπὰ τῶν ἱερῶν ἃ δὴ τοὺς προγόνους καταλιπεῖν, Theopomp. ap. Porph., Abs. ii, 16 (p. 146, 8–9 N.). Acc. to this Hekate and Hermes belong to the θεοὶ πατρῷοι of the house.—Shrines of Hekate before the house-door (Lob., Agl. 1336 f.); cf. the sacella of the Heroes in the same place: above, chap. iv, n. 135.

95a   The late interpolation in Hes., Th. 411–52, in praise of Hekate leaves out the uncanny side of her character altogether. Hekate has here become so much the universally revered goddess that she has lost all definite personality in the process. The whole is a telling example of the sort of extension that might be given to a single divinity who had once been the vital cult-object of a small locality. The name of this universally known daimon becomes finally of little importance (for everything is heaped upon one personality). Hence there is little to be learnt of the special characteristics of Hekate from this Hymn. (In any case it is time we gave up calling this Hymn to Hekate “Orphic”: the word is even more than usually meaningless and conventional in this case.)

[96]   Hekate (ναίουσα at the crossroads, S. fr. 492 N.) meets men as an ἀνταία θεός (S. fr. 311) and is herself called ἀνταία (fr. 311, 368; cf. EM. 111, 50, where what precedes is from Sch. A.R. i, 1141). The same adj. applies to a δαίμων that she causes to appear: Hsch. ἀνταία, ἀνταῖος, in this as in most cases with the added sense of hostile. Hek. φαινομένη ἐν ἐκτόποις φάσμασιν, Suid. Ἑκάτην. (from Elias Cret. on Greg. Nz. iv, p. 487 Mg.). She appears or sends apparitions by night as well as by day: Εἰνοδία, θύγατερ Δάματρος, ἃ τῶν νυκτιπόλων ἐφόδων ἀνάσσεις καὶ μεθαμερίων, E., Ion, 1048 ff. Meilinoe, a euphemistically (cf. above, chap. v, n. 5) named daimonic creature, either Hekate or Empousa, meets ἀνταίαις ἐφόδοισι κατὰ ζοφοειδέα νύκτα, Orph. H. 71, 9. Hek. appears at midday in Luc., Philops. 22. In this midday vision she opens the earth and τὰ ἐν Ἅιδου ἅπαντα become visible (c. 24). This reminds us of the story told by Herakl. 324 Pont. of Empedotimos to whom Plouton and Persephone appeared ἐν μεσημβρίᾳ σταθερᾷ in a lonely spot and the whole world of the spirits became visible (ap. Procl. in Rp. ii, 119 Kroll). Lucian is probably parodying that story. Elsewhere in the same pamphlet he gives an absurd turn to a fabulous narrative of Plutarch’s (de An. fr. 1 Bern. = Philops. 25).

[97]   See Append. vi.

[98]   See Append. vii.

[99]   Hekate herself is regarded as having the head of a dog: undoubtedly an ancient conception of her (she has σκυλακώδεα φωνήν, H. Mag. 5, 17 Ab.). She is sometimes even a dog herself: Hsch. Ἑκάτης ἄγαλμα, and partic. AB. 336, 31–337, 5; Call. fr. 100 h, 4. She is identified with Kerberos: Lyd., Mens. 3, 8, p. 42 W. She is actually invoked as a dog in P. Mag. Par. 1432 ff., p. 80 W.: κυρία Ἑκάτη εἰνοδία, κύων μέλαινα. Hence dogs are sacred to her and are sacrificed to her (earliest witness Sophr. fr. 8 Kaib.). The hounds with whom she flies about at night are daimonic creatures like Hekate herself. Porph. (who was specially well informed about such things) said that σαφῶς the hounds of Hekate were πονηροὶ δαίμονες: ap. Eus., PE. 4, 23, 7–8. In Lycophron’s account (ll. 1174–80) Hekabe is represented exactly in this way, i.e. as a daimonic creature who appears to men as a hound (cf. PLG. iii, 721 f.). She is transformed by Hekate (Brimo) into one of her train (ἑπωπίδα) who by their nocturnal howling strike terror into men who have neglected to make offering to the goddess.—Dogs occur as symbols of the dead on grave-reliefs?—above, chap. v, n. 105. (Erinyes as hounds; Keres as “Hounds of Hades”: A.R. iv, 1665; AP. vii, 439, 3 [Theodorid.], etc. Ruhnken, Ep. Cr. i, 94.)

[100]   See Dilthey, Rh. Mus. 25, 332 ff.

[101]   The Italian Diana who had long become identical with Hekate remained familiar to the Christianized peoples of the early Middle Ages (allusions in Christian authors: Grimm, pp. 283, 286, 933, 949, 1161 f. O. Jahn, Bös. Blick, 108). She was, in fact, the meeting point of the endless mass of superstition that had survived into that time from Graeco-Roman tradition. The nocturnal riding of a mob of women (i.e. “souls” of women) cum Diana, paganorum dea is quoted as a popular superstition by the so-called Canon Episcopi, which in the controversies on witches was so often appealed to. This document, it seems, cannot be traced back further than Regino (end of ninth century). He seems to have got it out of [Aug.] De Sp. et Anima (probably written in the sixth century). It was rescued from oblivion by Burkhard of Wurms, used in the Decretals of Gratian, and became very well known in the Middle Ages. (The passage from Burkhard is printed in Grimm, p. 1741. That the whole is a Canon (24) of the Council of Ancyra, 314 A.D., is, however, only a mistaken idea of Burkhard’s.) This belief in the nightly hunt of Diana with the souls may be regarded as a vestige of the ancient idea of Hekate and her nocturnal crew. It was all the more likely to survive in northern countries with their native legends of wild Hunters and the “furious host” with which it could so easily combine. [“Herne the Hunter,” Merry Wives of Windsor, iv, 4; v, 5.]

[102]   ὁκόσα δείματα νυκτὸς παρίσταται, καὶ φόβοι καὶ παράνοιαι καὶ ἀναπηδήσεις ἐκ τῆς κλίνης καὶ φόβητρα καὶ φεύξεις ἔξω, Ἑκάτης φασὶν εἶναι ἐπιβολὰς καὶ ἡρώων ἐφόδους, καθαρμοῖσί τε χρέονται καὶ ἐπαοιδαῖς, Hp., Morb. Sac. vi, 362 L.; cf. Plu., Supers., 3, p. 166 A; Hor., AP. 454. Hekate is μανιῶν αἰτία, Eust., Il., p. 87, 31 (hence also releases men from madness in the initiations of Aegina, see above, n. 89); cf. ἔνθεος 325 ἐξ Ἑκάτης, E., Hip. 141. Dreams of Hekate, Artemid., 2, 37, p. 139, 1 ff. H. The ἥρωες ἀποπλήκτους ποιεῖν δύνανται: Sch. Ar., Av. 1490. The ἥρωες are also the source of nightmares, Rh. Mus. 37, 467 n. (like Pan as Ephialtes: Didym. ap. Sch. Ar., Ves. 1038—where Εὐάπαν should be read, from εὔα the noise of bleating goats and Πᾶν: Suid. and CIG. iv, 8382). The Lamiai and Empousai seem also to have been night-terrors; cf. what is said of their amorous disposition and desire for human blood by Apollonios ap. Philostr. VA. 4, 25, p. 145, 18; and what is said of Pan-Ephialtes, ἐὰν δὲ συνουσιάζῃ, Artemid., p. 139, 21 H. General statement: ὀνειρώσσειν comes ἀπὸ δαιμόνων ἐνεργείας Suid. ὀνειροπολεῖν, p. 1124 Gaisf. Seirenes: Crusius, Philol. 50, 97 ff.

[103]   The “Banquets of Hekate”, besides the καθάρματα referred to above (n. 88), included also the specially prepared dishes that were made and put out for Hekate κατὰ μῆνα (Ar., Plu. 596) at the τριακάδες (see above, chap. v, n. 88) or else at the νουμηνίαι, Sch. Ar., Plu. 594: κατὰ τὴν νουμηνίαν, ἑσπέρας; cf. the offering to Hekate and Hermes at each νουμηνία: Theopomp. ap. Porph., Abs. 2, 16, p. 146, 7 N. These banquets of Hek. are meant by Ar., Plu. 594 ff., S. fr. 668 N.; Plu., Smp. 7, 3, p. 709 A.—It is possible that at the turn of the month there was a “purification” of the house, in which case the καθάρσια and the Ἑκάτης δεῖπνα would be again combined.—Ingredients of the offerings to Hek.: eggs and toasted cheese (Sch. Ar.); τρίγλη and μαινάς Ath. 325 B.; flame-cakes (of cheese, πλακοῦντες διὰ τυροῦ, Paus. Lex. ap. Eust. 1165, 14) ἀμφιφῶντες (see Lob., Agl. 1062 f.).

[104]   The person καθάρματα ἐκπέμψας throws them away ἀοστρόφοισιν ὄμμασιν: A., Cho. 98–9. The vessel filled with the purificatory offerings was emptied ἐν ταῖς τριόδοις and ἀμεταστρεπτί: Schol. ib. This was regular with καθαρμοί: Theoc. xxiv, 94 ff., and at offerings to the Erinyes: S., OC. 490. Even Odysseus is obliged at his sacrifice to the dead ἀπονόσφι τραπέσθαι, κ 528. Medea in collecting her magic juices turns her eyes ἐξοπίσω χερός: S. Ῥιζ. fr. 491 N.; A.R. iv, 1315; cf. also Lomeier, de lustrat., p. 455 f. This remained the rule at sacrifices to χθόνιοι and in magic ceremonies which regularly had to do with the underworld. Even Marc. Emp. in giving directions for the cure of φυσικά often enjoins nec retro respice e.g. 1, 54, likewise Plin., NH. 21, 176; 29, 91. In making an enchantment πορεύου ἀνεπιστρεπτεὶ μηδενὶ δοὺς ἀπόκρισιν P. Mag. Lond., given in Kenyon Greek Pap. in B.M., i, p. 98. Modern superstition agrees: cf. Grimm, p. 1789, n. 299; cf. nn. 357, 558, 890, 1137. The eye must be turned away from the “furious host”: Birlinger, Aus Schwaben, N.S. i, 90. The precaution is, however, of primeval antiquity. In the old Indian cult of the dead and worship of formidable deities many of the proceedings must be performed ἀμεταστρεπτί, Oldenberg, 335 f., 487 f., 550, n. 5; 577 f., 580. The reason for the precaution is not hard to see. If the person looked round he would see the spirits engaged in taking possession of the objects thrown to them, which would be sure to bring ill-luck—χαλεποὶ δὲ θεοὶ φαίνεσθαι ἐναργῶς. Hence Odysseus, when he is returning Leukothoë’s wimple by throwing it into the sea, must αὐτὸς ἀπονόσφι τραπέσθαι, ε 350. Hence Orpheus must not look back at Eurydike while she belongs to the lower world. (Cf. Hannibal’s dream reported after Silenus and Cael. Ant. by Cic., Div. i, 49.) οἱ ἐντυγχάνοντες νυκτὸς ἥρωσι διέστρεφον τὰς ὄψεις: Sch. Ar., Av. 1493. Very clearly put by Ov., F. 5, 437; at the Lemuria the sacrificer throws away the beans aversus . . . nec respicit. umbra putatur colligere et nullo terga vidente sequi. At last when the Manes are 326 all driven out, respicit (444). One of the Pythagorean σύμβολα, those invaluable fragments of Greek old wives’ wisdom, runs: ἀποδημῶν τῆς οἰκίας μὴ ἐπιστρέφου· Ἐρινύες γὰρ μετέρχονται (Iamb., Protr., p. 114, 29 f. Pist). Here the reason for the superstitious practice is clearly shown (cf. also Grimm, p. 1778, n. 14; cf. n. 360): the underworld spirits (wandering over the earth, esp. on the fifth of the month, as in Hes., Op. 803) are following the departing person: if he were to turn round he would see them.

[105]   Appearance of εἴδωλα of the dead: not as in Homer in dreams only, but openly before men’s waking eyes. Stories of this go back as far as the poems of the Epic Cycle; cf. appearance of Achilles in the little Iliad (p. 37 Ki), in the Νόστοι (p. 33). How familiar this idea had become by the fifth century may be judged from the frequency of ghosts in the tragedians: A., Pers. Eum. Prom. Ψυχ.; S., Πολυξ.; cf. fr. 795 N.; E., Hec.; raising of the spirit of a dead man, fr. 912; cf. also the stories of Simonides and the grateful dead (Bgk. on Sim. fr. 129); of Pelops and the εἴδωλον of Killos (see A. Marx, Griech. Märchen von dankbaren Thieren, p. 114 f.).

[106]   Spirit-raising at entrances to the underworld at definite ψυχομαντεῖα or νεκυομαντεῖα: see above, chap. v, n. 23. There were, however, ψυχαγωγοί who could compel individual souls to appear at other places as well: E., Alc. 1128 f. Such ψυχαγωγοί belonging to the fifth century and to be found in Thessaly are spoken of by Plu. ap. Sch. E., Alc. 1128. People τούς τε τεθνεῶτας φάσκοντες ψυχαγωγεῖν καὶ θεοὺς ὑπισχνούμενοι πείθειν, ὡς θυσίαις τε καὶ εὐχαῖς καὶ ἐπῳδαῖς γοητεύοντες occur in Pl., Lg. 909 B. Later literature abounds in such spirit-raisings. Conjuring Hekate to appear was a favourite magic experiment: A.R. iii, 1030 f., etc., recipe for producing this illusion in Hipp., RH. iv, 35–6, p. 102 f. D.-S. A Ἑκάτης ἐπαγωγή occurs as early as Thphr., Ch. 28 (16).

[107]   ἀγύρται καὶ μάντεις profess ἐάν τίς τιν’ ἐχθρὸν πημῆναι ἐθέλῃ μετὰ σμικρῶν δαπανῶν ὁμοίως δίκαιον ἀδίκῳ βλάψειν, ἐπαγωγαῖς τισι καὶ καταδέσμοις τοὺς θεούς, ὥς φασι, πείθοντές σφισιν ὑπηρετεῖν, Pl., Rp. 364 C. And esp. from Lg. 933 AE we get a good idea of the fear that the μάντεις and τερατοσκόποι generally inspired with their καταδέσεις ἐπαγωγαί, ἐπῳδαί, and other μαγγανεῖαι (we even hear of wax-figures on house-doors, grave-stones, ἐπὶ τριόδοις, as so frequently later, with the same superstitious purpose). Plato himself does not rule out the possibility of such magic incantations: at least they did not conflict with his own daimonic theory: see Smp. 203 A. ἐπαγωγαί are “evocations” of spirits or gods: see Ruhnk., Tim., p. 115. ἐπιπομπαί have the same meaning: see above, chap. v, n. 168. ἐπιπέμπειν frequently in this sense in the Orph. H. καταδέσεις, κατάδεσμοι are the “bindings” whereby the spirit-raiser magically compels the unseen to do his will. Compulsion is regularly found to be necessary: the spirits do not come willingly. The magician by his spells and ceremonies is their master; he exerts over them that ἀνάγκη (ὁ ἐπάναγκος is frequent in the magical books) or πειθανάγκη of which Porph. ap. Eus., PE. 5, 8, specially tells us (probably deriving it from Pythagoras of Rhodos). πείθειν is Plato’s weaker word: the most extreme is βιαστικαὶ ἀπειλαί Iamb. Myst. 6, 5 [i.e. Porph. Ep. Aneb. fr. 31 Parth.]; cf. τὸ δεῖνα πράξεις κἂν θέλῃς κἂν μὴ θέλῃς: refrain in a magic hymn, P. Mag. Par. 2252 ff.—Just as in these incantations the κατάδεσις affects the gods themselves so in other cases the victim is the unfortunate person whom the magician intends to harm: in this sense we have καταδέσεις, κατάδεσμοι, P. Par. 336; Orph. Lith. 582, and the 327 devotiones or defixiones written on metal tablets which have been found in such numbers in graves; see Gothofred. ad Cod. Theod. 9, 16, 3. These are now collected and edited by R. Wünsch, Defixionum tabellae in Attica repertae (CIA. App.), 1897, with those found outside Attica included in the Praefatio. Here we find καταδῶ (καταδίδημι) τὸν δεῖνα his tongue, limbs, mind, etc. (nn. 68, 89, 95, etc.), i.e. a magical disabling, paralysing, fettering of his faculties—and of all his efforts: ἀτελῆ, ἐναντία πάντα γένοιτο, nn. 64, 98. The carrying out of this is entrusted to Hermes χθόνιος or to Hekate (καταδῶ αὐτὸν πρὸς τὸν Ἑρμῆν κτλ.) as the κάτοχοι δαίμονες; cf. nn. 81, 84, 85, 86, 101, 105, 106, 107. Sometimes the promoter of the κατάδεσις says of himself καταδῶ καὶ κατέχω 109, etc. The defixio itself is called ὁ κάτοχος, Gk. Pap. in B.M. (Ken.), No. 121, ll. 394, 429 = p. 97–8. καταδεῖν is therefore here = κατέχεσθαι ποιεῖν (= disable him—not make him “possessed”) and implies the delivery of the victim into the power of the infernal spirits.—The μάντεις and καθαρταί appear as accomplished weather-magicians in Hp., Morb. Sac. vi, 358 L. They are claimed to be able to draw down the moon (an old art of Thessalian witches), make the sun go out, cause rain or drought at will, etc. A γένος of ἀνεμοκοῖται at Korinth was able τοὺ ἀνέμους κοιμίζειν: Hsch. Suid. ἀνεμοκ.: cf. Welcker, Kl.S. iii, 63. The claims made by these καθαρταί for themselves were made by later ages on behalf of Abaris, Epimenides, Pythagoras, etc.; Porph., VP. 28–9 (Iamb. 135 f.); Empedokles promised them to his own pupils; 464 ff. Mull., fr. 111 Diels; and cf. Welcker, Kl.S. iii, 60 f.—These are all examples of magical arts from early times: the overwhelming mass of evidence for such proceedings in later ages cannot be mentioned here except as explaining ancient accounts.

[108]   Abaris had been mentioned by Pindar (Harp. Ἄβαρις); Hdt. mentions him in iv, 36. There we hear of the arrow which he bore along with him κατὰ πᾶσαν τὴν γῆν and of his complete abstention from food (cf. Iamb., VP. 141). The arrow, a σύμβολον τοῦ Ἀπόλλωνος (Lycurg. fr. 85, ap. Eudoc., p. 34, 10) is borne by Abaris in his hand—the suggestion of Wesseling, recently revived, that we should in Hdt.’s passage read ὡς τὸν ὀϊστὸς περιέφερε, has been shown to be linguistically impossible by Struve, Opusc. Crit. ii, 269. The embellishment of the Abaris story, whereby he (like Musaios) flew through the air on his arrow, is later than Hdt. or than Lyk. (The arrow is presumably the same as the one of which Herak. Pont. tells some strange things; ap. [Eratosth.] Catast. 29.) The story sounds rather like Herakleides. See Porph., VP. 29; Iamb., VP. 91, 136; Him., O. 25, 2, 4; Nonn. D. 11, 132 f.; Proc. Gaz., Ep. 96. Abaris was regarded as ἔνθεος (Eudoc.) as καθαρτής and χρησμολόγος, as driving away pestilences by magic arts (esp. in Sparta, where κωλυτήρια = apotropaic sacrifices, were instituted and a temple of Κόρη σώτειρα founded: Apollon., Mir. 4—prob. from Theopomp.: see Rh. Mus. 26, 558—Iamb., VP. 92, 141; Paus. 3, 13, 2). He is also said to have prophesied earthquakes, pestilence, etc. (Apollon.), and to have given prescriptions against disease and ἐπωδαί (Pl., Chrm. 158 CD); was a type of εὐκολίας καὶ λιτότητος καὶ δικαιοσύνης: Str. 301.—The figure of Abaris thus left rather vague in ancient legend was elaborated from two sources: (1) the Athenian cult-legends of the foundation of the Proërosia: Harp. Ἄβ., Suid. προηροσία. Sch. Ar., Eq. 729; Lycurg. κατὰ Μενεσαίχμου; and (2) the Pythagorean legends. It is in itself very probable that the story in Iamb., VP. 91–3, 147, of the meeting between Abaris and Pythagoras goes back to the fabulous “Abaris” of Herakleides 328 (the story in 215–17 of Abaris and Pythagoras before Phalaris evidently comes from Apoll. Ty.). This was suggested by Krische de soc. Pythag., p. 38, and has been more definitely maintained by Diels, Arch. f. Gesch. d. Philos. iii, 468: it cannot, however, be demonstrated absolutely—there is not a scrap of evidence to show that Herakleides did actually make Abaris meet Pythagoras. (Πυθαγόρας ἐν τῷ πρὸς Ἄβαριν λόγῷ, Procl. in Tim. 141 D. may very possibly, but not necessarily, as Diels thinks, refer to the Abaris of Herakleides.)—In any case the bringing together of Abaris and Pyth. is a late invention; it is impossible to say whether it could have occurred or did occur as early as the Aristotelian work περὶ τῶν Πυθαγορείων.—In any case, the guiding conception in all this is that Abaris did not belong to the primeval past but came to Greece in the daylight of historical times. Pindar makes this happen κατὰ Κροῖσον τὸν Λυδῶν βασιλέα (prob. about the time of the Σάρδεων ἅλωσις, Ol. 58, 3 = 546); “others” (acc. to Harp.) made it earlier, in Ol. 21 = 696. It is impossible to tell what the reasons were for either of these particular dates. Abaris might still be regarded as a contemporary of Pythagoras by those who, with Eusebios and Nikostratos ap. Harp., put him in Ol. 53 (κατὰ τὴν νγ Ὀλυμπιάδα, for so the figure in Harp. should be read and not γ Ὀλ.; the right reading is preserved from Harp. in Suid. Ἄβ.). This view, however, is not, as Diels thinks, obtained by making Abaris forty years older than Pyth. (The ἀκμή of Pyth. falls in Ol. 62—see Rh. Mus. 26, 570—and that, too, is the date—not Ol. 63—given by “Eusebius Chronica”, i.e. the Armenian, tr. and the MSS. PEMR of Jerome.) Perhaps Abaris was regarded as the contemporary of Phalaris whose reign according to one of the versions given by Eusebios began in Ol. 53, or 52, 3. Cf. Rh. Mus. 36, 567.

[109]   Ekstasis of Aristeas: τούτου φασὶ τὴν ψυχὴν, ὅταν ἐβούλετο, ἐξιέναι καὶ ἐπανιέναι πάλιν. Suid. Ἀριστέας. His body lies as if dead ἡ δὲ ψυχὴ ἐκδῦσα τοῦ σώματος ἐπλάζετο ἐν τῷ αἰθέρι κτλ. Max. Tyr. 16, 2, p. 288 R. (reperimus) Aristeae animum evolantem ex ore in Proconneso corvi effigie, Plin., NH. vii, 174 (very similar stories from elsewhere, Grimm, p. 1083 [and Baring-Gould, Myths of M.A.]). So, too, the Ἀριμάσπεια said that Aristeas reached the Issedones φοιβάλαμπτος γενόμενος (Hdt. iv, 13); which at least means in some strange way impossible for other men, i.e. in Apolline ecstasy (cf. above, n. 63, νυμφόληπτος, etc.; ἐν ἐκστάσει ἀποφοιβώμενος, P. Mag. Par., p. 63 Wess.). So, too, Max. Tyr. 38, 3, p. 222 ff., makes Aristeas describe how his ψυχή, καταλιποῦσα τὸ σῶμα had reached the Hyperboreans, etc. These accounts are not derived from Hdt. who on the contrary says that Arist. died in a fuller’s mill at Prokonnesos and that his body then disappeared and was seen by a man at Kyzikos. This would be translation of body and soul together not ἔκστασις of the soul alone. In this case Hdt. is probably inaccurate. In such cases of translation the point of the story, in fact its whole meaning, lies in the fact that the translated person has not died but that he has vanished without his soul being separated from his body, i.e. without dying; for normally in death the soul alone vanishes. This applies to all the cases of translation referred to in this book (see e.g. the story of the Hero Euthymos: above, chap. iv, n. 116; of Kleomedes, p. 129, above); and also to the legend of Romulus in Plu., Rom. 27–8, in which Plu. rightly finds much resemblance with the story of Aristeas as told by Hdt. It applies to the numerous stories of translation which, evidently after Greek models, were told of the Latin and Roman kings (see Preller, Röm. Mythol.2, p. 84 f., 704). It appears then that 329 Hdt, has combined two versions of the legend: one acc. to which Aristeas “died” (not only on this occasion but often), i.e. his soul separated itself from his body and had a life of its own; another in which his body and soul were “translated” together without his death. In either version Aristeas might meet with the man in Kyzikos: if he were translated, it would be his vanished body (cf. Romulus’ meeting Julius Proculus); but if his soul left his body behind as though lifeless then it would be the soul as εἴδωλον of its body that appeared to the man (as in the cases of Pythagoras and Apoll. Tyan. who were seen at two different places at the same time). This last story seems to be the real and primitive one; it is suggested by the above-mentioned accounts of the ἔκστασις of the soul of Aristeas and it was so understood by the authority (apparently Thpomp.) whom Apollon., Mirab. 2, is following.

[110]   Hdt. iv, 15, Thpomp. ap. Ath. 13, 605 C: the bronze laurel was set up κατὰ τὴν Ἀριστέα τοῦ Προκοννησίου ἐπιδημίαν ὅτε ἔφησεν ἐξ Ὑπερβορέων παραγεγονέναι. This is not said by Hdt. but is compatible with his account. Acc. to Hdt. Aristeas told the people of Metapontum that they alone of all the Italiots had been visited by Apollo and that he, Aristeas, had been in the god’s train in the shape of a raven (sacred to Apollo). This last feature allows us to conclude that Hdt., too, knew of the wanderings made by the soul of Aristeas while his body remained at home as though dead. The raven is clearly the soul of Aristeas: Plin., NH. vii, 174.—The ἐπιδημία of Aristeas in Metapontum fell acc. to Hdt.’s own calculation (ὡς συμβαλλόμενος . . . εὕρισκον) 240 years (not 230) after the second ἀφανισμός of Aristeas from Prokonnesos. As Aristeas had in his poem spoken of the beginning of the Kimmerian invasion (Hdt. iv, 13) his first ἀφανισμός cannot have been before 681 (the first year of Ardys’ reign, when the Kimmerian invasion began acc. to Hdt. i, 15: Prokonnesos was, too, first founded under Gyges: Str. 587). Taking this as a starting point (and it is the earliest admissible terminus) and subtracting 240 + 7 years (Hdt. iv, 14 fin.) we should arrive at the year 434. This, however, cannot possibly have been meant by Hdt. as the year of the miraculous presence of Aristeas in Metapontum. We seem to have one of Hdt.’s errors of calculation to which he is prone. We cannot indeed make out when exactly he intended to date the various scenes of the Aristeas story.—In any case, Hdt. never intended to make Aristeas the teacher of Homer, as Bergk following others thinks. He makes Homer’s flor. about 856: see Rh. Mus. 36, 397; and puts the Kimmerian invasion much later. Aristeas could only be regarded as teacher of Homer (Str. 639; Tat. Gr. 41) by those who made Homer a contemporary of the Kimmerian invasion, Thpomp. esp.: see Rh. Mus. 36, 559.—We do not know what grounds those Chronologists had who made Aristeas contemp. with Kroisos and Kyros and put his flor. in Ol. 58, 3 (Suid.). The reason may possibly have been “identification”—this is hardly likely—“or conjunction with Abaris” (Gutschmid ap. Niese, Hom. Schiffskat., p. 49, n.). Unfortunately nothing is known of such a conjunction with Abaris (very problematical conjectures by Crusius in Myth. Lex. i, 2814 f.). Possibly those who favoured this view held that the Ἀριμάσπεια had been foisted upon Aristeas; cf. D. H., Thuc. 23; π. ὕψους, 10, 4. This work was certainly regarded as having been composed at the time of the Kim. invasion. The historical reality of Aristeas was never doubted in antiquity and in spite of the many legends that gathered about his name there is no need for us to do so. The stories of Aristeas’ extremely prolonged lifetime (from the 330 Kim. invasion to the evidently much later period in which he really lived) appear to have been derived chiefly from fictions in the Ἀριμάσπεια which probably also gave reasons of a mysterious kind for this marvellous extension of his existence. We cannot tell whether Aristeas himself wrote the poem and provided his own halo of marvel or whether someone else, coming later, made use of this name so famous in legend. If there was any basis for the account in Suid. Πείσανδρος Πείσωνος fin. we might be justified in attributing the composition of the Ἀριμάσπεια to Aristeas himself. In any case the poem was already in existence at the beginning of the fifth century: it can hardly be doubted that Aeschylus modelled upon it his picture of the griffins and Arimaspoi in Pr. 803 ff.

[111]   Dexikreon in Samos, Plu., Q. Gr. 54.—Polyaratos of Thasos, Phormion of Sparta: Cl. Al., Str. i, 21, p. 399 P. Phormion is better known because of his marvellous experiences: Paus. 3, 16, 2–3; Thpomp. ap. Suid. Φορ.: see Meineke, Com.2, p. 1227 ff.—At the end of the above-mentioned enumeration of μάντεις ap. Clem. Al., a certain Ἐμπεδότιμος ὁ Συρακόσιος is given. Varro ap. Serv. on G. i, 34, tells of the ecstatic vision of this Empedotimos: after being a quadam potestate divina mortalis aspectus detersus he saw in the sky inter cetera three gates and three ways (to the gods and the kingdom of the dead). Varro is evidently quoting the account of some ancient authority not a work of Empedot. himself; but in any case this vision is the source of what Empedotimos had to say about the dwelling-place of the souls in the Milky Way: Suid. Ἐμπεδ., Ἰουλιανός: Rh. Mus. 32, 331, n. 1; cf. Damasc. ap. Philop. in Arist. Meteor., p. 117, 10 Hayd. Suid. Ἐμπεδ. calls (probably a guess) the work in which Empedot. gave an account of his visions περὶ φυσικῆς ἀκροάσεως. (Because E. also brought back with him information about the future life, the usual stories about the subterranean chamber, etc., are transferred to him by Sch. ad Greg. Nz., C. vii, 286 = Eudocia, p. 682, 15.) Apart from this no one gives us any information about the personality of Emped. except Jul., Ep. 295 B., p. 379, 13 ff. H., who tells us how he was murdered but the gods avenged him upon his murderers. This, however, rests upon a confusion (either Julian’s or his copyist’s) with Ἑρμότιμος whose murderers were punished in the next world acc. to Plu., Gen. Socr. 22, p. 592 C. The above-mentioned story of the souls and the Milky Way was also known to Julian (see Suid. Ἰουλ.): his source being Herakleides Pont. (who also probably supplied it to others, e.g. Noumenios ap. Procl. in Rp. ii, p. 129 Kroll, Porph., Iamb. ap. Stob., Ecl. i, p. 378, 12 W., and even earlier, Cicero, Somn. 15–16). No older source of this fancy is known: “Pythagoras” mentioned as its authority by Julian, etc., only takes us back again to Herakleides. All that we know up to the present about it suggests the suspicion that the very existence and history of this remarkably little-known “great Empedotimos” may have been a simple invention of Herakleides’, who may have made use of him in one of his dialogues to add interest and importance to some of his own fancies. But now we come upon something more detailed about the story told by Herakleides of the vision in which Emped. (μετὰ τοῦ σώματος, p. 122, 2) beheld πᾶσαν τὴν περὶ τῶν ψυχῶν ἀληθείαν: Procl. in Rp. ii, 119, 21 Kroll. From this passage it is quite clear that Empedotimos is simply a figure in a dialogue by Herakleides, and no more existed in reality than Er the son of Armenios or Thespesios of Soli, or than their prototype Kleonymos of Athens ap. Klearchos of Soli (Rh. Mus. 32, 335). 331

[112]   Apollon., Mirab. 3 (prob. from Thpomp.); Plin., NH. vii, 174; Plu., Gen. Soc. 22, p. 592 C (Ἑρμόδωρος—the same copyist’s error occurs in Procl. in Rp. ii, 113, 24 Kroll); Luc., Enc. Musc. 7; Tert., An. 2; 44 (from Soranos; cf. Cael. Aur., Tard. 1, 3, 5); Or., Cels. iii, 3; 32. The same Hermotimos of Klazomenai is undoubtedly the person meant when a Ἑρμότιμος is mentioned among the earlier incarnations of the soul of Pythagoras, even when the country of the person in question is not named (as in D.L. viii, 5 f.; Porph., VP. 45; Tert., An. 28) or is incorrectly called a Milesian (e.g. in Hipp., RH. 1, 2, p. 12 D.-S.). A quite untenable theory about this Hermot. is given by Göttling, Opusc. Ac. 211.—Acc. to Plin. the enemies who finally burnt the body of Hermot. (with the connivance of his wife) were the Cantharidae—probably the name of a γένος hostile to Hermot.—There is a remarkably similar story in Indian tradition: see Rh. Mus. 26, 559 n. But I no longer suspect any historical connexion between this story and that of Hermot.; the same preconceptions have led in India as in Greece to the invention of the same tale. Similar conceptions in German beliefs: Grimm, 1803, n. 650.

[113]   Hence the legend that Apollo after the murder of Python was purified not at Tempe, as the story generally went, but in Krete at Tarrha by Karmanor: Paus. 2, 7, 7; 2, 30, 3; 10, 6, 7 (the hexameters of Phemonoë); 10, 16, 5. The καθάρσια for Zeus were brought from Krete: Orph. fr. 183 Ab.; cf. the oracle ap. Oinom. Eus., PE. 5, 31, 2: K. O. Müller, Introd. Scient. Myth. 98.—Krete an ancient seat of mantikê: the Lokrian Onomakritos, teacher of Thaletas, lived in Krete κατὰ τέχνην μαντικήν, Arist., Pol. 1274a, 25.

[114]   See above (pp. 96 f). As one who had been initiated into the orgiastic cult of Zeus in Krete (Str. 468), Epimenides is called νέος Κούρης: Plu., Sol. 12; D.L. i, 115. He is called ἱερεὺς Διὸς καὶ Ῥέας in Sch. Clem. Al. iv, p. 103 Klotz.

[115]   Legend of the ἄλιμον of E.: H. Smyrn. 18. D.L. i, 114. Plu. 7 Sap. 14. He was prepared for it by living on ἀσφόδελος, μαλάχη and the edible root of a kind of σκίλλα (Thphr., HP. 7, 12, 1). All these are sacred to the χθόνιοι (on ἀσφόδελος, see partic. AB. 457, 5 ff., which goes back to Aristarchos; and Hsch. s.v.), and were only eaten occasionally by the poor: Hes., Op. 41.

[116]   οὗ (Ἐπιμενίδου) λόγος ὡς ἐξίοι ἡ ψυχὴ ὅποσον ἤθελε χρόνον καὶ πάλιν εἰσῄει ἐν τῷ σώματι, Suid. Ἐπιμεν. This is possibly the meaning of προσποιηθῆναι (λέγεται) πολλάκις ἀναβεβιωκέναι, D.L. i, 114. Epimenides like others μετὰ θάνατον ἐν τοῖς ζῶσι γενόμενος, Procl. in Rp. ii, 113, 24 Kr. The story of his prolonged sleep in the cave is an example of a widespread fairy-tale motif; see Rh. Mus. 33, 209, n. 2; 35, 160. In the case of Epimenides it has been exaggerated beyond all bounds and attached to him as a sort of popular mode of expressing his long ἐκστάσεις. This cave-sleep is interpreted as a state of ekstasis by Max. Tyr. 16, 1: ἐν τοῦ Διὸς τοῦ Δικταίου (see above, chap. iii, n. 23) τῷ ἄντρῳ κείμενος ὕπνῳ βαθεῖ ἔτη συχνά (cf. the ψυχή of Hermot. which ἀπὸ τοῦ σώματος πλαζομένη ἀποδημεῖ ἐπὶ πολλὰ ἔτη, Apollon., Mir. 3) ὄναρ ἔφη ἐντυχεῖν αὐτὸς θεοῖς κτλ. Thus his ὄνειρος became διδάσκαλος to him, Max. Tyr. 38, 3; cf. Sch. Luc., Tim. 6, 110 Rb.

[117]   σοφὸς περὶ τὰ θεῖα (δεινὸς τὰ θεῖα, Max. Tyr. 38, 3) τὴν ἐνθουσιαστικὴν σοφίαν, Plu., Sol. 12. Epimen. is put among the ἔνθεοι μάντεις, Bakis and the Sibyl, by Cic., Div. 1, 34.—Prolonged solitude is a preparation for the business of the ecstatic seer (cf. Plu.’s story of a sort of counterpart to Epimenides, Def. Or. 21, p. 421 B). There 332 is still another fragment remaining from the story of Epim. on this head in the account given by Theopompos (though he makes too rationalistic a use of it): Epim. did not sleep all that time ἀλλὰ χρόνον τινὰ ἐκπατῆσαι, ἀσχολούμενον περὶ ῥιζοτομίαν (which he needed as an ἰατρόμαντις); D.L. i, 112. We cannot help being reminded of the way in which the Angekok of Greenland, after prolonged and profound solitude, severe fasting and concentration of thought, makes himself into a magician (Cranz, Hist. of Greenland, p. 194). In the same way the North American Indian stays for weeks in a solitary wood and consciously prepares himself for his visions. At last the real world falls away from him, the imagined world of his visions becomes the real one and seems almost palpable; till finally in complete ecstasy he rushes out of his hiding place. Nor would it be hard to find analogies in the religion of civilized peoples.

[118]   Epim. is credited with prophecies of coming events: Pl., Lg. 642 D; D.L. i, 114, and also Cic., Div. i, 34. On the other hand, Arist., Rh. 3, 17, 10, has περὶ τῶν ἐσομένων οὐκ ἐμαντεύετο, ἀλλὰ περὶ τῶν γεγονότων μὲν ἀδήλων δέ which at least means discovering the grounds of an event—grounds known only to the god and the seer; e.g. the interpretation of a pestilence as the vengeance of the daimones for an ancient crime, etc. If only rational explanation were meant there would be no need for a μάντις.

[119]   Delos: Plu., Sept. Sap. 14, p. 158 A. (There is no need to suppose that there has been any confusion between this μέγας καθαρμός by Epimenides and any other purification of Delos that happens to be better known to us—the Pisistratean or that of the year 426.) Epimenides πόλεις ἐκάθηρεν ἄλλας τε καὶ τὴν Ἀθηναίων, Paus. 1, 14, 4.

[120]   The purification of Athens from the Kylonian ἄγος by Epimenides is now further confirmed by the Aristotelian Ἀθ. πολ. 1 fin. This admittedly is not a very strong guarantee of its historical truth; but no strong guarantee is required to dispose of the doubts recently raised as to the historical truth of the story that Athens was purified by Epimenides, and even of Epimenides’ very existence. There is no reason at all for such a doubt. The fact that the historical figure of Epimenides has been almost entirely obscured behind the veil of fable and romance gives us of course no right to doubt his existence (or what would be the fate of Pythagoras, Pherekydes of Syros, and of many others?); and further, because some parts of the story of Epim. and his life are fabulous, to doubt the truth of his entirely non-fabulous purification of the Athenians from murder is a monstrous inversion of true historical method.—No exact dating for the purification of Athens is to be derived from the Aristotelian account of the event, as the English ed. (Kenyon) of the Ἀθ. πολ. rightly observes. It certainly does not follow (as e.g. Bauer takes for granted in his Forsch. zu Arist. Ἀθ. πολ. 41) that the purification took place before the archonship of Drakon (Ol. 39). Furthermore, it is probable that in Plu., Sol. 12, everything that comes before τοὺς ὅρους (p. 165, 19, Sint. ed. min.) is taken from Aristotle (though perhaps not directly). In this case Aristotle, too, would be shown to have attributed to Solon the first suggestion that led to the condemnation of the ἐναγεῖς. In Plu., however, Solon is still far from having thoughts of his νομοθεσία, he is still only ἤδη δόξαν ἔχων c. 12 (not till c. 14 does his archonship begin). Solon’s archonship is put by Ἀθ. πολ. in the year 591/0 (c. 14, 1, where we should be careful to avoid arbitrary alteration of the figures); Suid. Σόλων, Eus., Chron. also date it in Ol. 47, and the same period is implied by Plu., Sol. 14, p. 168, 12. (Ἀθ. πολ. 333 13, 2, also brings the first archonship of Damasias to 582/1 = Ol. 49, 3: a date to which all other reliable tradition also points). The condemnation of the ἐναγεῖς and the purification of Athens by Epimenides thus took place some considerable time before 591. It is possible that Suid. gives the right date. s.v. Ἐπιμενίδης· ἐκάθηρε τὰς Ἀθήνας τοῦ Κυλωνείου ἄγους κατὰ τὴν μδ Ὀλυμπιάδα (604/1)—that in the Kirrhaian war there was an Ἀλκμαίων general of the Athenians offers no objection: Plu., Sol. 11. Suidas’ statement has not (as I once thought myself, with Bernhardy) been taken from D.L., nor is it to be corrected acc. to his text. D.L. i, 100, only brings forward the connexion between the purification and the Κυλώνειον ἄγος as the opinion of “some” (which in spite of the vagueness of expression must mean Neanthes ap. Ath. 602 C), while the real reason is said to be a λοιμός, and the purification (as in Eus. Chr.) is placed in Ol. 46; i.e. probably 46, 3, the traditional date of Solon’s legislation.—Plato, Lg. 642 DE, does not conflict with the story of the expiation of the Κυλ. ἄγος by Epimenides: his story that Epimen. was present in Athens in the year 500 and retarded the threatened Persian invasion for ten years is not intended to contest the truth of the tradition of the much earlier purification of Athens by Epimen. (“retarded”: so Clem. Al., Str. vi, 13, p. 755 P., understood Plato and prob. rightly; we often hear in legendary stories of the gods or their prophets retarding coming events which have been determined by fate; cf. Pl., Smp. 201 D; Hdt. i, 91; Ath. 602 B; Eus., PE. 5, 35, p. 233 BC; Vg., A. vii, 313 ff.; viii, 398 f.; and what Serv. ad loc. reports from the libri Acheruntici). How the same man could be living both at the end of the seventh and of the sixth centuries would have troubled Plato not at all—tradition attributed a miraculously long life to Ep. At any rate, it is quite impossible to base the chronology of Ep.’s life on the story in Plato. (It may have been suggested by a forged oracle made ex eventu after 490 and fathered on Epim., as Schultess suggests, De Epim. Crete, p. 47, 1877.)

[121]   Details of the expiation ceremonies: D.L. i, 111–12; Neanthes ap. Ath. 602 C. It is not the human sacrifice but the sentimental interpretation of Neanth. that Polemon (Ath. 602 F.) declares to be fictitious. They are invariably sacrifices to the χθόνια that Epim. institutes. Thus (as Abaris founded a temple at Sparta for Κόρη σώτειρα) he founded at Athens, evidently as the concluding part of the purification, τὰ ἱερὰ τῶν σεμνῶν θεῶν, i.e. of the Erinyes: D.L. i, 112.

[122]   Such a connexion must at least be intended when Aristeas is brought to Metapontum and Phormion to Kroton, both important centres of the Pythagorean society. Aristeas, too, as well as Abaris, Epimenides, etc., is one of the favourite figures of the Pythagoreans: see Iamb., VP. 138.

[123]   It would certainly be necessary to deny to Epimenides the “Theogony” that the whole of antiquity read and quoted under the name of Epimenides without once expressing a doubt, if the figments of that Theogony really contained borrowings from the teaching of Anaximenes or, even worse, from the rhapsodical Theogony of Orpheus, as Kern, de Orphei Ep. Pher. Theog. 66 ff. maintains. But in the first place a few vague resemblances are not enough to show any connexion between Epimenides and those others. In the second, supposing the connexion proved, Epimenides need not necessarily have been the borrower. In any case, such alleged borrowings do not oblige us to advance the period when Ep. lived from the end of 334 the seventh to the end of the sixth century. If they really exist then we should rather have to conclude that the Theogony is itself a forgery of a much later date.

[124]   The possibility of theoretical activity in the case of these men is often implied in the statements of later writers; e.g. when the name is given to Epimenides (D.S. 5, 80, 4) or Abaris (Apollon., Mir. 4); or when Aristeas is called an ἀνὴρ φιλόσοφος (Max. Tyr. 38, 3, p. 222 R.).

[125]   Arist., Meta. 1, 3, p. 948b, 19 f.

[126]   See Append. viii.

[127]   See above, chap. i, n. 41. Archiloch. fr. 12: κείνου κεφαλὴν καὶ χαρίεντα μέλη Ἥφαιστος καθαροῖσιν ἐν εἵμασιν ἀμφεπονήθη. E., Or. 40 f.: the slain Klytaimnestra πυρὶ καθήγνισται δέμας and Sch. πάντα γὰρ καθαιρεῖ τὸ πῦρ, καὶ ἁγνὰ δοκεῖ εἶναι τὰ καιόμενα, τὰ δὲ ἄταφα μεμιασμένα. E., Sup. 1211: . . . ἵν’ αὐτῶν (those who are being buried) σώμαθ’ ἡγνίσθη πυρί; cf. ἅγνισον πυρσῷ μέλαθρον, IT. 1216. On a grave inscr. from Attica (Epigr. Gr. 104): ἐνθάδε Διάλογος καθαρῷ πυρὶ γυῖα καθήρας . . . ᾤχετ’ ἐς ἀθάνατους—evidently modelled on ancient ideas; cf. also ib. 109, 5 (CIA. iii, 1325). Those, too, who are struck by lightning (see Appendix i) are purified from all earthly taint by the holiest sort of πῦρ καθάρσιον (E., IA. 1112; καθαρσίῳ φλογί, E., Hel. 869) and go straight πρὸς ἀθανάτους. Iamb., Myst. v, 12, also explains how fire τὰ προσαγόμενα καθαίρει καὶ ἀπολύει τῶν ἐν τῇ ὕλῃ δεσμῶν, ἀφομοιοῖ τοῖς θεοῖς, etc.

[128]   Cf. also Pl., Lg. 677 DE; Plu., Fac. Orb. Lun. 25, p. 940 C.

CHAPTER X

THE ORPHICS

The earliest authority who mentions Orphic sects and their practices is Herodotos (ii, 81), who calls attention to the correspondence between certain sacerdotal and ascetic ordinances of the Egyptian priesthood, and the “Orphic and Bacchic” mysteries. The latter, he says, are really Egyptian and Pythagorean, or in other words they were founded by Pythagoras or Pythagoreans upon Egyptian models; and thus, in the opinion of the historian, they cannot have come into existence before the last decade of the sixth century. Herodotos then, either in Athens or elsewhere, had heard during his journeys of certain private societies who by calling themselves after the name of Orpheus, the prototype of Thracian song so well known to legend, recognized the origin of their peculiar cult and creed in the mountains of Thrace, and did honour to Bakchos the Thracian god. The fact that the Greek Orphics did indeed worship Dionysos, the lord of life and death, before all other gods, is clearly shown by the remains of the theological poems that originated in their midst. Orpheus himself, as founder of the Orphic sect, is actually said to have been the founder also of the Dionysiac initiation-mysteries.1

This gathering-together in the name of Orpheus for the purpose of offering a special worship to Dionysos was, then, the work of sects who, in private association, practised a cult which the public and official worship of the state either did not know of or disdained. There were many such associations, and of very varied character, which kept themselves aloof from the organized religion of the community, and were tolerated by the state.2 As a rule, they were “foreign gods”3 who were thus worshipped; and generally by foreigners who thus kept up the special worship of their own homes, though they did not always exclude natives of their adopted country. Now, Dionysos, the god of the Orphic sects, had for a long time ceased to be a foreigner in Greek countries; since his arrival from Thrace he had been refined and matured under the humanizing sun of Greece, until he had become a Greek god, and a worthy associate of the Greek Olympos. It is possible, however, that in this process, the old Thracian god may have seemed to his original worshippers to have lost his real 336 character, and they may on that account have joined together to offer, in separation from the official worship, a special cult in which all the old ideas of the national religion should be preserved unaltered. A secondary wave of influence thus broke upon the long-since-Hellenized god, the Thracian Dionysos in Greece, and this wave the official worship either had not the power or lacked the will to assimilate. It was therefore left to special sects who honoured the god after their own private laws. Whether indeed they were Thracians who, as in the similar case of the unmodified worship of Bendis,4 or Kotytto, thus reinstituted their ancient and national worship of Dionysos in Greek countries, we cannot with certainty tell; but this special cult would certainly not have achieved the importance it did in Greek life if it had not been joined by Greek adherents brought up in the native conceptions of Greek piety, who under the name of “Orphics” once more adapted the Thracian god to Greek modes of thought—though this new adaptation differed from the previous assimilation of the god by the official worship of the state. We have no reason for believing that Orphic sects were formed in Greek states before the second half of the sixth century,5 that critical age of transition when in so many places primitive and mythological modes of thought were developing into a theosophy, which in its turn was making an effort to become a philosophy. The Orphic religious poetry is itself clearly marked by this effort—for in Orphism it never became more than an effort and never succeeded in reaching its goal.

The exact point of origin of this combined movement of religion and theosophy, the various steps and manner of its development remain hidden from us. Athens was a centre of Orphism; it does not therefore follow that Orphism had its origin there, any more than had the multifarious tendencies and activities in art, poetry, and science that at about the same period flowed together, and as though driven by an unseen intellectual current, found their meeting place at Athens. Onomakritos, we are told, the giver of oracles in the court of Peisistratos “founded the secret worship of Dionysos”.6 This appears to refer to the first founding of an Orphic sect at Athens; and we meet with the name of Onomakritos among the authors of Orphic poems. But the real authorship of these poems is far more often ascribed to certain men of Southern Italy and Sicily, who can be more or less clearly connected7 with the Pythagorean societies which were flourishing in those districts about the last decades of the sixth and the first of the fifth centuries. 337

It seems certain that in Southern Italy at that time, Orphic societies were already in existence—for whom else can these writers have intended their “Orphic” poems? In any case we must take it as certain that the correspondence of Orphic and Pythagorean doctrine on the subject of the soul is not purely accidental. Did Pythagoras when he came to Italy (about 532) find Orphic societies already settled in Kroton and Metapontum, and did he associate himself with their ideas? Or did the “Orphic” sectaries (as Herodotos imagined8) owe their inspiration to Pythagoras and his disciples? The various cross-currents of reciprocal influence can no longer be disentangled by us, but if the Pythagoreans were the sole creditors in the bargain we should undoubtedly find the whole body of Orphic doctrine thoroughly permeated with conceptions that belong exclusively to the Pythagorean school. In the wreckage of the Orphic poems, however, except for a few negligible traces of the Pythagorean mystic theory of numbers,9 we find nothing that must necessarily have been derived by the Orphics from Pythagorean sources.10 Least of all did they need to derive the doctrine of the migration of souls and its application from this source. It is possible, therefore, that it was the independently developed Orphic doctrine which exerted an influence upon Pythogoras and his adherents in Southern Italy; just as it was a ready-made Orphic teaching (and that, too, perhaps, brought from Southern Italy) with which Onomakritos, the founder of the Orphic sects at Athens, associated himself—about the same time as Pythagoras’ similar action in Kroton. It is hardly possible to interpret in any other way the various relations of the Orphics with each other when we learn that at the court of the Peisistratids, in addition to Onomakritos, two other men who had arrived from Southern Italy were active and were counted among the earliest writers of Orphic poems.11

§ 2

The Orphics wherever we meet with them in Greek countries always appear as members of a private cult-society who are held together by a specially organized and individual mode of worship. The old Thracian worship of Dionysos in its straining after the infinite conducted its revels under the open sky of night, seeking out deserted mountain-sides and forests where it was farthest from civilization and closest to unspoiled and untrammelled nature. How this cult may have accommodated itself to the narrow limitations of ordinary 338 city-life, it is hard to imagine;12 though it is natural to suppose that much of the extravagance that was literal and actual enough in the old northern festival of night was represented in the milder worship of Greece by mere symbol. We have less difficulty in discovering the side of their religious activity which the Orphics, apart from the private worship of the conventicle, revealed to the outer world of the profane. Orpheus himself in the tradition had been not merely the inspired singer but the seer, the magically endowed physician and purification-priest as well,13 and the Orphics, as his followers, were active, too, in all these directions.14 In the composition of Greek Orphism the kathartic ideas which had been evolved on Greek soil were combined in a not unnatural alliance with the old Thracian worship of Dionysos. The Orphic priests of purification were preferred to others of their kind by many religious people.15 But among the inner circles of Orphism the sacerdotal activities of purification and the removal of daimonic hindrances, which were by no means given up, tended rather to produce deeper and broader ideas of purity and of release from the earthly and the transitory. In some such way was evolved that asceticism which in close combination with the Thracian worship of Dionysos gave the peculiar tone to the faith and temperament of the sectaries and gave to their lives their special direction.

The Orphic sect had a fixed and definite set of doctrines; this alone sufficed to distinguish it both from the official worships of the state, and from all other cult-associations of the time. The reduction of belief to distinct doctrinal formulæ may have done more than anything else to make Orphism a society of believers—none of the other theologi of the time, Epimenides, Pherekydes, etc., accomplished as much. Without its fundamental religious doctrine Orphism in Greece is inconceivable; according to Aristotle the “doctrines” of Orpheus were put into poetical form by the founder of the Orphic sect in Athens, Onomakritos.16 The uncertain accounts given us by the later authorities do not allow us to make out quite clearly17 what was the extent of Onomakritos’ work in the formation or collection of Orphic doctrinal poetry. What is important is the fact that he is distinctly named as the author of the poem called “Initiations”.18 This poem must have been one of the basic, and in the strictest sense “religious”, writings of the sect; a poem of this character may very well have had for its central incident the dismemberment of the god at the hands of the Titans—a story which Onomakritos is said to have put into verse.19 339

The religious beliefs and worship of the sect were founded upon the detailed instructions of certain very numerous writings dealing with matters of ritual and theology. These claimed the authority of religious inspiration,20 and were as a whole supposed to be the work of the primitive Thracian bard, Orpheus, himself. The anonymity which concealed the identity of the real authors of these poems was not, however, very thoroughly preserved; even towards the end of the fourth century there were those who claimed to be able to give with certainty the names of the original authors of the various poems. Strictly canonical authority, such as would at once have reduced to silence every conflicting view or statement, never seems to have belonged to any of these writings. In particular, there were several “Theogonies”21—poems which attempted to give expression to the fundamental ideas of Orphic speculation on religious subjects—and in spite of much harmony in general effect they differed considerably from each other in particular mode of expression. They represented ever-renewed and increasingly elaborate attempts to construct a connected doctrinal system for Orphism. With unmistakable allusion to the oldest Greek theological system—that which had been committed to writing in the Hesiodic poem—these Orphic Theogonies described the origin and development of the world from obscure primordial impulses to the clear and distinct variety-in-unity of the organized kosmos, and it described it as the history of a long series of divine powers and figures which issue from each other (each new one overcoming the last) and succeed each other in the task of building and organizing the world until they have absorbed the whole universe into themselves in order to bring it forth anew, animated with one spirit and, with all its infinite variety, a unity. These gods are certainly no longer deities of the familiar Greek type. Not merely the new gods evolved by the creative fancy of Orphism—creatures which had almost entirely lost all distinct and sensible outline under the accumulation of symbolical meaning—but even the figures actually borrowed from the Greek world of divinities are turned into little more than mere personified abstractions. Who would recognize the Zeus of Homer in the Orphic Zeus who after he has devoured the World-God and “taken unto himself the power of Erikapaios”,22 has become himself the Universe and the Whole? “Zeus the Beginning, Zeus the Middle, in Zeus all things are completed.”23 The concept here so stretches the personality that it threatens to break it down altogether; the outlines of the individual figures are 340 lost and are merged into an intentional “confusion of deities”.24

Still, the mythical envelope was never quite given up; these poets could not do without it altogether. Their gods did indeed strive to become pure abstractions but they were never quite successful in throwing off all traces of individuality and the limitations of form and matter: the concept never quite broke through the veil of mythology. The poets of the Orphic Theogonies vied with one another in their attempts to make the half-seen and half-conceived accessible alike to the imagination and the reason; and in succession gave varying expression to the same fundamental conceptions until finality was reached as it seems in a poem whose contents are better known to us than the others from quotations made from it by Neoplatonic writers—the Theogonical poem of the four-and-twenty Rhapsodies. Into this poem was poured all the traditional material of mythological and symbolical doctrine, and in it such doctrine achieved its final expression.25

§ 3

This combination of religion and quasi-philosophical speculation was a distinguishing feature of the Orphics and of Orphic literature. Religion only entered into their Theogonical poetry in so far as the ethical personalities of the divinities therein described had not entirely faded away into transparent allegories.26 It was abstract speculation alone which really prevailed there, little respect being paid to religion; and as a result a much greater licence was given to speculative construction.

This abstract speculation, however, reached its climax in a religious narrative of the first importance for the beliefs and cult of the sect. At the end of the series of genealogically connected deities came the son of Zeus and Persephone, Dionysos, who was also given the name of the underworld deity Zagreus.27 To him, even in infancy, was entrusted the rule of the world by Zeus. But the wicked Titans, urged on by Hera, approached him by a stratagem. They were the enemies of Zeus, and had already been overthrown by Ouranos,28 but had, it seems, been let loose again by Zeus from Tartaros. They made Dionysos trust them by giving him presents, and while he was looking at his own image in a mirror29 that they had given him, they fell upon him. He tried to escape them by repeated transformations of shape; finally, in the form of a bull,30 he was at last overcome and his body torn to pieces which his savage foes thereupon devoured. The heart alone 341 was rescued by Athene, and she brought it to Zeus who swallowed it. From Zeus there sprang the “new Dionysos”, the son of Zeus and Semele, in whom Zagreus came to life again.

The myth of the dismemberment of Zagreus by the Titans was already put into verse by Onomakritos;31 it continued to be the culminating point of the doctrinal poetry of the Orphics. It occurred not only in the Rhapsodies,32 but in other versions of the Orphic legend composed in complete independence of these.33 It is a religious myth in the stricter sense; its ætioloqical character is most marked;34 its purpose is to explain the religious implication of the ritual dismemberment of the bull-god at the Bacchic nocturnal festivals, and to derive that feature from the legendary sufferings of Dionysos-Zagreus.

But though the legend thus has its roots in the primitive sacrificial ritual of ancient Thrace,35 in its extended form it belongs entirely to the region of Hellenic thought; and in this combination of the two elements it becomes truly Orphic. The wicked Titans belong entirely to strictly Greek mythology.36 In this case, as the murderers of the god, they represent the primeval power of evil.37 They dismember the One into Many parts; by their impiety the One divine being is dispersed into the multiplicity of the things of this world.38 It is reborn as One in the new Dionysos sprung from Zeus. The Titans—so the legend goes on to relate—who had devoured the limbs of the god were destroyed by Zeus with his lightning flash. From their ashes sprang the race of men in whom, in conformity with their origin, the good derived from Dionysos-Zagreus is mixed with a wicked Titanic element.39

With the rule of the new-born Dionysos and the origin of mankind, the series of mythological events in the Orphic poetry came to an end.40 With the entry of mankind into Creation41 the existing period of the world begins; the period of world-revolutions is over. The poems now turn to the subject of man and the revelation of his fate, his duty and his purpose in the world.

§ 4

The mixture of the elements that make up the totality of his being in itself prescribes for man the direction that his effort shall take. He must free himself from the Titanic element and, thus purified, return to the god, a fragment of whom is living in him.42 The distinction between the Titanic and Dionysiac elements in man is an allegorical expression of the popular 342 distinction between body and soul; it also corresponds to a profoundly felt estimate of the relative value of these two sides of man’s being. According to Orphic doctrine man’s duty is to free himself from the chains of the body in which the soul lies fast bound like the prisoner in his cell.43 The soul has a long way, however, to go before it can find its freedom; it may not by an act of violence tear its bonds asunder for itself.44 The death of the body only frees it for a short while; for the soul must once more suffer imprisonment in a body. After leaving its old body, it flutters free in the wind, but a breath of air sends it into a new body again.45 So it continues its journey, perpetually alternating between an unfettered separate existence, and an ever-renewed incarnation—traversing the great “Circle of Necessity” in which it becomes the life-companion of many bodies both of men and beasts. Thus, the “Wheel of Birth”46 seems to return ever upon itself in hopeless repetition: in Orphic poetry (and there perhaps for the first time) occurs the despairing thought of the exact repetition of the past; events which have already been lived through once returning again with the convergence of the same attendant circumstances.47 Thus, Nature, ever reverting to its own beginnings, draws men with it in its senseless revolution round itself.

But the soul has a way open for escape from this perpetual recurrence of all things that threatens to close in upon it; it may hope “to escape from the circle and have a respite from misery”.48 It is formed for blessed freedom, and can at last detach itself from the condition of being it has to endure upon earth—a condition unworthy of it. A “release” is possible; but man in his blindness and thoughtlessness cannot help himself, cannot even, when salvation is at hand, turn himself towards it.49

Salvation comes from Orpheus and his Bacchic mysteries; Dionysos himself will loose his worshipper from Evil and the unending way of misery. Not his own power, but the grace of the “releasing gods” is to be the cause of man’s liberation.50 The self-reliance of the older Greece is breaking down; in humility of heart the pious man looks elsewhere for help; he needs the revelation and mediation of “Orpheus the Ruler”51 in order to find the way of salvation; he must follow his ordinances of salvation with perfect obedience if he is to continue in that way.

It is not only the sacred mysteries themselves, in the form in which Orpheus has ordained them, which prepare for the release; a complete “Orphic life”52 must be developed out 343 of them. Asceticism is the prime condition of the pious life. This does not mean the practice of the respectable bourgeois virtues, nor the discipline and moral reformation of a man’s character; the height of morality is in this case the turning again towards god,53 and the turning away not merely from the weaknesses and errors of earthly being but from the whole of earthly life itself; renunciation of all that ties man to mortality and the life of the body. The fierce determination with which the Indian penitent tears away his will from life, to which every organ in his body clings desperately—for this, indeed, there was no place among the Greeks, the lovers of life—not even among the world-denying ascetics. Abstention from the eating of flesh was the strongest and most striking species of self-denial practised by the Orphic ascetics.54 Apart from this, they kept themselves in all essentials uncontaminated by certain things and situations which rather suggested to a religious symbolism than actually indicated in themselves attachment to the world of death and transitoriness. The long-standing ordinances of the priestly ritual of purification were taken up and added to;55 but they were also raised to a higher plane. They are no longer intended to free men from the effects of daimonic contacts; the soul itself is made pure by them56—pure from the body and its polluting association, pure from death and its loathsome mastery. In expiation of “guilt” the soul is confined within the body,57 the wages of sin is in this case that life upon earth which for the soul is death. The whole multiplicity of the universe, emptied of its innocent and natural sequence of cause and effect, appears to these zealots under the uniform aspect of a correlation between crime and punishment, between pollution and purification. Thus, mysticism enters into the closest alliance with kathartic practices. The soul which comes from the divine and strives to return thither, has no other purpose to fulfil upon earth (and therefore no other moral law to obey); it must be free from life itself and be pure from all that is earthly.

The Orphics, moreover, were the only people who could venture among themselves or before strangers to greet each other with the special name of the “Pure”.58 The first reward of his piety was received by the initiate of the Orphic mysteries in that intermediate region whither men must go after their earthly death. When a man dies, Hermes leads the “deathless soul” into the underworld.59 Special poems of the Orphic community announced the terrors and delights of the underworld kingdom.60 What the Orphic 344 mystery-priests vouchsafed to their public upon these hidden matters—outdoing the promises made in the Eleusinian mysteries in coarse appeal to the senses—may have been the most popular, but was certainly not the most original feature of Orphic teaching.61 In Hades a judgment awaited the soul—it was no instinctive fancy of the people, but the “sacred doctrine”62 of these sectaries which first introduced and elaborated the idea of compensatory justice in the world of the dead. The impious suffer punishment and purgation in the depths of Tartaros;63 those who have not been made pure by the Orphic mysteries lie in the miry Pool;64 “dreadful things65 await” the disdainer of the sacred worship. By a conception that is quite unique in ancient religion, participation in the Orphic ceremonial enables the descendant to obtain from the gods “pardon and purification” for his departed ancestors who may be paying the penalty in the next world for the misdeeds of the past.66 But for the initiate of the Orphic mysteries himself who has not merely borne the narthex but has been a true Bakchos,67 his reward is that he shall obtain a “milder fate” in the kingdom of the underworld deities whom he has revered on earth, and dwell “in the fair meadows of deep-running Acheron”.68 The blessed home of refuge no longer lies like the Homeric Elysium upon earth, but below in the world of the Souls, for only the released soul reaches there. There, the initiated and purified will live in communion with the gods of the nether world69—we feel that we are listening to Thracian and not Greek conceptions of the ideal when we hear of the “Banquet of the Pure” and the uninterrupted intoxication which they enjoy there.70

But the depths restore the soul at last to the light, for its lasting habitation is not below; it stays there only for the interval which separates death from its next rebirth. For the reprobate this is a time of punishment and purgation—the Orphics could not distress their hearers with the awful and intolerable idea of the perpetual punishment of the damned in Hell; many times over the soul rises again to the light and in continually renewed bodies fulfils the cycle of births. For the deeds of its past life it is recompensed in the next life that it lives, and each man must now suffer exactly what he has done to another.71 So he pays the penalty for ancient guilt: the “thrice-ancient law”—what thou hast done thou shalt suffer—is thus fulfilled for him in far livelier fashion than it could be in any torments of the shadow-world. So surely also shall the pure be rewarded in future lives by ever-increasing happiness. How exactly the Orphic fancy filled out the 345 individual gradations in the scale of happiness is beyond our knowledge.72

But the soul is immortal, and even sinners and the unredeemed cannot perish entirely. Hades and the life on earth holds them in their perpetual round, and this is their punishment. For the soul of the blessed, however, neither Hades nor earthly life can offer the highest crown of happiness. If it has been made pure and spotless in the Orphic mysteries and the Orphic manner of life, it is freed from the necessity of rebirth and withdrawn from the cycle of becoming and perishing. The “purification” ends in a final redemption. The soul mounts upwards from the base level of earthly life, not to become nothing in a final death, for it is now that it first truly begins to live; hitherto it has lain imprisoned in the body like the corpse in the grave.73 It was death for the soul when it entered into life—now it is free and will no more suffer death; it lives for ever like God, for it comes from God and is itself divine. We do not know whether these theosophists went so far as to lose themselves in detailed picturing and contemplation of the blissful heights of the divine life.74 In the remains of their poems we read of stars and the moon as other worlds,75 perhaps as the dwelling-place of illuminated spirits.76 But perhaps also the poet allowed the soul to flee from its last contact with mortality without himself desiring to follow it into the unbroken radiance of divinity that no earthly eye can abide.

§ 5

This, then, is the keystone that completes the arch of Orphic religion—the belief in the divine, immortal, and abiding life of the soul for whom union with the body and its desires is a thwarting hindrance and repression—a punishment from which its one desire, as soon as it is awakened to a full knowledge of itself is to escape in order that it may belong entirely to itself in full enjoyment of its powers. The contrast between these ideas and those of the Homeric world is complete; there, the soul released from the body was credited only with a poor, shadowy, half-conscious existence, so that an eternity of godlike being in the full enjoyment of life and its powers was only thinkable if the body and the soul, the twofold self of man, were translated in undissolved communion out of the world of mortality. The Orphic legends about the origin of the human race do not tell us the real source and derivation of the very different beliefs about the soul held by the Orphics; those legends only give expression to the 346 way—and only one of many ways77—in which the already established confidence in the divinity of the soul was deducible from what might be considered the oldest historical story of mankind, and how it might be brought into connexion with the Orphic legend of the gods. This persuasion, the belief that a god was living in man and a god that could not be free until he had broken through the prison of the body, was deeply rooted in the worship of Dionysos and the ecstasies belonging to that worship; we cannot be in much doubt that it was taken over ready-made, together with the “enthusiastic” cult of the divinity, and further developed by the Orphic believers. We have already met with traces of this belief even in the Thracian home of the Dionysiac cult; and in what we know of the Thracian form of the religion, traces are not absolutely wanting of an ascetic tendency of living that would easily and naturally arise from such a belief.78 Even in those Northern countries we found the belief in the transmigration of souls bound up with the religion of Dionysos, and that belief, when it is naively held, has as its essential presupposition the idea that the soul, in order to have a complete life, and one that can survive bodily death, must of necessity be united to another body. Even this idea is, however, quite foreign to Orphism. The Orphics retained, in spite of everything, the doctrine of transmigration, and combined it in a strange alliance with their own belief in the divinity of the soul and its vocation to a life of perfect liberty. It is evidently improbable that they invented that doctrine entirely on their own account; the first principles of their creed by no means led necessarily to it. Herodotos79 asserts distinctly that the doctrine of transmigration came to the Greeks from Egypt; and as a consequence, that it was from Egyptian tradition that the Orphics received it. This assertion has no more to recommend it than any other of Herodotos’ many pronouncements as to the Egyptian origin of Greek opinions and legends, and it is even less likely to mislead us in view of the fact that it is by no means certain and not even probable that a belief in transmigration ever really existed in Egypt.80 This belief has arisen independently in many places on the surface of the earth, without the need of transmission from one place to another;81 it might easily arise in a country where the belief prevailed that there existed only a limited number of souls of which each one—in order that no earthly body might be without its spiritual guest—must inhabit many perishable life-tenements, and not be bound to any one of them by a real inner necessity. This, 347 however, is a conception common to popular psychology all over the world.82 If it is still considered more probable that the idea of a migration of the soul through many temporary bodies was not spontaneously evolved by the Orphics, but was received by them from the hands of others, there is yet no reason to reject the most natural assumption—namely, that this also was one of the beliefs that the Orphics took over with the cult of Dionysos from Thrace. Like other mystics,83 the Orphics took over the belief in transmigration from popular tradition and turned it into a serviceable member of their own body of doctrine.84 It served them by giving a striking and physical expression to their own conception of the inevitable connexion between guilt and penance, pollution and the refining power of punishment, piety and future blessedness upon which all their religious ethic depended. It was with an exactly similar purpose that they also retained and developed the old Greek idea of a place of the souls in the depths below the earth.

But if they believed in the transmigration of souls, that belief did not with them hold the highest place. There is a realm where the ever free and divine souls have their being, a realm to which the series of lives in earthly bodies is only transitional, and the way to it was pointed out by the saving doctrine of the Orphic mysteries, by the purification and salvation afforded by Orphic asceticism.

NOTES TO CHAPTER X

[1]   . . . ὅς ποτε καὶ τελετὰς μυστηρίδας εὕρετο Βάκχου, AP. vii, 9, 5 (Damagetos). διὸ καὶ τὰς ὑπὸ τοῦ Διονύσου γενομένας τελετὰς Ὀρφικὰς προσαγορευθῆναι, D.S. 3, 65, 6. εὗρε δὲ Ὀρφεὺς τὰ Διονύσον μυστήρια [Apollod.] 1, 3, 2, 3. (Dionysum) Iove et Luna (natum), cui sacra Orphica putantur confici: Cic., ND. iii, 58; cf. Lyd., Mens. 4, 51, p. 107 W. Βακχικά an Orphic poem: Suid. Ὀρφεύς (cf. Hiller, Hermes, 21, 364 f.), whence fr. 3 (Abel); and perhaps frr. 152, 167, 169, 168. τὰ Ὀρφικὰ καλούμενα καὶ τὰ Βακχικά are already reckoned as a single class by Hdt. ii, 81.

[2]   This is seen in the decree of the Council and people of Athens dealing with the ἔμποροι Κιτιεῖς and their temple of “Aphrodite”—CIA. ii, 168 (333/2 B.C.).—That on the other hand such foreign mystery-cults were not always so tolerated (or not without resistance) is shown by the case of Ninos: Dem., FL. (19) 281 with Sch.; cf. D.H., Dinarch. 11.

[3]   θεοὶ ξενικοί, Hsch., see Lob., Agl. 627 ff. A nameless θεὸς ξενικός occurs in CIA. i, 273 f., 18.—The foundation of such θίασοι for foreign deities (or deities at least not officially worshipped by the city in question) is almost invariably the work of foreigners (many exx. from Rhodos in BCH. 1889, p. 364). They are all foreigners, e.g. whose names occur in the decree of the θιασῶται of the Karian Zeus Labraundos, CIA. ii, 613 (298/7 B.C.); cf. ib. 614; SIG. 726. Merchants from Kition found a cult of their Aphrodite (Astarte) in Athens, just as some Egyptians had a little while before put up τὸ τῆς Ἴσιδος ἱερόν there: CIA. ii, 168. The names of foreigners (in addition to Athenians) are very numerous among the ὄνοματα τῶν ἐρανιστῶν of a collegium of Σαβαζιασταί in the Peiraeus (second century B.C.): Ἐφ. Ἀρχ. 1883, p. 245 f. The foreign worship would then begin to receive the support of natives of the host-city (most of them being at first of the poorer classes), and in this way the new religion would gain a footing in its adopted home. (Pure Athenian citizens compose the society of the Dionysiastai in the Peiraeus, second century B.C., Ath. Mitt. ix, 288 = CIA. iv, 2, 623 d.)

[4]   The Bendideia early became a state festival in Athens (even fifth century, CIA. i, 210, fr. K, p. 93). An allusion in Plato (Rp. 327 A), however, shows that the Thracians (who must have introduced the cult of Bendis into Athens, or at least into the Peiraeus, the home of most θίασοι) still kept up a special worship of their goddess in their own manner, side by side with the Hellenized cult. It appears at least as if the worship in its remodelled Greek form seemed to them no longer the right one. (Bendis, too, like Dionysos, is a divinity of both this world and the next: see Hsch. δίλογχον.)

[5]   Alleged traces of Orphic influence on special sections of the Iliad (Διὸς ἀπάτη) or the Odyssey are entirely illusory, nor did the Orphic doctrines exert any influence on the Hesiodic Theogony. On the other hand, Orphism was itself strongly affected by the primitive Greek theology the fragments of which were put together in the Hesiodic poem.

[6]   Ὀνομάκριτος . . . Διονύσῳ συνέθηκεν ὄργια, Paus. 8, 37, 5. 349

[7]   Among the writers of Orphic poems mentioned by (1) Clem. Al., Str. 1, 21, p. 397 P. (from Epigenes) and (2) Suidas (from Epigenes and another authority: both Su. and Clem. probably got their information through the mediation of D.H.)—two certain Pythagoreans are named, Brotinos (of Kroton or Metapontum) and Kerkops (not the Milesian). [Abel, Orphica, p. 139.] From lower Italy or Sicily come: Zopyros of Herakleia (the same person is probably meant by Iamb., VP. 190, 5 N., when he counts Zopyros among the Pythagoreans coming from Tarentum), Orpheus of Kroton, Orpheus of Kamarina (Suid.), Timokles of Syracuse. Pythagoras himself is mentioned among the writers of Orphic poems in the Τριαγμοί of [Ion] (at least as early as the beginning of the fourth century). Apart from these the only names of conjectured composers of Orphic poems are: Theognetos ὁ Θετταλός, Prodikos of Samos, Herodikos of Perinthos, Persinos of Miletos; all of whom are unknown to us except Persinos, whom Obrecht not improbably identifies with the court poet of Euboulos of Atarneus mentioned by Poll. ix, 93 (cf. Lob. 359 f. Bgk., PLG. iii, 655). In this case he is an Orphic of a much later period.

[8]   ὁμολογέουσι δὲ (sc. Αἰγύπτιοι) ταῦτα (prohibition to bury the dead in woollen clothing) τοῖσι Ὀρφικοῖσι καλεομένοισι, καὶ Βακχικοῖσι, ἐοῦσι δὲ Αἰγυπτίοισι καὶ Πυθαγορείοισι, Hdt. ii, 81. There can be no doubt that Hdt. in these words meant to derive the Ὀρφικὰ καὶ Βακχικά (the four datives are all neuters, not masc.) from the Αἰγύπτια καὶ Πυθαγόρεια, i.e. the Pythagorean ordinances which were themselves derived from Egypt (cf. Gomperz, Sitzb. Wien. Ak. 1886, p. 1032). If he had regarded the Πυθαγόρεια as entirely independent of the Αἰγύπτια (and the Ὀρφικά as independent of the Pythag.) he certainly could not have brought them in here. (This answers Zeller, Ber. Berlin. Ak. 1889, p. 994, who introduces a comma before καὶ Πυθ.)—It is equally impossible (with Maass, Orpheus, p. 165, 1895), to connect the ἐοῦσι δὲ Αἰγυπτίοισι with Βακχικοῖσι only; it must of necessity go with τοῖσι Ὀρφικοῖσι as well; for it is the whole point of Hdt.’s note to show that the religious usage which he mentions has, like so much else of the kind in Greece wherever it may be found, been borrowed from Egypt, and “is Egyptian”. In this he would fail completely if he did not regard the Ὀρφικά (and hence also the Πυθαγόρεια) as Αἰγύπτια ἐόντα and clearly say so. Hdt. certainly has no idea, as Maass would have us believe, of making a generic distinction between Ὀρφικά and Βακχικά: Βακχ. is the name of the genus of which Ὀρφ. is the species.—“the Ὀρφικά, and the Βακχικά in general.” Not all Βακχικά are Ὀρφικά. This use of καὶ whereby the whole is added subsequently to the part is perfectly regular and legitimate (it may also add the part to the whole as in the cases adduced by Maass, 166 n.: τὰς Διονυσιακὰς καὶ τὰς Ὀρφικάς, etc.). Hdt. mentions the Πυθαγόρεια last in order to indicate by what intermediate step the Egyptian element in the first-mentioned Ὀρφικά was specially assisted—he has further in ii, 123, shown clearly enough that he regarded Pythagoras as one of the pupils of the Egyptians (P. in any case is one of the teachers of immortality there referred to). This is also obvious from his whole attitude.—Hdt.’s opinion does not in any case oblige us to believe in it. He was forced to regard Pythagoras as the earliest author of Orphic doctrine because his connexion with Egypt seemed certain (cf. Hdt. ii, 123) while that of the Ὀρφικοί themselves was not so: in this way only could Hdt. seem to prove the Egyptian origin of that doctrine.—The priority of the Orphics is often supposed to be proved by the witness of Philolaos (fr. 14 D.) ap. Clem. Al., Str. 350 3, 3, p. 518 P. (and cf. Cic., Hortens. fr. 85 Or.); it must be admitted, however, that the passage does not prove what it is supposed to do.

[9]   Frr. 143–51 (cf. Lob. 715 ff.). Here, indeed, Orphic and Pythagorean doctrine are mixed up inextricably. Fr. 143 (Πυθαγορείως τε καὶ Ὀρφικῶς Syrian.) belongs to the εἰς τὸν ἀριθμὸν Πυθαγόρειος ὕμνος which is several times distinctly so called by Proclus. (The frr. are in Nauck, Iamb., VP., p. 228. fr. iii). Fr. 147 (Lyd. Mens.) obviously comes from the same (Nauck, p. 234, fr. ix). The same is at least highly probable of the frr. 144–6, 148–51. Probably what Orpheus says of the number 12 comes from the same ὕμνος (ap. Procl. in Rp. ii, 131, 10 Kroll). Proclus, however (in Rp. 169, 25 K.), also cites ll. 2–5 from the ὕμνος (Nauck, fr. iii) but this time attributes them to an εἰς τὸν ἀριθμὸν Ὁρφικὸς ὕμνος. This Orphico-Pythagorean ὕμνος had at any rate nothing to do with the (Rhaps.) Theogony of Orpheus. On the other hand, the words τετράδα τετρακέρατον, which acc. to Procl. in Rp. 169, 29 K., occurred μυριάκις in the Ὀρφικὴ θεολογία, come from the Theogony. They were possibly used as a title of Zagreus the κερόεν βρέφος (Nonn., D. vi, 165): though what is here said by Proclus about the Διονυσιακὴ (i.e. of Zagreus) θεότης, viz. that it τετράς ἐστιν, was applied rather to the four-eyed Orphic Phanes by Hermias (fr. 64 Ab.).

[10]   On the other hand, there is much in Orphic theology and poetry that is taken immediately from the primitive Thracian worship of Dionysos and absent from Pythagorean teaching. This makes it very probable that even such theologoumena as are common to Orphism and Pythagoreanism really go back to the fanatical cult of Dionysos, or at least were easily thence derived by religious speculation: in this case the Orphics may well have got them from this original source of mystic lore that was common to both parties and not by the circuitous route of Pythagorean teaching. Orphism remained more closely attached to the common source than did Pythagoreanism, and may for that reason be regarded as somewhat older than its rival and be supposed to have originated independently of it.

[11]   Zopyros of Herakleia, Orpheus of Kroton: Tz., Prol. in Aristoph. ([p. 20, 28 Kaibel, Com. Fr.] Ritschl, Opusc. i, 207); Suid. Ὀρφ. Κροτωνιάτης (from Asklepiades of Myrlea).

[12]   We may not simply take it for granted that the account given in Dem. 18, 259–60, of the nocturnal initiations and the processions by day through the city held by a mystical sect, is intended to describe the secret mysteries of an Orphic conventicle (as Lob. does 646 ff., 652 ff., 695 f.). The explanation of the ἀπομάττειν τῷ πηλῷ of that passage by reference to the specially Orphic myth of Zagreus and the Titans is arbitrary in itself and hard to reconcile with the language of Demosth. (Harp. and Phot. are responsible for this expl.) Hardly more successful is the derivation of the call ἄττης ὕης from the ἄτη of Dionysos (Zagreus) on being torn to pieces by the Titans: EM. 163, 63. A definite connexion undoubtedly does exist between the Ὀρφικὰ ὄργια and the Σαβάζια καὶ Μητρῷα (Str. 471) described by Dem.; but the Orphics were never called worshippers of Sabazios nor their god Σαβάζιος, and it seems likely that their secret worship was different from the ceremonies of the Σαβαζιασταί that Dem. had in view (the latter may have retained more of the primitive barbaric ritual: cf. the ins. given in Ἐφ. Ἀρχ. 1883, p. 245 f. = CIA. iv, Supp. ii, n. 626 b; from the end of second century B.C.).

[13]   See Lob., Agl. 235 f., 237, 242 f.

[14]   To attribute the practical side of Orphism to a late degeneration 351 of the once purely speculative character of the sect (as many have done) is a very arbitrary proceeding and quite unjustifiable on historical grounds. The fact that a clear description of this activity does not occur before the fourth century (in Plato) does not prove that it did not exist earlier. Apart from this an ὀρφεοτελεστής named Philippos is mentioned by Plu., Apoph. Lac. 224 E as a contemporary of King Leotychidas II of Sparta (reigned 491–469). This evidence is not to be so easily set aside, as K. O. Müller, Introd. Scient. Myth. 311 ff., would like to do. The Orphic sect from the very beginning derived its strength from its telestic and kathartic practices.

[15]   Thphr., Ch. 28 (16).

[16]   αὐτοῦ (Ὀρφέως) μὲν εἶναι τὰ δόγματα, ταῦτα δέ φησιν (Aristot.) Ὀνομάκριτον ἐν ἔπεσι κατατεῖναι Arist. π. φιλοσοφίας fr. 10 [7] Rose, Arist. Pseudepig.

[17]   Tatian, Gr. 41 (p. 42 Schw.), seems to speak only of redaction (συντετάχθαι) of the εἰς Ὀρφέα ἀναφερόμενα among already existing Orphic poems as the work of Onomakritos (in the same way Onomakr. is only the διαθέτης—the arranger not the author—of the χρησμοί of “Mousaios”, Hdt. vii, 6). Traces of an external linking-together of the individual poems of Orpheus in a “redaction” are not wanting (cf. the linking-together of the poems of the Epic Cycle or of the corpus Hesiodeum): first of all coming in all probability the greater κρατήρ (as in the enumeration of Clem. Al., Str. i, 21, p. 397 P.); see Lob. 376, 417, 469.—Clem. Al., Str. i, p. 397 P. (and Eus., PE. 10, 11, p. 495 D) is only derived from Tatian, though Onomakr. is here definitely called the author of the εἰς Ὀρφέα φερόμενα ποιήματα. Onomakr. seems also to have been simply regarded as the author of the Ὀρφικά in the doxographical excerpt ap. S.E. P. iii, 30 = M. 9, 361, p. 287 Mutschm.; cf. Gal., H. Philos. (Dox., p. 610, 15): Ὀνομάκριτος ἐν τοῖς Ὀρφικοῖς.—On the other hand, in the—admittedly incomplete—enumeration of Orphic poems in Clem. Al., Str. i, 21, p. 397 P., not one is attributed to Onomakr., and in Suid. Ὀρφεὺς he is only given the χρησμοί (no confusion with the χρησμοί of Mousaios is to be suspected here) and the τελεταί. Paus. (8, 37, 5) mentions (without naming them) ἔπη of Onomakr. (cf. Ritschl, Opusc. i, 241). Some at least of the poetry going under the name of Orpheus must have been ascribed to Onomakr. by Arist. (fr. 10 [7 Teubn.]).

[18]   Suid. Ὀρφεύς, 2721 A Gaisf.

[19]   Onomakr. εἶναι τοὺς Τιτᾶνας τῷ Διονύσῳ τῶν παθημάτων ἐποίησεν αὐτουργούς, Paus. 8, 37, 5. Lob., p. 335, thinks this refers to the “Theogony”: but no authority attributes a single one of the several Orphic Theogonies to Onomakr. as its real author. We should rather be inclined to think of the τελεταί which is distinctly ascribed to Onomakr. and which at least dealt with the practical side of worship: cf. Pl., Rp. 364 E–365 A, λύσεις, καθαρμοί ἀδικημάτων κτλ. ἃς δὴ τελετὰς καλοῦσιν (but it was not that the mystical βίβλοι were called τελεταί as Gruppe, Gr. Culte u. Mythen, i, 640, mistakenly supposes: he is otherwise quite right in his protest against Abel’s treatment of the τελεταί). They must almost necessarily have dealt with the reproduction of the πάθη τοῦ Διονύσου (as providing the ἱερὸς λόγος to the δρώμενα), and, as the central idea of the orgiastic cult, must have included the most important circumstance of the Orphic τελεταί (see D.S. 5, 75, 4; Clem. Al., Protr. ii, 17, p. 15 P.).

[20]   One of the poems (perhaps indeed the poem of the ῥαψῳδίαι, and in that case the ἱερὸς λόγος as well) made Orpheus distinctly appeal to a revelation made to him by Apollo: fr. 49 (see Lob. 469). 352

[21]   Besides the three Theogonies distinguished by Damascius there were (apart from other more doubtful traces) at least two other variations of the same theme: see fr. 85 (Alex. Aphrod.) and frr. 37; 38 (Clem. Rom.); cf. Gruppe, i, 640 f.—The series of divine rulers given by “Orpheus” acc. to Nigid. Fig. ap. Serv. Ecl. iv, 10 (fr. 248 Ab.), conflicts with all the other Theogonies but agrees in some particulars with Lact. i, 13 (fr. 243). Still, this remark need not necessarily have been taken from any Orphic “Theogony”.

[22]   (Zeus) . . . πρωτογόνοιο χανὸν μένος Ἠρικαπαίου, τῶν πάντων δέμας εἶχεν ἑῇ ἐνὶ γαστέρι κοίλῃ, fr. 120 (from the Rhapsodiai). We are accustomed to read here χανών with Zoëga (Abh. 262 f.): but χανών does not mean “catching up or devouring” [Zo.]; at most it might mean, in bad late-Greek, just the opposite of this—“abandoning” (transitive). Lobeck’s explanation (p. 519 n.) is also unsatisfactory. The word may have been originally χαδών.

[23]   The line occurred in various forms in the Theogonic poem; frr. 33 (Plato?); 46 [Arist.] de Mundo); 123 (Rhapsod).; see Lob. 520–32. It seems certain then (Gruppe’s doubts go too far: Rhaps. Theog. 704 ff.) that the line appeared in the oldest form of Orphic Theogony and was merely borrowed thence, like so much else that was ancient, by the Rhapsod. Theogony (i.e. the words, Ζεὺς κεφαλὴ κτλ. which would be the oldest form, as Gruppe rightly remarks: κεφαλὴ = τελευτή; cf. Pl., Ti. 69 B). Even the writer of the speech against Aristogeiton A ([Dem.] 25), an Orphic adherent, appears, as Lob. remarks, to allude to the words in § 8.

[24]   Theokrasia must have belonged to Orphic theology from the outset: Lob. 614; though the most extreme examples of this may perhaps come from later poems: frr. 167; 169 (Macr.); 168 (D.S.); 201 (Rhaps.), etc., being probably derived from the “Little Krater” (fr. 160), in which Chrysippos seems to be imitated (Lob. 735 and fr. 164), and from the Διαθῆκαι, fr. 7 (J.M.) a forgery in Judaeo-Christian interests which nevertheless made use of many ancient pieces of Orphic literature (the ἱερὸς λόγος: Lob. 450 ff., 454).—Theokrasia is met with even in the orthodox poets of the fifth century, though they did not invent it; the “theologoi” of the sixth century Epimenides and Pherekydes were as familiar with it as were the Orphics; cf. Kern, de Theogon. 92.

[25]   See Append. ix.

[26]   It must have been chiefly the religious significance of the gods which caused the retention of their personalities and prevented them from fading into mere personifications of abstract ideas or elementary powers with which religion could have had nothing further to do.

[27]   In the statements of the Neoplatonic writers this first Orphic Dionysos is regularly called Διόνυσος simply (perhaps also Βάκχος: fr. 192). Nonnus in recounting the Orphic legend calls him Zagreus: D. vi, 165; cf. Ζαγρέα γειναμένη (of Perseph.) with clear allusion to Callim. fr. 171, υἷα Διώνυσον Ζαγρέα γειναμένη. Callim. here, as elsewhere, seems to have in mind the Orphic story. Tz. on Lyc. 355 calls the god of the Orphic legend Διόνυσον τὸν καὶ Ζαγρέα καλούμενον. Ζαγρεύς the great Hunter is a name of the all-absorbing Hades: thus also the Alkmaionis fr. 3 Kink. Zagreus is identified with the Dionysos of nocturnal revelry in E., Kret. fr. 472, 10 (a reference in Ba. 1181 Kirchh.); and see above, chap. viii, n. 28. This Dionysos is regarded as a χθόνιος (see Hsch. Ζαγρεύς) and this must indubitably have been quite familiar to the poets who made him the son of Persephone: χθόνιος ὁ τῆς Περσεφόνης Διόνυσος (Harp. λεύκη). 353 They were as clearly conscious as was Herakleitos of the fact that ὡυτὸς Ἅιδης καὶ Διόνυσος, whereas this consciousness was undoubtedly obscured in the public ceremonial of Dionysos-worship (to which, however, Hcl.’s saying refers). Zagreus-Dionysos was never identified with the Ἴακχος of the Eleusinia (to which Orph. fr. 215, l. 2 refers); though Dionysos alone was often so identified.

[28]   Ouranos casts the Titans into Tartaros: frr. 97, 100. Acc. to Procl. (fr. 205) and Arn. (196: prob. not from the Rhaps.) we should be led to suppose that the Titans after they had torn Zagreus in pieces were cast down to Tartaros by Zeus. In Arn. this is set down side by side with the statement that the Titans were destroyed by the lightning of Zeus (ἡ Τιτάνων κεραύνωσις, Plu., Es. Carn. 1, 7, p. 996 C), though obviously incompatible with the latter statement, as it is also (even more so) with the origin of mankind from the ashes of the Titans which is known not only to Olympiodoros (ad Phd., p. 68 Finckh: Lob. 566), but also to Proclus who got it from the “Rhapsodiai” (as also did Olymp.): Procl., in Rp. ii, 74, 29; i, 93 Kroll. It seems from this that Proclus (and perhaps Arn.) in error ascribed the καταταρτάρωσις of the Titans to Zeus instead of to Ouranos.

[29]   Nonn. vi, 173; O., fr. 195. Perhaps Proclus is right in explaining this doubling of the god’s figure in the mirror as meaning his entrance upon the μεριστὴ δημιουργία. A reference to a similar explanation of this Διονύσου κάτοπτον occurs even in Plot. 4, 3, 12 (Lob. 555)—? also in the strange statement made by Marsilius Ficinus as to the crudelissimum apud Orpheum Narcissi fatum (was Zagreus another Narcissus?) fr. 315; cf. Plot. 1, 6, 8. The entry of the one origin of the universe into the multiplicity of phenomena is first clearly referred to in the dismemberment of Zagreus, but it would be quite like this symbol-loving poetry to introduce the same motif in a different form with a passing reference earlier in the poem.

[30]   Nonn., D. vi, 197 ff.

[31]   Paus. 8, 37, 5.

[32]   Procl., O., frr. 195, 198, 199. In any case Nonn. vi, 169 ff. is following the Rhapsodiai.

[33]   Callim. and Euphor. knew of the dismemberment of Dionysos by the Titans: Tz. ad Lyc. 208 (from the completer version in EM.). In any case it is not from the Rhaps. that this legend is also known to D.S. 5, 75, 4; Cornut. 30, p. 62, 10 Lang; Plu., Es. Carn. 1, 7, p. 996 C; Is. et Os. 35, p. 364 F; Clem. Al. (see Orph. frr. 196, 200).—A roughly caricatured drawing on a hydria belonging to the early fourth century found at Rhodos and made probably in Attica appears in JHS. xi (1890), p. 243; where it is said to represent the dismemberment of Zagreus as conceived by Orphics. The picture, however, does not agree at all with the meaning thus attributed to it; the interpretation cannot be the right one.

[34]   A true ἱερὸς λόγος, i.e. an account of the origin of ritual acts founded upon myth or legend. (The Orphics had such accounts, e.g. of the prohibition against being buried in woollen clothing: Hdt. ii, 81 fin.)

[35]   That the tearing in pieces of the bull in the primitive Thracian manner occurred also in the Orphic ὄργια may perhaps be deduced from the fact that in the legend Orpheus himself is torn in pieces by the Mainads. The priest stands in the place of the god: what the god suffers in the ritual δρώμενα that the priest suffers too. This is frequently met with. Ὀρφεὺς ἅτε τῶν Διονύσου τελετῶν ἡγεμὼν γενόμενος τὰ ὅμοια παθεῖν λέγεται τῷ σφετέρῳ θεῷ, Procl. in 354 Rp. i, 175 Kr. The ancients were fully aware that the bull torn in pieces in the Bacchic orgies represented the god himself (and this not only in Orphic ritual but from the beginning in the Thracian worship): the idea is often expressed (see e.g. Firm. Mat., Error. P.R. vi, 5), but nowhere more clearly than in the Orphic ἱερὸς λόγος.

[36]   The introduction of the Titans from Hellenic mythology into the Thracian myth is clearly described as the work of Onomakritos by Paus. 8, 37, 5.

[37]   Τιτῆνες κεκομῆται, ὑπέρβιον ἠτορ ἔχοντες, fr. 102. ἀμείλιχον ἠτορ ἔχοντες καὶ φύσιν ἐκνομίην, fr. 97. As early as Hesiod the Titans are hated by their father as δεινότατοι παίδων (Theog. 155). Τιτανικὴ φύσις is the evil character that cannot keep an oath: Pl., Lg. 701 C; Cic., Lg. iii, 5; impios Titanas, Hor., O. 3, 4, 42.

[38]   This explanation of the διαμελισμός of Zagreus is often put forward (though subtilized into a Neoplatonic sense) by those who use the Orphic Rhapsodiai: see Lob. 710 ff. But even Plutarch has something of the sort (E ap. D. 9, p. 389 A), and it cannot be doubted that this (apart from its Platonist wrappings) was the meaning of the legend in the mind of its first inventor. Nor can the conception that the separate existence (multiplicity) of things first came into the world by an act of impiety, have been strange to the theologoi of the sixth century: we must admit this at once on remembering the doctrine of Anaximander that the multiplicity of things which has arisen out of the original one ἄπειρον is in itself an ἀδικία for which it must pay “recompense and punishment” (fr. 2 Mull., 9 Diels). Such personification of the processes of nature and the reading of an ethical sense into them, combined as it was with a quietist tendency, was much more likely to have arisen in the fanciful minds of semi-philosophical mystics than to have been given to them by the philosophers.

[39]   See the accounts given in Lob. 565 f.: they come from the Rhapsodiai. The fact that the origin of men and the doctrine of Metempsychosis as well were dealt with in the Rhaps. follows from Procl. in Rp. ii, 338 Kroll. It must, however, have been from older Orphic poetry—at any rate, not from the Rhaps.—that the story was derived by D. Chr. 30, 10 f. Plutarch, too, does at least refer to it: τὸ ἐν ἡμῖν ἄλογον καὶ ἄτακτον καὶ βίαιον οἱ παλαιοὶ Τιτᾶνας ὠνόμασαν, Es. Carn. 1, 7, p. 996 C; and possibly Opp., H. v, 9–10; Ael. fr. 89, p. 230, 19 f. Herch. (Lob. 567 g). Even the words of Xenokrates (fr. 20, p. 166 Heinze) seem to allude to this Orphic myth. Thus the Rhapsodiai in this case also were following older Orphic teaching and poetry. Orph. H. 37 derives from a later age. What Nic. Th. 8 ff. reproduces (mistakenly?) as Hesiodic tradition was perhaps really an echo of Orphic poetry. Was the derivation of Man from the Titans suggested by still earlier fancies such as e.g. meet us in passages like h. Hom. Ap. 335 (137) f.: Τιτῆνές τε θεοὶ τῶν ἒξ ἄνδρες τε θεοί τε—? This is not Homeric (for all the Homeric πατὴρ ἀνδρῶν τε θεῶν τε), though possibly it had a different sense from what it had for “Orpheus”.

[40]   Dionysos is the last of the divine rulers of the world: frr. 114, 190. Hence δεσπότης ἡμῶν, Procl. in Crat., pp. 59, 114 Boiss. (though Procl. also speaks of e.g. Hermes as ὁ δεσπότης ὑμῶν in Cr., p. 73 B.). Dionysos is the sixth ruler; Zeus who came before him being the fifth: frr. 113 (85, 121, 122). The order given is: 1 Phanes, 2 Nyx, 3 Ouranos, 4 Kronos, 5 Zeus, 6 Dionysos. This is definitely stated by Syrian.: fr. 85 (Proclus follows his master: frr. 85, 121), and confirmed by the fragments of the Rhapsodiai: frr. 86, 87, 96, 113. It seems, however, as if Plato actually found this order (as Syrian. thought) 355 in the Orphic Theogony which he read. It is true that as their silence shows the Neoplatonists did not find the verse cited by Plato in the Rhapsodiai as they knew them. (Plato’s line is ἕκτῃ δ’ ἐν γενεῇ καταπαύσατε κόσμον ἀοιδῆς: Plu., E ap. D. 15, p. 391 D, has the meaningless θυμόν instead of κόσμον—did he read θεσμόν?) They were right, however, in deducing from the line that the ancient Orphic Theogony referred to by Plato also knew of six generations of the gods (following the Pythagorean τέλειος ἀριθμός?) and ended with the sixth generation. The verse was intended doubtless by Plato himself in rather a different sense and he only quotes it humorously (Gruppe differs; Rhaps. Theog. 693 f.). This passage therefore provides important evidence of the harmony that existed between the Rhapsodiai and the oldest Orphic Theogony in the general outlines of their construction. It is, of course, quite a different question whether the six rulers in the poem referred to by Plato were the same as those given by the Rhaps.; nor can we tell whether Dionysos there occupied the last place, though the predominance held by Dionysos in Orphic belief makes it very probable that he did.

[41]   The authorities who speak of the origin of mankind from the ashes (or the blood) of the Titans (Lob. 565 ff.) express themselves in such a way that we are forced to suppose that they regarded this as essentially the first appearance of men. This, however, cannot be reconciled with what Proclus, as usual following the Rhapsodiai, says of the golden and silver ages of mankind under Phanes and Kronos, which then, and not till then, are followed by the third and last race, τὸ τιτανικὸν γένος: see fr. 244 and esp. in Rp. ii, 74 Kr. θνητοί in the reign of Phanes even occurs in the line quoted by Syrian. (in Ar. Meta. 935a 22 Us.) fr. 85. It is impossible to say whether this improvement upon the Hesiodic legend of the Ages of Mankind actually occurred in an ancient Orphic Theogony (the one used perhaps by Lactant.; O., fr. 243, 8; cf. 248), and was thence taken for the Rhapsodiai without being reconciled with the legend of the origin of men from the ashes of the Titans; or whether the two scarcely reconcilable accounts of the origin of men were somehow or other made to agree. (Fr. 246 [Plu.] prob. comes from a picture of the long life enjoyed by the earliest generations of men: see Lob. 513. This picture does not necessarily presuppose a series of several γενεαί before the Titanic race.)

[42]   μέρος αὐτοῦ (τοῦ Διονύσου) ἐσμέν, Olymp. (from Orphic doctrine) in Pl. Phd., p. 3 Finckh. ὁ ἐν ἡμῖν νοῦς Διονυσιακός ἐστιν καὶ ἄγαλμα ὄντως τοῦ Διονύσου, Procl. in Crat., p. 82 Boiss. The Hellenes are accustomed to make use of the dismemberment, re-integration and resuscitation of Dionysos εἰς τὸν περὶ τῆς ψυχῆς λόγον ἀνάγειν καὶ τροπολογεῖν, Orig., Cels. 4, 17, p. 21 Lo.

[43]   οἱ ἀμφὶ Ὀρφέα think that the soul has the body as a περίβολον, δεσμωτηρίου εἰκόνα, Pl., Crat. 400 C. Certainly Orphic, too (as the Schol. also say), is ὁ ἐν ἀπορρήτοις λεγόμενος λόγος ὡς ἔν τινι φρουρᾷ ἐσμεν οἱ ἄνθρωποι κτλ., Pl. Phd. 62 B; see Lob. 795 f.

[44]   fr. 221 (Phd. 62 B with Sch.). The similar saying of Philolaos is, as Plato’s manner of recording it shows (Phd. 61 E–62 B) evidently derived from a saying of the Orphic ἀπόρρητα (and Philolaos himself appealed to the παλαιοὶ θεολόγοι τε καὶ μάντιες in confirmation of the closely connected doctrine of the enclosure of the ψυχή in the σῆμα of the σῶμα: fr. 23 Mull. 14 Di.). The doctrine continued to be taught by Pythagoreans: see Euxitheos Pyth. ap. Klearch. in Ath. iv, 157 CD; Cic., Sen. 73. It had moreover some root in popular belief and in legal usage: see above, chap. v, n. 33. 356

[45]   According to the Ὀρφικὰ ἔπη καλούμενα, ap. Arist. de An. 1, 5, p. 410b, 28 ff.: τὴν ψυχὴν ἐκ τοῦ ὅλου εἰσιέναι ἀναπνεόντων φερομένην ὑπὸ τῶν ἀνέμων. (The ancient commentators add nothing fresh.) ἐκ τοῦ ὅλου means simply “out of space”. The ἄνεμοι were regarded as daimonic powers subordinate and related to the Τριτοπάτορες: see above, chap. v, n. 124. We cannot say how this conception was made to square with the other articles of Orphic belief (purgation of souls in Hades, etc.). It is plainly nothing but an attempt at such reconciliation that (following the Rhapsodiai, fr. 224) makes the souls that pass in death out of the bodies of men, go into Hades, while those that have inhabited the bodies of animals fly about in the wind εἰσόκεν αὐτὰς ἄλλο ἀφαρπάζῃ μίγδην ἀνέμοιο πνοῇσιν. Aristotle knows nothing of any such restriction. Plato (Phd. 81 D; rather differently 108 AB) apparently making free use of Orphic ideas regards all the μὴ καθαρῶς ἀπολυθεῖσαι ψυχαί as liable to the same fate as that allotted by the Rhapsodiai to the beasts. (Of course it is possible to suppose that the ψυχαί on being released from Hades for a new ἐνσωμάτωσις first of all fly about in the wind round the dwelling places of the living and are then breathed into a new body. This would not prevent there being a predestined conjunction of a particular soul with the particular σῶμα corresponding to its state of purification.)—The establishment in later Orphic poetry of the theory that the ψυχαί dwelt in the air may have been assisted by the philosophic theory of the soaring-up of the πνεύματα into their element the aether (of which more below). This theory, though not first put forward by the Stoics, was specially favoured by them: it almost attained the status of a popularly accepted belief. When the realm of the souls had thus been at least in part transferred to the air, late Orphic poetry began to regard one of the four rivers of the soul-world, Ἀχέρων, as the ἀήρ: frr. 155, 156 (Rhaps.). There is no reason to see in all this the traces of a supposed ancient conception in which Okeanos is really a river in the sky (in spite of Bergk’s fanciful speculations in Opusc. ii, 691–6). The elevation of the soul-kingdom to the sky is in Greek thought invariably the result of comparatively late speculation. We might even ask whether there is not Egyptian influence at work in the transference of Okeanos (= the Milky Way?) to the sky. Such influence would be late of course; but in Egypt the idea of the Nile in the sky was quite familiar.

[46]   κύκλος τῆς γενέσεως, fr. 226; ὁ τῆς μοίρας τροχός, rota fati et generationis: see Lob. 797 ff.

[47]   οἱ δ’ αὐτοὶ πατέρες τε καὶ υἱέες ἐν μεγάροισιν (πολλάκις) ἠδ’ ἄλοχοι σεμναὶ κεδναί τε θύγατρες . . . γίγνοντ’ ἀλλήλων μεταμειβομένῃσι γενέθλαις, frr. 225, 222 (Rhaps.). Here, as Lob. 797 rightly remarks, there is an allusion to the dogma of the recurrence of exactly the same state of things in the world. The doctrine of complete παλιγγενεσία or ἀποκατάστασις ἁπαντων (see Gataker ad. M. Ant.1, p. 385) was closely and indeed indissolubly bound up with the doctrine of the migration of souls. (Illogicality belongs rather to the conception of the break in the circle caused by the secession of individual souls.) It was therefore found among the Pythagoreans to whom it is ascribed by Eudemos fr. 51 sp. (see Porph., VP. 19, p. 26, 23 ff. N.; used later still in a Pythagorean sense by Synes., Aeg. 2, 7, p. 62 f. Krab.). It was borrowed from the Pythagoreans by the Stoa (by Chrysippos esp.), which after its usual fashion pushed the rather bizarre fancy to pedantic extremes. (After the Stoic model is Plot. 5, 7, and perhaps also the genethliaci spoken of by Varro ap. Aug., CD. 22, 28.) It is at least 357 probable in the extreme that these ideas were first held by the Orphics and not borrowed by them from the Stoics: there are even traces in Orphic tradition of the great World-year (which is always closely connected with the ἀποκατάστασις τῶν ἁπάντων): Lob. 792 ff.

[48]   κύκλον τε λῆξαι καὶ ἀναπνεῦσαι κακότητος were the words Proclus probably had before him: (fr. 226) in Tim. 330 B. The forms ἂν λήξαι καὶ ἀναπνεύσαι—thus rightly accented here by Schneider—come from Procl. himself, who accommodates the words of the original to the construction of his own sentence. We must therefore not write αὖ λῆξαι with Gale and Lob. 800. In this case the subject of the sentence is the praying soul; on the other hand, in the form preserved by Simp., κύκλον τ’ ἀλλῦσαι καὶ ἀναψῦξαι κακότητος, the subject is the gods to whom the soul prays; ψυχή being object. In either form the freeing of the soul from the circle is regarded as a grace from the gods.

[49]   fr. 76. The lines of the Carm. Aur. 55 ff. (Nauck, p. 207) are probably modelled on the Orphic οὔτ’ ἀγαθοῦ παρεόντος κτλ. The point is: few are they who trouble about the salvation that Orpheus (or Pythagoras) brings them; the ὅσιοι are always a small minority.

[50]   frr. 208, 226. Διόνυσος λυσεύς, λύσιος, θεοὶ λύσιοι; see Lob. 809 f. and cf. fr. 311 (Ficinus).

[51]   Ὀρφέα τ’ ἄνακτ’ ἔχων βάκχευε . . . E. Hp. 953 (N.B. ἄναξ not δεσπότης, l. 88).

[52]   Ὀρφικὸς βίος, Pl., Lg. 782 C; Lobeck, 244 ff.

[53]   The Pythagorean ἔπου θεῷ, ἀκολουθεῖν τῷ θεῷ (Iamb., VP. 137, from Aristoxenos) might also have been given to the Orphics as their motto.

[54]   ἄψυχος βορά of the Orphics: E., Hp. 952, Pl., Lg. 782 CD; Lob., p. 246. This, too, is the meaning of Ar., Ra. 1032, Ὀρφεὺς μὲν γὰρ τελετάς θ’ ἡμῖν κατέδειξε φόνων τ’ ἀπέχεσθαι, i.e. using slain animals for food. Hor., AP. 391 f.: silvestris homines . . . caedibus et victu foedo deterruit Orpheus means to speak not of the ritual vegetarianism of “Orpheus”, but of the previous cannibalism of men which Orpheus had put an end to. As this is nowhere else mentioned of Orpheus we might perhaps regard it as mistaken allusion on the part of Horace to the passage of Aristoph. quoted above. It is not, however, impossible that Horace did in fact have in mind some Orphic verse which really reported something like what he himself says of Orpheus. The Orphic fragment [247] ap. S.E., M. ii, 31; ix, 15 (Lob., p. 246), may have arisen in the same way; see Maass, Orpheus, 77. (The well-known lines of Kritias [S.E., M. ix, 54 fr. 25 Di.] and Moschion, p. 813 Nauck, can hardly have anything to do with Orphism and should rather be connected with the theories of the Sophists and Demokritos—followed later by the Epicureans—about the gradual evolution of human civilization from miserable and savage origins; and not from a “golden age” of which the Orphics too spoke.)

[55]   Prohibition to bury corpses in woollen garments: Hdt. ii, 81 (in each case in order that nothing θνησείδιον might cling to the departed). Prohibition against eating eggs: Lob. 251 (eggs are part of the offering to the dead and the food of the χθόνιοι, and so forbidden: so rightly explained by Lob. 477). It was forbidden in Orphic poetry, as well as Pythagorean, to eat beans: Lob. 251; Nauck on Iamb., VP., p. 231 f.: the reason here, too, being that beans as part of the offerings to the dead, putantur ad mortuos pertinere (Fest.); see Lob. 254 and Crusius, Rh. Mus. 39, 165. The same or similar reasons are everywhere at work to cause the eating of certain foods to be forbidden 358 both by the Pythagorean ordinances and in the mystical cult of the χθόνιοι: it is because they are used as offerings to the beings of the lower world, πρὸς τὰ περίδειπνα καὶ τὰς προκλήσεις τῶν νεκρῶν, or even because they have names which, like ἐρέβινθος or λάθυρος, recall ἔρεβος and λήθη: Plu., QR. 95, p. 286 E. The purified state requires above all complete separation from anything connected with the realm of the dead and the divinities of the dead.

[56]   Cf. fr. 208.

[57]   The soul is confined within the body (according to those ἀμφὶ Ὀρφέἀ), ὡς δίκην διδούσης τῆς ψυχῆς ὧν δὴ ἕνεκα δίδωσιν, Pl., Crat. 400 C. The exact nature of this “guilt” of the soul is not explained in our remains of Orphic literature. The point, however, is chiefly that the life within the body is according to their doctrine not in accordance with but contrary to the proper nature of the soul.

[58]   συμπόσιον τῶν ὁσίων, Pl., Rp. 363 C. ὁσίους μύστας, Orph., H. 84, 3; see above, chap. vi, n. 18.

[59]   ψυχὰς ἀθανάτας κατάγει Κυλλήνιος Ἑρμῆς γαίης ἐς κευθμῶνα πελώριον fr. 224 (it would be vain to look for an example of ἀθάνατος used as adjective to ψυχή in Homer). Hermes χθόνιος leads the souls down into Hades and also upwards again (to fresh ἐνσωματώσεις): Orph., H. 57, 6 ff. (For the Pythagorean Hermes see D.L. viii, 31.)

[60]   Especially in the κατάβασις εἰς Ἅιδου (Lob. 373; cf. above, chap. vii, n. 3). The descent lay through the chasm at Tainaron: see above, chap. v, n. 23, and cf. Orph., Arg. 41.—Other Orphic poems may also have dealt with such matters: πολλὰ μεμυθολόγηται περὶ τῶν ἐν Ἅιδου πραγμάτων τῷ τῆς Καλλιόπης, Jul., Or. vii, p. 281, 3 Hertl. [216 D].

[61]   λύσεις καὶ καθαρμοί of the living and even the dead carried out by Orphic priests: Pl., Rp. 364 E. Reward of the initiated in Hades: cf. the anecdote of Leotychidas II in Plu., Apophth. Lac., p. 224 E; and of Antisthenes in D.L. vi, 4. Those who feared the bite of Kerberos or the water-carrying to the leaky cask (see App. iii) sought protection against such things in τελεταὶ καὶ καθαρμοί: Plu. N.P.Q. Suav. Epic. 27, p. 1105 B. Hope of immortality for the soul rests on the Dionysiac mysteries acc. to Plu., Cons. ad Ux. 10, p. 611 D.

[62]   It is significant that the belief in a judgment and punishment of ψυχαί is based in [Pl.] Ep. vii, 335 A not on popular acceptance or the statements of poets but on παλαιοί τε καὶ ἱεροὶ λόγοι; cf. above, chap. vii, n. 13.

[63]   fr. 154 (punishment in Hades of those guilty of crimes against their own parents? fr. 281).

[64]   See above, chap. vii, n. 15.

[65]   δεινὰ περιμένει: Pl., Rp. 365 A; cf. fr. 314 (Ficinus).

[66]   fr. 208 (Rhaps.) ὄργιά τ’ ἐκτελέσουσι (ἄνθρωποι), λύσιν προγόνων ἀθεμίστων μαιόμενοι· σὺ (sc. Dionysos) δὲ τοῖσιν (dat. commodi), ἔχων κράτος, οὗς κ’ ἐθέλησθα λύσεις ἔκ τε πόνων χαλεπῶν καὶ ἀπείρονος οἴστρου (of continual rebirth). That this belief in the efficacy of prayers for the “poor souls of the departed” belonged to the earlier stratum of Orphism follows from Pl., Rp. 364 BC, E, 365 A, where he speaks of λύσεις τε καὶ καθαρμοί of the Orphics which promised to deliver living and dead from the ἀδικήματα αὐτοῦ ἢ προγόνων. (It has been wrongly attempted to fasten the same belief on Plato himself, in the Phaedo.)—For Gnostic and early Christian ideas of the same kind see Anrich, D. Ant. Mysterienwesen, 87, 4; 120 n. But even in the Rigveda (7, 35, 4) we may find the thought that the “pious works of the pious” can help others to salvation (Oldenberg, Rel. d. 359 Veda, 289). Religious pietism seems to produce the same effects everywhere.

[67]   πολλοὶ μὲν ναρθηκοφόροι κτλ. was an Orphic verse. Lob. 809, 813.

[68]   fr. 154.

[69]   ὁ κεκαθαρμένος τε καὶ τετελεσμένος ἐκεῖσε (εἰς Ἅιδου) ἀφικόμενος μετὰ θεῶν οἰκήσει, fr. 228 (Pl.).

[70]   συμπόσιον τῶν ὁσίων in Hades, μέθη αἰώνιος their reward: Pl., Rp. 336 CD (cf. Dieterich, Nekyia, 80 n.). Plato there mentions Mousaios and his son (Eumolpos) as authorities for these promises and contrasts with them, by a οἱ δέ, others who made different promises; perhaps referring to other Orphic poems (cf. fr. 227). But Mousaios, himself always closely connected in Plato with Orpheus (Rp. 364 E, Prot. 316 D, Ap. 41 A, Ion, 536 B), here simply means “Orphic poetry”. A literature of essentially Orphic character went under his name. So Plu., Comp. Cim. et Luc. 1 seems right in substituting simply τὸν Ὀρφέα for the Μουσαῖος named in Pl.

[71]   Pl., Lg. 870 DE; then in more detail for a special case but derived from same source: νόμῳ . . . τῷ νῦν δή (i.e. in 870 DE) λεχθέντι 872 DE, 873 A.—The idea of such a religio-juridical talio was popular also in Greece: see below (chap. xi, n. 44). Frequently for instance in curses of vengeance the wish is that the doer may suffer exactly the same thing as that which he has done to his victim. Exx. from Soph. (best is Tr. 1039 f.) given by G. Wolff in S., Aias, 839; cf. A., Cho. 309 ff., Ag. 1430.—As a Neoplatonic idea: Plot. 3, 2, 13; Porph. and Iamb. ap. Aen. Gaz., Theophr., p. 18 B.

[72]   We may, however, suppose that the ideas of the Orphics corresponded with the statements of Empedokles, Plato, etc., about the series of births.

[73]   σῶμα—σῆμα is Orphic: Pl., Crat. 400 C.

[74]   Complete escape from the world of birth and death is distinctly anticipated for the pious Orphic in fr. 226, κύκλον τε λῆξαι κτλ. The other and positive side completing this negative promise is not clearly supplied for us by any fragment. (We never even hear distinctly of the return of the individual soul to the one Soul of the World; though certain Orphic myths—probably of late origin—seem to suggest such a doctrine of Emanation and final Remanation.)

[75]   frr. 1, 81. The moon was regarded as inhabited, like the world, by Pythagoreans too (esp. Philolaos) and also by Anaxagoras.

[76]   This at least was the belief of Pythagoreans and later of Platonics: see Griech. Roman, 269; Wyttenb. on Eun. VS. 117. But the idea occurs as early as in the Ti. of Plato, esp. in 42 B. It may have been long familiar to Greek popular belief (as to other peoples; cf. Tylor, ii, 70), and reached Orphics from that source. (Similar though not quite the same is the popular belief ὡς ἀστέρες γιγνόμεθ’ ὅταν τις ἀποθάνῃ, Ar., Pa. 833 f., which the Greeks shared with all the nations of the earth: cf. “Pythagoras” ap. Comm. Bern. in Lucan, 9, 9.)—No opinion can be built upon the statement of Ficinus (fr. 321).

[77]   Orphic poetry must have varied in its account of what happened to the dismembered limbs of Zagreus-Dionysos. That the Titans tore the god limb from limb seems to have been common to all versions of the Theogonic poem (see nn. 28, 41; p. 341). But whereas according to one account the Titans then devoured the god (except the heart) and from the mixed Titanic and Dionysiac elements of their bodies after they had been destroyed by lightning the race of men had its origin (p. 341); according to others the mangled limbs 360 of the god were brought by Zeus to Apollo who buried them taking them “on to Parnasos”, i.e. at Delphi: see Orph. fr. 200 (Clem. Al.) and so, too, Callim. fr. 374. The Rhapsodiai gave the first version in detail, but also preserved an account resembling the second (see frr. 203, 204: the ἑνίζειν τὰ μερισθέντα τοῦ Διονύσου μέλη there refers probably to the reunion of the collected limbs for the purpose of burial and not for the restoration of the dead god to life. This is also possibly the meaning of the Διονύσου μελῶν κολλήσεις in Jul., Chr., p. 167, 7 Neum. But Or., Cels. 4, 17, p. 21 Lom., speaks of the reanimation of Dionysos συντιθεμένου after the dismemberment). This second account, where it occurs alone, of course excludes the Anthropogony from the Titans’ ashes. The second version unmistakably connects itself with the Delphic legend of the grave of Dionysos at the foot of Apollo’s tripod (see above, pp. 97 f.) as K. O. Müller observed, Introd. Scient. Myth. 242. It does, in fact, accord in this instance, but apart from this it has no connexion whatever with the real Delphic legend about the disappearance of Dionysos into the underworld and his periodic return to this world. (See above, chap. viii, n. 28. The Orphic and Delphic legends are elaborately compared and worked in together as though they were separate fragments of a single whole in Lübbert’s book, de Pindaro theologiae Orph. censore: Ind. Sch. Bonn. Lib. 1888, p. xiii f.—with shocking results and no intrinsic justification.) Whether this second version was the one put forward by Onomakritos is uncertain. In any case, both accounts are much older than the Rhapsodiai, in which, it appears, they were included side by side and superficially harmonized (—only the limbs of the god not devoured by the Titans being buried acc. to this version). Besides these two versions there may have been another Anthropogony differing from that given in the first account: the existence of something of the kind is perhaps to be deduced from what the Rhapsodiai themselves have to tell about the golden and silver generations of mankind (see above, n. 41).

[78]   Of the Thracian Mysoi λέγει ὁ Ποσειδώνιος καὶ ἐμψύχων ἀπέχεσθαι (which Pythagoras is said to have learnt from Zalmoxis, Str. 298) κατ’ εὐσέβειαν, διὰ δὲ τοῦτο καὶ θρεμμάτων· μέλιτι δὲ χρῆσθαι καὶ γάλακτι καὶ τυρῷ, ζῶντας καθ’ ἡσυχίαν· διὰ δὲ τοῦτο καλεῖσθαι θεοσεβεῖς τε καὶ καπνοβάτας (perh. καπνοβότας acc. to an ancient conjecture). εἶναι δέ τινας τῶν Θρᾳκῶν οἳ χωρὶς γυναικὸς ζῶσιν, οὓς κτίστας καλεῖσθαι, ἀνιερῶσθαί τε διὰ τιμὴv καὶ μετ’ ἀδείας ζῆν, Str. 296. The religious character of this asceticism is seen in the words κατ’ εὐσέβειαν and the name θεοσεβεῖς; also in the word ἀνιερῶσθαι, which are all used of the κτίσται as of a monastic order. Jos., AJ. 18, 1, 5, says of the Essenes ζῶσι δ’ οὐδὲν παρηλλαγμένως ἀλλ’ ὅτι μάλιστα ἐμφέροντες Δακῶν (i.e. Θρᾳκῶν, Γετῶν: Getae, Daci Romanis dicti, Plin., NH. iv, 80) τοῖς πολισταῖς καλουμένοις. In any case the same Thracian ascetics are meant whom Poseidonios (literally translating a Thracian word) calls the κτίσται. Thus, they are said like the Essence to live without women, eat no meat, and in the practice of various other asceticisms live together and have all things in common.—It cannot be certainly decided how old this Thracian asceticism was, its exact connexion with Dionysiac religion, and whether it could or did give any impulse in the direction of asceticism to the Orphics. (Following Hom., Ν 4 ff., many told similar stories of the nomadic Skythoi: see Ephor., frr. 76, 78; or of the fabulous Argimpaioi, Hdt. iv, 23; Znb., Pr. 5, 25, p. 129, 1, etc. Griech. Roman, 203.—ἀποχὴ ἐμψύχων occurred also among the Atlantes and certain Indian races: Hdt. iv, 184; iii, 100.) 361

[79]   ii, 123. His words make it plain that the Greek teachers of transmigration of souls whom he has in mind (Pherekydes, Pythagoras, Orphics, Empedokles) had no idea of the Egyptian origin of that doctrine (Rh. Mus. 26, 556, 1).

[80]   The Egyptian monuments show no knowledge of a general transmigration of souls, due to a law of nature or the decree of the gods. We can see very well, however, what it was in Egyptian traditions that might seem like a doctrine of transmigration to Herodotos (cf. Wiedemann, Erläut. zu Herodots 2. B. p. 457 f.).

[81]   It is sufficient to refer to Tylor’s collections: ii, 3 ff.—In antiquity the Greeks met with a doctrine of Transmigration, apart from Thrace, among the Keltic races (Caes., BG. 6, 14, 5; D.S. 5, 28, 6; cf. Timagenes ap. Amm. Marc. 15, 9, 8). This was the sole reason why Pythagoras was made the pupil of the Gallic Druids: Alex. Polyh. ap. Clem. Al., Str. i, p. 355/6 P., etc.

[82]   That it was not unnatural for the Greeks also to have the conception of the migration of the soul from its first body to some other suitable second or third body (entry of τῆς τυχούσης ψυχῆς εἰς τὸ τυχὸν σῶμα acc. to Arist.) may be seen from the fact that in Greek popular tales of the transformation of men into beasts the idea regularly prevails that while the body changes in such cases the “soul” remains the same as before. Thus, explicitly in Hom. κ 240 (cf. Sch. there and 329); cf. also Ov., M. ii, 485; Nonn., D. v, 322 f.; Aesop., F. 294 (Halm): [Luc.] Asin. 13, 15 init.; Apul., M. iii, 26 init; Aug., CD. 18, 18, p. 278, 11 ff. Domb., etc. (In all transformation stories this is regularly implied and gives the point to the story.) This is true from the earliest times onward, down to Voltaire’s muleteer who was turned into a mule et du vilain l’âme terrestre et crasse à peine vit qu’elle eut changé de place.)—The beasts also have a ψυχή: e.g. ξ 426.

[83]   Brahmins, Buddhists, Manichaean, etc.

[84]   A fixed term for “transmigration of souls” does not seem to have been offered by Orphic teaching. It was later called παλιγγενεσία (a term which did not exactly fit the real meaning of the idea): this seems to have been its oldest name (cf. αἱ ψυχαὶ πάλιν γίγνονται ἑκ τῶν τεθνεώτων, Pl., Phd. 70 C), and remained its most ceremonious one. “Pythagoras” non μετεμψύχωσιν sed παλιγγενεσίαν esse dicit: Serv., A. iii, 68. μετενσωμάτωσις, is not uncommon (frequent in Hippol., RH., p. 12, 53 D.-S.; 266, etc.). The word most commonly used among ourselves, μετεμψύχωσις, is among the Greeks precisely the least usual; it occurs e.g. in D.S. 10, 6, 1; Gal. iv, 763 K.; Tertul. de An. 31; Serv., A. vi, 532; 603; Suid. s.v. Φερεκύδης. μετεμψυχοῦσθαι occurs in Sch., A.R. i, 645.

CHAPTER XI

THE PHILOSOPHERS

The Orphic teaching, in which a protracted movement of religion in Greece reached comprehensive expression, might seem almost an anachronism, appearing as it did in an age when a religious interpretation of the world and of mankind was hardly any longer admissible. Eastwards, on the coasts of Ionia, a new view of the world had arisen which, like a youth that has come of age, demanded the right to pursue its course without any guidance from traditional beliefs. The Ionic maritime cities were the meeting-place of all the collected wisdom and experience of mankind; and there all the more serious knowledge and study—both indigenous and of foreign origin—of “Nature”, the earth, and the heavenly bodies, was gathered together in the intelligence of those ever-memorable spirits who at that time were laying the foundations of natural science, and of all science in general. This knowledge was now attempting to turn itself into an organized and all-embracing whole. Observation and constructive study combined with an imaginative vision to hazard a picture of the world and reality as a whole. Because it was impossible anywhere in this world to find anything completely and for ever fixed and dead, speculation inevitably pressed forward to the discovery of the undying source of Life, that perpetually fills, moves, and rebuilds this whole, and of the laws according to which it works and necessarily must work.

This was the direction pursued by these earliest pioneers of philosophy; and they pursued it unhampered by any subservience to mythical or religious modes of thought. Where mythology and the theology founded upon it saw a complete history of cosmic events each one of which was the result of the separate and unique action of divine personalities endowed with consciousness and the power of arbitrary choice—there the philosopher saw the play of everlasting forces which could not be completely resolved into the single events of any historical process, for, without beginning or end they had been ever in action, tirelessly fulfilling themselves in accordance with unchanging laws. In such a universe there seemed 363 to be little room left for divine figures created by man after his own image, and worshipped by him as the guiding and supreme powers of the world. And in fact, the foundations were now laid of that tremendous structure of free inquiry, which finally succeeded in weaving out of its treasure new worlds of thought, where even those who had quarrelled or were dissatisfied with the old religion (now inwardly falling into decay for all its outward appearance of being at the most brilliant zenith of its powers) might yet find a refuge if they would not fall back upon sheer nothingness.

And yet Greece never saw a thorough-going opposition and conscious quarrel between science and religion. In a few special cases the religion of the state was forced to recognize its incompatibility with the openly expressed opinions of individual philosophers, and took steps to make its claims to universal supremacy respected. But for the most part, the two streams of influence flowed on side by side for centuries without ever coming into hostile contact. The propagandist temper was completely absent from philosophy from the very beginning. (Even when it appeared later as among the Cynics it produced very little effect on the supremacy of the state religion.) Religion on its side was not represented by any priestly caste which might have been led to take up arms for religion and for what it believed to be its own interest alike. Theoretic contradictions might the more easily remain unobserved when religion depended so little upon fixed dogma or upon a world-embracing whole of opinions and doctrines; while Theology, wherever it accompanied the worship of the gods (εὐσέβεια), which was the real core of religion, was, just as much as philosophy, the business of individuals and their adherents gathered together outside the limits of the official religion of the state. Philosophy (except in a few special and unrepresentative cases) never sought open war with religion—not even with the weakened and diluted religion of the masses. In fact the juxtaposition of philosophy and religion (with theology itself by their side) sometimes went beyond the external conditions of the time, and affected the private intellectual life of certain thinkers. It might seem as if religion and philosophy were not merely different but dealt with different provinces of reality, and thus even strict and philosophically minded thinkers could honestly and without imagining disloyalty to philosophy, adopt particular and even fundamental conceptions from the creed of their fathers, and allow them to grow up side by side and at peace with their own purely philosophical ideas. 364

§ 2

What the Ionic philosophers in connexion with the rest of their cosmology had to say about the soul of man did not for all its striking novelty bring them into direct conflict with religious opinion. Philosophy and religion used the same words to denote totally different things; it could surprise no one if different things were said about quite different objects.

According to the popular view, which finds expression in Homer, and with which, in spite of their very different estimate of the relative values of body and soul, the religious theory of the Orphics and other theologi also agreed—according to this view the “psyche” was regarded as a unique creature of combined spiritual and material nature that, wherever it may have come from, now dwells within man and there, as his second self, carries on its separate existence, making itself felt when the visible self loses consciousness in dream, swoon, or ecstasy (see above, pp. 6 f.). In the same way, the moon and the stars become visible when no longer obscured by the brighter light of the sun. It was already implied in the conception itself that this double of mankind, which could be detached from him temporarily, had a separate existence of its own; it was no very great step from this to the idea that in death, which is simply the permanent separation of the visible man from the invisible, the latter did not perish, but only then became free and able to live by and for itself.

This spiritual being and the obscure manifestations of its existence in the living man, did not attract the observation of the Ionian philosophers. Their thoughts were all for the universe as a whole; they looked for the “origins” (ἀρχαί) of all that is and becomes; for the simple elements of multifarious appearance and for the force which turns the simple into the multifarious while controlling, moving, and giving life to primeval matter. The power of life, the force which can set in motion both itself and all else that without it would be fixed and motionless—this force penetrates all being; where it manifests itself most strikingly in separate individual beings, there it is what these philosophers call the “psyche”.

Thought of in this way, the psyche is something quite different from the old psyche of popular belief, idly observing the life and activities of its body, as of some stranger, concentrated in itself, and pursuing its own secret, hidden life. And yet the name given to these very different concepts remained the same. The application of the word “psyche” 365 to the power which gives life and movement to the visible body—man’s power of life—might have been suggested to the philosophers by a manner of expression which, though in the strict sense of the words conflicting with Homeric conceptions, is occasionally observable in the Homeric poems, and seems to have become more and more frequent in late times.1 In more exact language, the “psyche” of these philosophers is a collective expression for all the powers of thought, desire, and will (νόος, μένος, μῆτις, βουλή), and especially for the functions denoted by the untranslatable word θυμός—powers which according to the Homeric and popular partition all belong entirely to the side of the visible man and his body.2 According to that view, they are all expressions of the body’s natural powers of life—though they cannot indeed be awakened to real life before the arrival of the “psyche”—and in Homeric usage are almost the exact opposite of the “psyche”, for they perish at death, while the psyche leaves them behind to wander about in its separate shadow-life.

But the soul, according to the view of the physiologists, has quite a different relation to the totality of life and living, and differs in this respect both from the Homeric psyche and the Homeric θυμός. The same force which manifests itself so strongly, as though specially concentrated there, in the psyche of man, works and rules in all matter as the general source of life that creates and preserves the world. Thus, the psyche loses the special singularity that distinguished it from all the other things and substances in the world, and made it incomparable and unique. Later reporters are wrong in attributing to these Ionic thinkers (for whom vital power and material substance seemed immediately and indissolubly united) the conception of a separate, independent “World-Soul”. Not as emanations from a single Soul of the World did they conceive the separate souls of men; but neither did they conceive them as simply independent, unique, and entirely incomparable essences. They are expressions of that force which everywhere in all the phenomena of the world produces life and is itself life. Attributing spiritual qualities to the primeval source of things, the physiology of the “Hylozoists” naturally could not assume any profound distinction between that source and the “soul”. Deprived in this way of its separateness, the soul acquired a new importance in exchange; in another sense from that of the mystics and theologians it could still be thought of as something divine, for it was a participator in the one Force which builds and rules the world. It is not the abode of a single daimonic 366 nature, but instead, the very nature of god is alive within it.

The closer its inward connexion with the universal Whole the less, of course, will the soul be able to preserve its individual existence, which was only lent to it while it gave life and movement to the body, when that body, the sign and support of its separateness, is overtaken by death. These earliest philosophers whose view was almost entirely concentrated on the broad outlines of the life of nature as a whole, would hardly have regarded it as part of their task to formulate a deliberate opinion about the fate of the puny individual soul after the death of its body. In no case could they have spoken of an immortality of the soul in the same sense as did the mystics who regarded the soul of which they spoke as something which has entered from without into material existence, and as a spiritual essence quite distinct from everything material. The latter were thus able to attribute to the psyche a capacity for separate and continued existence which was inadmissible in the case of a force of movement and sensation completely inhering in matter and in the shaping of matter. And it was such a force which the physiologists called the soul.

Ancient tradition, nevertheless, asserts that Thales of Miletos, whose genius first began the philosophic study of nature, was the first “to call the soul (of man) immortal”.3 But Thales, who recognized a “soul” also in magnets and plants,4 and thought of the material stuff and the motive force of the “soul” as inseparable, can only have spoken of the “immortality” of the human soul in the same sense as he might have spoken of the immortality of all “soul-forces” in nature. Like the primal Matter which works and creates by reason of its own natural powers of life, so, too, the universal Force which permeates it5 is imperishable and indestructible, as it is uncreated. It is entirely and essentially alive and can never be “dead”.

Anaximander said of the “Unlimited” from which all things have been developed by separation, and by which all things are enveloped and directed, that it never grows old, but is immortal and imperishable.6 This cannot be intended to apply to the human soul as a separate existence; for like all separate creations out of the “Unlimited” it must “in the order of the time” pay the penalty for the “offence” of its separate existence,7 and lose itself again in the one primordial matter.

Nor could the third in this series—Anaximenes of Miletos—have differed seriously from Thales in the sense in which 367 he spoke of the soul as “immortal”; for him it was of the same nature8 as the one divine9 primal element of Air that is eternally in movement and produces all things out of itself.

§ 3

In the teaching of Herakleitos of Ephesos the living power of the primal essence—the one10 and universal, out of which arises through change the many and the particular, which manifests itself in the union, regarded as indissoluble, of matter and motive force—received even greater prominence than with the older Ionians. By them matter itself—described as either limited or not limited in reference to one particular quality—is regarded as self-evidently in motion. For Herakleitos the origin of all multiplicity lies rather in the creative energy of absolute Life itself which is at the same time a definite material substance or analogous to one of the known substances. The idea of life, and that form of it which makes its appearance in man, must have been more important for him than for any of his predecessors.

This never-resting force and activity of becoming that has neither beginning nor end, is represented by the Hot and Dry and called by the name of that elementary condition which cannot be thought of as ceasing to move, namely, Fire. The ever-living (ἀείζωον) fire, which periodically kindles itself and periodically goes out (Bywater, fr. 20), is formed entirely of movement and livingness. Living belongs to everything; but living is becoming, changing, becoming something different without cessation. Every appearance brings forth from itself, at the moment of its appearance, the opposite of itself. Birth, life, and death, and fresh birth clash together in a single burning moment, like the lightning (fr. 28).

That which thus moves itself in unceasing vitality and has all its being in becoming; which perpetually changes and “in backward-straining effort” finds itself again—this is something endowed with reason, creative in accordance with reason and “art”; is Reason (λόγος) itself. In creating the world it loses itself in the elements; it suffers its “death” (frr. 66, 67) when in the “Way downwards” it becomes water and earth (fr. 21). There are degrees of value in the elements decided by the relation which they hold towards the moving and self-vivifying fire. But that which in the multiplicity of the phenomena in the world, yet preserves its godlike fiery nature—this is for Herakleitos “psyche”. Psyche is fire.11 Fire and psyche are interchangeable terms.12 And so, too, the psyche of man is fire, a part of the universal fiery 368 energy that surrounds it and upholds it, through the “inhalation” of which it maintains itself alive;13 a portion of the World-Reason by participation in which it is itself rational. In men God is living.14 But god does not descend into man, as in the teaching of the Theologians, entering as a finite individuality into the vessel of the individual human life. As a united whole he surrounds men with his flood and reaches after and into them, as though with fiery tongues. A portion15 of his universal Wisdom is living in the soul of man: the “drier”, more fiery, nearer to the universal Fire and further from the less living elements he is, the wiser will he be (frr. 74, 75, 76). If he sundered himself from the universal wisdom, man would become nothing; it is his business in thinking, as in acting and in moral behaviour, to surrender himself to the One Living essence that “nourishes” him and is the Mind and Law of the world (frr. 91, 92, 100, 103).

But the soul itself is also a portion of the universal Fire that in the perpetual variation of its form of being has been encompassed by the body and become entangled in corporeality. Here we no longer have the rigid, unmediated contrast between “Body” and “Soul” such as it appeared from the standpoint of the theologian. The elements of the body, water and earth, have themselves arisen and perpetually arise out of the fire which changes into all other things, and into which everything else changes (fr. 22). So it is the soul itself, the creative fire, which creates the body. “Soul,” i.e. Fire, unceasingly turns itself into the lower elements; there is no contrast between them, and it is but a continual flux of transition.

While it is enclosed in the body the soul is still affected by unceasing change. In this it is like everything else. Nothing in the world can for a single moment preserve the parts which compose it unaltered; the perpetual movement and alteration of its being constitute its life. The sun itself, the greatest fire-body, becomes another sun every day (fr. 32). So, too, the soul, though distinct from the body and a self-existing substance, yet is a substance that never remains like itself. In unceasing alteration of its material substance, its contents are perpetually being transposed. It loses its fire of life in the lower elements; it absorbs fresh fire from the living Fire of the universe that surrounds it. There can be no question of the permanent identity of the soul, of the spiritual personality, with itself. What in the unbroken process of upward and downward straining seems to maintain itself as a single person, is in reality a series of souls and 369 personalities, one taking the place of another and ousting and being ousted in turn.

Thus, even while it is in life, the soul is perpetually dying—but to live again; ever supplementing the departing soul-life or supplying its place with another. So long as it can recruit itself from the surrounding World-Fire, so long the individual lives. Separation from the source of all life, the living and universal fire of the world, would be death for it. The soul may temporarily lose its life-giving contact with the “common world”: this happens in sleep and dreaming which enclose it in their own world (frr. 94, 95), and this is already a partial death to it. Sometimes, too, the soul has a tendency to transform itself to a humidity not always made good by fresh fire; the drunkard has a “moist soul” (fr. 73). Finally, there comes the moment when the soul of man cannot any longer repair the loss of the living fire which is taken from it in the perpetual alteration of its matter. Then it dies; death carries off the last of the series of living fires which in their continuity made up the human soul.16

But in Herakleitos’ world there is no such thing as death in the absolute sense—an end followed by no beginning, an unconditional cessation of becoming. “Death” is for him only a point where one condition of things gives way to another; a relative “not-being”, involving death for one but simultaneously bringing birth and life for another (frr. 25, [64], 66, 67). Death, just as much as life, is for him a positive thing. “Fire lives the death of earth, and air lives the death of fire; water lives the death of air, and earth the death of water” (fr. 25). The One that is in all things is at once dead and alive (fr. 78), immortal and mortal (fr. 67); a perpetual “death and becoming” agitates it. So, too, the “death” of man must be the exit from one positive state of things, and the entry into another, also positive, condition. Death occurs for man when the “soul” is no longer within him. Only the body is then left; alone and by itself it is no better than dung (fr. 85). But the soul—what becomes of that? It must have altered; it was fire, but now it has descended on the “Way downwards” and become water—to become earth after that. So it must happen to all fire. In death the fire in man “goes out” (fr. 77). “It is death for the souls to become water” says Herakleitos clearly enough (fr. 68).17 The soul must tread this path at last, and treads it willingly; change is for the soul its delight and refreshment (fr. 83). The soul has then changed itself into the elements of the body, has lost itself in the body. 370

But it cannot rest permanently in this transformation. “For the souls it is death to become water; for the water it is death to become earth. And yet from earth comes water; and from water, soul” (fr. 68). Thus, in the restless up and down of becoming, in the “Way upwards” the soul reconstitutes itself out of the lower elements. But not that soul which had formerly animated the particular individual and of whose complete self-identity in the midst of the influx of the Fire-spirit there could be no question even during the life of the body. The inquiry after an individual immortality or even a continued existence of the separate soul could hardly have had any meaning at all for Herakleitos. Nor can he have admitted it under the form of the “transmigration of the soul”.18 It is quite certain that Herakleitos can never have distinctly asserted the changeless persistence of the individual human soul in the midst of the unbroken stream of becoming in which all fixity is nothing but an illusion of the senses. But it is also incredible that, in despite of his own fundamental principles, he even admitted the possibility of this popular view with an indulgence quite foreign to his nature.19 What could have tempted him to do so? We are told20 that it was from the mysteries that he adopted this opinion which was one of their most important doctrines. Herakleitos, however, only casts an occasional glance at the mysteries and what might be called their “doctrine” (just as he glanced at other prominent manifestations of the excited religious life of his time21); and he does so in order to harmonize their teaching with his own—a result which he achieves rather by imposing an interpretation than by patiently eliciting one. He demonstrates that the mysteries might be harmonized with his own doctrine,22 which seemed to him able to explain all the phenomena of the world; that contrariwise he ever sought to set his own teaching in harmony with that of the mysteries, or that the latter had shown him the way to his thought, or could ever have tempted him to set foot outside his own self-chosen path—of this there is not a scrap of evidence to be had.

The individual in its isolation has, for Herakleitos, neither value nor importance: to persist in this isolation (if it had been possible) would have seemed to him a crime.23 The Fire is for him indestructible and immortal as a totality, not as divided into individual particles, but only as the one Universal Mind that transforms itself into all things and draws all things back again into itself. The soul of man has a claim to immortality as an emanation of this universal Reason, 371 and shares the immortality which belongs to it. So, too, the soul, even when it has lost itself in the elements, finds itself again. Between “want” and “satisfaction” (frr. 24, 36), this process of becoming has its perpetual being. A day will come when the Fire will “overtake” everything (fr. 26); God will then be utterly by himself—all in all. But that is not the purpose of this world; here change, becoming and passing away will never end. Nor should they end; the “Strife” (fr. 43) which has created the world, and ever fashions it anew, is the most inward nature of the All-living which it perpetually stirs to insatiable desire of becoming. For the desire and refreshment of all things is Change (frr. 72, 83), the coming and going in the interplay of Becoming.

It is the precise opposite of a quietistic mood that speaks from the whole teaching of Herakleitos. His voice is a trumpet call that grows louder and louder as his lofty and majestic spirit with ever-increasing intensity proclaims prophet-like the last word of wisdom. He knows well that it is only labour that can give meaning to rest, and hunger to satisfaction; only sickness can call forth the desire of health (fr. 104). That is the law of the world which binds together the opposing contraries, each of which is engendered from the last, with an inward and complete necessity. He bows before it and assents to it. For him the fixity of the soul in a Blessedness that was without activity and without change—even if such were thinkable24—would not have seemed a possible goal of desire.

§ 4

Even before the days of Herakleitos the torch of philosophic inquiry had been borne from the coasts of Ionia to the West by Xenophanes of Kolophon who in a life of adventure had wandered as far as Southern Italy and Sicily. For his fiery temperament the most subtle reflection was turned into life and experience, and the one enduring source of Being to which he ever directed his gaze became the universal Divinity that is all perception and thought, that tirelessly embraces all things in its thought and intelligence, and, without beginning or end, perpetually remains the same with itself. What Xenophanes had to say about this God which for him is the same as the world, became the basis for the elaborated doctrine of the Eleatic school which, in declared opposition to Herakleitos,25 denied all possibility of movement, becoming, alteration, division of the One into Many, to the one absolute Being that completely and entirely occupies Space, is raised 372 above all development, whether temporal or spatial, and remains perpetually enclosed in itself in absolute self-sufficiency.

For this view the whole multiplicity of things that presses itself upon sense-perception is an illusion. Deceptive also is the apparent existence of a multiplicity of animated beings, just as the whole of nature is an illusion. It was not “Nature”, the content of actual experience, that provided the starting-point of the philosophy of Parmenides. Without any assistance from experience, simply by the pure logical deductions to be made from a single fundamental concept (that of “Being”), which was to be grasped only by the understanding, this philosophy claimed to arrive at the whole content of its teaching. For the philosophic scientists of Ionia the soul also had been a part of nature and the science of the soul a department of the science of nature; and this inclusion of the psychical within the physical was the peculiarity in their doctrine of the soul which distinguished it from the ordinary popular psychology. When, however, the whole of Nature was to be ruled out of account as a subject of scientific knowledge, the derivation of psychology from physiology had to be given up as well. These aphysici26 were logically debarred from holding any doctrine of the soul.

With a complaisance that is remarkable in view of the uncompromising logical vigour with which they deduced their main theory and based it on abstract, super-sensual knowledge, the Eleatics conceded so much at least to the region of appearance and the pressure of sense-perception that, although they did not deduce from their own fundamental conceptions a physical theory of multifarious appearance and its development, yet, side by side with their rigid doctrine of being, in unjustified and unjustifiable relation with it, they did in fact put forward such a theory. Xenophanes, himself, had already in the same way offered a physical theory of limited and relative validity. Parmenides in the second part of his doctrinal poem, developed, “in deceptive adornment of words,” not an authoritative statement of the true nature of being, but “human opinions” of becoming and creation in the world of multiplicity. This, too, must be the standpoint of the physiological doctrines put forward by Zeno of Elea, the boldest dialectician who upheld the doctrine of the motionless All-One. In the course of such a physiology, and with the same implied reservations, the Eleatic philosophers dealt also with the nature and origin of the soul. Their physical doctrine was framed entirely on the lines of the older type of 373 natural philosophy, and they regarded the relation of the spiritual to the corporeal from exactly the same point of view as their predecessors had done. For Parmenides (146 ff, Mull. = fr. 16 Diels) the mind (νόος) of man depends for its existence upon the mixture of two ingredients of which everything, including its body, is composed. These ingredients are the “Light” and the “Night” (the Warm and the Cold, Fire and Earth). What is intellectually active is, even in mankind, the “nature of his limbs”; the character of his thought is determined by the one of the two elements which preponderates in the individual. Even the dead man (because he still has a body) has feeling and sensation; but these powers are deserted by the warm and the fiery and given over to the cold, the dark, and silence. All that is has some capacity of knowledge.27—It would be impossible to condemn the “soul” to corporeality more completely than is here done by the bold philosopher of abstract Reason, who at the same time denied so unconditionally all validity to sense-perception. The soul is evidently no longer an independent substance but a mere resultant of material mixture, a function of elements in composition. For Zeno, too, the “soul” in the same way was an exactly equal mixture of the four elementary properties of matter, the Warm, the Cold, the Dry, and the Wet.28

It is, therefore, startling, in the face of these utterances, to find that Parmenides also said about the “soul” that the deity that rules the world “at one time, sends it out of the Invisible into the Visible, and at another time back again”.29 Here, the soul is no longer a condition arising from the mixture of material elements, but an independent being credited with pre-existence before its entry into the “Visible”, i.e. before its entry into the life of the body, and also with a continued existence after its separation from the realm of visibility—and indeed, with a sojourn, several times repeated, in those two worlds. Did Parmenides distinguish between this independently existing soul and the being that perceives in the mixture of the elements and as mind (νόος) thinks, but whose existence is bound up with the elements and the body they together compose? It is obvious at any rate that in what he says of the psyche, and its alternate life in the visible and the invisible, Parmenides is not speaking as a physiologist, but as an adherent of the Orphic-Pythagorean theosophy. While reserving for himself his knowledge of “Truth” and unalterable Being, he could select as he liked among the “opinions of men” when speaking only hypothetically. In his doctrine as a practical teacher with an ethical purpose 374 in view he preferred to adopt the conceptions of the Pythagoreans with whom he lived in close association.30

§ 5

Ionic physiology had fixed its attention on Nature as a whole, and on the phenomena of life displayed in every nook and corner of the universe; man, as a mere ripple on the surface of the ocean of becoming and taking form, was almost entirely neglected. A philosophy that made it its main effort to learn the nature of man, and, still further, with the knowledge so acquired, to show man the way and purpose of his living, had to try other paths.

This is what Pythagoras of Samos did. What he called his “Philosophy”31 was in essence a practical effort. Plato32 tells us that Pythagoras was so peculiarly honoured because he discovered a special mode of directing one’s life. A distinct way of living, formed on a religious and ethical basis, was his creation. How far his “polymathy”,33 which indubitably contained already the substance of Pythagorean science, may have become a system in his hands, is not distinctly known. What is certain is that in Kroton he formed a society which, together with the strict rules in accordance with which he organized their manner of life for his associates, eventually spread far and wide among the Achæan and Dorian cities of the Italian “great Greece”. In this society a profound conception of human life and its purposes was given practical and visible application, and to have brought this about must be regarded as the act and the special service of Pythagoras. The fundamental conception of this way of life, except in so far as it may have contained from the beginning a mystic philosophy of numbers, was by no means the special invention of Pythagoras; the new and potent feature which he introduced was the force of personality which was able to give life and body to the ideal. What was apparently lacking in similar movements in ancient Greece was now provided by a great man who for his followers was a pattern and an example, a leader inspiring imitation and emulation. His personality became a centre to which a whole community was attracted by a sort of inward necessity. Before very long this founder of a community appeared to his followers as a superman, unique and incomparable among all other men. Some lines of Empedokles,34 who did not himself belong to the Pythagorean society, bear witness to this fact, and to his followers Pythagoras became in memory a saint or even a god in human form, and they related legends of the miracles he had 375 performed. For us it is difficult to form a connected picture or trace the real features of the man beneath the dazzling halo of the saint.

The teaching which enabled him to knit together his followers in a far closer bond of fellowship in living than had been achieved by any Orphic sect, must still in the main have coincided with what in the Orphic doctrine immediately related to the religious life. He too pointed out the way of salvation for the soul and his doctrine of the soul formed the central feature of his philosophy.

So far as our scanty and dubious evidence serves us, the substance of the Pythagorean doctrine of the soul may be stated as follows.

The soul of man, once more regarded entirely as the “double” of the visible body and its powers, is a daimonic immortal being35 that has been cast down from divine heights and for a punishment is confined within the “custody” of the body.36 It has no real relationship with the body; it is not what may be called the personality of the individual visible man; any soul may dwell in any body.37 When death separates it from the body the soul must first endure a period of purgation in Hades38 and then return again to the upper world. The souls invisibly swarm about the living;39 in the tremulous motion of motes in the sunbeam the Pythagoreans saw the movement of the “souls”.40 The whole air is full of souls.41 Upon earth, however, the soul must seek out another body, and this may be repeated many times. So it wanders a long way, passing through many bodies of men and beasts.42 Very ancient tradition43 said that Pythagoras himself remembered the earlier incarnations through which his soul had passed (and of which he gave information for the instruction and warning of the faithful). Here, too, the doctrine of the soul’s transmigrations took on an edificatory character in a religious and ethical sense. The conditions of the new incarnations and the character of the new lifetime are governed by the performances of the past life. What the soul has done in the past, that it must suffer in its own person when it becomes a man again.44

It is thus of primary importance both for the present life and for future incarnations to know and to follow the methods of salvation delivered by Pythagoras to his followers. The society points out the way to its company of the faithful in purifications and initiations, in a “Pythagorean life”45 entirely organized with the same purpose in view—to “follow the god”.46 Much of the old ritual symbolism that had been 376 in use for ages must have been incorporated in this Pythagorean asceticism.47 The theological ethic of asceticism was essentially negative in character, and here, too, it meant nothing more than a protecting of the soul against the attacks of external evil that might come and pollute it.48 All that matters is to keep the soul pure: no need for moral reformation—only that it be kept free from external evil. The fact of immortality, the soul’s perpetuity, stands fast and unalterable; as it was from the beginning so it must ever be and live.49 To lift it at last altogether from this earthly existence and restore it to a free divine state of being—that, at least, was the final goal.50

The practical philosophy of the Pythagorean school is founded upon a conception of the soul as absolutely distinct from “nature”, and, in fact, opposed to it. It is thrust into the life of nature, but it is in a foreign world where it preserves its self-enclosed individuality intact and from which it escapes into independence to undergo ever-renewed incarnations. Its origin is supra-mundane, and so, too, when liberated from the shackles of natural life it will one day be enabled to return to a supernatural existence as a spirit.

Not one of these ideas is achieved by a process of scientific thinking. Physiology, the science of the world and all the phenomena of the world could never lead to the conception of the soul’s separateness from nature and its life. It was not from Greek science, but neither was it, as ancient tradition would have us believe, from foreign lands, that Pythagoras got his belief in the fallen nature of the soul, descended from supra-mundane heights to this earthly nature, and in its long pilgrimage through many bodies on the completion of which it is to be free at last, through purifications and initiations. He may have owed much to his travels; from his stay in Egypt, perhaps, he may (like Demokritos after him) have derived the stimulus to his mathematical discoveries and much else besides of the “learning” which Herakleitos ascribes to him. His doctrine of the soul, on the other hand, simply reproduces in essentials the fanciful ideas of the old popular psychology, as it had been enlarged and transformed by the theologi and the purification priests. Tradition was right in its estimation of his character, when it set him in this company and made him the pupil of Pherekydes of Syros, the theologos.51

It can hardly be doubted that Pythagoras himself laid the foundations of the Pythagorean science—the doctrine of the creation of the world and perhaps, too, the interpretation of 377 all being and becoming in the world as due to the action and relation of numbers, as the essential basis of all things—all this, at least in elementary outline, must have been handed on by him to his followers. After his death the two sides of his doctrine continued to develop for a period in loose conjunction side by side; the guidance of life by the mystical and religious philosophy (though this, indeed, was hardly capable of further development), and the scientific interest which grew into a fairly elaborate system. Indeed, with the break-up of the Pythagorean society and its bifurcation in the fifth century, the scattered members of the band now brought into touch with the scientific studies of other communities and cut off from the ideal of the Pythagorean life which could only be realized within the limits of the society, were forced to continue their scientific studies in solitude. Pythagorean science, evolving, as it did, a picture of the world as a whole, no less than Ionian physiology deprived the soul of the unique and, indeed, antagonistic relation to nature that Pythagorean theology had given it. Philolaos, conceiving it in a manner strictly conforming to the mathematical and musical theory, called the soul a Harmony of contrary elements united together in the body.52 If, however, the soul is only a binding-together of opposites to unity and harmony, then it must, when death breaks up the conjunction of the united elements, itself pass away and perish.53 It is difficult to imagine how the older Pythagorean faith in the soul as an independent being dwelling in the body and surviving it—in the immortal soul, in fact—could be accommodated to this conception. Can it be that the two conceptions were not originally intended to be brought into conjunction at all, or were not meant to exclude each other? Ancient tradition spoke of different groups among the followers of Pythagoras who had also different objects, methods, and aims of study; nor shall we be inclined to deny all credibility to this tradition when we observe how little, in fact, Pythagorean science and Pythagorean faith had to do with each other.54

And yet we have to admit that the same Philolaos, who described the soul as a harmony of its body, also spoke of the soul as an independent and imperishable being. We may well doubt whether these two contradictory utterances can really come from the same man and apply to the same object; though the same man might really speak in varying language about the one soul if he recognized different parts of the soul of which different truths held good; and this was, in fact, first suggested by the Pythagorean school.55 378

§ 6

Empedokles of Akragas did not belong to the Pythagorean school (it lost its external unity in his time); but he approaches Pythagorean doctrine so closely in his opinions and teaching about the soul of man, its problems and destinies, that there can be no doubt about Pythagorean influence upon the formation of his convictions on these points. His many-sided activities also included the study of natural science and he took up the researches of the Ionic Physiologists with zeal and a marked aptitude for the observation and synthesis of natural phenomena. But the roots of his peculiar individuality—the pathos which moved and agitated him—lay in a practical activity far removed from scientific investigation and representing a brilliant resuscitation in a very different age of the character and practice of the mantis, the purification-priest and magical-physician of the sixth century. The introduction to his “Purifications”56 gives a picture of his triumphal progress from city to city, crowned with ribbons and garlands, adored as a god and questioned by thousands: “Where is the road to healing?” He intends to give his disciple Pausanias the results of his own experience and to teach him all his remedies for disease and their virtues, the arts of stilling the winds and stirring them up, producing drought or rain, raising the dead from Hades.57 He himself boasted of being a magician and his pupil Gorgias saw him “do magic”.58 Through him those efforts of the Kathartes, the expiation-priest and seer, which an earlier and already distant-seeming time had honoured as the highest form of wisdom, at last achieved a voice and literary expression—an expression given them with the fullest personal experience of the truth of their claims by one who was convinced of their power to control nature and sure of the godlike status of the man who had reached these almost superhuman heights of empire over nature. As a god, an immortal no longer subject to death, he passed through all the land—so Empedokles himself tells us.59 He may have won credit in many places. He did not, indeed, found an ordered society of disciples and adherents, a sect: this does not seem to have been his intention. But he alone as a unique and unparalleled being, a self-confident personality of the greatest force and weight impressed himself masterfully both as mystic and politician upon the mundane affairs of his contemporaries and pointed the way beyond time and all things temporal to a blessed and divine state as the final goal of human life. He 379 must have made a profound impression upon the men among whom he lived,60 though he disappeared from their midst like a comet, and left no permanent traces of his presence behind him. Many legends still witness to the astonishment that his appearance among men provoked, more especially those legends that in varying form related his end.61 They are all expressions of the same belief: that he, as his own verses had foretold, in his departure did not have to suffer death; he had vanished, “translated” body and soul together to an everlasting divine life, as once Menelaos had been and so many great figures of the ancient days, and even a few Heroes of more recent times.62 Once more the ancient conception shows in this story that it still lives on: immortal life can only be obtained by undissolved union of the psyche with its body. Such a legend hardly did justice to Empedokles’ own idea. When he claimed to be a god who would never die he certainly did not mean that his psyche would remain for ever bound to his body. On the contrary, he thought that in “death”, as men63 call it, it would be freed from this last corporeal envelope64 and never again have to enter into a body, but would live for ever in freedom and divinity. His conception of the conscious after-life of the psyche was as different as it was possible for it to be from the Homeric conception on which that translation legend was based.

Empedokles united in his own person to an astonishing degree the most sober attempts at a study of nature that was scientific according to its lights, and quite irrational beliefs and theological speculations. Occasionally the scientific impulse passes over to influence even the world of his beliefs;65 but as a rule theology and natural science exist side by side in his mind quite independently. As a physiologist he inherited the already extensive and variously developed stock of ideas belonging to the older generations of inquirers and thinkers. He himself was able to unite conceptions derived from the most different sources into an original whole that satisfied himself at least. Becoming and passing-away, all qualitative change, were denied by him as by the Eleatics, but the permanent substance of Being is for him no single indivisible unity. There are four “roots” of things, the four bodies of elements, which in this division are for the first time clearly distinguished. It is the mixture and separation of the essentially indivisible elements that cause the appearance of becoming and perishing; and those two processes are caused by the two forces—clearly distinguished from the elements—of attraction and repulsion, 380 Love and Hate, which in the creative process struggle and in turn overmaster each other until at last, in the final victory of one of the two forces, all things are either united or divided; in either case an organic world ceases to exist. The present state of the universe is one in which “Love”, the tendency to amalgamation of differences, is prevailing; when this tendency is completed, there will be an absolute levelling-out of all distinction; a result which Empedokles, a quietist in his scientific studies as well, regards as the most desirable end.

In this world, then, that experiences only mechanical movement and change, and from whose evolution Empedokles by an ingenious turn is able to exclude all idea of purpose, there are also to be found souls; or rather psychical powers which grow up entirely within it. Sense-perception is expressly distinguished from the capacity of thought by Empedokles.66 The former takes place when each of the elements, from the mixture of which the perceiving being has its origin, comes into contact with, and so becomes aware of, the same elements in the object perceived, through the “passages” that connect the interior of the body with the exterior.67 “Thinking” has its seat in the heart’s blood, where the elements and their powers are mixed most equally. Or rather this blood actually is thinking and the power of thought;68 the material substance and its vital functions thus also for Empedokles completely coincide. Plainly, nothing in the nature of a permanent substantial “soul” is here intended by the thinking-power of the “mind”, but rather a capacity of bringing together and unifying the individual sense-activities;69 a capacity no less than the individual powers of sensation bound up with the elements, the senses, and the body.70 With the varying constitution of the body, they too vary.71 Both capacities, that of sense-perception, and that of thought, as vital expressions of the matter that is combined together in the organic creature, are present in all organisms; in men, in beasts, and even in plants.72

If we give the name of “soul”73 to the sum of these psychical powers—a name generally reserved for the common permanent substratum of the changing psychical activities—we cannot avoid concluding, in accordance with the logic of this philosopher, that the “soul” must be perishable. With the death and destruction of the individual the elementary parts that go to compose him are disunited, and the soul which in this case is nothing but the highest resultant of that composition, must itself disappear with their dissolution—as it had come into being with their union.74 381

It might seem as if Empedokles himself was as far as possible removed from drawing such conclusions from his own premises. No one speaks more distinctly and forcibly of the spiritual, individual beings that dwell in men and in other creatures of nature as well. They are regarded by him as Daimones fallen to the corporeal world, who have to pass through many different forms of life till they may at last hope for release.

In the introduction to his poem on Nature, he describes, from his own experience, and the information of the Daimones who had once led his soul down to this earthly Vale of Grief,75 how by an ancient decree of the gods and the compulsion of Necessity, every daimon that has “polluted” itself by drinking the blood or eating the flesh of living beings,76 or has broken its oath,77 is banished for a long period78 from the company of the blessed. It is thrust down to the “Meadow of Disaster”, into the realm of contradiction,79 the cave of misery upon this earth, and must now wander through many “painful ways of life”80 in changing incarnations. “Thus, I myself was once a boy and also a maiden, a bush, a bird, and a voiceless fish in the salty flood” (ll. 11, 12 = fr. 117). This daimon that in expiation of its crime must wander through the forms of men, beasts, and even plants, is evidently no other than what popular speech and that of theologians as well called the “psyche”, the soul-spirit.81 In all essentials though perhaps in clearer language, Empedokles merely repeated82 what the adherents of the doctrine of Transmigration had long told of its divine origin, its fall and penal banishment in earthly bodies. So, too, when as teacher of the means that bring salvation, he tells how more gracious forms and conditions of life may be obtained in the series of births, till at last complete release from rebirth is achieved,83 Empedokles follows in the footsteps of the purification-priests and theologi of old. It is a matter of keeping the daimon within us free from the pollutions that bind it fast to the earthly life. To this end the methods of religious purification are most efficacious; Empedokles respects them quite as much as did the old Kathartai. It is necessary to keep the internal daimon far removed from every kind of “sin”,84 more particularly from the drinking of blood and the eating of meat which must necessarily involve the murder of kinsmen daimones which are dwelling in the slaughtered beasts.85 By purification and asceticism (which here again dispenses with a positive form of morality aimed at reforming the man) a gradual process to purer and better births is achieved;86 in the end the persons thus reborn in a purified condition 382 become seers, poets, doctors, and are the leaders of mankind.87 Finally, when they have emerged superior even to these highest steps of earthly life, they return to the other immortals, and become themselves gods released from human misery, escaping death, and now indestructible.88 Empedokles regard himself as one who has reached the last stage,89 and points out to others the way up to it.

Between what Empedokles the mystic here tells us of the soul that was once living its divine life, but has since been plunged into the world of the elements, though it is not for ever bound to them; and what Empedokles the physiologist teaches of the psychical powers that dwell in the elements and are bound to the body that is composed of the elements and perish with their dissolution, there seems to be a hopeless contradiction. And yet if we are to grasp the whole truth of what Empedokles means, we must neither leave on one side half of what he says,90 nor yet by well-meaning interpretation seek to bring the philosopher into harmony with himself,91 when he clearly speaks with two different voices. The two voices say different things, and yet in the mind of Empedokles, there is no contradiction in what they say, for they are dealing with totally distinct objects. The psychical powers and faculties of feeling and perception which are functions of matter, born in matter, and determined by it, together with the thinking faculty that is no other than the heart’s blood of men—these neither make up the character and content of that soul-spirit which dwells in men, beasts, and flowers, nor are they expressions of its activity. They are entirely bound up with the elements and their combination, and in man they are joined to the body and its organs; they are the powers and faculties of this body, and not of a special and invisible entity, the soul. The soul-daimon is not made out of the elements, nor is it for ever chained to them. It enters as a stranger into this world in which the only permanent component parts are92 the four elements, and the two forces of Love and Hate; and it enters it from another world, the world of gods and spirits, to its detriment; the elements cast it about from one to another “and they all hate it” (fr. 115, 12, l. 35 M.). This living soul, with its independent existence, that thus enters into foreign and hostile surroundings, only enters into such earthly creatures as already possess senses, feeling and perception, together with reason or the faculty of thinking, the crowning manifestation of their material union. It is, however, as little identical with these psychical faculties as it is with the mixture of elementary matter or, in 383 the case of men, with the heart’s blood. It exists, unmixed and incapable of mixture, alongside the body and its faculties which indeed only have life—“what men call life”—(fr. 15, 2, l. 117 M.) when united with it. When they are separated from it they fall into dissolution; not so the soul, which continues its journey and visits other dwelling places, and does not share in their dissolution.

This peculiar dualistic doctrine reflects the two sides of Empedokles’ own mental activity. He probably intended in this way to unite the views of both the physiologists and the theologians. To the Greeks, such a twofold division of the inner life may have seemed less surprising than it does to us. The conception of a “soul” that as an independent, unique, and self-contained spiritual being dwells within the body, while the body does not receive its intellectual faculties of perceiving, feeling, willing and thinking from the soul, but exercises these by its own power—this conception agrees at bottom with the ideas of popular psychology that are as a rule described or implied in the Homeric poems.93 The only difference is that these ideas of poet and populace are elaborated and defined by the speculations of theologians and philosophers. How deeply impressed upon the Greek mind such conceptions, derived eventually from Homer, actually were, can be measured by the fact that a conception of the twofold origin of psychic activity, its twofold nature and sphere of action, closely related to that of Empedokles, is continually recurring in more advanced stages of philosophy. It occurs not merely in Plato, but even in Aristotle, who in addition to the “soul” that directs and expresses itself in the physico-organic nature of man, recognizes another being of divine descent that enters into man “from without”, the “mind” (νοῦς) which is separable both from the soul and from the body, and is alone destined to survive the death of the man to which it was assigned.94 In the doctrine of Empedokles, too, it is a stranger-guest from the distant land of gods that enters into man to give him a soul. This being is indeed far below the “mind” of Aristotle in philosophic importance; nevertheless, in the introduction of this Stranger into the world composed of the elements and vital faculties, a sense of the absolute uniqueness of spirit, its unlikeness to everything material, its essential distinctness from matter, finds expression, if only in a limited theological fashion.

In the light of such theological considerations, the soul seems also to Empedokles something essentially distinct from its prototype, the Homeric psyche, which after its separation 384 from the body passes to the twilight of a shadowy dream-life. To him, the soul is of divine race, too noble for this world of visibility, and only when it escapes from this world does it seem to him to begin its real and full life. Though confined within the body, it has its separate existence there; it has no concern with the everyday business of perception and sensation—not even with that of thinking, which is nothing else but the heart’s blood. But it is active in the “higher” mode of knowledge, in ecstatic inspiration;95 to it alone belongs the profound insight of the philosopher who is enabled to pass beyond the limits of mere experience and sense-perception, and behold the totality of the universe in its true nature.96 To it alone apply all the requirements of ethical and religious systems—duties in this higher sense belong only to the soul; it is something in the nature of a “conscience”. Its highest duty is to free itself from the unhallowed union with the body, and the elements of this world; the rules of purification and asceticism refer solely to it.

Between this soul-daimon that yearns after its divine home, and the world of the elements, there exists no inward bond or necessary connexion. And yet, since they have become implicated in each other’s existence, a certain parallelism exists between them in character and destiny. In the mechanically moved world, too, the separate and particular phenomena tend back again towards their starting point, the inwardly coherent Unity from which they once took their origin. A day will come when, after all struggle has been done away, “Love” alone will have absolute rule; and this means for the poet—who in his description even of this world of mechanical attraction and repulsion interpolates half-realized ethical concepts97—a state of absolute goodness and happiness. If there is no longer any world, then, until another one is created, no soul-daimon can be bound any more to the individual organisms of a world. Have they then all returned to the blessed communion of the immortal gods? It appears that not even the gods and daimones (and so not the spirits enclosed in world as “souls”) are regarded by Empedokles as having everlasting life. “Long-living” is the name he repeatedly applies to them; he never distinctly ascribes eternal life to them.98 They, too, shall for a period enjoy “the happiness of profoundest peace” until, just as the elements and forces are drawn into the unity of the Sphairos, they, too, come together in the unity of the godlike Universal Mind, thence at a new world-creation to appear once more as individual separate being.99 385

§ 7

Empedokles took a fully developed “hylozoic” system (which in itself, with its introduction of the motive forces of Conflict and Love, already betrayed a latent dualism) and attempted to combine with it an extreme form of spiritualist teaching. His attempt illustrates very clearly the observation that a philosophic science of nature in itself could never lead to the establishment of the axiom that the individual “soul” after its separation from the body continues to exist, still less that it is indestructible. Any one who still felt it necessary to assert that axiom could find support for it only by allowing physiology to be either overwhelmed by theological speculation, or else supplemented by it in the manner attempted by Empedokles.

Such an attempt to reconcile the irreconcilable can have found few adherents among those who were accessible to scientific ideas, nor was it likely to tempt the physiological philosophy from the path which it had hitherto followed. Soon after Empedokles, and in essentials hardly influenced by him, Anaxagoras and Demokritos developed those doctrinal systems which were the last products of the independent speculation of Ionia. Demokritos was the founder and completer of the atomic doctrine according to which there exist “in reality” only the indivisible, minutest material bodies—which, while qualitatively indistinguishable, yet differ in shape, position, and arrangement in space as well as in bulk and weight—and empty space. He was obliged to seek for the “soul” (which to the materialist may easily present itself as being a separate, substantial, self-existent thing) among those minutest bodies out of which the whole fabric of the world of appearance is built up. The soul is that which confers movement upon the inherently motionless collections of bodies. It is composed of the round and smooth atoms which, in the universal condition of unrest that keeps all the atoms in agitation, are the most easily moved, for they offer least resistance to change of position, and can most easily penetrate others. These atoms compose fire and the soul. It is the soul-atom—one being inserted between every two of the other atoms100—which gives these their movement; and it is from all the soul-atoms uniformly disposed throughout the whole body that the body gets its movement, whence also (though it must be admitted in an unintelligible manner) comes the power of perception, which equally depends on movement, and the thought arising thence, of this same body. 386 During the life-time of the individual body, the continuance of the soul-atoms is secured by the breathing which continually replaces the smooth soul-particles that are as continually being expelled from the whole atom-complex by the pressure of the surrounding atmosphere. The breathing is always drawing in fresh soul-stuff from the air which is full of floating soul-atoms, and supplies it to the body. A time comes, however, when the breathing refuses this function, and death occurs, which is simply the insufficient supply of these moving and animating atoms.101 With the coming of death, there is an end to the union of the atoms, whose amalgamation had formed the particular living organism. Neither the soul-atoms nor any of the other atoms are destroyed; they do not alter in kind; but from the loose state of aggregation which even in the living body hardly amounted to an absolute unity to which a single common name could be applied—from this they now escape entirely. It is scarcely possible to see how, on this view of what essentially constitutes mental and vital phenomena, as a mere resultant of the separate and individual activities of individual and disconnected bodies, the unity of the living organism and the spiritual entity could ever come into being. It is even more evident that a unified “soul” could not possibly continue to exist after the dissolution which takes place at death of the atoms that in their union made up the organism. And, in fact, the soul-atoms disperse;102 they return whence they came into the restless mass of world-stuff. The human individual, in this view of the case, perishes in death entirely.103 The materials out of which he was shaped and composed are indestructible, and reserved for future construction; but his personality—the invisible personality, the “soul”, just as much as the visible—has but a single existence strictly limited to its one appearance in time. The continued existence of the soul after death, an immortality in whatever manner the thing may be conceived, is here for the first time in the history of Greek thought, expressly denied. The Atomist, with the candid precision that distinguishes him, draws the necessary consequences of his premises.

Anaxagoras strikes out a path almost directly opposed to this materialist doctrine. As the first decisive and conscious dualist among Greek philosophers, he takes the material substratum of being, the inexhaustible many of distinctly characterized and distinctly separate “Seeds” of things—which are nevertheless indistinguishably intermingled with each other—and sets over against them a force which he 387 obviously did not mean to derive from them, to which he gives a name usually attached to the faculty of thought in man, and which in any case he thought of as analogous to that faculty.104 This “Mind”, simple, unmixed and unchangeable, is given such titles and adjectives that it is impossible to mistake the effort of Anaxagoras to think of it as something distinct from everything material, and in fact, absolutely immaterial and incorporeal.105 It is at once power of thought and force of will; at the creation of the world it gives the first circular impulse to the intrinsically motionless lump of matter; the creation of distinct forms in accordance with a conscious purpose is begun by it—though the carrying out of this purpose is indeed to be completed in accordance with pure mechanical laws without the interference of “Mind”. This “Mind” that plans and orders but does not make the world, that with the conscious insight of its omniscient wisdom106 influences matter without being influenced in turn, that moves without being moved;107 set over against the multiplicity of things as an indivisible unity,108 “having nothing in common with anything outside itself”109 but entirely self-contained110—how shall we conceive of it otherwise than as an almost personified, transcendent divine power confronting the world of matter as something foreign to it, ruling the world from without by magical, not mechanical, means?

But this transcendent is also completely immanent. Wherever in this world life and independent movement are found, there, too, the mind as the source of life and movement must be active. “Mind rules all that has soul” says Anaxagoras.111 In saying this he has not indeed asserted the presence of “Mind” within the animated being nor yet identity of nature as between soul and mind. But when we hear that Mind “goes through all things,112 that in everything there is a part of all things, except of mind, and in some things of mind also”,113 that must imply the penetration of many associations of matter by mind (hardly any longer to be thought of as immaterial) whereby the previously asserted transcendency of mind seems to be given up. At any rate, as such associations in which is “Mind”, living and animated beings are regarded. It is in them that “Mind” is present in continual, equal creativeness, though in different degrees;114 indeed, Mind is or constitutes that very thing that we call the “soul” of a living being.115 Among these living beings, which exist upon the moon,116 as well as on earth, are not only men and beasts, but also plants.117 In all these “Mind” is active; without losing any of its purity or unity, it is mixed with them.118 388 How we are to conceive the omnipotent Mind, whose oneness and self-containedness has been so emphatically asserted, as nevertheless entering simultaneously into the infinity of individual being—that certainly remains obscure. It is clear, however, that having thus derived all animated being from the single World-Mind, Anaxagoras could not speak of the continued existence of individual, self-existent “souls” after the dissolution of the material concretions in which moving and animating “soul-force” had once lived. The view is definitely ascribed to him that separation from the body is also “the soul’s death”.119 Nothing, indeed, of the component parts that belong to the whole perishes, and no change in its nature takes place. So “Mind”, whose manifestations the “souls” were, maintains itself unaltered and undiminished; but after the dissolution of the united, which “the Hellenes” regard as its destruction,120 though the component parts of the individual remain, yet not that particular mixture in which the peculiarity of the individual was inherent—“Mind” remains, but not the soul . . .

Thus, the first distinct separation of the intellectual thinking principle from the material substance with which it was—not fused, much less identified, but—contrasted in sovereignty and independence, did not lead to the recognition of the indestructibility of the individual spirit.

Shall we say that the mental, self-moved, life-giving principle, whether set over against the material and corporeal or indivisibly united with it, is for the physiologist always something universal—that the essentially real is impersonal? For him the individual, the personality conscious of itself and of the outer world, can be nothing but a manifestation of the universal, whether the latter is regarded as fixed and at rest, or as a living process that untiringly develops itself, recruits itself, and reconstructs itself in ever renewed creations. The only permanent, unchanging reality is the universal, the essential and fundamentally real Nature which appears in all individual things, speaks out of their mouth, and, in reality, only works and lives in them. The individual human soul has its indestructibility only in its identity with the universal that represents itself in it. The individual forms of “appearance”, having no independence of their own, cannot permanently abide.

The view that imperishable life belongs to the individual soul could only be reached by a line of thought that took as a fact and held fast to it as something given that the individual spirit is a reality. (Its appearance and disappearance in the 389 midst of the one universe was indeed for the physiologists the true miracle, the problem never satisfactorily solved.) Such a belief in individuality, the belief in an independently existent individual substance that had never had a beginning and could therefore never have an end, was the contribution, however fancifully it might be expressed, of the theologians and the mystics. For them immortality, the power of substantive duration unlimited by time, was extended also to include the individual. The individual soul is for them a self-existent, individual, divine being, indestructible because it is divine.

Greek philosophy underwent many changes in the course of its speculations during the following ages; but exactly in proportion as it, to a greater or lesser degree, accepted theological elements or on the other hand rejected such elements, did it give fundamental support to the view of the soul’s immortality, or grudgingly admit it, or absolutely reject it.

NOTES TO CHAPTER XI

[1]   ψυχή = “life,” “concept of life,” in Homer (though not indeed used to denote psychical powers during lifetime): see above, pp. 30, 31. So, too, occasionally in the remains of the Iambic and Elegiac poets of the earliest period: Archil. 23; Tyrt. 10, 14; 11, 5; Sol. 13, 46; Thgn. 568 f., 730; (Hippon. 43, 1?). ψυχή = “life” in the proverbial phrase περὶ ψυχῆς τρεχεῖν (see Wessel. and Valck. on Hdt. vii, 57; Jacobs on Ach. Tat., p. 896). ψυχή frequently = “life” in the idiom of the Attic orators (see Meuss, Jahrb. f. Philol. 1889, p. 803).

[2]   See above, pp. 5, 30. Even the Homeric poems in one case show a slight uncertainty of language and of psychological conception when they use θυμός, the highest and most general of the powers of life dwelling within the visible and living man, in the sense of ψυχή, the double of the man who dwells as a lodger in his body, separate and taking no part in the ordinary business of his life. The θυμός (see above, chap. i, n. 57) is active during the man’s lifetime, is enclosed in the midriff (ἐν φρεσὶ θυμὸς) and when that is overtaken by death is itself overwhelmed (Ψ 104): on the arrival of death it leaves the body and perishes—while the ψυχή flies away intact. The distinction is clearly maintained, e.g. in λ 220 f.: “fire destroys the body” ἐπεί κεν πρῶτα λίπῃ λεύκ’ ὀστέα θυμός, ψυχὴ δ’ ἠύτ’ ὄνειρος ἀποπταμένη πεπότηται. θυμός and ψυχή therefore leave the body of the slain man simultaneously (θυμοῦ καὶ ψυχῆς κεκαδών Λ 334, φ 154); but in very different ways. The relation between them becomes, however, interchangeability in the single case when it is said of the θυμός that it in death will enter ἀπὸ μέλέων δόμον Ἄιδος εἴσω—Η 131; in reality this could only be said of that very different being, the ψυχή. (When a fainting-fit has passed over we do indeed hear, not that the ψυχή—though this it was that had left the man: see above, chap. i, n. 8—but that ἐς φρένα θυμὸς ἀγέρθη, X 475, ε 458, ω 349. This, however, is not a case of θυμός instead of ψυχή, but θυμός is merely an abbreviated form of the whole statement which would be in full: both θυμός and ψυχή have now returned into the man; cf. Ε 696. It is a kind of synecdoche.) In the line Η 131 we really, then, do have θυμός instead of ψυχή either as the result of a misunderstanding of the real meaning of the two words or merely through an oversight. But never (and this is the most essential point) do we have a case in Homer of the opposite exchange of significance: i.e. of ψυχή used in the sense θυμός (νόος, μένος, ἠτορ, etc.), as meaning the mental power and its activity in the living and waking man. Just this, however, and more than this, the sum and substance of all the mental powers in general, is what the word ψυχή means in the language of the philosophers (except those affected by religious tendencies). They left out of account altogether that spiritual double of mankind whom the popular psychology called the ψυχή, and were thus free to use the word to express the whole psychical content of the human individual. From the fifth century onwards we find the word ψυχή used commonly, and even regularly, in this sense in the vocabulary of non-philosophical poets and prose writers. Only theologians and poets, or philosophers of a theological tendency, continued to use the 391 word in its ancient and primitive sense. Indeed, when the separation of a spiritual being from the body of a man in death was being spoken of, ψυχή always continued to be the proper word for this sense even in popular language. (An extremely rare example of θυμός in this sense, comparable with Η 131, is [Arist.] Pepl. 61 Bgk.; θυμόν . . . αἰθὴρ λαμπρὸς ἔχει. In the corresponding epigram, Epigr. Gr. 41, we have ψυχήν.)

[3]   ἔνιοι, among them Choirilos of Samos: D.L. i, 24 (from Favorinus): Vors.4, i, p. 1, 21.

[4]   Arist., An. 1, 2, p. 405a, 20 f. “Aristotle and Hippias” ap. D.L. i, 24; Vors., p. 2, 1. τὰ φυτὰ ἔμψυχα ζῷα, Dox. 438a, 6, b, 1.

[5]   Metaphorical language: Θαλῆς ᾠήθη πάντα πλήρη θεῶν εἶναι, Arist., An. 1, 5, p. 411a, 8. τὸν κόσμον (ἔμψυχον καὶ) δαιμόνων πλήρη, D.L. i, 27; Dox. 301b, 2; Vors. p. 2, 20. Pl., Lg. 899 B, is an allusion to the θεῶν πλήρη πάντα (as Krische remarks, Theol. Lehr. d. Gr. Denker, p. 37). There is perhaps a half-mocking reference to the words in the saying attributed by anecdotal tradition to Herakleitos: εἶναι καὶ ἐνταῦθα θεούς (i.e. in his own hearth) Arist., PA. 1, 5, p. 645a, 17 ff. Hence Herakleitos himself was credited with the opinion of Thales in slightly altered form: πάντα ψυχῶν εἶναι καὶ δαιμόνων πλήρη, D.L. ix, 7 (Vors., p. 68, 29), in the first (and valueless) of the two lists of the doctrines of Herakl. there given.

[6]   Arist., Phys. 3, 4, p. 203b, 10–14. Dox. 559, 18. Vors., p. 17, 35.

[7]   Anaximander, fr. 2 Mull. Vors., p. 15, 26. That Anaximander declared the soul to be “like air” is an erroneous statement of Theodoret.: see Diels, Dox. 387b, 10 (Vors. 21, 5).

[8]   Anaximenes in Dox. 278a, 12 ff.; b, 8 ff. fr. 2 Diels.

[9]   Anaxim. calls τὸν ἀέρα θεόν, i.e. it has divine power: Dox. 302b, 5; 531a, 17, b, 1–2. Vors. 24, 18. This at least is to be understood in the same sense in which Anaximander is said to have called τὸ ἄπειρον, τὸ θεῖον (Arist., Phys. 3, 4, p. 203b, 13; Vors., p. 17, 35).

[10]   ἓν πάντα εἶναι, fr. 1 (Byw.); 50 (Diels).

[11]   Arist., An. 1, 2, p. 405a, 25 ff. Vors. 74, 30. Hkl. is also meant in p. 405a, 5. Dox. 471, 2 (Arius Didymus); 389a, 3 ff.

[12]   Arist., p. 405a. 25 ff. Hkl. fr. 68 (36 D.).

[13]   S.E., M. 7, 127, 129–31. Vors. 75, 14 ff.

[14]   ὁ θεός is both the Universal Fire, that transforms itself into the world, and at the same time its power (and λόγος: frr. 2 [1], 92 [2]): fr. 36 (67). τὸ πῦρ θεὸν ὑπείληφεν, Herakl.: Cl. Al., Prot. 5, 64, p. 55 P. [Vors. n. 8 A 8]. πῦρ νοερὸν τὸν θεὸν (εἶναι ἐφθέγξατο), Hippol., RH. i, 4, p. 10, 57 Mill.—“Zeus” as metaphor for this universal fire (hence οὐκ ἐθέλει καὶ ἐθέλει), the “only wise one”; fr. 65 (32).

[15]   ἡ ἐπιξενωθεῖσα τοῖς ἡμετέροις σώμασιν ἀπὸ τοῦ περιέχοντος μοῖρα (περιέχ. = the universal Fire) is said of the soul and its reasoning faculty ap. S.E., M. vii, 130; Vors., p. 75, 19; (cf. ἀπορροὴ καὶ μοῖρα ἐκ τοῦ φρονοῦντος, Plu., Is. et O. 77, p. 382 B). This is fully Herakleitean in thought if not also in actual form of expression.

[16]   That Herakleitos drew the conclusions affecting also the “Soul”—the spiritual man—freely paraphrased in the text, arising necessarily out of his doctrine of the perpetual change in the material substance that excludes all possibility of lasting self-identity in any object (frr. 40, 41, 42, 81 = 91, 12, 49 a), is proved especially by the words of Plutarch in the eighteenth chapter of his treatise de E Delph. p. 392—a chapter which is entirely based on Herakleitos, who is twice actually cited in it. Not only does ὁ νέος die εἰς τὸν ἀκμάζοντα κτλ., but ὁ χθὲς (ἄνθρωπος) εἰς τὸν σήμερον τέθνηκεν, ὁ δὲ σήμερον εἰς τὸν 392 αὔριον ἀποθνήσκει. μένει δ’ οὐδείς, οὐδ’ ἔστιν εἷς, ἀλλα γιγνόμεθα πολλοὶ περὶ ἓν φάντασμα κτλ.; cf. Cons. ad Apoll. 10, p. 106 E. Herakl. is also the origin of what is said in Plato, Smp. 207 D ff.: each man is only apparently one and the same; in reality, even while he is still alive, “he continually suffers a new and different man to take the place of the old and departing one”—and this applies, just as much to the soul as to the body. (Only from the standpoint of Herakleitean doctrine—here adopted in passing by Plato as suiting his chosen method of argument—is the conclusion he reaches justified; the conclusion is that it is only by the perpetual substitution of a new being like the old one that man has immortality, and not by the eternal preservation of his own proper being; for this advantage belongs peculiarly to the divine. This, of course, cannot possibly be understood as the serious teaching of Plato himself.)—The Herakleitean denial of personal identity in men is alluded to by Epicharmos (or a pseudo-Ep.?) ap. D.L. iii, 11, ll. 13–18; Vors., p. 118–19 (cf. Wytt. ad Plu., Ser. Num. V. 559 A = vii, p. 397 f. Ox.; Bernays, Rh. Mus. viii, 280 ff.); and cf. Sen., Ep. 58, 23.—It is instructive to compare with Herakl.’s doctrine of the instability of the psychic complex the very similar theory of the influx and reflux of the elements of the “soul” as described in the Indian doctrine of Jainism. The soul (in the Indian doctrine) continually transforms, re-arranges, and restores itself, just like the body. See Deussen, System d. Vedânta, 330.

[17]   The apparently contradictory statement ψυχῇσι τέρψιν, μὴ θάνατον, ὑγρῇσι γενέσθαι ap. Porph., Antr. Nymph. 10 (72 By., 77 D.), does not represent the words or real opinion of Hkl., but only of Numenios’ (fr. 35 Thedinga) arbitrary and personal interpretation of Hkl. doctrine (see Gomperz in Sitzb. d. Wien. Ak. 113, 1015 ff.).

[18]   A doctrine of transmigration of souls is attributed to Hkl. by Schuster, Heraklit, p. 174 ff. (1873). The utterances of Herakleitos there quoted to prove this thesis (frr. 78, 67, 123 = 88, 62, 63) do not, however, imply anything of the kind and there is not the slightest indication in the whole of Hkl’s doctrinal system upon which a theory of the transmigration of the soul might be founded.

[19]   To prove that Herakleitos spoke of a continuation of the life of the individual soul after its separation from the body, appeal is made partly to the statements of later philosophers, partly to actual utterances of Herakl. (cf. in particular Zeller, Greek Phil. to Socr. ii, 86; Pfleiderer, Philos. d. Heraklit im Lichte der Mysterienidee, p. 214 ff.). Platonist philosophers do, of course, attribute to Herakleitos a doctrine of the soul which taught the pre-existence of the individual soul, “its fall in birth,” and its departure into a separate life of its own after death (cf. Numenios ap. Porph., Ant. 10; Iamb., ap. Stob., Ecl. i, 375, 7; 38, 21 ff. W.; Aen. Gaz., Thphr., pp. 5, 7 Boiss.). These accounts, however, are plainly but private and arbitrary interpretations of Herakleitean sayings (μεταβάλλον ἀναπαύεται, κάματός ἐστι τοῖς αὐτοῖς ἀεὶ μοχθεῖν καὶ ἄρχεσθαι) in the light of the conceptions current among those philosophers themselves; they are homiletic, fancifully conceived expositions of very short and ambiguous texts, and can so much the less serve as witnesses of Herakleitos’ real opinions since Plotinos (4, 8, 1) openly admits that Herakl. in this matter has omitted σαφῆ ἡμῖν ποιῆσαι τὸν λόγον. Others read into certain Herakleitean utterances the Orphic doctrine of σῶμα—σῆμα, the entombment of the soul in the body (Philo, Leg. Alleg. 1, 33, i, p. 65 M.; S.E., P. iii, 230), which cannot, however, be seriously supposed to be his teaching. The soul did not for Hkl., any more than for the Pythagoreans or Platonics, 393 come into existence at birth (substantially) out of nothing (which was the popular idea); it rather, as a portion of the universal fire (the universal psyche) is in existence from eternity. But it certainly does not follow, because later writers insisted on finding in him the idea so familiar to themselves, that Hkl. himself accepted the pre-existence of disembodied separate souls possessing complete and absolute individuality. A few enigmatic and highly picturesque expressions—typical of this philosopher’s favourite manner of expressing abstract ideas by clothing them in symbolic imagery—might tempt to such an interpretation. ἀθάνατοι θνητοί, θνητοὶ ἀθάνατοι, ζῶντες τὸν ἐκείνων θάνατον τὸν δὲ ἐκείνων βίον τεθνεῶτες (fr. 67 = 62)—that certainly does sound as if Hkl. had meant to speak of the entrance into the human life of individual divine beings (and this was simply substituted in inaccurate quotations of the saying: θεοὶ θνητοί, ἄνθρωποι ἀθάνατοι, etc.; cf. Bernays, Heraklit. Briefe, 39 ff.). And yet Herakleitos can only have meant, in conformity with his whole position, that eternal and perishable, divine and human are alike and interchangeable; he has for the moment personified τὸ θεῖον (also called ὁ θεός fr. 36 = 67; cf. fr. 61 = 102) as individual ἀθάνατοι, but he only means what he says in another place: ταὐτὸ τὸ ζῶν καὶ τεθνηκός (fr. 78 = 88), βίος and θάνατος are the same (fr. 66 = 48). It seems to me impossible to extract from these words of this 67th fragment (62nd), or from no. 44 (= 53), a doctrine of the ascent to divinity of special great men (with Gomperz, Sitzb. Wien. Ak. 1886, p. 1010, 1041 f.). Nor would anything be asserted by such a doctrine about the immortality of such men. The striking phrase ἀνθρώπους μένει τελευτήσαντας ἅσσα οὐκ ἔλπονται (fr. 122 = 27) is certainly understood by Cl. Al. as referring to the punishment of the soul after death. But the same Cl. Al., Str. v, 9, p. 649 P., is capable of explaining the Herakleitean ἐκπύρωσις (in which Herakl. actually speaks of a κρίσις by fire: fr. 26 = 66) as a διὰ πυρὸς κάθαρσις τῶν κακῶς βεβιωκότων. In fact, he is giving to statements torn from their context a meaning that accords with his own knowledge and comprehension. The same sentence (fr. 122 = 27) is given a quite different and consolatory sense by Plu. ap. Stob., Fl. 120, 8 fin.; cf. Schuster, Heraklit, p. 190, n. 1. Herakl. himself need have meant nothing more than the perpetual process of change that “awaits men after death”.—Other utterances are no more conclusive for a doctrine of immortality in Hkl. (fr. 7 = 18 belongs to quite another context). “Those who have fallen in war are honoured both by gods (whose existence was not denied by Hkl. nor was it necessary that he should) and men,” fr. 102 = 24; that their reward was anything else but fame—for example, blessed immortality—is not suggested even by Cl. Al. (Str. iv, 16, p. 571 P.), and is certainly not to be extracted from H.’s words, fr. 126 = 5 (the fool) οὕτι γινώσκων θεοὺς οὐδ’ ἥρωας οἵτινές εἰσιν simply shows that Hkl. did not share the popular ideas about gods and Heroes, but supplies nothing positive.—In fr. 38 = 98 we have αἱ ψυχαὶ ὀσμῶνται καθ’ ᾅδην. Are we really to deduce from this that Herakl. believed in a regular Homeric Hades? ᾅδης is a metaphorical expression for the opposite of the life on earth (just as it is used metaphorically for the opp. of φάος by the Herakleitean [Hippocr.] de Victu, 1, 4, p. 632 Kühn = vi, 476 Lit.). For the souls ᾅδης means the ὅδος κάτω and the sense of the dictum is: after disappearing in death the souls when they have travelled on the way downwards through water and earth will at last rise up again through water, and drawing in to themselves pure, dry “fire” will become “souls” again, (ὀσμῶνται is remarkable 394 but not to be altered. ὁσιοῦνται Pfleiderer; but the connexion in which Plu. quotes the saying of Herakl. [Fac. O. L. xxviii, p. 943 E] shows that there is no reference to the purification of the souls in Hades, but merely of their nourishment and strengthening by the ἀναθυμίασις of the fiery aether; cf. also S.E., M. ix, 73, following Poseidonios. This ἀναθυμιᾶν—and the becoming “fiery” again—is what Hkl. calls ὀσμᾶσθαι.)—From the hopelessly corrupt fr. 123 = 63 nothing intelligible can be extracted.—Nowhere can we find clear and unambiguous statements of Herakleitos witnessing to his belief in the immortality of the individual soul; and it would require such statements to make us attribute to Herakleitos a conception that, as everyone admits, is in hopeless contradiction with the rest of his teaching. He says perfectly plainly that in death the soul becomes water; and that means that it, as the soul = fire, perishes. If his belief had been anything like that of the mystics (as the Neoplatonists supposed) he must have regarded death—the liberation of the soul from the fetters of corporeality and the realm of the lower elements—as a complete issue of the soul into its proper element, the fire. Whereas, what he teaches is the opposite of this: the soul perishes, becomes water, then earth, and then water again, and finally soul once more (fr. 68 = 36). Only in this sense is it indestructible.

[20]   e.g. by Pfleiderer, Philos. d. Heraklit, etc., p. 209, and frequently.

[21]   The Sibyl fr. 12 = 92; the Delphic Oracle 11 = 93; Kathartic practices 130 = 5; Bakchoi, etc., 124 = 14.

[22]   ὡυτὸς Ἅιδης καὶ Διόνυσος fr. 127 = 15 (and to that extent—as being reconcilable with the doctrine of Hkl.—may the Dionysiac mysteries be considered valid: this must be the meaning of the sentence). On the other hand, we have disapproval of the μυστήρια carried out ἀνιερωστί by men: fr. 125 = 14 (for the worshippers do not perceive the real meaning of the ceremonies).

[23]   In contrast to the Neoplatonic writers who attributed to Hkl. a doctrine of the soul like the Orphico-Pythagorean, the [Plutarchian] account in the Placita Philos. is again much nearer the real meaning of Herakleitos; cf. 4, 7 (where the name of Herakleitos has fallen out, as can be seen from Theodoret; see Diels, Dox., p. 392; Vors. 76, 1) . . . ἐξιοῦσαν (τὴν ἀνθρώπου ψυχὴν) εἰς τὴν τοῦ παντὸς ψυχὴν ἀναχωρεῖν πρὸς τὸ ὁμογενές. Even this is not quite correct as expressing what Hkl. really thought as to the fate of the soul but it does at least show once more that the contrary views of the Neoplatonists are also only interpretations, not evidence.

[24]   Ἡράκλειτος ἠρεμίαν καὶ στάσιν ἐκ τῶν ὅλων ἀνῄρει· ἔστι γὰρ τοῦτο τῶν νεκρῶν. Dox., p. 320; Vors. 73, 10. στάσις and ἠρεμία could never make a real “life”—not even a blessed life far removed from the world—but are signs of what is “dead”, i.e. of what is nowhere to be found in this world, in fact, Nothing.

[25]   Parmenldes’ polemic against Herakleitos: l. 46 ff. Mull.; fr. 6, 4 ff. Diels; see Bernays, Rh. Mus. vii, 115 (cf. Diels, Parm. 68).

[26]   Aristotle (acc. to S.E., M. x, 46; Vors. 142, 33 ff.) ἀφυσίκους αὐτοὺς κέκληκεν, ὅτι ἀρχὴ κινησεώς ἐστιν ἡ φύσις, ἣν ἀνεῖλον φάμενοι μηδὲν κινεῖσθαι.

[27]   Thphr., Sens. § 4; Vors. 146, 13 f.

[28]   γεγενῆσθαι τὴν τῶν πάντων φύσιν ἐκ θερμοῦ καὶ ψυχροῦ καὶ ξηροῦ καὶ ὑγροῦ, λαμβανόντων εἰς ἄλληλα τὴν μετανολήν, καὶ ψυχὴν κρᾶμα ὑπάρχειν ἐκ τῶν προειρημένων κατὰ μηδενὸς τούτων ἐπικράτησιν, Zeno ap. D.L. ix, 29; Vors. 166, 14. The composition out of four elements instead of two as with Parmenides may have been arrived at by Zeno 395 in imitation of the “four roots” of Empedokles, each of which was distinguished by possessing one of the four qualities θερμόν κτλ. The statement that the ψυχή arises from the equal mixture of the four qualities reminds us of Empedokles’ account of φρονεῖν (Vors. 218, 1 = 220, 23; Thphr., Sens. 10, 23). On the other side, Zeno takes over and applies to the ψυχή what the Pythagorean physician Alkmaion said about ὑγίεια (Vors. 136, 1; Dox., p. 442; cf. Arist., An. 408a, 1): his point of view is almost identical with that of those Pythagoreans who regarded the “soul” as made up out of a ἁρμονία of the Cold, the Warm, etc. (see below). He may have actually got his views from the acquaintance of Pythagorean physiologists (he was regarded as a “Pythagorean”: Str. 252).

[29]   Simpl. ad Arist., Ph., p. 39 D.; Vors. 162, 11; cf. Diels, Parm. 109 f. (1897).

[30]   Parmenides pupil of Diochaites the Pythagorean and of Ameinias, also as it appears a Pythagorean: Sotion ap. D.L. ix, 21; Vors. 138. He was counted a Pythagorean by tradition which, however, was very free with its attributions of this kind. Call. fr. 100d, 17; Str. 252; V. Pyth. ap. Phot., Bibl. 249, p. 439a, 37 Bk.; Iamb., VP. 267 (with Sch., p. 190 N.). The Pyth. influence on Parmenides may have been essentially of an ethical nature: εἰς ἡσυχίαν προετράπη ὑπὸ Ἀμεινίου, D.L. ix, 21. Παρμενίδειος καὶ Πυθαγόρειος βίος as equivalent: [Ceb.] Tab. 2 fin. Str., p. 252, connects the good government of Elea with the Pythagorean influence of Parmenides (and of Zeno). Parmenides law-giver of Elea: Speus. π. φιλοσόφων ap. D.L. ix, 23.

[31]   φιλοσοφίαν δὲ πρῶτος ὠνόμασε Πυθαγόρας καὶ ἑαυτὸν φιλόσοφον: D.L., Proem. 12 (though the rest is from the fictitious dialogue of Herakl. Pont. see Cic., TD. v, 8–9).

[32]   Pl., Rp. 600 AB.

[33]   πολυμαθίη, ἱστορίη of Pythag.; Herakl. frr. 16, 17 = 40, 129. παντοίων τὰ μάλιστα σοφῶν ἐπιήρανος ἔργων is said of Pythag. by Emped. (429 Mull.) fr. 129, 3.—The Pythagorean account of the construction of the world was known to Parmenides at the beginning of the fifth century and imitated by him in several points: Krische, Theol. Lehren d. gr. D. 103 ff. (To what extent Parmenides in other respects controverted Pythag. doctrine—as has been recently asserted of him—may be left undecided.) Fanciful speculations about numbers are attributed to Pythag. himself by Aristot., MM. 1182a, 11 ff.; Vors. 347, 3.

[34]   Emped. 427 ff. Mull.; fr. 129 Diels. That this praeconium does really refer to Pythag. (as Timaeus and others supposed) and not to Parmenides (as the undefined οἱ δέ of D.L. viii, 54, thought) appears to be proved by l. 4 ff., which allude to a remarkable power of ἀνάμνησις which was certainly attributed by legend to Pythag., never to Parmenides.

[35]   ψυχαί filling the whole air, not distinguished from δαίμονες and ἥρωες, Alex. Polyh. ap. D.L. viii, 32; Vors.4 i, xliv (who in this section of his account—§§31 ff.—is giving older Pythagorean ideas. Poseidonios expresses the same ideas; but it does not therefore follow that he got them from the Stoics. Poseid. borrowed and elaborated many Pythagorean views). More subtly expressed: the soul is ἀθάνατος because it is eternally in motion like τὰ θεῖα πάντα, the moon, sun, stars, and heaven; Alkmaion ap. Arist., An. 405a, 29 ff.; Vors. 133, 40; cf. Krische, 75 f. The perpetual movement of the ψυχαί was one of the older Pythag. beliefs: it is expressed in the old fable (known already to Demokritos) of the motes in the sunbeam, 396 which, in their continual agitation, are, or enclose, swarming souls (see below, n. 40). In Alkmaion’s treatment of the doctrine there is the additional idea that the soul of man ἔοικε τοῖς ἀθανάτοις. The derivation of its immortality and divinity from its origin in the World-soul (this is often said to be a Pythagorean doctrine: Cic., ND. i, 27; Sen. 78; D.L. viii, 28; S.E., M. ix, 127) does indeed suggest Stoic pantheism in the form of its expression but in substance it may very well go back to the older Pythag. teaching. (The genuineness of the frag. [21 D.] of Philolaos ap. Stob., Ecl. i, 20, 2 ff.; Vors. 318, 13, remains, however, dubious.) The idea that the soul and νοῦς of man came to him from an impersonal θεῖον, an all-pervading ἐν τῷ παντὶ φρόνησις, must have been widespread even in the fifth century. It finds expression in Xen., M. 1, 4, 8–17; 4, 3, 14, where it is certainly not an original fancy of Xenophon’s, but must have been derived by him from somewhere or other (not from Socrates, however, nor Plato).

[36]   ἐν φρουρᾷ, Pl., Phd. 62 B. This is traced back to Pythag. belief (though he misinterprets the meaning of the word φρουρά) by Cic., Sen. 73; cf. the Pythagorean Euxitheos ap. Ath. 157 C; Vors. 315, 19. See Böckh, Philol. 179 ff. (Philolaos fr. 15 [16 Mull.] speaks of the World-soul or God who holds and contains all things ἐν φρουρᾷ without mentioning the human soul: see Böckh, p. 151.) The comparison of life in the body to a φρουρά may very well be Pythagorean; nor is this prevented by the fact that it is also Orphic (see above, chap. x, n. 43). This comparison implies the conception of the earthly life as a punishment. διά τινας τιμωρίας the soul is enclosed in the body: Philolaos fr. 14 (23) appealing to παλαιοὶ θεολόγοι τε καὶ μάντιες (cf. Iamb., VP. 85, ἀγαθὸν οἱ πόνοι . . . ἐπὶ κολάσει γὰρ ἐλθόντας δεῖ κολασθῆναι).—Espinas in Arch. f. Ges. d. Philos. viii, 452, interprets the ἐν φρουρᾷ of Pl., Phd. 62, as = “in the cattle-pen” or “sheep-fold”; the idea of God as the Shepherd of man would then be vaguely present even here (cf. Plt. 271 E; Criti. 109 B). It remains, however, to be proved (to begin with) that φρουρά is ever used in the sense of σηκός or εἱρκτή.

[37]   Arist., An. 1, 3, p. 407b, 22 ff.

[38]   οἱ ἐν τῷ ταρτάρῷ terrified by thunder acc. to Pythag. belief: Arist., An. Po. 94b, 32 ff.; σύνοδοι τῶν τεθνεώτων in the depths of the earth, Ael., VH. iv, 17 (perhaps from Arist. π. τῶν Πυθαγορείων). Description of the condition of things in Hades given in the Pythagorean Κατάβασις εἰς ᾅδου. As in the case of the Orphics this purgation and punishment in the spirit-world must have belonged to the parts of the Πυθαγόρειοι μῦθοι that were quite seriously believed.

[39]   ἐκριφθεῖσαν (out of the body) αὐτὴν (τὴν ψυχὴν) ἐπὶ γῆς πλάζεσθαι ἐν τῷ ἀέρι ὁμοίαν τῷ σώματι (being a complete εἴδωλον of the living): Alex. Polyh. ap. D.L. viii, 31.

[40]   Arist., An. 1, 2, 4, p. 404a, 16 ff.; Vors. 357, 1; many called the ἐν τῷ ἀέρι ξύσματα themselves “souls”, others τὸ ταῦτα κινοῦν. This may rest on a real popular belief which, however, has already been partially elevated to a philosophical standing: the souls are compared to what is evidently itself in perpetual agitation (Arist., l. 19 f.). This was undoubtedly Pythagorean (and old Ionic) teaching: see Alkmaion ap. Arist., An. 405a, 29 ff.; Vors. 133, 40. (Statement of Dox. 386a, 13 ff., b, 8 ff., is more doubtful.)

[41]   D.L. viii, 32; Vors^4. i, p. xliv.

[42]   That the Pythagoreans believed in the entry of the soul into the bodies of animals also is implied in the satirical verses of Xenophanes 397 (fr. 6) ap. D.L. viii, 36. All probability suggests that this was the reason for the injunction to abstain from flesh food among the older Pythagoreans themselves (and with Empedokles). (S.E., M. ix, 127 ff., however, drags in the “World-Soul” in a moment of untimely Stoicism. S.E.’s own quotation from Empedokles shows that the latter at any rate derived the ἀποχὴ ἐμψύχων simply from the fact of Metamorphosis, and not at all from the ψυχῆς πνεῦμα which rules in all life; though this last is attributed to him by S.E.)

[43]   See Appendix x.

[44]   According to the Pythagoreans τὸ δίκαιον is nothing else than τὸ ἀντιπεπονθός, i.e. ἃ τις ἐποίησε ταῦτ’ ἀντιπαθεῖν: Arist., EN. 5, 5, p. 1132b, 21 ff.; MM. 1194a, 29 ff. (also given with fanciful numerical expression, MM. 1182a, 14; Sch. Arist. 540a, 19 ff.; 541b, 6 Br.; [Iamb.] Theol. Arith., p. 28 f. Ast). This definition of justice was simply taken over by the Pythagoreans from popular sayings such as the verse of Rhadamanthys ap. Arist., EN. about the δράσαντι παθεῖν and similar formulae: see collection in Blomfield’s Gloss. in A., Cho. 307; Soph. fr. 229 P. Compensatory justice of this kind we may suppose was manifested in the rebirths of men (in this respect the P. went beyond the commonplace sense of that τριγέρων μῦθος): we may assume this without further hesitation if we remember the completely analogous application of this conception by the Orphics (above, chap. x, n. 71).

[45]   Πυθαγόρειος τρόπος τοῦ βίου, Pl., Rp. 600 B.

[46]   ἀκολουθεῖν τῷ θεῷ, Iamb., VP. 137 (following Aristoxenos); Vors. 362, 32; ἕπου θεῷ Pythagoras ap. Stob., Ecl. ii, p. 49, 16 W. See Wyttenb. on Plu., Ser. Num. Vind. 550 D.

[47]   Ancient testimony ascribes to the Pythagoreans: abstinence from flesh-food or at least from the flesh of such animals as are not sacrificed to the Olympians (the ἀνθρώπου ψυχή does not enter into the θύσιμα ζῷα in transmigration: Iamb., VP. 85; Vors. 359, 13); from eating fish, particularly τρίγλαι and μελάνουροι, and beans; from using linen clothing (or being buried in it: Hdt. ii, 81); and a few other forms of abstinence and measures assuring ritual purity. The whole apparatus of ritual ἁγνεία is ascribed to the older Pythagoreans by Alex. Polyh. ap. D.L. viii, 33. This, as a general statement is certainly correct. It is customary to say that it began among the degenerate Pythagoreans after the break up of the Italian society (so esp. Krische, De Soc. a Pythag. cond. scopo politico, Gött., 1831). But when Aristoxenos, the contemporary of the later, scientifically-minded Pythagoreans, denies all such superstitious ideas and regulations to the original Pythagoreans, his evidence really applies only to those Pythagorean scholars with whom he was acquainted and who seemed to him to have preserved the real spirit of the older Pythagoreanism much more truly than the ascetic (and in any case degenerate) Pythagoreans of the same period. Everything, however, goes to show that the strength of the surviving community as it had been founded by Pythagoras lay in the religious and mystical elements of its doctrine; and that what was oldest in Pythagoreanism was what it had in common with the faith and religious discipline of the Orphics. To this side belongs what we learn from tradition of the older Pythagorean asceticism. Much, then, that is of early Pythagorean origin (though certainly combined with other and later elements) is to be found in many of the ἀκούσματα or σύμβολα of the Pythagoreans, esp. in those of them (and they are numerous) that give directions of a ritual or merely superstitious kind. A fresh collection, arrangement and 398 explanation of these remarkable fragments would be very useful: Göttling’s purely rationalist treatment of them does them less than justice. (Corn. Hölk, De acusmatis s. symbolis Pythag., Diss. Kiel. 1894.)

[48]   Efforts in a more positive direction may perhaps be seen in the practice of the musical form of κάθαρσις which Pythag. and the Pythagoreans used in accordance with an elaborate system: cf. Iamb., VP. 64 ff., 110 ff.; Sch. V. on X 391; also Quint. 9, 4, 12; Porph., VP. 33, etc.—What Aristoxenos has to say about Pythagorean ethics, moralistic parainesis and edification—most of it of a purely rationalist kind—can scarcely be said to have historical value.

[49]   Good formulation of Pythag. belief ap. Max. Tyr. 16, 2, i, 287 R.: Πυθαγόρας πρῶτος ἐν τοῖς Ἕλλησιν ἐτόλμησεν εἰπεῖν, ὅτι αὑτῷ τὸ μὲν σῶμα τεθνήξεται, ἡ δὲ ψυχὴ ἀναπτᾶσα οἰχήσεται ἀθανὴς καὶ ἀγήρως. καὶ γὰρ εἶναι αὐτὴν πρὶν ἥκειν δεῦρο. i.e. the life of the soul is not only endless but without beginning; the soul is immortal because it is timeless.

[50]   The withdrawal of the soul from the κύκλος ἀνάγκης and its return to an emancipated existence as a bodiless spirit was never so clearly held in view for the “Pure” by the older Pythagorean tradition as it was among the Orphics (and Empedokles). It is, however, hardly thinkable that a system which regarded every incarnation of the soul as a punishment and the body as its prison or its tomb should never have held out to the true βάκχοι of its mysteries the prospect of a full and permanent liberation of the soul, at last, from corporeality and the earthly life. Only so could the long chain of deaths and rebirths reach a final and satisfactory conclusion. Eternally detained in the cycle of births the soul would be eternally punished (this is e.g. the idea of Empedokles: 455 f., fr. 145 D.); and this cannot have been the real conclusion of the Pythagorean doctrine of salvation. Claud. Mamertus, de An. 2, 7 [Vors. 320, 12], gives it as a doctrine of Philolaos [fr. 22] that the (pure) soul after its separation from the body leads a “bodiless” life in the “Universe” (the κόσμος situated above the οὐρανός): see Böckh, Philol. 177. Apart from this the only evidence for the withdrawal of the soul is late: Carm. Aur. 70 f. (making use of the Empedok. verses, fr. 112, 4 f. = 400 Mull.), Alex. Polyh. ap. D.L. viii, 31 (ἄγεσθαι τὰς καθαρὰς [ψυχὰς] ἐπὶ τὸν ὕψιστον “in altissimum locum” Cobet: but an ellipse of τόπον is hardly admissible. ὁ ὕψιστος = the highest God would be a Hebraic form of expression, nor can it be a possible one here for Alex. Polyh.—we should also, with this meaning of ὕψιστος, expect πρὸς τ. ὕ. ad superiores circulos bene viventium animae, secundum philosophorum altam scientiam, Serv., A. vi, 127—should we then supply ἐπὶ τὸν ὕψιστον <κύκλον>? Or perh. ἐπὶ τὸ ὕψιστον?)—An escape of the souls after the expiry of their περίοδοι must have been known as a Pythagorean belief to Luc., VH. ii, 21. (Vergil, too, is speaking in a Pythagorean sense, A. vi, 744, pauci laeta arva [Elysii] tenemus.—i.e. for ever without renewed ἐνσωμάτωσις—see Serv., A. vi, 404, 426, 713. It is true the line is out of its right place, but there can be no doubt that it reproduces the words and the—in this section Pythagorean—opinion of Vergil.) The idea that the cycle of births is never to be broken cannot be regarded as Pythagorean nor even as Neopythagorean. (A few isolated later accounts of Pythag. doctrine; e.g. D.L. viii, 14 (from Favorinus), Porph., VP. 19, and also the cursory description in Ov., M. xv—with a good deal of foreign matter added—speak of the Pyth. doctrine of soul-transmigration without also referring to the possibility of κύκλου λῆξαι; but they are not meant to deny that 399 possibility but merely leave it unmentioned as unnecessary in the context.) There seems to be no example of a Greek doctrine of transmigration that did not also include a promise to the ὅσιοι or the φιλόσοφοι that they would be able to escape from the cycle of births (at least for a world-period: as Syrian. took it, though probably not Porph.). Such a promise, as the consummation of the promises of salvation therein made, could only be dispensed with in the case of a doctrine of transmigration in which being born again was itself regarded as a reward for the pious (as in the teaching which Jos., BJ. 2, 8, 14, attributes to the Pharisees). By Greek partisans of the doctrine of Metempsychosis rebirth upon earth is always regarded as a punishment or at any rate a burden, not as a desirable goal for the life of the soul. We must therefore presume that the promise of escape from the cycle of rebirth was made also by the oldest Pythagorean teaching as the final benefit of its message of salvation. Without this completing touch Pythagoreanism would be like Buddhism without the promise of a final attainment of Nirvâna.

[51]   Pythagoras is called the pupil of Pherekydes as early as Andron of Ephesos (before Theopompos): D.L. i, 119; Vors. ii, 199, 18. Pherekydes was regarded as “the first” who taught the immortality of the soul (Cic., TD. i, 38) or more correctly metempsychosis (Suid. Φερεκ.); cf. Preller, Rh. Mus. (N.F.), iv, 388 f. A hint of such teaching must have been found in his mystical treatise (cf. Porph., Antr. 31; Vors. ii, 204, 12—Gomperz is rather too sceptical, Gk. Thinkers, i, 542). This teaching seems to have been the chief reason which tempted later writers to make the old theologos into the teacher of Pythagoras, the chief spokesman of the doctrine of the soul’s transmigrations.—It is, however, an untenable theory that Pherek. illustrated his doctrine of transmigration by the example of Aithalides. What the Sch. on A.R. i, 645 [Vors. ii, 204, 24], quotes from “Pherekydes” about the alternate sojourn of the ψυχή of Aithalides in Hades and on earth, does not come from Pherekydes the theologos (as Göttling, Opusc. 210, and Kern, de Orph. Epim. Pherec., pp. 89, 106, think) but without the slightest doubt from the genealogist and historian; this is the only Pherekydes who is used by the Sch. of Ap. Rh., and he is used frequently. Besides this, the way in which the different statements of the various authorities used in this Scholion are distinguished, shows quite clearly that Pherekydes had only spoken of Aithalides’ alternate dwelling above and below the earth, but as still being Aithalides, and not as metamorphosed by the series of births into other personalities living upon earth. Pherekydes was obviously reproducing a Phthiotic local-legend in which Aithalides as the son of (the chthonic?) Hermes alternately lived on and below the earth, as an ἑτερήμερος—like the Dioscuri in Lacedaimonian legend (λ 301 ff.: in that passage and generally in the older view—as held by Alkman, Pindar, etc.—both the Dioscuri change their place of abode together: it is not till later that the variant arose acc. to which they alternate with each other: see Hemst. Luc. ii, p. 344 Bip.). It was Herakleides Pont. who first turned the alternate sojourning of Aithalides into death and resurrection (he also made Aithalides one of the previous incarnations of Pythagoras; see Appendix x); but as a different person, so that A. thus became an example of metempsychosis. It is not hard to see why Aithalides was chosen as one of the previous incarnations of P., nor how the old miracle-story, preserved to literature by Pherekydes, was thus transformed to suit its new purpose. Plainly Pherekydes did not say that Hermes 400 also gave Aithalides the power of memory after his death (otherwise the statement to this effect in Sch. A.R. would have stood under the name of Pherek.); and the privilege was rather meaningless until after Herakleides’ narrative. Perhaps it was Her. who first added this touch to the story. Ap. Rh. follows him in this point (i, 643 ff.), but not—or not plainly, at least: 646 ff.—in what Herakleides had invented about the metempsychosis of Aithalides.

[52]   Macr., Som. Scip. 1, 14, 19, attributes this view to Pythagoras and Philolaos, being certainly correct in the case of the latter; since the opinion that the soul is a κρᾶσις and ἁρμονία of the warm and the cold, the dry and the wet, which go to make up the body, is given by Simmias in Pl., Phd. 86 B, as a tradition that he has received and not an invention of his own. But what else can this mean than a tradition handed down in Thebes by his teacher Philolaos (Phd. 61 D)? (Hence Ἁρμονίας τῆς Θηβαϊκῆς, 95 A.) It is true that Claud. Mam. de An. ii, 7, only attributes to Philolaos the doctrine that the soul is bound up with the body “in eternal and incorporeal harmony” (convenientiam): which would imply an independent substance of the soul side by side with that of the body. But this must have been a misunderstanding of the real meaning of Philolaos. Aristoxenos, too, can only have got his doctrine of the soul as a harmony from his Pythagorean friends. Perhaps, too, this was the influence which suggested to Dikaiarchos his view that the “soul” is a ἁρμονία τῶν τεσσάρων στοιχείων (Dox., p. 387), and indeed τῶν ἐν τῷ σώματι θερμῶν καὶ ψυχρῶν καὶ ὑγρῶν καὶ ξηρῶν, as Nemes., Nat. Hom., p. 69 Matth., tells us—thus exactly resembling Simmias in Plato (unless indeed the passage in Nemes. is a mere reminiscence of Plato strayed here by accident). See also chap. x, n. 27.

[53]   See Pl., Phd. 86 CD. Pre-existence of the soul impossible if it is only an ἁρμονία of the body: 92 AB.

[54]   It was in itself almost unavoidable that a community founded like the Pythagorean mainly on a mystical doctrine but not ill-disposed to scientific studies, should, as it was extended (and still followed practical aims) split up into two parties: an inner circle of qualified teachers and scholars, and one or more groups, outside and attached to them, of lay members for whom a special teaching suited for popular comprehension would be provided. Thus the inner circle of Buddhism, the Bikshu, was surrounded by the common herd of “worshippers”; and the same can be seen in Christian monastic organisations. A division, then, of the followers of Pythagoras into Akousmatikoi and Mathematikoi—Pythagoreioi and Pythagoristai—etc., is not in itself at all incredible.

[55]   The division of the soul, or the δυνάμεις of the soul, into the λογικόν and the ἄλογον was made, before Plato, by Pythagoras—so we might have learnt, αὐτοῦ τοῦ Πυθαγόρου συγγράμματος οὐδενὸς εἰς ἡμᾶς σωζομένου, from the writings of his followers, acc. to Poseidonios ap. Galen, de Plac. Hipp. et Pl. 5, p. 459 Müll. = v, 478 K.; cf. also 425 K. (Vors. 34, 23). From Poseidonios evidently comes the same opinion in Cic., TD. iv, 10. And, in fact, a fragment of Philolaos π. φύσεως, fr. 13 Diels (Theol. Ar., p. 20, 35 A.), gives a division of the ἀρχαὶ τοῦ ζῴου τοῦ λογικοῦ, which depends upon the idea that the highest living organism contains within itself and makes use of all the lower organisms as well (νοῦς in the head, ἀνθρώπου ἀρχά—ψυχὰ καὶ αἴσθησις in the heart, ῴου ἀρχὰ—ῥίζωσις καὶ ἀνάφυσις in the navel, φυτοῦ ἀρχὰ—σπέρματος μεταβολά and γέννησις in the αἰδοῖον, ξυναπάντων ἀρχά). Then in the psychical region we have a division between the λογικόν 401 and the ἄλογον according to their nature and “seat” in man (λογικόν being made up of reasoning power, νοῦς, specific to man, and sense-perception, αἴσθησις, which also belongs to the other ζῷα, while the ἄλογον = ῥίζωσις καὶ ἀνάφυσις and resembles the αἴτιον τοῦ τρέφεσθαι καὶ αὔξεσθαι, or the φυτικόν, a part of the ἄλογον τῆς ψυχῆς in Arist., EN. 1, 13, p. 1102a, 32 ff.). This evidently represents an attempt at a division of the soul into λογικόν and ἄλογον, such as Poseidonios must have found carried out by other Pythagoreans. A clear distinction between φρονεῖν (ξυνιέναι) and αἰσθάνεσθαι was made by the Pythag. physician Alkmaion, whose division was at least different from and more profound than that of Empedokles (with whom he is contrasted by Thphr., Sens. 25; Vors. 132, 20). Empedokles did indeed distinguish between thinking and perceiving, but thinking (νοεῖν) was only a σωματικόν τι ὥσπερ τὸ αἰσθάνεσθαι and to this extent ταὐτόν with it (Arist., An. 3, 3, p. 427a, 21). Alkmaion cannot, therefore, have made ξυνιέναι σωματικόν. These Pythagoreans were on the way to separating from the soul as a whole a separate, thinking soul that required no sense-perception for its thought, the νοῦς. To this latter alone would divinity and immortality be ascribed, as in later philosophy (and thus Dox. 393a, 10, though unhistorically and prematurely, gives τὸ λογικὸν [τῆς ψυχῆς] ἄφθαρτον as a doctrine of “Pythagoras”).—It is certainly difficult to see how Philolaos’ doctrine of the distinction between the ἀνθρώπου ἀρχά, the νοῦς—an element of the soul belonging exclusively to men—and the ζῴου ἀρχά (confined to αἴσθησις and ψυχά, power of life) could possibly be reconciled with the older Pythagorean doctrine of the soul’s transmigration. Acc. to that belief the soul wanders through the bodies of animals as well as men, and the idea implies the view that the same soul could inhabit animals as well as men; that, in fact, πάντα τὰ γενόμενα ἔμψυχα are ὁμογενῆ (Porph., VP. 19; cf. S.E., M. ix, 127). Philolaos, on the contrary, holds that the soul of man is differently constituted from the souls of animals—the latter lack νοῦς (it is not merely that its efficacy is hindered in animals by the δυσκρασία τοῦ σώματος as is said wrongly to be the opinion of Pythag. by Dox. 432a, 15 ff.). The same difficulty arises again in the case of Plato’s doctrine of transmigration.—Alkmaion who ascribes ξυνιέναι to man alone seems not to have held the transmigration doctrine.

[56]   401 ff. Mull.; fr. 112, 5 Diels.

[57]   462 ff. fr. 111.

[58]   Satyros ap. D.L. viii, 59; Vors. 195, 26.—Especially famous was his feat of driving away adverse winds from Akragas (cf. fr. 111, 3); see also Welcker, Kl. Schr. iii, 60–1.—The asses’ skins with which Emped. kept the north winds away from Akragas were at any rate intended as apotropaic materials—magic means of driving away spirits. In the same way protection against hail and lightning is obtained by hanging up the skin of a hyena, a seal, etc. (see Geop. i, 14, 3–5; i, 16, and Niclas’ notes there). These skins ἔχουσι δύναμιν ἀντιπαθῆ: Plu., Smp. 4, 2, 1, p. 664 C.—Other magic charms against hail—the χαλαζοφύλακες, Plu., Smp. 7, 2, 2, p. 700 F; Sen., NQ. 4b, 6.

[59]   . . . ἐγὼ δ’ ὑμῖν θεὸς ἄμβροτος, οὐκέτι θνητός, πωλεῦμαι μετὰ πᾶσι τετιμένος κτλ. 400 f. (fr. 112, 4 f.).

[60]   A late echo is to be found in the inspired lines of Lucretius in praise of Empedokles, i, 717 ff.

[61]   The well-known story of Empedokles’ leap into the crater of Mt. Aetna—intended by his complete disappearance to call forth the belief that he had not died (Luc., DM. xx, 4), but had been translated 402 alive—is a parody of a serious translation legend and presupposes the existence of one. The parodists’ version was contradicted early by Empedokles’ follower, the physician Pausanias: D.L. viii, 69 (this does not come from the fabulously conceived narrative of Herakleides Pont. It does not follow, from the epigram quoted by D.L. viii, 61, fr. 156; AP. vii, 508, that Paus. died before Emped.; the authorship of that ep. is uncertain and in any case it is not very worthy of credit). The seriously intended legend must then have arisen soon after the disappearance of Empedokles: it was founded upon the fact that no one did know where Emp. had died (θάνατος ἄδηλος, Timaeus ap. D.L. viii, 71), or could point to the grave which covered his remains. (This is expressly stated by Timaeus, who, in other respects, contradicts the translation-fable as well as the story of the leap into Mt. Aetna: D.L. viii, 72. In the face of this no importance need be attached to what some one—Neanthes apparently—states ap. D.L. viii, 73; that there was a grave of Emped. at Megara.) Free elaboration was given to the translation story by Herakleides Pont. π. νόσων: D.L. viii, 67–8 (in return, his philosophic rivals contemptuously applied a malicious story of feigned translation to Herakleides himself, who in this way wished to legitimize his own claim to be god or Hero: D.L. v, 89 ff. From other sources comes Suid. Ἡρακλ. Εὐθύφρονος; cf. Marx, Griech. Märchen v. dankb. Thieren, p. 97 ff.). All kinds of stupid variations of the story of Empedokles’ end ap. D.L. viii, 74.

[62]   See above, chap. ii, and p. 129.

[63]   Cf. 113 ff.; fr. 9.

[64]   σαρκῶν χιτών, 414, fr. 126.

[65]   His treatment of the woman who seemed to be dead (ἄπνους, D.L. viii, 60) has quite the appearance of a psychophysical experiment; one, however, that was intended to prove the correctness of precisely the irrational side of his doctrine of the soul.

[66]   γυίων πίστις is distinguished from νοεῖν in v, 57 (fr. 4, 13), and νόῳ δέρκεσθαι from δέρκεσθαι ὄμμασιν in 82 (fr. 17, 21); cf. οὔτ’ ἐπίδερκτα τάδ’ ἄνδρασιν οὔτ’ ἐπακουστά, οὔτε νόῳ περίληπτα, 42 f. (fr. 2, 7).—Elsewhere it is true that Emped. (who throughout avoids prosaic exactitude in the use of technical terms) uses νοῆσαι as simply = sense-perception following epic idiom: e.g. 56 (fr. 4, 12; but it is not quite correct to say that Emped. τὸ φρονεῖν καὶ τὸ αἰσθάνεσθαι ταὐτό φησι, as Arist. declares: An. 427a, 22).

[67]   378 ff.; fr. 109: γαίῃ μὲν γὰρ γαῖαν ὀπώπαμεν, etc. (ὁρᾶν is here used in its widest sense, εἶδος ἀντὶ γένους, and = αἰσθάνεσθαι. Thus, νόῳ δέρκεσθαι in 82 [17, 21] = αἰσθάνεσθαι, and very commonly words denoting one of the modes of perception are used instead of those of another εἶδος, or for the whole γένος of αἴσθησις. Lob., Rhemat. 334 ff.).

[68]   372 ff. Mull.; fr. 105: αἵματος ἐν πελάγεσσι . . . τῇ τε νόημα μάλιστα κυκλίσκεται ἀνθρώποισιν· αἷμα γὰρ ἀνθρώποις περικάρδιόν ἐστι νόημα.—The blood is the seat of τὸ φρονεῖν· ἐν τούτῳ γὰρ μάλιστα κεκρᾶσθαι τὰ στοιχεῖα, Thphr., Sens. 10, 23 f.

[69]   A kind of συγγυμνασία τῶν αἰσθήσεων as the physician Asklepiades defines the idea of the ψυχή (Dox. 378a, 7).—It resembles what Arist. calls the πρῶτον αἰσθητήριον.—This function which Emped. calls φρονεῖν would probably be the ἑνοποιοῦν of the perceptions which Aristot. found wanting in Emp. (An. 409b, 30 ff.; 410a, 1–10; b, 10).

[70]   τὸ νοεῖν is σωματικὸν ὥσπερ τὸ αἰσθάνεσθαι, Arist., An. 427a, 26.

[71]   Arist., Metaph. 1009b, 17 ff.

[72]   298 Mull.; fr. 110, 10: πάντα γὰρ ἴσθι φρόνησιν ἔχειν καὶ νώματος αἷσαν. The πάντα must be understood quite literally; for it is the 403 elements in which the powers of perception inhere (ἕκαστον τῶν στοιχείων ψυχὴν εἶναι is the opinion attributed to Emped. by Arist., An. 404b, 12). But elements are present in the mixture of all things, and thus stones, etc., have φρόνησις and a “portion of mind” in them (though the statement that it is αἵμα that first produces φρόνησις will not square with this: Thphr., Sens. 23). Emped. attributed complete sensation and perception to plants, and even gave them νοῦς and γνῶσις (without blood?): [Arist.] Plant. 815a, 16 ff.; b, 16 f. That is why they, too, are capable of harbouring fallen daimones.

[73]   Emped. himself does not use the word ψυχή at all in the fragments that have been preserved to us; and it is hardly probable that he himself would have used the term of the psychical faculties of the body even if he regarded these as gathered together to a substantive unity. Later authorities, on the other hand, in their accounts of the doctrine of Emped. give the name of ψυχή precisely to these “somatic” intellectual faculties; thus Arist., An. 404b, 9 ff.; 409b, 23 ff.: αἷμα φησιν εἶναι τὴν ψυχήν, Gal., Hipp. et Pla. 2 = v, 283 K.; cf. Cic., TD. i, 19; Tert., An. 5.

[74]   113–19 Mull.; frr. 11, 15, do not (as Plu., adv. Col. 12, p. 1113 D, understood them) teach the pre-existence and persistence after death of the psychic powers within the world of the elements, but merely speak of the indestructibility of the elements that are the component parts of the human body, even when the latter has suffered dissolution.

[75]   ἄτης λειμών, fr. 121, 4 (21 Mull.; cf. 16) is the name given by Empedokles to the earth; and not to Hades (as has been supposed), of which—as an intermediate place of purgation between two births—there is nowhere any mention in his verses. That the ἀτερπὴς χῶρος (fr. 121, 1) to which Emped. is cast down, the realm of Φόνος κτλ. (fr. 121) and the Ἄτης λειμών, all refer to the earth, ὁ ἔγγειος τόπος, τὰ περὶ γῆν, is expressly stated by Themistios, Or. 13, and Hierocl. in C. Aur. 24 (fr. 121), p. 470 Mull. [FPG. i]; Synes. also implies it (Ep. 147, p. 283 C; Prov. i, 89 D); the same is distinctly implied for fr. 121, 4, and by Jul., Or. vii, 226 B; Philo, ii, p. 638 M.—Procl., in Crat., p. 103 Boiss., connects fr. 121, 3, αὐχμηραί τε νόσοι καὶ σήψιες ἔργα τε ῥευστά immediately with fr. 121, 2, and both lines acc. to him apply to τὰ ὑπὸ τὴν σελήνην; i.e. not to any kind of underworld but to the region of the earth (cf. Emp. ap. Hippol., RH. i, 4; Vors. 210, 27; Dox. 559). The idea that Hades is being spoken of in these lines is a view peculiar to moderns who have misunderstood the poet and set aside the clear testimony of Themistios and the rest. Maass, Orpheus, 113, speaks as though the interpretation in favour of Hades rested upon a tradition which I “contradicted”. On the contrary, that interpretation is itself contradicted by definite tradition and by common sense (for Emp. falls from Heaven to earth and not, please God, to Hades!). The view is quite baseless (though Maass himself finds in the ἔργα ῥευστά of fr. 121 [20 M.]—the inconstant, transitory works of men upon earth—a support for his Hades-view: these “fluid works” or things are, he thinks, nothing else but the stream of filth, the σκὼρ ἀείνων, in Hades of which pious invention rumoured: certainly an ingenious interpretation). Emp. is, in fact, the first to regard this earthly sojourning as the real Hell—the ἀσυνήθης, ἀτερπὴς χῶρος (fr. 118, 121, 1, the latter a parodying reminiscence of λ 94)—an ἄντρον ὑπόστεγον (fr. 120) filled with all the plagues and terrors of the original Hades (121). Stoics and Epicureans (see below) took up the idea after him and elaborated it in detail. The daimones that are shut up in this life here below—a ζωὴ ἄβιος (fr. 2, 3)—are as if dead: 404 frr. 125 (?), 35, 14. The Orphic idea of the σῶμα—σῆμα (see above, p. 345) was thus thoroughly and energetically carried out. (Macr., in S. Scip. 1, 10, 9 ff., attributed the idea that the inferi are nothing else but the material world of earth to the old theologi (§ 17) who, he says, lived before the development of a philosophic science of nature.)

[76]   3 Mull.; fr. 115, 3: εὖτέ τις (τῶν δαιμόνων) ἀμπλακίῃσι φόνῳ φίλα γυῖα μιηνῃ. He means βρῶσις σαρκῶν καὶ ἀλληλοφαγία as Plu. paraphrases it, Es. Carn. 1, p. 996 B (for this must always imply acc. to Emp. the “murder” of a spirit of the same race: fr. 136). Even for God it is a crime to taste of a meat (“blood”)-offering and, in fact, there were only bloodless offerings made in the Golden Age (which was described by Emp. not in the Φυσικά—the principle of which work denied that there had ever been such a period—but in some other poem in which he left his philosophic doctrine out of account; perhaps the Καθαρμοί): 420 ff. M; fr. 128, 3 ff.

[77]   fr. 115, 4. The earth then becomes the place of their banishment and punishment for gods that have broken their oath. This is a version of the impressive picture in Hes., Th. 793 ff. Dei peierantes were punished for nine years (cf. Hes., Th. 801) in Tartaros: Orpheus (not Lucan in his “Orpheus”) ap. Serv., A. vi, 565. (To this also alludes the poet from whose elegiac verses came the frag. ap. Serv., A. vi, 324: τοῦ [sc. Στυγὸς ὕδατος] στυγνὸν πῶμα καὶ ἀθανάτῳ: this is probably how the words should be read.) So that instead of the “underworld” or Tartaros, the world is for Emp. the worst place of sorrows. From Emp. is derived the conception that the realm of the inferi is our world, that inhabited by men, and that there is no other, nor any need of another ᾅδης—a conception often alluded to and improved upon by Stoic and other semi-philosophers (esp. clear in Serv., A. vi, 127, often only in allegorical sense: Lucr. iii, 978 ff. [See also Bevan, Stoics and Sceptics, p. 107.]).

[78]   30,000 ὧραι: which means probably “years” (hardly “seasons” as Dieterich, Nekyia, 119, takes it). The figure 30,000 has no special meaning (e.g. 300 periods of a life-time each): it is merely a concrete phrase for “innumerable” (and is frequent: Hirzel, Ber. sächs. Ges. d. Wiss. 1885, p. 64 ff.). This enormous period of time is the divine counter-part, as measured by divine standards of time, of the μέγας ἐνιαυτός, the ennaëteris during which the earthly murderer had to fly from the land of his violent deed. The fiction of Emp. clearly shows the influence of this expiation of murder by ἀπενιαυτισμός.

[79]   fr. 121 (22 ff.).

[80]   ἀργαλέας βιοίτοιο κελεύθους . . . fr. 115, 8 (8).

[81]   Emp. does not even use the word ψυχή of these δαίμονες confined within corporeality. They are so named, however, regularly and without qualification by the later authors who quote verses from the Prooimion of the Φυσικά, Plutarch, Plotinos, Hippolytos, etc.

[82]   Peculiar to Emp. is the attempt to give actual details of the crimes for which the spirits are condemned to ἐνσωμάτωσις; and also the extension of metempsychosis to plants (which is occasionally attributed, but by late authorities only, to the Pythagoreans as well).

[83]   The entirely unpurified seem not to have been condemned to everlasting punishment in Hades, of which in general he shows no knowledge, by Emp. (as by the Pythagoreans sometimes). He merely, it seems, threatens them with ever-renewed rebirth upon earth and the impossibility of τὸ κύκλου λῆξαι (until the complete ascendency of φιλία). This appears to be the meaning of fr. 145 (455 f.) from the way in which Cl. Al., Protr. ii, 27, p. 23 P., cites the lines. 405

[84]   As we may paraphrase—though indeed here, too, only with reservations—the κακότης and κακότητες of Emp. fr. 145 (454 f.).

[85]   frr. 136–7, 128, 9 f. (424, 440). Very remarkable in a thinker of such an early period is what is said (fr. 135) about the πάντων νόμιμον which forbids κτείνειν τὸ ἔμψυχον.—Apart from this we have other vestiges of kathartic rules: purification with water drawn from five springs: fr. 143 (see Append. v); abstention from the eating of beans (fr. 141) and of laurel leaves (fr. 140). The laurel is sacred as a magic plant, together with the σκίλλα (see App. v) and ῥάμνος (see above, chap. v, n. 95). Cf. Gp. 11, 2, etc. Its special sacredness gives the laurel its importance in the cult of Apollo. Emp. (like Pythagoras) seems to have paid special honour to Apollo: it appears from something that is said ap. D.L. viii, 57, that he wrote a προοίμιον εἰς Ἀπόλλωνα: the exalted conception of a divinity that is pure φρὴν ἱερή in abstraction from all sense-perception, elaborated by Emp. in frr. 133–4, was regarded by him as applying particularly περὶ Ἀπόλλωνος (Amm. in Arist., Interpr. 249, 1 ed. Brand. 135a, 23).

[86]   In fanciful ways: fr. 127 (lion, laurel), 448 Mull.

[87]   fr. 146 (457) πρόμοι being used probably with intention as a vague term: regal power would hardly have seemed to possess special merit to the democratically minded Emp. He hardly knew it in any form but the tyrannis and to this he showed himself an energetic opponent (even though the violent language of Timaeus, the enemy of tyrants, is not to be taken quite literally). He himself was offered royal power, but he refused it with contempt as one who was πάσης ἀρχῆς ἀλλότριος: Xanthos and Arist. ap. D.L. viii, 63; Vors. 196, 10. He might all the same (and rightly) regard himself in political matters, too, as one of the πρόμοι; it is plain that in the enumeration of those who were εἰς τέλος born as μάντεις τε καὶ ὑμνοπόλοι καὶ ἰητροί, καὶ πρόμοι ἀνθρώποισιν ἐπιχθονίοισι πέλονται, and were never to be born again, he includes himself especially, and, in fact, takes himself as the model of this last and highest stage upon earth. He himself was all these things simultaneously.

[88]   frr. 146–7 (459 ff.) ἔνθεν ἀναβλαστοῦσι θεοὶ τιμῇσι φέριστοι, ἀθανάτοις ἄλλοισιν ὁμέστιοι, ἔν τε τραπέζαις (read ἔν τε τράπεζοι—a tmesis, = ἐντράπεζοί τε)· εὔνιες ἀνδρείων ἀχέων, ἀπόκηροι, ἀτειρεῖς.

[89]   Emped. perhaps described himself as “god” also in fr. 23, 11 (144) ἀλλὰ τορῶς τοῦτ’ ἴσθι (he is speaking to Pausanias), θεοῦ πάρα μῦθον ἀκούσας. See Bidez, Biogr. d’Emp., p. 166 (1894)—unless these words would be better taken as an abbreviated comparison (with omission of ὡς): “as certainly as if you had received these words from a god.”

[90]   As Plu. is inclined to do: Exil. xvii, p. 607 D.

[91]   As several modern critics have attempted to do.

[92]   fr. 17, 30 (92).

[93]   See above, chap. i, pp. 4 ff.

[94]   As late again as Plotinos, who speaks of the διττὸν ἐν ἡμῖν: the σῶμα which is a θηρίον ζῳωθέν and the ἀληθὴς ἄνθρωπος distinct from it, etc. (1, 1, 10; 6, 7, 5).

[95]   At any rate Emp. spoke of the ekstasis, the furor which is an animi purgatio and to be entirely distinguished from that which is produced by alienatio mentis (φρονεῖν ἀλλοῖα, fr. 108): Cael. Aur., Morb. Chron. i, 5, p. 25 Sich. = Vors. 223. A special ἐνθουσιαστικόν in the soul as its θειότατον (part): Stoics (and Plato) acc. to Dox. 639, 25. A special organ of the soul which effects the union with the divine, being the ἄνθος τῆς οὐσίας ἡμῶν, is mentioned in Proclus (Zeller, Phil. d. Griech.2 iii, 2, 738). 406

[96]   τὸ ὅλον, the whole reality of Being and Becoming in the world, cannot be comprehended by man through his senses nor even with νοῦς: fr. 2 (36-43). But Empedokles has in his own persuasion grasped it; he is situated σοφίης ἐπ’ ἄκροισι (fr. 4, 8), αὐτὴν ἐπαγγέλλεται δώσειν τὴν ἀλήθειαν (Procl., in Ti. 106 E). Proclus declares that the words σοφίης ἐπ’ ἄκροισι—and this is a further point—are meant to apply to Emped. himself. (I do not quite understand Bidez’ doubts about what is said here, and in what follows: see Archiv. f. Gesch. d. Phil. ix, 203, 42.) Whence, then, did the poet obtain this knowledge of the truth since it is revealed neither to the senses nor to the νοῦς? At any rate, the ψυχοπομποὶ δυνάμεις (Porph., Antr. 8), who conducted his soul-daimon out of the region of the gods, say to the soul (fr. 2, 8): σὺ δ’ οὖν ἐπεὶ ὧδ’ ἐλιάσθης (i.e. “since you have been cast up here—on the earth”—not “since you have so desired it”, as Bergk, Opusc. ii, 23, explains: which would be a distorted idea expressed in distorted language)—πεύσεαι οὐ πλέον ἠὲ βροτείη μῆτις ὅπωπεν (thus with Panzerbieter, for ὄρωρε). According to this we must suppose that his more profound knowledge (insight into the μῖξίς τε διάλλαξίς τε μιγέντων of the elements, together with knowledge of the destiny and purpose of the soul-daimones, etc.), which he cannot have got on earth or in his earthly body must have been brought with him out of his divine past-life. This knowledge is then peculiar to the daimon (or ψυχή in the older sense) that is buried in the body; and Emp. presumably owes it to an ἀνάμνησις of his earlier life (a faculty that is only rarely active). From what other source could he have got his knowledge of his previous ἐνσωματώσεις (fr. 117)? He has even farther and more profound knowledge than he dares communicate—fr. 4 (45-51), and says quite plainly that he is keeping back in piety a last remnant of wisdom that is unsuited for human ears (to this extent the authorities—ἄλλοι δ’ ἦσαν οἱ λέγοντες—of S.E., M. vii, 122—have rightly understood him).—The belief in a miraculous power of ἀνάμνησις that goes beyond the present life of the individual may have been derived by Emp. from Pythagorean doctrine or mythology. Emp. himself follows the legend of the Pyth. school and attributes such a power of recollection to Pythagoras: ὅπποτε γὰρ πάσῃσι . . . fr. 129 [430 ff.]. See Append. x. The eager development—indeed, the cult—of the μνήμη in Pythagorean circles is well known. The invention of the myths describing the fountain of Mnemosyne in Hades may also be Pythagorean (see below). Throughout the various ἐνσωματώσεις of the soul it is the undying μνήμη that alone preserves the unity of personality which (as the ψυχή) lives through all these transformations and is bound together in this way. It is evident how important this idea was for the doctrine of transmigration (it occurs also in the teaching of Buddha). Plato, like Empedokles, seems to have got the idea of an ἀνάμνησις reaching beyond the limits of the present life from the Pythagoreans: he, then, it is true, developed the idea in connexion with his own philosophy to unexpected conclusions (cf. further, Dieterich, Nekyia, 122).

[97]   φιλία is for him (not indeed in his words but in his intention as Arist. understood him): αἰτία τῶν ἀγαθῶν, τὸ δὲ νεῖκος τῶν κακῶν, Metaph. 985a, 4 ff.; 1075b, 1–7. Hence the ἠπιόφρων Φιλότητος ἀμεμφέος ἄμβροτος ὁρμή (fr. 35) is contrasted with Νεῖκος μαινόμενον (115, 14), οὐλόμενον (17, 19), λυγρόν (109). The σφαῖρος in which only φιλία prevails while νεῖκος is completely vanquished, is called μονίῃ περιήργεϊ γαίων, fr. 27, 28. 407

[98]   θεοὶ δολιχαίωνες (frr. 20, 12, 23, 8). Exactly the same is said of the δαίμονες οἵτε βίοιο λελόγχασι μακραίωνος (115, 5). In the face of these expressions, so definitely setting a period to the lifetime of the gods, we must suppose that the epithets which Emp. applies to himself—he is to be in the future θεὸς ἄμβροτος οὐκ ἔτι θνητός, 112, 4—are merely intended to assert that he shall not die any more in his incarnation as a man (the same thing must be meant when those who are delivered from the circle of rebirth are called ἀπόκηροι, ἄτειρεῖς (147); the gods are only called ἄθανατοι by traditional convention). Plutarch also, Def. Or. 16, p. 418 E, distinctly states that the δαίμονες of Emp. eventually die. That the gods (but not τὸ θεῖον itself) were liable to extinction had already been the opinion of Anaximander and Anaximenes. Acc. to Emp. the individual δαίμονες would be reabsorbed into the universal divinity, the σφαῖρος (just as the individual deities of the Stoics are reabsorbed at the world-conflagration into Zeus who is alone indestructible). [= ll. 131, 141, 461, 460 M.]

[99]   Emp., frr. 133, 134 (389–96), speaks of a supersensual divinity that is entirely φρὴν ἱερή: he gives to this divinity the name of Apollo, but the description is said to apply περὶ παντὸς τοῦ θείου. Hipp., RH. vii, 29, p. 386 D.-S., refers the description to the σφαῖρος. The σφαῖρος, in which no νεῖκος is left was called by Emp. ὁ θεός, ὁ εὐδαιμονέστατος θεός (Arist., An. i, 5, 410b, 5–6; Metaph. ii, 4, 1000b, 3). It is, however, certain that Emp. would not have regarded the σφαῖρος as pure φρὴν ἱερή. It appears, in fact, that in the σφαῖρος, in which everything is together and united, even the divine power thought of as supersensual is brought to a close. In the world-state of multiplicity caused by νεῖκος divinity seems to be regarded as separate from the elements and the forces. “Furious conflict” (115, 14) then attacks even the divinity and divides it against itself; hence the origin of individual δαίμονες as a self-caused division of the divine, a desertion from the One θεῖον—the individual δαίμονες are φυγάδες, θεόθεν (115, 13). These individual δαίμονες are entangled in the world from its origin until at last, having become purified, they rise again to the heights of divinity; and when all individuality is again fused into one by φιλία they return once more into the universal divinity in order with it to enter into the σφαῖρος.—Thus we may perhaps reconstruct the Empedoklean fantasy. His lines do not supply sufficient evidence for the complete reconstruction of his picture of the perpetually recurring process. We should naturally expect a certain obscurity to cling to this attempt to fuse together physiology and theology.

[100]   Lucr. iii, 370–3.

[101]   All that is essential on the subject of Demokritos’ doctrine of the soul is to be found in Arist., An. i, 2, p. 403b, 31–404a, 16; 405a., 7–13; i, 3, p. 406b, 15–22; Resp. iv, p. 471b, 30–472a, 17.—The air is full of the particles which Demokritos calls νοῦς and ψυχή: Resp. 472a, 6–8 [Vors. ii, 36]. The atoms hovering in the air become visible as “motes in the sunbeam”; of these some are the soul-atoms (this must be the meaning of An. 404A, 3 ff.; Iamb. ap. Stob., Ecl. i, p. 384, 15 W., is only drawing upon Arist.). This is a modification of the opinion held by the Pythagoreans (mentioned also by Arist. 404a, 16 ff.) that the motes in the sunbeam are “souls” (see above, chap. x, n. 34). Inhalation of the world-stuff as a condition of life in the individual is imitated from Herakleitos (see S.E., M. vii, 129).

[102]   The soul acc. to Dem. ἐκβαίνει μὲν τοῦ σώματος, ἐν δὲ τῷ ἐκβαίνειν διαφορεῖται καὶ διασκεδάννυται, Iamb. ap. Stob., Ecl. i, p. 384, 16 f. W. 408

[103]   Dem. φθαρτὴν (εἶναι τὴν ψυχὴν) τῷ σώματι συνδιαφθειρομένην, Dox. 393a, 8 [Vors. A 109]. Since the disruption of the soul-atoms is not effected at a single blow death may, in consequence, sometimes be only apparent; i.e. when many but not all the soul-particles have escaped. For this reason also, with the possible re-assemblage of the soul-atoms, ἀναβιώσεις of the apparently dead may occur. Cases of this kind seem to have been treated in the work περὶ τῶν ἐν Ἅιδου: see Procl., in Rp. ii, 113, 6 Kr.; D.L. ix, 46; it is counted among the most famous, or at least the most popular of Dem.’s writings in the anecdote ap. Ath. 168 B; cf. [Hp.] Ep. 10, 3, p. 291 Hch. [ix, 322 Lit.]; Vors. 55 C, 2. This view of the retention of vitality, of course, only applies to the period immediately following the (apparent) death (it is fairly correctly represented by [Plu.] Plac. Ph. 4, 4, 4 [Dox. 390], it was probably attributed to Dem. on account of a similar observation made by Parmenides; see above, p. 373). Nevertheless, out of it grew up the assertion, which was then attributed to Dem., that in fact τὰ νεκρὰ τῶν σωμάτων αἰσθάνεται: e.g. Alex. Aph. in Arist., Top. 21, 21; [Vors. ii, 38, 8]; Stob., Ecl. i, p. 477, 18 W. In the case, at least, of those that are really “dead”, i.e. of bodies that have been deserted by all the soul-atoms, Dem. certainly never taught the presence of αἴσθησις: against the vulgarization of his opinions that would attribute such a view as this to him (as Epicurus himself did) the Democritici spoken of by Cic. (TD. i, 82) made their protest.—The work περὶ τῶν ἐν Ἅιδου can certainly not have confined itself to considerations of a purely physical nature; otherwise Thrasyllos (D.L. ix, 46) could not have classified it among the ἠθικὰ βιβλία of Dem. [Vors. ii, 19]. It is, indeed, difficult to imagine what from Dem.’s point of view there could have been to say about “the things in the Underworld”. It is hardly possible to suppose (as Mullach, Dem. fr., pp. 117–18, and Heyne do) that Dem. would think himself obliged either to answer or to parody the fabulous inventions of the poets about the realm of shadows. It is difficult to be certain that Dem. was really the author of the work: the forgery of later times was particularly fond of turning the most clear-headed of materialists into a mage and a jack-of-all-trades. (Dem.’s observations of the possibility of ἀναβιοῦν is in part at least the origin of the writing π. τ. ἐν ᾅδου; it is also responsible for the anecdote that makes him promise to the Persian king that he will restore his dead wife to life again, etc.—a variation of an ingenious story widely spread both in the East and the West. See my Lecture on Greek Novel-writing: Verh. der Philologenvers. zu Rostock, 1875, p. 68 f.)—The “fragmenta moralia” of Dem. are with rare exceptions (e.g. Mull. frr. 7, 23, 48, 49, etc. = 146, 159, 147, 127 D.) wholesale fabrications of the feeblest kind. One of them, however (119 Mull., 297 D.), agrees at least with what Dem. may very well have said about the punishments in Hell (though in rather different words—he was incapable of quite such a monstrosity as μυθοπλαστέοντες, which sounds very late Greek. Vain efforts have been made to justify this μυθοπλαστέω by reference to the older μυθοπλάστης. But μυθοποιός, ὀδοφύλαξ, ἀργυροκόπος, etc., are also old, and it is no secret that verbs derived by further extension from such composite verbal nouns are mostly late formations: thus μυθοποιέω, ὀδοφυλακέω, ἀργυροκοπέω, and again πετροβολέω, ἱεροφαντέω, τεκνοκτονέω, etc.). In another of these falsa no echo even of Dem.’s thought is to be found: fr. moral. 1 Mull. [171 D.] ψυχὴ οἰκητήριον δαίμονος.

[104]   Dem., whose inquiries set out from the study of inorganic nature, 409 was led to predicate a mechanical obedience to law in organic nature as well. Anaxagoras starting from the study of organic nature and in particular of man, its highest development, derived from that study the concept of purpose—purpose consciously undertaken and carried out—and this idea affected his outlook upon the whole of nature, including inorganic nature. This teleological system, regarded as of universal application, is made by him to depend on a Being modelled upon the human mind, the only source, in fact, from which he could have derived his experience of action carried out in accordance with pre-arranged purpose.

[105]   Cf. here and on what follows, Heinze, Ber. d. Sächs. Ges. d. Wiss. 1890, pp. 1 ff.

[106]   νοῦς must be omniscient if it γνώμην περὶ παντὸς ἴσχει (fr. 6 M. = 12 D.). It has organized (διεκόσμησε) not only what was and is but also what is to be: frr. 6, 12 [12, 14 D.].

[107]   Arist., Ph. 256b. 24 ff.

[108]   ὁ γὰρ νοῦς (of Anaxag.) εἷς: Arist., Metaph. 1069b, 31. On the other hand, χρήματα ἄπειρα πλῆθος: Anaxag. fr. 1.

[109]   Ἀναξαγόρας φησι τὸν νοῦν κοινὸν οὐθὲν οὐθενὶ τῶν ἄλλων ἔχειν. Arist., An. i, 2, p. 405b, 19 ff.; cf. iii, 4, p. 429b, 23 f.

[110]   Anaxag. fr. 6 [12]: τὰ μὲν ἄλλα <πάντα> παντὸς μοῖραν μετέχει, νόος δέ ἐστι ἄπειρον καὶ αὐτοκρατὲς καὶ μέμικται οὐδενὶ χρήματι, ἀλλὰ μοῦνος αὐτὸς ἐφ, ἑωυτοῦ ἐστι. (ἄπειρον does not seem to supply the required opposition to what proceeds: ? ἁπλόον. Anaxag. used the word of νοῦς acc. to Arist., An. 405a, 16; 429b, 23. Zeller also suggests ἁπλόον, Archiv f. G. d. Philos. v, 441.)

[111]   ὅσα ψυχὴν ἔχει, καὶ τὰ μέζω καὶ τὰ ἐλάσσω, πάντων νόος κρατέει· καὶ τῆς περιχωρήσιος τῆς συμπάσης νόος ἐκράτησε, ὤστε περιχωρῆσαι τὴν ἀρχήν, fr. 6 [12]. This κρατεῖν at the beginning of the εριχώρησις cannot at any rate take place by the inter-mixture of νοῦς in the σπέρματα or by the entry of νοῦς into these. Because νοῦς is both ἀπαθής and ἀμιγήςs, it κρατοίη ἂν ἀμιγὴς ὤν, Arist., Ph. 256b, 27; cf. 429a, 18. Does this also apply to νοῦς when it τῶν ψυχὴν ἐχόντων κρατέει? And yet in this case it appears to be divided, as μείζωνn or ἐλάττων in each case, in the ζῷα.—No one can help being reminded here of the insoluble aporiai raised in Aristotle’s own doctrine of the active νοῦς which, in this case too, is ἀπαθής, ἀμιγής, χωριστός from the body; is also deprived of all attributes of individuality (which reside entirely in the lower psychical powers) and thus appears as a common divine spirit. And yet it is said to be a μόριον τῆς ψυχῆς, present ἐν τῇ ψυχῇ, dwelling inside the body yet having nothing in common with it, and in any case is thought of as an individual mind. In the case of Anaxagoras the same aporiai apply also to the nourishing, feeling, desiring, and moving soul (as it is called by Arist.); for all the “parts” of the soul are included almost indistinguishably by him under the conception of νοῦς.—The difficulty of reconciling the unity and inward continuity of the spiritual (immaterial, that cannot be thought of as divided)—with its individuation and distribution into the multiplicity of souls, is one which repeatedly occurs in Greek philosophy.

[112]   διὰ πάντων ἰόντα, Pl., Crat. 413 C.

[113]   ἐν παντὶ παντὸς μοῖρα ἔνεστι πλὴν νόου· ἔστι οἷσι δὲ καὶ νόος ἔνι, fr. 5 [11].

[114]   νόος δὲ πᾶς ὅμοιός ἐστι καὶ ὁ μέζων καὶ ὁ ἐλάσσων, fr. 6 [12].

[115]   Arist., An. i, 2, p. 404b, 1–7: Anaxag. often gives τὸν νοῦν as τὸ αἴτιον τοῦ καλῶς καὶ ὀρθῶς· ἑτέρωθι δὲ (he says) τοῦτον εἶναι τὴν ψυχήν· ἐν ἅπασι γὰρ ὑπάρχειν αὐτὸν τοῖς ζῴοις, καὶ μεγάλοις καὶ μικροῖς 410 καὶ τιμίοις καὶ ἀτιμοτέροις (in which case the νοῦς that dwells within all the ζῷα cannot be any longer regarded as ὁ κατὰ φρόνησιν λεγόμενος νοῦς). Anaxag. had expressed himself indistinctly: ἧττον διασαφεῖ περὶ αὐτων (i.e, the relation between νοῦς and ψυχή). Cf. 405a, 13 f. In the sense of the words as used by Anaxagoras νοῦς and ψυχή were simply identified by Plato: Crat. 400 A.

[116]   D.L. ii, 8 [Vors. 375]. Acc. to Anaxag. the moon has οἰκήσεις (ἀλλὰ καὶ λόφους καὶ φάραγγας). Fr. 10 [4] probably refers to the men and other ζῷα in the moon (to whom yet another moon gives light). Anaxag. τὴν σελήνην γῆν φησὶν εἶναι (i.e. an inhabitable heavenly body like the earth), Pl., Ap. 26 D; cf. Hippol., R.H. i, 8, 10, p. 22, 40 D.-S.—We are reminded of the Orphico-Pythagorean fantasies about life on the moon (see above, chap. x, n. 76).

[117]   Anaxag. counted the plants as ζῷα and ascribed emotions to them: ἥδεσθαι καὶ λυπεῖσθαι [Arist.] Plant. 815a, 18. Like Plato and Demokritos Anaxag. also regarded plants as ζῷα ἔγγεια: Plu., QN. 1, 911 D.

[118]   In spite of its entry into χρήματα, νοῦς is yet said to remain “unmixed” and unaffected by them: αὐτοκράτορα γὰρ αὐτὸν ὄντα καὶ οὐδενὶ μεμιγμένον πάντα φησὶν αὐτὸν κοσμεῖν τὰ πράγματα διὰ πάντων ἰόντα, Pl., Crat. 413 C. We thus have at the same time διὰ πάντων ἰόντα and denial of mixture which is reiterated in stronger and stronger language. Thus νοῦς even so remains still ἐφ’ ἑωυτοῦ (εἰ μὴ γὰρ ἐφ’ ἑωυτου ἦν, ἄλλῳ τέῳ ἐμέμικτο ἄν· μετεῖχε δὲ ἂν ἁπάντων χρημάτων εἰ ἐμέμικτό τεῳ· ἐν παντὶ γὰρ παντὸς μοῖρα ἕνεστι κτλ. So perhaps we should read fr. 6 [12] restoring a completed syllogism. In the traditional text the clause εἰ ἐμέμικτό τεῳ is superfluous and in the way). It takes no particle of the others into itself.

[119]   [Plu.] Plac. Phil. 5, 25, 2 (Aët., Dox. 437; Vors. 397, 18), in the chap. ποτέρου ἐστὶν ὕπνος καὶ θάνατος ψυχῆς ἢ σώματος; Anaxag. taught: εἶναι δὲ καὶ ψυχῆς θάνατον τὸν διαχωρισμόν. Nothing else can be meant by the words—the theme of the chapter alone shows it—than: the death of the soul (as well as of the body) occurs with its separation (from the body). τὸν διαχωρισμόν is subject and εἶναι τῆς ψυχῆς θάνατον predicate of the sentence (not the other way round as Siebeck seems to think: Ges. d. Psychol. i, 285). The violent alteration proposed by Wyttenbach (de immort. animi, Opusc. ii, 597 f.) has not the smallest justification: εἶναι δὲ καὶ τὸν θάνατον ψυχῆς διαχωρισμὸν καὶ σώματος. There could have been no reason at all in appealing specially to Anaxagoras for a confirmation of the popular conception of death (it would be nothing more). Further, in this particular connexion such a definition of death is quite out of place; since the theme of the chap. is only to ask the question whether death also affects the soul, not what it is. ψυχή here must mean the individual soul, not the νοῦς which is the basis of the individual souls. Anaxag. made the individual soul perish at death—so much is certain. It must be admitted that we cannot say for certain whether the Placita are referring to an actual utterance of Anaxag. or are only drawing conclusions from his teaching.

[120]   fr. 17 [17].

CHAPTER XII

THE LAY AUTHORS

Theology and Philosophy, each in its own way attempting to go beyond inadequate popular belief, could only very gradually transcend the limits of those narrow communities within which their influence was first felt and reach the circles in which that popular belief held sway. During the earliest successes of the theological and philosophical spirit hardly a voice was raised that might have suggested that the belief in the imperishability and divine nature of the human Soul, of the inherence of all things spiritual in one imperishable, fundamental substance, might become something more than a mystery known to the wise and illuminated, and enter into the convictions of the people and the unlearned. “After the death of the body, the Image of Life remains alive; for that alone is descended from the gods”—such is the announcement of Pindar. But for all the confidence with which, as though anticipating no contradiction, he here proclaims the view of the soul’s immortality and bases it upon its divine nature, such an opinion can at that time have been no more than the persuasion of isolated communities formed and instructed in that particular doctrine. It cannot be merely accidental,1 that in the fragments which have come down to us of the lyric and semi-lyric (elegiac and iambic) poetry—poetry intended for a wide and unspecialized public and expressing feelings and ideas in language that all could understand—hardly a trace appears of that enhanced conception of the worth and nature of the Soul. Reflexion does not linger over such dark subjects; whenever they are illuminated for a passing moment, we discern the outlines of those figures from the spirit world just as the Homeric imagination had given them shape.

Life and light are only to be found in this world;2 Death, to which we are all “owing”,3 leads the soul into a realm of nothingness.4 Inarticulate, voiceless, the dead man lies in the grave like a statue.5 Upon earth, and not in any shadowy hereafter, is completed that judgment6 which divine Justice passes upon the criminal himself, or upon his descendants in whom something of him still lives on. It is the lack of such descendants that forms the bitterest pang, as he goes down to Hades, of the man who passes childless out of this life.7 412

More distinctly and bitterly, in this age of advancing civilization and growing sensibility, sounds the wail over the pain and affliction of life, the obscurity of its ways, and the uncertainty of its outcome.8 Silenos, the prophetic wood-spirit, so went the ancient legend, when captured by King Midas in his rose-gardens at Bermios earned his release with the judgment of melancholy wisdom that the Greek was never tired of repeating in ever-varying forms—not to be born is the best thing for men, but having been born, let him pray that he may return as soon as possible to the kingdom of Night,9 and of Hades.10 The cheerful enjoyment of life is no longer so sure of itself as once it had been in the days of its naïve confidence: and yet there is no substitute attempted, no compensatory hereafter in a next world of justice and untroubled happiness. We rather hear the opinion expressed that rest is the greatest of all earthly blessings; and rest is brought by Death. Nevertheless there is little demand for consolation; a robust and virile sense of life that can put up with whatever may befall of evil or hardship in healthy indifference, is in the air, and speaks to us from many a page of this poetic legacy with unpretending veracity. No attempt is made to smooth over the hardship and cruelty of life. Man’s power is small, his efforts go unrewarded, one necessity after another besets his short life: over all alike hangs the shadow of inevitable death. All things come at last to the awful chasm—the bravest virtue and the highest authority in the world.11 Yet life is good and death an evil; else, why do the blessed gods not die? asks Sappho12 with feminine naiveté; though indeed, her life’s path had lain through the deepest valley of the shadow. Even the dead man, if he wishes to be preserved from utter nothingness, must depend upon the world of the living as the only place of reality; the fame of his virtues and his deeds is all that outlasts his death.13 Perhaps some dim perception of that fame reaches even to the dead.14 They themselves are for the living as though they had passed into nothingness; we should not, thinks a poet, give them another thought after we have buried them.15

Here even the time-honoured conventions associated with the cult of souls seem to be perversely cast aside. In general, the poet with his wide-ranging observation of mankind had small occasion to be reminded of the cult of the soul that the narrow circles of family or city offered to their dead, or of the conceptions thereby encouraged of the continued life enjoyed by the departed. The omission is supplied by the Orators of the fifth and fourth centuries and by what they say—and do 413 not say—of the state of things hereafter. The greatest period of lyric poetry was by that time already fading into the past, and yet whoever wished in speaking before a citizen assembly to meet with general agreement and understanding was still obliged to refrain from speaking of the blessed immortality, the eternity and divinity of the soul. The Orators16 never pass beyond the conceptions of the survival, power, and rights of the souls of the departed which were called forth and maintained in existence by the cult of the soul. The continued existence of the souls in the next world is not called in question; but the opinion that the souls still preserve their consciousness and have any knowledge of what happens on this earth is only expressed with the most cautious avoidance of definiteness.17 What—apart from the sacrificial offerings of their relatives—still binds the dead to the life upon earth, is little more than the fame accorded to them among the living.18 Even in the elevated language of solemn funeral orations the consolations offered to the survivors omit all mention of any enhanced state of being, any thought of immortal life in fully-conscious blessedness, that might belong now to the glorious departed.19 Such high visions and hopes for the future were still, it appears, as little necessary or demanded for the comfort of the people as they had been in the times of the great wars of liberty.20 The beloved dead who had given their lives for their country in those wars, as well as many others of the time whom death had overtaken, were the recipients of the epitaphs composed by Simonides the master of brilliant and condensed inscriptions. Nevertheless, not once does he vouchsafe a word that might point forward to a land of blessed immortality for the departed. There is a vestige of life still remaining for the dead—but it is in this world; the memory of the living and their own great name honoured by after generations is all that can prolong their existence.

It seems like an echo from another world when (about the middle of the fifth century) Melanippides the dithyrambic poet addresses a god in the words: “Hear me Father, marvel of all mortal men, Thou that rulest over the everliving Souls.” The words must be addressed to Dionysos;21 for such as entered into the magic circle of his nightly festival those visions of the imperishability of the human soul and its divine power acquired reality. Such wisdom received but partial assent from those who lived unaffected by the conceptions of isolated sects of the theologically or philosophically minded. 414

§ 2

A peculiar position is taken up by Pindar. Two contrasted views of the nature, origin, and destiny of the soul seem to be combined in his mind with equal claim to authority.

In the Victory Odes allusions predominate which imply an agreement with the popular view expressed in the sayings of poets and the presuppositions of the cult of souls and the worship of Heroes. After its separation from the body, the soul disappears into the underworld.22 The piety and affectionate memory of relatives and descendants remains as a link between the dead and the living;23 whether the soul itself is still conscious of any connexion with the world of the living seems uncertain.24 Its power is over and done with—it is certainly no condition of blessed happiness into which it has entered. Only the glorious name, the fame that is honoured in song, rewards the great deeds of the virtuous after death.25

An exalted state of being, after their departure from this earth, is attributed to the Heroes alone. The belief in the existence, importance, and power of these illuminated spirits holds complete sway;26 it emerges in lively reality from the words and narrations of the poet throughout all his work. Moreover, the ancient conception—in reality rendered untenable by the belief in Heroes—that only with the undivided union of body and soul is complete life imaginable, is discernible in many allusions and stories of Translation that imply that conception. Amphiaraos, the most illustrious of those who have been translated to everlasting life, is specially dear to the heart of the Theban poet, and is glorified more than once in the language of unaffected faith in such miracles.27 But, further, even when death has occurred in the meantime, elevation to a higher life remains possible—even beyond the heights of the “Hero”. Semele lives for ever, though she died under the crash of the thunder-bolt.28 The barrier between men and gods is not insuperable; we can distantly approach the immortals not only in greatness of mind, but in bodily vigour.29 One mother gave birth to both races, though the gulf between them is indeed a deep one; man is nought—a shadow’s dream-image; for the gods the brazen heavens remain for ever as an unconquerable stronghold.30 Only a miracle of divine interference with the lawful and normal course of nature, can raise the individual soul to the everlasting life of the gods and Heroes.

Such visions as these could be indulged in by one who still 415 kept his feet firmly fixed upon the ground of popular belief. And yet side by side with them in Pindar’s works are to be found descriptions of quite another order in which is expressed, with elaborate fullness and dogmatic exactitude, a complete doctrine of the nature, destiny, and fate of the soul; passages in which, in spite of some little poetic licence in detail, a well ordered and, in the main, consistent whole is pictured.

The Soul, the “Image of Life”, the other Self of the living and visible man, sleeps while the limbs of man are active; when the individual is asleep it shows him dream-visions of the future.31 This psyche32 which during the waking and conscious hours of the man is itself lying in the darkness of unconsciousness, is far from being the totality of mental powers gathered together in a single creature, or at any rate, in a single concept, such as the philosophers as well as the everyday use of the word at that period understood by the name “psyche”. Here, again, the name once more denotes the double of mankind dwelling within the living man such as it was known to primeval popular belief and to the Homeric poems. A theological meaning has, however, been added to it. This “Image” of man, we are told, “is alone descended from the gods,” and with this the reason also is discovered why the soul-image alone after the destruction of the body by death remains alive.33

Derived from the gods and therefore eternally exempt from destruction, everlasting and immortal, the soul is none the less condemned to finiteness; it dwells within the mortal body of man. This is the result of the “ancient guilt” of which, quite in the manner of theological poetry, Pindar also speaks.34 After the death of the body it is to await in Hades the stern sentence that “One” shall pronounce over its earthly deeds.35 For the condemned there is in store “affliction past beholding”36 in deep Tartaros, “where the slow rivers of murky night spit out endless darkness,” and forgetfulness encloses the victims.37 The just enter into the subterranean places of bliss where the sun gives them light when he has set upon earth.38 In flowery meadows they enjoy an existence of resplendent idleness, such as only the Greek imagination, nourished amid the artistic surroundings of Greek life, could describe without falling into emptiness and futility.

But the soul has not even so found its last resting place. It must again give life to a body and not until it has completed upon earth a third faultless life can it hope for an end of its earthly course of being.39 The conditions of each new life 416 upon earth depend upon the degree of purity that the soul has achieved in its previous lifetimes. When at last the Queen of the Underworld considers that its “ancient guilt” has been atoned for, she sends forth the souls after the ninth year40 of their last sojourn in Hades once more to live in the upper world, this time in happiness. Here they pass through one more lifetime as kings, mighty men of valour, and Wise Men.41 Then at last they escape from the necessity of earthly rebirth. As “Heroes” they are honoured among men;42 and they have therefore entered into a state of higher being which the popular belief of Pindar’s time ascribed not only to the souls of the great ancestral figures of the past, but also to many who had departed hence in more recent times after a life of valour and service.43 Now they are beyond the reach of Hades as much as of the world of men. Faith seeks them in “Islands of the Blest” far out in Okeanos; thither, to the “Citadel of Kronos” they travel on the “Way of Zeus”44 and enjoy, in company with the great ones of the past, under the protection of Kronos45 and his assessor Rhadamanthys, a life of bliss for ever undisturbed.

Such conceptions of the origin, fortunes, and ultimate destiny of the soul, the more they diverge from commonly held opinions, the more certainly must they be regarded as being part of the private and real persuasion of the poet himself. The poet, who on other occasions when he makes passing and casual reference to the things of the next world accommodates himself to the traditional view, gives himself up willingly to such hopes and aspirations where the circumstances of his song provided an opportunity of dealing at length with such matters—especially in hymns of mourning for the dead. He may have paid attention in such poems to the special opinions of those who were to be the first hearers of his song. Theron, the ruler of Akragas, to whom was dedicated the second Olympian Ode of Victory that deals so fully with the hope of bliss to come, was an old man whose thoughts might well be occupied with the life after death.46 In this case, therefore, we may presume perhaps the special interest of the person whose praises are sung in these reflections that lead so far away from the commonly accepted view of the Soul.47 But that Pindar, proud and self-willed, conscious of specific knowledge and proud of that consciousness, should have given expression to strange doctrine so foreign to popular ideas simply out of complaisance to another’s will, and in subservience to another man’s belief—that is quite unthinkable. It is rather the substance of what he believes himself 417 and has achieved by his own struggles that in a solemn hour he reveals for a moment to like-minded friends.

The different elements out of which Pindar has composed his special view are not hard to distinguish. He is following theological doctrine in what he tells of the divine origin of the soul, its wanderings through several bodies, the judgment in Hades, the special place assigned to the just, and that of the wicked. But it is layman’s theology that he is propounding; it does not bind itself to a single unalterable formula, and betrays throughout that its exponent is a poet. Pindar, throughout the whole of his poetic activity, combines the office of singer with that of professional teacher, more especially where he has to speak of the things of an invisible divine world. But for all his didactic professionalism he remains the poet, for whom as depository and trustee of the Myth it is out of the question to abandon the traditional, whether in legend or belief. His task is to keep pure what has been handed down to him, to make it more profound, perhaps to supplement and complete it, but with all this to justify it. Thus, poetic legend and popular belief enter even into his theologian’s doctrine of the Soul; the Islands of the Blest, the elevation of man to Hero—these were things he could not give up.

From what particular direction Pindar’s theological interests may have come to him we cannot say with precision or certainty. Orphic as well as Pythagorean doctrines may have come to his notice in Sicily whither he made repeated visits after 477 B.C.48 For both sects this country was the original nursery and breeding ground.

There, too, the poet may perhaps have (even at that date) met with certain varieties of the Orphic mystical doctrine which, like his own views, were intermingled with elements taken from conventional mythology. Examples of this type of Orphic mysticism allied with foreign elements are the verses which, inscribed upon gold tablets, were found not long ago in graves near the ancient Sybaris.49 Three of these poems begin with phrases that are common to them all, and imply the same underlying conceptions; after that they part company and represent two different views. The soul of the dead person50 thus addresses itself to the Queen of the lower world, and the other gods of the depths below: “I draw near to you purified and born of pure parents.”51 It belongs then to a mortal who, like his parents before him, has been “purified” in the sacred mysteries of a religious association.52 It claims also to be descended from the blessed race of the deities of the lower 418 world.53 “Lightning robbed me of life,” so one of the versions goes on,54 “and so I escaped from the Circle, the burdensome, the grievous”. In these words purely Orphic belief is expressed: the Soul has now at last escaped entirely from the “Circle of Births”,55 and it enters as it tells us “with speedy feet into the wished-for precinct”,56 and buries itself in the bosom of the Queen of the Underworld.57 It is the latter, probably, who at the end greets the liberated soul with the words: “Fortunate and to be called Blessed art thou; now shalt thou be, instead of a mortal—a god.”

Much less exalted are the hopes expressed in the other two versions of the mystic document—two versions that resemble each other in most essentials. Here the soul asserts that it has done penance for unrighteous deeds; now it appears before the revered Persephoneia to implore her graciously to send it to the dwelling places of the pure and the holy.58

How are we to explain the discrepancy? It would indeed be possible to explain the more restrained version as that of a sect whose members were less confident of their own divine origin and of the necessary return of the soul at last to its enfranchised divine state. It is much more probable, however—since in fact the presupposition of the divine nature of the soul and its kinship with the divine is really made in both cases and with the same words—that we here have to do with the beliefs of one and the same sect, and that the varying heights of felicity aspired to correspond to different stages of the process of redemption. He who through participation in the sacred mysteries has atoned for the ancient guilt, can be admitted by the goddess into the paradise of the blest in the midst of Hades. But he must still, in subsequent rebirths upon earth first complete the cycle before he can be fully released from rebirth and become once more what he was at the beginning, entirely a god. The dead man of the first tablet has reached the final goal of his pilgrimage; the other two have only reached an intermediate resting place.59 Another inscription, found in a grave of the same neighbourhood,60 by its use of a mystic formula61 appended also to the first version of the above-mentioned poems, reveals itself as an expression of faith deriving from the same sect. Among a variety of disconnected instructions and appeals to the dead,62 strung together with no particular arrangement, it contains the following statement: “a god hast thou become instead of a mortal”. This then always remained the crowning point of the salvation promised by the sect. 419

In the cult and beliefs of this sect which thus with divided voice speaks to us in these verses, the worship of the ancient Greek divinities of the Underworld (among whom Dionysos is not this time included) was fused with the boldest conception belonging to the Dionysiac mysteries: the confident assurance that the divine nature of the soul must in the end break through, purified and triumphant over the earthliness that obscured it. Pindar in another, but not very different, way has brought the same elements into conjunction. One would indeed like to be able to estimate the influence which his doctrine, which lay so close to his own heart, may have exercised on the hearers and readers of his poems. He was at once something more and something less than a theological teacher. Never again among the Greeks did the blessed life of the sanctified soul receive such majestic expression, clothed in such ample and resplendent diction, as that which poured so freely from the heart of this richly gifted poet. But though the poet may have touched the heart of his hearer and tempted his imagination to stray along the path laid out for him, yet it cannot have been easy (and perhaps the greatness of the poet’s triumph almost made it harder) permanently to mistake the magic gleam of poetry for the sunlight of reality. One may doubt whether the poems in which Pindar recounted his dreams of future blessedness can have found many hearers in whom they awakened not merely æsthetic satisfaction, but belief in the literal truth of the teaching, in the reality of those beautiful, dim, haloed figures.

§ 3

But perhaps by the expression of such doubts we do less than justice to the influence which a Greek poet might exercise upon the minds and dispositions of his hearers. Greek popular opinion was very much inclined to place the poet on a pedestal to which his modern representative would hardly care to aspire, and to which at any rate he could never attain. The purely artistic value and importance of a poem did not seem to be impaired by the demand that it should at the same time instruct and edify. The poet was to be the teacher of his people in an age when, in the conditions of Greek life, the people had no other instructor. He was to be a teacher in the highest sense of all when, speaking in the language of the most exalted poetry, he dealt with the doubts and certainties of religion and the relationship between religion and morality. In these matters he could supplement out of the wealth of 420 his own far-reaching reflection what was lacking in the public morality of the time through the absence of an official, authoritative religious Book. By giving them intelligible and memorable expression, together with greater cohesion and unity, he could strengthen the foundations of the common stock of moral ideas that had been evolved in the course of social and city life. He might also expand and give greater depth to the ideas of popular morality, tempering them in the fire of his own more rigorous thought and interpreting and refining them from the heights of a more elevated understanding of the divine. What he thus gave back to the people stamped with the impress of his own very personal temperament and outlook, no longer remained the casual opinion of a single individual, but took root in suitably constituted minds and became for many a valued possession, an enduring addition to their consciousness.

It was not until the rise in later times of a fully developed philosophy extending its range of interpretation to the whole of life that poetry was deprived of its special office of instructress to the aspiring minds among the people.63 Poetry had always been willing to exercise this function, but never so decidedly or with such fully conscious purpose as in the times of transition at the beginning of which Pindar lived—the transition from an unsophisticated faith in the traditional view of all things visible and invisible to a fresh stabilization of belief secured by, and resting upon, philosophic conviction. The need felt for the readjustment or verification of the ancestral or traditional forms of belief was vividly awakened, and it was still only poetry that could extend the light of its teaching to illuminate the minds of whole classes of the population. The influence of the poets must have increased in proportion as the numbers increased of those who were ready to receive the special bounty which they were able to offer. But if the influence wielded by Pindar, the Pan-Hellenic poet of the great Festivals, as the teacher of his people was, as we have seen, considerable, a very wide field indeed for the propagation of fruitful ideas lay open to the Attic tragedians in the huge concourse of the people which flocked together to hear their creations—a multitude which seemed all the greater for being confined within a narrower space. The poets themselves frequently allow it to be seen how seriously they regarded themselves as the teachers of their public, and the people admitted their claims. All men expected and demanded instruction from the word of the poet—the highest instruction from the highest poetry.64 We shall not be much mistaken 421 if we believe that the opinions and reflections to which Aeschylus, Sophokles, and not least Euripides, gave utterance in their tragic drama did not remain the sole property of those in whose minds they had first arisen.

§ 4

The Attic Tragedy of the fifth century must of its own accord, even if the conscious purpose of the dramatists had not tended in the same direction, have developed into an artistic product based on psychological interest. The real theatre of that drama must inevitably have become the interior of its hero’s mind.

The tragic poet attempted something hitherto unknown. The characters and events of ancient legend or history which had passed shadowlike before the minds of the hearers or readers of all earlier poetry, at the mercy of those hearers’ own private and variously limited imagination—these same events and characters were now to take form and body and appear visibly before the eyes of all beholders alike in equal clearness. What had hitherto seemed a dream-vision of the imagination now visibly presented itself to the eyes of the beholder, unchanging, precise, independent of the limitations of intellect among the audience, a concrete and self-moving object of waking perception. Thus reawakened to a palpable and fully realized life, the myth was seen in a new light. What in it was mere incident became subordinated to the personality of the man who plays his part in these events before our eyes, and whose importance and content is not exhausted in the single particular action. The old legend in becoming drama has undergone an extension both spatial and temporal, and even in externals the plot that unfolds itself in a series of momentary acts plays the least part in the story. The speeches and counter-speeches of the hero and the other actors who take part in the story were bound to take up the greater part of the time. Motives of action, expressed, debated and fought out in words, become more important than their eventual outcome in passionate deed or mortal woe. With the advance of artistic skill the intellect seeks to grasp the permanent outlines of the character that in the given circumstances can be moved by particular motives to particular acts. Thus, the complete materialization of the myth leads to its complete spiritualization. The eyes and mind of the beholder are directed less to the external events—these, being familiar from the ancient legend, could 422 awaken little curiosity—and more to the inward meaning and import of what the hero does and suffers.

And it was here that the dramatic poet was faced with his special and peculiar problem. What was to happen in his drama was settled out of hand by the course of the ancient legend (in a few cases by the course of historical events) and the lines along which his invention must move were planned out for him in advance. To give life to the personages of the drama, motivation and justification to the events of the drama—that was his particular business. But in this he was thrown entirely upon his own resources. Even if he could he was not permitted to derive the inner motive forces of the action from the real modes of feeling and thinking that had belonged to the distant past in which the myth had first been conceived. Such motives would have remained unintelligible to the audience, and his play would have been stillborn. But on the other hand, how was he to make plausible and intelligible to the vastly different mentality and changed feelings of the age in which he lived actions which really sprang from the habits and moral ideas of a long since vanished age? It is open to him (if he is not content to be a mere annalist simply stringing together bare events) to take the actual incident given him by the mythical legend and set over against it the actor in the story whose emotions are those of a modern man, and upon whose shoulders the burden of the event is laid; he may represent this opposition as beyond reconciliation, and so lead to the most simple and overwhelming of tragic conflicts. This simple opposition of character and destiny which places both the poet and his hero—another Hamlet—in a position of direct hostility to the mythological background can, however, never become the rule. It is the business of the poet as far as possible to assimilate and make his own the spirit that actually called forth the dark and cruel legend of the past, while yet remaining true to the mode of perception proper to his own time. He must manage to leave undisturbed the full primitive sense of the mythical story and bring it about that by its marriage with the spirit of a later age its meaning is not destroyed but deepened. He is committed to the search for an adjustment between the mental attitudes of an older and a newer age.

Such an adjustment came most easily to Aeschylus and satisfied the needs of his temperament. As one who had grown to manhood in the Athens of the period before the Persian wars his own character had its roots in ancient and traditional modes of thought. These he built up under the guiding 423 influence of his own special ways of thinking and feeling into a new and loftier whole: to corroborate this whole, which appeared to him as a law of the moral world, by reference to typical examples taken from mythology—examples chosen by him with deliberate care to serve as subjects of his dramatic poetry—this was one of the chief aims of his art. To the plot in its moral—nay, its religious—sense, all his thoughts are directed; the characters of the actors themselves are only illuminated from the standpoint of this special interest; their wider, independent existence outside the life of the drama which completely envelops them is not meant to draw attention to itself. He himself gives us the right, in studying his plays, to leave out of sight for a moment the representational aspect of the particular and the personal—all that in fact makes them essentially works of art—in order to observe more closely the under-current of generalized belief which we may reasonably call the ethic and theology of the poet.

Behind the living tissue of his artistic creation Aeschylus allows us to perceive pretty clearly the firm outlines of his own ethical and religious convictions. He fuses together elements prescribed to him from without with that which was dictated by his own spirit. What is prescribed to him by legend—which he allows to run its full course, in strictly dramatic form and by preference as a trilogy, a form in this case uniquely adapted to the subject—is a history that deals with the continued operation of the forces of evil and suffering upon several generations of a family, persisting from father to son and from son to son’s son. The belief also in such interconnexion of human destinies is prescribed to him from without. That the sins of the ancestors were visited upon their descendants here upon earth was an ancient article of faith especially strong in Attica.65 What Aeschylus contributes on his part is the unswerving conviction that the son and grandson of the sinner are punished for their own sin too. Suffering is punishment,66 and suffering would not have overtaken Oedipus, nor the sons of Oedipus, if Laïos had been the only guilty one—if their own sin had not deserved punishment.

And yet it does not lie within their power to choose whether the guilt shall be theirs or not: they cannot escape the deed of sin. How, we may ask, can a guilty deed be necessitated, imposed upon the guilty one by the decree of a higher power, and yet at the same time the fault of the doer of the deed, as though he had acted of his own free will? 424 The question is a perplexing and a formidable one, and it was by no means unnoticed by the poet. Behind the external apparatus of myth he finds himself faced by the problem of the freedom or determination of man’s will, which, as civilization and culture advance, feels itself morally responsible for every decision. He finds a way out of the difficulty in the view that it is not merely the deed of wickedness itself, but the conscious decision that leads up to the deed that arises out of the family inheritance of crime. The conscious choice and decision, though regarded as necessary, seemed to demonstrate fully the personal guilt and responsibility of the doer.67 The cloud of evil that proceeds from the deed of the ancestor casts a dark shadow also over the minds of his son and his son’s son. Not from his own mind or character does the will to do wrong take its origin. The noble, pure and resolute Eteokles, the model of intelligent manhood, the shield and protection of his people, falls in a moment, a victim to ominous destiny; his clear-sighted spirit is darkened, he gives himself up—his better self—for lost,68 and rushes upon his doom with awful resolve. The “sins derived from his ancestors”69 drive him on. Then, and not till then, is the full measure of penance at last paid for the crime done by the ancestor;70 his descendants are his representatives, and become guilty on his behalf and then, for their own guilt as well as his, they suffer retribution. Divinity, or a spirit of vengeance sent with a divine mission, drives the victims burdened with the inheritance of crime to the criminal deed. The divine guidance is actuated no longer, as in ancient and undying popular belief, by personal desire of vengeance, anger or malice,71 but by divine justice, acting with “just deceit”,72 that the measure of guilt may be fulfilled, and that the divine will to justice may have a means to complete satisfaction. The evil Spirit of the House assists Klytaimnestra to conceive the thought of murdering her husband;73 God himself guides and urges forward Orestes to the act of matricide which he plans and carries out with fully conscious purpose—a crime that is also a duty. To the poet the old ideas of the duty of avenging murder are a very living reality. The right to worship and cult possessed by the souls, their claim to vengeance when they have been violently done to death, their ghostly influence exerted upon the life and destinies of their immediate kinsfolk upon whom the duty of taking vengeance rests—all these things are for him not the obsolete fancies of an older generation but true and awful realities.74 Whole dramas, the Choephoroi and the Eumenides, for 425 instance, would appear as a meaningless beating of the air if they were not animated and made significant by unaltered faith in the right and the might of the souls, the reality and potency of the daimonic counsel, the Erinyes,75 who appear on behalf of the murdered mother. And now at last light breaks through the dark and clouded sky of awful imagination: where Duty and Crime have become inextricably confused, divine grace, though yielding nothing of its rights, finds at last a solution.

All these things, however—conflict and solution, crime and its expiation in ever-renewed crime and the suffering that arises thence—fulfil themselves in this world. Guilt is avenged always upon earth. The “other” world is by no means an indispensable link in this chain of conceptions and fancies; the poet’s view is rarely turned in that direction. Speculation upon the state of the soul after death, upon a blessed life in the kingdom of the spirits,76 does not interest him. Only such portions of the eschatological imaginings of the theologians as might serve the purposes of moral inspiration or support, found favour with the poet. There are occasional allusions to the judgment that, in Hades, “another Zeus” holds over the deeds of earthly life,77 but they remain dark and vague. It is not explained in what relation this judgment in Hades stands to the complete equivalence of guilt and destiny that, here upon earth, Zeus and Moira bring to completion in the person of the criminal himself and, after his death, of his descendants. Side by side with the allusions to the judgment in the underworld implying the complete consciousness of the dead, stand expressions that call up a picture of the senseless, twilight existence of the souls in Hades like that described in Homer.78 The poet, to whom every feature of the beliefs derived from the cult of the souls about the relations of the departed to the life of the dwellers on earth was intensely and vividly real, never cared to fix his attention for long upon the nature and condition of the dead in their separate other-world existence. In fact his chosen work of giving a moral significance and deeper meaning to popular and ancient faith was wholly derived from this faith itself; and so also was the lofty and consistent idea of divinity which fills the background of his picture of life. The generation which had fought at Marathon, in spite of a profounder and even more sombre meditation upon life and destiny, could still dispense almost entirely with the assistance of the theological doctrines of the sects who sought refuge from the dark and austere 426 realities of this unsatisfying world in thoughts of an imagined hereafter.

§ 5

Towards the great problems of dramatic philosophy—the problems of the freedom or compulsion of the will, the guilt and destiny of man—Sophokles took up a position that differed essentially from that of his great predecessor. A maturer and calmer self-abandonment to the observation of life and its difficulties made him less able to rest content with simple or sweeping solutions of the complexities; made him seek out other and more various modes of understanding. The individual man, stamped with the unique impression of his peculiar being, with him becomes more fully detached from the background of omnipotent might and universal law. The individual finds within himself the rules of his behaviour, the causes of his success, or his tragic failure. No petty, egotistical motive inspires the action of Antigone or Elektra: they are obedient to the old, unwritten laws of the gods. But the force that leads them to obey is derived solely from the special fashion and impulse of their own hearts. No one else could do what they do, suffer what they suffer. We realize the necessity and justification of what they do and suffer solely from the contemplation of the strength and weakness of their own characters as displayed for us in the action that takes place upon the stage. Indeed, the length to which Sophokles, in the “Elektra”, goes in the suppression of such universally recognized and binding motives as those derived from the duty of vengeance and the rights of injured souls, may well cause surprise. The special and individual case must for him carry its own justification within itself, and in fact it receives such justification so completely from the character and behaviour of the actors in the drama that, unlike the hero of Aeschylus’ tragedy, Orestes needs to have no qualm of doubt in the performance of his deed, and suffers no remorse after the murder of the wicked murderess. Once again as in the Homeric story, with Orestes’ “righteous deed of blood”,79 the circle of calamity is complete: no Erinys rises from the earth to demand his overthrow.80

So, too, when the suffering and calamity that befalls the mortal hero comes not from his own conscious decision and exercise of will, but from obscure decrees of fate it is still the special character of the hero which not only demands the greater part of our attention, but entirely conditions and sufficiently explains the course of events. The same 427 misfortune might overtake another man, but neither its inward nor its outward effects would be the same as they are for Oedipus or Aias. Only tragically extreme characters can have a tragic fate.

And yet, in these as in other tragedies, what gives the first impulse and direction to the course of the story does not arise from the will or character of their heroes. The mind of Aias is not free but subject when he performs the deed that sends him to his death. Oedipus, Deianeira take vengeance upon themselves for the deeds of horror that they have brought about without knowing what they did. Notwithstanding the fact that the interest of the “Philoktetes” centres so completely round the vividly contrasted characters of Philoktetes, Neoptolemos, and Odysseus, yet the situation which brings them into opposition is one which it was beyond the power or the purpose of man to bring about or to hinder. An obscure destiny plunges man into suffering, drives him to actions in the face of which easy and ready-made judgments about “guilt” and the relation between suffering and desert are silenced. It is not inherited family crime that here forces the son and the grandson to deeds that can hardly be called their own. The poet, it is true, knows of these conceptions81 that play so large a part in the poetry of Aeschylus, but they are mere historical tradition to him, not vital motives of his drama. Nor is it mere irrational chance, or impersonal fate working by necessity and without passion that directs the mind and guides the hand of the actor in his bondage. Clearly or obscurely moving about in the background of events the will of a divine power can be discerned that, inevitable as fate,82 guides the deeds and the fate of men in accordance with its own purpose.

The divine purpose brings to maturity a plan in which the individual man and his destiny are mere instruments. To make plain the premeditated character of this purposeful direction of human affairs is the object of the prophetic anticipations of the future, the divine oracles and prophecies of seers of which we hear so much in the plays. If this divine purpose should involve the fatal act, the undeserved suffering of the individual, then that purpose will be fulfilled though human happiness may be destroyed in the process, and though pain, crime, agony, and violent death may overwhelm the mortal individual. The well-being of the individual does not enter into the question where the intentions of a divinity that sees far beyond this puny existence are concerned. An honest, simple-minded, good-hearted man, without 428 deceit or fault, like Philoktetes, is abandoned for many long years to every kind of suffering in order that he may not interfere prematurely in the development of the war against Troy with the magic weapons that are in his possession.83 He is an involuntary martyr for the good of the whole community. In order that Herakles may be released from this life at the precise moment of time that has been fixed by divine foreknowledge,84 Deianeira, the most devoted and womanly character in the whole of the Attic drama, must out of the goodness of her heart and the love she bears to her husband send him to the most awful of deaths and then perish herself. Simply because such is the will of heaven85 must Oedipus, unknowing and blameless, slay his father, marry his mother, and plunge himself into the deepest depth of misery.

Thus, out of the darkness, the hand of divine superiority guides the destinies of humanity, the will and behaviour of men, according to its own purposes. The problematical in human life, the disparity between personal guilt and personal suffering, which daily experience brings before our eyes, seemed to the poet to be rendered more intelligible by this conception. He preaches dutiful submission to these dispensations of a higher power. He himself is one of the pious, in the specific sense of the word,86 for whom to perceive the will of the gods is sufficient to call forth adoration of the gods; who feel no need that this mighty will should justify itself to human ideas of morality and goodness.87 It may be right to call this will a holy will; but there is no need for it to prove itself such at the bar of human judgment. Nor does such piety find itself disturbed in its worship when, in order to assert the divine prerogative over humanity (whose first duty it is to recognize the limits of what is allowed and possible for it), divine inhumanity and cold lust of vengeance manifest themselves so clearly as in the Athene of the “Ajax”.88 It gives the measure of the peculiar and unique character of Sophoklean art and the Sophoklean attitude to life—a quite personal character not to be explained on abstract grounds—that this attitude of awed submissiveness in matters of religion could exist side by side with the strong appreciation and justification of the unfettered action of free individuality. Rarely—only once or twice in the plays—is a cry of pain wrested from the lips of one of these uncomplaining victims of a purpose not their own.89 As a rule, the eye shuns to behold, the judgment to criticize, the ultimate reasons of divine action. It is partly artistic restraint no doubt, but religious discretion, too, makes the poet leave 429 such things in semi-obscurity.90 The majesty of divine power remains for the most part in the background and does not mingle familiarly with men or too notoriously interfere with human destiny.91

But the individual who with his sufferings must serve a purpose that is not his own, Humanity that lives under such bitter laws—what elevating and consoling thoughts are awakened by the contemplation of their fate. The poet employs all the resources of his overwhelming art to secure the profoundest sympathies of his hearers for the undeserved sufferings of the victim, for the delusions of well-intentioned but limited vision that must always stray from the goal at which it aims. The moral of the play is not lost even on the sufferer’s foe as he beholds the error and guilt of the noble but misguided heart.92 What thus overwhelms the strong and the wise, the good and the well-meaning, through no fault of their own, may descend upon any member of the human family. Thus the destinies of men are allotted. The lament over the vanity and the sorrow of life, its brief happiness, and the uncertainty of its joy, is poured forth in memorable lines.93 They end on a note of resignation which gives the keynote of the poet’s own character; but there is a bitterness which remains behind.

It might have been supposed that one who thus abandoned all attempt to reconcile the worth and actions of men with their fate upon earth, would feel all the more need, for his own satisfaction and that of others, to prove the existence of a divine justice that should restore the balance in a future state of being. But the poet shows little sign of any such need. Thoughts of what may happen after death are never of very great moment to him. They never distinctly affect the behaviour of those whose deeds or suffering fill his plays.94

When, however, light is thrown for a passing moment on the unknown land beyond the grave the scene that imagination reveals hardly differs at all from the picture that had once been present to the minds of the Homeric singers. The place that is in store for the departed is Hades,95 the unlovely country of the dead,96 whither the Soul flits powerless, shadowlike, little more than a nothing,97 feeling no joy but no pain either;98 where it enters upon a state of insensibility that the grief-stricken sufferer on earth often longs for as a much-desired haven of rest.99 Plouton, Persephone, all the deities of the earth below,100 there rule over the departed. But it is not grace nor kindliness that prevails there—only Justice: Hades demands equal justice for all.101 430 Pious veneration of the gods continues also in the other world,102 and for the rest we hear nothing of either reward or punishment or of a final supplementing in the land of the Souls of the inadequacy of the justice that fulfils itself on earth.

But though departed into Hades the dead have still a claim upon the upper world and on those who still are living there. Together with the Homeric picture of the lower world is united the cult of the souls and the ideas, connected with that cult, of the continued life of the dead. The next of kin owe to the departed the ceremonious burial that is the first expression of their pious solicitude for his soul’s welfare.103 In two plays the “Ajax” and the “Antigone”, the love and loyalty of the survivors is obliged to fight for this right of the dead in desperate encounter with earthly authority and even with the sacrifice of their own devoted lives. Such instances serve to bring out clearly the fact that it is no empty convention or tradition that is thus defended and carried through to the end. Nor does the completion of the burial mark the end of the dead man’s relations with the upper world: even after that he may be benefited by offerings made at his grave.104 Information of what happens on earth may penetrate to the dead;105 and he himself, under the protection of the underworld spirits and of their assessor Dikê, who take cognizance of his claims,106 may interfere in the affairs of the living as a “Curse-spirit” upon those who disregard his wishes,107 by sending threatening dream-visions upon his foes,108 and as a very present help and unseen ally to his friends in their hour of need.109

As to an eternity of bliss awaiting the soul, the god in man, after its final release from the shackles of the body, the poet knows as little of such as he does of an eternity of damnation for the wicked. Only the quite special state of grace which is enjoyed by those who have been purified in the mysteries of the goddesses at Eleusis receives mention by him110: he is frequently disposed to think of this supreme expression of Attic worship with patriotic pride.111 But it is only a minority of the good who thus achieve by the grace of the goddesses a privileged “life” in the kingdom of shadows. One and only one is lifted by the divine grace clear of the human fate of annihilation, and in the Grove of the Erinyes the sorely-tried Oedipus is translated without seeing death out of this earthly life.112 So living a reality to this poet of ancient piety is the conviction that the divine miracle of translation113 is a literal truth, that he is even ready 431 to make this strange circumstance serve as the sole aim and purpose of a whole drama: a miracle which all the other scenes serve not so much to prepare as simply to postpone, and thus heighten the expectancy with which the event is awaited. It is not supreme virtue that secures an immortality for Oedipus which others also who showed an equal degree of goodness might possibly attain. He reveals himself to us as an innocent sufferer indeed,114 but also as obdurate in his rash and violent nature, vindictive, stubborn, and self-willed, not ennobled but rather brutalized by his sufferings.115 Nevertheless, divine power elevates him to the state of immortal Hero less almost for the sake of the satisfaction and bliss to himself as in order that he may be the saviour of the Attic land, the country of humanity and kindness that has taken into its protection116 the unfortunate one, and desires to preserve for ever his power of blessing.117 Just as once it had pleased divine power to overwhelm the innocent victim in a sea of crime and suffering, so now it pleases the same divine power to raise the sufferer, without any new or special merit on his side, to a fate of superhuman bliss.118 In his case a divine miracle occurs, into the ultimate reasons for which it is not profitable to inquire.

In his views, so far as he allows us to see them, of the things of the next world, Sophokles differs not at all from those who still saw life and worshipped the gods as their fathers had done before them. The great poet of human, tragic destiny, the profound student of the divine government of this mournful world, was unwilling to set by the side of it a brighter and more comforting picture of a spirit world of the imagination. In this, too, he is modest and will not say much—he knows no more of these matters, and in no other fashion, than “any other honest citizen of Athens”.119

§ 6

In the course of a long life Sophokles was able to make himself complete master of his art and grow up into strong and generous manhood without the guidance or support of either theological or philosophical learning. Theology he did not care to seek out in its hiding place, the obscurity of isolated sects. Philosophy, in the period of his impressionable youth, had not yet reached Athens, and when he had attained riper years his noble simplicity of temper had little to gain or to fear from the meditated wisdom or folly of the younger generation. In serene detachment he passed on his way through all the press and clamour of the market place. 432

The moving impulse which since the end of the sixth century had collected together at Athens all the intellectual forces of Greece for a final expansion of their capacity now began, in the middle of the fifth century, to take hold of philosophy as it had long since done literature and the fine arts. Athens saw the last representatives of Ionian physiology gathered together within her walls. Some, like Anaxagoras, took up their residence there for a long period, and left the impress of their teaching upon the foremost minds of the city. The others who paid briefer visits were those who in conscious opposition to the recent trend of thinking, stoutly upheld the older principles of philosophic Monism or Hylozoism, such as Diogenes of Apollonia or Hippon of Samos; or who sought like Archelaos to reconcile the old and the new Ionic doctrine. Besides these, Athens was a headquarters of the wandering exponents of the newest wisdom, the Sophists. Nowhere did unfettered discussion find such cultivated appreciation of its daring; nowhere was such an eager welcome given to the dialectical word-play that, seeming to be an end in itself, was destined to become the most fruitful nursery of native Athenian philosophy. All traditional beliefs and customs that had not their origin or their justification in reflexion were already doomed as soon as they, together with every conventional view of life and the world, were deprived of their natural protection of unchallenged self-evidence by the cold scrutiny of the sovereign tyrant Dialectic. The Sophists, those skirmishers of a new and as yet unrecognizable philosophy, scattered and put to flight the old guard of positive and doctrinal wisdom, but to the individual, who was bidden to depend upon his own resources, they offered stimulus to reflection in abundance but no permanent foothold in the shifting sands of opinion. It would be but a final assertion of the principle that there are no principles if by any chance the Sophists themselves should for a moment speak in the language of edification and, for example, lend the support of their eloquence to certain articles of doctrine that provided a positive teaching as to the nature and life of the soul.120

If Sophokles remained quite unaffected by this whole movement which reached its flood tide in Athens, Euripides was drawn completely into its current. He sought out philosophers and sophists personally and in their writings. His was a spirit that urgently desired to know the truth and he followed every available guide to knowledge and wisdom for a stage upon their journey. But he was never able to continue permanently in any one direction; in the restlessness 433 and bewilderment of search and experiment he is the true son of his age.

His philosophical and sophistical leanings were sufficiently marked to make it impossible for him to accept any part of the belief or tradition of his countrymen without trial. So far as it is possible within the limits of dramatic art, he instituted an unsparing and unhesitating criticism of all accepted things, and in the process felt himself immeasurably superior to the wit and wisdom of the past. And yet he never satisfied himself. He could never rest content with a merely negative position, for all onesidedness was foreign to his nature. The tremendous honesty of his nature made it impossible for him to admit that element of frivolity which made the sophistic movement and the dialectical negation of all certainty so simple and attractive, and at the same time took away half its sting. But he could take nothing easily; and so with all his sophistic enlightenment he was never happy. The pupil of the Sophists would hear every other side as well; there were even moments when he longed to take refuge in the restful narrowness of old and traditional piety. But it was not given to him to settle down in any fixed set of opinions; all his convictions were provisional, mere hypotheses adopted for the purposes of experiment. Afloat on a changeful sea, he let himself be driven hither and thither by every wind of intellectual excitement or artistic necessity.

When all convictions were involved together in a state of perpetual change and instability, the conception of the nature and being of the soul and its relation to the powers of life and death could not alone remain in fixed and dogmatic certainty.

Where the content and character of the fable chosen as the subject of his drama demand it, the poet frankly adopts the popular view of the nature and destiny of the departed soul, its power and claim upon the worship of the survivors upon earth. In the fairy-tale play of the “Alcestis” the whole apparatus of popular belief plays its part; the God of Death and his awful office, the dwelling of the dead in the underworld, are spoken of as facts and creatures of experience and reality.121 The elaborate funeral ceremonies owed to the dead are treated with the utmost seriousness and precision.122 A whole drama, the “Suppliant Women”, has as its real subject, or at least as its ostensible motive, the religious importance of a ritual burial,123 nor is there any lack of isolated passages in which the importance of burial and the honour paid to graves is stressed.124 The survivors on earth give pleasure to the dead by offerings at their graves,125 434 and in this way obtain their goodwill and can count upon their support.126 Power and honour belong not only to the great ones of antiquity translated to a higher state of being;127 not only “Heroes” can extend their influence beyond their graves and affect the course of earthly events:128 from the soul of his murdered father, the son expects assistance and succour in his time of need. The dread creatures of antique faith, the Erinyes, exact vengeance for the murdered mother.129

But at this point it becomes apparent that the poet only associates himself for his own purposes with this circle of ancient and sanctified popular fancy—so long in fact as it suits the tone that he wishes to give to the drama and its characters. The Erinyes are excellent material for the play—that in reality their horrid figures only exist in the imagination of the mentally diseased is clearly asserted in the “Orestes”.130 The whole series of beliefs and demands—murder ever calling forth fresh murder in accordance with the sacred duty of vengeance, the Erinyes, the bloodthirsty patrons of the murdered victim who leaves no proper avenger behind him—all these have ceased to have any validity for him. The “animal and bloodthirsty” part of these figures of ancient belief call forth the loathing of the poet living in the days of organized justice and humaner manners.131 He does not believe in the souls’ right to blood; the ancient legends which depend on this right are an abomination to him. In fact, he only seems to have written his plays about them in order, by the manner of his presentation, to have his revenge upon this material that was almost unavoidably thrust upon him by the tradition of the tragic stage. The duty of the living to offer a cult to the departed souls becomes doubtful in its turn. The seriousness with which that cult is sometimes handled in the plays is compromised by such reflections as these: it is certain that it matters little to the dead whether rich offering are placed in their graves or not; such things only satisfy the idle vanity of the living;132 honour and dishonour are of no further consequence to the dead.133 How should they be, if the departed no longer feel either pleasure or pain, are nothing at all, as is repeatedly declared even in the middle of the “Alcestis”?134

It is evident that only from an arbitrarily adopted point of view do the picturesque creations of popular belief in the soul and of the cult of souls seem real to the poet; apart from this they disappear from his mind like the creatures of a dream.135 The teachings of the theologians supplied him with no real substitute for popular faith; at the most they were a 435 momentary and passing stimulus. No doubt he did not shut his eyes completely to these manifestations of the spiritual life of his time. His plays contain allusions to Orphic poetry and he joins the asceticism of the Orphics to the cold virtue of his Hippolytos.136 The thought that the soul has fallen from a higher state of being and is enclosed within the body like the dead man in his coffin takes captive his imagination for a moment. “Who knows then whether life is not a kind of death,” so that in death the soul awakes to its real life?137 The gloomy view of human destiny upon this earth to which the poet so often gives expression, might seem to hint at a consolation to come in a more satisfactory hereafter; but the poet has no longing for the consolation offered by the theologians. Among the many and various reflections of the poet upon the reality that may reveal itself when the curtain is drawn aside by death, we never meet with the conception that lies at the bottom of the assurances made by the theologians—the conception that the spiritual individual is certain of its immortality because in its individuality it is of divine nature and is itself a god.138 True, he is the author of the bold saying so often quoted and varied in later times, that God is nothing else but the mind that dwells in men.139 But this makes no allusion to the theological doctrine of the multiplicity of individual gods or daimones banished into the life of men; it rather implies a semi-philosophic doctrine of the soul in which one may perceive for the first time the expression of a permanent conviction on the part of the poet.

In quite inapposite contexts Euripides sometimes introduces passing allusions to a philosophical view of the world and humanity, that is the more certainly to be regarded as the private conviction of the poet himself as the utterances fail to correspond fully with the character of the person in the play who makes them, and do not arise necessarily from the dramatic situation. Everything in the world has had its origin from Earth and “the Aether of Zeus”; the Earth is the maternal womb from which the Aether brings everything to birth.140 Both constituents combine to produce the multiplicity of appearance; they are not fused together nor are they to be derived from a single common original element;141 they remain in dualistic contrast side by side.142 It was probably the dualism of this cosmological fancy that reminded the ancients of Anaxagoras; but these statements cannot be regarded as simply a poetical version of the doctrine of Anaxagoras;143 for they derive the multiplicity of matter and things from the simple element of “Earth” from which 436 they arise only by a process of change and transformation, while in the “seedmixture” of Anaxagoras, the unchangeable seeds of all things only separate themselves out from the whole and give rise by mechanical reassemblings to all the perceived appearances of the world. The “Aether” of Euripides in its relations with the “Earth” is besides being the active partner also the intellectual and animated element. The isolation of such an element from the rest of matter does indeed remind us of the procedure of Anaxagoras. But the poet’s Aether is still an element though it may be penetrated by mind and animated by spirit; it is not a mental being standing over against all the other elements in essential distinctness like the Nous of Anaxagoras. The fact that it is the element of the Aether, i.e. the dry and hot air, in which intellectual capacity is said to inhere, may be regarded as having been borrowed from Diogenes of Apollonia, a philosopher who was held in considerable estimation at Athens at that time, and who was well known to Euripides.144 In his doctrine, the air (which indeed, in contrast to the view of Euripides, produces all other things simply out of itself) is expressly identified with the “Soul” and is itself described as “having understanding”.145

This view of the elementary forces and constitution of the universe, made up as it is from philosophical suggestions of a scarcely reconcilable character, in which the dualistic tendency is in fact finally predominant, suggests itself to the poet whenever in an exalted mood he speaks of the final destiny of the human soul. The soul on its separation from the body will depart to join the “Aether”. But in such conceptions it is not always the imagination of the philosopher-poet that finds expression. On this subject it is accompanied or replaced by a more popular view that only distantly resembles it, but which led to the same result. When we hear now and again of the Aether, the luminous atmosphere above the clouds, as being the dwelling place of the departed souls,146 the view—more theological than philosophic in its character—seems to be implied that after death the liberated soul will float upwards to the seat of the gods147 which has long ceased to be situated upon Olympos, but is in “heaven” or in this same Aether. This, too, was the meaning of a saying traditionally ascribed to Epicharmos the comic-poet of Sicily who was himself versed in philosophy. In this saying the pious man is assured that for him death will bring no evil for his “mind” will dwell permanently in “heaven”.148 This conception, which appears so frequently in later epitaphs, 437 must have been familiar to popular imagination at Athens at an early period; at least in the grave-epigram officially dedicated by the state to the memory of the Athenians who fell in the year 432 before Poteidaia, we find the belief expressed (as a commonly received opinion) that the souls of these brave men have been received by the “Aether” just as the earth has received their bodies.149 Such official use implies a commonly accepted opinion and the fundamental ideas of the popular cult of the souls might have led to similar results. From the beginning popular belief had regarded the psyche, which got its name from the air or breath, as closely akin to the winds, the mobile air and its spirits. It would not be difficult for the idea to arise that the soul, as soon as it was free to decide for itself what should become of it, should go to join the elemental spirits that are its kinsfolk. Perhaps this, too, is what Epicharmos means when on another occasion he says that in death when the united are parted asunder each returns whence it came, the body to earth, but the soul up to the heights—its name, in which allusion is made to its perpetual mobility, being now after the example of Xenophanes derived from the breath of the wind, the moving air (πνεῦμα), a usage which became very common in later times.150

But perhaps the use of such a name is an indication that this poet also regards the soul as standing in a close relation and kinship with the Aether that is destined to receive it after its release from the body; so that from this side, too151—in addition to the more popular conception just mentioned—Euripides may have received a hint for his peculiar version of the physiological theory of Diogenes. In his view the soul participates in the nature of the Aether. But it is more important to notice that the Aether participates in the nature and true reality of the soul; it possesses life, consciousness and power of thought. They both belong to one family. The Aether according to the poet—and here the speculations of Anaximenes as revived by Diogenes are unmistakable152—is a true vital atmosphere, an all-embracing psychic element, so that it becomes, not a mere vehicle of mind, but the All-Mind itself. The concept is even condensed and half-personified, it is called by the name of the highest divine power, Zeus,153 and the poet as though speaking of a personal god, calls it “immortal”.154 The human mind, too, as akin to the universal god and the All-Mind, appears, as it had been in the teaching of Diogenes,155 as a part of this God, this universal Mind. God is the mind, and the mind and understanding in us is God—so the poet clearly asserts.156 In death, when 438 the separation of the mind from its earthly elements takes place, the Pneuma of man will “not indeed live”, as it had done in the separate existence of the individual man, but it will “preserve an immortal consciousness”, entering into the immortal Aether and fusing itself with the All-living and the All-thinking.157 None of the physiologists who conceived the same idea of an immortality excluding the personal immortality of the individual, of the universal spirit of life in mankind, has expressed his meaning with such distinctness as this philosophic layman.

The poet may have wished to remain permanently upon the sublime heights of this Pantheistic vision; but he must, in his peculiar all-embracing spirit that never held fast to any one view with enduring persistence, have experienced too often the truth of the saying of Protagoras that every statement calls forth its equally legitimate opposite,158 to have become an unswerving adherent of any single opinion. Death, and whatever may reveal itself after death, is beyond the experience of any man.159 It may be that complete disappearance into nothingness follows death; that the dead man becomes simply nothing.160 It may be that in the permanence of the human race the great name and the renown of glorious deeds lives on undying.161 Whether there may remain besides a vestige of life in a spirit world, who can tell? Perhaps such a thing is hardly even to be wished.162 It is just what makes death such a comforting thing, that it puts an end to all feeling and therefore to all pain and every care. We should not lament over our fate if, like the harvests that follow each other in the course of the years, one generation of men after another flowers, fades, and is carried off. So it is ordered in the course of Nature, and we ought not to be dismayed by anything that is rendered inevitable by her laws.163

NOTES TO CHAPTER XII

[1]   The learned and more particularly the philosophers of later ages paid special attention to utterances of the older poetry that gave expression to belief of a spiritualist tendency. Just as they selected and preserved passages from Pindar (and from Melanippides in the case soon to be mentioned), which bore witness to an advanced view of the soul, so they must also have given us similar passages from other melic or from iambic and elegiac poets—if such passages had existed. They must, for example, have been absent from the θρῆνοι of Simonides which were famous as the models of this kind of poetry. And so with all the rest.

[2]   Hades puts an end to all pleasure for every man; hence the warning that man should enjoy his youth upon earth: Thgn. 973 ff.; cf. 877 f., 1191 ff., 1009 f.; Sol. 24; Thgn. 719 ff.

[3]   θανάτῳ πάντες ὀφειλόμεθα—an ancient saying often repeated; cf. Bergk on Simon. 122, 2; Nauck on Soph., El. 1173 [Blaydes ad loc.].

[4]   Hades himself plays the part of Thanatos and carries off the souls to the lower world. Thus as early as Semon. i, 13 f., τοὺς δ’ Ἄρει δεδημένους πέμπει μελαίνης Ἀΐδης ὑπὸ χθονός. In metaphorical language Ἅιδης for θάνατος is quite regular from the time of Pindar onwards. This, in turn, lent support to the use of the name of Ἅιδης instead of the personified Θάνατος. So esp. in Pi., O. ix, 33–5; cf. besides, Epigr. Gr. 89, 3–4. τόνδε . . . μάρψας Ἅιδης οἱ σκοτίας ἀμφέβαλεν πτέρυγας; cf. 201, 2; 252, 1–2. (And therefore in Eur., Alc. 261, we should not alter the πτερωτὸς Ἅιδας who is named instead of Thanatos—not even in favour of the otherwise ingenious βλέπων . . . ᾅδαν.)

[5]   δηρὸν ἔνερθεν γῆς ὀλέσας ψυχὴν κείσομαι ὥστε λίθος ἄφθογγος Thgn. 567 f.—the condition of things in Hades is regarded exactly as in the Homeric pictures: Thgn. 704–10.

[6]   See esp. Sol. 13, 29 ff.: Thgn. 731–42; 205 ff.

[7]   Mimn. ii, 13: ἄλλος δ’ αὗ παίδων ἐπιδεύεται, ὧντε μάλιστα ἱμείρων κατὰ γῆς ἔρχεται εἰς Ἀΐδην. Without children there can be no assurance that the cult of the soul will be carried on. But we may well believe that the attaching of so much importance to offspring was assisted by the natural human belief that the man who left children behind him on earth did not completely perish in death (hence ἀειγενές ἐστι καὶ ἀθάνατον ὡς θνητῷ ἡ γέννησις as in Plato, Smp. 206 E). This alone gives a meaning and a reason for the widespread belief among the Greeks that the wicked man who is punished after his death in his children and children’s children himself feels that punishment.

[8]   Semon. 1; 3. Mimn. 2. Sol. 13, 63 ff.; 14. Thgn. 167 f.; 425 ff. We may also add here the expressions of resignation, Hdt. vii, 46; i, 31.

[9]   Νυκτὸς θάλαμος [Ion] fr. 8, 2.

[10]   On the story of Midas and Silenos see Griech. Roman, p. 204 f. As to the ancient and often repeated maxim ἀρχὴν (or πάντων) μὲν μὴ φῦναι ἐπιχθονίοισιν ἄριστον κτλ., see Bgk., Opusc. ii, 214; PLG^4. ii, p. 155 f. Nietzsche, Rh. Mus. xxviii, 212 ff. (whose view that the 440 beginning ἀρχὴν . . . is old and original—but not his involved explanation of this—has been fully confirmed by the finding of the primitive form of the ἀγών: Mahaffy, On the Flinders Petrie Papyri, i, p. 70).

[11]   Simon, fr. 39; 38.

[12]   fr. 137.—Usener, Götternamen, 229, 13, says of Sappho that “she was possessed by the belief that as a poetess she would live again after her death among the gods, and would therefore become a heroine; see frr. 68 and 136”. But from these fragments of Sappho no such belief can be extracted without first reading into them a good deal that they do not say.

[13]   Of the man who has fallen in glory on the battlefield Tyrtaios says, 12, 31 f.: οὐδέ ποτε κλέος ἐσθλὸν ἀπόλλυται οὐδ’ ὄνομ’ αὔτοῦ, ἀλλ’ ὑπὸ γῆς περ ἐὼν γίγνεται ἀθάνατος (i.e. in renown upon earth). Thgn. says to his Kyrnos, 243 ff., in your lifetime my songs will make you famous καὶ ὅταν δνοφερῆς ὑπὸ κεύθεσι γαίης βῇς πολυκωκύτους εἰς Ἀίδαο δόμους, οὐδέποτ’ οὐδὲ θανὼν ἀπολεῖς κλέος ἀλλὰ μελήσεις ἄφθιτον ἀνθρώποις αἰὲν ἔχων ὄνομα . . . cf. Aesch., Epigr. iii, 3 (241 Bgk. = 449 Di.), ζωὸν δὲ φθιμένων πέλεται κλέος.

[14]   Even in Hades the dead perceive χθονίᾳ φρενί if they themselves or the ἀρεταί of their descendants upon earth are praised: Pi., P. v, 98: cf. O. viii, 81 ff.; xiv, 20 ff.; [Ion] Anth. Pal. vii, 43, 3 (to Eurip.), ἴσθι δ’ ὑπὸ χθονὸς ὤν, ὅτι σοι κλέος ἄφθιτον ἔσται κτλ.—In the expressions collected by Meuss, Jahrb. f. Philol. 1889, p. 812 f., from the fourth century orators there only remains a very faint recollection of such a belief.

[15]   Semon. 2, τοῦ μὲν θανόντος οὐκ ἂν ἐνθυμοίμεθα, εἴ τι φρονοῖμεν, πλεῖον ἡμέρης μιῆς.—Stes. 51, ἀτελέστατα γὰρ καὶ ἀμάχανα τοὺς θανόντας κλαίειν. 52, θανόντος ἀνδρὸς πᾶσ’ ἀπόλλυται ποτ’ ἀνθρώπων χάρις.

[16]   This emerges at once if we review the material collected by H. Meuss upon “the conceptions appearing in the Attic orators of existence after death”: Jahrb. f. Philol. 1889, pp. 801–15. For the cult of the soul and all that attaches to it the orators are our most authoritative witnesses and as such are frequently examined in the sections of this book that deal with the subject.

[17]   εἴ τινες τῶν τετελευτηκότων λάβοιεν τρόπῳ τινὶ τοῦ νῦν γιγνομένου πράγματος αἴσθησιν and frequently in this style: cf. the passages quoted by Westermann on D., Lept. (20), 87; cf. also Lehrs, Pop. Aufs. 329 ff. The question is always whether the dead are capable in any way of apprehending what goes on in this world. The continued life of the dead is never doubtful but rather implied throughout, for without such implication no possibility whatever would be left for that εἰ—.

[18]   See Nägelsbach, Nachhom. Theol. 420. Meuss, p. 812.

[19]   This is well brought out by Lehrs, Pop. Aufs. 331. But the statement holds good in an even more precise and exclusive sense than he there gives it. The words of Hyper., Epit. xiii, § 39, deal simply with the existence in Hades of those who have died for their country (with some traditional embellishments; see above, chap. vii, n. 5)—this much can hardly ever have been expressly doubted or denied by any orator. But it is wrong to say (as Lehrs does: p. 331) that Hyp. expresses, though in other words, what was afterwards laid down by [D.H.] Rhet. vi, 5, as proper “for such funeral speeches” (no, only for private funerals—which is quite another matter). It is true that the advice there given is to say that the soul is ἀθάνατος and now dwells 441 “with the gods”. But it never enters into the head of Hyp. to say any such thing (nor in the frag. of the speech preserved by Stob., Fl. 124, 36). In fact, the precept of this sophistic writer (still more the advice given by Men. Rhet., de Encom. 414, 16 ff.; 421, 16 ff. Sp.) rather reveals the enormous contrast between the style of the sophistic funeral oratory of a later period and the real characteristics of the old Attic funeral orations: a difference founded upon the difference of sentiment manifested by the public that listened to such speeches in two different ages. Even the statements of [Dem.] Epit. (60) 34 (πάρεδροι τοῖς κάτω θεοῖς together with the ἀγαθοὶ ἄνδρες of earlier times ἐν μακάρων νήσοις) betray sophistic colouring though falling far short of the excesses of Ps.-D.H. and Men. Rhet.

[20]   The only thing ἀγήραντος about those who have fallen in the wars of freedom is their εὐλογίη Simon. 100, 4; cf. 106, 4 (with Bgk.’s note). 99, 3–4 οὐδὲ τεθνᾶσι θανόντες ἐπεί σφ’ ἀρετὴ καθύπερθεν κυδαίνουσ’ ἀνάγει δώματος ἐξ Ἀΐδεω (which is imitated in the epitaph of Thrasymachos the Kretan οὐδὲ θανὼν ἀρετᾶς ὄνυμ’ ὠλέσας, ἀλλὰ σε Φάμα κυδαίνουσ’ ἀνάγει δώματος ἐξ Ἀΐδα, BCH. 1889, p. 60).

[21]   κλῦθί μοι ὦ πάτερ, θαῦμα βροτῶν, τᾶς ἀειζώου μεδέων ψυχᾶς, Melanipp. 6. The words θαῦμα βροτῶν (modelled on the θαῦμα βροτοῖσι of Homer) can refer only to Dionysos (of the gods who enter into the question here): Διώνυσος, χάρμα βροτοῖσιν, Ξ 325. Further, it is natural to think of Dionysos in the work of a dithyrambic poet.

[22]   The dead man ἀμφ’ Ἀχέροντι ναιετάων, Pi., N. iv, 85. This is the general assumption: e.g. P. xi, 19–22; O. ix, 33–5; I. viii, 59 f.; fr. 207 Bgk.

[23]   ἔστι δὲ καί τι θανόντεσσιν μέρος κὰν νόμον ἐρδόμενον· κατακρύπτει δ’ οὐ κόνις συγγόνων κεδνὰν χάριν, O. viii, 77 ff.

[24]   Something of the kind is adopted for the moment, e.g. in O. xiv, 20 ff.; viii, 81 ff. A real belief in such a possibility appears perhaps most clearly in P. v, 98 ff.

[25]   For him who dies fighting for his country there is in store—not blessedness but only Fame, I. vii, 26 ff. He who comes καλὰ ἔρξαις ἀοιδᾶς ἄτερ εἰς Ἀΐδα σταθμόν has little reward for his pains (his reward would, in fact, have been just the praise given in the ἀοιδά), O. x, 91 ff., cf. N. vii, 30–2.

[26]   A strange expression is the δαίμων γενέθλιος of O. xiii, 105 (in the same poem we also have Ξενοφῶντος δαίμων 28, which in this case at least is something more than “destiny”, otherwise the normal meaning of δαίμων in Pindar, cf. P. v, 123, I. vii, 43). It almost seems as if it were intended to describe the ancestor spirit that brings good luck to the house like the genius generis or ἥρως συγγενείας (see above, chap. v, n. 132).

[27]   Amphiaraos, O. vi, 14; N. ix, 24 ff.; x, 8 f. (Amph. from his underground cavern sees the fighting in the war of the Epigonoi, P. viii, 39–56. There is no suggestion that the Ἐπίγονοι inquire at his oracle—as Dissen supposes; with this the ὧδ’ εἰπε μαρναμένων 43 is inconsistent.)—Ganymedes translated to eternal life, O. i, 44; x, 104 f. Apart from this there are temporary translations to the gods or from one place on earth to another, O. i, 36 ff.; ix, 59; P. ix, 5ff.; I. viii, 20 f.

[28]   O. ii, 27 ff.

[29]   ἀλλά τι προσφέρομεν ἔμπαν ἢ μέγαν νόον ἤτοι φύσιν ἀθανάτοις, N. vi, 4 f.

[30]   σκιᾶς ὄναρ ἄνθρωπος, P. viii, 95. ἓν ἀνδρῶν ἓν θεῶν γένος, ἐκ μιᾶς δὲ πνέομεν ματρὸς ἀμφότεροι· διείργει δὲ πᾶσα κεκριμένα δύναμις, 442 ὡς τὸ μὲν οὐδέν, ὁ δὲ χαλκεος ἀσφαλὲς αἰὲν ἕδος μένει οὐρανός, N. vi, 1 ff.

[31]   fr. 131 Bgk.

[32]   Pindar in these lines speaks only of the αἰῶνος εἴδωλον; but that by this he means the ψυχή is obvious in itself and is stated by Plutarch, who preserves the lines, Cons. ad Apoll. 35, p. 120 D (περὶ ψυχῆς λέγων; cf. Rom. 28).—ψυχή in Pindar sometimes stands for what is otherwise called καρδία or φρήν, “heart” or “disposition” e.g. P. i, 48; iv, 122; N. ix, 39; I. iv, 53b, and O. ii, 77, and prob. also P. iii, 41; “disposition,” N. ix, 32. The word is sometimes (as in Homer) equivalent to ζωή, P. iii, 101, ψυχὰν λιπών. It simultaneously = “life” and the alter ego dwelling within the living man, O. viii, ψυχὰς βάλον; cf. N. i, 47. But the poet knows also the full meaning of ψυχά in the older idiom and belief. Entirely in the manner of Homeric usage ψυχά denotes the spiritual double of mankind, which survives the man himself, in those instances where the ψυχή of the dead is said to be still in existence: ψυχὰν κομίξαι, P. iv, 159; N. viii, 44 f.; σὺν Ἀγαμεμνονίᾳ ψυχᾷ (is Kassandra sent into Hades), P. xi, 20 f. Persephone ἀναδιδοῖ ψυχὰς πάλιν (out of Hades), fr. 133, 3 (Bgk.); I. i, 68, ψυχὰν Ἀΐδᾳ τελέων (in death).—ψυχαί is also used in the old idiomatic sense in fr. 132, 1: which is, however, spurious.—ψυχά in Pindar never denotes the psychical powers of the living man inclusive of the intellect, much less the intellect, νοῦς, alone.

[33]   καὶ σῶμα μὲν πάντων ἕπεται θανάτῳ περισθενεῖ, ζῶον δ’ ἔτι λείπεται αἰῶνος εἴδωλον· τὸ γὰρ ἐστι μόνον ἐκ θεῶν, fr. 131 (96 Boeckh).

[34]   οἶσι δὲ Φερσεφόνα ποινὰν παλαιοῦ πένθεος δέξεται—fr. 133. What is meant is undoubtedly the ancient “guilt” of the soul for which Perseph. receives satisfaction. This guilt can only be called a πένθος if she who accepts the satisfaction is regarded as herself grief-stricken by the guilty dead; if, in fact, the deed has been the occasion of mourning for Persephone. That this can apply to the goddess of the underworld is startling, but it cannot be got rid of by artificial interpretation (as Dissen would like to get rid of it). Pindar follows throughout the analogy of the ancient procedure of expiation in the case of blood-guiltiness. But this procedure seems to be familiar with the idea that, apart from the ἀγχιστεία of the murdered man, the underworld gods themselves (as guardians of the Souls) are immediately injured by the deed and stricken by grief and must receive satisfaction on their own account. Hence in certain legends (typificatory of ritual) the murderer not only has to fly from the land but to undergo servitude to the χθόνιοι: Apollo, especially after the slaying of Python, has to serve Ἄδμητος, i.e. Hades for an ennaëteris (more on this subject below, n. 40). Thus, the guilty soul banished from its proper home serves a “great year” under Persephone, and this is the ποινά that it pays.

[35]   O. ii, 63–5. Everything here refers to judgment and compensation in Hades. In the words θανόντων μὲν ἐνθάδ’ αὐτίκ’ ἀπάλαμνοι φρένες ποινὰς ἔτισαν the ἐνθάδε cannot possibly belong to the ποινὰς ἔτισαν, as Aristarchos supposed, so that the words should refer to the punishment in the course of a new birth upon earth of crimes committed in Hades (in itself a remarkable conception). θανόντες alone would not be put for θανόντες καὶ ἀναβεβιωκότες, and we can only understand by the word those who after a life-time upon earth have died and are now spending their time below in the underworld. Moreover, it is hardly likely (as Ty. Mommsen reminds us adnot. crit. ad Olymp. 24) that the exposition of the “knowledge of the future” (62) on the part of 443 a man still living upon earth would begin with what may happen to man, not after his death, but in a second appearance upon earth that is to fall to his lot later on. We must first of all be told what happens after the conclusion of the present condition of life, viz. that upon earth. Finally, the use of αὐτίκα is quite satisfactory if it refers to the judgment in Hades that follows immediately after death; while it is meaningless in Aristarchos’ interpretation (hence Rauchenstein writes αὖτις—a mere conjecture and a superfluous one). The view that the μὲν—δέ of 63–4 necessitates Aristarchos’ explanation is not convincing (as Lübbert thinks, Ind. Schol. Bonn. hib. 1887, p. xviii—incidentally he quite unjustifiably introduces specifically Platonic fancies into Pindar, p. xix). The θανόντων μέν of 63 is not answered till ὅσοι δ’ ἐτόλμασαν . . . 75, just as the αὐτίκα of 63 does not receive its contrast till we come to what happens much later—after the life on earth has been thrice repeated—described in 75 ff. The δέ of 64 and 67 are subordinate (not adversative) to what is introduced by the μέν of 63 and they continue the thought. The ἐνθάδε of 63 might indeed, in accordance with an otherwise correct usage, be connected with ἀπάλαμνοι φρένες, as it is by one of the Scholiasts: “the φρένες which have committed crimes here upon earth.” But ἀπάλαμνος does not mean sceleratus, impius (nor does it in the passages adduced for this meaning by Zacher, Diss. Halens. iii, 237: Thgn. 281; Sim. v, 3). The ἀπάλαμνοι φρένες are simply equivalent to the ἀμενηνὰ κάρηνα of Homer, and are a very suitable expression for the ψυχαί of the dead (though not indeed for the ψυχαί of the reborn as Aristarchos would have it). No alternative remains save to connect θανόντων and ἐνθάδε: simulac mortui sunt hic, s. decedunt hinc (Dissen). The sentence τὰ δ’ ἐν τᾷδε . . . must then either be a more exact description of what has been stated generally just before in ποινὰς ἔτισαν (and this is Mommsen’s view supported by one Schol.), or else be subordinated—together with its contrasted ἴσαις δὲ . . . 67 ff.—to ποινὰς ἔτισαν. ποινά in Pindar means regularly compensation, whether expiation for evil deeds or reward for good (cf. P. i, 59; N. i, 70b). If we might suppose that by a brachylogy not beyond possibility in Pindar ποινὰς ἔτισαν is put for ποινὰς ἔτισαν καὶ ἐδέξαντο, then the sense might be: after death the souls receive at once recompense for their actions—and then follows the division of the bad 64 ff., and the good 67 ff. But we may perhaps rest content with Mommsen’s explanation.

[36]   O. ii, 74.

[37]   Plu., de Lat. Viv. 7, p. 1130 C after citing the lines of Pindar fr. 130 (95) adds: (the rivers of Erebos) δεχόμενοι καὶ ἀποκρύπτοντες ἀγνοίᾳ καὶ λήθῃ τοὺς κοαζομένους. This might possibly be an addition made by Plu. on his own account—he had frequently spoken of εἰς ἄγνοιαν αὐτὸν ἐμβαλεῖν, etc., in his war against the Epicurean λάθε βιώσας and here the same thing appears again from Erebos. But the words are more probably a paraphrase from Pindar. At any rate, what is said in Plu. about the μνῆμαι καὶ λόγοι of the εὐσεβεῖς in clear contrast with the λήθη of the ἀσεβεῖς, comes from Pindar: this is shown by the allusions of Aristid. i, p. 146, 1 Dind. From this parallel it is also clearly proved that the λήθη does not refer (as Lehrs, Pop. Aufs. 313 thinks) to the forgetfulness of the κολαζόμενοι in the minds of the living, but forgetfulness of their previous life by the κολαζόμενοι themselves. Accordingly we are to suppose that Pindar assigns retention of memory and complete consciousness only to the good in Hades, as their special privilege (cf. the position of Teiresias in κ 494), while the punishment 444 of the wicked is enhanced by λήθη (cf. above, chap. vii, n. 21). Not to have fallen a victim to λήθη in Hades—not to have drunk the waters of Lethe—is occasionally alluded to in poetico-religious utterances of later times as a special privilege of the good, e.g. Epigr. Gr. 204, 11 (first century B.C.); 414, 10. Λήθης and Μνημοσύνης πήγη in Hades (as in the sanctuary of Trophonios at Lebadea, Paus. 9, 39, 8); Epigr. 1037 (cf. above, chap. vii, n. 21; chap. xi, n. 96; and see also below).

[38]   τοῖσι λάμπει μέν μένος ἀελίου τὰν ἐνθάδε νύκτα κάτω fr. 129. In this naive conception, what Helios only threatens to do in Homer, δύσομαι εἰς Ἀΐδαο καὶ ἐν νεκύεσσι φαείνω, he does in reality and regularly during the earthly night. The same idea must be referred to in O. ii, 61 ff., ἴσον δὲ νύκτεσσιν αἰεὶ ἴσον ἐν ἁμέραις ἅλιον ἔχοντες (so Boeckh)—the ἐσθλοί live in the χῶρος εὐσεβῶν in Hades: they have by night and day the same sun (as we: the ἀπονέστερον of 62 also implies this), that is to say, just as much of the sun as we have on earth only in reverse order of time. The sun only shines upon the εὐσεβεῖς below; μόνοις γὰρ ἡμῖν ἥλιος καὶ φέγγος ἱλαρόν ἐστι sing the initiated in Hades in Ar., Ran. 454 f. (but it is the same sun which shines upon them as shines on us, φῶς κάλλιστον ὥσπερ ἐνθάδε 155. solemque suum sua sidera norunt is a subtlety of later excogitation). Helios shining by night in Hades occurs again in the late Greek Hymn εἰς Ἥλιον (Orph., p. 291 Ab.), v, 11, ἢν γαίης κευθμῶνα μόλῃς νεκύων τ’ ἐπὶ χῶρον. Epigr. Gr. 228b, 7–8, Λητογενές, σὺ δὲ παῖδας ἐν ἡρώεσσι φυλάσσοις, εὐσεβέων ἀεὶ χῶρον ἐπερχόμενος.

[39]   O. ii, 75 ff.

[40]   fr. 133 ἐνάτῳ ἔτεϊ. What is meant is beyond all question “after the expiration of an ennaëteris” (period of 99 months, i.e. 8 years and 3 intercalary months), a period which besides being familiar as a cycle of religious festivals (Apolline specially but not exclusively) also occurs in the ancient procedure of atonement for murder as the period of self-banishment and servitude in a foreign land undergone by the murderer. Apollo after slaying Python serves μέγαν εἰς ἐνιαυτόν (i.e. an ennaëteris) in the house of Admetos (i.e. the god of the lower world) and then returns purified (Müller, Dorians, i, 338); in the same way Herakles serves Eurystheus (at least a trace of this is found in [Apollod.] 2, 5, 11, 1; see Müller, Dorians, i, 445).—After the murder of Iphitos Herakles has to serve as bondsman to Omphale (peculiar in this case is the combination of this species of atonement for murder with the buying-off of the relatives of the murdered man [Apollod.] 2, 6, 2, 5; D.S. 4, 31, 5). At the end of this period of service he is once more “pure” (ἁγνὸς ἦν S., Trach. 258).—Kadmos after slaying the dragon and the Σπαρτοί serves Ares (the chthonic?) for an ἐνιαυτός of eight years [Apollod.] 3, 4, 2, 1; Müller, Orchomen. 213.—Hippotes after the murder of Mantis has to fly the country δέκα ἔτη [Apollod.] 2, 8, 3, 3.—On the analogy of this custom the gods, too, who have broken an oath sworn by the Styx are banished nine years from the rest of the Olympians (and confined to Hades, since menial service of the χθόνιοι is the essential idea of all such ἀπενιαυτισμός), Hes., Th. 793 ff.: Orph. fr. 157. With a reminiscence of this expiatory banishment Pindar makes the souls at the conclusion of their earthly pilgrimage (which is itself a banishment) undergo a final period of penance in Hades for an ennaëteris, at the end of which the ποινή for the ancient crime is regarded as completely paid off.—The life on earth and the period in Hades which follows is regarded as an exile of the souls (on account of serious crime).—Such an idea was most natural if the real home of the soul was thought of as being 445 a divine (not earthly) country; the idea occurs quite clearly in Empedokles (certainly uninfluenced by the brief allusions of Pindar); see above, chap. xi, n. 75.

[41]   fr. 133. The similarity to the promises made by Emped. fr. 146 (457 f.) is immediately apparent, but is not to be explained by imitation of Pindar by Emped., but simply by the similarity of imaginative outlook which led to similar results in the two cases.—Elevation to the rank of Hero is the reward which next awaits the man who is born a king, according to this view. Very remarkable is the manner in which Pindar, O. ii, 58–62, effects the transition to his eschatological statement: the man who possesses πλοῦτος ἀρεταῖς δεδαιδαλμένος knows the future, viz, what we are then told about the fate of the soul hereafter. This assertion, which seems to attribute to the virtuous Great Man at once a higher and a profounder knowledge, is perhaps best explained by the allusions of fr. 133. He who has reached this highest stage of earthly happiness must deduce from that very circumstance that for him now it is fated after another death to become a Hero. He therefore knows that everything, indeed, happens that is related in ll. 63–74, but that before him in particular lies that which follows in ll. 75 ff.; and this is to be regarded as the real import of what the man in question “knows”, 62, while the rest, 63–74, is only added for the sake of completeness. Theron, therefore—for it is he who is alluded to throughout—may be assured beforehand that after death he will be gathered to the Heroes. This is what Pindar means to say here, or at least to give the συνετοί to understand 91 ff. As a matter of historical fact Theron was worshipped with ἡρωϊκαὶ τιμαί after his death, D.S. xi, 53, 2.

[42]   fr. 133. There is according to Dissen a contradiction between fr. 133 and O. ii, 75 ff.: in the latter three periods of life on earth are necessary before the final departure, in fr. 133 only two. This variation would be got rid of if we could adopt the interpretation given by Ty. Mommsen, adnot. crit. Olymp. 30, and assert that in O. ii also Pindar only speaks of two earthly lives with a single residence in Hades intervening. But the words ἐς τρὶς ἑκατέρωθι μείναντες, 75–6, can hardly bear any other interpretation than “three times on each of the two sides” (not: “on both sides—once on that side, twice on this side: total three times”). At the same time there is nothing in fr. 133 to prevent us taking the same number of lives (three as a minimum) to be implied there too. We are not there told that the birth as kings, etc., must always be the one to follow the first birth: in this case also two earlier lives may have gone before.

[43]   See above, chap. iv, § 8.

[44]   ἔτειλαν Διὸς ὁδὸν παρὰ Κρόνου τύρσιν, O. ii, 77. What exactly is to be understood by the “way of Zeus” was presumably clearer to the συνετοί versed in the mythology of mysticism for whom Pindar is here writing, than it is to us. It must mean (as Boeckh supposes) the way which Zeus treads in order to reach that Island, far to the West in Okeanos, inaccessible as the Land of the Hyperboreans to ship or traveller on foot; it is a special ἀθανάτων ὁδός like that which leads to Homer’s grotto of the Nymphs, ν 112. Acc. to Bergk, Opusc. ii, 708, it is “certain” that Pindar means the Milky Way. Along this the gods travel to the house of Zeus, Ovid, M. i, 168; and Orpheus in the same way fr. 123, 17 Ab., speaks of the θεῶν ὁδοὶ οὐρανιώνων in the heavens. But the souls could only be made to travel along the Milky Way if their habitation was placed in the sky as it often was later. So, as Bergk points out, following Lob., Agl. 935, 446 the Empedotimos of Herakld. Pont. calls the Milky Way ὁδὸς ψυχῶν τῶν ᾇδην τὸν ἐν οὐράνῳ διαπορευομένων ap. Philop. in Arist., Mete., p. 117, 10 Hayd.; see above, chap. ix, n. 111. But Pindar situates his μακάρων νῆσος in the Ocean (78): it is difficult to see how the souls could arrive there on the Milky Way from the place where they find themselves after death. (We may surely acquit Pindar of the later fancies about an Okeanos in the heavens.) Q.S. iii, 761 ff. (cited by Tafel) knows of a special way belonging to the gods which leads from heaven down to the Ἠλύσιον πεδίον. But the way by which the souls reach the μακάρων νῆσος does not, like that way, begin in heaven. We should rather think of some way only passable for gods and spirits leading from the inhabited world over the pathless Ocean to the latter’s “sources” far in the West.

[45]   In O. ii, 84–5, it is certainly Kronos who is meant (as Didymos took it, though he gave an absurd interpretation of the passage) and not Zeus as Aristarchos imagined. The exceedingly corrupt and (owing to the intrusion of glosses) unmetrical lines are beyond certain restoration: the emendations of the Byzantine scholars give the required sense.—What happened to the incorrigibly wicked? In accordance with the theory of the soul’s Transmigration two alternative views as to their fate were possible: they might be regarded as passing from body to body unceasingly (Empedokl.) or as doing penance by suffering eternal punishment in Hell (as with Plato and others). The circumstances in which he alludes to these matters do not give Pindar any special occasion to declare himself for either view. He has only to speak of the final condition of the just; the fate of the ἀσεβεῖς is left in semi-obscurity. Something about the matter is, however, said in fr. 132; ψυχαὶ ἀσεβέων hover under the vault of heaven that covers the earth (γαίᾳ either corrupt or grammatically bad Greek), while the pious above the vault of heaven (ἐπουράνιοι) sing to the “Great Blessed One”. Everything in this is un-Pindaric, the inadequacy and even incorrectness of the language (μολπαῖς ἐν ὕμνοις), the unconcealed monotheism of the phrase μάκαρα μέγαν, the conception of the souls as having nothing else to do than sing to the One God, the whole idea that these blessed ones dwell “in heaven”. This last is an idea familiar to Greeks of a later period, nor is the division of souls into ὑπουράνιοι and ἐπουράνιοι unknown to them; cf. Epigr. Gr. 650, 9 ff. But Pindar cannot have written anything of the kind. It is even doubtful whether Clem. Al. who, Str. iv, 640 P., names as the author of the lines τὸν μελοποιόν, meant Pindar by the words: Theodoret. (Gr. Aff. C. viii, 599 C), who attributes the second half of the frag. to Pindar, had no other source but the same Clem. Al. But it may be doubted whether the whole is to be attributed to any Greek of the older faith. It has quite the appearance, as Zeller, Socr. and Socratics, p. 24, n. 3, strikingly suggests, of one of those Jewish forgeries in which Jewish monotheism and the ideas connected with it were to be fathered upon Greek antiquity. Welcker, Kl. Schr. v, 252 ff.; Götterl. i, 741 f., defends the fr. (and most unconvincingly connects the ψυχαὶ ὑπουράνιοι and ἐπουράνιοι of the fr. with the quite different δαίμονες ἐπιχθόνιοι and ὑποχθόνιοι of Hes., Op. 123 and 141). He thinks he can defend the genuineness of the lines (which had already been declared spurious by Dissen) by pointing to the words of Horace about Pindar’s θρῆνοι (O. iv, 2, 21): flebili sponsae iuvenem raptum plorat, et vires animumque moresque aureos educit in astra nigroque invidet Orco. Even supposing that this referred to the transport of the souls to the stars the witness of Horace thus given would only 447 remove a single difficulty from a passage that has other overwhelming difficulties in profusion. But Horace says nothing of the transport of the “Soul” to the heavenly regions, vires, animus, mores, all these together refer not at all to the ψυχή but to the ἦθος and the ἀρεταί of the dead. Pindar, Horace means, rescues the memory of the nature and merits of the youth from decay: only the fame which the poet secures for him is under discussion. educit in astra and invidet Orco mean nothing more than: he rescues the memory of the dead from oblivion, exactly as in the epitaph quoted above, n. 20: οὑδὲ θανὼν ἀρετᾶς ὄνυμ’ ὤλεσας ἀλλά σε Φάμα κυδαίνουσ’ ἀνάγει δώματος ἐξ Ἀΐδα. Thus, it is least of all to be concluded from Horace’s words that Pindar transported the souls of the εὐσεβεῖς into the heavens (rather that in the θρῆνοι—as much as anywhere else: see above, n. 25—Pindar sometimes only recognizes the immortality of fame: of that alone does Horace speak).

[46]   O. ii celebrates the victory which Theron had won at Olympia in Ol. 76, but was probably written some time after that victory. Theron died Ol. 77, 1, or 76, 4.

[47]   Sicily was rich in cults of χθόνιοι, in which Gelon, Hieron and their ancestors were hierophants, Hdt. vii, 153; Pi., O. vi, 95. So, too, Akragas the city of Theron (and the home of Empedoldes which also is not without its importance) was Φερσεφόνας ἕδος, Pi., P. xii, 2, having been given by Zeus to Persephone on her marriage, Sch. Pi., O. ii, 16 (as also had, in addition to other cities, Pindar’s native city Thebes, Euphorion, fr. 48; cf. Eur., Phoen. 684 ff. Theron’s family traced its descent from Eteokles the son of Oedipus). It is very possible that the hopes of a blessed immortality of the soul such as were fostered in many ways in the cult of the χθόνιοι and particularly in that of Persephone, should have been familiar to Theron from such a cult and attractive to him.

[48]   The theological character of much of Pindar’s work makes knowledge of mystic doctrine not surprising in him. In fr. 137 he speaks of the Eleusinia (to which he otherwise owes nothing). In fr. 131, though the words are unfortunately most corrupt and probably contain lacunae as they have been transmitted, he speaks of the “releasing Initiations”, ὀλβία δ’ ἅπαντες αἶσα λυσίπονον τελετάν—this is the form of the words required by the metre (dactylo-epitritic), and thus (not τελευτάν) they appear in Plu., Cons. Apoll. 35, p. 120 D, and also in cod. Vatic. 139 (which I have collated).

[49]   IG. xiv = IG. Sic. et It., 641, 1–2–3. [Harrison-Murray, Prolegom. 661 ff.; Vors. 66 B, 18, 19.]—The inscription of the oldest of these poems belongs to the fourth century B.C. The verses can, however, be cited here because the original or rather the two originals upon which the poems are modelled were older than the oldest of the three surviving inscr. (which itself shows serious corruption of the primitive text); and nothing prevents us from supposing that the original forms of these verses go to the fifth century.—The common ancestor of versions 2 and 3 is not derived from version 1, even in the parts in which it agrees with that version, but from a still older original.—Acc. to Dieterich, Nekyia 128 f., 135 f., the lines are taken from a poem of Orpheus’ descent to Hades; but of this they themselves offer not the slightest suggestion.

[50]   The feminine ἔρχομαι ἐκ καθαρῶν καθαρά—and also νῦν δ’ ἱκέτις ἡκω (though this indeed is metrically impossible) IG. xiv, 641, 2, l. 6—refers probably to the ψυχή and not to the sex of the dead person as though a woman were speaking in all three cases. Moreover, in 448 No. 1, 9, Persephone speaks as though to a man ὄλβιε καὶ μακαριστέ, θεὸς δ’ ἔσῃ ἀντὶ βροτοῖο.

[51]   l. 1, ἔρχομαι ἐκ καθαρῶν καθαρά, χθονίων βασίλεια. This is certainly the right punctuation (and is given by the editors), and not Hofmann’s ἐκ καθαρῶν, καθαρὰ χθ. β. “Pure and born of the pure” (referring to the immediate parents of the dead: more distant ancestry would be expressed by ἀπό); cf. κάκιστος κἀκ κακῶν, etc. (Nauck on Soph., OT. 1397; Ph. 874); ἀγαθοὶ ἐξ ἀγαθῶν ὄντες, Andoc., M. 109.

[52]   The parents are καθαροί, the soul of the dead καθαρά, simply as being “purified”, “sanctified”, in τελεταί of the χθόνιοι. In the same way, elsewhere, the Mystai are ὅσιοι “the pure”: see above, chap. vi, n. 18.

[53]   καὶ γὰρ ἐγὼν ὑμῶν γένος ὄλβιον εὔχομαι εἶμεν—so in all three versions.

[54]   ἀλλά με μοῖρ’ ἐδάμασσε καὶ ἀστεροπῆτα κεραυνῶν (particip.): so in the original to which the readings of three versions point, as restored by O. Hofmann in GDI. 1654. ἀστεροβλῆτα is in No. 1—this might simply = ἀστεροποβλῆτα, but it may only have been substituted by mistake for ἀστεροπῆτα (= ἀστεροπητής of Homer). The line in this form occurs in No. 1, 4. Versions 2 and 3 have εἴτε με μοῖρ’ ἐδάμασσ’ εἴτ’ ἀστροπῆτα κεραυνῶν. But the dead had no choice between natural death (for this is what μοῖρα must mean as contrasted with death by the thunderbolt) and death by being struck by lightning; one or other of the two (or more) forms of death must in actual fact have occurred. In this embarrassment—for death by lightning is not a very frequent occurrence—the ancient verse was altered in such a way that it might refer also to one who had died a natural death. The attempt was indeed not a great success. Originally death by lightning can alone have been mentioned (as in No. 1) and the original form of the lines must have referred to someone who had actually perished in this way. The dead person was then immediately regarded as sanctified simply on account of the method of his death; he became a ἱερὸς νεκρός translated to a higher and continued life: see above, chap. ix, n. 127, and Appendix i. This is the only interpretation of the lines which gives any point to the introduction here of this peculiar manner of death—one who has been thus translated out of life will certainly now be θεὸς ἀντὶ βροτοῖο.

[55]   κύκλος τῆς γενέσεως, rota fati, etc. Lob., Agl. 798 ff.

[56]   ἱμερτοῦ δ’ ἐπέβαν στεφάνου ποσὶ καρπαλίμοισι, Δεσποίνας δ’ ὑπὸ κόλπον ἔδυν χθονίας βασιλείας, No. 1, 6–7. The στέφανος will probably be the sacred precinct, the enclosure that surrounds the realm of Persephone, as Dieterich, De hymn. Orph. 35, very plausibly suggests.

[57]   See Appendix xi.

[58]   ὥς με πρόφρων πέμψῃ ἕδρας ἐς εὐαγέων. The ἕδραι εὐαγέων correspond to the χῶρος εὐσεβῶν of other poets and mythologists. But the strange phrase does also contain an allusion to the fact that this paradise of the “pure” is specially reserved for the initiates of the mysteries. The εὐαγής, the man untouched by any ἄγος, is ὅσιος (ὅσιος ἔστω καὶ εὐαγής law ap. And., M. 96): εὐαγεῖν = ὁσιοῦν in an ins. from Ialysos in Rhodes, IGM. Aeg. i, 677. Ordinary non-religious language also preserves the original meaning of the word: it frequently means (in contrast to σκοτώδης and the like) “bright, pure, clean” (and in places, too, where it is customary to insert without good reason εὐαυγής, following the ex. of Hemsterh. on Eur., Suppl. 662).

[59]   The similarity with the stages of the reward given to the good in Pindar is obvious: χῶρος εὐσεβῶν in Hades; then and not till then 449 escape from the underworld and from human life as well. The only difference is that in Pi. the soul’s final end is to become a ἥρως while here it becomes θεός.

[60]   IG. xiv, 642.

[61]   id. 641, 1, v, 10, ἔριφος ἐς γάλ’ ἔπετον. 642, 4, θεὸς ἐγένου ἐξ ἀνθρώπου. ἔριφος ἐς γάλα ἔπετες. The conjunction of the two phrases in 642 shows that “As a kid I fell into the milk” is a condition of “I became a God”. We may certainly recognize in the phrase a σύνθημα or σύμβολον of the Mystai like those usual in other secret initiatory rites—ἐκ τυμπάνου ἐφαγον κτλ., Lob. 23 ff.—which refer to performance of symbolical actions in the initiation ceremonies. The precise sense of this σύνθημα cannot be made out (Dieterich’s efforts, H. Orph., p. 35, have not succeeded in clearing up the matter).

[62]   Worth remarking is the instruction ἀλλ’ ὁπόταμ’ ψυχὴ προλίπῃ φάος ἀελίοιο, δεξιὸν εἰσιέναι πεφυλγμένος εὖ μάλα πάντα (this or something like it may have been the original form of the lines which have been thrown into confusion by the intrusion of the explanatory words δεῖ τινα). Then at the conclusion (ὦ) χαῖρε χαῖρε, δεξιὰν ὁδοιπορῶν λειμῶνάς τε ἱεροὺς καὶ ἄλσεα Φερσεφονείας. (καί: this and nothing else is probably concealed by the KAT of the inscription—καί long before a vowel in 3rd thesis is even in Homer not unheard of.) Here at a comparatively early date we meet with the legend of the Two Ways at the entrance to the underworld, of which that to the right leads to the χῶρος εὐσεβῶν, the left to the place of punishment of the ἄδικοι. It may derive from the fancies of South Italian mystic sects. δεξιόν and ἀριστερόν in the Pythagorean table of Opposites—and in oionistike for a long time before that—mean the same as ἀγαθόν and κακόν (Arist., Metaph. 1, 5, p. 986a, 24; cf. Iamb., VP. 156).—The Υ Pythagoreum denoted the parting of the ways of life to the right (to virtue) and to the left (vice): Serv., A. vi, 136; cf. O. Jahn, Pers., p. 155 f. Plato transferred the Two Ways to the underworld probably following Pythagorean example, Rp. 614 C; cf. τὼ ὁδώ, Gorg. 524 A; divorso itinere, Cato ap. Sall., C. 52, 13, in a Platonist passage. To the right the fountain of Mnemosyne, to the left that of Lethe—grave-tablet from Petelia: Epigr. Gr. 1037 = IG. xiv, 638. The Two Ways in the underworld (of which that to the right hand regularly leads to salvation) are also spoken of by the ποητής whose lines are quoted by Hippol., RH. 5, 8, p. 164, 80 D.-S. (perhaps “Orpheus” as Dieterich, Nek. 193 thinks); cf. also Verg., A. vi, 540 ff., Hegesipp., AP. vii, 545, and the Jewish forgery under the name of Philem., Mein. 4, 67, 6 f. (ii, p. 539 K.).—Three Ways in the world of the spirits, which he takes as being in the sky, are seen by the Empedotimos of Herakld. Pont. (see above, chap. ix, n. 111): Serv., G. i, 34. Plutarch also alludes to three Ways in the underworld, Lat. Viv. vii, p. 1130, for in giving his quotation from Pindar’s θρῆνος fr. 129–30 he suddenly, without having previously said anything about the other two Ways, speaks of the τρίτη τῶν ἀνοσίως βεβιωκότων καὶ παράνομων ὁδός which leads into Erebos. We should suppose that he found these three Ways in Pindar whom he is making use of throughout the passage. Three Ways would seem natural to one who knew of three classes of souls; the εὐσεβεῖς and the ἀσεβεῖς having in between them those who have not strayed seriously from either side of the middle way of ordinary morality and deserve neither reward nor severe punishment. To these then was probably allotted, instead of the bliss or sorrow of the two other classes, the indifferent state of the Homeric εἴδωλα καμόντων. So at least it appears from Lucian, Luct. 7–9. A similar triple 450 division occurs in a popular form ap. D.H. viii, 52 ad fin.: (1) a place of punishment, a kind of Tartaros: (2) τὸ λήθης πεδίον (which is here the indifferent state); (3) the αἰθήρ which is the dwelling-place of the Blessed. Verg., too, has three classes, but he places the middling characters in the limbus infantium, beyond which the road first divides towards Elysium and Tartarus. Did Pindar then anticipate these and incidentally—he need not have been logically consistent about it—introduce such a triple division of the souls?

[63]   Plato’s violent attacks on poets and poetry—in which nevertheless acc. to his own account οὐδὲν σπουδῆς χαρίν, ἀλλὰ παιδιᾶς ἕνεκα πάντα δρᾶται—show once more clearly enough that in his time the old Greek view of the poets as the true teachers of their age was by no means a thing of the past. It was precisely as teachers, whether rightly or wrongly so regarded, that they seemed to him dangerous and worth opposing.

[64]   Aristophanes is only formulating popular opinion—and in unusually naive language—when he says Ran. 1030 ταῦτα γὰρ ἄνδρας χρὴ ποιητὰς ἀσκεῖν· σκέψαι γὰρ ἀπ’ ἀρχῆς ὡς ὠφέλιμοι τῶν ποιητῶν οἱ γενναῖοι γεγένηνται κτλ. And again 1053 ff. where he is referring particularly to tragic dramatists, ἀποκρύπτειν χρὴ τὸ πονηρὸν τόν γε ποιητήν, καὶ μὴ παράγειν μηδὲ διδάσκειν. τοῖς μὲν γὰρ παιδαρίοισιν ἔστι διδάσκαλος ὅστις φράζει, τοῖς ἡβῶσιν δὲ ποιηταί.

[65]   This idea is alluded to as early as Δ 160 ff. Then Hes., Op. 282 ff. It is established for Hdt.; cf. i, 91, vi, 86. Further examples collected by Nägelsbach, Nachhom. Theol. 34 f. Thgn. 205 ff., 731 ff., is particularly definite. Among Attic authors; cf. Sol., fr. 13, 29 (ἀναίτιοι ἔργα τίνουσιν); E., Hipp. 831 ff., 1378 ff. (where note τὸν οὐδὲν ὄντ’ ἐπαίτιον), fr. 980; [Lys.] 6, 20; Lycurg. 79. It is briefly alluded to as a commonly held opinion by Isoc. 11, 25; cf. Lys., fr. 53 Th. The case of Diagoras of Melos the ἄθεος may also be remembered; cf. above, chap. vii, n. 16.—This idea of the punishment of the son for the deeds of the father receives its justification acc. to Plu., Ser. Nu. Vi. 16, 559 D (quite in accordance with primitive ideas) in the unity that belongs to all the members of the same γένος—so that in the person of the son it is the father himself, though he may be dead, who is also punished. The idea arises from the deeply ingrained feeling of the unity, solidarity, and continuity of the ancient family cult-circle pre-supposed by the cult of souls. (This is primitive and meets us, e.g. in India as well: “release us from the wrongs that our fathers have done; take away the sins of that we ourselves have committed” is the prayer to Varuna in the Rigveda, 7, 86, 5. τὰ ἐκ προτέρων ἀπλακήματα are transferred also to the next generation “like a pestilence-breeding substance”, Oldenberg, Rel. d. V. 289. Elsewhere the conception emerges that the guilty ancestor lives again in the descendant and is punished in his person: Robinsohn, Psychol. d. Naturv. 47.)

[66]   It is precisely on this point, namely, that evil does not befall men without their own fault, that the Chorus, i.e. the poet, of the Agamemnon (757), acknowledges δίχα δ’ ἄλλων μονόφρων εἰμί.

[67]   In this way, too, the Stoics saved the responsibility of men for their own deeds in spite of the unavoidable εἰμαρμένη. The deeds would not have come to fruition if the personal συγκατάθεσις of the man had not been added to the original necessary cause conditioning the acts. The συγκ., though not itself “free”, yet always remains ἐφ’ ἡμῖν and makes us responsible: Cic., Fat. 18; Nemes. Nat. Hom., p. 291 Matth. 451

[68]   Clearly so from l. 689 onwards.

[69]   τὰ γὰρ ἐκ προτέρων ἀπλακήματά νιν πρὸς τάσδ’ (τὰς Ἐρινύας) ἀπάγει, Eum. 934.

[70]   Only when Eteokles and Polyneikes have fallen in single combat ἔληξε δαίμων, Sept. 956.

[71]   This idea is quite common in Homer (Nägelsbach, Hom. Theol. 70 f., 320 f.), and in later times reappears frequently in the case of such authors as always, or on occasion, express popular ideas: Thgn. Hdt. esp. Eur. (cf. Fr. Trag. Adesp. 4, 55 N.), and the orators: see Nägelsbach, Nachhom. Th. 54 ff., 332 f., 378.

[72]   ἀπάτης δικαίας οὐκ ἀποστατεῖ θεός, fr. 301 S. This, too, must be the meaning of other expressions in which the poet refers less plainly to the righteous purpose of divine deception: Pers. 93 ff., 742; frr. 156, 302 (cf. also Suppl. 403 f.).—Aristoph. makes his Clouds speak quite in accordance with the Aeschylean ideas, Nub. 1458 ff. This grim idea must, in fact, have had considerable success and spread beyond the stage. Falsehood and deception for a good end presented no difficulty to the mind of the Greeks (even as applied to their gods). Hence Sokrates (in Xen.), Plato, and certain Stoics could quite openly approve of and recommend such falsehoods (and the author of the Διαλέξεις, c. 3 in defending the same theory also appeals to the lines of Aesch.).

[73]   Ag. 1497–1508. Here there is a clear opposition between the popular view which attributed all guilt to an ἀλάστωρ tempting to crime (a reminiscence of which appears in Soph., El. 197 ff.), and the more elevated conception of the poet who holds fast to the view that though the ἀλάστωρ may contribute to the result the agent of the evil deed is not ἀναίτιος.

[74]   The dead man stands in need of the cult paid by his surviving kinsfolk, Cho. 484 (his grave a βωμός, Cho. 106; χοαὶ γαμήλιοι for him, 486 f.). As an appeasement of his easily aroused wrath χοαὶ νερτέρων μειλίγματα, Cho. 15. The dead man is still conscious of events both past and present upon earth: φρόνημα τοῦ θανόντος οὐ δαμάζει πυρὸς μαλερὰ γνάθος, Cho. 324 f. In the song of awakening addressed to the departed and the invocations sung by Electra and the Chorus in Cho. the soul of Agamem. is similarly regarded as fully alive and accessible to the callers (though, indeed, ἐξ ἀμαυρᾶς φρενός 157) and addressed accordingly (cf. 139, 147 f., 156 f., 479 ff.; Pers. 636). It is even expected that his soul, invisibly present in the upper world, will take an active share in the work of vengeance: ἄκουσον ἐς φάος μολών, ξὺν δὲ γενοῦ πρὸς ἐχθρούς, Cho. 459; cf. 489. So, too, Orestes, Eum. 598, hopes in his extremity of need that ἀρωγὰς ἐκ τάφου πέμψει πατήρ. More especially the murdered man has a right to be avenged by his ἀγχιστεῖς (οὐδ’ ἀπ’ ἄλλων, Cho. 472) and Apollo himself has commanded Orestes to take such vengeance, Cho. 269 ff., etc. Dread results of neglecting this duty, Cho. 278–96 (possibly an interpolated passage, but still an extension of the words of A. himself 271 ff. in a sense thoroughly in consonance with popular belief).

[75]   The Erinyes only avenge the murder of a blood-relation and not therefore when one of a married pair is murdered by the other, Eum. 210–12, 604 ff. But the opinion emerges that they are particularly charged with the vengeance of a mother who has been murdered by her son (rather than a father who has suffered the same fate), 658 ff., 736 ff. (Reminiscences of such a view in S., El. 341 ff., 352 ff.; E., Orest. 552 ff., fr. 1064.) This may possibly be an old popular belief (not fully understood by A. himself) which need not, however (as is often 452 supposed), depend upon an ancient system of “matriarchy” for which there is no other evidence in Greece. It is simply explained by the fact that the father has plenty of men still living among his kinsfolk who will avenge him (even against his own son), whereas the mother who is separated from her own family can expect no avenger from that side, while in the family of her husband there will be nobody yet old enough to take vengeance on her own son. For this reason it is for her most particularly and necessarily that the daimonic avengers of murder must intervene, and they are the Erinyes, who are always thought of as only active where no earthly avenger is available.—Of course, it could never be denied that there exists also πατρὸς εὐκταίαν Ἐρινύν, Sep. 783.

[76]   δαίμων, θεός, δῖος ἀνάκτωρ, ἰσοδαίμων βασιλεύς are titles given only to the dead Persian king, Pers. 620, 633, 644, 651. They are, however, probably intended to characterize Persian and not Greek beliefs (the Greek king, too, is still a king in Hades, but not a δαίμων, Cho. 355–62).

[77]   κἀκεῖ δικάζει τἀμπλακήμαθ’, ὡς λόγος, Ζεὺς ἄλλος (cf. Ζῆνα τῶν κεκμηκότων 158) ἐν καμοῦσιν ὑστάτας δίκας, Suppl. 230 f.; cf. 414 ff.—μέγας γὰρ Ἅιδης ἐστὶν εὔθυνος βροτῶν ἔνερθε χθόνος, δελτογράφῳ δὲ πάντ’ ἐπωπᾷ φρενί, Eum. 273 ff. Not even in Hades do the Erinyes let the murderer go, Eum. 340. The punishment in Hades seems to be regarded as merely supplementary to the (perhaps delayed) punishment of crime on earth ῥοπὴ δ’ ἐπισκοπεῖ δίκας ταχεῖα τοὺς μὲν ἐν φάει, τὰ δ’ ἐν μεταιχμίῳ σκότου μένει χρονίζοντας ἄχη, τοὺς δ’ ἄκρατος ἔχει νύξ, Cho. 61 ff.

[78]   τοὺς θανόντας εἰ θέλεις εὐεργετεῖν εἴτ’ οὖν κακουργεῖν, ἀμφιδεξίως ἔχει τῷ μήτε χαίρειν μήτε λυπεῖσθαι νεκρούς, fr 266. This does, not, however, agree with Cho. 324 f., or with the frequently occurring expressions which presuppose consciousness and feeling (and so also χαίρειν and λυπεῖσθαι) in the dead. Consistency in such matters must not, in fact, be looked for in a non-theological poet. The ψυχή of the dead man a shadow without the sap of life, fr. 229. Death a refuge from earthly suffering, fr. 255. The speedy death which the Chorus wish for themselves, Ag. 1449 ff., brings with it τὸν ἀεὶ ἀτέλευτον ὕπνον and therefore a condition of unconsciousness if not of complete nothingness.—The shadow of Dareios takes his leave of the Persian nobles in the foll. words: ὑμεῖς δέ, πρέσβεις, χαίρετ’, ἐν κακοῖς ὅμως ψυχὴν διδόντες ἡδονῇ καθ’ ἡμέραν, ὡς τοῖς θανοῦσι πλοῦτος οὐδὲν ὠφελεῖ, Pers. 840 ff. This view of life is perhaps intended to have an Oriental colouring (like the epitaph of Sardanapalus which is rightly quoted in illustration of this passage); the reason given ὡς τοῖς θανοῦσι κτλ. is perhaps to be similarly explained.

[79]   ἔνδικοι σφαγαί, 37. Orestes is to his father’s house δίκῃ καθαρτὴς πρὸς θεῶν ὡρμημένος 70.

[80]   One reason why no Erinys pursues Orestes after he has murdered his mother is, indeed, the fact that Sophokles is treating the “Elektra” in isolation as an independent drama and could not therefore introduce a fresh thread of interest at the end, if he was to bring it to a satisfactory conclusion. But the mere fact that he could so arrange matters shows that for him, in contrast with Aeschylus, the belief in the veritable reality of the Erinys and the necessary perpetuation of the idea of vengeance in the family was already obscured and almost obsolete. The ancient family blood-feud is less important to him than the rights of the separate and independent individual.

[81]   Casual allusions, El. 504 ff.; OC. 965; Ant. 856; and cf. 584 ff., 594 ff. 453

[82]   οὐ γὰρ ἴδοις ἂν ἀθρῶν βροτὸν ὅστις ἂν, εἰ θεὸς ἄγοι, ἐκφυγεῖν δύναιτο, O.C. 252. ὅταν δέ τις θεῶν βλάπτῃ, δύναιτ’ ἂν οὐδ’ ἂν ὁ σθένων φυγεῖν, El. 696 f. αἴσχη μέν, ὦ γυναῖκες, οὐδ’ ἂν εἷς φύγοι βροτῶν ποθ’ ᾧ καὶ Ζεὺς (as the one who rules and ordains everything, cf. El. 175; O.C. 1085) ἐφορμήσῃ κακά· νόσους δ’ ἀνάγκη τὰς θεηλάτους φέρειν, fr. 619 N.

[83]   Phil. 191–200.

[84]   It is fixed long before by an oracle: 821 ff.; 1159 ff. It is not exactly overpowering violence or heaven-sent madness that drives Deianeira to carry out the prophecy; it is rather an obscure force that transforms her purest intentions to an evil result. She herself is completely innocent: ἥμαρτε χρηστὰ μωμένη.

[85]   The reason for this will of the gods is not revealed to us, either in OT. or in the subsequent treatment given in OC. The only thing that is made quite clear there is the complete innocence of Oedipus; as to the meaning of the divine purpose that has plunged him into such deeds of horror the sufferer can only say θεοῖς γὰρ ἦν οὕτω φίλον, τάχ’ ἄν τι μηνίουσιν εἰς γένος πάλαι (964 f.). This is a passage in which modern interpretation of the ancients finds the “upholding of the moral order in the world” clearly expressed as a motive of divine will.

[86]   καὶ γὰρ ἦν τῶν θεοσεβεστάτων, Sch., El. 831.

[87]   fr. 226 N., σοφὸς γὰρ οὐδεὶς πλὴν ὃν ἂν τιμᾷ θεός. ἀλλ’ εἰς θεόν σ’ ὁρῶτα, κἂν ἔξω δίκης χωρεῖν κελεύῃ, κεῖσ’ ὁδοιπορεῖν χρεών. αἰσχρὸν γὰρ οὐδὲν ὧν ὑφηγοῦνται θεοί.

[88]   Aias has angered the goddess because he has boasted that he could do without her help. Thus he has drawn upon himself ἀστεργῆ θεᾶς ὀργήν, 776. The goddess makes him insane that he may recognize τὴν θεῶν ἰσχὺν ὅση, 118. Thus, her superior power is shown and the folly of men who despise that power. But as for showing that the revengeful act of the goddess has any sort of moral purpose or meaning behind it, the pious poet makes no such attempt.—The interpolation of ideas more familiar in modern times does not make it any easier to understand the peculiar character of such antique εὐσέβεια and δεισιδαιμονία. The same kind of fearful awe of the gods which we find here, runs through the whole of Herodotos’ historical writing (Hdt. was not without reason a friend of Sophokles) and meets us again in the character of Nikias and to a large extent in Xenophon, too. Thuc. and, on the whole, Eurip. (for he varies) calmly ignore it or else violently reject it. Its nature is shown (better than in the more usual εὐσέβεια) by the phrase ἡ πρὸς τοὺς θεοὺς εὐλάβεια which also occurs: [D.] 59 (Neaer.) 74.

[89]   Trach. 1266 f.; 1272 (where, however, there remains a suspicion that the traditional text may be unsound); fr. 103 N. Parallels occur also in Phil.

[90]   There exists a region of divine mystery that is not to be fathomed: οὐ γὰρ ἂν τὰ θεῖα κρυπτόντων θεῶν μάθοις ἄν, οὐδ’ εἰ πάντ’ ἐπεξέλθοις σκοπῶν, fr. 833; cf. OT. 280 f. and πολλὰ καὶ λαθεῖν καλόν, fr. 80 N.

[91]   The behaviour of Athene in the prologue of the Aias is an exception.

[92]   Odysseus beholding the insane Aias: ἐποικτίρω δέ νιν δύστηνον ὄντα καίπερ ὄντα δυσμενῆ, ὁθούνεκ’ ἄτῃ συγκατέζευκται κακῇ, οὐδὲν τὸ τούτου μᾶλλον ἢ τοὐμὸν σκοπῶν· ὁρῶ γὰρ ἡμᾶς οὐδὲν ὄντας ἄλλο πλὴν εἴδωλ’ ὅσοιπερ ζῶμεν, ἢ κούφην σκιάν, Ai. 121 ff.

[93]   ἰὼ γενεαὶ βροτῶν κτλ. OT. 1186 ff.; ὅστις τοῦ πλέονος μέρους χρῄζει . . . OC. 1211–38; cf. frr. 12, 535, 536, 588, 859, 860.

[94]   Nor is Antigone affected by such motives as might appear from a casual or isolated study of such lines as Ant. 73 ff. The whole play 454 shows that Antig. throughout follows the ἄγραπτα κἀσφαλῆ θεῶν νόμιμα and the instincts of her own nature, without paying any attention to what may happen to her on earth and without a side glance at what may be the result in the world below of her “pious crime”.

[95]   We often have ἐν Ἅιδου κεκευθότων (Ant. 911) μυχοὺς κιχεῖν τοῦ κάτω θεοῦ (Ai. 571) and other phrases = “be dead” (cf. to be an οἰκήτωρ of Erebos, Ai. 395 ff. Hades seems to be called πανδόκος ξενόστασις fr. 252). The confusion of the idea of a kingdom of Hades with that of the grave is shown in the not infrequent expression ἐν Ἅιδου, παρ’ Ἅιδῃ κεῖσθαι, El. 463; OT. 972; Ph. 861; φίλη μετ’ αὐτοῦ κείσομαι φίλου μέτα, Ant. 73; cf. fr. 518.

[96]   τὸν ἀπότροπον Ἅιδαν, Ai. 608; fr. 518.

[97]   The dead man is a σκιά, Ai. 1231. σποδὸς καὶ σκιὰ ἀνωφελής, El. 1159a. μηδέν, El. 1166; Ai. 1231.—In spite of this, in the Homeric manner, a definite shape and a measure of semi-conscious existence is presumed in the shades in Hades: OT. 1371 ff.—Doubt: εἴ τις ἔστ’ ἐκεῖ χάρις, El. 356.

[98]   θανόντων οὐδὲν ἄλγος ἄπτεται, OC. 955. τοῖς γὰρ θανοῦσι μόχθος οὐ προσγίγνεται, Tr. 1173. τοὺς γὰρ θανόντας οὐχ ὁρῶ λυπουμένους, El. 1170. (All three lines are denied to Soph. by the latest criticism.)

[99]   Ph. 797 f.; Ai. 854; OC. 1220 ff.; fr. 631 (cf. A., fr. 255; Fr. Tr. Adesp. 360. λιμὴν κακῶν ὁ θάνατος, a commonplace of later moralists: see Wyttenb. Plu., Mor. vi, p. 720, was taken over from tragedy).—The converse fr. 64, 275.

[100]   Collectively οἱ νέρτεροι, οἱ νέρτεροι θεοί, OC. 1661; Ant. 602. Hades in particular is often mentioned, and also Πλούτων: Ἅιδης στεναγμοῖς καὶ γόοις πλουτίζεται, OT. 30; fr. 251. ὁ παρὰ τὸν Ἀχέροντα (τὰν Ἀχέροντος ἀκτάν, Ant. 812. ἀκτὰν ἑσπέρου θεοῦ, OT. 177) θεὸς ἀνάσσων, El. 184. Persephone and Aidoneus, OC. 1556 ff. Erinyes, Thanatos, Kerberos: OC. 1568 ff. πομπαῖος Ἑρμῆς χθόνιος, Ai. 832; and see El. 110 B., etc.—Ἅιδης (here as often = Θάνατος) desires to devour men: δαίσασθαι, El. 542, f.—a popular conception or at least popular language: see above, chap. vii, n. 25.

[101]   Hades ὃς οὔτε τοὺπιεικὲς οὔτε τὴν χάριν οἶδεν, μονὴν δ’ ἔστερξε τὴν ἁπλως δίκην, fr. 703, i.e. the justice of absolute equality (for all earthly distinctions have passed away): ὅ γ’ Ἅιδης τοὺς νόμους ἴσους ποθεῖ, Ant. 519.

[102]   ἡ γὰρ εὐσέβεια συνθνῄσκει βροτοῖς (it dies when the man dies to whom it belonged: i.e. it follows him, or his ψυχή, into the lower-world. No textual corruption need be assumed here), κἂν ζῶσι κἂν θάνωσιν οὐκ ἀπόλλυται, Ph. 1443 f.

[103]   Without ritual burial the dead man is τῶν κάτωθε θεῶν ἄμοιρος ἀκτέριστος ἀνόσιος νέκυς, Ant. 1070 f.

[104]   ἐντάφια οἷα τοῖς κάτω νομίζεται, El. 326. κτερίσματα, 434, 931. λουτρά, 84, 434 (cf. above, chap. v, nn. 106, 107), ἔμπυρα, 405. χοαί, 440.—El. 452, prayer is made to the dead that he “shall help us and Orestes” ὅπως τὸ λοιπὸν αὐτὸν ἀφνεωτέραις χερσὶν στέφωμεν ἢ τὰ νῦν δωρούμεθα (at present only a lock of hair and a girdle, 448 ff.).—Offerings to the dead made by foes and even the approach of such persons to the neighbourhood of the grave is displeasing and hateful to the departed who lies therein: El. 431 ff., 442 ff.; Ai. 1394 f. (cf. above, chap. v, n. 109). In this case as in the cult of the soul generally the presence of the dead man in the grave, or else in its immediate neighbourhood, is presupposed—not his departure into an inaccessible land of the dead. The latter view, retained from Homeric 455 poetry, is generally allowed to remain incongruously side by side with the former.

[105]   El. 1066 ff.

[106]   The god of the underworld is οὐκ ἀπερίτροπος of the murdered man: El. 182 f. Hence all the gods and spirits of the lower world are summoned to take vengeance for the murder of Agamemnon: El. 110–16. We hear of Δίκη ἡ ξύνοικος τῶν κάτω θεῶν as the patron of the dead in their claim to justice: Ant. 451.

[107]   Herakles in giving his last commands to Hyllos finally threatens the latter: εἰ δὲ μή, μενῶ σ’ ἐγὼ καὶ νέρθεν ὤν, ἀραῖος εἰς ἀεὶ βαρύς, Tr. 1201 f.; cf. fr. 367; see above, chap. v, n. 148.

[108]   Elektra thinks that Agamemnon himself may have sent the δυσπρόσοπτ’ ὀνείρατα to Klytaimnestra: El. 459 f. (There is no reason for altering the traditional text here—with Nauck—to make the gods the senders of the dreams instead of the dead man. ἥρωες, too, can send nocturnal visions of terror: see above, chap. ix, n. 102.) Here Elektra supposes that by sending such harbingers of his wrath the unavenged victim of murder has signified his readiness to assist in the taking of vengeance. This makes perfectly good sense and is the only interpretation that suits the context of Elektra’s admonitions to her sister.

[109]   ἀρωγός, El. 454. ῶσιν οἱ γᾶς κάτω κείμενοι. παλίρρυτον γὰρ αἷμα ὑπεξαιροῦσι τῶν κτανόντων οἱ πάλαι θανόντες, El. 1419 f. “The dead man brings death to the living,” Nauck on Tr. 1163.

[110]   frr. 753, 805.

[111]   OC. 1049 ff., 680; fr. 736.

[112]   Oedipus does not die but vanishes (is seen no more, 1649); the depths of the earth open and receive him: 1661 f., 1681. What is meant is translation without death as in the case of Amphiaraos, etc. The poet only hints at the miracle in intentionally vague words—but they cannot refer to anything but translation. ὤλετο 1656, and ἔθανε are therefore only inaccurate expressions to describe his departure (see also above, chap. iii, n. 2). The Messenger of 1583 f. refuses, however, to give a distinct answer to the question of the Chorus ὄλωλε γὰρ δύστηνος; he will only hint that Oedipus has indeed ὄλωλε (1580), but has not simply died—he has instead been translated out of earthly life. The corrupt ὡς λελοιπότα κεῖνον τὸν ἀεὶ (this was already what the Alexandrians read) βίοτον ἐξεπίστασο may not therefore be altered simply into τὸν αἰνόν, τὸν ἄβιον βίοτον. It may perhaps have originally been something like τὸν ἔνθα, τὸν ἐν γῇ, τὸν ἀνδρῶν βίοτον (cf. Medea to her children ἐς ἄλλο σχῆμ’ ἀποστάντες βίου, E., Med. 1039. A dead woman ὑποκεχώρηκε αἰφνίδιον τοῦ καθ’ ἡμᾶς βίου. Ins. from Amorgos, BCH. 1891, p. 576, ll. 9–10).

[113]   A distinct act of precaution against disbelief in such a miracle: OC. 1665 f. (cf. ἔρρει δὲ τὰ θεῖα, OT. 906 ff.; which refers esp. to the belief in the Oracle of Loxias, a matter of great importance to Soph.).

[114]   The innocence of Oedipus and the fact that the awful crimes committed by him have been done in ignorance and against his will θεῶν ἀγόντων, is stressed in order that his elevation to the position of Heros may not seem to be an honour done to a guilt-stained criminal. But the poet does not attribute positive virtues to him even in OC.—far less in fact than in OT.

[115]   One has only to read the play without preconceived ideas to see that this passionate and savage old man, pitilessly heaping dreadful curses on his sons, gloating vindictively over the coming misfortunes 456 of his own country, is quite ignorant of the “deep peace from the gods” or the “illumination of the pious sufferer” which conventional literary interpretation has been anxious to ascribe to him. The poet is not one to gloss over the harsh realities of life with trite phrases of vapid consolation, and he has clearly perceived that the usual effect of unhappiness and misery upon men is not to “illuminate” but to enfeeble and vulgarize them. His Oedipus is pious (he was that from the beginning in OT. as well), but he is made savage, ἠγρίωται, exactly like Philoktetes in his misery (Ph. 1321).

[116]   Humanitarianism of Athens and her king: 562 ff., 1125 ff.

[117]   It is emphasized over and over again that the settlement of Oedipus on Attic soil is meant to bring about the salvation of the Athenians and the discomfiture of the Thebans (Apollo’s oracle has thus decreed it): 92 f., 287 f., 402, 409 ff., 576 ff., 621 ff. The whereabouts of the valuable possession must therefore be kept secret (as frequently with the graves of Heroes: see above, chap. iv, n. 38); 1520 ff. This elevation of Oedipus to be the σωτήρ of Attica (459 f.) is evidently what makes the interest and importance for the poet of the whole mystery which he relates.

[118]   νῦν γὰρ θεοί σ’ ὀρθοῦσι, πρόσθε δ’ ὤλλυσαν, 394. The gods now feel ὤραν τινά for Oedipus, 386. After many πήματα πάλιν σφε δαίμων δίκαιος αὔξοι (ἄν), 1565 f. It is, in fact, an act of kindness after a long period of ill-usage; there is a reversal of fortune, but there is no reward or indemnification given in recognition of a just claim. It is all grace.

[119]   In this, too, ὡς ἄν τις εἶς τῶν χρηστῶν Ἀθηναίων (Ion ap. Ath. 13, 604 D).

[120]   Prodikos is, acc. to Welcker, Kl. Schr. ii, 497 ff., responsible for most of the theories propounded in the Ps.-Platonic Axiochus on the subject of the ἀθανασία τῆς ψυχῆς, Ax. 370 B ff., the tendency of the soul to the heavenly αἰθήρ (366 A), and even of the Platonizing fantasy at the end about the fate of the departed (371-2). Prodikos, if we adopted this attribution, would become less the “forerunner of Sokrates” (as Welcker calls him) than the forerunner of Plato. There is, however, no real reason to attribute to him any more share in that document than is asserted distinctly in it. The brief and carelessly composed pamphlet consists of a medley of the conventional ingredients of the usual λόγοι παραμυθητικοί loosely strung together. To Prod. is assigned: the disquisition on the troubles of life in all its stages 336 D-367 E; and the saying ὅτι ὁ θάνατος οὔτε περὶ τοὺς ζῶντάς ἐστιν οὔτε περὶ τοὺς μετηλλαχότας κτλ., 369 B (cf. Buresch, Leip. Stud. ix, 8–9). These two passages put together would establish as the opinion of Prodikos just the opposite of what Welcker wishes to ascribe to him. He would show himself as a true πεισιθάνατος (—ἐξ ἐκείνου θανατᾷ μου ἡ ψυχή, 366 C), who would make death a mere exit into a state of unconsciousness after the troubles of life, and thus seem an absolute nonentity. But the piece is in reality quite without authority: it apparently puts forward the name of Prodikos, who is so often stated in Plato to have been the “teacher” of Sokrates, merely in order to have a definite authority (like the fabulous Gobryes later on) for what the author does not wish to represent Sokrates as saying on his own account. One of the sayings attributed to the imaginary Prodikos, ὅτι ὁ θάνατος . . . is, however, only too clearly a simple appropriation of Epicurus’ aphorism, ὁ θάνατος οὐδὲν πρὸς ἡμᾶς κτλ. (p. 61, 6 Usen.; cf. p. 227, 30; 391. Heinze also points this out, Ber. sächs. Ges. d. Wiss. 1884, p. 332). The other passage (366 D ff.) agrees suspiciously 457 with what Teles (p. 38 Hens.) has to say on the same subject apparently in entire dependence on Krates the Cynic. It seems extremely probable that the author of the Axiochus also had Krates before him or even Teles (as Wyttenbach already suggested, Plu., Mor. vi, p. 41); and that he attributes what he has thus borrowed from extraneous sources to “Prodikos” by a fiction that never came amiss to the composers of such dialogues.—It follows then that what Prodikos really said about the soul and its destiny is unknown to us; cf. on this recently much-discussed subject: Brinkmann, Rh. Mus. 51, 444 ff.

[121]   In the Prologue Thanatos at once describes his claims and his office. He has to receive the departed and cut off the lock of hair from the forehead (75 f. probably as a sign that the dead enter into the possession of the underworld deities: in Verg., A. iv, 698 f. Proserpina in the same way dedicates the dead to Orcus). He then leads them to Hades, 871. He comes in person to the grave and enjoys the offerings laid there, 844 ff., 851 f. (like the dead man himself on other occasions, see above, chap. v, n. 108). Properly speaking he is only the servant of Hades; but just as the word ᾅδης was already common as = θάνατος, so Thanatos himself is also actually called Ἅιδης (268, see above, n. 4); only as identical with Hades can he be called ἄναξ νεκρῶν, 843; cf. δαιμόνων κοίρανος, 1140.—In the underworld are Charon ὁ ψυχοπομπός, 361, 254 ff., 458 f., and Kerberos, 360. Hades and Hermes χθόνιος receive the dead. εἰ δέ τι κἀκεῖ πλέον ἔστ’ ἀγαθοῖς Alkestis will have the seat of honour next to Persephone: 744 ff. By the living who survive she is regarded on account of her incomparable virtue as μάκαιρα δαίμων and her grave is not the abode of a dead woman but a place of worship, 995–1005. Such facile elevation to the rank of “Heroine” was supposed to be characteristic of Thessaly and Eurip. may in this also have intended to give his poem a touch of Thessalian local colour. (δαίμων as an intermediate stage between θεοί and ἄνθρωποι; so frequently in Eur., e.g. Tro. 55–6; Med. 1391; is this the meaning of the μέσον in Hel. 1137?)—Thoroughly in keeping with popular belief is χαῖρε κἀν Ἅιδου δόμοις εὖ σοι γένοιτο, 626 f. (such a χαῖρε is the last word with which ὡς νομίζεται one addresses the dead ἐξιοῦσαν ὑστάτην ὅδον, 609 f.). Similar also (but really implying the conception of the dead as resting in the grave and not in Hades) is: κοῦφά σοι χθὼν ἐπάνωθε πέσοι, 463.

[122]   The funeral dirge, 86 ff.; κόσμος buried with the dead, 618 ff.; mourning ceremonies: the manes of the horses are cut short; no sound of flute or lyre is to be heard in the town for twelve months, 428 ff. (πένθος ἐτήσιον is usual, 336). These extreme observances are probably taken from the mourning customs of the Thessalian dynastic families.

[123]   Burial of the dead in accordance with νόμος παλαιὸς δαιμόνων, Suppl. 563; νόμιμα θεῶν, 19; a general Hellenic custom, 526 f.—Burial of Polyneikes in spite of Kreon’s prohibition: Phoen. and probably Ἀντιγόνη.

[124]   τοῖς γὰρ θανοῦσι χρὴ τὸν οὐ τεθνηκότα τιμὰς διδόντα χθόνιον εὐσεβεῖν θεόν, Ph. 1320 f. ἐν εὐσεβεῖ γοῦν νόμιμα μὴ κλέπτειν νεκρῶν, Hel. 1277. The honour of the grave more important even than good fortune upon earth, Hec. 317 f. Lament over the dishonouring of the grave of Agamem., El. 323 ff. Request for the burial of Astyanax, Tro. 1133 ff., of Orestes, IT. 702 ff., of Makaria, Hcld. 588 ff. The shade of the murdered Polydoros prays especially for burial, Hec. 47 ff. (31 f., 796 f.). He is an example of the wandering of the ἄταφοι upon the upper earth; he ἄθαπτος ἀλαίνει, Tro. 1084 (see above, p. 163, and Append. vii).—Funeral ceremony for those who have 458 been drowned at sea, Hel. 1057 ff., 1253 ff.; though there the idea is only used as an excuse for the intrigue.

[125]   χοαί for the dead, e.g. Or. 112 ff., El. 511 ff.; IT. 159 ff.

[126]   χοαί make the dead εὐμενῆ towards the givers of the offering, Or. 119. The children call upon the soul of the murdered father to help them, El. 676 ff., in the belief that πάντ’ ἀκούει τάδε πατήρ, 684. The soul of the dead man hovers above the living observing everything, Or. 674 ff. Invocation of the dead (striking both hands on the ground: see above, chap. iii, n. 10), Tro. 1305 f. Expectation that the dead thus called on will σῶσαι his friends, Or. 797, or help them, El. 679. Calling upon the departed in Hades ἄρηξον, ἐλθὲ καὶ σκιὰ φάνηθί μοι, HF. 494 (though with the qualification εἴ τις φθόγγος εἰσακούσεται θνητῶν παρ’ Ἅιδῃ, 490).

[127]   Translation miracles are touched upon by the poet with obvious pleasure; cf. transl. of Kadmos and Harmonia, Bac. 1330 ff., 1338 ff.: of Peleus, Andr. 1257 ff.; of Helen, Or. 1629 ff.: of Herakles, Hcld. 910; of Menelaos (in unmistakable sarcasm), Hel. 1676 ff. So, too, in the spurious conclusion to the IA. there is a translation of Iphigeneia, 1583 ff. (πρὸς θεοὺς ἀφίπτατο, 1608).

[128]   Eurystheus buried in the temple of Athene Pallenis will bring safety to Athens and evil to her enemies: Hcld. 1026 ff. Eurysth. says σοὶ μὲν εὔνους καὶ πόλει σωτήριος μέτοικος ἀεὶ κείσομαι κατὰ χθονός, 1032 f.; i.e. he will become a ἥρως σωτήρ of the land (just as Oedip. was to become σωτήρ for Attica. S., OC. 460, and Brasidas Heros σωτήρ of the Amphipolitans, Thuc. 5, 11, 1). Heroic cult of Hippolytos, Hip. 1423 ff., fr. 446.

[129]   The Erinyes are spoken of (apparently with real belief) in IT. 79 ff. and elsewhere.

[130]   Or. 258 f., not very different, IT. 288–94.

[131]   τὸ θηριῶδες τοῦτο καὶ μιαιφόνον, Or. 524. Orestes instead of committing murder himself should have brought his father to justice, Or. 500 f. Agamemnon himself if he could have been asked would not have desired this bloody vengeance, Or. 288 ff. It is only Apollo’s unwise counsel that has led Orestes to the murder of his mother, El. 971 ff., 1296 f.; Or. 276 ff., 416, 591. After the deed Orestes does indeed feel remorse but no religious terrors, El. 1177 (in spite of which there is much about the pursuing Erinyes of his mother). How completely this whole series of ideas, the duty of vengeance, etc., has lost its meaning for the poet, is to be felt more especially in the sophistical frigidity with which the subject is treated in an ἀγών between Tyndareos and Orestes, Or. 491–604, and in the hair-splitting of the speech of Orestes himself, 932 ff.

[132]   δοκῶ δὲ τοῖς θανοῦσι διαφέρειν βραχύ, εἰ πλουσίων τις τεύξεται κτερισμάτων· κενὸν δὲ γαύρωμ’ ἐστὶ τῶν ζώντων τόδε, Tro. 1248 ff.

[133]   fr. 176.

[134]   οὐδὲν ἔσθ’ ὁ κατθανών, Alc. 381. The dead are οἱ οὐκέτ’ ὄντες 322. τοῖς (the dead) μὲν γὰρ οὐδὲν ἄλγος ἄψεταί ποτε, πολλῶν δὲ μόχθων εὐκλεὴς ἐπαύσατο, 937 f. But even fame is nothing to the dead. Admetos says to his father in the scurrilous dialogue θανεῖ γε μέντοι δυσκλεής, ὅταν θάνῃς. To which the old man unconcernedly replies κακῶς ἀκούειν οὐ μέλει θανόντι μοι (725 f.).

[135]   It might seem simpler to regard all the utterances of persons in the plays which correspond to conventional beliefs as being merely dramatic expressions of the character’s own (orthodox) view, and in no sense put forward by the poet as his own opinion. And certainly the separate and independently acting persons of the drama can only 459 speak and act in accordance with their own proper conceptions and springs of action—not in accordance with the poet’s. But in the antique drama this complete detachment of the creatures of the dramatic imagination from their creator, the poet of the drama, only holds good in a limited sense. The ancient dramatists exercised their office of judge much more vigorously than the greatest of the moderns. The course of his play showed clearly what acts and characters the poet disapproved of, but also which opinions he sanctioned and which he did not. We have only to remember the attacks of Oedipus and Iokaste upon the judgments of the gods in OT. (or the story of Sen., Ep. 115, 14: Eur. fr. 324). Accordingly we may take it that such utterances of dramatic characters as are not supplied with practical or spoken corrective are among those of which the poet did not disapprove. Euripides so very frequently puts words into the mouth of his characters which can only express his own moods or opinions that we may also assume that when their language harmonizes with traditional belief then, too, the most subjective of the tragedians is for the moment expressing his own view. Thus, for example, we cannot doubt that the strain of piety running through the whole of the Hiketides (subjection of φρόνησις to God’s wisdom, 216 ff., submission to the guidance of the gods, 592 ff., and to Zeus’ government of the world, 734 ff.), and especially the whole-hearted elaboration of the picture of Theseus as a model of εὐσέβεια represent the actual opinion of the poet at that particular period (he clearly speaks of himself, 180–3). At other times, too (apart from the Bacchae), though generally for a short time only, he shows vague aspirations towards orthodoxy.

[136]   Alc. 968 ff.; Hipp. 952 ff.—Asceticism of the mystai of Zeus and Zagreus of the Mountain Mother and the Kouretes: Κρῆτες, fr. 472.

[137]   Polyid. fr. 638; Phrixos, fr. 833. It is usual (cf. Bergk, Gr. Litt. 3, 475, 33) to see here a reminiscence of Herakleitos. But the latter’s ἀθάνατοι θνητοί, θνητοὶ ἀθάνατοι, ζῶντες τὸν ἐκείνων θάνατον, τὸν δὲ ἐκείνων βίον τεθνεῶτες (fr. 67 Byw. 62 D.) is clearly intended to express the view that “death” and “life” are purely relative concepts; that death (of the one, i.e. Fire) and life (of the other, i.e, Water or Earth) are simultaneously present in the same object (see also frr. 68, 78 = 36, 88). According to this view it would be strictly true that life on earth is not more life than it is death; but that is certainly not what Eurip. means to say. Philo and Sext. Emp. are mistaken in attributing to Herakl. the Orphic doctrine of the “death” of the soul which takes place when it is enclosed in the σῶμα, as its σῆμα (see above, chap. xi, n. 19). But it is precisely this Orphic doctrine that is present to the mind of Eurip. (and Plato, Gorg. 492 E, 493 A, brings it into immediate connexion with the verses of E.). He is speaking of the true “death” of the soul in the life of the body and of its release to a real (and not a merely relative) life after death; and thinks that “life” has no claim to the distinguishing name (cf. ὃ δὴ βίοτον καλέουσι Emped. 117 Mull. = fr. 15 D.).

[138]   Palingenesia is alluded to once only and in jest as a desirable reward for the virtuous, HF. 655–68; cf. M. Ant. xii, 5.

[139]   ὁ νοῦς γὰρ ἡμῶν ἐστιν ἐν ἑκάστῳ θεός, fr. 1018.

[140]   fr. 839 (Chrysipp.) fully physical in fr. 898, 7 ff.—fr. 1023 Αἰθέρα καὶ Γαῖαν πάντων γενέτειραν ἀείδω. Cf. fr. 1004.

[141]   fr. 484 (Μελαν. ἡ σοφή)—ὡς οὐρανός τε γαῖά τ’ ἦν μορφὴ μία κτλ. Here, too, the poet is speaking of a mere initial association of the elements afterwards to be parted, but thought of as always from the 460 beginning independent—there is no derivation of both from a single common original element, or of one out of the other. Eurip. may really have been thinking here of the ὅμου πάντα χρήματα ἦν of Anaxagoras (as the ancient authorities supposed), esp. as, with Anax. also, out of the general conglomeration two masses, ἀήρ and αἰθήρ, first emerge (though in this case νοῦς is not included in the αἰθήρ as it is with Eurip.). Here, too, then the usual dualism of the Euripidean cosmogony is preserved. For the rest this fr. 484 allows us to perceive that in spite of all his physiological tendencies Eurip. can never quite get rid of the mythical element in his cosmogonical events. The reason why Ouranos and Gaia in particular recommend themselves to him as elemental forces (and κοινοὶ ἁπάντων γονεῖς, fr. 1004) was that these figures had long been set at the beginning of the world and of the gods by cosmogonical poetry (αἰθήρ is simply the more physiological term for what is half-personified as Οὐρανός). This probably explains why matter (or at least the more solid forms of matter as distinguished from the αἰθήρ the λεπτότατον πάντων χρημάτων) is for him included in the description “earth”. In this he is not following the old physiologists, none of whom had called “earth” the original matter—at least not earth alone (see Ilberg, Quaest. Pseudohippocrat., p. 16 ff., 1883). “Earth” as describing the merely material, matter deserted by spirit, may have come to him from popular usage. As early as Ω 54 the body deserted by soul and life is called κωφὴ γαῖα (cf. Eur. frr. 532; 757, 5). Thus for the poet the contrast between γῆ and αἰθήρ almost amounts to that between “matter” and “mind”, except that he either could not or would not think of a “mind” without any material substratum and that for this reason his αἰθήρ still preserves a remnant of matter.

[142]   This is esp. clear in fr. 839, 8 ff. In the disruption of the elements out of which πάντα are composed each of the two, γῆ and αἰθήρ, preserves itself undiminished and unmixed. θνῄσκει δ’ οὐδὲν τῶν γιγνομένων διακρινόμενον δ’ ἄλλο πρὸς ἄλλου μορφὴν ἰδίαν ἀπέδειξεν (restores itself in its independent being). Whereupon we feel ourselves irresistibly reminded of the saying of Anaxagoras—οὐδὲν γὰρ χρῆμα γίνεται οὐδὲ ἀπόλλυται, ἀλλ’ ἀπ’ ἐόντων χρημάτων συμμίσγεταί τε καὶ διακρίνεται, καὶ οὕτως ἂν ὀρθῶς καλοῖεν τό τε γίνεσθαι συμμίσγεσθαι καὶ τὸ ἀπόλλυσθαι διακρίνεσθαι, fr. 17 Mull. [and D.].

[143]   That it was not Anaxagoras, or at least not he alone, who gave the decided direction to the philosophic ideas of Eurip. has rightly come to be held of late. We do not find a trace in Eurip. of the separation of νοῦς from matter, at least not in the form in which Anaxagoras understood it. For E. the mind is bound to one of the two primal elements and quite foreign to the other, the earth. Thus he arrives at a dualism indeed, but in quite a different sense from that of Anaxag. Dümmler, Proleg. zu Platons Staat (Progr. Basel, 1891), p. 48, points out reminiscences in Eurip. of Diogenes of Apollonia—but it is not true to say that the poet’s views show the “closest kinship” with the monistic system of Diog., or with any Monism.

[144]   Tro. 884 ff. The air, called by the name of Zeus, and identical with the νοῦς βροτῶν, can only be taken from the doctrine of Diog.: Diels, Rh. Mus. 42, 12.

[145]   Diog. Apoll., frr. 3, 4, 5 Mull. (= 8, 3, 4 D.). The soul is ἀὴρ θερμότερος τοῦ ἔξω, ἐν ᾧ ἐσμεν, though it is colder than the air which is παρὰ τῷ ἡλίῳ, fr. 6 [5]. The soul is therefore more akin to the αἰθήρ than to the ἀήρ (αἰθήρ and ἀήρ were at that time often confused: e.g. in E., fr. 944, αἰθήρ instead of ἀήρ). 461

[146]   Suppl. 1140 αἰθὴρ ἔχει νιν ἤδη κτλ. Elektra expects to find her dead father in the Aither, El. 59. Of a dying man, πνεῦμ’ ἀφεὶς εἰς αἰθέρα, fr 971 (differently, Or. 1086 f.); cf. also Suppl. 531–6 (imitated from Epicharm.), where again the αἰθήρ is only spoken of as the abode, and not as the original and consubstantial element of the soul.

[147]   αἰθὴρ οἴκησις Διός, Eur., fr. 487 (Melanip.).

[148]   Epich., fr. 7, p. 257 Lor. [= fr. 265 Kaibel].

[149]   CIA. i, 442, αἰθὴρ μὲν ψυχὰς ὑπεδέξατο, σώ[ματα δὲ χθὼν] τῶνδε. . . .

[150]   συνεκρίθη καὶ διεκρίθη, κἀπῆλθεν ὅθεν ἦλθεν πάλιν, γᾶ μὲν ἐς γᾶν, πνεῦμ’ ἄνω· τί τῶνδε χάλεπόν; οὒδὲ ἕν, Epich. ap. Plu., Cons. ad Apoll. 15, 110 A; Epich., fr. 8 [245 Kaib.]. πνεῦμα as a general name for the ψυχή occurs also in Epich., fr. 7 [265]. No earlier authority is to be found for this usage that became so common later (under Stoic influence) than Xenophanes who πρῶτος ἀπεφήνατο ὅτι ἡ ψυχὴ πνεῦμα (D.L. ix, 19). Epicharm. may have been actually following Xenophanes (whose writings he knew: Arist., Meta. iii, 5, 1010a, 6) in this use of the word. Eurip. then did the same, Suppl. 533. πνεῦμα is the name given to the ἀήρ in so far as it is in motion. (ὑποληπτέον, εἶναι σῶμα τὸν ἀέρα) γίνεται δὲ πνεῦμα κινηθείς. οὐθὲν γὰρ ἕτερόν ἐστι πνεῦμα ἢ κινούμενος ἀήρ: Hero, μηχαν. σύστ., p. 121 (ed. Diels = i, p. 6. ed. Schmidt) after Straton. The soul is called a πνεῦμα just because the soul is that which has continual movement from its very nature (and is the principle of movement); as such it had already been regarded by Alkmaion (and later by Plato), and even before that by Pythagoras (see above, chap. xi, n. 40); in a different way by Herakleitos and Demokritos also. The universal ἀήρ and the Soul-πνεῦμα, if we give the terms their proper meaning, are to be thought of as being of the same nature, so that the ἀήρ, too (still more the αἰθήρ as a higher ἀήρ), is psychical and animated by soul. That at least was how Diogenes of Apollonia regarded it. (ἀήρ = the outer air, πνεῦμα the air which is inside men’s bodies: [Hp.] de Flatib. 3 [vi, 94 L.], a section taken from Diog. Ap.)

[151]   Numerous references in Eurip. to verses of Epicharm. are pointed out by Wilamowitz, Eurip. Herakles, i, 29. The fact that Eurip. knew the poems of Epich. and valued them for their philosophic contents is clearly made out by Wilamowitz’ study. But he goes on to assert that all the allusions of Eurip. refer only to the (or one of the) forgeries in the name of Epicharm., of which many were known in antiquity. The reason alleged for this statement—“Euripides never quotes comedies”—is merely a petitio principii. It may be that Eurip. does not “quote” contemporary Attic comedy, but whether he maintained the same attitude to the brilliantly original comic poet of Sicily, whom Aristotle and even Plato (Gorg. 505 E and esp. Tht. 152 E) were not ashamed to notice, is the very point at issue; nothing is gained by unproved denial of this main premiss.—Moreover, it would be a most unusual species of forger that preferred to publish gems like νᾶφε καὶ . . . (imitated by Eurip.) or νόος ὁρῇ—under another man’s name. The fragments of the Πολιτεία, which is really a forgery fathered on Epicharmos (ap. Clem. Al., Str. v, p. 719 P. = Lor., p. 297), are of a very different character.

[152]   Archelaos makes a less satisfactory model for Eurip. here. Arch. in his reconciliation of the doctrines of Anaxagoras and Diogenes did not separate νοῦς from the mixture of the material elements (or from the ἀήρ), but he distinguished between them, while for the poet αἰθήρ and mind are the same. 462

[153]   αἰθήρ = Zeus, fr. 941. αἰθήρ. . . .Ζεὺς ὃς ἀνθρώποις ὀνομάζεται, fr. 877. Hence the αἰθήρ is κορυφὴ θεῶν, fr. 919.—In the same way for Diog. Ap. the air is god (Cic., ND. i, 29) and Zeus (Philod., Piet. c. 6b, p. 70 Gomp.; Dox. 536).—In E., fr. 941: τὸν ὑψοῦ τόνδ’ ἄπειρον αἰθέρα καὶ γῆν πέριξ ἔχονθ’ ὑγραῖς ἐν ἀγκάλαις the αἰθήρ is not put instead of ἀήρ (for τὸν ὑψοῦ only suits αἰθήρ in its proper sense), but the two are combined under the one word (ὑγραῖς ἐν ἀγκάλαις could not be said of the αἰθήρ in the strict sense), just as the ἀήρ of Diogenes includes the αἰθήρ (for the hot ἀὴρ παρὰ τῷ ἡλίῳ, fr. 6 [5 Diels] is, in fact, the αἰθήρ, and so, too, essentially, is the warm ἀήρ in our bodies).

[154]   —εἰς ἀθάνατον αἰθέρ’ ἐμπεσών, Hel. 1016.

[155]   ὁ ἐντὸς ἀὴρ (which alone αἰσθάνεται—not the senses) μικρὸν μόριον ὢν τοῦ θεοῦ, Diog. ap. Thphr., Sens. 42.

[156]   The living air, or Zeus, is νοῦς βροτῶν, Tro. 886. And vice versa, the νοῦς in each one of us is no other than God, fr. 1018.

[157]   ὁ νοῦς τῶν κατθανόντων ζῇ μὲν οὔ, γνώμην δ’ ἔχει ἀθάνατον, εἰς ἀθάνατον αἰθέρ’ ἐμπεσών, Hel. 1013 ff.—Ambiguity attaches to the passages in which a dying person is said to depart εἰς ἄλλο σχῆμα βίου (Med. 1039), ἐς ἄλλας βιότου μορφάς (Ion, 1068), to ἕτερον αἰῶνα καὶ μοῖραν (IA. 1508). It is possible that in each case a personal existence continued in a land of the dead is understood—but if they mean no more than that they are remarkably pregnant in form. In reading them (esp. Med. 1039) one is reminded of the remarkable lines of Philiskos (pupil of Isocr.) ap. [Plu.] Vit. X Or., p. 243, 60 West. τῷ γὰρ ἐς ἄλλο σχῆμα μεθαρμοσθέντι καὶ ἄλλοις ἐν κόσμοισι βίου σῶμα λαβόνθ’ ἕτερον—said of the dead Lysias. But here the idea of metempsychosis seems really to be involved, which it can hardly be in the case of Eurip.

[158]   Eur. adopts it for himself, fr. 189 (Antiope), and confirms it by so many λόγων ἅμιλλαι in which he allows the most contradictory opinions about a single subject to be given equally plausible expression.

[159]   ἀπειροσύνη ἄλλου βιότου, etc. Hip. 191–7. τὸ ζῆν γὰρ ἴσμεν, τοῦ θανεῖν δ’ ἀπειρίᾳ πᾶς τις φοβεῖται φῶς λιπεῖν τόδ’ ἡλίου, fr. 816, 10 f. (Phoinix).

[160]   The dead man is γῆ καὶ σκιά—τὸ μηδὲν εἰς οὐδὲν ῥέπει, fr. 532; cf. 533, 534. τὸ μὴ γενέσθαι τῷ θανεῖν ἴσον· ὥσπερ οὐκ ἰδοῦσα φῶς the dead woman knows nothing of herself or her sufferings, Tro. 636–44 (a locus often initiated in “consolations”: Axioch. 365 D, Plu., Cons. ad Apoll. 15, p. 110 A).

[161]   φήμη τὸν ἐσθλὸν κἀν μυχοῖς δείκνυσι γῆς, fr. 865. ἀρετὴ δὲ κἂν θάνῃ τις οὐκ ἀπόλλυται, ζῇ δ’ οὐκετ’ ὄντος σώματοςs, fr. 734; cf. Andr. 772. At the sacrifice of Makaria the chorus in Hcld. 621 ff. can only offer as consolation the fame which awaits her—οὐδ’ ἀκλεής νιν δόξα πρὸς ἀνθρώπων ὑποδέξεται.

[162]   Makaria voluntarily going to meet her death—εἴ τι δὴ κατὰ χθονός· εἴη γε μέντοι μηδέν. εἰ γὰρ ἕξομεν κἀκεῖ μερίμνας οἱ θανούμενοι βροτῶν οὐκ οἶδ’ ὅποι τις τρέψεται· τὸ γὰρ θανεῖν μέγιστον φάρμακον νομίζεται, Hcld. 592 ff.; cf. fr. 916.

[163]   fr, 757 (the metaphor of ll. 5 ff. is employed for homiletic purposes by Epictet. ii, 6, 11–14); Andr. 1270 ff.

CHAPTER XIII

PLATO

The belief in human immortality, construed in a theological or philosophical sense, had at this time hardly penetrated to circles of ordinary lay folk. Socrates himself, when it came to such inquiries into the unknowable, never claimed to provide an answer that differed from that which would be given by the majority of his fellow citizens out of the accumulated wisdom of their ancestors. Where in the pages of Plato he is allowed to give undisguised expression to his natural and homely vigour—in the Apology—he shows little anticipation of an immortal life of the soul. Death, he thinks, either brings complete unconsciousness to men, like a dreamless sleep, or else it means the transition of the soul to another life in the realm of the Souls—a realm which, to judge by his allusions, has much more resemblance to the Homeric Hades than to any of the visionary countries imagined by theologians or theologically minded poets.1 Both possibilities he accepts with complete equanimity, trusting in the righteousness of the controlling gods,2 and he looks no further. How should he know with certainty where everyone was ignorant?3

With a like absence of concern it is possible that the majority of the cultured (who were just beginning to separate themselves from the rest of the community) left unsettled the problem of the Unknown.4 Plato assures us that it was in his time a widespread belief of the populace that the outgoing soul-breath of the dying was caught up by the winds—especially if its exit took place in stormy weather—and was dispersed, blown away, into nothing.5 In other ways, too, we may suppose that the orthodox Greek, when death approached, allowed his fancy to picture what might await his soul on the other side of death’s threshold.6 But it is certain that the belief in an unending life of the soul—a life with no end because it had no beginning—was not among these thoughts. Plato himself lets us see how strange such a conception was even to those who were capable of following and understanding a philosophical discussion. Towards the end of the long dialogue upon the best kind of State his Sokrates asks Glaukon with apparent irrelevance “are you not aware that 464 our soul is immortal and never perishes?” Whereupon, we are told, Glaukon looked at him in astonishment and said, “No, in truth, of that I was not aware: can you then assert any such thing?”7

The idea that the soul of man may be everlasting and imperishable seemed thus a paradoxical freak to one who was no adept in the theological doctrine of the soul. If in later times the case was altered, no one contributed more effectually or more permanently to bring that change about than the great thinker and poet who established the theological conception of personal immortality in the very heart of philosophy and then gave back the idea strengthened and made more profound to its parent theology, while he himself extended the influence of that idea far beyond the bounds of school or sect by the far-reaching power of his own unaging writings which belong, not to the schoolroom, but to the greatest achievements of literature whether of Greece or of mankind. It is beyond calculation what power has been wielded since their first appearance by the Platonic dialogues in the confirmation, dissemination, and precise definition of the belief in immortality—a power that with all its alteration in the passage of the centuries has maintained itself unbroken into our own times.

§ 2

Plato had not always given his assent to the belief in immortality. At any rate, it must have remained very much in the background of his thoughts and his belief in the days when he still regarded the world from the point of view of a slightly more developed Socraticism. Not only at that period (in the Apology) does he make his Sokrates go to his death without the most distant approach to a belief in the undying vitality of his soul, but also in the first sketch of his Ideal State—a sketch made while the influence of the Socratic view of life still prevailed with him—the belief in immortality is omitted and even excluded.8 It seems as if Plato did not reach the higher conception of the nature and value of the soul, its origin and destiny reaching out beyond all temporal limitation, until the great change which came over his philosophy had been completed. The world of ever-changing Appearance manifesting itself to the senses in perpetual flux and efflux—this in its inessential, unseizable unreality he abandoned to the criticisms of Herakleitos. But above it, in accordance with his own deepest longings and, as it seemed, implied as its real object by the Socratic search itself after 465 conceptual knowledge, stood a world of unchangeable Being without beginning or end, to which all the appearances of this lower world owed such reality as they possessed. “Being” itself, the totality of the Ideas, remained uncontaminated with “Becoming” and passing away; remained the highest goal and supreme aim standing high above all that aspired to it, or felt a longing for its complete and unlimited fullness.9 This everlasting reality holds itself aloof from the stream of appearance and is not to be grasped within that stream; it is not manifested in the deceitful ever-changing perception of the senses, nor yet in the Opinion that is based upon them; it can only be apprehended, without any assistance from the senses, by the pure intuition of the Reason.10 This world of everlasting self-identical Being exists outside the thought and knowledge of man, but it first reveals itself to man in the activity of his own thinking;11 and at the same time there is revealed to him a higher power than the mere capacity to abstract the unsubstantial general conceptions from the multiplicity of experience—a power that is the highest capacity of the soul, enabling it to voyage out beyond all experience and with infallible knowledge12 to soar of its own independent power upwards to a transcendental world of permanent and essential reality. The highest capacity that belongs to man, the soul of his soul, is not enclosed within this world that surrounds his senses in its restless flood. Like the objects that are the last goal of its study the soul itself is raised to where it can for the first time find a form of activity worthy of its natural powers. It achieves a new distinction, a priestlike dignity, as an intermediary between the two worlds to both of which it belongs.

The soul is a pure spiritual essence; it contains nothing within it that is material, nothing of the “place” where Becoming is shaped into a distant resemblance to Being.13 It is incorporeal and belongs to the realm of the “invisible”, which in this immaterialist doctrine counts as the most real of all, more real than the most solid matter.14 It is not one of the Ideas; on the contrary it seems to partake in one of the Ideas—that of Life—only as other appearances share in their Ideas.15 But it stands nearer to the whole world of the everlasting Ideas than anything else that is not itself an Idea; of all the things in the world it is “most like” to the Idea.16

But it has also a share in Becoming. It cannot simply remain with the Ideas in unaltered other-world transcendence. It has its origin indeed in that other world beyond Appearance. It was from the beginning, uncreated17 like the Ideas and like 466 the Soul of the World to which it is akin.18 It is “older than the body”19 to which it must link itself; it does not come into being at the same time as the body, but is only drawn down from its spiritual state of being into the realm of matter and becoming. In the Phaedrus this “fall into birth” appears as the necessary result of an intellectual “fall” which takes place within the soul itself.20 In the Timaeus, however, with its study of the general life of the whole world-organism, the animation of the living creature has now to be explained as arising out of the plan—not from a failure of the plan—of the Creator.21 The soul thus seems to be destined from the beginning to give life to a body. It is not only the knowing and thinking element in a world of inanimate things, it is also the source of all movement. Itself in motion from the beginning it bestows the power of movement upon the body with which it is associated; without it, there would be no movement in the world, and no life either.22

But though enclosed within the body it remains a stranger to the body. On its side it has no need of the body and is not conditioned by it. It remains independently associated with it as its mistress and leader.23 Even in their united existence there is a great gulf fixed between the soul and all that is not soul;24 body and soul never fuse into one, however closely they may be bound up with each other. And yet the body and its impulses have the power to influence profoundly the immortal being that dwells within it. By its union with the body the soul can be made unclean; “diseases” such as folly and unrestrained passion come to it from the body.25 It is not beyond the reach of change like the Ideas, to which it is akin without being of their nature; on the contrary, it can degenerate entirely. The evil influences of the body penetrate to its inmost being; even in its everlasting, immaterial, spiritual nature it can derive something “corporeal”26 from such a sinister partnership.

It is bound to the body by influences of a lower kind which attach themselves to the pure power of knowledge that alone is proper to it. At the outset of his speculations Plato, like other thinkers before him,27 had thought of the different capacities of the soul, alternately in conflict or alliance with each other, as “parts” of unequal rank and value, bound up together within the soul of man.28 Even in the previous life of the soul, in the other world, the reasoning power of the soul is, according to the Phaedrus, already coupled with “Temper” and “Desire”; it is these in fact which drag down the soul into the realm of the material; and the three parts still 467 remain indissolubly united in the everlasting life which awaits the soul after its release from the body.

But in proportion as the philosopher extends and elevates his conception of the soul, and as he becomes more convinced of its eternal destiny and vocation to a life of unending blessedness in a realm of unchangeable being, the more impossible does it seem to him that this candidate for immortality in the realm of the everlasting Forms can be a composite amalgam of elements capable of being resolved again by division and analysis29—that the reasoning faculty can be for ever united with Effort and Desire, which perpetually threaten to drag it downwards into materiality. The soul in its true and original nature is now for him simple and indivisible.30 Only with its enclosure in the body does the everlasting, thinking soul, whose tendency is towards the eternal, acquire impulses and desires31 that have their origin in the body and belong to the body,32 that only adhere to the soul during the period of its earthly life, that with their separation from their immortal associate will pass away, since they are themselves mortal and such as perish with the body.

The soul, to which sense-perception,33 feeling, emotion, and desire are only added from outside, is in its own imperishable nature nothing but pure capacity of thought and knowledge—with which indeed the power to will that which is conceived in thought, seems to be directly associated. It is destined for the “other” world, for the intuition and undistorted reflection in its consciousness of the immaterial essences. Banished to this earth amid the restless change and alteration of all being, and not uninfluenced by the forces of bodily life, it must endure a brief exile here.34 Not unscathed does it leave behind it, in death, its ill-assorted companion, the body.35 Then it goes into an intermediate region of bodiless existence in which it must do penance for the misdeeds of its life on earth, and free itself from their effects.36 After that it is driven away once more into a body and transported to a fresh life upon earth, the character of which it chooses for itself in accordance with the special nature that it had evolved in its earlier incarnation upon earth.37 Though no organic connexion exists between them, yet there is a certain “symmetry”38 between the individual soul and the body that is lent to it.

Thus, the soul lives through a series of earthly lives39 of the most varied character; it may even sink so low as the animals in the course of its incarnations.40 Its own merits, the success or failure of its conflict with the passions and desires of the 468 body, decide whether or not its lives shall lead it upwards to a nobler type of existence. Its task is plain: it must free itself from its impure companions, sensual Lust and the darkening of the powers of Reason. If it can succeed in this it will find once more the “way upwards”41 which at last leads it into complete immunity from renewed incarnation and brings it home again into the kingdom of everlasting untroubled Being.

§ 3

It is evident that in what he thus, clothing philosophy in the language of poetry, says of the origin, destiny, and character of the soul, which though beyond time is yet placed within time, and though beyond space is yet the cause of all movement within space—that in all this Plato is following in the track of the theologians of earlier times. Only in the poetry and speculative thought of theologi, not in any physiologists’ doctrine, did he find the conception, imaginatively expressed and pointing in the direction which he also followed, of a multiplicity of independent souls whose existence had been from all time and was not first begun in the material world with the creation of a living organism; of souls enclosed in the corporeal as though in a foreign, hostile element, which survive their association with the body, passing through many such bodies and yet preserving themselves intact after the destruction of each of those bodies, immortal, endless (for they are without beginning),42 and alive from the very beginning of Time. The souls, moreover, have life as distinct, complete, and indivisible personalities, not as mere dependent emanations of a simple common Source of all life.

The theory of the eternity and indestructibility of the individual souls, of the personal immortality of the souls, is difficult to reconcile with more specifically Platonic doctrine—with the doctrine of the Ideas.43 And yet it is undeniable that from the moment that he first adopted this theory—and adopted it, too, precisely in connexion with the philosophy of the Ideas—he adhered to it steadfastly and without deviating from its essential meaning. The process by which he arrived at it is not to be found in the “proofs” by which he attempts in the Phaedo to establish the truth of the soul’s immortality in which he himself already believed. Those proofs in reality do not prove what they are intended to prove (and what considered as a fact of experience is unproved and as an axiom necessary to thought is beyond proof); they cannot therefore be the reasons that led the philosopher to 469 hold his conviction. He has in fact borrowed this article of his faith from the creeds which already contained it. He himself scarcely conceals the fact. As authority for the main outlines of the soul’s history as given by himself he refers us almost apologetically, and as though excusing himself for not providing a philosophical proof, to the theologi and priests of the mysteries.44 And he himself becomes the philosophical poet, completely and without concealment, when in imitation of the poetry of edification he, too, gives a picture of the soul’s sojourn in an intermediate station of its pilgrimage or describes the stages of its earthly existence45 that lead the soul down even to the animal.

For such mythological expressions of the inexpressible the philosopher himself claims no more than symbolical truth.46 He is fully in earnest, however, with the fundamental conception of the soul as an independent substance that enters from beyond space and time into the material and perceptible world, and into external conjunction with the body, not into organic union with it; that maintains itself as a being of spiritual essence in the midst of the flux and decay of the material world, though at the same time its pure brightness is overshadowed through this conjunction and must purify itself from the effects; that can disentangle itself,47 even to the extent of complete severance from the embrace of the material and the perceptible. All that is essential in this conception he derives from the theologians, but he brings it into close relationship with his own philosophy which depends upon a conviction of the absolute opposition between Being and Becoming, and upon the dualistic division of the world into matter and mind—a dualism that applies also to the relations of soul and body and throughout the whole realm of Appearance. The soul which stands half-way between the unity and unchangeability of Being and the ever-varying multiplicity of matter has in this realm of fragmentary and subordinate validity, into which it is temporarily exiled, the power to reflect the Ideas and represent them in its own consciousness clear and unfalsified. The soul in its complete independence of sense-perception and of concepts derived from the senses is alone able to pursue the “Quest of Reality”.48 In this pursuit the body with which it is associated is nothing but a hindrance and a serious one. The soul has a hard struggle against the tendencies of the body in spite of its independence and aloofness. Just as, in the creation of the universe, matter, though not a cause is at least a subordinate cause which by its influence and exigencies gives 470 various hindrances49 to the “Mind” that shapes and orders the world, so, too, the soul finds in this ephemeral and inconstant Matter, with its stirring and tumultuous unrest, a serious obstacle to its own proper activity. This is the evil, or the cause of evil,50 which must be overthrown in order that the mind may win its way to freedom and final rest and security in the realm of pure Being. Plato often speaks of the katharsis, the purification, after which man must strive.51 He takes both the word and the idea from the theologians, but he gives it a higher meaning while yet preserving unmistakably the analogy with the katharsis of the theologi and mystery-priests. It is not the pollution which comes from contact with sinister daimones and from all that belongs to them, that is to be avoided, but rather the dulling of the power of knowledge and of willing what is known (regarded as a simultaneously created power) due to the world of the senses and its fierce impulses.52 Man’s effort must be directed not so much to ritual purity, as to the preservation of his knowledge of the eternal from eclipse through the deceptive illusions of the senses; towards the concentration and gathering together of the soul within itself;53 its withdrawal from contact with the ephemeral as the source of pollution and debasement.

Thus, even in this philosophic reinterpretation of ritual abstinence in terms of a spiritual release and emancipation, the effort after “purity” retains its religious sense. The world of the Ideas, the world of pure Being, to which only the pure soul can attain,54 is a world of divinity. The “Good” as the highest of the Ideas, the loftiest pattern, the supreme aim to which all Being and Becoming tend, which is at the same time more than all the Ideas—the first cause of all Being and all knowledge—is also God.55 The soul for which, in its desire and longing for the full being of the Idea, the knowledge of the “Good” is the “supreme science”,56 enters hereby into the closest communion with God. The “turning away” of the soul from the many-coloured image to the sun of the highest Idea, is itself57 a turning towards the divine, towards the luminous source of all Being and Knowing.

Thus exalted, philosophic inquiry turns to enthousiasmos.58 The way which leads upwards from the lower levels of Becoming to Being, is discovered by means of dialectic, which in its “comprehensive view”59 is able to unite the distracted ever-moving flood of multifarious Appearance into the ever-enduring unity of the Idea which is reflected in Appearance. Dialectic travels through the whole range of the Ideas, graduated one above the other, till it reaches the last and 471 most universal of the Ideas. In its upward course it passes by an effort of sheer logic through the whole edifice of the highest concepts.60 Plato is the most subtle of dialecticians; he almost carries subtlety to excess in his eager pursuit of every intricacy of logic—and of paralogism. But he combined to a remarkable degree the cold exactitude of the logician with the enthusiastic intensity of the seer; and his dialectic, after its patient upward march step by step from concept to concept, at last soars to its final goal in a single tremendous flight, in which the longed-for realm of the Ideas reveals itself in a moment of immediate vision. So the Bacchant in his ecstasy saw divinity suddenly plain, and so too in the nights consecrated by the mysteries the epoptês beheld the vision of the Goddesses in the torch-lit glare of Eleusis.61

To this loftiest height whence a view is obtained of “colourless, formless Being, beyond the reach of every contact”, inaccessible to sense-perception, it is dialectic that shows the way; and dialectic now becomes a way of salvation in which the soul finds once more its own divine nature and its divine home. The soul is closely akin to godhead and like it62—it is itself something divine. The reason in the soul is divine,63 and comprehends everlasting Being immediately by its power of thought. “If the eye were not sunlike, it could never see the sun”;64 if the mind were not akin by nature to the good,65 the highest of the Ideas, it could never comprehend the Good, the Beautiful, and all that is perfect and eternal. In its power of recognizing the eternal the soul bears within itself the surest proof that it is itself eternal.66

The “purification” by means of which the soul gets rid of67 the defacement that has overtaken it during its earthly life reveals again the divine in man. Even on earth the philosopher is thus rendered immortal and godlike.68 As long as he can continue in a state of pure intellectual knowledge and comprehension of the everlasting, for so long is he living, already in this life, “in the Islands of the Blest.”69 By expelling all traces of the corruptible and the mortal in and about himself, he is more and more to “become like God”;70 so that when it is at last set free from this earthly existence, his soul may enter into the divine, the invisible, the pure, the eternally self-identical, and as a disembodied mind remain for ever with that which is its kin.70a At this point, language that can only make use of physical imagery becomes totally inadequate.71 A goal is set before the soul that lies outside all physical nature, beyond time and space, without past or future, an ever-present now.72 472

The soul can escape out of time and space and find its home in eternity, without at the same time losing its own self in the General and Universal that stands above time and space. We must not inquire what sort of personality and individual distinctness can yet remain with the soul when it has cast off all effort, desire, sense-perception, and everything related to the world of change and multiplicity, to become once more a pure mirror of the eternal. Nor must we ask how it is possible to think of a spirit removed above space and time and all the multiplicity of matter and yet personal and separate in its personality.73 For Plato the Souls live on as they had been in the beginning—individual beings conscious of themselves in a time that has no end and is beyond all time. He teaches a personal immortality.

§ 4

There is an “other-worldly” tone in this philosophy, and its doctrine of the soul. Far beyond the world in which life has placed man lies the realm of pure Being, the good, the perfect, and the unspoilt. To reach that realm at last, to free the mind from the unrest and illusion of the senses, to be rid of the desires and emotions that would “nail”74 it down here below, to sever its connexion75 with the body and bodily things—that is the soul’s highest duty. The only reason why it is banished into this world is that it may all the more completely separate itself from the world. To die—to be dead inwardly to all that is visible, material, physical—that is the goal and the fruit of philosophy.76 “To be ready and fit to die” is the hall-mark of the complete philosopher. For such, philosophy is the deliverer that frees him for all time from the body77—from its desires, its restlessness, its wild passions78—and gives him back again to the eternal and its silence.

To be pure, to be free from evil, to die already in this temporal world—these are the oft-repeated exhortations which the philosopher addresses to the immortal soul. Ascetic morality here again demands from man what is essentially a quite negative proceeding. But this denial of the world is only a step leading on to the most supremely positive behaviour. Katharsis is only the gateway to philosophy; and it is philosophy which teaches man how to reach what alone is positive, the only true and unconditional Being; instructs him how to reach the clear and perfect understanding of the only permanent good and how to merge himself utterly in that good.79 The soul of the thinker yearns after Reality;80 473 death is for it not merely the annihilation of the chains of the body that impede it, but a very positive “acquisition of intellectual knowledge”81 to which it is urged on by its proper nature—which is therefore also a fulfilment of its proper task. So the turning aside from the physical and the ephemeral is at the same time and without transition a turning towards the eternal and the divine. The flight from the things of this world is in itself an entry into that other world, and a becoming like to the divine.82

But the true realities are not to be found in this world. To grasp them plainly in its thought—to recover the untroubled vision of its spiritual eye—the soul must divest itself entirely of all the stress and distraction of the earthly. For this mundane world, the mirage that encompasses the senses, the philosopher has nothing but denial. Because it gives no foothold for true knowledge the whole world of Becoming has no independent value for his science. The apprehension of that which is never more than relative, which simultaneously manifests contrary qualities in itself, can only serve as stimulus and invitation to the search for what is absolute.83 In this realm of doubtful shadows the soul finds nothing but obscure reminders of that which it had once beheld plainly. The beauty of the physical world which is apprehended by the noblest of the senses, the eye, serves indeed to recall to the soul’s memory the Beautiful-in-itself, of which that other is but a pale copy, and to disclose to the soul what is really its own property, what it had brought with it ready made from an earlier existence beyond the bounds of all matter.84 But the observation of beauty here below must lead beyond itself at once and conduct the mind out of the world of mere appearance to the pure forms of the Ideal world. The process of Becoming tells us nothing about the nature of Being; the thinker learns nothing from this source—in fact he learns no new knowledge or wisdom of any kind in this world; he only recovers what he had before and always possessed in latent form.85 The treasure, however, lies beyond the limits of this world. He must turn away his gaze from the shadow-figures upon the wall of the cave of this world, and direct it towards the sun of eternity.86 He is placed in this world of perpetual change; to it his senses and his understanding are directly referred; and yet he must disdain and rise superior to, and flee from, all that this world offers, giving himself up immediately and entirely to the unseen, and taking flight from this world to that where he will become like God, and be purified and justified by the power and might of his knowledge.87 474

Earthly life as it actually is will remain strange to him, and he a stranger in earthly life,88 despised as a fool for his inaptitude in earthly affairs by the great majority of those who are so versed in such things.89 He has something higher to think about—the salvation of his own soul. He will not live for the community, but for himself, and his real task.90 Human interests seem to him hardly worth troubling about,91 the state itself hopelessly corrupt, founded as it is upon deception and passion and injustice. At the same time, he himself of course would be the real statesman,92 the leader who could guide his fellow citizens to their true salvation—acting not as the servant of their lusts, but as a doctor who gives help to the sick.93 It is “not ships and harbours and walls and taxes and such trivialities”94 that he would give the city, but justice and health and everything else which after this life can stand before the stern judgment of the other world.95 This would be the best mode of life,96 and he could show them the way to it; no worldly power or greatness can do as much—none of the great statesmen of the past, Themistokles, Kimon, and Perikles, understood anything of all this; all their efforts were nothing but blind error and wandering.97

At the climax of his life and of his philosophical development Plato completed an ideal picture of the State, drawn in accordance with the principles and the requirements of his own philosophy. It rests upon a broad foundation—the multitude of its inhabitants divided strictly into classes that in themselves and their manner of life are to display, like a beacon that can be seen afar, the virtue of Justice. At one period this had seemed to include all that was necessary for the completion of the ideal State; but now, far above that level, pointing upwards into the lofty aether above the earth, a final consummation reveals itself to him, to which all mere mundane things serve but as support and furtherance. A small minority of the citizens, the philosophers, form this last pinnacle of the building. Here on earth and in this state that is organized in conformity with justice, they will serve the state, as in duty bound and not for their own satisfaction, and take part in government.98 As soon as duty is fulfilled they will return to the supramundane contemplation which is the aim and content of their whole life’s activity. To provide a place where these contemplatives may live, where they may be educated for their vocation, the highest there is; to allow dialectic as a form of living to take its place in the activity of worldly civilization as an object of men’s effort99—to bring about all this the Ideal State is built up step by step. The 475 bourgeois social virtues and their firm establishment and interconnexion, which had once seemed the real and sufficient reason for the erection of the whole edifice of the state—seen from this elevation, these no longer retain their independent importance. “The so-called virtues” all pale before the highest capacity of the soul, which is the mystic beholding of the eternal.100 The chief mission of the perfect wise man is no longer to fulfil his obligations to the others that stand without. To make his own inner life fit and ready for self-emancipation is now his real and immediate task. Mysticism aims at a personal salvation such as the individual can only obtain for himself. Good works are no longer necessary when the mind has no further connexion with earthly life and conduct. When it comes to dealing with practical earthly affairs he who possesses the highest virtue will have all these others added unto him.101 Virtue belongs to him; it is his real condition of being; but the particular virtues he will rarely need to use.

This lofty pinnacle is accessible to but a few. God alone and a small102 company of mortals are able to approach in pure thought to the everlasting Reality, the sole object of certain, plain and unchanging Knowledge. The majority of men can never become philosophers.103 And yet, according to this philosophy, the crown of all life belongs to the philosopher. This is no religion for the poor in spirit. Science—the supreme knowledge of the highest Being—is a pre-condition of salvation. To know God is to become like God.104 It is easy to see why such a message of salvation could not attract a wider community of believers. It could not have done so without being false to its own nature. To a few lofty spirits among mankind, it offers a reward that beckons from eternity. Freedom from life in the corruptible body is the prize it offers; that and a never-ending union with true Reality—a return to what is everlasting and divine. A symbol of what the philosopher has achieved after his death will be provided by the community by whom the departed will be honoured as a Daimon.105

Such then is the ideal vision of a civilization in which the belief in the soul’s immortality and its vocation to an everlasting life in the kingdom of the gods was held with profound and serious conviction. The belief in immortality here becomes the corner-stone of a building, the architect of which regards all earthly things as only valid for the moment, and therefore of profound unimportance. For him only the Heaven of the spiritual world with its everlasting laws and 476 patterns seriously matters. He discards without a regret the whole of Greek culture as it had expressed itself in state and society, custom and art—an art that will last as long as humanity itself. He demands an aristocracy, and an aristocracy measured by a standard of what is the “best” that was quite beyond the reach of any possible human society even though it were as deeply impregnated with aristocratic ideas as Greek society always was. And the final aim and ideal sought by this organization of life on earth was to be the superseding of all earthly life . . .

The mind of Plato, equally ready to receive as to give, was not likely to become immobilized for ever in a mystic rapture of vision. Even when he had finished the Republic he did not cease to reshape his system at many points and in many directions, while some special problems were taken up again for further and repeated study. Even a second sketch of a political system was left behind by him in which he sought to lay down rules for the guidance of life among the multitude who are still regarded as completely shut out from the realm of the everlasting Forms. To this end the highest aims of human endeavour are almost left out of sight and practical rules for reaching the attainable “better” are supplied for the benefit of the majority. He had learnt resignation at many points. Nevertheless, the profound conviction of all his thoughts remained unchanged; the claims that he put before the world and mankind remained essentially the same. For this reason after generations have not been mistaken in seeing in him the priestly man of wisdom, who with warning finger points the immortal spirit of man on its way from this feeble world upwards to the everlasting life.

NOTES TO CHAPTER XIII

[1]   Pl., Ap. c. 32 f. (40 C ff.).

[2]   Ap. 41 C D.

[3]   Ap. 29 A B, 37 B.

[4]   Xen. Cyrop. 8, 7, 17, makes the dying Kyros justify his faith that the soul survives the body rather on the lines of popular belief and the cult of souls than from would-be-philosophical considerations (§ 20; see above, chap. v, n. 178). In spite of this he allows the question to remain undecided—as though of little importance—whether, in fact, the soul then leaves the body and lives on or whether μένουσα ἡ ψυχὴ ἐν τῷ σώματι συναποθνήσκει, § 21. In either eventuality he will after death μηδὲν ἔτι κακὸν παθεῖν, § 27.—Arist., SE. xvii, p. 176b, 16, πότερον φθαρτὴ ἢ ἀθάνατος ἡ ψυχὴ τῶν ζῴων, οὐ διώρισται τοῖς πολλοῖς—in this question they ἀμφιδοξοῦσι.

[5]   Pl., Phd. 70 A, 77 B, 80 D. This belief of the πολλοί and παῖδες looks indeed much more like a piece of superstition than a denial of the continued life of the ψυχή (in which light Pl. represents it). We have already met with the soul as a wind-spirit more than once: when it leaves the body the other wind-spirits carry it off and away with themselves (cf. above, chap. i, n. 10), esp. when a high wind is blowing (cf. the German popular belief that when a man hangs himself a storm arises: Grimm, p. 635: cf. Mannhardt, Germ. Myth. 270 n. In other words, the “furious host”, the personified storm-spirits—Grimm, p. 632; cf. Append. vii—come and carry away with them the poor unquiet soul).

[6]   Cf. Pl. Rp. 330 D E. There is more about these matters in the speech against Aristogeiton, [D.] 25, 52–3. In spite of the popular form in which it is put such an opinion is not to be claimed at once as a popular and generally held belief: the author of this speech is a follower of Orpheus, a fact which he himself betrays in § 11.

[7]   Pl. Rp. 608 D.

[8]   It is probable that in the Πολιτεία two essentially distinct stages of Platonic doctrine are found side by side with only an external bond of union, and that in particular what is said in Bk. v, 471 C ff., to the end of Bk. vii about the φιλόσοφοι, their education and position in the state (and outside politics), is an extraneous addition to the completed picture of the καλλίπολις which is given in Bks. ii—v, 471 C: an afterthought not originally included in the plan of the whole book and not anticipated in the beginning of it. This seems to me to emerge unmistakably from a careful and unprejudiced study of the whole work and to have been completely demonstrated by Krohn and Pfleiderer. That Plato himself regarded the first sketch of an ideal state as a separate work (which may even have been actually published separately: Gellius, 14, 3, 3), is shown by the beginning of the Timaeus. Here—with the implication of quite a different staging of the dialogue and a different introduction from what we now read in Rp., Bk. i, c. 1—ii, c. 9—we have an exact recapitulation of the subject of the inquiry in the Πολιτεία from ii, 10, 367 E, to v, 460 C, with the definite statement (19 AB) that thus far and no farther had the discussion gone “yesterday”. The stages in which the whole work was composed seem then to be divisible as follows: (1) Sketch of the state of the 478 φύλακες (in brief) embodied in a dialogue between Sokrates, Kriton, Timaios, Hermokrates, and another companion: in subject matter agreeing (apart from the introduction) substantially with Rp. ii, 10, 367 E, to v, 460 C. (2) Continuation of this sketch in the story of ancient Athens and the people of Atlantis. Its completion is transferred elsewhere because in the meantime the Πολιτεία itself has been extended and into the empty framework of the Τίμ. thus left available the account of the creation of the world given by Timaios is very loosely inserted: the frame-narratives of the Τίμαιος and Κριτίας never being completed. (3) Continuation of the first sketch (still virtually along the lines originally laid down) in Rp. v, 460 D–471 C (in which 466 E ff. is a brief account of the behaviour of the state in time of war—a substitute for the longer and more detailed statement on the same subject in Tim. 20 B f.), and in viii, ix (the greater part), and x, second half (608 C ff.). (4) Finally the whole work receives its crown and completion in a section that was, however, not foreseen in the older parts of the design, for it disturbs part of that original design’s independence and validity and does more than merely supplement it—the introduction of the φιλόσοφοι and their special type of “virtue”, v, 471 C–vii fin.; ix, 580 D–588 A; x, part 1 (to 608 B).—Then came the final editing of the whole: insertion of the new introduction, i, 1–ii, 9 (not necessarily left until the completion of the whole); necessary bringing into harmony of the divergent elements by a few excisions, qualifications, etc.; and probably a literary revision and polishing of the whole book.—The whole thus finally produced reveals its origin clearly enough in the outgrowing of a first plan and its replacement by a second that has naturally suggested itself in the course of the author’s own continued development. At the same time Plato could claim that the whole edifice, in spite of much extension and rebuilding in a different style of architecture, should be considered as a unity in the form in which he finally left it (as a noteworthy monument, too, of his own alteration of view). He himself in the sublimest moments of his mystic flight in Bks. vi and vii in no sense rejects the groundwork of the καλλίπολις of ii–v (though not, indeed, designed originally as such), but merely reduces it to the position of a substructure which remains a necessary and sole foundation even for the mystic pinnacle and preserves its absolute validity for the great majority of the citizens who inhabit the καλλίπολις (for the φιλόσοφοι are still regarded as very few in number) for whom it is a school for the exhibition of political virtue.—In the first sketch, then, there is no trace of a doctrine of immortality that can be properly so called, and the popular belief in a continued life of the soul after death has for Plato, at this stage at least, no serious weight or importance. The φύλακες are not to trouble about what may follow death (iii, 1 ff.); the main purpose in view is to show that δικαιοσύνη is its own reward, and the rewards which are anticipated for it after death are only ironically alluded to (ii, 363 CD; cf. 366 AB); Sokrates means to do without such hopes (366 E ff.). The ἀθανασία ψυχῆς is only introduced as a paradox in x, 608 D (in the continuation of the first sketch) for which proof is sought; whereupon the importance of the question as to what may await the soul after death emerges (614 A ff.) as well as the necessity of taking thought not for this short life but ὑπὲρ τοῦ ἅπαντος χρόνον (608 C), of which nothing had been said or could have been said in iii–v. Finally in vi–vii the indestructibility of the soul is implied in its sublimest form. It is evident that Plato’s own views on these matters had undergone changes in the course of time, and that these 479 changes are reflected in the various strata of the Πολιτεία even after its final editing. (Cf. Krohn, Platon. Staat, p. 265; Pfleiderer, Platon. Frage, p. 23 f., 35 ff., 1888.)

[9]   The Appearance βούλεται, ὀρέγεται, προθυμεῖται εἶναι what its Idea is: Phd. 74 D, 75 AB. The Ideas are thus teleological causes like the divine νοῦς of Aristotle which, unmoved itself, κινεῖ ὡς ἐρώμενον (just as matter has a desire for form, potentiality for actuality). Plato it is true did not keep to this method of illustrating rather than explaining the relation between the Appearance and the unmoved Idea.

[10]   νοήσει μετὰ λόγου περιληπτόν, Tim. 27 D. οὗ οὔποτ’ ἂν ἄλλῳ ἐπιλάβοιο ἢ τῷ τῆς διανοίας λογισμῷ, Phd. 79 A. αὐτὴ δι’ αὑτῆς ἡ ψυχὴ τὰ κοινὰ φαίνεται περὶ πάντων ἐπισκοπεῖν, Tht. 185 D.

[11]   The prius in the case of man is really the perception of his own mental activity in νόησις μετὰ λόγου as being a process essentially different from δόξα μετ’ αἰσθήσεως ἀλόγου. It is inference from the former alone that leads to the conclusion that the νοούμενα exist: Tim. 51 B–52 A. It is the Ideas that we grasp in abstract thought: αὐτὴ ἡ οὐσία ἧς λόγον δίδομεν καὶ ἐρωτῶντες καὶ ἀποκρινόμενοι, Phd. 78 D.

[12]   The ἐπιστήμη which διαλεκτική alone can give (Rp. 533 DE) is ἀναμάρτητος (Rp. 477 E).

[13]   Of the three εἴδη or γένη—the ὄν, the γιγνόμενον and the ἐν ᾧ γίγνεται (the χώρα) of Tim. 48 E f., 52 ABD)—the third at any rate is quite foreign to the soul. Like the World-Soul (Tim. 35 A), along with which it is “mixed” (41 D), the individual soul also is a middle term between the ἄμερες of the Idea and the κατὰ τὰ σώματα μεριστόν, having a share in both.

[14]   True, unalterable Being belongs only to the ἀειδές and therefore also to the soul: Phd. 79 A f.

[15]   Phd. c. 54–6 (105 B–107 B).

[16]   ὁμοιότερον ψυχὴ σώματός ἐστι τῷ ἀειδεῖ (and that = τῷ ἀεὶ ὡσαύτως ἔχοντι), Phd. 79 B. τῷ θείῳ καὶ ἀθανάτῳ καὶ νοητῷ καὶμονοειδεῖ καὶ ἀδιαλύτῳ καὶ ὡσαύτως κατὰ ταὐτὰ ἔχοντι ἑαυτῷ ὁμοιότατον ψυχή, 80 AB.

[17]   ἀγένητον, Phdr. c. 24, 245 D (ἀΐδιος simply, Rp. 611 B). The creation of the souls in Tim. is only intended to represent the origin of the spiritual from the δημιουργός (not the coming into being of the soul in time): see Siebeck, Ges. d. Psychol. i, 1, 275 ff. Still, it remains impossible to say whether Plato whenever he speaks of the pre-existence of the soul always means that the soul existed without beginning.

[18]   As to the relation of the individual soul to the soul of the universe, neither the mythical account in Timaeus nor the briefer allusion in Phileb. 30 A allows us to conclude that the soul of our body is “taken from” the soul of the σῶμα τοῦ παντός. In reality the fiction of a “World-Soul” is intended to serve quite other purposes than the derivation of the individual soul from a single common source.

[19]   Tim. 34 C; Lg. 891 A–896 C.

[20]   Acc. to the account in Phdr. 246 C, the soul suffers its downfall into the earthly existence if ὁ τῆς κάκης ἵππος, i.e. the ἐπιθυμία in the soul, tends towards the earth—247 B. It must, therefore, be the result of the preponderance of the appetitive impulses. This, however, can only happen if the λογιστικόν of the soul has become too weak to drive the soul-chariot any longer as its duty was. Hence the supporting wings, i.e. the νόησις, of the soul-horse fall off. It is thus a weakening of the cognitive part of the soul that causes its downfall into materiality (just as it is the measure of their capacity for knowledge that determines 480 the character of the ἐνσωμάτωσις of the souls, and their return to the τόπος ὑπερουράνιος is equally determined by their recovery of the purer form of knowledge: 248 C ff., 249 AC). Thus it is not, as in Empedokles, a religio-moral transgression that leads to the incarnation of the souls, but a failure of intellect, an intellectual fall in sin.

[21]   The soul is, acc. to the account in Tim., created in order that by animating and governing a body, it may complete the sum of creation: without the ζῷα the οὐρανός (the universe) would be ἀτελής, Tim. 41 B ff. Acc. to this teleological motivation of the being and the ἐνσωμάτωσις of the soul, this latter, the ἐνσωμάτωσις, would have belonged to the original plan of the δημιουργός and there would be no purpose in the creation of the souls (by the δημιουργός and the inferior gods) unless they were destined to the animation of the ζῷα and conjunction with σώματα. But it is obviously inconsistent with all this that the object of the soul’s endeavour should be to separate itself as soon as possible and as completely as possible from the body and everything material in order to get back again to immaterial life without any body—42 BD. This is a relic of the original theological view of the relation between body and soul. In Phd. (and usually in Plato) it displays itself unconcealed; but it was far too closely bound up with the whole of Plato’s ethic and metaphysics not to make its illicit appearance even when as in Tim. he wished to keep the physiological side to the fore.

[22]   Phdr. 245 C–246 A. The soul is τὸ αὑτὸ κινοῦν, and indeed continually, ἀεικίνητον, it is τοῖς ἄλλοις ὅσα κινεῖται πηγὴ καὶ ἀρχὴ κινήσεως (the body only seems to move itself, but it is really the soul within which moves it—246 C). If the soul were to perish, πᾶς οὐρανὸς πᾶσά τε γένεσις would be at a standstill. The conception of the “soul” as the ἀεικίνητον was already well and long established in Plato’s time (see above, chap. xii, n. 150). In the form in which he introduces it here (as a proof of the imperishability of the soul) he may have modelled his conception on that of Alkmaion (Arist., An. 405a, 29): see Hirzel, Hermes, xi, 244. But Plato here and throughout Phdr. is speaking of the individual soul (ψυχή collective singular). So too in Lg. 894 E ff., 896 A ff. (λόγος of the soul: ἡ δυναμένη αὐτὴ αὑτὴν κινεῖν κίνησις. It is the αιτία and the issue of all movement in the world, the source of life; for life belongs to that which αὐτό αὑτὸ κινεῖ 895 C.) As distinguished from the ψυχὴ ἐνοικοῦσα ἐν ἅπασι τοῖς κινουμένοις we do not hear of the (double) World-Soul until 896 E. There is in fact κίνησις in plenty in the world besides that of the animated organisms.

[23]   Phd. 93 B (c. 43) and often.

[24]   ψυχή on the one side, πᾶν τὸ ἄψυχον on the other. Phdr. 246 B and so generally.

[25]   Tim. 86 B ff. (c. 41).—In brief: κακὸς ἑκὼν οὐδείς, διὰ δὲ πονηρὰν ἕξιν τινὰ τοῦ σώματος καὶ ἀπαίδευτον τροφὴν (education of the soul) ὁ κακὸς γίγνεται κακός, 86 E.

[26]   τὸ σωματοειδὲς ὃ τῇ ψυχῇ ἡ ὁμιλία τε καὶ ξυνουσία τοῦ σώματος . . . ἐνεποίησε ξύμφυτον κτλ. Phd. 81 C, 83 D.

[27]   Pythagoreans, see above (chap. xi, n. 55); hardly Demokritos (Dox., p. 390, 14). The trichotomy can exist very well side by side with the dichotomy (which also appears) into λογιστικόν and αλόγιστικον, the last being simply divided again into θυμός and ἐπιθυμία.

[28]   In the first sketch of the Republic (ii–v). Here it is admittedly bound up with the three classes or castes of the state, but it has not been invented for the benefit of these classes. On the contrary, the 481 trichotomy of the soul is original and the division of the citizen body into three parts is derived and explained from it; cf. 435 E.—The view that Plato was never quite serious about the threefold division of the soul but always spoke of it as something semi-mythical or as a temporarily adopted hypothesis, will not appear plausible on an unprejudiced study of the passages in the Platonic writings that deal with the threefold division of the soul.

[29]   Rp. x, 611 A–E (c. 11), shows clearly that the reason which made Plato abandon his conception (given in the first sketch of the Rep. and still maintained in the Phaedrus) of the natural trichotomy of the soul into parts or divisions was the consideration of its immortality and vocation to intercourse with the θεῖον καὶ ἀθάνατον καὶ ἀεὶ ὄν.—The emotions and passions by which the soul is “fettered” ὑπὸ τοῦ σώματος, explain its tendency to clothe itself in another body after death, Phd. 83 C ff. If the emotions and passions were indissolubly linked to the soul the latter could never escape from the cycle of rebirths.—On the other hand, if only the λογιστικόν, as the only independently existing side of the soul, goes into the place of judgment in the other world there would seem to be no reason that should tempt this simple uncompounded soul to renewed ἐνσωμάτωσις, a process which implies materiality and desire. (This difficulty troubled Plotinos too.) Plato takes into view the possibility of an inner corruption of the pure and undivided intellectual soul which makes a future state of punishment and purgatory possible and intelligible and explains the existence (until a complete return to purity is achieved) of a tendency or constraint to renewed ἐνσωμάτωσις even without a permanent association with the θυμοειδές and the ἐπιθυμητικόν.

[30]   τῇ ἀληθεστάτῃ φύσει the soul is μονοειδές, Rep. x, c. 11 (611 B, 612 A). Hence it is τὸ παράπαν ἀδιάλυτος ἢ ἐγγύς τι τούτου, Phd. 80 B.

[31]   The intellect-soul ἀθάνατον ἀρχὴν θνητοῦ ζῴου is the creation of the δημιουργός; the other faculties of the soul, θυμός, ἐπιθυμία (and αἴσθησις therewith), ψυχῆς ὅσον θνητὸν (Tim. 61 C), are all added to the soul at the moment of its union with the body by the subordinate deities: Tim. 41 D–44 D; 69 A–70 D (c. 14, 15, 31). The same idea appears in Rp. x, 611 BC. τὸ ἀειγενὲς μέρος τῆς ψυχῆς is distinguished from the ζωογενές: Polit. 309 C.

[32]   τὸ σῶμα καὶ αἷ τούτου ἐπιθυμίαι, Phd. 66 C. The soul moved by passion suffers ὑπὸ σώματος, 83 CD. In death the soul is καθαρὰ πάντων τῶν περὶ τὸ σῶμα κακῶν καὶ ἐπιθυμιῶν, Crat. 404 A.

[33]   Tim. 43 C. It is only as a result of this violent and contradictory excitement through the physical perception of Becoming that the soul becomes ἄνους (which is originally foreign to it) ὅταν εἰς σῶμα ἐνδεθῇ θνητόν, 44 A. (It will in time become ἔμφρων once more and can become wise, 44 BC. In the case of the animals, which can be inhabited by the same soul, it will remain always ἄφρων—one may suppose.)

[34]   . . . σμικρὸν χρόνον, οὐδὲν μὲν οὖν πρὸς τὸν ἅπαντα (χρόνον). Rp. 498 D.

[35]   In accordance with popular thought (but obviously also in perfect seriousness and without any special concession) death is regarded as τῆς ψυχῆς ἀπὸ τοῦ σώματος ἀπαλλαγή, Phd. 64 C; Gorg. 524 B. Hence, it usually happens that the soul μηδέποτε εἰς Ἅιδου καθαρῶς ἀφικέσθαι, ἀλλ’ ἀεὶ τοῦ σώματος ἀναπλέα ἐξιέναι, Phd. 83 D. (—ἀεὶ, i.e. with the exception of the few complete φιλόσοφοι that do not need further purification in Hades, and this is, in fact, the doctrine of the Phd. itself; cf. 114 C, 80 E, 81 A.)

[36]   Purgatory, punishment and rewards in the other world: Gorg. 482 523 ff.: Rp. x, c. 13 ff., 614 A ff. (vision of Er, son of Armenios in the continuation of the first version of the πολιτεία); Phd. 110 B–114 C. We must not here go into the details of the individual myths in which it is still perhaps possible to distinguish what parts Plato has taken out of ancient poetry and popular legend and what comes from theological and particularly Orphic doctrinal poetry—or even (Rp. x) from Oriental fables—and how much he has added independently on his own account. (A few remarks will be found in G. Ettig, Acherunt., Leipz. Stud. xiii, 305 ff.; cf. also Döring, Arch. Ges. Phil. 1393, p. 475 ff.; Dieterich, Nekyia, 112 ff.) He usually distinguishes three classes among the souls (only apparently two in Phdr. 249 A): those who are affected with curable faults, the hopelessly and incurable guilty (who are condemned to eternal punishment in Tartaros without rebirth: Gorg. 525 C ff.; Rp. 615 D; Phd. 113 E); and, thirdly the ὁσίως βεβιωκότες, δίκαιοι καὶ ὅσιοι. This is the system of Gorg. 525 BC, 526 C; Rp. 615 BC. (With these come also the ἄωροι, 615 C, who neither deserve punishment nor reward—of them Er said ἄλλα, οὐκ ἄξια μνήμης. Perhaps older theologians had already concerned themselves with these, not being satisfied with the fate assigned by popular mythology to the ἄωροι—see Append. vii—it would have been a natural subject for the professional attention of these Schoolmen of popular superstition.) In Phd. 113 D ff. the question is even more minutely dealt with. Here we have (1) οἱ μέσως βεβιωκότες (che visser’ senz’ infamia e senza lode), (2) οἱ ἀνιάτως ἔχοντες, (3) οἱ ἰάσιμα ἡμαρτηκότες, (4) οἱ διαφερόντως ὁσίως βεβιωκότες, and (5) the élite of these ὅσιοι, the real philosophers, οἱ φιλοσοφίᾳ ἱκανῶς καθεράμενοι—these are not born again. To the other classes are assigned their appropriate purgation, reward or punishment. Here classes 2, 3, and 4 correspond to the three classes of Rp. and Gorg. (which may perhaps be modelled on the divisions popularized by older theological poetry—see above, chap. xii, n. 62). Novelties are the μέσως βεβιωκότες and the true philosophers. For these last the abode upon the μακάρων νῆσοι (Gorg. 526 C), or, what comes to the same thing, upon the surface of the earth (Phd. 114 BC), is no longer sufficient. They go ἐς μακάρων τινὰς εὐδαιμονίας (115 D), which means that they are really freed entirely from temporal existence and enter into the unchanging “Now” of eternity. (As far as the complete escape of the φιλόσοφοι is concerned the account in Rp. x, c. 13 [614 A–615 C] does not contradict that of Phd. The only reason why this is not mentioned in Rp. is that these absolutely enfranchized souls could not appear upon the λειμών there mentioned: 614 E.)—Of these various accounts that of Phd. seems to be the latest. In Lg. there is yet another indefinite allusion to the necessity of undergoing a judgment after death: 904 C ff.

[37]   Choice of their new state of life by the souls in the other world, Rp. 617 E ff.; Phdr. 249 B. The purpose of this arrangement is made clear by Rp. 617 E; αἰτία ἑλομένου· θεὸς ἀναίτιος (cf. Tim. 42 D). It is, in fact, a theodicy and at the same time secures the complete responsibility of every man for his own character and deeds (cf. 619 C). There is no idea of founding a determinist theory upon it.—The choice is guided by the special character of the soul (which it has developed in its previous life) and its tendencies (cf. Phd. 81 E; Lg. 904 BC). For the same reason there is no choice on the occasion of the soul’s first ἐνσωμάτωσις (Tim. 41 E): after that, in later births, a definite descent in well-marked stages in peius, can be observed, each conditioned by the degree of corruption attaching to the soul (Tim. 42 B ff.). 483 All of which can very well co-exist with a choice of its own fate by the soul conditioned by its own nature.

[38]   ξυμμετρία, Tim. 87 D.

[39]   At least three (as in Pi., O. ii, 75 ff.), acc. to Phdr. 249 A. Between each two births there is an intervening period of 1,000 years (Rp. 615 A; Phdr. 249 AB). This cuts away the ground from such myths as that of the various “lives” of Pythagoras (see Append. x).

[40]   Incarnation in animals, Phdr. 249 B; Rp. 618 A, 620 ff.; Phd. 81 E; Tim. 42 BC. That this part was any less seriously meant than any other part of his doctrine of metempsychosis is not in the least suggested by Plato himself. Acc. to Tim. 91 D–92 B, all the animals have souls that had once inhabited the bodies of men (see Procl., in Rp. ii, 332 Kroll; he is trying to harmonize Tim. and Phdr.). In fact, the idea that a man’s soul might inhabit an animal was precisely the great difficulty in Plato’s doctrine of the soul. If, as is said in Phdr. 249 BC, a real animal-soul cannot enter into a human body because it does not possess νόησις or the power of “dialectic” which constitutes the essential part of the human soul’s activity, how can a real human soul enter into an animal’s body when it is obvious that as an animal it can make no use of its νόησις? (For this very reason many Platonists—those who were not satisfied with ingenious or artificial interpretations: cf. Sallust., de Dis 20; Procl., in Tim. 329 DE—denied the entrance of the human soul into animals; cf. Aug. CD. X, 30, and partic. Nemes., p. 116 Matth. Lucr. iii, 760, already seems to have such Platonists in mind.) The λογιστικόν of the soul seems to be absent from animals or to be present but undeveloped as in children: Rp. iv, 441 A B (or does it remain permanently bound in ἀφροσύνη? see above, this chap., n. 33. Just such a theory put forward by exponents of μετεμψύχωσις who would make the ψυχή always the same but not always equally active, is attacked by Alex. Aphr., de An., p. 27 Br.). But acc. to the later doctrine of Plato the λογιστικόν comprises the whole contents of the soul before it enters a body; if the animals do not possess it then they do not strictly speaking possess a soul (θυμός and ἐπιθυμία in themselves are not the soul; they are only added to the soul when it first enters into a body). It seems certain that Plato adopted the view that the soul migrates into the bodies of animals from the theologians and Pythagoreans, while he still believed that the soul was not pure power of thought but also (as still in Phdr.) included θυμός and ἐπιθυμία in itself. Later, because it was difficult to do without the migration-theory of the soul on account of its ethical importance, he allowed the idea to remain side by side with his reorganized and sublimated doctrine of the soul. (On the other hand, metempsychosis into plants—which are certainly also ζῷα, though they only have to τὸ ἐπιθυμητικόν, Tim. 77 B—was never adopted by him from Empedokles; cf. Procl., in Rp. ii, 333 Kr., and for the same reason: this idea was unimportant and indifferent from an ethical point of view.)

[41]   τὴν εἰς τὸν νοητὸν τόπον τῆς ψυχῆς ἄνοδον, Rp. 517 B.

[42]   ἐπειδὴ δὲ ἀγένητόν ἐστι, καὶ ἀδιάφθορον αὐτὸ ἀναγκη εἶναι, Phdr. 245 D—the ancient argument from the fact that the individual soul (and of this Plato is speaking) has no beginning to the conclusion that its life can have no end.

[43]   This much may be conceded to Teichmüller’s observations. “The individual, and the individual soul, is not an independent principle but only a resultant of the compounding of the Idea and the principle of Becoming”—though this is not how Plato regards the 484 matter; hence in Plato—“the individual is not eternal (i.e. not necessarily), and the eternal Principles are not individual”, Stud. z. Ges. d. Begr., p. 115, 142 (1874). But all that Teichmüller has to say under this head is in reality only a criticism of the Platonic doctrine of the soul and does not help us to determine what exactly that doctrine was. Plato speaks always of the immortality, i.e. the eternity, of the individual soul; nowhere does he confine indestructibility to the “common nature” of the soul; and this fact is not even remotely explained by appealing as Teichmüller does to an alleged “orthodoxy” to which Plato is supposed to be accommodating his words. If from no other passage we should be obliged to conclude definitely from Rp. 611 A that Plato believed in the existence of a plurality of souls and in their indestructibility: ἀεὶ ἂν εἶεν αἱ αὐταί (ψυχαί). οὔτε γὰρ ἄν που ἐλάττους γένοιντο μηδεμιᾶς ἀπολλυμένης, οὔτε αὗ πλείους. Here the predicate of the first sentence is indubitably εἶεν only; it is affirmed that always the same souls will exist, not that αἱ αὐταὶ εἶεν (“the souls are always the same ones”) as Teichmüller supposes, Platon. Frage, 7 ff., and it is asserted with all possible plainness that the plurality of individual souls, of which a definite number exist, is indestructible.

[44]   E.g. appeal made to τελεταί, παλαιοὶ λόγοι ἐν ἀπορρήτοις λεγόμενοι, and particularly to Orphic doctrine, in those places where he is speaking of the inward difference between the soul and all that is corporeal, of the soul’s “death” in earthly life, of its enclosure in the σῶμα as its σῆμα in punishment of its misdeeds—of punishment and purification after death in Ἅιδης, of the migration of the soul, its imperishability, dwelling of the pure in the neighbourhood of the gods (Phd. 61 BC, 63 C, 70 C, 81 A, 107 D ff.; Gorg. 493 A; Crat. 400 BC; Men. 81 A; Lg. 870 DE, 872 E). This also is the origin of the tendency to compare the highest philosophical activity, or the beholding of the Ideas before all time, with the ἐποπτεῖαι of the mysteries: Phdr. 250 B; cf. Lob., Agl. 128.

[45]   Nine (an ancient sacred number) stages from the φιλόσοφος downwards to the τύραννος, Phdr. 248 DE.

[46]   This is frequently stated in individual myths; cf. also Phd. 85 CD.

[47]   Phdr. 250 C (ὄστρεον): Rp. 611 CD (Glaukos).

[48]   τὴν τοῦ ὄντος θήραν, Phd. 66 C (ὅταν αὐτὴ καθ’ αὑτὴν πραγματεύηται ἡ ψυχὴ περὶ τὰ ὄντα, Tht. 187 A. αὐτῇ τῇ ψυχῇ θεατέον αὐτὰ τὰ πράγματα, Phd. 66 D).

[49]   ξυναίτια, Tim. 46 C ff. νοῦς καὶ ἀνάγκη, 47 E ff. (ὁ θεός is πολλῶν ἀναίτιος, namely τῶν κακῶν, Rp. 379 AC).

[50]   The σῶμα with which the soul is bound up is a κακόν, Phd. 66 B (δεσμοί of the soul, 67 D). The κακά in the world are regularly said to come from matter until in Lg., side by side with the εὐεργέτις ψυχή of the world, there appears an evil World-Soul that works evil.

[51]   Particularly in Phd., καθαρεύειν—κάθαρσις—οἱ φιλοσοφίᾳ ἱκανῶς καθηράμενοι in contrast with the ἀκάθαρτοι ψυχαί, 67 A ff., 69 BC, 80 E, 82 D, 108 B, 114 C. Katharsis of the soul through dialectic Soph. 230 C ff. Express allusion to the analogous requirement of κάθαρσις by οἱ τὰς τελετὰς ἡμῖν καταστήσαντες, Phd. 69 C.

[52]   κάθαρσις εἶναι τοῦτο ξυμβαίνει, τὸ χωρίζειν ὅ τι μάλιστα ἀπὸ τοῦ σώματος τὴν ψυχὴν καὶ ἐθίσαι αὐτὴν καθ’ αὑτὴν πανταχόθεν ἐκ τοῦ σώματος συναγείρεσθαί τε καὶ ἁθροίζεσθαι, καὶ οἰκεῖν κατὰ τὸ δυνατὸν καὶ ἐν τῷ νῦν παρόντι καὶ ἐν τῷ ἔπειτα μόνην καθ’ αὑτῆν, ἐκλυομένην ὥσπερ ἐκ δεσμῶν ἐκ τοῦ σώματος, Phd. 67 C. Thus δικαιοσύνη and 485 ἀνδρεία, and more particularly φρόνησις, are καθαρμός τις, 69 BC. λύσις τε καὶ καθαρμός of φιλοσοφία, 82 D.

[53]   φιλοσοφία teaches the soul εἰς αὑτὴν ξυλλέγεσθαι καὶ ἁθροίζεσθαι and to ἀναχωρεῖν from the ἀπάτη of the senses ὅσον μὴ ἀνάγκη αὐτοῖς χρῆσθαι, Phd. 83 A.—ἐὰν καθαρὰ ἡ ψυχὴ ἀπαλλάττηται . . . φεύγουσα τὸ σῶμα καὶ συνηθροισμένη αὐτὴ εἰς αὑτήν, 80 E, 76 C.

[54]   . . . καθαροὶ ἀπαλλαττόμενοι τῆς τοῦ σώματος ἀφροσύνης . . . γνωσόμεθα δι’ ἡμῶν αὐτῶν πᾶν τὸ εἰλικρινές, μὴ καθαρῷ γὰρ καθαροῦ ἐφάπτεσθαι μὴ οὐ θεμιτὸν ᾖ, Phd. 67 AB.

[55]   For the ἀγαθόν, ἡ τοῦ ἀγαθοῦ ἰδέα, αἰτία both of ἀλήθεια and of ἐπιστήμη but identical with neither (they are only ἀγαθοειδῆ) and ἔτι μειζόνως τιμητέον—cause of the γιγνωσκόμενα and not only of γιγνώσκεσθαι, of both εἶναι and οὐσία, οὐκ οὐσίας ὄντος τοῦ ἀγαθοῦ ἀλλ’ ἔτι ἐπέκεινα τῆς οὐσίας πρεσβείᾳ καὶ δυνάμει ὑπερέχοντος—see Rp. vi, c. 19 (508 A ff.), 517 BC. Here τὸ ἀγαθόν, as the reason and active cause of all Being is itself placed beyond and above Being (as it is regularly with the Neoplatonics) and identified with Godhead (the θεῖος νοῦς, Phil. 22 C); this last is, however, in Tim. set side by side with the Ideas, of which τὸ ἀγαθόν is now the highest.

[56]   ἡ τοῦ ἀγαθοῦ ἰδέα μέγιστον μάθημα, Rp. 505 A.

[57]   The περιαγωγή of the soul, Rp. vii init.

[58]   The philosopher, ἐξιστάμενος τῶν ἀνθρωπίνων σπουδασμάτων καὶ πρὸς τῷ θείῳ γιγνόμενος, ἐνθουσιάζων λέληθε τοὺς πολλούς, Phdr. 249 D.

[59]   ὁ γὰρ συνοπτικὸς διαλεκτικός, Rp. 537 C. εἰς μίαν ἰδέαν συνορῶντα ἄγειν τὰ πολλαχῇ διεσπαρμένα (and again κατ’ εἴδη τέμνειν what is unified)—this is the business of the διαλεκτικός, Phdr. 265 D. ἐκ πολλῶν αἰσθήσεων εἰς ἓν λογισμῷ ξυναιρούμενον (ἰέναι), Phdr. 249 B.

[60]   Gradual ascent of dialectic upwards to αὐτὸ ὃ ἔστιν ἀγαθόν, Rp. 532 A f., 511 BC, 534 B ff. to αὐτὸ τὸ καλόν, Smp. c. 28–9 (211 B). Its aim is ἐπαναγωγὴ τοῦ βελτίστου ἐν ψυχῇ πρὸς τοῦ ἀρίστου ἐν τοῖς οὖσι θέαν, Rp. 532 C.

[61]   The philosophic ἐρωτικός at the end of the dialectic ascent ἐξαίφνης κατόψεταί τι θαυμαστὸν τὴν φύσιν καλόν κτλ., Smp. 210 E—exactly as in the τέλεα καὶ ἐποπτικὰ μυστήρια, 210 A. ὁλόκληρα καὶ ἁπλᾶ καὶ εὐδαίμονα φάσματα μυουμενοί τε καὶ ἐποπτεύοντες ἐν αὐγῇ καθαρᾷ, Phdr. 250 C.—it is a visionary and a suddenly acquired apprehension of the world-order, not one obtained in discursive thought. We may compare the way in which Plotinos, with a recollection of such Platonic passages, describes the arrival of ἔκστασις—ὅταν ἡ ψυχὴ ἐξαίφνης φῶς λάβῃ κτλ. (5, 3, 17; cf. 5, 5, 17).

[62]   The soul ἔοικε τῷ θείῳ, Phd. 80 A. It is ξυγγενὴς τῷ τε θείῳ καὶ ἀθανάτῳ καὶ τῷ ἀεὶ ὄντι, Rp. 611 E—συγγένεια θεία of men; Lg. 899 D. The eternal and immortal is, as such, divine. The real Ego of man, the ἀθάνατον, ψυχὴ ἐπονομαζόμενον, after death goes παρὰ θεοὺς ἄλλους, Lg. 959 B.

[63]   The θεῖον, ἀθανάτοις ὁμώνυμον, part of the soul is ἀθάνατος ἀρχὴ θνητοῦ ζῴου, Tim. 41 C, 42 E. The φρόνησις of the soul (its “wing” Phdr. 246 D) τῷ θείῳ ἔοικεν, Alc.1 133 C.—In Tim. 90 A C this κυριώτατον τῆς ψυχῆς εἶδος is actually called the δαίμων which man has ξύνοικον ἐν αὑτῷ.

[64]   The eye is ἡλιοειδέστατον τῶν περὶ τὰς αἰσθήσεις ὀργάνων, Rp. 508 B.—Goethe is alluding either to these words or to the phrase of Plotinos taken from them, 1, 6 (περὶ τοῦ καλοῦ), 9.

[65]   ἐπιστήμη καὶ ἀλήθεια are both ἀγαθοειδῆ, Rp. 509 A—the soul something θεοειδές, Phd. 95 C. 486

[66]   From the φιλοσοφία of the soul and from the question ὧν ἅπτεται καὶ οἵων ἐφίεται ὁμιλιῶν its real nature can be discerned as one which is ξυγγενὴς τῷ θείῳ καὶ ἀθανάτῳ καὶ τῷ ἀεὶ ὄντι, Rp. 611 DE; Phd. 79 D. With the ξυγγενές of the soul we achieve contact with the ὄντως ὄν, Rp. 490 B. If the Ideas are everlasting, so must our soul be, Phd. 76 DE. By its power of φρονεῖν ἀθάνατα καὶ θεῖα the ἀνθρωπίνη φύσις has itself a share καθ’ ὅσον ἐνδέχεται (i.e. with νοῦς) in ἀθανασία, Tim. 90 BC. This thinking “part” of the soul πρὸς τὴν ἐν οὐρανῷ ξυγγένειαν ἀπὸ γῆς ἡμᾶς αἴρει, ὡς ὄντας φυτὸν οὐκ ἔγγειον ἀλλ’ οὐράνιον, Tim. 90 A.

[67]   λύειν τὴν ψυχὴν from the body and from sense-perception, Phd. 83 AB, 65 A, 67 D. λύσις and καθαρμός of the soul by φιλοσοφία, Phd. 82 D. λύσις καὶ ἴασις τῶν δεσμῶν (of the body) καὶ τῆς ἀφροσύνης, Rp. 515 C.

[68]   θεῖος εἰς τὸ δυνατὸν ἀνθρώπῳ γίγνεται—said of the true philosopher, Rp. 500 D; ἀθάνατος, Smp. 212 A. The φιλόσοφος is perpetually in contact with the ὂν ἀεὶ and the θεῖον, which last is with difficulty recognizable by the eyes of τῆς τῶν πολλῶν ψυχῆς, Soph. 254 A.—καί μοι δοκεῖ θεὸς μὲν (as e.g. Empedokles called himself) ἀνὴρ οὐδαμῶς εἶναι, θεῖος μήν· πάντας γὰρ ἐγὼ τοὺς φιλοσόφους τοιούτους προσαγορεύω Soph. 216 B (where θεῖος is used in quite a different sense from that it has in other passages where Plato speaks of χρησμῳδοὶ καὶ θεομάντεις as θεῖοι, Men. 99 C, and of the insight and virtue of the unphilosophic as coming θείᾳ μοίρᾳ ἄνευ νοῦ).

[69]   Rp. 519 C, 540 B.—τῆς τοῦ ὄντος θέας, οἵαν ἡδονὴν ἔχει, ἀδύνατον ἄλλῳ γεγεῦσθαι πλὴν τῷ φιλοσόφῳ, Rp. 582 C (cf. Phileb.).

[70]   The flight ἐνθένδε ἐκεῖσε produces ὁμοίωσιν θεῷ κατὰ τὸ δυνατὸν, Tht. 176 B. ὁμοιοῦσθαι θεῷ, Rp. 613 A (τὸ κατανοουμένῳ τὸ κατανοοῦν ἐξομοιῶσαι, Tim. 90 D).

70a   The soul that has through philosophy become completely “pure” is withdrawn from the cycle of Rebirth and from the whole material world. Even as early as Phdr. the souls of the φιλοσοφήσαντες after a third ἐνσωμάτωσις are exempt for the remainder of the περίοδος of 10,000 years, while the real and unwavering (ἀεί) philosopher remains for ever free from the body. That at least must be the meaning of 248 C–249 A. The subject is then treated in more detail in Phd.: Release of the φιλοσοφίᾳ ἱκανῶς καθηράμενοι for ever from life in the body (ἄνευ σωμάτων ζῶσι τὸ παράπαν εἰς τὸν ἔπειτα χρόνον, 114 C)—entry of the pure soul to its kin (εἰς τὸ ξυγγενές, 84 B) and its like (εἰς τὸ ὅμοιον αὐτῇ, τὸ ἀειδές, 81 A), and εἰς θεῶν γένος, 82 B—and to the τοῦ θείου τε καὶ καθαροῦ καὶ μονοειδοῦς ξυνουσία, 83 E. Still more mythologically expressed—Tim. 42 BD (ὁ τῶν κακῶν καθαρὸς τόπος Tht. 177 A). Throughout we have the release theory of the theologians re-expressed in a philosophical and more elevated manner (Orphic: μεμυημένοι, Phd. 81).

[71]   . . . οὐ ῥᾴδιον δηλῶσαι . . . , Phd. 114 C.

[72]   To the ἀΐδιος οὐσία, τὸ ἔστι μόνον κατὰ τὸν ἀληθῆ λόγον προσήκει Tim. 37 E.

[73]   It is true that not until it becomes associated with the body does the soul, by obtaining αἴσθησις, ἐπιθυμία, θυμός, and all the other faculties that bring it into touch with Becoming and Changing, obtain what can strictly be called its individual personality. The perfectly adequate comprehension in thought of the ever-Unchanging by the bodiless and free soul would have no individualized content. We must not, however, (with Teichm., Pl. Fr. 40), conclude from this that Plato knew nothing of an immortality of the individual and of 487 individuality. He did not distinctly raise the question of the seat and origin of individuality in the soul. He is content to suppose that a plurality of individual souls was living before their entanglement with Becoming, and to conclude from this that in eternity, too, after their last escape from γένεσις, the same number of individual souls will still be living. Numerical distinctness (which affects in a scarcely intelligible manner the spaceless and immaterial) has to do duty with him for qualitative distinctness which would alone be able to account for the self-consciousness of this plurality. Acc. to the picture given in Tim. c. 14 (41 D ff.) the souls created by the δημιουργός are evidently all alike (hence also is γένεσις πρώτη τεταγμένη μία πᾶσιν, 41 E), and only when they are in the σῶμα, and bound up with mortal portions of soul, do they react in different ways to what affects them from without—and so become different. (This is so, however, in the pre-existent period, too, acc. to Phd.: but in that account θυμός and ἐπιθυμία are also bound up with the soul in pre-existence.) The influence of the lower soul-partners and of the τροφὴ παιδεύσεως (Tim. 44 B) makes the λογιστικά also of the souls differ among themselves. This acquired individual characterization, the fruit of differing παιδεία καὶ τροφή—something quite the reverse of the “common nature” of “soul” in general which Teichmüller supposes to be meant here: Stud. 143—is taken with it by the soul to the place of judgment, i.e. Hades, Phd. 107 D. When, however, by the best τροφὴ παιδεύσεως it has become completely pure and free from all the trammels of the physical and perishable and departs into bodiless existence in the ἀειδές—then in truth all individual distinctness has been dissolved out of it. Still, it must endure for ever as a self-conscious personality; for that this is what Plato meant cannot be doubted.

[74]   Phd. 83 D.

[75]   χωρίζειν ὅτι μάλιστα ἀπὸ τοῦ σώματος τὴν ψυχὴν, Phd. 67 C. ἀναχωρεῖν, 83 (quite in the manner of genuine mysticism—it is the “separateness” of the man who is to behold god, of which Eckhart speaks).

[76]   Phd. 64 A ff., 67 E.

[77]   Phd. 114 C.

[78]   τοῦ σώματος πτόησις καὶ μανία, Crat. 404 A.

[79]   τῷ ξυγγενεῖ πλησιάσας καὶ μιγεὶς τῷ ὄντι ὄντως, Rp. 490 B.

[80]   The soul ἐῶσα χαίρειν τὸ σῶμα καὶ καθ’ ὅσον δύναται οὐ κοινωνοῦσα ὀρέγεται τοῦ ὄντος, Phd. 65 C. In the same way the Appearance yearns after the Idea; see above, this chap., n. 9.

[81]   τῆς φρονήσεως κτῆσις, Phd. 65 A ff.

[82]   πειρᾶσθαι χρῆ ἐνθένδε ἐκεῖσε φεύγειν ὅτι τάχιστα. φυγὴ δε ὁμοίωσις θεῷ κατὰ τὸ δυνατόν, Tht. 176 AB.

[83]   Rp. 523 A–524 D.

[84]   Beyond all other things it is the κάλλος of the world of Appearance that awakes the memory of that which has once been seen in the world of Ideas: Phdr. 250 B, 250 D ff.; Smp. c. 28 ff. (210 A ff.). Plato gives a peculiar reason for this, but in reality it is due to a vigorous re-emergence of the fundamental artistic sense—the aesthetic element in his philosophic speculation and enthusiasm—which the thinker had so violently suppressed in obedience to his theory that the αἰσθήσεις and all the arts are merely imitations of deceptive imitations of the only true Reality.

[85]   Not μάθησις—only ἀνάμνησις, Phdr. 249 BC; Men. c. 14 ff. (80 D ff.); Phd. c. 18 ff. (72 E ff.). (This theory occurs regularly in Plato in close connexion with the theory of the soul’s migrations; 488 and it appears that he did as a matter of fact derive it from the anticipations and suggestions of earlier teachers of metempsychosis: see above, chap. xi, n. 96.)

[86]   Rp. vii init.

[87]   ὁμοίωσις δὲ θεῷ δίκαιον καὶ ὅσιον μετὰ φρονήσεως γενέσθαι, Tht. 176 B.

[88]   εἰς ἀγορὰν οὐκ ἴσασι τὴν ὁδόν κτλ., Tht. 173 D ff.

[89]   Tht. 172 C–177 C. The philosopher is unskilled in the life of the everyday world and its arts, and is quite indifferent towards them. Commonplace people, if he is at any time drawn into the affairs of the market place or the law courts, regard him as εὐήθης, ἀνόητος, γελοῖος. Sometimes δόξαν παράσχοιντ’ ἂν (οἱ ὄντως φιλόσοφοι) ὡς παντάπασιν ἔχοντες μανικῶς, Soph. 216 D; Rp. 517 A—passages from the later writing of Plato. Even as early as Phdr. 249 D ἐξιστάμενος τῶν ἀνθρωπίνων σπουδασμάτων καὶ πρὸς τῷ θείῳ γιγνόμενος νουθετεῖται ὑπὸ τῶν πολλῶν ὡς παρακινῶν κτλ.

[90]   ἰδιωτεύειν ἀλλὰ μὴ δημοσιεύειν is the injunction made to the philosopher, Ap. 32 A; at least, in πόλεις as they are, Rp. 520 B. After death comes the reward ἀνδρὸς φιλοσόφου τὰ αὑτοῦ πράξαντος καὶ οὐ πολυπραγμονήσαντος ἐν τῷ βίῳ, Gorg. 526 C. ὥσπερ εἰς θηρία ἄνθρωπος ἐμπεσών the true philosopher will ἡσυχίαν ἔχειν καὶ τὰ αὑτοῦ πράττειν, Rp. 496 D.

[91]   τὰ τῶν ἀνθρώπων πράγματα μεγάλης μὲν σπουδῆς οὐκ ἄξια, Lg. 803 B.

[92]   Gorg. 521 D. ὁ ὡς ἀληθῶς κυβερνητικός, Rp. 488 E (cf. also Men. 99 E, 100 A).

[93]   Not διάκονος καὶ ἐπιθυμιῶν παρασκευαστής but rather an ἰατρός, Gorg. 518 C, 521 A; cf. 464 B ff.

[94]   Gorg. 519 A. All these worldly matters seem to him φλυαρίαι: just as all the Appearances in the world of Becoming are for him but φλυαρίαι, Rp. 515 D.

[95]   Gorg. c. 78 ff. (522 B ff.).

[96]   οὗτος ὁ τρόπος ἄριστος τοῦ βίου, Gorg. 527 E—(this is the real subject of the Gorg., viz. ὅντινα χρὴ τρόπον ζῆν, 500 C, and not the nature of ῥητορική—and it is this which gives its special emotional tone to the dialogue).

[97]   Gorg. 515 C ff., 519 A ff. Summary: οὐδένα ἡμεῖς ἴσμεν ἄνδρα ἀγαθὸν γεγονότα τὰ πολιτικὰ ἐν τῇδε τῇ πόλει, 517 A.

[98]   οὐχ ὡς καλόν τι ἀλλ’ ὡς ἀναγκαῖον πράττοντες, Rp. 540 B.

[99]   It is now the σκοπὸς ἐν τῷ βίῳ—inaccessible to the ἀπαίδευτοι—οὗ στοχαζομένους δεῖ ἅπαντα πράττειν, Rp. 519 C.

[100]   The ἄλλαι ἀρεταὶ καλούμεναι (even including σοφία regarded as practical shrewdness: Rp. 428 B ff.) as ἐγγὺς οὖσαι τῶν τοῦ σώματος become of secondary importance compared with the virtue of φρόνησις, i.e. of dialectic and the contemplation of the Ideas, Rp. 518 DE. This alone is θειότερον, something μεῖζον than those bourgeois virtues, Rp. 504 D—philosophy stands high above δημοτική τε καὶ πολιτικὴ ἀρετή, ἐξ ἔθους τε καὶ μελετῆς γεγονυῖα ἄνευ φιλοσοφίας τε καὶ νοῦ, Phd. 82 BC.—This, too, rightly understood, is the real point of the inquiry in Meno. Explicitly, indeed, the dialogue only concerns itself with that ἀρετή which is commonly so regarded and is based on ἀληθὴς δόξα, coming into existence by instinct (θεία μοῖρα); which, however, to the philosopher is not ἀρετή in the proper sense of the word; that name he would only give to ἐπιστήμη, the only sort of knowledge that can be learnt and acquired as a permanent possession, depending as it does upon the doctrine of Ideas. To ἐπιστήμη he this time only makes distant allusion. 489

[101]   Rp. vii, c. 15 (535 A, 536 D); cf. vi, c. 2, 5 (485 B, 487 B; 489 D, 490 E).

[102]   καὶ τοῦ μὲν (δόξης ἀληθοῦς) πάντα ἄνδρα μετέχειν φατέον, νοῦ δὲ θεούς, ἀνθρώπων δὲ γένος βραχύ τι, Tim. 51 E.

[103]   φιλόσοφον πλῆθος ἀδύνατον εἶναι, Rp. 494 A. φύσεις of a completely philosophical kind, πᾶς ἡμῖν ὁμολογήσει ὀλιγάκις ἐν ἀνθρώποις φύεσθαι καὶ ὀλίγας, Rp. 491 B.

[104]   “That into which I sink myself—that becomes one with me: when I think on Him I am as God that is the Fount of Being”—the true mystic note. For the mystics, knowledge of an object is real oneness with the thing known; knowledge of God is union with God.

[105]   Rp. 540 B.

CHAPTER XIV

THE LATER AGE OF THE GREEK WORLD

PART I

PHILOSOPHY

Plato and the Platonic account of the nature, origin, and destiny of the soul closes a period. It marks the end of that theological and spiritualist movement to the force and significance of which nothing bears clearer witness than the fact that it could have such a conclusion. After this point its development ceases—at least it disappears from the surface of Greek life: like one of those Asiatic torrents with which the ancients were familiar it buries itself underground for a long stretch of its course, only to reappear eventually, with all the greater effect, far away from the place of its origin. Even Plato’s own school almost immediately after the death of its master and directing spirit turned its attention in a direction quite other than that which he had given it.1 To have retained the Platonic outlook would have made his pupils even more isolated in their very different age than Plato himself had been in his own.

Greece entered upon a new and final phase of her development. The ominous breakdown of the older political fabric at the end of the fourth century might have seemed likely to put an end to the natural vitality of the Greek peoples. With the conquest of the East by Macedonians and Greeks, however, new tasks were set before that people and with the new task they acquired new faculties. The polis, indeed, the purest expression of Greek constructive ability, could not be restored to life. Such of the old and narrow city-republics as had not perished completely in that stormy period only languished in a stagnant peace. Rare, indeed, are the exceptions in which (as particularly in Rhodos) a more vigorous and independent life asserted itself. The new and swollen cities of the Macedonian Empire, with their motley populations drawn from many nationalities, could not make good the loss. The Leagues in which Greece seemed to be making an effort to find a political organization of a wider compass soon broke down under the effects of inward 491 corruption and external violence. Even in its deepest and most essential character the old national spirit of Greece, which had drawn its strength from its clear-cut individuality, seemed to be suffering damage through the unlimited extension eastwards and westwards of Greek life. It did not cease to be an immeasurable advantage to be a Greek, but a Greek now meant anyone who had a share in the one thing that still distinguished and characterized the Greeks, namely, Greek culture—and Greek culture was no longer confined to a single nation. It was no fault of this Greek humanism that not a single one of the vast populations of the East (and in the West at last Rome stood alone) was able to make their own this culture so generously offered to the whole world, so that there, too, all should become Greek who were capable of becoming free human beings. Nevertheless, from all countries and nationalities uncounted multitudes of individuals entered into the circle of this extended Hellenism. The way was open for all who could live without the need of a way of life and thinking modelled strictly upon national lines: for the culture which now united all Greeks and Greek communities was based upon science—and science knows nothing of national frontiers.

The science which could thus present itself as the guiding principle of such a large and heterogeneous mass of cultured people, must at any rate have reached a condition of stability if not of completely rounded finality. After all the stir and controversy of the previous centuries it had at last arrived at a period of contented enjoyment of its own resources: the long drawn-out struggle, the restless years of search were now held to have borne fruit. In philosophy at least there was a distinct slackening of the insatiable zeal and boldness of individual thinkers in posing new questions and wresting answers or in seeking for fresh solutions to old problems. A few great systems, formulated in accordance with the fixed tenets of the various schools of thought, still offered a refuge to those who demanded fixity and definition in their opinions; for centuries they kept up their special traditions without serious alteration until they, too, fell in pieces at last. A greater measure of independence and variety was displayed by the special sciences which since they had now been completely released for the first time from the leading-strings of philosophy proceeded to develop freely in accordance with their own principles. Art, too, was by no means devoid as yet of originality and attractiveness, and in spite of the overwhelming achievements of the past refused to be driven 492 into a position of subservience and imitation. But it was no longer, in conjunction with the peculiar customs and manners of a people, the mistress and dispenser of wisdom and knowledge of the world. Art becomes a plaything and an incidental diversion: it is science that determines the general character and content of culture. But this scientifically minded culture shares in the natural temper of all science. Science has its feet firmly planted in life itself: it keeps men’s minds actively employed in this world; it has small temptation to leave the firm ground of what is knowable and can never be too well known, to voyage out into the region of the intangible which can never be a subject of scientific inquiry. A cool rationalism, a calm adherence to the intelligible and thinkable, without any leanings to the gloomy terrors of a mysterious world of the unknown—such is the temper that marks the science and culture of the Hellenistic age and marks it more distinctively than any other period of Greek culture. Such mysticism as was still vigorous and effective kept itself timidly in the background at this time; in the everyday world it is rather the direct contrary of mysticism that we are made aware of; the unlovely results of the prevailing rationalism, a bleak reasonableness, a knowing and prosaic common sense such as stares dully at us from the pages of Polybios’ History as the point of view of the narrator himself and of those of whom he writes. It was no age of heroes or of the heroic. A weaker and more delicate generation holds the field. The breakdown of political life and the disappearance of its obligations made it more possible than it had ever been before for the individual to lead his own life in his own way.2 And he makes the most of his freedom, his culture, the treasures of an inward, private life enriched with all the brilliance and charm of an old and perfected civilization. All the past had thought and laboured on his behalf; he is not idle, but he is busy without ever being in a hurry, enjoying his heritage and taking his ease in the cooling sunlight of the long drawn-out autumn of Greek life. And he is little concerned to inquire what may follow when this brilliant, many-coloured world that surrounds him shall have vanished from his gaze. This world is all in all to him. The hope or fear of immortality has little effect upon the educated people of the age.3 Philosophy to which in one form or another they are all more or less closely attached teaches them according to its particular mood to cherish that hope or calmly to set it to one side: in none of the popular sects 493 had the doctrine of the eternity or imperishable nature of the soul any serious significance as the central doctrine of a system. Natural science ruled the day, while theology remained in the background and could only obtain a doubtful hearing (if it was even listened to at all) for its proclamation of the divine origin and everlasting life of the souls.

§ 2

At the outset of this period, and illuminating a long stretch of it with the light of his genius, stands the figure of Aristotle. In what this master di color’ che sanno had to say of the soul’s nature and destiny two voices are distinctly audible. The soul, he instructs us, is that which in a living and organic physical body brings the potentially existing to actual existence. It is the form to the body’s matter, the culmination of the capacities of independent life residing in the particular body. Bodiless and immaterial itself, it is not the outcome of the mixture of the various parts of the body; it is the cause, not the resultant, of the vital functions of its body which exists for the soul’s benefit as its “instrument”.4 It dwells within a natural organism and though it is itself unmoved it moves that organism as the source of its growth and nourishment, of its desires and locomotion, of its feeling and perceiving; while in the higher organisms it acts as the combination of all these faces. It is as little to be thought of as separate from the body—its own body—as the power of vision is in separation from the eye or as its shape from the moulded waxen image.5 Theoretically, indeed, it is possible to distinguish between body and soul, but actually and in the animated organism they cannot be distinguished. When the living creature dies the matter of which it was composed loses it special adaptation to a purposeful organism, and this adaptation was its life; without it there can be no independent “Substance” (οὐσία).6 The Form, the functional power of the once living organism, its “soul”, has no longer any independent existence.

This is the voice of Aristotle the physicist when he is speaking from the standpoint of a physical doctrine which includes the study of the soul “in so far as it occurs not without matter”.7 Aristotle the metaphysician takes us further. In the soul of man, besides the vital powers of the organized individual, there lives a spiritual being of more than natural character and origin, the “Mind”—“that in us which thinks and conceives”.8 This thinking mind is not bound to the body and its life.9 It does not come into being with the creation of the human organism which is completed by the addition of Mind. It has no beginning and was uncreated from eternity:10 it enters into man at his creation “from without”.11 Even while it lives within the body it remains unmingled with the body and its powers and uninfluenced by them.12 Enclosed within itself it lives its separate life as something quite other than the “soul” (of which it is nevertheless called a “part”13) and separated from it by a gulf. Comparable with the God of Aristotle’s world it transcends what might be called its “little world”,14 the living human organism. It influences that organism without being influenced in turn. It is akin to God; it is called the “divine” in man.15 Its activity is the same as that of God.16 God—pure substance, unlimited, highest, everlasting actuality—is absolute and perpetually operant thinking.17 All practical activity, doing and creating, is far removed from God.18 So, too, the “Mind” is entirely occupied in thinking (though here there is some alternation perhaps between the potential and the actual).19 It grasps, in an intuition of the intellect that is beyond failure and error,20 the “unmediated” first principles, the first and highest concepts, immediately certain and not deducible from still higher concepts, from which all knowledge and philosophy is derived.21

In its association with the body and its “soul” this thinking Reason lives as “the ruling”22 element over both—not, however, as the “realization” of this particular individual creature. The Mind is indeed said to be that which the individual man “is”,23 and without the addition of Mind the man could not exist, but the special and personal character belonging to the individual is not to be found in this reasoning Mind.24 Mind is totally devoid of distinguishable qualities and is identical in every case where it appears; it is invariably foreign to the separate and individual character of the man to whom it is added, and hardly seems to be his peculiar property.

When death occurs the thinking “Mind” is not involved in the destruction which overtakes the human organism with which it was associated. Death does not affect it. Like everything that is without beginning it is indestructible.25 It returns again to its separate existence. Like the great World-Mind, God, and in company with it—for it has not sprung from God and does not merge again into God—the individual Mind of man continues in unending life.26 It 495 disappears now into impenetrable darkness. The separate existence of the Mind is beyond not merely our perception but our conceiving as well—persisting for itself alone, Mind has no mental activity, no memory and no consciousness; indeed, it is impossible to say what special qualities or activity can be attributed to it beyond the simple predicate of existence, of being.27

In the doctrine of this thinking Mind which is associated with the human soul “from without” and never merges into it, of its pre-existence from eternity, its kinship with God and its imperishable life after its separation from the human organism—in all this Aristotle preserves a mythological element taken from the dogmatic teaching of Plato.

There was a time when he had been a complete Platonist precisely in his doctrine of the soul. In his youth, like other members of the Academy, he had yielded28 to the fascination of clothing in artistic and perfected language brilliant fantasies about the origin, nature, and destiny of the soul—the divine daimon29 inhabiting the mortal frame of man. Later, however, it seemed inconceivable to him that “any soul may inhabit any body”.30 He could only conceive of the “soul” of the individual man as a realization of the life of this entirely distinct and physical organism, to which it is indissolubly bound as the purpose and form of the particular instrument. All the vital powers as well as appetite, perception, memory, and reflective thought, appeared to him merely as the modes of activity manifested by the animated body which is itself unthinkable apart from its “soul”. And yet he still preserved a relic of the old dualistic opposition between the body and the independent substantial soul—the same conception of the soul, in fact, as that which Plato had himself, in the later period of his philosophical development, alone retained. This was as the contemplative Mind which is occupied in apprehending the highest truths in intellectual intuition; and this mind is, according to Aristotle, not to be included in the “soul”, but to be separated from it as a special being that has descended from the heights of divinity and has been coupled with the soul from without and for its limited period of life. The origin of this conception of a reduplicated soul is plain: it is derived from memories of Plato and beyond that from theological doctrine which was itself in the last resort but a spiritualized restatement of primeval popular fancies of the psyche that dwells in the living body. But though he took over the doctrine he did not take over the special sense that 496 the theologians had given to it: he omitted both the conclusions they drew and the exhortations they based upon it. We hear no more of the “purification” of the divine Mind within mankind. It has nothing impure or evil in it nor can any breath of pollution affect it from without. The effort towards the “other world” of purity, the denial and rejection of its earthly partner the living body, are foreign to the “Mind” of Aristotle.31 It has no impulse to “deliverance” or self-emancipation; it knows of no peculiar task that points beyond this world. The presence of this “separable” Mind in the living man is an assured fact, and nothing more: no purpose in life is deducible from it. The fact itself seemed to be evident from the power that man possesses of grasping immediately a highest form of knowledge that is beyond demonstration, not as the result of the mental activity of his soul, for the apprehension is prior to the soul, but by means of a higher spiritual faculty, a special intellectual being that seemed to proclaim its presence and existence within man in this way. It is thus by way of a theory of knowledge not of a theological doctrine that we arrive at the distinction between “Mind” and “Soul”. But the doctrine thus reasserted was in reality nothing but the old doctrine of the theologians. This “Mind”, too, seems to the thinker to be a being akin to God. The pure contemplative existence, a life consisting in the contemplation of the final objects of intuition is counted as a privilege of the divine and of all divine beings, as the true purpose of vital energy and of its manifestation; and in the description of this state the sober reserve of his lecture style seems to be uplifted and almost illuminated with the warmth and brilliance imparted by a genuine glow of personal experience.32 This pure activity of contemplation, finding its deepest satisfaction in itself, belongs to the divine in man—to the Mind; its whole life lies in this. This activity, however, the Mind performs and finishes in this life, while it is united with the body and the body’s “soul”. There is nothing left that can be thought of as forming the content of the life and activity of the Mind in its separate existence after the completion of its period of life on earth. Mind and the man with whom it is associated can hardly have a very urgent desire for that emancipation in “another world” which is thus left blank and without content for our thought. The thought of immortality cast in this form could no longer possess any real value or ethical significance for man.33 It arises from a logical deduction, from metaphysical considerations, not 497 from a demand of the spirit. It lacks not only the distinctness that might have appealed to the senses and given direction to the imagination, but the power (or the intention) of playing a leading part in the conduct or direction of life on this earth. There is no inspiration in this doctrine—not even for the philosopher, though it was to him and his activity and his efforts that the picture and panegyric of “Mind”, the philosopher in man, had really referred.

It was quite possible to abide by the teaching and philosophy of Aristotle, directed as it was to the observation and interpretation of the things of this world, while abandoning the advanced post of the doctrine of Mind—that Being which has sunk to the level of this world from the other world of divinity, which separates itself, with the death of man, once more to everlasting divine life though hardly to a continuation of individual existence. On this point in particular free discussion of the master’s teaching maintained itself in his school: some, and by no means the weakest, of Aristotle’s successors denied altogether and in every form the doctrine of immortality.34

§ 3

The dogmatic teaching of the Stoics on the subject of the human soul is closely bound up with the materialistic pantheism by means of which they explained all the phenomena of life, of being and becoming upon earth. God is All, and divinity is nothing outside this “all”, which forms the world: the Universe is God. God is thus not only the matter but the form, the life and the power of the world. Divinity is the original matter, the etherial Fire, the fiery “breath” which maintains itself or changes and in innumerable metamorphoses creates the world. God is also what supplies a purpose to this world and is the purposeful force—the reason and law of the world. The universal deity which is thus at once matter, mind, and formative principle sends out from itself at varying periods the multiplicity of Appearance and then again at another time takes back the multifarious and the divided into the fiery unity of its own breath of life. Thus, in everything that has shape, in everything that lives and moves, the content and the unifying form is God: he is and works as their “state” in inorganic things, as “nature” in plants, as “irrational soul” in the other living things, as rational and thinking soul in man.35 498

The soul of man, thus endowed with reason, is a fragment of the divine,36 and is itself divine like everything else in the world but in a purer sense than all other things. It has remained closer to the first and original essence of the divine, conceived as “creative fire” (πῦρ τεχνικών), than the earthly fire which has lost much of its original purity and refinement. It is closer37 than the lower matter that in all its changeful forms degenerates progressively as it gets farther and farther away from the divine fire by gradual loss of the tension (τόνος) that had once been living and active in the primeval fire; closer even than the material of its own body in which it dwells and rules. As something essentially distinct from the body, then, the individual soul comes into being among the elements of its body when that body is conceived, and it develops its full nature after the birth of the individual.38 But even in its individual, separate existence it remains incompletely detached from the universal life that is present in it; it remains subject to the “universal Law” of the world, which is God, and fast bound by “fate”, the “destiny” (πεπρωμένη, εἱμαρμένε) which decrees the course of their existence for the totality of all Life and the individual lives.39 Nevertheless, the soul has its special gifts and special task—it is capable of self-determination and is responsible for its own decisions and acts. Though it is a pure emanation from the universal Reason and bound down to no irrational elements, it has the power of irrational choice and can resolve upon what is evil. Though they have all sprung from one and the same original source the individual souls are of very different character, intellect, and propensity of will. Unreason in thought, will, and conduct is common in the world; those who have real insight are few; in fact, the Wise Man, the man who keeps his own will in complete harmony with the universal and divine direction of the world, is but a picture of imaginary perfection, naturæ humanæ exemplar, never fully and perfectly realized in actual life.

Ethical interests demanded the freedom and independence of the moral personality and its will, which can only fulfil the requirements of duty by self-mastery and the overthrow of base impulses; but this independence was in conflict with the essential principles of Stoic metaphysics. The Stoics taught that the world (and the soul included in it) is only the necessary self-development of a single and absolute Being that excludes all independent and separate multiplicity. Nor could they recognize any principle of Evil, an anti-rational principle answering to the purity of divine power, working 499 evil and suggesting it, and making the individual capable of wilful disobedience to the laws of all-embracing divinity. Pure pantheism, uniting God and the world in indissoluble unity, cannot imagine a real conflict between humanity and divinity; it cannot postulate a principle of Evil through the overthrow of which a lost unity with God is to be restored. Pantheism makes no claims of an ethical or religious kind. The ingenuity of the Stoic doctors was exercised in vain in the attempt to find a way out of this dilemma.40

From the very origin of the school two tendencies were discernible in the teaching of the Stoa, derived as that teaching was from such different sources. On the one hand, the ethical doctrine of the Cynics, to whom the Stoics owed the greater part of their practical teaching, threw the individual back upon his own resources and made everything depend upon the determination of his own will. It thus pointed in the direction of the most self-sufficient individualism—to an ethical atomism. The physical doctrine derived from Herakleitos, on the other hand, merged the individual completely into the omnipotence and omnipresence of the All-One; and therefore, as its ethical counterpart, demanded that this relation of the individual to the universal Logos of the world should find expression in a life lived completely ex ductu rationis, in unconditional abandonment of the individual will to the Universal Mind that is the World and God.41 In actual fact it was Cynicism that had the profounder influence in ethical matters. The universal Law and order of the world, embracing both universe and individual in its absolute decrees, threw its net too widely to be able to answer closely enough to the needs of narrow and individual existence. No practical ethics could possibly unite this distant and final aim with the individual man in a single nexus of ordered self-determination. The intermediate link between the universe and its laws, on the one hand, and the individual with his private will, on the other, had formerly been the Greek polis with its law and custom. But it was a cosmopolitan age, and for the Stoics as well as for the Cynics before them the city-state had lost most of its educative force. The individual saw himself more and more left to his own devices and forced to depend upon his own strength—his life had to be ordered on self-erected standards and guided by self-found rules. Individualism, which gave its tone to the age more decisively than in any past period of Greek life, began to win a footing even in this pantheistic system. The “Wise Man” who is a law to himself in perfect 500 self-determination,42 and feels himself bound only to those like himself,43 is individualism’s fairest flower.

But the soul, thus elevated to a height where it was capable of much that was impossible for or only incompletely within the reach of its weaker sisters, began more and more to seem like something rather different from a mere dependent offshoot of the One divine power that is the same everywhere. It is, in fact, regarded as an independent, divine, and self-enclosed creature in those passages where in Stoic literature, as in the older literature of the theologians, the soul is called a “daimon”—the daimon dwelling within the individual man, and given to him as his associate.44 Death, too, is regarded by this professedly monist system as a separation of soul from body45 in accordance with what was really a naive or a conscious spiritualism. In death, then, this soul-essence whose independence had been so marked even in life, does not perish with the body—it does not even lose itself again in the One from which it had taken its origin. An infinitely extended individual life is indeed not attributed to the individual souls: only God, the one Soul of the World, is eternally indestructible.46 But the souls which have arisen by separation from the one and all-embracing divinity, survive the destruction of their bodies: until the final dissolution, in the Conflagration that will make an end of the present period of world-history, they persist in their independent life; either all of them (as was the older teaching of the school) or, as Chrysippos, the master of Stoic orthodoxy, taught the souls of the “Wise” only, while the others have been lost in the general life of the Whole some time previously.47 The stronger ethical personality is held together in itself for a longer time.48

From the point of view of physical science and materialist doctrine49 it was also hard to see why the soul, composed of pure fire-breath, which even in life had held the body together and had not been held together by the body,50 should disappear at once when that body was disintegrated. As it had once held the body together, so it might well and all the more easily hold itself together now. Its lightness carries it upwards into the pure air under the moon, where it is fed by the breath that rises upwards and where there is nothing that can put an end to it.51 An “underworld” region like that of popular imagination and theological teaching, was expressly denied by the Stoics.52 Their imagination preferred to exercise itself in an imaginary extension of life in the Aether, which was their region of 501 the souls;53 but as a rule it appears that such flights of fancy were avoided. The life of the souls after death—that of the wise as well as of the unwise—remained indistinct and without content54 in the imagination of those whose life was still upon earth.

Thus, the doctrine of the soul-personality and its continued existence (never simply expanded into personal immortality), which was in reality not required by the metaphysical principles of Stoicism, and could indeed hardly be reconciled with them, had in fact no serious significance for the general intention and substance of Stoicism—least of all for Stoic ethics and conduct of life. The philosophy of Stoicism is directed to the study of life, not of death. In this life on earth and only here can the purpose of human endeavour—the reproduction of divine wisdom and virtue in the human spirit—be fulfilled in manful contest with contrary impulses, fulfilled, that is, in so far as such a thing is possible for lonely and isolated fragments of divinity.55

But virtue is sufficient in itself for the attainment of happiness—a happiness which loses nothing through the brevity of its duration and to which nothing would be added by the prolongation of its span.56 Nothing in the doctrine of Stoicism points man, or the Wise Man, to another world beyond the life of the body and outside this earthly theatre of conflict and duty, for the fulfilment of his being and his task.

§ 4

The limited doctrine of immortality which, as we have seen, was not an essential part of the teaching of Stoicism, began to be called in question as soon as the rigid dogmatism of the school was subjected to the too-searching criticism of other schools of thought. In the clash of opinions Stoicism began to be doubtful of the absolute validity of its own teaching. The boundaries of orthodox doctrine once so firmly drawn now became more fluid; exchange and even compromise became common. Panaitios, the first writer among the pedantic professors of Stoicism to achieve a wider popularity for his writings, became the teacher and friend of those aristocratic Romans who found in Greek philosophy the impulse to a humanism that the barren soil of Rome could never have produced unaided. And Panaitios differed in more than one point from the strict orthodoxy of the older Stoicism. For him the soul is formed of two distinct elements57—it is no longer simple and undivided, but 502 compounded of “Nature” and “Soul” (in the narrower sense).58 In death these two elements separate and change into other forms. The soul having had its origin at a particular point in past time now perishes in time. Being capable of grief and subject to the destructive influence of the emotions it falls a victim at last to its own pains. Panaitios, while remaining a Stoic, taught the dissolution of the soul, its death and simultaneous destruction with the death of the body.59

His pupil Poseidonios, who as a writer possessed an even greater influence than Panaitios with the great majority of cultivated readers who belonged to no special school of thought, returned to the older Stoic doctrine of the simple and undivided nature of the soul as fiery breath. He distinguished three faculties but not three separate and independent elements in the human soul, and as a consequence of this view had no further need to believe in the dissolution of the soul into its component parts at death. He also denied the origin of the individual soul in time, from which the doctrine of its destruction in time had seemed to follow by a logical necessity. He returned to the old theological idea of the pre-existence of the soul, its life since the beginning of the created world; and could therefore go on to assert its continued existence after death—at least till the time of the next destruction of the World at the hands of omnipotent Fire.60

It was not an inward and private necessity that led to this transformation of the old teaching of the School. Doubts and criticisms levelled at it from outside—from the Sceptics in particular—had necessitated the change. While some gave up the struggle, others sought refuge in a re-arrangement of the figures of the dialectical game and by the introduction of fresh characters.61 Immortality might be abandoned to criticism or reaffirmed in either case with equal indifference. The Platonic and poetic version of Stoicism provided by Poseidonios may have found a wider response among the readers of a highly cultivated society who felt the need of a doctrine of immortality more as a satisfaction to the artistic fancy than from any deeper or more temperamental causes. Cicero, the most eloquent representative of the Hellenized Roman culture of the time, may perhaps give us a picture of the refined and æsthetic partiality with which these ideas were taken up. In the Dream of Scipio and the first book of the Tusculans, he gives an account, mainly based on Poseidonios, of the belief then held of a continued life of the soul in the divine element of the Aether.62 503

§ 5

Stoicism had a long and vigorous life. More than ever during the first and second centuries of our era did it fulfil its real task of acting as a practical guide to conduct, not as a mere museum of dead erudition. It made good its claim to provide its adherents with the autonomous freedom and independence of a mind at peace with itself, whose virtue was proof against the tribulation and failure of life, and not corrupted by its plenty. It was not always blind imitation of a literary fashion or the love of displaying virtuous paradoxes that attracted the noblest of the higher Roman aristocracy to the doctrines of Stoicism. Not a few of them guided their lives in accordance with its principles and even died for their convictions. Not entirely “without tragic emotion”, as the Stoic Emperor would prefer it, but at any rate with conscious and deliberate purpose—not in mere unreasoning stubbornness63—did these Stoic martyrs go to their death. Nor was it the unquestioned certainty of a continued life in a higher existence that made them so ready to give up life upon this earth.64 Each in the special manner dictated to him by his own temperament and the circumstances of his life, they still speak to us, these leaders of Roman Stoicism—Seneca the philosophic director of the world’s conscience, Marcus Aurelius the Emperor, and those instructors and patterns of the aspiring youth of Rome, Musonius and Epictetus. The eager and unswerving effort of these wise men to educate themselves to the attainment of freedom and peace, of purity and goodness of heart, wins our admiration—not least in the case of Seneca in whom the struggle for self-mastery and philosophic calm must have been a continual war with his own too-receptive and imaginative nature. But just as they looked for no supernatural helper and redeemer but trusted to the power of their own spirit for the assurance of success, so they required no promise of a future crowning of their labours in an after-life of the soul. The whole scope of their endeavour lies within the limits of this world. The old Stoic belief in the continued life of the individual soul until the annihilation of all separate creation in the World Conflagration65 is regarded at the best as one possibility among many66—it is perhaps but a “beautiful dream”.67 But whether death is a transition to another form of being or a complete termination of individual life—to the wise man it is equally welcome, for he measures the value of life not by the number 504 of its years but by the richness of its content. At bottom Seneca is inclined to the view that death is the end of all things for man, after which “everlasting peace” awaits the restless spirit.68

The Stoic Emperor is uncertain whether death is a dissipation of the elements of the soul (as the atomists teach) or whether the mind survives in a conscious or an unconscious existence that must yet disappear eventually in the life of the Whole. All things are in perpetual flux—so the Law of the universe has willed it—nor shall the human personality maintain itself untouched and unchanged. But even supposing that death is a “putting out” of his small individual candle, the wise man is not afraid: to the melancholy that is the prevailing mood of his gentle, pure, and high-strung character Death, the annihilator, seems to beckon like a friend.69

The tougher spirit of the Phrygian slave and freedman needed no conviction of personal survival to enable him to face the battle of earthly life with courage and intrepidity. What has been made must be unmade: without hesitation and without regret the wise man gives himself up to the laws of the rationally-ordered universe in which the present must make way for the future—not indeed to be lost entirely, but to be changed and to merge its individuality, its unimportant self in new manifestations of the creative stuff of Life. The Whole does not perish, but its parts change and alter their relations among themselves.70 The pantheistic principles of the school which had been taken over from Herakleitos and which made it permanently inconceivable that the diminutive individual spark of life could achieve a lasting separation from the central fiery mass, had become a settled conviction. The passionate abandonment of the personal, short-lived self to the everlasting Whole and One had become a fixed habit of mind. No longer did it seem intolerable that the individual existence should pass away after a brief span of life; it was possible to remain a Stoic and yet assert expressly, like Cornutus the teacher of Persius, that with the death of its body there is an end, too, of the individual soul.71

§ 6

The atomist doctrine renewed by Epicurus demanded in the most emphatic manner of its adherents that they should abandon the belief in personal survival.

For the atomist the soul is corporeal, a compound made 505 up of the most mobile of the atoms which form the plastic elements of air and fire. It occupies all parts of the body, and is held together by the body, while at the same time, and in spite of this, holding itself in essential distinctness from the body.72 Epicurus also speaks of the “Soul” as a special and enduring substance within the body, a “part” of the corporeal, not a mere “harmony” resulting from the association of the parts of the body.73 He even speaks of two parts or modes of manifestation in the “soul”; the irrational, which holds the whole body in its sway as its vital force, and the rational, situated in the breast, which exercises will and intelligence and is the last and most essential source of life in living things, without the undivided presence of which death occurs.74 Anima and animus (as Lucretius calls them), distinct but not separable from one another,75 come into being in the embryo of man and grow to maturity, old age and decay, together with the body.76 If death occurs it means that the atoms belonging to the body are separated and the soul-atoms withdrawn—even before the final dissolution of the body, the separable “soul” disappears. No longer held together by the body, it is blown away in the wind, it disappears “like smoke” in the air.77 The soul, this soul that had animated the individual man, is no more.78 The material elements of which it was composed are indestructible; it is quite possible that they may at some future time combine together with the life-stuff to produce new life and consciousness of exactly the same kind as had once been joined together in the living man. But, if so, it will be a new creature that thus comes into being: the original man has been annihilated by death; there is no bond of continuous consciousness uniting him with the fresh creation.79 The vital forces of the world are continuous, undiminished, indestructible, but in the formation of the individual living creature they are only lent temporarily, for this occasion and for a brief period, after which they are withdrawn for ever from the particular creature. Vitaque mancipio nulli datur, omnibus usu.

After his death the individual is unaffected by the fate of his inanimate body;80 nor should he be troubled by the thought of what may happen to the atoms of his soul. Death does not concern him at all; for he only is when death is not; where death is, he is no longer there.81 Sensation and consciousness have left him at the dissolution of body and soul; what he cannot possibly feel affects him no longer. Epicurean maxims are never tired of driving home 506 this proposition: death is nothing to us.82 From every possible direction, from abstract principle and practical experience in actual life, Lucretius labours to demonstrate the truth of this view83 as ardently as other philosophers seek to prove its opposite. Physical science has no more valuable service to render than that of convincing us of its truth.84 Just as the wisdom of Epicurus has no other purpose than to protect man, of all creatures the one most sensitive to pain, from distress and anguish—and even pleasure is but the removal of pain—so more particularly, in putting an end to the fear of death and the craving after unceasing life, it serves this finite life itself,85 that is committed to us once and for all and never repeated.86 If a man has once succeeded in realizing that he will cease to be in the moment of death’s coming, he will neither be oppressed with terror at the threatened loss of self-consciousness nor will the terrors of eternity87 or the fabulous monsters of the spirit-world below the earth88 darken his existence by casting their dark shadow over all his life.89 He will devote himself to life without repining, neither fearing death nor seeking it.90

He alone—the ideal Wise Man of the Epicurean faith—will know how to live as the true artist of his own life;91 he will not waste the precious time in vain preparations for the future,92 but will cram every moment to the full so that his brief span of existence will have all that a long life could give. Long life, in fact, even life without an end, would not make him any happier or any richer. What life has to offer it has already offered—anything further must only be a repetition of what has gone before: eadem sunt omnia semper.93 The Wise Man has no reason even to look for an eternity of life.94 In his own personality, in this present “now”, he possesses all the conditions necessary to happiness. The very transience of this supreme happiness to which mortality can attain makes it seem the more valuable to him. To the development and the enjoyment of this, the only life that belongs to him he will devote himself exclusively. In ethical matters, too, the atomist doctrine holds good. There is no such thing in nature as an essential community of human beings—still less of humanity—there are only individuals.95 In associations entered into by free and unforced choice the individual may attach himself to the individual as one friend to another; but the political societies that men have invented and set up among themselves have no obligations for the Wise Man. He is himself the centre and indeed the whole circumference of the world surrounding 507 him. State and society are valuable, and indeed only exist for the protection of the individual and to make it possible for him under their enfolding care to develop his own personality in freedom.96 The individual, on the other hand, does not exist for the state, but for himself. “It is no longer necessary to save the Hellenes or to win crowns of victory from them in contests of wisdom.”97 Such is the decision reached with a sigh of relief by a civilization that has attained the highest point of its development and is now overcome by a lassitude in which it no longer sets itself new tasks, but takes its ease as age may be permitted to do. In its lassitude it no longer hopes, and in all honesty no longer cares, to extend the period of its existence beyond the limits of this earthly life. Calm and untroubled it sees this life, dear though it may once have been, fade away, taking its leave and sinking into nothingness without a struggle.

NOTES TO CHAPTER XIV

PART I

[1]   At first the philosophy of Plato’s old age lived on in spirit in the Academy. Just as his pupils carried on his Pythagorean speculations about numbers, reduced his imaginative suggestions as to a daimonic nature intermediate between that of God and man to pedantic system, and elaborated the theological strain in his thought to a gloomy and burdensome deisidaimonia (witness esp. the Epinomis of Philippos of Opos and in addition all that we know of Xenokrates’ speculations)—so too they retained and respected for a time the Platonic doctrine of the soul and the ascetic tendency in his ethical teaching. For Philippos of Opos the aim of all human endeavour is a final and blessed emancipation from this world (which, however, is only possible for a few of those who are, in his special manner, “wise”—973 C ff., 992 C). He is a mystic for whom this earth and its life fall away into nothing: all serious interest is confined to the contemplation of divine things such as are revealed in mathematics and astronomy. Again, the Platonic doctrine of the soul, in its mystic and world-renouncing sense, lies at the bottom of the fabulous narratives of Herakleides Pontikos (in the Ἄβαρις, Ἐμπεδότιμος, etc.). This, too, accounts for the youthful attempts in this direction of Aristotle himself (in the Εὔδημος and probably also in the Προτρεπτικός). This side of his doctrine was as it seems systematized from the standpoint of the latest stage of Platonism by Xenokrates in particular. It may be merely accident that we do not hear very reliably of anything indicating an ascetic tendency or an “other-worldly” effort after emancipation of the soul in connexion with Xenokrates. Krantor (in his much-read book περὶ πένθους) was already capable of employing the Platonic doctrine of the soul and the imaginative fancies that could be attached to it simply as a literary adornment. And before him his teacher Polemon betrays a turning aside from the true Platonic mysticism. With Arkesilaos the last vestige of this whole type of thought disappears completely.

[2]   τοῖς ἐλευθέροις ἥκιστα ἔξεστιν ὅ τι ἔτυχε ποιεῖν, ἀλλα πάντα ἢ τὰ πλεῖστα τέτακται, Arist., Meta. 1075a, 19 (in maxima fortuna minima licentia est, Sall., C. 51, 13). Freedom in this sense indeed was a thing of the past.

[3]   Not that such hopes or fears were entirely absent. The reader will remember the case of Kleombrotos of Ambrakia (Call., Ep. 25), who by reading the Phaedo of Plato (and completely misunderstanding the meaning of the prophet, as not unfrequently happens) was led to seek an immediate entrance into the life of the other world by a violent break with this one—and committed suicide. This is an isolated example of a mood to which Epiktetos bears witness as common in his own much later time—the desire felt by many young men of ardent temperament to escape from the distracted life of humanity and return as quickly as possible to the universal life of God by the destruction of their own individual existence: Epict. 1, 9, 11 ff. But in the earlier period such violent manifestations of other-worldly fanaticism were of rare occurrence. Hedonism was 509 capable of leading to the same result as we may see from the Ἀποκαρτερῶν of Hegesias the Cyrenaic, called ὁ πεισιθάνατος, whom Cicero mentions together with this same Kleombrotos: TD. i, 83–4.

[4]   τὸ σῶμά πως τῆς ψυχῆς ἕνεκεν (γέγονει), as ὁ πρίων τῆς πρίσεως ἕνεκα—and not vice versa: PA. 1, 5, 645b, 19.

[5]   The ψυχή is related to the body as ὄψις is to the eye, i.e. as the effective power residing in the ὄργανον (not like ὅρασις, the individual act of vision). It is the πρώτη ἐντελέχεια of its body de An. ii, 1, 412a, 27. There is no σύνθεσις of σῶμα and ψυχή: they are simply “together” like the wax and the ball formed out of the wax: Top. 151a, 20 ff.; GA. 729b, 9 ff.; de An. 412b, 7.

[6]   ἀπελθούσης γοῦν (τῆς ψυχῆς) οὔκετι ζῷόν ἐστιν, οὐδὲ τῶν μορίων οὐδὲν τὸ αὐτὸ λείπεται, πλὴν τῷ σχήματι μόνον καθάπερ τὰ μυθευόμενα λιθοῦσθαι, PA. 641a, 18.

[7]   Meta. 1026a, 5: περὶ ψυχῆς ἐνίας θεωρῆσαι τοῦ φυσικοῦ, ὅση μὴ ἄνευ τῆς ὑλῆς ἐστίν.—οὐδὲ γὰρ πᾶσα ψυχὴ φύσις, ἀλλά τι μόριον αὐτῆς, PA. 641b, 9. The subject of τὸ κεχωρισμένον of the soul is studied by ὁ πρῶτος φιλόσοφος: de An. 403b, 16.

[8]   λέγω δὲ νοῦν, ᾧ διανοεῖται καὶ ὑπολαμβάνει ἡ ψυχή, de An. 429a, 23.

[9]   The νοῦς and its θεωρητικὴ δύναμις ἔοικε ψυχῆς γένος ἕτερον εἶναι καὶ τοῦτο μόνον ἐνδέχεται χωρίζεσθαι, καθάπερ τὸ ἀΐδιον τοῦ φθαρτοῦ, τὰ δὲ λοιπὰ μόρια τῆς ψυχῆς οὐκ ἔστι χωριστά κτλ., de An. 413b, 25.

[10]   There can be no doubt that Aristotle’s opinion was that νοῦς was uncreated and existed without beginning from eternity: see Zeller, Sitzb. Berl. Ak. 1882, p. 1033 ff.

[11]   θύραθεν ἐπεισέρχεται into the man as he is being made, GA. 736b, 28; cf. ὁ θύραθεν νοῦς, 744b, 21.

[12]   νοῦς is ἀπαθής, ἀμιγής, οὐ μέμικται τῷ σώματι—it has no physical ὄργανον, de An. iii, 4. οὐδὲν αὐτοῦ (τοῦ νοῦ) τῇ ἐνεργείᾳ κοινωνεῖ σωματικὴ ἐνέργεια, GA. 736b, 28.

[13]   μόριον τῆς ψυχῆς, de An. 429a, 10 ff. ψυχὴ οὐχ ὅλη, ἀλλ’ ἡ νοητική, 429a, 28. ἡ ψυχὴ . . . μὴ πᾶσα ἀλλ’ ὁ νοῦς, Meta. 1070a, 26.

[14]   The ζῷον a μικρὸς κόσμος, Phys. 252b, 26.

[15]   νοῦς, θειότερόν τι καὶ ἀπαθές, de An. 408b, 29.—τὸν νοῦν θεῖον εἶναι μόνον, GA. 736b, 28 (737a, 10). εἴτε θεῖον ὅν εἴτε τῶν ἐν ἡμῖν τὸ θείοτατον, EN. 1177a, 15. νοῦς is τὸ συγγενέστατον to the gods, 1179a, 26.—τὸ ἀνθρώπων γένος ἢ μόνον μετέχει τοῦ θείου τῶν ἡμῖν γνωρίμων ζῴων ἢ μάλιστα πάντων, PA. 656a, 7.

[16]   ἔργον τοῦ θειοτάτου τὸ νοεῖν καὶ φρονεῖν, PA. 686a, 28.

[17]   Meta. Λ 7, 9.

[18]   EN. 1178b, 7–22; Cael. 292b, 4 ff.

[19]   So too ἐπικαλύπτεται ὁ νοῦς ἐνίοτε πάθει ἢ νόσῳ ἢ ὕπνῳ, de An. 429a, 7.

[20]   θιγγάνειν is the term often applied to the activity of νοῦς, i.e. a simple and indivisible act of apperceiving the ἀσύνθετα. This act not being composite (of subject and predicate), like judgment, leaves no room for error: the act simply occurs or does not occur—ἀληθές or ψεῦδος does not enter into the question with it. Meta. 1051b, 16–26 (θιγεῖν, 24–5), 1027b, 21.

[21]   τὰ ἀληθῆ καὶ πρῶτα καὶ ἄμεσα καὶ γνωριμώτερα καὶ πρότερα καὶ αἴτια τοῦ συμπεράσματος, An. Po. i, 2, This ἀμέσων ἐπιστήμη ἀναπόδεικτος (72b, 19) belong to νοῦς. There is only a νοῦς—not an ἐπιστήμη (as being a ἕξις ἀποδεικτική, EN. 1139b, 31)—τῶν ἀρχῶν, τῆς ἀρχῆς τοῦ ἐπιστητοῦ, EN. vi, 6. Thus also νοῦς is ἐπιστήμης ἀρχή, An. Po. 100b, 5–17. τῶν ἀκινήτων ὅρων καὶ πρώτων νοῦς ἐστὶ καὶ οὐ λόγος, EN. 1143b, 1 (cf. MM. 1197a, 20 ff.). 510

[22]   τὸ κύριον, EN. 1178a, 3, and frequently. νοῦς δοκεῖ ἀρχεῖν καὶ ἡγεῖσθαι, 1177a, 14. It rules esp. over ὄρεξις (as ἡ ψυχή does over the σῶμα), Pol. 1254b, 5 (cf. EN. 1102b, 29 ff.).

[23]   A man is called ἐγκρατής or ἀκρατής, τῷ κατεῖν τὸν νοῦν ἢ μή· ὡς τούτου ἑκάστου ὄντος, EN. 1168b, 35. δόξειε δ’ ἄν καὶ εἶναι ἕκαστος τοῦτο (νοῦς), 1178a, 2. τῷ ἀνθρώπῳ δὴ (κράτιστον καὶ ἤδιστον) ὁ κατὰ τὸν νοῦν βίος, εἴπερ τοῦτο μάλιστα ἄνθρωπος (here only in so far as the possession of νοῦς distinguishes men in general from the other ζῷα), 1178a, 6.

[24]   Cicero makes a distinction of this kind between ratio and animus. Off. i, 107 (after Panaetius): intellegendum est, duabus quasi nos a natura indutos esse personis; quarum una communis est ex eo quod omnes participes sumus rationis . . . ; altera autem quae proprie singulis est tributa.

[25]   ἅπαντα τὰ γινόμενα καὶ φθειρόμενα φαίνεται, Cael. 279b, 20. τὸ γενόμενον ἀνάγκη τέλος λαβεῖν, Ph. 203b, 8. But ἅπαν τὸ ἀεὶ ὄν ἁπλως ἄφθαρτον. ὁμοίως δὲ καὶ ἀγένητον, Cael. 281b, 25. εἰ τὸ ἀγένητον ἄφθαρτον καὶ τὸ ἄφθαρτον ἀγένητον, ἀνάγκη καὶ τὸ “ἀΐδιον” ἑκατέρῳ ἀκολουθεῖν, καὶ εἴτε τι ἀγένητον, ἀΐδιον, εἴτε τι ἄφθαρτον, ἀΐδιον κτλ., Cael. 282a, 31 ff. Thus too νοῦς (ἀπαθής) as uncreated is everlasting and imperishable (see Zeller, Sitzb. B. Ak. 1882, p. 1044 f.). It belongs to the imperishable οὐσίαι, which as such are τίμιαι καὶ θεῖαι, PA. 644b, 22 ff.

[26]   ὁ νοῦς ὑπομένει at the separation, Meta. 1070a, 25–6. More strictly this applies to the νοῦς ἀπαθής (ποιητικός). While the νοῦς παθητικός (whose relation to the νοῦς ποιητικός remains most obscure) is φθαρτός, we hear of the νοῦς ποιητικός that it is χωρισθεὶς μόνον τοῦτο ὅπερ ἐτί, καὶ τοῦτο μόνον ἀθάνατον καὶ ἀΐδιον, de An. 430a, 10–25.

[27]   de An. 408b, 18 ff.: νοῦς οὐ φθείρεται, nor ὑπὸ τῆς ἐν τῷ γήρᾳ ἀμαυρώσεως . . . τὸ νοεῖν καὶ τὸ θεωρεῖν μαραίνεται (in old age) ἄλλου τινος ἔσω φθειρομένου (? nothing perishes within τὸ νοεῖν—read ἐν ᾧ as in l. 23 and understand: ἄλλου τινὸς ἐν ᾧ τὸ νοεῖν = ὁ νοῦς, ἔνεστι, i.e. the whole living man), αὐτὸ δὲ ἀπαθές ἐστιν (just as νοῦς is always ἀναλλοίωτον, even its νόησις is no κίνησις, and the λῆψις τῆς ἐπιστήμης makes no ἀλλοίωσις for it: de An. 407a, 32; Ph. 247a, 28; b, 1 ff.; 20 ff.), τὸ δὲ διανοεῖσθαι (thinking and judging) καὶ φιλεῖν ἢ μισεῖν οὐκ ἔστιν ἐκείνου πάθη, ἀλλὰ τοῦδε τοῦ ἔχοντος ἐκεῖνο, ᾗ ἐκεῖνο ἔχει. διὸ καὶ τούτου φθειρομένου οὔτε μνημονεύει οὔτε φιλεῖ, οὐ γὰρ ἐκείνου ἦν, ἀλλὰ τοῦ κοίνου (that which had once been associated with the νοῦς), ὃ ἀπόλωλεν· ὁ δὲ νοῦς ἴσως θειότερόν τι καὶ ἀπαθές ἐστιν. In its separate existence νοῦς has no memory—this at least is meant by οὐ μνημονεύομεν, de An. 430a, 23, however we may be inclined to interpret the rest of the sentence.

[28]   Particularly in the Εὔδημος (frr. 31–40 [37–44]), probably also in the Προτρεπτικός.

[29]   For this must be the meaning of fr. 36 = 44 (Εὔδ.)—the δαίμων is the soul itself; cf. 35 [41].

[30]   de An. 407b, 13–26; 414a, 19–27.—And yet it must be admitted that the νοῦς of Aristotle is itself a τυχόν within another τυχόν—not indeed as a separate entity with any qualities set in a fortuitous vessel of perhaps discordant qualities that do not fit it (which acc. to the Πυθαγόρειος μῦθος was true of the ψυχή in the σῶμα)—but at any rate set within an animated individual with quite definite qualities as a stranger, itself devoid of all definite quality and therefore not capable of having a character specially fitting that individual in which it is placed. Thus, after all, the Aristotelian μῦθος about the νοῦς betrays its origin from the μῦθοι of old theology. 511

[31]   It is only as an argumentum ad hominem that the view is suggested on one occasion, that βέλτιον τῷ νῷ μὴ μετὰ σώματος εἶναι (καθάπερ εἴωθέ τε λέγεσθαι καὶ πολλοῖς συνδοκεῖ), de An. 407b, 4.

[32]   EN. x, 7–9.—δοκεῖ ἡ φιλοσοφία θαυμαστὰς ἡδονὰς ἔχειν καθαριότητι καὶ τῷ βεβαίῳ. εὔλογον δὲ τοῖς εἰδόσι τῶν ζητούντων ἡδίω τὴν διαγωγὴν εἶναι, 1177a, 26. The σοφός requires no σύνεργοι (as the σώφρων and the ἀνδρεῖος do), and is αὐταρκέστατος in himself. The activity of νοῦς is the most valuable as being θεωρητική and because παρ’ αὑτὴν οὐδένος ἐφίεται τέλους. A sufficiently long life of the theoretic activity of νοῦς is τελεία εὐδαιμονία ἀνθρώπου—indeed, this is no longer an ἀνθρώπινος βίος, but rather κρείττων ἢ κατ’ ἄνθρωπον—a θεῖος βίος as νοῦς θεῖόν τι ἐν ἀνθρώπῳ ὑπάρχει. Therefore man must not ἀνθρώπινα φρονεῖν but ἐφ’ ὅσον ἐνδέχεται ἀθανατίζειν (be immortal already in this life) καὶ πάντα ποιεῖν πρὸς τὸ ζῆν κατὰ τὸ κράτιστον τῶν ἐν αὑτῷ (1177b, 31 ff.). This τελεία εὐδαιμονία, as a θεωρητικὴ ἐνέργεια, brings the thinkers near to the gods whose life does not consist in πράττειν (not even virtuous) or ποιεῖν but in pure θεωρία, and this can be so with the life of man (alone among the ζῷα) ἐφ’ ὅσον ὁμοίωμά τι τῆς τοιαύτης (θεωρητικῆς) ἐνεργείας ὑπάρχει (1178b, 7–32). Nowhere do we meet with so much as the shadow of an idea that the εὐδαιμονία of the θεωρητικὸς βίος can only become τελεία in “another” world, or is conceivable as existing elsewhere than in the life on earth. The only condition for τελεία εὐδαιμονία that is made is μῆκος βίου τέλειον (1177b, 25)—nothing lying outside or beyond this life. The θεωρητικὸς βίος has its complete and final development here upon earth.—τέλειος βίος is mentioned as necessary for the obtaining of εὐδαιμονία, EN. 1100a, 5; 1101a, 16. But εὐδαιμονία is completely confined within the limits of earthly life: to call a dead man εὐδαίμονα would be παντελῶς ἄτοπον, for he lacks the ἐνέργεια which is the essence of εὐδαιμονία—only a mere shadow of sensation can belong to the κεκμηκότες (almost the Homeric conception) 1100a, 11–29; 1101a, 22–b, 9.—Since it is impossible for the individual to enjoy an unending permanence and share in τὸ ἀεὶ καὶ θεῖον, it follows that the continuation of the individual after death consists only in the continuance of the εἴδος—not of the αὐτό (which perishes) but only of the οἷον αὐτό which persists in the series of creatures propagated on earth: de An. 415a, 28–b, 7; GA. 731a, 24–b, 1. (Borrowed from the observations of Plato, Smp. 206 C–207 A; cf. also Lg. 721 C, 773 E; Philo, Incor. Mund. 8, ii, p. 495 M., after Kritolaos.) It was much easier for Aristotle to take this conception seriously than it was for Plato with his particular outlook: only for the passing requirements of his dialogue does Plato adopt the Herakleitean view and expand it: see above, chap. xi, n. 16.

[33]   οἶμαι δὲ τοῦ γινώσκειν τὰ ὄντα καὶ φρονεῖν ἀφαιρεθέντος οὐ βίον ἀλλὰ χρόνον εἶναι τὴν ἀθανασίαν, Plu., Is. et Os. i, fin., p. 351 E. Origen (Cels. iii, 80, p. 359 Lom.) draws a clear distinction between the ἀθανασία τῆς ψυχῆς of Platonic doctrine and the Stoic ἐπιδιαμονὴ τῆς ψυχῆς on the one hand—and this Aristotelian doctrine of the τοῦ νοῦ ἀθανασία: οἱ πεισθέντες περὶ τοῦ θύραθεν νοῦ ὡς ἀθανάτου (θανάτου Edd.) καὶ μόνου (καινοῦ Edd.) διαγωγὴν (= βίον) ἔξοντος (—this is how the passage should be read).

[34]   Theophrastos discussed (by the method of ἀπορίαι fashionable with the school) the obscurities and difficulties inherent in the doctrine of νοῦς, particularly of the reduplicated νοῦς, the ποιητικός and the παθητικός. True to his character, however, he adheres to the fixed dogma of his school of the νοῦς χωριστός which ἔξωθεν ὢν καὶ ὥσπερ 512 ἐπίθετος is ὅμως σύμφυτος with man and being ἀγέννητος is also ἄφθαρτος: Frag. 53b, p. 226 ff.; 53, p. 176 Wim. (θεωρία belongs to νοῦς, θιγόντι καὶ οἷον ἁψαμένῳ, and is therefore without ἀπάτη, fr. 12, § 26. The νοῦς is κρεῖττόν τι μέρος [τῆς ψυχῆς] καὶ θειότερον, fr. 53. To the νοῦς and its θεωρία we must suppose the κατὰ δύναμιν ὁμοιοῦσθαι θεῷ to refer—for this is the teaching of Thphr. also: Jul., Or. vi, p. 185 A.) Nowhere is there any indication that for him the immortality of νοῦς had the slightest importance for this life and its conduct. Nor has it any in the ethical doctrine of the very theologically inclined Eudemos. Here the aim of life—the ἀρετὴ τέλειος which is καλολἀγαθία—is said to be ἡ τοῦ θεοῦ θεωρία which is carried on by the νοῦς, τὸ ἐν ἠμῖν θεῖον, 1248a, 27; in this process it is best ἥκιστα αἰσθάνεσθαι τοῦ ἄλλου μέρους τῆς ψυχῆς, 1249b, 22. For the sake of τὸ γνωρίζειν man wishes ζῆν ἀεὶ, 1245a, 9—but upon earth and in the body: there is no thought of the other world. (This would have been quite natural and to be expected of this semi-theological thinker who, e.g. speaks quite seriously of the separability of νοῦς from the λόγος—the ἄλλο μέρος τῆς ψυχῆς—in bodily life and of its higher intuition in enthousiasmos and veracious dreaming: 1214a, 23; 1225a, 28; 1248a, 40.)—To this first generation of Peripatetics belong also Aristoxenos and Dikaiarchos who did not recognize any peculiar substance of the “soul” apart from the “harmony” brought about by the mixture of bodily material. Dik. ἀνῄρηκε τὴν ὅλην ὑπόστασιν τῆς ψυχῆς: Atticus ap. Eus., PE. xv, 810 A. Aristox. and Dik. nullum omnino animum esse dixerunt Cic. TD. 1, 51: 21; 41, etc.; Dik. (in the Λεσβιακοὶ λόγοι) expressly controverted the doctrine of immortality, TD. i, 77. (It remains very remarkable that Dik. who naturally knew nothing of a separabilis animus, TD. i, 21, nevertheless, believed not merely in mantic dreams—that would be just intelligible, ἔχει γάρ τινα λόγον, Arist., P. Nat. 462b ff.—but also in the prophetic power of ἐνθουσιασμός, Cic., Div. i, 5; 113; Dox. 416a, which invariably presupposes the dogma of a special substance of the “soul” and its separability from the body.)—Straton “the naturalist” (d. 270), for whom the soul is an undivided force, inseparable from the body and the αἰσθήσεις, gave up completely the belief in the νοῦς χωριστός of Aristotle: he cannot possibly have held any doctrine of immortality in any form or under any limitations.—Then follows the period of pure scholarship when the Peripatetic school almost gave up philosophy. With the return to the study of the master’s writings (from the time of Aristonikos) they gained a new lease of life. The problems of the parts of the soul, the relation of νοῦς to the soul (and to the νοῦς παθητικός) were discussed once more. It became more and more common, however, to set aside the νοῦς θύραθεν ἐπεισιών (cf. the definition of the soul given by Andronikos ap. Galen π. τ. τῆς ψυχῆς ἠθῶν, iv, 782 f., K.; Themist., de An. ii, 56, 11; 59, 6 Sp.). This meant the denial of immortality (which belonged to νοῦς only): e.g. by Boëthos: Simp., de An. p. 247, 24 ff. Hayd. [Sto. Vet. iii, 267 Arn.]. A different view again, and one which even went beyond Aristotle, was held by Kratippos, the contemporary of Boëthos: Cic., Div. i, 70; cf. 5; 113. Alexander of Aphrodisias the great ἐξηγητής absolutely banished the νοῦς ποιητικός from the human soul. (This is the divine νοῦς, which is perpetually νοῦς and νοητὸν ἐνεργείᾳ, and that, too, already πρὸ τοῦ νοεῖσθαι by the ὑλικὸς νοῦς of man. It enters into the latter θύραθεν—though not locally, for it is incapable of change of place, p. 113, 18 f.—with the individual act of νοεῖν by the νοῦς ὑλικός, but it never becomes a μόριον καὶ δύναμίς τις τῆς 513 ἡμετέρας ψυχῆς: Alex. de An., p. 107–9; p. 90 Br.). For him νοῦς is χωριστός and ἀθάνατος, ἀπαθής, etc., whereas the human soul exactly like the εἶδος of its σῶμα from which it is ἀχωριστός perishes at death together with its νοῦς ὑλικός, completely: συμφθείρεται τῷ σώματι, de An., p. 21, 22 f.; p. 90, 16 f. The individual soul thus perishes: the imperishable νοῦς had not communicated itself to the individual.—The indestructibility of the individual νοῦς of man (and this was indubitably what Aristotle himself taught), a doctrine derived not from experience but from pure logical inference, had in reality no serious significance for the general teaching of the Peripatetics so long as they preserved their independence. Finally, indeed, they too were swallowed up in the ferment of Neoplatonism.

[35]   ἕξις, φύσις, ἄλογος ψυχή, ψυχὴ λόγον ἔχουσα καὶ διάνοιαν, Plu., Virt. Mor. 451 BC and A. Through all these and all things in which these are—διήκει ὁ νοῦς, D.L. vii, 138 f. [ii, p. 192 Arn.].

[36]   Our soul an ἀπόσπασμα of the ἔμψυχος κόσμος, D.L. vii, 143 [ii, 191 Arn.]. We often find the soul of man called an ἀπόσπασμα τοῦ θεοῦ (Διός), θεία ἀπόμοιρα, ἀπόρροια (see Gataker on M. Ant., pp. 48, 211; Ed. 1652)—and often even θεός (see Bonhöffer, Epiktet u. d. Stoa, p. 76 f.).

[37]   (ἡ ψυχὴ) ἀραιότερον πνεῦμα τῆς φύσεως καὶ λεπτομέρεστερον . . . Chrysipp. ap. Plu., Stoic. Rep. 41, p. 1052 F [ii, 222 Arn.]. “Nature” is πνεῦμα that has become moist, soul the same πνεῦμα which has remained dry (Galen, iv, 783 f. K. [p. 218 Arn.]).

[38]   The βρέφος is created as a φύτον, and only afterwards becomes a ζῷον by περίψυξις (derivation of ψυχή hence!). Chrysipp. ap. Plu., Stoic. Rep. 1052 F [p. 222 Arn.]. Thus comes ἐκ φύσεως ψυχή, Plu., Prim. Frig. ii, p. 946 C.

[39]   It would almost be possible to employ the semi-Stoic language of Philo to describe the soul as conceived by this Stoic Pantheism: τῆς θείας ψυχῆς ἀπόσπασμα οὐ διαιρετόν (τέμνεται γὰρ οὐδὲν τοῦ θείου κατ’ ἀπάρτησιν, ἀλλὰ μόνον ἐκτείνεται), Q. Det. Pot. Insid., 24, i, p. 209 M. But in orthodox Stoic doctrine the idea prevails that the individual ἀποσπάσματα are completely detached from the universal θεῖον—but at the same time without denial of ultimate connexion with the “All” and the “One”.

[40]   Acc. to the older Stoical doctrine as systematized by Chrysippos the soul is absolutely simple and unified, having sprung from the universal Reason of God which contains no ἄλογον. Its impulses (ὁρμαί) must on this view be rational just as much as its willed decisions (κρίσεις): it is affected from without by φύσις, which, being itself a development of the highest reason, God, can only be good and rational. It is quite impossible to conceive how, on the principles of the older Stoicism, erroneous judgment or excessive and evil impulses could arise. ἡ τῆς κακίας γένεσις is rendered unintelligible as Poseidonios maintains in opposition to the subtle observations of Chrysipp. on this head (see Schmekel, Phil. d. mittl. Stoa, p. 327 ff.).

[41]   ἀκολούθως τῇ φύσει ζῆν (but our φύσεις are μέρη τῆς τοῦ ὅλου), i.e. in harmony with the κοίνος νόμος ὅσπερ ἐστὶν ὁ ὀρθὸς λόγος ὁ διὰ πάντων ἐρχόμενος, ὁ αὐτὸς ὢν τῷ Διί, καθηγεμόνι τούτῳ τῆς τῶν ὅλων διοικήσεως ὄντι, Chrysipp. ap. D.L. vii, 87–8 [iii, 3 Arn.]. This obedience to the rational order and governance of the world—the deum sequere, Sen., VB. 15, 5; Ep. 16, 5; ἕπεσθαι θεοῖς, Epict. i, 12, 5, etc.—is more often regarded as a passive attitude of self-abandonment adopted consciously and with συγκατάθεσις: χρῶ μοι λοιπὸν εἰς ὃ ἂν θέλῃς. ὁμογνωμονῶ σοι, σός εἰμι κτλ., Epict. ii, 16, 42. θέλε γίνεσθαι τὰ 514 γινόμενα ὡς γίνεται, καὶ εὐροήσεις (this sounds very like “make God’s will your own will”), Ench. 8. Much the same idea occurs already in the lines of Kleanthes ἄγου δέ μ’ ὧ Ζεῦ καὶ σύ γ’ ἡ Πεπρωμένη κτλ. [i, 118 Arn.]. But such “affirmation of the universe”, understood in the full pantheistic sense (cf. Kleanthes τὴν κοινὴν μόνην ἐκδέχεται φύσιν ᾗ δεῖ ἀκολουθεῖν, οὐκέτι δὲ καὶ τὴν ἐπὶ μέρους, D.L. vii, 89 [i, 126 Arn.]), could not lead to an ethical teaching of active character and concrete substance.

[42]   The σοφός is ἐλεύθερος· εἶναι γὰρ τὴν ἐλευθερίαν ἐξουσίαν αὐτοπραγίας, D.L. vii, 121. Laws and constitutions do not apply to him: Cic., Ac. Pri. ii, 136.

[43]   Enemies and strangers are μὴ σπουδαῖοι to one another—πολῖται καὶ φίλοι καὶ οἰκεῖοι οἱ σπουδαῖοι μόνον. Zeno, ἐν τῇ Πολιτείᾳ, ap. D.L. vii, 32–3 [i, 54 Arn.].

[44]   ὁ παρ’ ἑκάστῳ δαίμων which one must keep in harmony πρὸς τὴν τοῦ τῶν ὅλων διοικητοῦ βούλησιν, D.L. vii, 88, after Chrysipp. [iii, 4 Arn.]. In the later Stoic literature, the only part of it which has come down to us, we often hear of this δαίμων of the individual—sacer intra nos spiritus (Sen., Epict., M. Ant.: see Bonhöffer, Epiktet, 83). It is generally spoken of in language that seems to regard it as something separable from the man or his soul, including the ἡγεμονικόν; Zeus παρέστησεν ἐπίτροπον ἑκάστῳ τὸν ἑκάστου δαίμονα καὶ παρέδωκε φυλάσσειν αὐτὸν αὐτῷ κτλ., Epict. i, 14, 12. ὁ δαίμων ὂν ἑκάστῳ προστάτην καὶ ἡγεμόνα ὁ Ζεὺς ἔδωκεν, M. Ant. v, 27. ἀνάκρινον τὸ δαιμόνιον, Epict. iii, 22, 53 (one can ask questions of it, as Sokrates did of his δαιμόνιον, as something other and different from oneself). This δαίμων then does not seem to be simply identifiable with the “soul” of man like the daimon in man of which the theologians speak. It is conceived and spoken of in language that suggests rather the “protecting spirit” of a man as known to popular belief (cf. now Usener, Götternamen, 294 ff.). ἅπαντι δαίμων ἀνδρὶ συμπαρίσταται εὐθὺς γενομένῳ μυσταγωγὸς τοῦ βίου, Menand. 550 K. (where the idea of two daimonic partners in the life of man is already rejected: Eukleides Socr. had spoken of such, cf. Censor., DN. iii, 3, and in a different way again Phocyl., fr. 15). Plato himself speaks (with a λέγεται) of the δαίμων ὅσπερ ζῶντα εἰλήχει (and guides the departed soul into Hades): Phd. 107 D. The idea, however, must have been much older: it appears fairly clearly expressed in Pindar’s words, O. xiii, 28 (Ζεῦ πάτηῤ), Ξενόφωντος εὔθυνε δαίμονος οὖρον, where the transition to the meaning “fate” for the word δαίμων has not yet been completed. Later (with the Tragedians and other poets) this use became very common, but even then still presupposes the belief in such personal daimonic partners in the life of man: the use would have been quite impossible otherwise. (δαίμων = πότμος, Pi., P. v, 121 f., and already in Thgn. 161, 163. When Herakleitos says ἦθος ἀνθρώπῳ δαίμων, fr. 121 By., 119 D. he uses δαίμων in the sense of fortune in life. The word means both ἦθος and condition of life at the same time in Pl., Rp. 617 E, οὐχ ὑμᾶς δαίμων λήξεται, ἀλλ’ ὑμεῖς δαίμονα αἱρήσεσθε, where the derivation of the metaphorical use of the word δαίμων from a belief in a special daimon belonging to the individual man can still be seen plainly. See also [Lys.] Epit. (2), 78. But the metaphorical use comes as early as Θ 166, πάρος τοι δαίμονα δώσω = πότμον ἐφήσω.)—The personal existence of the daimon is still far removed from all danger of such abstraction in a very remarkable case: in Halikarnassos Poseidonios and his ἔκγονοι decide that on the first day of the month they will offer Δαίμονι ἀγαθῷ Ποσειδωνίου . . . κριόν (Gr. Ins. in Br. Mus. 515 iv, 1, n. 896, p. 70, l. 35. The inscr. seems to date from the third century B.C.). Here then offering is made to the ἀγαθὸς δαίμων (see above, chap. v, n. 133) of the living, just as offering was made on birthdays, and at other times also, to the genius of Romans; ἀγ. δ. is here clearly equivalent to genius. Apollo whose advice had been sought at his oracle had expressly enjoined (ib., l. 9) . . . τιμᾶν καὶ ἱλάσκεσθαι καὶ ἀγαθὸν δαίμονα Ποσειδωνίου καὶ Γόργιδος (the latter, P.’s mother, seems to have been already dead: l. 34).—This special δαίμων attached to individuals with whom it can be contrasted (as Brutus can be with his δαίμων κακός: Plu., Brut. 36) is distinct from the individual’s ψυχή, though it is natural to suppose that it may have arisen from the projection of the ψυχή—conceived as very independent—outside the man himself, in which it would again resemble the Roman genius. (The daimonic φύλακες of Hesiod [cf. above, p. 67 ff.], belong to quite a different range of ideas.) At any rate the Stoics had this analogous popular conception in mind when they spoke of the παρ’ ἑκάστῳ δαίμων as something different from the man himself and his ἡγεμονικόν. They use it, however, only as a figure of speech. The δαίμων of the individual really means for them “the original, ideal personality as contrasted with the empirical personality” (as Bonhöffer very rightly puts it: Epikt. 84)—the character the man already is ideally but must become actually (γένοι’ οἷος ἐσσί . . .). Thus the δαίμων is distinct from the ψυχή (διάνοια) and yet identical with it. It is a semi-allegorical play upon the idea of the δαίμων as individual genius and at the same time as crown or summit of the human personality—just as Plato had used the word already incidentally, Tim. 90 A. Finally—for the Stoics did not seriously wish to establish the existence of an independent protecting deity that enters man from without and rules over him—the ἡγεμονικόν is the same as the δαίμων. Thus in M. Ant. iv, 27, the δαίμων is completely identical with the ἀπόσπασμα Διός, and the ἑκάστου νοῦς καὶ λόγος (cf. also iii, 3 fin.; ii, 13; 17; iii, 7, τὸν ἑαυτοῦ νοῦν καὶ δαίμονα). The fact, however, that this ἀπόσπασμα τοῦ θεοῦ can be called a δαίμων bears witness to a tendency to conceive the soul-spirit as something independent and more cut off and separated from the common and original source of divinity than was possible for Stoic pantheism of the stricter sort (to which the terms ἀπόσπασμα, ἀπόρροια τοῦ θεοῦ were more apt). A decided approximation was thus made to the theological idea of the “soul” as an individual daimon which persists in its separate existence. To this view Poseidonios went over completely: he regards the individual δαίμων that lives in man as συγγενὴς ὢν τῷ τὸν ὅλον κόσμον διοικοῦντι (Pos. ap. Gal. v, 469), and no longer as the dependent ἀπόσπασμα of the latter, but as one of many independent and individually characterized spirits that have lived from all time in the air and enter into man at birth. (See Bonhöffer, Epikt. 79–80, and also Schmekel, Phil. d. mittl. Stoa, 249 ff., 256.)

[45]   ὁ θάνατος ἐστι χωρισμὸς ψυχῆς ἀπὸ σώματος . . . Chrysipp. ap. Nemes., NH., p. 81 Matth.; Zeno and Chrysipp. ap. Tert., An. 5 [ii, 219 Arn.].

[46]   Everything comes into being and perishes, including the gods, ὁ δὲ Ζεὺς μόνος ἀΐδιός ἐστι, Chrysipp. ap. Plu., Sto. Rep. 38, p. 1052 A; Comm. Not. 31, p. 1075 A ff. [ii, 309 Arn.].—ἐπιδιαμονὴ but not ἀθανασία of the human soul [ib., 223].

[47]   Κλεάνθης μὲν οὖν πάσας (τὰς ψυχὰς) ἐπιδιαμένειν (λέγει) μέχρι τῆς ἐκπυρώσεως, Χρύσιππος δὲ τὰς τῶν σοφῶν μόνον, D.L. vii, 157. 516 A statement often repeated without mention of the two authorities: Arius Did. ap. Eus., PE. 15, 20, 6, p. 822 A–C (the ψυχαὶ τῶν ἀφρόνων καὶ ἀλόγων ζῴων perish immediately with the death of the body, C) and others [ii, 223 Arn.]. Chrysippos’ doctrine comes also in Tac., Agr. 46, si ut sapientibus placet non cum corpore extinguuntur magnae animae (αἱ μεγάλαι ψυχαί, Plu., Def. Or. 18, p. 419 f.); cf. omnium quidem animos immortalis esse sed fortium bonorumque divinos, Cic., Leg. ii, 27, not quite accurately put.

[48]   The ἀσθενεστέρα ψυχή (αὕτη δέ ἐστι τῶν ἀπαιδεύτων) perishes sooner, ἡ δὲ ἰσχυροτέρα, οἷα ἐστὶ περὶ τοὺς σοφούς remains μέχρι τῆς ἐκπυρώσεως, [Plu.] Plac. Phil., 4, 7 ap. Dox. 393a.

[49]   The predominance of the materialistic point of view is remarkable in those Stoici who acc. to Seneca, Ep. 57, 7, existimant animum hominis magno pondere extriti permanere non posse et statim spargi, quia non fuerit illi exitus liber (which reminds us of the popular belief that the soul of one who has died in a high wind εὐθὺς διαπεφύσηται καὶ ἀπόλωλεν, Pl., Phd. 70 A, 80 D, see above, chap. xiii, n. 5).

[50]   οὐ τὰ σώματα τὰς ψυχὰς συνέχει ἀλλ’ αἱ ψυχαὶ τὰ σώματα, ὥσπερ καὶ ἡ κόλλα καὶ ἑαυτὴν καὶ τὰ ἐκτὸς κρατεῖ, Poseidon. ap. Ach. Tat., Isag., p. 133 E Petav., borrowed from Arist. (de An. 1, 5, 411b, 7), but a thoroughly Stoic idea as contrasted with Epicurean doctrine (see Heinze, Xenokrates, 100 f.).

[51]   S.E., M. ix, 71–3. The naive but quite plain statements go back to Poseid. as has often been pointed out (e.g. by Corssen, de Pos. Rhod., p. 45, 1878, and others). So, too, do the similar remarks in Cic., TD. i, 42. Poseid. does not appear to be uttering heterodox opinions in this case, so far as we can see.

[52]   —καὶ γὰρ οὐδὲ τὰς ψυχὰς ἔνεστιν ὑπονοῆσαι κάτω φερομένας. λεπτομερεῖς γὰρ οὖσαι εἰς τοὺς ἄνω μᾶλλον τόπους κουφοφοροῦσιν, S.E., M. ix, 71. This physical reason was in itself enough to make it impossible for the Stoics to believe in a subterranean region of the souls: οὐδεὶς Ἅιδης, οὐδ’ Ἀχέρων, οὐδὲ Κωκυτός κτλ., Epict. iii, 13, 15. It is the regular Stoic doctrine: see Bonhöffer, Epikt. 56 f.; cf. Cic., TD. i, 36 f.; Sen., C. ad Marc. 19, 4. When Stoics speak occasionally of inferi or ᾅδης as the abode of the souls, they are only using metaphorical language. When the word is not a mere conventionalism, they mean the regions nearer the earth, the cloud regions and lower levels of the air, ὁ παχυμερέστατος καὶ προσγειότατος ἀήρ (Corn., ND. 5, p. 4, 17 L; other exx. in Heinze, Xenokr. 147, 2). Here the “unwise” souls (the moister, less buoyant ones) are supposed to remain after death (circa terram as Tert., An. 54 says, alluding to Stoic doctrine—and this is obviously where the inferi mentioned at the end of the same chapter are situated). This ἀήρ (distinguished from the higher regions of the air) = ᾅδης, must have been what Zeno referred to when he spoke of the loca tenebrosa where the souls of the unwise have to expiate their folly (quoted and varied by Lact., Inst. 7, 7, 13, in a Platonic sense [i, 40 Arn.]).

[53]   Abode of the souls in the air: S. E., M. ix, 73; Cic., TD. i, 42–3, both probably after Poseid. Cf. sapientum animas in supernis mansionibus collocant (Stoici), Tert., An., 54. Generally: εἰς τὸν ἀέρα μεθίστασθαι said of the departed souls, M. Ant. iv, 21. ἐν τῷ περιέχοντι . . . διαμένειν τὰς τῶν ἀποθανόντων ψυχάς, Ar. Did. ap. Eus., PE. xv, 822 A [ii, 225 Arn.]. (Gradual ascent to ever higher regions, Sen., C. ad Marc. 25, 1—hardly orthodox Stoic doctrine).—The conception may possibly belong to the older Stoicism, and may underlie the opinion of Chrysipp.: σφαιροειδεῖς—as fiery μετέωρα—τὰς ψυχὰς 517 μετὰ θάνατον γίνεσθαι, ap. Eust., Il. 1288, 10 f. [224 Arn.]. Poseid. seems to have worked it out further, probably making use also of Pythagorean and Platonic fancies to which he was distinctly inclined. The Pythagoreans had fancies about the souls hovering in the air (see above, chap. xi, n. 35), of the sun and moon as places where the souls lived (chap. x, n. 76). Acc. to Poseid. the souls inhabit τὸν ὑπὸ σελήνην τόπον (S.E., M. ix, 73) as suitable for divine but not perfect creatures. It is the souls who are meant when people speak of δαίμονες (S.E. § 74), or ἥρωες (Stoic in this use D.L. vi, 151 [ii, 320 Arn.]); cf. heroes et lares et genii, Varro using Stoic language (ap. Aug., CD. vii, 6, p. 282, 14 Domb.). The whole air is full of them: Pos. ap. Cic., Div. i, 64. Something very similar given as Pythag. doctrine by Alex. Polyh. ap. D.L. viii, 32; see above, chap. xi, n. 35. But Poseidonios (esp. if he is really the source of the Ciceronian Somn. Scip.) seems to have emulated more particularly the imaginative efforts of Herakleides Pont. and his story of Empedotimos’ vision (see above, chap. ix, n. 111). Herakl. contributed largely to popularizing the idea that the souls inhabit the air and giving it shape; the interest with which his fancies were studied is shown by the quotations from his book so common from Varro down to Proclus and Damascius. He must have been led to make the souls, on being freed from the body, float upwards (and occupy the stars or the moon—which are inhabitable heavenly bodies: Dox. 343, 7 ff.; 356a, 10) by the view—just as the Stoics after him were—that the soul is an αἰθέριον σῶμα (Philop.)—φωτοειδής, a lumen, Tert., An. 9. In this he is following an idea that had been common in the fifth century (held by Xenophanes, Epicharmos, Eurip.: see above, p. 436 ff.), and had even attained popular vogue. This idea from the very first led to the conclusion that the soul, when ready for it, enters εἰς τὸν ὅμοιον αἰθέρα and ascends to the upper regions (of the aether). Herakleides carried this idea further and embellished it with philosophical and astronomical fancies. (On another occasion he seems to have denied substance and consistency to individual “souls”: Plu., Mor. v, p. 699 Wytt.—a view to which his doctrine of the ὄγκοι might easily have led him.) Poseidonios then took up this idea of Herakl. In this way, or at least not uninfluenced by this semi-philosophical literature, the belief in the abode of the “souls” in the aether attained the popularity that grave inscriptions witness for it (see below, ch. xiv, 2, n. 135).

[54]   Cicero, following Poseid., imagines a blissful observation of the earth and the stars by the souls in the air: TD. i, 44–7 (cf. Sen., C. ad Marc. 25, 1–2); and similarly in Somn. Sci.; in both cases the idea certainly comes from Herakl. Pont.

[55]   ἀπόσπασμα τοῦ θεοῦ [i, 36 Arn.].

[56]   A frequently repeated Stoic dogma (stated with particular fullness by Senec., Ep. 93): see Gataker on M. Ant. (iii, 7), p. 108–9. The happiness of the (Stoic) wise man does not require μῆκος βίου τέλειου as Aristot. had maintained (see above, n. 32). In this point Stoic and Epicurean doctrine fully agreed: magni artificis est clusisse totum in exiguo: tantum sapienti sua, quantum deo omnis aetas patet (Sen., Ep. 53, 11, and see below, n. 92).

[57]   Acc. to Panaitios there are duo genera in the soul which he calls inflammata anima (Cic., TD. i, 42). It is at any rate very probable that Panaitios (and Boëthos—roughly contemporary with Pan.: see Comparetti, Ind. Stoic., p. 78 f.—acc. to Macr., in S. Scip. 1, 14, 20) regarded the soul as compounded of two elements, aer et ignis, not 518 as a single and uncompounded πνεῦμα ἔνθερμον as the older Stoa had taught (see Schmekel, Philos. d. mittl. Stoa, 324 f.).

[58]   φύσις and ψυχή: Pan. ap. Nemes., NH., p. 212 Matth. This clearly shows a tendency to a psychological dualism: Zeller, Stoics and Epicureans, p. 542 f. What further suggestions were made by Pan. about the division of the soul remains very problematical. The only more precise statement is Cicero’s, TD. i, 80 (speaking of Pan.), aegritudines iras libidinesque semotas a mente et disclusas putat.

[59]   Panaitios denied not merely the immortality but even the διαμονή of the soul after death: Cic., TD. i, 78–9. Two reasons are there given: everything that has come into being (like the soul of man at birth) must also perish—the Aristotelian principle: see above, n. 25; what can feel pain (as the soul does) must become diseased and what is diseased must eventually perish. (Here the destruction of the soul from its own inward decay is asserted—not from the effect of external force at the world conflagration, the periodic occurrence of which Pan. at least called in question.) Acc. to Schmekel (mittl. Stoa, p. 309) it follows from Cic., TD. i, 42, that Panaitios also added a third argument: that the soul being composite must suffer the dissolution of its parts in death which change into other elements. This does not indeed at all follow from the passage, but such a view would almost have been inevitable with Panaitios’ doctrine of the soul and had already been suggested by Karneades in his polemic against the indestructibility of the divine and of every ζῷον—an argument to which Pan. on the whole yielded.

[60]   Poseidonios distinguished in the human soul not three parts but three δυνάμεις μιᾶς οὐσίας ἐκ τῆς καρδίας ὁρμωμένης (Gal. v, 515), namely, the Platonic three, the λογιστικόν, θυμοειδές, ἐπιθυμητικόν (Gal. v, 476). The last two are the δυνάμεις ἄλογοι (they only give φαντασίαι the special forms taken by their impulses: Gal. v, 474, 399). The πάθη are not judgments nor the consequences of judgment but the motions (κινήσεις) of these δυνάμεις ἄλογοι (Gal. v, 429; cf. 378). In this way alone is it possible to understand how passion or wrong-doing can arise in man; it is because soul is not (as Chrysipp. had taught) pure reasoning power (cf. also Gal. iv, 820). There exists then in man an ἄλογον καὶ κακόδαιμον καὶ ἄθεον in addition to the δαίμων συγγενὴς τῷ τὸν ὅλον κόσμον διοικοῦντι: Gal. v, 469 f. How, indeed, this is possible when the soul is a single οὐσία and in its nature nothing but divine πνεῦμα it is difficult to say.—Pos. too was quite ignorant of an evil principle in the world, not the divine or contrary to the divine principle. The ethical teaching of Stoicism had always contained a dualism which is here transferred to the physical doctrine where it was originally unknown. From the time of Pos. there is an ever growing tendency to emphasize the contrast (which was, however, always familiar to the older Stoics as well) between “soul” and “body”, the inutilis caro ac fluida, Pos. ap. Sen., Ep. 92, 10. In view of this contrast the “soul” too is no longer said to come into being with the body or with the physical conception of the individual (cf. γεγονέναι τὴν ψυχὴν καὶ μεταγενεστέραν εἶναι [τοῦ σώματος], Chrysipp. ap. Plu., Sto. Rep. 1053 D [ii, 222 Arn.]), but rather to have been living before that, in the separate life of the divine. It is nowhere expressly or authoritatively stated that Poseidonios held the “pre-existence” of the “soul”; but that view has been rightly attributed to him, fitting in as it does with his other ideas, and because it is often introduced and taken for granted in those passages where 519 Cicero or Seneca are following Pos. (see Corssen, de Pos. Rhod., p. 25 ff. But we may not read the doctrine of pre-existence into S.E., M. ix, 71, as Heinze, Xenok. 134, 2, does). If the soul-δαίμων was in existence before its incarnation it can presumably only enter the body with the conception of the individual life θύραθεν, tractus extrinsecus as Cic. puts it, Div. ii, 119; a passage obviously related (as Bonhöffer, Epikt. 79 remarks) to the statement in Div. i, 64, where he is speaking of the immortales animi of which the air is full—and there Pos. is mentioned by name as the authority. From its pre-existent life in the air the “soul” enters into man. The multitude of individual bodiless souls—not only the one impersonal soul-substance of the world—were thus living before their ἐνσωμάτωσις, and the Stoic pantheism thus turns into a rather questionable “pandaemonism”. On the other hand, Poseidonios in opposition to his teacher, Panaitios, adheres to the doctrine of the periodic extinction of all life in the one Soul of the World, the original Fire: cf. Dox. 388a, 18; b, 19. Holding this view he cannot very well have put the origin of each of the individual soul-daimones before the beginning of the particular world-period in which they live. Nor can the survival of the souls after their separation from the body be prolonged beyond the next ἐκπύρωσις (which makes Cicero’s immortales animi inexact: Div. i, 64, after Pos.). Thus, although the survival which Panaitios had denied is reaffirmed it does not go beyond the qualified doctrine of immortality which the older Stoics had held. At the same time Pos. could hold, with Chrysipp. and other Stoics, that there was a περιοδικὴ παλιγγενεσία (M. Ant. xi, 1) after the world-conflagration and even that each individual man of the previous world-period would be restored again in precisely the same place (Chrysipp. ap. Lact., Inst. 7, 23, 3, etc.; ii, 189 Arn.; cf. the Orphico-Pythagorean fantasy: above, chap. x, n. 47). But this would not amount to an ἀθανασία for the individual: the individual life has been interrupted and is separated from its ἀποκατάστασις by a long interval of time.—There is no satisfactory reason for assigning to Pos. the belief in a series of μετενσωματώσεις of the soul—as Heinze does, Xen. 132 ff.—though such an idea would not have been hard to arrive at, even while holding fast to the doctrine of the final ἐκπύρωσις. But the dubious accounts given by many δοξογράφοι of Stoic teaching on the question of the μεταγγισμὸς ψυχῶν need not necessarily refer to Poseidonios: nor are we bound to draw this conclusion because they reappear in Plutarch. Plu. does indeed here and there follow Poseidonios, but he never hesitates to add Platonic ideas or fancies of his own invention, a fact which makes it most risky to attempt to fix an exact source for any particular detail in his variegated mosaic.

[61]   Schmekel (Phil. d. mittl. Stoa, 1892) maintains convincingly that Panaitios was led to his view of the nature and fate of the soul chiefly by the polemic of Karneades against the dogmatic philosophers and particularly the Stoics. It is less certain that Poseidonios and his heterodox views are influenced by respect for Karneades. It is certain, however, that Pos. differs from Chrysipp., and still more from Panaitios. There is thus an indirect connexion between him and Karneades, to whose criticisms Panaitios had in the most essential points given way.

[62]   That Pos. is being used in the first book of Tusc. Disp. is admitted on all hands (as to the extent of that use conjecture may indeed be various). It is at least very possible in the case of Somn. Scip. (see Corssen, Pos. 40 ff.).—The attraction of such theories of immortality 520 remained an aesthetic one with Cicero (and probably among all the cultured of his age and social circle). Where he is not speaking rhetorically or in pursuance of a literary pose—in his letters esp.—he shows no trace of the conviction that he defends at other times with so much ardour (see Boissier, Rel. rom. d’Aug. aux Ant. i, 58 f.).

[63]   οὐ κατὰ ψιλὴν παράταξιν, ἀλλὰ λελογισμένως καὶ σεμνῶς though not always quite ἀτραγῴδως (M. Ant. xi, 3).

[64]   Julius Kanus when condemned to death by Gaius only attempts to enquire whether there is any truth in the belief in immortality: Sen., Tr. An. 14, 8–9. De natura animae et dissociatione spiritus corporisque inquirebat Thrasea Paetus, before his execution, with his instructor Demetrius the Cynic: Tac., A. xvi, 34. They have no firm conviction in these matters that might serve to explain or account for their heroism (Cato reads the Phaedo before his suicide: Plu., Cat. min. 68, 70).

[65]   nos quoque felices animae et aeterna sortitae says the soul of her father to Marcia: Sen., C. ad Marc. 26, 7, in antiqua elementa vertemur at the ἐκπύρωσις.

[66]   Sen., Ep. 88, 34.

[67]   bellum somnium, Sen., Ep. 102, 2.

[68]   Where Seneca admits more positive conceptions of a life after death he never goes beyond a fortasse, si modo vera sapientium fama est (Ep. 63, 16); a deliberate concession to the consensus hominum (Ep. 117, 6) or the opiniones magnorum virorum rem gratissimam promittentium magis quam probantium (Ep. 102, 3). Following the conventional style of consolatory discourses he gives such expressions a more vivid turn in the Consolationes: e.g. Marc. 25, 1 ff.; Helv. 11, 7; Polyb. 9, 8. But even there the idea of personal immortality hardly seems to be taken seriously. In the same pieces death is commended simply as putting an end to all pain, and, in fact, to all sensation: Marc. 19, 4–5. In death we become again as we were before being born, Marc. 19, 5; cf. Ep. 54, 4, mors est non esse, id quale sit iam scio. hoc erit post me quod ante me fuit; and Ep. 77, 11, non eris: nec fuisti. So that whether death is a finis or a transitus, (Prov. 6, 6; Ep. 65, 24), it is equally welcome to the wise man who has made the most of his life, however short it may have been. Whether he goes then to the gods or whether on the other hand nothing is left of the mortal creature after death aeque magnum animum habebit (Ep. 93, 10); cf. nunquam magis divinum est (pectus humanum) quam ubi mortalitatem suam cogitat, et scit in hoc natum hominem ut vita defungeretur cet., (Ep. 120, 14); ipsum perire non est magnum, anima in expedito est habenda (QN. 6, 32, 5); to be ready is everything.—Of the old Stoic dogmas the only one that seems to remain certain for Seneca is that of παλιγγενεσία at the new creation of the world, Ep. 36, 10–11: mors intermittit vitam, non eripit: venit iterum qui nos in lucem reponat dies; but that is not in any way a consolation: multi recusarent nisi oblitos reduceret. Consciousness ceases with the coming of death in this world-period.

[69]   It is very rarely that the utterances of the Emperor on the subject of what happens after death resemble those of a convinced Stoic of the old school. The souls are all parts of the one νοερὰ ψυχή of the world which though extended over so many individual souls yet remains a unity (ix, 8; xii, 30). After death the individual soul will survive for a period in the air until it is merged into the universal soul εἰς τὸν τῶν ὅλων σπερματικὸν λόγον (iv, 21). This implies the survival of the personal self for an undefined period, but it is 521 not a fixed conviction of M. Ant. As a rule he allows the choice between σβέσις ἢ μετάστασις, i.e. immediate extinction and merging of the individual soul (Panait.) or its removal into a temporary abode of the souls in the air (αἱ εἰς τὸν ἀέρα μεθιστάμεναι ψυχαί, iv, 21; cf. v, 53). Or else the choice is between σβέσις, μετάστασις (both in agreement with the Stoic doctrine of the ἕνωσις of the soul) or σκεδασμός of the soul-elements, in case the atomists are right (vii, 32; viii, 25; vi, 24)—a dilemma which really comes down to σκεδασμός or σβέσις (= ληφθῆναι εἰς τοὺς κόσμου σπερματικοὺς λόγους); and μετάστασις falls out. This is probably the meaning also of x, 7: ἤτοι σκεδασμὸς στοιχείων ἢ τροπή (in which τὸ πνευματικόν disappears εἰς τὸ ἀερῶδες) and τροπή only of the last πνευματικόν that man preserves in himself: for here (at the end of the chapter) the identity of the individual soul with itself is given up in the Herakleitean manner (see above, p. 370). Sometimes the choice is presented between ἀναισθησία or ἕτερος βίος after death (iii, 3) or αἴσθησις ἑτεροία in an ἀλλοῖον ζῷον (viii, 58). This is no allusion to metempsychosis (in which the envelope into which the soul goes is another but its αἴσθησις does not become ἑτεροία): it means the turning of the soul-pneuma, exhaled in death, to new forms of life united to the previous forms by no identity of soul-personality. In this case we can indeed say τοῦ ζῆν οὐ παύσῃ: but there can be no idea of the survival of the personal ego. ἡ τῶν ὅλων φύσις exchanges and redistributes its elements; all things are changing (viii, 6; ix, 28). The Emperor never seriously thinks of the survival of personality; he seeks rather to inquire why things are as they are; but he never doubts that as a matter of fact even the noblest of mankind must also “go out” completely with death (xii, 5). Everything changes and one thing perishes to make way for another (xii, 21); and so each man must say to himself μετ’ οὐ πολὺ οὐδεὶς οὐδαμοῦ ἔσῃ (xii, 21; viii, 5). The wise man will say it with calmness: his soul is ἕτοιμος ἐὰν ἤδη ἀπολυθῆναι δέῃ τοῦ σώματος . . . xi, 3. Living among men to whom his way of thought is strange (ἐν τῇ διαφωνίᾳ τῆς συμβιώσεως) he sighs at times θᾶττον ἔλθοις, ὦ θάνατε . . . ix, 3; cf. Bonhöffer, Epikt. u. d. Stoa, 59 ff.

[70]   I shall die without resisting God εἰδὼς ὅτι τὸ γενόμενον καὶ φθαρῆναι δεῖ. οὐ γάρ εἰμι αἰὼν ἀλλ’ ἄνθρωπος, μέρος τῶν πάντων ὡς ὥρα ἡμέρας· ἐνστῆναί με δεῖ ὡς τὴν ὥραν καὶ παρελθεῖν ὡς ὥραν, Epictet. ii, 5, 13. The present must make way for the future ἵν’ ἡ περίοδος ἀνύηται τοῦ κόσμου, ii, 17–18; iv, 1, 106. Death brings with it not complete destruction, οὐκ ἀπώλειαν, but τῶν προτέρων εἰς ἕτερα μεταβολάς, iii, 24, 91–4. But the personality of the now living individual does indeed perish completely in death.—Cf. Bonhöffer, Epiktet, 65 f.; cf. also the same author’s Ethik des Epiktet, p. 26 ff., 52 (1894).

[71]   Cornutus ap. Stob., Ecl. i, 383, 24–384, 2 W.

[72]   The ψυχή a σῶμα (the only ἀσώματον is empty space which is merely a passage way for the σώματα), D.L, x, 67 [p. 21 Us.]. It is a σῶμα λεπτομερές, παρ’ ὅλον τὸ ἄθροισμα (i.e. of atoms to a body) παρεσπαρμένον, προσεμφερέστατον δὲ πνεύματι θερμοῦ τινα κρᾶσιν ἔχοντι, D.L. x, 63. Cf. Lucr. iii, 126 ff.; more precise is iii, 231–46. It is the ἄθροισμα which τὴν ψυχὴν στεγάζει, D.L. x, 64. vas quasi constitit eius, Lucr. iii, 440, 555.

[73]   Lucr. iii, 94 ff., 117 ff.

[74]   The ἄλογον ὃ ἐν τῷ λοιπῷ παρέσπαρται σώματι, τὸ δὲ λογικὸν ἐν τῷ θώρακι, Sch. D.L. x, 67 (p. 21 Us.), fr. 312, 313 Us. anima and animus, Lucr. iii, 136 ff. The anima, though it is diminished 522 when the man loses his limbs (in which it inheres), yet allows him to remain alive. The animus, however, vitai claustra coercens, must not be diminished otherwise the anima escapes as well and the man dies: Lucr. iii, 396 ff. The animus with its perceptions is more independent of anima and corpus than they are of it: Lucr. iii, 145 ff.

[75]   Lucr. iii, 421–4.

[76]   Lucr. iii, 445 ff.

[77]   The soul διασπείρεται, λυομένου τοῦ ὅλου ἀθροίσματος and cannot retain any αἴσθησις apart from its ἄθροισμα, D L. x, 65–6. The winds disperse it: Lucr. iii, 506 ff. καπνοῦ δίκην σκίδναται, Epicur. fr. 337. ceu fumus, Lucr. iii, 446–583.

[78]   radicitus e vita se tollit et eicit, Lucr. iii, 877.

[79]   Lucr. iii, 854–60; 847–53.

[80]   οὐδὲ ταφῆς φροντιεῖν (τὸν σοφόν) fr. 578. Cf. Lucr. iii, 870 ff. The way in which the body, deserted by its soul, is buried or disposed of is of no consequence: Phld., Mort., p. 41–2 Mekl.

[81]   D.L. x, 124–5.

[82]   ὁ θάνατος οὐδὲν πρὸς ἡμᾶς, τὸ γὰρ διαλυθὲν ἀναισθητεῖ, τὸ δὲ ἀναισθητοῦν οὐδὲν πρὸς ἡμᾶς, Ep., Sent. ii; D.L. x, 139 (p. 71 Us.). Frequently repeated: see Usen., p. 391 f.

[83]   dolor and morbus, leti fabricator uterque, affect the soul too, Lucr. iii, 459 ff., 470 ff., 484 ff. Nothing that can be broken up into parts can be eternal; 640 ff., 667 ff. The chief argument: quod cum corpore nascitur, cum corpore intereat necesse est, Ep., fr. 336. (They are identical in part with the arguments which Karneades directed against the theory of the eternity and indestructibility of the highest ζῷον, God. Karn. must have got them from Epicurus.)

[84]   Cf. Ep., Sent. xi, p. 73 f. Us.

[85]   To be able to see μηδὲν πρὸς ἡμᾶς εἶναι τὸν θάνατον, ἀπόλαυστον ποιεῖ τὸ τῆς ζῳῆς θνητόν, οὐκ ἄπειρον προτιθεῖσα χρόνον ἀλλὰ τὸν τῆς ἀθανασίας ἀφελομένη πόθον, D.L. x, 123; cf. Metrod. (?), ed. Körte, p. 588, col. xvi.

[86]   γεγόναμεν ἅπαξ, δὶς δὲ οὐκ ἔστι γενέσθαι κτλ. hence carpe diem! fr. 204; see also fr. 490–4. Metrod. fr. 53 K.

[87]   D.L. x, 81.

[88]   Against the fear of torment and punishment in the underworld: fr. 340–1, cf. Lucr. iii, 1011 ff. (torments such as those fabled of Hades exist in this world: iii, 978 ff.). Cf. the letter of the Epicurean Diogenes, Rh. Mus. 47, 428 . . . φοβοῦμαι γὰρ οὐδὲν (sc. τὸν θάνατον) διὰ τοὺς Τιτυοὺς καὶ τοὺς Ταντάλους οὓς ἀναγράφουσιν ἐν Ἅιδου τινές, οὐδὲ φρίττω τὴν μύδησιν (μήδησιν the stone) κτλ.

[89]   metus ille foras praeceps Acheruntis agendus, funditus humanam qui vitam turbat ab imo, omnia suffundens mortis nigrore neque ullam esse voluptatem liquidam puramque reliquit, Lucr. iii, 37 ff.

[90]   D.L. x, 126. ridiculum est currere ad mortem taedio vitae, fr. 496.

[91]   artifex vitae, Sen. Ep. 90, 27.

[92]   —σὺ δὲ τῆς αὔριον οὐκ ὢν κύριος ἀναβάλλῃ τὸν καιρόν· ὁ δὲ πάντων βίος μελλησμῷ παραπόλλυται . . . fr. 204.

[93]   Negat Epicurus ne diuturnitatem quidem temporis ad beate vivendum aliquid afferre, nec minorem voluptatem percipi in brevitate temporis quam si sit illa sempiterna, Cic., Fin. ii, 87; cf. Ep., Sent. xix (p. 75 Us.). χρόνον οὐ τὸν μήκιστον ἀλλὰ τὸν ἥδιστον καρπίζεται (ὁ σοφός): D.L. x, 126.—quae mala nos subigit vitai tanta cupido, Lucr. iii, 1077. eadem sunt omnia semper, 945. 523

[94]   ἡ διάνοια . . . τὸν παντελῆ βίον παρεσκεύασεν καὶ οὐδὲν ἔτι τοῦ ἀπείρου χρόνου προσεδεήθη, Sent. xx (p. 75 Us.).

[95]   οὐκ ἔστι φυσικὴ κοινωνία τοῖς λογικοῖς πρὸς ἀλλήλους.—sibi quemque consulere, fr. 523. Aloofness from ταῖς τῶν πληθῶν ἀρχαῖς frr. 554, 552, 9.

[96]   οἱ νόμοι χάριν τῶν σοφῶν κεῖνται, οὐχ ὅπως μὴ ἀδικῶσιν, ἀλλ’ ὅπως μὴ ἀδικῶνται, fr. 530.

[97]   οὐκέτι δεῖ σῴζειν τοὺς Ἕλληνας, οὐδ’ ἐπὶ σοφίᾳ στεφάνων παρ’ αὐτοῖς τυγχάνειν . . . Metrod. fr. 41.

CHAPTER XIV

PART II

POPULAR BELIEF

Philosophic teaching and the philosophic outlook were at this time by no means confined exclusively to the narrow circles dominated by particular schools. Never more widely or more effectively than in this Hellenistic period did philosophy in one shape or another provide the basis and common medium of a culture that no one of moderate wealth and leisure would willingly be without. Such ideas as educated people of the time generally possessed, dealing in a more connected and definite form with the things of this life and existence that lie beyond the scope of immediate perception, were all drawn from the teaching of philosophy. To a certain extent this is true also of the current views as to the nature and destiny of the soul. But in the region of the unknowable philosophy can never entirely replace or suppress the natural—the irrational beliefs—of mankind. Such beliefs were in their natural element in dealing with such subjects. They influenced even the philosophically enlightened and their authority was supreme with the many who in every age are incapable of understanding the disinterested search for knowledge. Even in this supreme period of universal philosophic culture, popular beliefs about the soul still remained in force, unmodified by the speculations or the exhortations of philosophers.

They had their roots—these beliefs—not in any form of speculative thought but in the practice of the Cult of Souls: and that Cult, as it has been described1 for an earlier stage of Greek life, still went on unaltered and with undiminished vigour. This may be asserted with confidence, though we can produce no very important evidence from the literature of this later period. The character and content of that literature is such that we should hardly expect to find such evidence in it. But for the most part the literary evidence from which we were able to illustrate the Cult of Souls in an earlier period may be taken to apply equally to the age with which we are now dealing. Even in its final years Lucian’s pamphlet On Mourning bears express witness to the survival of the ancient and sanctified usages in their fullest compass. We hear again of the washing, anointing, 525 and crowning of the dead, the ceremonious lying-in-state upon the bier, the violent and extravagant lament over the dead body, and all the traditional customs that are still in full force. Last comes the solemn interment of the body—the articles of luxury burnt together with the corpse of the dead man or buried with him in the grave—articles that had once belonged to him and which he is supposed to enjoy even in death—the feeding of the helpless soul of the dead with libations of wine and burnt-offerings—the ritual fasting of the relatives only broken, after three days, in the Banquet of the Dead.2

The dead man must not be deprived of a single one of “the customary things”—only so can his well-being be fully secured.3 The most important of these is the solemn interment of the body. This is carried out not only by the family of the dead man, but in many cases also by the society to which he may have belonged.4 In these times when the cities sought to make up for the loss of more serious interests in their life by an often touching care for the immediate and the insignificant, deserving citizens were frequently honoured with elaborate funeral processions in which the municipality took part;5 the city fathers would then probably decree that representatives should be sent to the survivors and commissioned to express the sympathy of the city in their loss and distract their minds from their grief by a speech.6

The ritual act of burial, the object of so much pious zeal, was the very reverse of the indifferent matter that philosophy loved to represent it.7 The sanctity of the place where rests the dead is also a matter of great importance, not only for the dead man himself but for the rest of the family which desires to be still united in the life of the spirit world, and so inhabits a common burial-ground (generally outside the city, very rarely within,8 but sometimes, even yet, actually inside the house).9 The founder of a family-grave desires the members of it to be joined together in the same grave for at least three generations.10 Those who have a right to be buried there take steps—religious and legal or municipal—against the profanation of this family tomb and sanctuary by the burying in it of strangers or the pillaging of the vault—a practice that became increasingly common in the final period of the antique world.11 There are innumerable grave-notices threatening money penalties in accordance with the ancient law of the city, to be paid into the public treasury by those who violate the peace of the grave.12 No less common are the inscriptions which place the grave and its sanctity 526 under the protection of the underworld deities, invoking at the same time the most shocking curses—torments and calamities both temporal and eternal—against profaners of the holiness of the tomb.13 Especially the inhabitants of certain districts of Asia Minor, only very superficially Hellenized, give themselves free rein in the accumulation of such violent execrations. In their case the dark superstitions of ancestral and native worship of gods or spirits may have infected the Hellenes also—it is often the Greeks who become barbarian rather than the barbarians who are Hellenized in the history of Greek relations with these stubborn and barbarous native populations.14 But even in lands where the Greek population has maintained itself without admixture such execrations are occasionally to be found in graves.

As time went on and the sanctity and peace of the grave began to be more and more seriously threatened, measures of all kinds were taken for its protection. The grave is no mere chamber of corruption; the souls of the dead dwell there,15 and therefore is it holy; as a sanctuary it becomes completely sanctified when it has received the last member of the family, and is enclosed for ever.16 The family so long as it lasts continues to pay the regular Soul-Cult to its ancestors;17 sometimes special foundations ensure the payment for ever18 of the Soul-Cult of which the dead have need.19 Even those whose burial place lies far away from the graves of their own family20 are not entirely deprived of benevolent care and cult.

The pre-supposition of all Cult of Souls—that the dead survive to enjoy at least a gloomy sepulchral existence in their last resting-place—is everywhere vividly implied. It speaks to us with archaic simplicity from those grave-stones upon which the dead, as though still accessible to the sounds of the human voice and able to understand the words of the living, are addressed with the customary words of greeting.21 Sometimes the dead man himself is provided with a similar greeting which he is supposed to address to the passers-by22—between him, confined to his grave, and the others who still walk about in the daylight a dialogue takes place.23 The dead man is not entirely cut off from the affairs of the upper world. He feels an access of fresh life when he is called by the name that he had once borne in his life-time, and the memory of which is now preserved only by his gravestone. His fellow-citizens call upon him three times by name at his burial;24 but even in the grave 527 he is capable of hearing the precious sound. On a gravestone at Athens25 the dead man enjoins upon the members of the actors’ guild to which he had belonged to call upon his name in chorus whenever they pass by his grave, and to gladden him with the sound of hand-clapping, to which he had been accustomed in life. At other times the passer-by “kisses his hand”26 to the dead man; a gesture which denotes the honour paid to a Hero.27 The soul is not merely alive; it belongs now, as primitive and age-long belief expressed it, to the Higher and Mightier Ones.28 Perhaps this exaltation of the wrath and power of the dead is the meaning of the custom by which the dead are called the Good, the Honest (χρηστοί). This usage must have become established at an early period,29 but it is not until these later days that it is first employed as an addition to the simple words of greeting addressed to the dead on gravestones. In this use it is not uniformly current; it is rare in Attica (at least, on graves of natives of that country); whereas in Boeotia, Thessaly, and the countries of Asia Minor it is frequent and almost universal.30 In fact it is natural to suppose31 that this mode of address, originally a euphemistic title addressed to the ghosts of the dead who were conceived as quite capable of acting in a manner the very reverse of that attributed to them by the word, was intended to suggest the power belonging to the personality so addressed as one who has risen to a higher form of existence—and to venerate him with becoming awe.32

§ 2

The conception of the departed spirit as one who has been raised to a higher state of dignity and power receives clearer and more conscious expression where the departed one is called a Hero.

This class of intermediate beings standing on the border line between mankind and godhead—the world of the Heroes—was in no danger of extinction at this period of Greek religious belief. The attitude of mind that could think of certain special souls as withdrawn from the limitations of visible existence and raised to a higher spiritual state remained still vigorous and was even able to give birth to new conceptions.

In its original and proper sense the name Heros never indicated an independent and self-sufficient spirit. Archegetes, “leader” or “originator”, is his real and distinctive title. The Heros stands at the beginning of a series, taking its origin 528 from him, of mortal men for whom he is the leader and “ancestor”. The genuine Heroes are the ancestors, whether real or imaginary, of a family or a house; in the “Heroes”, after whom they wish to be called, the members of a society, a clan, or even a whole race honour the archegetai of those groups. They are always men of power and influence, prominent and distinguished from other men, who are regarded as having thus entered into the life of Heroes after their death. And even in later times the Heroes of a more recent elevation, though they may no longer be the leaders of a train of descendants taking their origin from them, are yet regarded as distinguished from the people who worship them by their peculiar virtue and dignity. To become a Heros after death was a privilege reserved for a few great and uncommon personalities who even in their lifetime were not as other men were.

The companies of these old and specially chosen Heroes did not suffer the fate of forgetfulness which would have been their second and real death. The love of country and city, undying among the Greeks, attached itself in reverent memory to the illuminated spirits of the past who had once protected and defended their native land. When Messene was refounded in the fourth century the Heroes of the country were solemnly called upon to become inhabitants of the city as they had been before—more particularly Aristomenes, the never-forgotten champion of Messenian freedom.33 Even at Leuctra he had appeared in the melée of the fight, doing battle for the Thebans.34 Before the battle, Epameinondas had secured the favour of the Heroines of the place, the daughters of Skedasos, by means of prayer and sacrifice.35 These were events of the last heroic age of Greek history, but the cult and memory of the local Heroes of the Greek countries survived into a much later age. Leonidas was worshipped by the people of Sparta for many centuries,36 and the champions of the Persian Wars, the saviours of Hellas, were worshipped by their remote descendants.37 Even in imperial times the inhabitants of the island of Kos still worshipped those who had fallen to secure their freedom centuries before.38 Such individual cases allow us to see what was the general rule: the memory and cult of a Hero lived on as long as the community remained in existence whose duty it was to maintain his worship. Even those Heroes—a class by themselves—who have secured their immortality through their fame in ancient poetry39 still retained their cult undiminished. The heroic 529 figure of Hektor still preserved life and reality for his worshippers in the Troad or at Thebes.40 Even in the third century of our era the district of Troy and the neighbouring coasts of Europe still kept fresh the memory and the cult of the Heroes of Epic renown.41 Of Achilles, who had a special fate, we must speak in another connexion.42

Nor did less splendid figures vanish from the memory of their narrower associations of worshippers. Autolykos the founder of Sinope retained his cult even in the time of Lucullus.43 At a quite late period the relics of the specially popular Heroes of the Pan-Hellenic games were still the subject of many superstitions44 that bear witness to their continued influence. Heroes to whom healing powers were ascribed continued to do works of healing and to be worshipped, and their number was even extended.45 Mere local spirits, whose very names had been forgotten, nevertheless lost none of the honour that came to them from their beneficent miracles; such were, for instance, that Philopregmon of Poteideia who was celebrated by a late poet,46 or the Hero Euodos of Apollinopolis in Egypt who dispensed “good journey” to those who honoured him in passing by his monument.47

But all Heroes were not yet reduced to such casual salutations from occasional passers-by. In many places48 the regular festivals and sacrifices to Heroes still survived—even human sacrifice was still sometimes made to spirits who were held capable of special exhibitions of power.49 In a few cases the festivals of Heroes are the chief feasts in the annual calendar of a city.50 The names of Heroes quite as much as of Gods were used in oath-taking51 at treaties made by Greek cities so long as they retained their independence. Foundations were dedicated to the honour of Gods and Heroes together.52 Cult associations called themselves after the Heroes they met to worship.53 Special priests of certain Heroes were regularly appointed.54 Even in the second century, in his book of travels, Pausanias is able to inform us of not a few Heroes whose cult, as he distinctly says, had gone on unbroken in their cities down to his own day.55 The annual festival of the Heroes who had fallen at Plataea was still celebrated with the greatest pomp in the time of Plutarch, who describes every detail of its archaic ceremonial.56 And at Sikyon, at the same time, the Heroic festival of Aratos, the founder of the Achæan League, was still celebrated, though here the centuries had robbed the occasion of many of its former glories.57 530

In all such ceremonies it was to a single and definite spirit-personality that the devotion of men was offered. Each of them received the cult that was due to him by the terms of some old-established and sanctified foundation. Nothing was further from men’s minds than the loose and vague conception, expressed sometimes by ancient writers, that all brave men of the past or all outstanding individuals of whatever time are to be regarded forthwith as Heroes.58 It was still clearly and consciously felt that elevation to the rank of Hero was not a privilege that belonged as a matter of course to any particular class of mankind, but, wherever it occurred, was essentially a ratification of quite exceptional worth and influence displayed already in the lifetime of the Hero. Following this conception even the Hellenistic age added to the number of the Heroes by drawing upon the great men of the present. A little earlier Pelopidas and Timoleon had been honoured in this way, and now the figures of Leosthenes, Kleomenes, and Philopoimen were raised to heroic glory.59 Even Aratos, the very incarnation of the sobriety of a too matter-of-fact age, at the end of a life devoted with ardour but without enduring success to the service of his country, was supposed by his countrymen to have passed over in a mysterious manner into the realm of heroic semi-divinity.60

As in these cases whole populations honoured individuals so also did narrower and much humbler associations, even in this rationalist age, elevate their helpers and protectors to the rank of Hero and honour them as such. The slaves of Kos thus honoured their former comrade and leader Drimakos;61 at another place there was a Hero who protected all refugees who took shelter with him;62 at Ephesos there was a Hero who had been a simple shepherd.63 At the time of Augustus, a benefactor of his city, Athenodoros, the philosopher, had been made a Hero by grateful Tarsians after his death.64 It sometimes happens that a Hero of the distant past may find himself confused with a descendant of the same name whom his contemporaries put in the place of his own ancestor and worship in his stead.65

So little were men grown out of the ideas centred round the cult of Heroes that, accustomed to the ever-increasing adoration of the “Mightier and Better”, every age was eager to add to their number from the men of the present. They did not always wait for the death of the individual so honoured before beginning to address him as Heros; even in his lifetime he must enjoy a foretaste of the honour that was destined 531 to be his after his departure from this life. Thus, Lysander was saluted as a Hero after his victory by the Greeks whom he had liberated from the despotism of Athens; and in the Hellenistic age many a fortunate army commander or mighty king received the same honour. Of the Romans Flamininus the friend of the Greeks was the first to receive it.66 This misapplication of the cult of Heroes to the living then became still further extended.67 It may be that sometimes it was a real feeling of unusual merit that fired the impulsive temperament of the Greeks; but in the end the custom became almost a meaningless convention; even private individuals were thus called Hero in their lifetime68 and heroic honours—even the foundation of annual athletic games—were granted to living persons almost indiscriminately.69 And at last when it was necessary to honour an individual whom the love and passionate regret of a monarch elevated to the rank of Hero after his death then, indeed, the age could hardly do enough in the hyperbole of pomp and ceremony. The funeral honours paid to the dead Hephaistion are an extravagant example of this.70

If in such cases the limits between the worship of a Hero and the adoration of a god seemed almost to have disappeared, we still have evidence of individual cases in which the survivors, without actually naming them Heroes, offer to their much-loved dead a memorial cult that hardly falls short of full heroic honours.71 Nor is it only in such cases as these that we perceive the signs of a tendency to exalt the Cult of Souls everywhere and to approximate it to the worship of ancestors in the ancient Cult of Heroes. It emerges clearly enough, for all the brevity of their language, from the multitude of epitaphic inscriptions in which members of simple citizen families are addressed with the title of Heros. At any rate, it betokens an increase in the importance and dignity of the dead when a tombstone expressly announces that an individual citizen has been “heroized” by the city after his death. And this is what not infrequently happened—early in Thera and later on in many other places as well.72 The same conclusion must be drawn when we hear of associations declaring a dead member to be a Heros;73 or when a society recognizes a dead man as Heros on the formal motion of an individual.74 Families, too, become accustomed to giving the name to those of their number that have died before the rest; and a son will thus speak of his father, parents of a son, and a wife of her husband—either informally or by a formal declaration naming 532 the dead one as Heros.75 A higher and mightier form of existence after death must be imagined for the departed when he is thus distinguished so explicitly from the ordinary multitude of the dead—still more so in those cases when the dead man, elevated to a mystic communion with higher forms of life, loses his own name and receives in exchange that of a Hero of long-standing honour, or even that of a God.76

In every case that is known to us, the “heroizing” of a dead person by the city or a society or the family is carried out entirely on the independent authority of those bodies. The Delphic Oracle, without whose deciding voice it was hardly possible in early times for the company of the elect to receive any addition,77 was, in these days when the prestige of the oracle had sunk almost to nothing, no longer applied to for its sanction. The consequence was hardly avoidable that the licence thus accorded to corporations and families should widen still further the bounds of the Heroes’ kingdom. In the end, these boundaries broke down entirely. There were cities and countries where it became the custom to apply the title of “Hero” as an epithet of honour belonging to all the dead without distinction. It seems that this extension of “heroizing” to all the dead first became common in Boeotia,78 though here it was not quite universal—Thespiai was an exception.79 Thessalian grave-inscriptions give the fullest evidence for the heroizing of the dead of every age and description. But the custom spread to every country populated by Greeks;80 only Athens is less unrestrained81 in the bestowal of the title of Hero upon the dead—a title which retained no more of the old and essential meaning of the word (which perhaps survived longest in Athens) than to say that the dead were really now dead.82

In spite of such indiscriminate application the name “Hero” still continued to be something of a title of honour. An honour, indeed, that was thus accorded to everyone without distinction was in danger of becoming the reverse of an honour. But isolated phrases of a naive and popular character make it clear that a difference was still felt to exist between the “Hero” and those who were not honoured with this distinguishing epithet.83 When the name of Hero was thus applied to all the dead, not in exceptional cases but as a rule, the glory and distinction of which the idea of the “Hero” was thus deprived must have fallen in some measure upon the individual dead, if they 533 and the Heroes could meet on common ground. Thus, even the dissipation of the heroic honour and its indiscriminate application to all the dead is in reality but another indication of the fact that even in the decline of the ancient world the power and dignity of the departed soul had not declined too, but had, on the contrary, grown greater.

§ 3

The souls of the departed show their power and the fact that they are still alive more particularly in the effect that they have on this life and on the living. For the purposes of the Cult of Souls they are regarded as confined to the region of the inhabited earth; they continue in the grave or near it, for a time or permanently, and can therefore be reached by the offerings or the prayers of their living relatives. There can be no doubt that at this time men still believed, as they had done since the earliest times, in a kindly relationship between the family and its departed members, an exchange in which offerings were made at the grave by the living and blessings vouchsafed by the Unseen. It is true, however, that we only have imperfect records of such calm and comfortable family belief in the survival of the departed and of the part they continue to play in the daily life of their descendants.

But there is a more sinister variety of intercourse with the souls or spirits of the dead. They sometimes appear unsought to the living; they can be compelled by the force of magic to use their powers in the service of the living. Both these possibilities apply more particularly to those unquiet souls whom fate or their own hands have deprived of life violently and before their time; to those who have not been consigned to the peace of the grave by ceremonious burial.84 The enlightened of the time do indeed refuse to believe in ghosts and haunting spirits of the dead that wander without rest about the place of their tragic fate, and make their presence disagreeably felt by the living.85 But the populace, even in such enlightened days, gave the fullest credence to stories in which the existence of a spirit-world seemed to reveal its sinister reality, trespassing at times upon the world of the living. Regular folk-tales of spectral apparitions, vagrant ghosts of unfortunate souls, vampire-like spirits of the grave,86 are preserved to us in some numbers—chiefly such as appealed to a perverted philosophy, the insaniens sapientia of an outworn age, as seeming to confirm its fancies of an invisible world between heaven and earth. In Lucian’s Lover of Lies the grey-beard 534 philosophers entertain each other in portentous seriousness with such communications from the spirit world.87 Plutarch himself is quite seriously convinced of the reality of some ghostly appearances.88 Philosophy, which at this time was going back to Plato, found in its system of demonology a means of making such old wives’ tales intelligible and credible to itself.

Finally, the time arrives when the violent and arbitrary interference with the unseen world—sorcery and spirit-raising—becomes a part of orthodox philosophy. The popular imagination of the Greeks did not have to wait for instruction from their barbarian neighbours, who had reduced the irrational to a system, before they could believe in the summoning of spirits from the deep. Magic in this sense was of extreme antiquity in Greece.89 But in the fusion and intermixture of Greeks with barbarians which marked the Hellenistic age similar and cognate superstitions from all the corners of the earth met together and acquired strength from their union. It was foreign sources rather than Greek which chiefly contributed to swell the turbid and noxious stream of sorceries and spirit-raisings, the practical application of an irrational theory of the nature and being of the soul in separation from the body. The lofty heaven of the old Greek gods was beginning to grow dim before the troubled vision of this later age; more and more their place was taken by a mob of idols and an obscure rabble of lesser devils. In this chaotic medley of Greek and barbarian demonology the companies of unquiet souls and ghosts of the dead easily found a place. The ghost was no longer an alien when the Gods themselves had become ghostly. When both Gods and spirits have to answer to the spells of the sorcerer the souls of the dead are seldom left in peace.90 We possess some relics of the art of spirit-raising in the Græco-Egyptian magic books; and we can now see with our eyes specimens which illustrate the practical outcome of this delusion in the magic charms and exorcisms that were scratched on tablets of lead or gold and placed in the graves—as the natural abode of the spirits which were to be compelled—where they have been found in considerable quantities in modern times. Among the sinister influences that are thus conjured to do the work of vengeance, punishment, or destruction upon the conjurer’s enemy, the unquiet souls of the dead are also regularly mentioned. To them is attributed the power and the will to intervene with malevolence and obstruction in the life of men, no less than to the other spiritual 535 powers of heaven and hell in company with whom they are summoned.91

§ 4

The Cult of Souls for all its expansion gave no assistance to the picturing of what might be the condition of the departed souls independently of their connexion with the living. Those who troubled themselves about such matters and sought further information were obliged to have recourse, if not to the systems of theologians and philosophers, then to the imaginative accounts and pictures of ancient poetry and legend.

The idea of a distant realm of the souls into which the strengthless shadows of those who had departed this life disappeared had not lost its hold on the popular imagination even of these later ages—difficult as it might be to reconcile92 such an idea with the pre-suppositions of cultus with its customary worship and sustenance of the souls confined within the grave. The belief in a distant kingdom of the dead could not but continue to be current among men for whom the Homeric poems remained the earliest manual and school-book in the hands of youth and the source of instruction and entertainment to every age. The passionate indignation with which philosophers of the Stoic as well as the Epicurean faith attacked the beliefs resting on the teaching of Homer cannot be explained except by supposing that Homer and his picture had remained a guiding force with the masses who were uninstructed in philosophy. And, in fact, ancient writers use language which shows that the ancient conception of Hades was by no means discarded but on the contrary was still vigorously alive among the populace.93

As to what might go on down below and the general appearance of the underworld—these were questions that the invention of theological and semi-philosophic fancy, each according to its special lights and preconceptions, strove to answer in eager competition.94 But such attempts to picture the condition of things in the kingdom of the souls—attempts which reached their highest point in the elaborate chiaroscuro of Vergil’s Hades—remained the exercises of ingenious fancy and rarely pretended to be anything else. A distinct and authoritative popular system of belief on these points was scarcely possible when the orthodox religion of the state formally and dogmatically rejected everything of the kind.

It would, indeed, have been more natural if in connexion with the idea of the congregation of souls enclosed in the 536 kingdom of the underworld deities a belief in a compensatory justice to be found in this after-life of the dead, had grown up and obtained popular currency. The oppressed and needy who feel themselves deprived of their share in this world’s goods think only too easily that somewhere there must be a place where they too will some day enjoy the fruits that others alone are allowed to pluck upon earth—and place that “somewhere” beyond the boundaries of this world and of reality. Pious belief in the gods expects to obtain the prize, so often denied upon earth, in a realm of the spirit. If indeed such a conviction of a compensatory justice to come95—reward of the virtuous and punishment of the wicked in a hereafter—was really more widely and seriously held in this age than it had been before,96 then the cult of the underworld deities as it was practised in the mysteries of the states and the various religious societies must have contributed in a large degree to bring this about. And contrariwise, the belief that the punishing and rewarding omnipotence of the gods would be felt in a hereafter must have brought an unbroken stream of adherents to those mysteries which in fact offered their help and mediation in the life to come. Those only could imagine that they had detailed knowledge of the enigmas that lie beyond the reach of all experience, who could surrender themselves entirely to the dogmatic teaching of a closed sect. We may in fact take leave to doubt whether the gruesome pictures of a place of torment in Hades, with its undying punishment in devouring flames, and the similar fancies that later authors sometimes express, were in reality anything more than the private imaginations with which exclusive and superstitious conventicles sought to terrorize their members.97 The charming pictures of a “Land of Arrival” to which death sends the much-tried children of men, may have been more widely accepted. Homer, the universal instructor, had stamped them upon men’s memories. For the poet the Elysian plain had been a place situated upon the surface of the earth to which the occasional favour of the gods was able to translate a few of their dearest favourites, that they might there enjoy, without seeing death, unending bliss.98 In imitation of the Homeric fancy, the poetry of the following ages had imagined the translation of many other Heroes and heroic women of the legendary past to a secret life of bliss in Elysium or in the Islands of the Blest.99 Later fancy, which saw in Elysium the Land of Promise to which all men who had lived in a manner pleasing to the gods 537 would be taken after their death,100 now placed its Elysium or Islands of the Blest in the interior of the earth beyond the reach of all save disembodied souls. In later times this became the currently accepted view, but the subject remained undefined and subject to variation. Men must still, in fact, have imagined The Isles of the Blest, the abode of privileged spirits, to be situated upon the surface of the earth (though, indeed, far away beyond the limits of the discovered countries of the globe), when attempts could be made to find the way there and to bring back news to the living. The attempt attributed to Sertorius was only the most famous of such voyages of discovery.101 Why, indeed, should these magic Isles remain for ever undiscovered upon the borders of the inhabited world that yet offered so wide a field for discovery, when everybody knew of the island in the Black Sea, often visited by living men, where Achilles, the supreme example of miraculous translation, lived for ever in perpetual enjoyment of his youth? For centuries the island of Leukê, the separate Elysium of Achilles and a few select among the Heroes, was visited and reverenced with religious awe.102 Here men thought they could discern in immediate perception, and in actual physical contact, something of the mysterious existence of blessed spirits. The belief in the possibility of miraculous translation to an eternity of unbroken union of body and soul, thus palpably and visibly substantiated, could not completely die even in this prosaic age. The educated did indeed find this conception so strange and unintelligible that when they come to speak of translation legends of the past they profess themselves unable to say what exactly the ancients had supposed to occur when such miracles took place.103 But the populace, which finds nothing easier to believe in than the impossible, once more naively accepted the miracle. Did not the examples of Amphiaraos and Trophonios plainly establish the fact of translation to underground retreats? And to them as being still alive in their caves beneath the earth a cult was offered until an advanced period.104 The translation of beautiful youths to everlasting life in the kingdom of the nymphs and spirits was the subject of many folk-tales.105 Even in contemporary life the miracle of translation seemed not altogether impossible.106 When the kings and queens of the Macedonian empire of the East began to receive divine honours in imitation of the great Alexander himself, it was not long before men ventured to affirm that at the end of his earthly existence the Divine Ruler everywhere 538 does not die but is merely “carried away” by the gods and still lives on.107 It is the peculiar property of divinity, as Plato clearly expresses it,108 to live for ever in the indivisible unity of body and soul. A court-bred theology could the more easily make such demands upon the belief of subject peoples in the Semitic East, and possibly in Egypt too, because native109 legends had already told of the translation to immortal life of individual men dear to the gods and akin to the gods in nature; just as similar stories became common in Italian legends too,110 though possibly only under the influence of Greek models. Indeed, quite apart from obsequious courtliness, Greeks and half-Greeks were quite capable of entertaining the idea111 that the darlings of their fancy, such as Alexander the Great, had not suffered death but had been translated alive to the realm of imperishable physical existence. This is shown clearly enough by the success which attended the appearance, in Moesia at the beginning of the third century A.D., of another Alexander. This imposter travelled from land to land with a great train of Bacchants, and everywhere men believed in his identity with the great monarch.112 A little earlier they had believed with equal credulity in the reappearance upon earth of the Emperor Nero,113 who, it was thought, had not died but had merely disappeared. When Antinous, the beautiful youth beloved by the Emperor Hadrian, sank and disappeared in his watery grave he was at once regarded as a god who had, in fact, not died but had been translated.114 The miraculous translation of Apollonios of Tyana is reported with the utmost seriousness;115 like the other marvels and mysteries in the strange and enigmatic existence of this prophetic figure, it found believers enough.116

But such unbroken continuance of the united life of body and soul, begun upon earth and carried on in a mysterious abode of bliss (the oldest form taken by the idea of human immortality in the Greek mind), was never attributed to more than a few specially favoured and specially gifted individuals. An immortality of the human soul as such, by virtue of its nature and composition—as the imperishable force of divinity in the mortal body—never became a real part of the belief of the Greek populace. When approximations to such a belief do occasionally find expression in popular modes of thought, it is because a fragment of theology or of the universally popular philosophy has penetrated to the lower strata of the uninstructed populace. Theology and philosophy remained the sole true repositories of the belief in the 539 immortality of the soul. In the meeting together and conjunction of Greek and foreign ideas in the Hellenized Orient it was not Greek popular tradition but solely the influence of Greek philosophy, that, finding favour even outside the limits of Greek nationality, communicated to foreign nations the arresting concept of the divine, imperishable vitality of the human soul—upon the impressionable Jewish people, at least, it had the profoundest and most deeply penetrating influence.117

§ 5

All the various modes of conceiving the life enjoyed by the soul after the death of the body, as they had been explored, modified, and developed in the course of centuries, were admitted on an equal footing to the consciousness of the Greeks in this late period of their maturity. No formulated body of religious doctrine had by a process of exclusion and definition given the victory to any one conception at the expense of the others. But where so much was permitted and so little proscribed it is still possible to ask how these various formulations of belief, expectation, and hope stood in relation to each other. Were any more popular and more readily received than others? To answer this question it is natural to suppose that we have only to turn to the numerous inscriptions from the gravestones of the people. Here, especially in these later times, individuals give unhampered expression to their own feelings and thus reveal the extent and character of popular belief. But information derived from this source must be carefully scrutinized if it is not to lead to misconception.

If we pass in imagination through the long rows of streets in which the Greeks placed the memorials of their dead, and read the inscriptions on the tombstones—they now form part of the accumulated treasures of Greek Epigraphy—the first thing that must arrest our attention is the complete silence maintained by the enormous majority of these inscriptions with regard to any hope—however formulated—or any expectation of a life of the soul after death. They content themselves with recording the name of the dead, adding only the name of the father and (in the case of a foreigner) the country of the deceased. At the most, the custom of some localities may add a “Farewell”. Such stubborn silence cannot be satisfactorily explained simply on the grounds of an economy practised by the surviving relatives 540 of the deceased (though in some cases a municipal regulation against wordy inscriptions may have given countenance to such economies).118 The very silence of this people that was never at a loss for words to express its meaning whether in verse or in prose, is in itself expressive. Where so little need was felt to give utterance to hopes of comfort, such hopes cannot have been of very vital consequence or matters of much assurance. Men rescued from forgetfulness only what had been the exclusive property of the individual—his name; the appellation which had distinguished him from all others in his lifetime and has now become the barest and emptiest envelope of the once living personality. Inscriptions in which precise hopes of a future life are expressed form a very small proportion of the great mass of epitaphic records. And of these very few again are in prose. Not as simple records of plain and authentic fact do such provisions and announcements of a blessed and hoped-for futurity present themselves. They need the artistic pomp and circumstance with which poetic fancy and extravagant affection clothe their inspired voyagings beyond the region of cold and matter of fact reality. This is certainly significant. Even among the poetic epitaphs the majority allude only to the life which the deceased has now done with, looking back upon the circumstances of his life—his fortunes and activities and character; giving expression, often with the most convincing sincerity, to the regret and dependence of the survivors; fixing attention exclusively upon things of this world. Wherever, at last, allusion is made to a future life, the tendency is rather to let fancy roam far beyond the limits of experience and sober reflexion to a vague and visionary land of promise. Such lofty aspirations needed more than any others the elevated language of verse. But we should run the risk of falling into grave error if we concluded from the preponderance of such aspirations among the metrical epitaphs that these were the normal views of the city folk who were their contemporaries.

The simple and archaic conception which perpetuates the old Homeric attitude and views without a complaint or a regret the disappearance of the soul of the departed into Erebos, is of the rarest occurrence among these sepulchral verses.119 More commonly we have the prayer that the departed may “rest in peace”, expressed in the traditional formula120—a formula that really refers to the dead man lying in his grave but also contains a further allusion to the “soul” that has departed to Hades.121 The idea is not yet dead 541 that there is a realm of the souls which receives the departed—Hades, the world ruled over by the Underworld deities, the “Chamber” of Persephone, the seat of primeval Night.122 Here a state of semi-conscious existence is conceived to prevail, under the empire of “Forgetfulness”, drinking of which123 the consciousness of the soul is darkened. Here “the majority”124 are assembled, and the dead man is visited by the reassuring thought that he may greet once more the souls of those who have gone before him.125

But sterner conceptions also occur. There is occasional reference to a judgment126 that separates the souls in the world below, dividing them into two and sometimes three127 classes in accordance with the deserts which they have earned on earth. There is no lingering over the pains of the damned,128 in the description of which the theological imagination had indulged so frequently. A more simple-minded fancy did not need such pharisaical satisfaction in the misfortunes of sinners in order to heighten its own assurance of superiority. There is no trace of a sentiment of penitence and terror indulged in for its own sake. The soul hopes to come by its rights;129 to reach the “Blessed”, to arrive at the Isles or the Island of the Blest—to Elysium, the abode of Heroes and demi-gods.130 Such hopes are very commonly expressed, but as a rule only in a brief phrase of confidence and hope. We rarely meet with any elaborate or alluring picture of the abode of the blessed.131 That abode is generally placed within the limits of the underworld kingdom of the souls,132 and such anticipations, when particularized, refer commonly to a “Place of the Good”, which in various forms is represented as the hoped-for dwelling-place of future life.133

But we also meet with the view that the company of the good is entirely removed from the region of underworld darkness.134 For many individuals the hope is expressed or the certainty announced that after death they will have their dwelling in the sky—in the shining Aether, among the stars. This belief in the elevation of the disembodied soul to the regions above the earth is so frequently repeated in various forms in this late period that we must suppose that among those who entertained precise conceptions of the things of the next world this was the most popular and widely held conviction.135 This belief that the soul rises to the neighbourhood and even the community of the heavenly deities136 has its origin both in religious aspiration and in philosophy. Its roots, indeed, stretch back to a much 542 earlier period137 and we may suppose that even in these later days it was derived from and very largely supported by the popular conception, disseminated by Stoic writers, of a living “breath”, which composes the human soul, and its effort upwards to the heavenly regions.138

But such language is in many cases plainly nothing more than a conventional formula which has already lost all vital significance; it rarely goes further than the expression of a hope that the soul will mount upwards to the heavenly heights. Very occasionally, in the adjective “immortal”139 applied to the soul (which only sleeps in death),140 we may detect the influence of mixed philosophical and theological ideas. We soon come to an end of the inscriptions which give expression to the doctrines of theology and of theologically minded philosophy as to the divine nature of the soul, its brief pilgrimage through earthly life and destined return to its true home in a divine incorporeal existence.141 There is no certain mention of a belief in the transmigration of souls.142 Of the specifically Platonic doctrine or its influence there is scarcely a trace.143

Another type of belief derives its strength not from the teachings of philosophers but from the usage and popular practice of religion. This is the belief of those who hope to be conducted after death to a blessed life by the special care of a god, presumably the god to which in their life-time they have offered particular devotion. Such a god will lead them by the hand, they hope, and conduct them into the land of bliss and purity. One who has thus “obtained a god as his leader”144 may face the future with equanimity. Together with Hermes the “messenger of Persephoneia”,145 Persephone herself is most frequently mentioned among these conducting deities.146 Perhaps in this we may see a reminiscence of the hopes awakened and cherished in the Eleusinian and other related mysteries147—hopes otherwise expressed on these tombstones with striking rarity. On the epitaph—certainly a late composition—of a Hierophant of Eleusis who “goes to the Immortals”, the dead man is made to commend, as a mystery revealed by the gods, the ancient opinion illustrated by stories like that of Kleobis and Biton148 “that death not only brings no evil to mortals, but is rather a blessing”.149 A gloomy philosophy has in these latter days of the old religion and worship of the gods taken hold of the mysteries themselves and given them an attitude of hostility to human life that was not originally theirs.150 We are reminded of the mysteries again when we find prayers 543 or promises that the dead shall not drink of the water of forgetfulness in the realm of the souls, but shall be given the “cold water” to drink by the God of the lower world; that he shall be refreshed at the spring of Mnemosyne, the bath of immortality, and so preserve intact his memory and consciousness, the necessary conditions of full and blessed life.151 Here there appears to be a reference to the promises made by particular secret cults in which the departed has specially recommended himself to the powers of life and death. This must plainly be the case when, instead of the Greek Aidoneus, there is mention of Osiris, the Egyptian Lord of Souls. “May Osiris give you the cold water” is a common prayer expressed in a formula that is of frequent and significant occurrence in late epitaphs.152 Of the numerous secret cults of these later times that promised a blessed immortality to their adherents, there is but infrequent mention in the grave-inscriptions: occasionally at the most there is an allusion to the special favour, reaching even beyond the grave, which belongs to the initiated in the mysteries of Mithras.153

No doubtful promises, but real and practical experience forms the basis of the belief of those to whom the dead has appeared visibly in a dream to assure them that his “soul” has not been annihilated by death.154 The oldest proof of the continued existence of the soul remains in force the longest. The pupil hopes for something higher from the master whom death has taken away from his sight: he prays to him that, as he had once in life, so he will now continue to stand by his side, assisting him in the pursuance of his profession as a physician—“Thou canst, for now thou hast a more divine part in life.”155

Expectations of an energetic after-life of the departed soul, expressing themselves in many forms, are widely current; but such expectations never achieve a unified, dogmatic form. Nor was anyone forbidden to cherish for himself and inscribe upon his grave-stone, unorthodox opinions of every kind—even though they should point to the very opposite of such expectations.156

A dubious “If” precedes on many epitaphs the anticipation of a conscious life of the dead in full possession of the senses, or a reward of the dead in accordance with their deserts: “if anything yet remains below”. Such phrases are of very frequent occurrence.157 Indeed the doubt itself is set aside when it is distinctly asserted that after death nothing of the man remains alive. All that men say of Hades and its terrors or its consolations is the fabled invention of poets; darkness 544 and nothingness is all that awaits us below.158 The dead turns to ashes or to earth;159 the elements out of which he was created take back what is their own.160 Life is only lent to man and in death he restores the loan again.161 In death he pays tribute to nature.162 The bitter outcry of the survivors against death, the savage beast of prey, loveless and pitiless, that has snatched away their dearest from their side, shows small hope of the preservation of the vanished life.163 Grief and complaint, say others, are vain both for the dead and for the living; no man returns; the parting effected by death is for ever.164 Only submission is left.165 “Take comfort, child, no man is immortal”—so runs the conventional phrase current among the populace and inscribed by many upon the graves of their vanished dead.166 “Once I was not, then I was, and now I am no more: what more is there to be said?”—so speaks the dead from more than one gravestone, addressing the living who is soon to suffer the same fate.167 “Live,” he cries to the living, “for there is nothing sweeter granted to us mortals than this life in the daylight.”168 A last thought reverts once more to the life that has been left behind on earth. The body dies, personality vanishes, nothing is left alive on earth but the memory of the deeds and virtue of the departed.169 But there is a continuance in the life of others, more vital than in the empty sound of fame, achieved by him who leaves behind him on earth children and children’s children. There are many who, in these later ages too, are content, in the true spirit of antiquity, with this blessing and desire no other consolation for their own annihilation.170

§ 6

But such reassertions of the antique temper were of rarer and rarer occurrence. The ancient world to which it had given such toughness and energy of purpose was on its death-bed. With the end of the third and the beginning of the fourth century it enters upon its last agony; a general failure of nerve had long threatened the loosely bound masses that shared in the Græco-Roman civilization. In the general atrophy that beset its old age the vigorous blood of the genuine and unadulterated Greek and Roman stocks was flowing but feebly. Now the universal process of decay sets in irresistibly. It was its own inherent weakness that made the attacks of outside forces so ominous to the old world. In the West the old order vanished more swiftly and submitted more 545 completely to the new forces, than in the Hellenized East. It was not that the old civilization was any less rotten in the East than in the West. The enfeebled hand and the failing mind betray themselves in every utterance—in the last spasms of vital energy that inspired the art and literature of moribund Greece. The impoverishment of the vital forces out of which Greece had once brought forth the flower of its special and characteristic spirit makes itself felt in the altered relation of the individual to the whole, and of the totality of visible life to the shadowy powers of the unseen world. Individualism has had its day. No longer is the emancipation of the individual the object of man’s endeavour; no longer is he required to arm himself against all that is not himself, that is outside the region of his free will and choice. He is not strong enough, and should not feel himself strong enough, to trust to the self-conscious strength of his own intelligence. Authority—an authority that is the same for all—must be his guide. Rationalism is dead. In the last years of the second century a religious reaction begins to assert itself and makes itself felt more and more in the period that follows. Philosophy itself becomes at last a religion, drawing its nourishment from surmise and revelation. The invisible world wins the day over the meagre present, so grievously bound down by the limitation of mere experience. No longer does the soul await with courage and calmness whatever may be hidden behind the dark curtain of death. Life seemed to need something to complete it. And how faded and grey life had become171—a rejuvenation upon this earth seemed to be out of the question. All the more complete, in consequence, is the submission that throws itself with closed eyes and eager yearning upon another world, situated now far beyond the limits of the known or knowable world of the living. Hopes and a vague longing, a shrinking before the mysterious terrors of the unknown, fill the soul. Never in the history of the ancient world is the belief in an immortal life of the soul after death a matter of such burning and exacerbated ardour as in these last days when the antique civilization was preparing itself to breathe its last.

Hopes of immortality, widely espoused by the masses and fed rather on faith than on reflexion, sought satisfaction in the brilliant ceremonial of religions that easily outshone the simple worship of every day officially undertaken by the city. In these new rites the worshippers united in the secret cult seemed to be placed more directly in the hands of the gods; and, above all, a blessed existence hereafter was assured to pious 546 believers. In these days the ancient and hallowed mysteries of Eleusis awake to a new life and remain in vigorous activity till nearly the end of the fourth century.172 Orphic conventicles must have attracted worshippers for ages;173 the Hellenized Orient was familiar with many such orgiastic cults.

In the mixed populations of the East the new religions proved more attractive to the Greeks, too, than their old worship of the gods of Greece. Clear and definite obligations, fixed commandments and dogmas, holding the weak and frail individual in their stronger embrace, seemed to belong more peculiarly to these foreign worships than to the old beliefs of Greece. Rigid and unalterable maintenance of primitive ideas and practices seemed to give the former the stamp of sacred and certain knowledge. From all men they demanded perfect submission to the God and his priests; perfect renunciation of the world, conceived as dualistically opposed to the divine; the purging away of the contamination of its lusts by purifications and sanctifications, ceremonial expiations and asceticisms. By these means the faithful prepared themselves for the highest reward that piety could conceive; an unending life of bliss far away from this unclean world in the realm of the holy and the consecrated. To the belief in a blessed immortality these foreign mysteries contributed their much desired support; and the populace welcomed their message of salvation with all the greater eagerness since their varied and impressive ceremonial contrasted so strikingly with the plain and homely worship of the Greek gods. In the symbolism of these exotic cults men seemed to discern a mysterious and secret knowledge; and to the divine figures illuminated by such a halo were easily attributed strange and magical powers beyond belief or experience. The cult of the Egyptian deities had long been familiar both in the East and in the West, and they maintained and extended their influence down to the last days of the ancient religions. The Phrygian deities, the Thraco-Phrygian cults of Sabazios, Attis, and Kybele, and the Persian worship of Mithras were later comers, but they, too, took equally firm root and spread over the whole extent of the empire.174

The higher culture of these last centuries, having become credulous and avid of marvels, no longer looked with contempt upon the means of salvation and sanctification which had once been left almost entirely to the lower orders of the population. The most cultivated and educated people of these times used their culture and their education simply to justify everything mysterious and incomprehensible in itself—even 547 when it was expressed in the most physical symbolism. The newly awakened religious interest of the populace had coincided with a return on the part of philosophy to the teaching of Plato; a teaching which itself tended towards religion. Platonism had invaded the doctrine of other schools at many points, and it had already acquired a new home for itself in the restored Academy, where once an un-Platonic Scepticism had overthrown the teaching of the master. Now a new Platonism comes forward and overwhelms all the other schools of philosophy. Absorbing the doctrines of Aristotle and Chrysippos (which it fancied it could reconcile with Platonism), it weaved them into its own special teaching so that the whole presented a subtle and far-reaching system of thought. The speculative system of Neoplatonism, into which the old age of Greece, in spite of its weariness, contrived to introduce so much profundity, spirit, and ingenuity (together with a luxuriant mass of scholastic folly), fills the history of the last centuries of Greek thought. Its fundamental tendency is, once more, a turning away from the life of nature, and a determined invasion of a transcendent world of pure spirit; and it was by this tendency that it satisfied the needs of its time. The Sole and First Cause, lying beyond all being and continually expressing itself in creative emanations, yet never troubled or impaired in its perfect and eternal transcendency; the development, in an unbroken process from this One, of the world of thinking, of the Ideas and pure thought preserved in it—the world of Spirit and the world of Matter—until at last, in longing and desire,175 all things created return to the origin of all Being: to describe and express all this is the single theme, persisting throughout all variations, of this philosophy. The whole fabric of reality, the interplay of cause and effect, depends upon the inherence of the thing caused in its Cause from which it takes its origin and to which it returns at last. That which in the evolution of nature takes its origin from the One, and degenerates more and more completely, in the darkness and corruption of Matter, as it gets further away from its source—now becomes Man and seeks in morality and religion a conscious return to the pure and everlasting and unfailing One. The divine does not descend to earth and man must reach upwards to the divine heights in order to unite himself with the One that is before all multiplicity. This union can be brought about by the pure exercise of the human reason, but also in the mysterious harmony of the individual life with the First Cause that is beyond all reason in the ecstasy 548 that is above all rationality. It can be achieved when at last the whole series of rebirths has been passed through, whereupon the pure soul, the divine in man, enters into the divinity of the Whole.176

To fly from the world—not to work within the world to produce something better—is the teaching and injunction of this last Greek philosophy. Away from separate, divided Being, upward towards the uninterrupted glory of the One divine life, the soul wings its way. The world, this visible world of matter, is fair, says Plotinos, for it is the work and image of the divine, present and working in it. A last gleam of the departing sunlight of Greek sensibility seems to break through the words in which Plotinos rejects the Christian-Gnostic hatred of the world.177 The ugly, he says, is strange and contrary to God as well as to Nature.178 But the soul must no longer rest in the world of created beauty.179 The soul is so profoundly conscious of its derivation from the supra-sensual, of its divinity and eternity, that it must rise above all created being and reach out to the One that was before the world and remains for ever outside the world.180

This philosophy, profoundly estranged though it was from the old Greek attitude to life with its enjoyment of the world, nevertheless felt itself called upon to oppose the rising tide of the new and irresistible religion. It took under its protection the ancient Greek culture and the ancient faith that was so inseparably bound up with that culture. Its most convinced supporters, with the last of the Emperors of the old faith at their head, threw themselves whole-heartedly into the fray. And before them rode the Genius of ancient Hellas, and the old beliefs of Greece. But when the battle had been fought and lost it became apparent to all the world that it was a corpse that rode before the exalted combatants, like the body of the dead Cid Campeador fastened upon his horse and leading his hosts against the Moors. The ancient religion of Greece, and with it the whole civilized life of the Greek world, faded and died at that discovery, and could not be recalled to life. A newer faith, very differently endowed and having power to crush the heavily laden soul and point it upwards in absolute submission to the divine compassion, held the field. The new world that was coming into being had need of it.

And yet—was Greece quite extinguished and dead for ever? Much—only too much—of the philosophy of its old age lived on in the speculative system of the Christian faith. And in the whole of modern culture so far as it has built itself upon 549 Christianity or by extension from it, in all modern science and art, not a little survives of Greek genius and Greek inspiration. The outward embodiment of Hellas is gone; its spirit is imperishable. Nothing that has once been alive in the spiritual life of man can ever perish entirely; it has achieved a new form of existence in the consciousness of mankind—an immortality of its own. Not always in equal measure, nor always in the same place, does the stream of Greek thought rise to the surface in the life of mankind. But it is a river that never quite runs dry; it vanishes, to reappear; it buries itself to emerge again. Desinunt ista, non pereunt.

NOTES TO CHAPTER XIV

PART II

[1]   See above, chap. v, p. 162 f.

[2]   Lucian 50, De Luctu: washing, anointing, crowning of the dead body, πρόθεσις: c. 11. Violent dirge-singing over the dead, 12; accompanied by the αὐλός, 19; and led by a special singer θρηνῶν σοφιστής, 20. Special lament by the father, 13. The dead is before them with jaws tied up and so secured against unsightly gaping—19 fin. (a stronger form of the Homeric σύν τε στόμ’ ἐρείδειν, λ 426). For this purpose narrow bands are drawn round the chin, cheeks, and forehead of the dead man. We sometimes see them represented on vases depicting a lying-in-state, and they have also been found sometimes in graves in which case they have been made of metal (gold or lead): see Wolters, Ath. Mitth. 1896, p. 367 ff. ἐσθής, κόσμος (even including horses and slaves) burnt or buried in company with the dead for his pleasure, 14. ὀβολός given to the dead, 10. The dead fed by χοαί and καθαγίσματα, 9. The gravestone crowned; sprinkled with ἄκρατος; burnt offering, 19. περίδειπνον after a three days’ fast, 24.

[3]   From a rather earlier period we hear that it is a bad thing to be dead μὴ τυχόντα τῶν νομίμων—it is an infamous deed for the son to deny his father τὰ νομιζόμενα after death; Din., Aristog. viii, 18; cf. [D.] 25, 54.—The dead man says with satisfaction πάνθ’ ὅσα τοῖς χρηστοῖς φθιμένοις νόμος ἐστὶ γενέσθαι τῶνδε τυχὼν κἀγὼ τόνδε τάφον κατέχω, Epigr. Gr., 137; cf. 153, 7–8.

[4]   ὁμόταφοι are mentioned among other associations as occurring in a Solonian law: Digest. 47, 22, 4. These would probably be special collegia funeraticia (at any rate societies of which the exclusive or essential bond of union consisted in ὁμοῦ ταφῆναι—and not, therefore, any of the ordinary θίασοι or any “gentilician association” as Ziebarth thinks, Gr. Vereinswesen, p. 17 [1896]). There are also traces (but not very frequent) of common burial grounds belonging to θίασοι; e.g. in Kos, Inscr. Cos, 155–9. ἐρανισταί bury their dead member, CIA. ii, 3308; συμμύσται do the same, Ath. Mitt. ix, 35. A member contributes as ταμίας of the collegium out of his own means, for the benefit of dead members of an ἔρανος, εἰς τὴν ταφήν, τοῦ εὐσχημονεῖν αὐτοὺς καὶ τετελευτηκότας κτλ., CIA. ii, 621 (about 150 B.C.). Another ταμίας δέδωκεν τοῖς μεταλλάξασιν (θιασώταις) τὰ ταφικὸν παραχρῆμα ins. from Attica, third century B.C. CIA. iv, 2, 623b; cf. ib., 615b, l. 14–15; Rhod. inscr. in BCH. iv, 138. Dionysiastai, Athenaistai in Tanagra ἔθαψαν τὸν δεῖνα: GDI. 960–2 (IG. Sept. i, 685–9). The Iobakchai in Athens (third century A.D.) offer a crown and wine at the burial of a member: Ath. Mitt. 1894, 261, l. 158 ff. οἱ θίασοι πάντες and even οἱ ἔφηβοι καὶ οἱ νέοι, ὁ δῆμος, ἡ γερουσία erect the monument, CIG. 3101, 3112. (Teos) συνοδεῖται bury together the members of their σύνοδοι, IPE. ii, 60–5. A gymnasiarch also undertakes τῶν ἐκκομιδῶν ἐπιμέλειαν, Inscr. Perg., ii, 252, l. 16; noteworthy also is ii, 374 B, l. 21–5. A few more exx. are given by E. Loch, Zu d. griech. Grabschriften (Festschr. Friedländer, 1895), p. 288. 551

[5]   δημοσία ταφή frequently. Resolution πανδημεὶ παραπέμψασθαι τὸ σῶμα τοῦ δεῖνος ἐπὶ τὴν κηδείαν αὐτοῦ, inscr. of Amorgos, BCH. 1891, p. 577 (l. 26); p. 586 (l. 17 ff.). Resolution of the council and people of Olbia (first century B.C.): when the body of a certain deserving citizen who has died abroad is brought into the city, all workshops are to close, the citizens wearing black shall follow his ἐκφορά; an equestrian statue of the dead man to be erected and every year at the ἱπποδρομίαι of Achilles the golden crown granted to the dead man to be proclaimed, etc.: IPE. i, 17, 22 ff.—Honour paid to a dead man by granting a golden crown, CIG. 3185; cf. Cic., Flac. 75. This example comes from Smyrna, where such honours were particularly common: see Böckh on CIG. 3216. Frequent on Asia Minor inss.: ἁ πόλις sc. στεφανοῖ, ἔθαψεν, τὸν δεῖνα. ὁ δᾶμος τῷ δεῖνι, sc. ἀνέθηκε, on graves: see esp. G. Hirschfeld, Greek Inscr. in Brit. Mus. iv, 1, p. 34. More ap. Loch, op. cit., p. 287.

[6]   This seems to have been particularly common in Amorgos; cf. CIG. 2264b: four inss. from Amorgos. BCH. 1891, p. 574 (153-4 B.C.), 577, 586 (242 B.C.), 588 f. The Council of the Areopagos and the people of Athens decree the erection of a statue in honour of a young man of rank (T. Statilius Lamprias) who has died πρὸ ὥρας in Epidauros, and also the dispatch of envoys to παραμυθήσασθαι ἀπὸ τοῦ τῆς πόλεως ὀνόματος his parents and his grandfather Lamprias. In the same way the citizens of Sparta send an embassy of sympathy and consolation to other relatives of the same youth (first century A.D.), Fouil. d’Epidaur. i, 205–9, pp. 67–70. Honorific decree of council and people of Corinth for the same person, Ἐφ. Ἀρχ., 1894, p. 15. ψηφίσματα παραμυθητικά of two Lydian cities at the death of a man of rank (first century A.D.), Anz. Wien. Ak., Phil. Hist. Cl., 16th Nov., 1893 (n. 24) = Ath. Mitt. 1894, p. 102 f.; cf. Paros, CIG. 2383 (the council and people decree the erection of a statue to a dead boy ἐπὶ μέρους παραμυθησόμενοι τὸν πατέρα); Aphrodisias in Karia, CIG. 277b, 2775b–d; Neapolis, CIG. 5836 = IG. Sic. It. 758.—The grounds of consolation, so far as they are alluded to, are regularly independent of any theological teaching: φέρειν συμμέτρως τὰ τῆς λύπης εἰδότας ὅτι ἀπαραίτητός ἐστιν ἡ ἐπὶ πάντων ἀνθρώπων μοῖρα and the like (φέρειν τὸ συμβεβηκὸς ἀνθρωπίνως, F. d’Epid. i, 209). We are reminded of the παραμυθητικοὶ λόγοι of the philosophers which are literary expressions of these consolations—the philosophers in fact were expected ex officio to offer such consolations to the mourners, cf. Plu., Superst. 186 C; D. Chr. 27, § 9 (ii, 285 Arn.).

[7]   In spite of any brevity in the narrative the fact of ritual burial is regularly alluded to (as an important circumstance) in the romance of Xen. Eph. and in the Historia Apollonii: Griech. Roman, 391, 3; 413, 1.

[8]   At Athens his friend vainly tries to obtain burial intra urbem for the murdered Marcellus: quod religione se impediri dicerent; neque id antea cuiquam concesserunt (while in Rome people were occasionally buried in the city in spite of the prohibition of the XII tables: Cic., Lg. ii, 58): Servius to Cicero, Fam. 4, 12, 3 (45 B.C.). There it was permitted uti in quo vellent gymnasio eum sepelirent and finally his body was cremated and the remains buried in nobilissimo orbis terraram gymnasio, the Academy. ἐνταφὰ καὶ θέσις τοῦ σώματος ἐν τῷ γυμνασίῳ (of an aristocratic Roman) in Kyme: GDI. 311. To a living benefactor of that city συνεχωρήθη καὶ ἐνταφῆναι (in the future) ἐν τῷ γυμνασίῳ, CIG. 279b (Aphrodisias in Karia). As a special mark of honour paid to a benefactor of the city it is permitted that his body in oppidum introferatur (into Smyrna: Cic., Flac. 75), ἐνταφὰ κατὰ πόλιν καὶ 552 ταφὰ δημοσία, ἐνταφὰ κατὰ πόλιν ἐν τῷ ἐπισαμοτάτῳ τοῦ γυμνασίου τόπῳ, Knidos, GDI. 3501, 3502 (time of Augustus). The city buries a youth γυμνάδος ἐν τεμένει, Epigr. Gr. 222 (Amorgos).—Ulpian, Dig. 47, 12, 3, 5, implies the possibility that lex municipalis permittat in civitate sepeleri.

[9]   σῆμα, i.e. probably grave and monument, of Messia set up by her husband in his own house: Epigr. Gr. 682 (Rome).

[10]   Thus Inscr. Perg. ii, 590, ζῶν ὁ δεῖνα κατεσκεύασε τὸ μνημεῖον τῇ ἰδίᾳ μάμμῃ . . . καὶ τῷ πάππῳ, ἑαυτῷ, γυναικί, τέκνοις, ἐκγόνοις ἀνεξαλλοτρίωτον ἕως διαδοχῆς κτλ. Similar directions, ib., n. 591, and frequently. The series includes the old and traditional circle of the ἀγχιστεῖς: see above, chap. v, nn. 141 and 146 (where μέχρι ἀνεψιαδῶν παίδων should be read).

[11]   There was even a Solonian law against violation and plunder of tombs: Cic., Lg. ii, 64. The specially invented word τυμβωρύχος shows that such practices were frequent at a quite early period; cf. σημάτων φῶρα, Herond. v, 57. Complaint on account of the rifling of a tomb: Egypt, papyr. of 127 B.C., Notices et extraits, xviii, 2, p. 161 f. Frequent rescripts of emperors of the fourth century against the profanation of graves, Cod. Theod. ix, 17. But even emperors of second and third centuries had to deal with the subject: Dig. 47, 12, and cf. Paul., Sent. 1, 21, 4 ff.; sepulchri violati actio, Quint., Decl. 299, 369, 373. Grave-thieves were a favourite character in romance: e.g. ap. Xen. Eph., Chariton and others. Epigram of Greg. Naz. on the subject of looted graves, Anth. Pal. viii, 176 ff. From the fourth century the Christians in particular seem to have been a danger to heathen burial places (cf. Gothofred., ad Cod. Theod. iii, p. 150 Ritt.)—in fact, ecclesiastics were specially given to grave-robbery: Novell. Valentin. 5 (p. 111 Ritt.), Cassiod., Var. iv, 18; bustuarii latrones (Amm. Marc. 28, 1, 12), were then frequent. An Egyptian anchorite had at an earlier period become latronum maximus et sepulchrorum violator: Rufin., Vit. Patr. 9 (p. 446b Rossw.).

[12]   Inscrr. indicating such sepulchral penalties are rare on the mainland of Greece, common in Thrace and the Greek cities of Asia Minor, but most frequent of all in Lykia. Most of them belong to the Roman period, but also appeal occasionally to τὸν τῆς ἀσεβείας νόμον of the city (cf. also Korkyra. CIG. 1933); or refer to the ἔγκλημα τυμβωρυχίας as though it were a local process of law which had perhaps been confirmed by an Imperial ordinance (ὑπεύθυνος ἔστω τοῖς διατάγμασι καὶ τοῖς πατρίοις νόμοις, inscr. from Tralles: see Hirschfeld, p. 121). They therefore cannot be simply borrowed from the Roman custom, but belong to the old law of the country esp. in Lykia where a similar prescription has been found dating from the third century B.C.: CIG. 4529; see Hirschfeld, Königsb. Stud. i, pp. 85–144 (1887)—doubt is thrown on the legal validity of the penal clauses in such inscrr. by J. Merkel, Festg. f. Ihering, p. 109 ff. (1892).

[13]   Curses directed against those who bury unauthorized persons in a grave or damage the monument are rare in European Greece: e.g. Aegina, CIG. 2140b; Thessaly, BCH. xv, 568; Athens, CIA. 1417–28; among these is a Thessalian grave, 1427; a Christian, 1428; 1417–22 are set up by Herodes Atticus to Apia Regilla and Polydeukion (cf. K. Keil, Pauly-Wiss. i, 2101), but his coquetting with the cult of the χθόνιοι proves nothing for the common opinion of his fellow citizens. Sepulchral curses are particularly common in inss. from Lykia and Phrygia; also Cilicia, JHS. 1891, p. 228, 231, 267; a few also from Halikarnassian graves; Samos, CIG. 2260.—The 553 grave and its peace are placed under the care of the underworld deities in these inss.: παραδίδωμι τοῖς καταχθονίοις θεοῖς τοῦτο τὸ ἡρῷον φυλάσσειν κτλ., CIA. iii, 1423–4. Cf. also a Cretan inscr. Ath. Mitt. 1893, p. 211. Whoever introduces a stranger into the grave or damages the grave ἀσεβὴς ἔστω θεοῖς καταχθονίοις (thus in Lykia, CIG. 4207; 4290; 4292), ἀσεβήσει τὰ περὶ τοὺς θεούς τε καὶ θεὰς πάσας καὶ ἥρωας πάντας (from Itonos in Phthiotis, BCH. xv, 568). ἁμαρτωλὸς ἔστω θεοῖς καταχθονίοις, CIG. 4252b, 4259, 4300e, i, k, v, 4307, 4308; BCH. 1894, p. 326 (n. 9)—all from Lykia. (The formula occurs already in a Lyk. inscr. of 240 B.C.; BCH. 1890, p. 164: ἁμαρτωλοὶ ἔστωσαν—the archons and citizens who neglect to offer the yearly sacrifice to Zeus Soter—θεῶν πάντων καὶ ἀποτινέτω ὁ ἄρχων κτλ., which thus corresponds exactly with the oldest Lyk. inscr. with sepulchral penalty, CIG. 4259). ἔστω ἱερόσυλος θεοῖς οὐρανίοις καὶ καταχθονίοις, CIG. 4253 (Pinara in Lykia). This must mean: he shall be regarded as having transgressed the law against ἀσέβεια, ἱεροσυλία (cf. οἱ νόμοι οἱ περὶ ἱεροσύλου, Teos, SIG. 523, 51), τυμβωρυχία, having at the same time offended against the gods (see Hirschfeld, op. cit., p. 120 f.). More particular is another Lyk. ins.: ἁμαρτωλὸς ἔστω θεῶν πάντων καὶ Λητοῦς καὶ τῶν τέκνων (as the special gods of the country), CIG. 4259, 4303, (iii, p. 1138), 4303 e^3 (p. 1139). In Cilicia ἔστω ἠσεβηκὼς ἔς τε τὸν Δία καὶ τὴν Σελήνην, JHS. xii, 231. Phrygian: κεχολωμένον ἔχοιτο Μῆνα καταχθόνιον, BCH. 1886, p. 503, 6; cf. ἐνορκιζόμεθα Μῆνα καταχθόνιον εἰς τοῦτο μνημεῖον μηδένα εἰσελθεῖν, Amer. School at Athens iii, 174. The same is intended by the peculiarly Phrygian denunciation ἔστω αὐτῷ πρὸς τὸν θεὸν, πρὸς τὴν χεῖρα τοῦ θεοῦ, πρὸς τὸ μέγα ὄνομα τοῦ θεοῦ, CIG. 3872b (p. 1099), 3890, 3902 f.o., 3963: Amer. School iii, 411; BCH. 1893, p. 246 ff. That these are Christian formulae—as Ramsay, JHS. iv, p. 400 f., supposes—is hardly likely. Equally unlikely in the case of 3902r (Franz rightly protests against the idea): ἔσται αὐτῷ πρὸς τὸν ζῶντα θεόν (the same occurs again in a decisively non-Christian sense: BCH. 1893, p. 241) καὶ νῦν καὶ ἐν τῷ κρισίμῳ ἡμέρᾳ (κρίσις apparently = death in CIG. 6731, from Rome, which, considering the words ἄγαλμα εἰμι Ἡλίου, can hardly be Christian). τῆς τοῦ θεοῦ ὀργῆς μεθέξεται, CIA. iii, 1427. Obscure threat: οὐ γὰρ μὴ συνείκῃ . . ., CIG. 2140b (Aegina). The profaner of graves is cursed in more detail: τούτῳ μὴ γῆ βατή, μὴ θάλασσα πλωτή, ἀλλὰ ἐκρειζωθήσεται παγγένει (the ἀραί on the mss. of Herod. Att. agree so far at least in intention, CIA. iii, 1417–22). πᾶσι τοῖς κακοῖς πεῖραν δώσει, καὶ φρείκῃ καὶ πυρετῷ καὶ τεταρταίῳ καὶ ἐλέφαντι κτλ., CIA. iii, 1423–4 (similar curse on a lead tablet from Crete: Ath. Mitt. 1893, p. 211). The first half of this imprecation represents the regular formula in such ἀραί and ὅρκοι—μὴ γῆ βατή κτλ.; cf. Wünsch, Defix., p. vii, and a Jewish-Greek inscr. from Euboea: Ἐφ. Ἀρχ., 1892, p. 175; it occurs also in CIG. 2664, 2667 (Halikarnassos); 4303 (p. 1138 Phrygia). δώσει τοῖς καταχθονίοις θεοῖς δίκην, 4190 (Cappadocia). ὄρφανα τέκνα λίποιτο, χῆρον βιόν, οἶκον ἔρημον, ἐν πυρὶ πάντα δάμοιτο, κακῶν ὕπο χεῖρας ὄλοιτο 3862, 3875, 400 (Phrygia). These are all peculiarly and originally Phrygian; something similar seems to occur in inss. in the Phrygian language: see Ztschr. vergl. Sprachf. 28, 381 ff.; BCH. 1896, p. 111 ff. Phrygian, too, is the curse οὗτος δ’ ἀώροις περιπέσοιτο συμφοραῖς, Epigr. Gr., p. 149, Amer. Sch. Ath. ii, 168—i.e. may his children die ἄωροι. (More plainly τέκνων ἀώρων περιπέσοιτο συμφορᾷ, BCH. 1893, p. 272.) Sometimes the additional phrase is found καὶ μετὰ θάνατον δὲ λάβοι τοὺς ὑποχθονίους θεοὺς τιμωροὺς καὶ κεχολωμένους, 554 CIG. 3915 (Phrygian). Besides the common imprecations we also have θανόντι δὲ οὐδὲ ἡ γῆ παρέξει αὐτῷ τάφον, 2826 (Aphrodisias in Karia); μήτε οὐρανὸς τὴν ψυχὴν αὐτοῦ παραδέξαιτο, Am. Sch. Ath. iii, 411 (Pisidia). Barbarous in the extreme is an inscr. from Cilicia (JHS. 1891, p. 287): ἕξει πάντα τὰ θεῖα κεχολωμένα καὶ τὰς στυγερὰς Ἐρεινύας καὶ ἰδίου τέκνου ἥπατος γεύσεται.—With these grave-imprecations we may compare also the threats uttered against those who shall neglect the directions for the honouring of King Antiochos of Kommagene who lies buried in his ἱεροθέσιον (ib, 13; iiib, 3: hence correct ἱεροθύσιον in Paus. 4, 32, 1) on the Nemrud Dagh: εἰδότας ὅτι χαλεπὴ νέμεσις βασιλικῶν δαιμόνων, τιμωρὸς ὁμοίως ἀμελίας τε καὶ ὕβρεως, ἀσέβειαν διώκει καθωσιωμένων τε ἡρώων ἀτειμασθεὶς νόμος ἀνειλάτους ἔχει ποινάς. τὰ μὲν γὰρ ὅσιον ἅπαν κουφὸν ἔργον, τῆς δὲ ἀσεβείας ὀπισθοβαρεῖς ἀναγκαί (iiia, 22 ff., Ber. Berl. Akad. 1883).

[14]   From the point of view of religion, at any rate, it is true, though with considerable reservations, that most of the Greeks and Macedonians scattered over Asia and Egypt in coloniae, in Syros Parthos Aegyptios degenerarunt, Liv. 38, 17, 11–12. The only non-Greek nation (apart from the Romans) which learnt anything from the Greeks or from the semi-religious Greek philosophy was the Jewish—at once the most stubborn and the most pliable of them all.

[15]   At a quite late period, in order to explain the impiety of grave-robbing, Valentinian says (following the libri veteris sapientiae quite as much as Christian teaching) licet occasus necessitatem mens divina (of man) non sentiat, amant tamen animae sedem corporum relictorum et nescio qua sorte rationis occultae sepulchri honore laetantur (Nov. Valent. v, p. 111 Ritt.).

[16]   After the reception of the last person who has a right there ἀποιερῶσθαι τὸν πλάταν, ἀφηρωΐσθαι τὸ μνημεῖον, CIG. 2827, 2834. κορακωθήσεται, i.e. it will be finally shut up: 3919.

[17]   ἐπεὰν δὲ τοῖς καμοῦσιν ἐγχυτλώσωμεν, Herond. v, 84 (i.e. at the end of the month: festival of the dead at the τριακάδες, see above, chap. v, n. 88. ἡμέρας ληγούσης καὶ μηνὸς φθίνοντος εἰώθασιν ἐναγίζειν οἱ πολλοί, Plu., Q. Rom. 34, p. 272 D). Offerings to the dead at the grave: see besides Luc., Charon, 22.

[18]   Epikteta: see above, chap. v, n. 126. Traces of a similar foundation on an inscr. from Thera ap. Ross, Inscr. Gr. 198 (ii, p. 81).—Otherwise the son will perhaps offer to his father τὴν ταφὴν καὶ τὸν ἐναγισμόν (CIG. 1976, Thessalonike; 3645 Lampsakos)—τὸ ἡρῷον κατεσκεύασεν εἰς αἰώνιον μνήμην καὶ τῇ μετὰ θάνατον ἀφωσιωμένῃ θρησκείᾳ (CIG. 4224d, iii, p. 1119 Lykia). A dead man has left the council of a city a sum of money for a στεφανωτικόν (CIG. 3912, 3916 Hierapolis in Phrygia); i.e. in order that his grave may be crowned every year from the interest of the money: 3919. Another man leaves money to a society to celebrate his memory yearly by holding a εὐωχία with οἰνοποσία illumination and crowns: 3028 Ephesos. An annual feast in honour of a dead man’s memory on his γενέθλιος ἡμέρα: 3417 Philadelphia in Lydia (this is the proper day for a feast of the dead: see above, chap. v, n. 89). Annual memorial in the month Ὑακίνθιος for a dead ἀρχιερανιστής in Rhodos, ἀναγόρευσις of his crowns of honour and crowning of his μνημεῖον, regular ἀναγόρευσις τᾶν τιμᾶν ἐν ταῖς συνόδοις (of the ἔρανος) καὶ ταῖς ἐπιχύσεσιν (second century B.C.), IGM. Aeg. i, 155, l. 53 ff., 67 ff. Another foundation, in Elatea (BCH. x, 382), seems to have been much more elaborate in intention and to have included the sacrifice of a bull, as well as εὐωχία and an ἀγών. 555

[19]   τάφος, δευόμενος γεράων, inscr. from Athens (second century A.D.): Ath. Mitt. 1892, p. 272, l. 6. θέλγειν ψυχὴν τεθνηκότος ἀνδρός by libations at the grave: Epigr. Gr. 120, 9–10.

[20]   The ἀπόταφοι: this is the name given to those ἀπεστερημένοι τῶν προγονικῶν τάφων, EM. 131, 44. They even had a burial place of their own: ἀποτάφων τάφων on a marble vase from Rhodos, IGM. Aeg. i, 656.

[21]   This χαῖρε repeats the last farewell which accompanied the removal of the body from the house (Eur., Alc. 626 f.). Cf. χαῖρέ μοι ὦ Πάτροκλε καὶ εἰν Ἀΐδαο δόμοισιν, the words with which Achilles (Ψ 179) addresses his dead friend lying upon the funeral pyre. So too on tombstones χαῖρε must be intended to suggest the continued sympathy of the survivors and the appreciation by the dead of that sympathy. Does it also imply veneration of the departed as κρείττων? Gods and Heroes were also addressed with this word: cf. χαῖρ’ ἄναξ Ἡράκλεες, etc.—The passer-by calls out χαῖρε: χαίρετε ἥρωες. ὁ παράγων σε ἀσπάζεται, Ath. Mitt. ix, 263; and cf. Epigr. Gr. 218, 17–18; 237, 7–8; cf. Loch, op. cit., 278 f.

[22]   χαίρετε is said by the dead man to the living; Böckh on CIG. 3775 (ii, p. 968); cf. χαιρέτω ὁ ἀναγνούς, IG. Sic. et It. [IG. xiv] 350.

[23]   χαίρετε ἥρωες. χαῖρε καὶ σὺ καὶ εὐόδει, CIG. 1956 (more given by Böckh, ii, p. 50; see also on 3278); Inscr. Cos, 343; IG. Sic. et It. 60, 319; BCH. 1893–4, 242 (5), 249 (22), 528 (24), 533 (36); specially noteworthy is p. 529 (28), Λεύκιε Λικίνιε χαῖρε. κὲ σύ γε ὦ παροδεῖτα “χαίροις ὅτι τοῦτο τὸ σεμνὸν | εἶπας ἐμοὶ χαίρειν εἵνεκεν εὐσεβίης”. To call upon the dead is an act of εὐσέβεια.

[24]   At the burial of a woman who is being given a public funeral ἐπεβόασε ὁ δᾶμος τρὶς τὸ ὄνομα αὐτᾶς, GDI. 3504 (Knidos; in the time of Trajan). In the same way the name of the ἥρως was called out three times at a sacrifice in his honour: see above, chap. iv, n. 62.

[25]   Tombstone of Q. Marcius Strato (circ. second century A.D.), Ath. Mitt. 1892, p. 272, l. 5 ff. τοίγαρ ὅσοι Βρομίῳ Παφίῃ τε νέοι μεμέλησθε, δευόμενον γεράων μὴ μαρανεῖσθε τάφον· ἀλλὰ παραστείχοντες ἢ οὔνομα κλεινὸν ὁμαρτῇ βωστρέετ’ ἢ ῥαδινὰς συμπαταγεῖτε χέρας. Those who are thus charged answer, προσεννέπω Στράτωνα καὶ τιμῶ κρότῳ.

[26]   Often represented on Attic lekythoi: Pottier, Les lécythes blancs, p. 57.

[27]   The gods and their statues are honoured in this way: Sittl, Gebärden, p. 182.

[28]   βελτίονες καὶ κρείττονες, Arist., Eudem. fr. 37 [44].

[29]   χρηστοὺς ποιεῖν euphemism for ἀποκτιννύναι in a treaty between Tegea and Sparta: Arist., fr. 542 [592]. They become χρηστοί only after death. This ancient and evidently popular expression gives far stronger grounds for believing that χρηστός applied to the dead than does the passage from Thphr., Ch. x, 16 (xiii, 3), for the opposite view (the περίεργος writes on a tombstone that a dead woman and her family χρηστοὶ ἦσαν, which Loch concludes that the word really “denotes a quality of the living and not of the dead”, op. cit., 281). It is possible at the same time that those who used such words did not mean anything special by their χρηστὲ χαῖρε, and at any rate only thought of it as a vague adjective of praise. But that was not its real meaning.

[30]   χρηστὲ χαῖρε and the like, with or without ἥρως, are very commonly met with on epitaphs from Thessaly, Boeotia, the countries of Asia Minor (and Cyprus as well: cf. BCH. 1896, pp. 343–6; 353–6). On 556 Attic graves the use of the title χρηστός seems to be confined to foreigners and those mostly slaves (see Keil, Jahrb. Phil. suppl. iv, 628; Gutscher, Att. Grabinschr. i, p. 24; ii, p. 13).

[31]   With Gutscher, op. cit., i, 24; ii, 39.—From the fact that in Attica this word does not seem to be given to natives no conclusion is to be drawn as to the opinions held by the Athenians about their dead (as though they thought of them with less respect). The word was simply not traditional in this sense in Attica. On the other hand, the word μακαρίτης was specifically Attic as applied to the dead (see above, ch. vii, n. 10), and this provides unmistakable evidence that the conception of the dead as “blessed” was current also in Attica.

[32]   χρηστῶν θεῶν, Hdt. viii, 111.—ὁ ἥρως (Protesilaos), χρηστὸς ὤν, ξυγχωρεῖ that people should sit down in his τέμενος: Philostr., Her. p. 134, 4 Ks.—Other modes of address intended to mollify the dead are ἄλυπε, χρηστὲ καὶ ἄλυπε, ἄριστε, ἄμεμπτε, etc. χαῖρε (cf. Inscr. Cos, 165, 263, 279, and Loch, op. cit., 281).

[33]   Paus. 4, 27, 6.

[34]   Paus. 4, 32, 4.

[35]   Paus. 9, 13, 5–6. Sacrifice (ἐντέμνειν) of a white mare to the Heroines: Plu., Pelop. 20–2. The same thing is briefly referred to in Xen., HG. 6, 4, 7; see also D.S. xv, 54. Detailed account of the fate of the maidens ap. Plu., Narr. Amor. 3; Jerome, a. Jovin. i, 41 (ii, 1, 308 D Vall.).—αἱ Λεύκτρον θυγατέρες, Plu., Herod. Mal. ii, p. 856 F.

[36]   Λεωνίδεια in Sparta (CIG. 1421) at which there were “speeches” about Leonidas (even in Sparta not a surprising circumstance at this late period), and an ἀγών in which only Spartiates might take part: Paus. 3, 14, 1.—ἀγωνισάμενοι τὸν ἐπιτάφιο[ν Λεωνίδου] καὶ Παυσανί[ου καὶ τῶν λοι]πῶν ἡρώω[ν ἀγῶνα], CIG. 1417.

[37]   At Marathon: crowning and ἐναγισμός at the πολυάνδρειον of the Marathonian Heroes carried out by the epheboi: CIA. ii, 471, 26. Cf. more generally Aristid. ii, p. 229 f. Dind. Nocturnal fighting of the ghosts there: Paus. 1, 32, 4 (the oldest prototype of the similar legends told, in connexion with the story of the battle between the dead Huns and Romans, by Damasc., V. Isid. 63).

[38]   ἄνδρας] ἐθ’ ἥρωας σέβεται πατρίς κτλ., Inscr. Cos, 350 (beginning of Empire).

[39]   Speaking of the Attic tragedians, D. Chr. thinks (15, p. 237 M. = ii, 235 Arn.) οὓς ἐκεῖνοι ἀποδεικνύουσιν ἥρωας τούτοις φαίνονται ἐναγίζοντες (οἱ Ἕλληνες) ὡς ἥρωσιν, καὶ τὰ ἡρῷα ἐκείνοις ᾠκοδομημένα ἰδεῖν ἔστιν. But this is only true in a very limited and qualified sense.

[40]   Ἕκτορι ἔτι θύουσιν ἐν Ἰλίῳ, says Luc. (expressly speaking of his own times), D. Conc. 12. Apparition of Hektor in Troad: Max. Tyr. 15, 7, p. 283 R. Miracles worked: Philostr., Her. pass. Hekt. in Thebes: Lyc. 1204 ff.

[41]   In the Ἡρωικὸς Philostratos gives plenty of evidence of this. Most of what he says about the Heroes of the Trojan war is entirely without traditional basis, but not all of it: and especially where he speaks (in the first part of the dialogue) of the appearances and displays of power attributed in his own day to the Heroes he is far from inventing. (His powers of invention are exercised particularly in what he says about the events of their lives where he is expanding or correcting Homer.) Acc. To Philostr. (Her. 681, p. 149, 32 ff. Kays., 1871) ὁρῶνται—at least by the shepherds of the Trojan plain—the figures of the Homeric champions (gigantic in size, pp. 136–40 [667]; φαίνονται in full armour, 557 p. 131, 1). Hektor in particular appears, works miracles, and his statue πολλὰ ἐργάζεται χρηστὰ κοινῇ τε καὶ ἐς ἕνα, pp. 151–2. Legend about Antilochos, p. 155, 10 ff. Palamedes appears, p. 154. On the south coast of the Troad opposite Lesbos he has an ancient temple in which θύουσιν to him ξυνιόντες οἱ τὰς ἀκταίας οἰκοῦντες πόλεις, p. 184, 21 (see also V. Ap. iv, 13). Sacrifice to Palamedes as a Hero, 153, 29 ff.—Mantic power attributed to the ἥρωες, 135, 21 ff.; 148, 20 ff. (to Odysseus in Ithaca, 195, 5 ff.). Hence Protesilaos in particular, who appears at Elaious in Thrac. Chers. to the vineyard-keeper into whose mouth Philostr. puts his story, has so much to say even about what he had not himself seen or experienced. Protes. is still fully alive (ζῇ, 130, 23); like Achilles (in Leuke, etc.) he has his ἱεροὶ δρόμοι ἐν οἷς γυμνάζεται (131, 31). A vision of Protes. appearing to an enemy makes him blind (132, 9). (To meet a Hero often blinds a mortal, cf. Hdt. vi, 117, and the case of Stesichoros and the Dioskouroi.) He protects his protégé’s fields from snakes, wild beasts, and everything harmful: 132, 15 ff. He himself is now ἐν Ἅιδου (when he is with Laodameia), now in Phthia, and now in the Troad (143, 17 ff.). He appears about midday (143, 21, 32; cf. Append. vi). At his ancient oracle at Elaious (mentioned already by Hdt. ix, 116, 120; alluded to by Philostr., p. 141, 12) he dispenses oracles more particularly to the champions of the great games, the heroes of the age (p. 146, 13 ff., 24 ff., 147, 8 ff., 15 ff.; famous contemporaries are mentioned: Eudaimon of Alexandria, victor at Olympia in Ol. 237, and Helix well-known from the Γυμναστικός). He heals diseases, esp. consumption, dropsy, ophthalmia, and ague, and he helps people in the pains of love (p. 147, 30 ff.). Prot. also gives oracles in his Phthiotic home Phylake (where he pays frequent visits), 148, 24 ff.—It is the regular series of miraculous performances normally attributed to the ἥρωες of older legends, that Protesilaos carries out here.—On Mt. Ismaros in Thrace Maron (Εὐανθέος υἱός, Od. ι 197) appears and ὁρᾶται τοῖς γεωργοῖς to whom he sends rain (149, 3 ff.). Mt. Rhodope in Thrace is haunted (οἰκεῖ) by Rhesos, who lives there a life of chivalry, breeding horses, practising his weapons, and hunting; the woodland animals offer themselves willingly as sacrifices at his altar; the heros keeps the plague away from the surrounding κῶμαι (149, 7–19).—The legendary details from Philostratos here selected for mention may be taken as really derived from popular tradition (cf. also W. Schmid, D. Atticismus, iv, 572 ff.).

[42]   Again in 375 A.D. Achilles preserved Attica from an earthquake (Zosim. iv, 18); in 396 he kept Alaric away from Athens; ib., v, 6.

[43]   Plu., Lucull. 23; App., Mithr. 83. Lucullus was Roman enough to carry off from the inhabitants of Sinope their much-honoured statue of Autolykos, to which the elaborate cult was principally attached: ἐτίμων Autol. ὡς θεόν. ἦν δὲ καὶ μαντεῖον αὐτοῦ, Str. 546.

[44]   See above, chap. iv, nn. 119–20.—Heroon of Kyniska (sister of Agesilaos) in Sparta as victor at Olympos: Paus. 3, 15, 1.

[45]   Hero-physicians: see above, chap. iv, § 10. Our knowledge of the cult and activity of these Heroes is chiefly derived from evidence from later times.—An evidently late creation is the Hero Neryllinos in the Troad, of whose worship, healing, and prophetic powers Athenag., Apol. 26, has something to say (Lob. Agl. 1171). ὁ ξένος ἰατρός, Toxaris, in Athens: Luc., Scyth. 1; 2. (The special name of the ξένος ἰατρός may be Lucian’s invention, but not what he tells us of his cult.) There was a permanent cult of Hippokrates in Kos in the time of Soranos: the Koans offered sacrifice to him (ἐναγίζειν) annually on his birthday 558 (see above, chap. v, n. 89): Soran. ap. Anon., V. Hipp. 450, 13 West. (miracle at the tomb of Hipp. in Larisa: ib., 451, 55 ff.). The doctor in Luc., Philops. 21, makes an elaborate sacrifice (something more than ἐναγίζειν) annually to his bronze statue of Hipp.—A good story thoroughly in the manner of popular folk-lore is that told of Pellichos the Corinthian general who was also worshipped as giving help in sickness and the magic tricks that he (simply as ἥρως) was able to play on the Libyan slave who had stolen the gold pieces which used to be offered to him: Luc., Philops. 18–20.

[46]   Anth. Pal. vii, 694 (Ἀδδαίου, probably the Macedonian).

[47]   CIG. 4838b (see above, chap. iv, n. 60). The name expresses the idea: εὐόδει was the greeting which the dead man returned to the traveller, CIG. 1956.

[48]   Another example: bulls are still sacrificed in Megara in the fourth century A.D. officially by the city to the Heroes who had fallen in the Persian wars, IG. Sept. i, 53.

[49]   At the monument of Philopoimen, Plu., Philop. 21.

[50]   ἐν τοῖς Ἡρωϊκοῖς καὶ ἐν ταῖς ἄλλαις ἑορταῖς—in Priansos and Hierapytna in Crete (third century B.C.), CIG. 2556, 37. Annual festival of the Ἡρῷα, in which were held εὐχαριστήριοι ἀγῶνες for Asklepiades and those who had fought with him in one of the city’s wars. A decree honouring the grandsons of this Asklep. has been found at Eski-Manyas near Kyzikos: Ath. Mitt. 1884, p. 33.

[51]   In taking an oath they swore by the gods καὶ ἥρωας καὶ ἡρωάσσας (Dreros in Crete): Cauer, Delect.1 38 A, 31 (third century B.C.). Treaty between Rhodos and Hierapytna (second century B.C.), Cauer, 44, 3: εὔξασθαι τῷ Ἁλίῳ καὶ τᾷ Ῥόδῳ καὶ τοῖς ἄλλοις θεοῖς πᾶσι καὶ πάσαις καὶ τοῖς ἀρχαγέταις καὶ τοῖς ἥρωσι, ὅσοι ἔχοντι τὰν πόλιν καὶ τὰν χώραν τὰν Ῥοδίων . . . Oath of citizenship from Chersonnesos (third century), Sitzb. Berl. Akad. 1892, p. 480: ὀμνύω . . . ἥρωας ὅσοι πόλιν καὶ χώραν καὶ τεύχη ἔχοντι τὰ Χερσονασιτᾶν.—Similar exx. from earlier times: see above, chap. iv, n. 4 (and cf. Din., Dem. 64: μαρτύρομαι . . . καὶ τοὺς ἥρωας τοὺς ἐγχωρίους κτλ.).

[52]   e.g. inscr. from Astypalaia BCH. 1891, p. 632 (n. 4): Damatrios son of Hippias dedicates a fountain and trees θεοῖς ἥρωσί τε . . . ἀθλοφόρου τέχνας ἀντιδιδοὺς χάριτα.—A grave is dedicated θεοῖς ἥρωσι, CIG. 3272 (Smyrna), i.e. probably θ. καὶ ἥρωσι (cf. θεοῖς δαίμοσι, 5827. etc.).

[53]   Collegia of ἡρωισταί: Foucart. Assoc. relig. 230 (49), 233 (56). CIA. ii, 630. In Boeotia, Ath. Mitt. 3, 299 = IG. Sept. i, 2725.

[54]   e g. inscr. on one of the seats in the theatre at Athens: ἱερέως Ἀνάκοιν καὶ ἥρωος ἐπιτεγίου, CIA. iii, 290.

[55]   διαμένουσι δὲ καὶ ἐς τόδε τῷ Αἴαντι παρ’ Ἀθηναίοις τιμαί, αὐτῷ τε καὶ Εὐρυσάκει, Paus. 1, 35, 3 (Αἰάντεια in Salamis in first century B.C., CIA. ii, 467–71). ἐναγίζουσι δὲ καὶ ἐς ἡμᾶς ἔτι τῷ Φορωνεῖ (in Argos), 2, 20, 3. καί οἱ (Theras) καὶ νῦν ἔτι οἱ Θηραῖοι κατ’ ἔτος ἐναγίζουσιν ὡς οἰκιστῇ, 3, 1, 8. He also bears witness to the still surviving cult of Pandion as Hero in Megara, 1, 41, 6; Tereus in Megara, 1, 41, 9; Melampous in Aigosthena, 1, 44, 5; Aristomenes in Messenia, 4, 14, 7; Aitolos in Elis (ἐναγίζει ὁ γυμνασίαρχος ἔτι καὶ ἐς ἐμὲ καθ’ ἕκαστον ἔτος τῷ Αἰτωλῷ, 5, 4, 4; cf. the γυμνασίαρχος who looks after the ἐκκομιδαί: above, this chap., n. 4); Sostratos the ἐρώμενος of Herakles in Dyme, 7, 17, 8; Iphikles in Phenea, 8, 14, 9; the boys slain at Kaphyai, 8, 23, 6–7; the four lawgivers of Tegea, 8, 48, 1; the Εὐσεβεῖς in Katana, 10, 28, 4–5.—Of course, it does not follow that when Paus. mentions other very numerous Heroes without so 559 expressly saying that their cult still survived, he means that those cults had died out.

[56]   Plu., Aristid. 21.

[57]   Aratos received from the Achaeans after his death θυσίαν καὶ τιμὰς ἡρωικάς in which he may take pleasure himself εἴπερ καὶ περὶ τοὺς ἀποιχομένους ἔστι τις αἴσθησις, Polyb. 8, 14, 8. He was buried at Sikyon, as οἰκιστὴς καὶ σωτὴρ τῆς πόλεως, in a τόπος περίοπτος called the Ἀράτειον (cf. Paus. 2, 8, 1; 9, 4). Sacrifice was made to him twice a year, on the day when he had freed Sikyon, 5th Daisios, the Σωτήρια, and on his birthday; the former was carried out by the priest of Zeus Soter, the latter by the priest of Aratos. They included: Hymn by the Dionysiac τεχνῖται, procession of παῖδες and ἔφηβοι in which the gymnasiarchoi, the boule wearing crowns, and the citizens took part. Of all this only δείγματα μικρά still survived in Plutarch’s time, αἱ δὲ πλεῖσται τῶν τιμῶν ὑπὸ χρόνου καὶ πραγμάτῶν ἄλλων ἐκλελοίπασιν, Plu., Arat. 53 (σωτήρ: cf. epigram in c. 14).

[58]   πάντες ἥρωας νομίζουσι τοὺς σφόδρα παλαιοὺς ἄνδρας, καὶ ἐὰν μηδὲν ἐξαίρετον ἔχωσι, δι’ αὐτὸν οἶμαι τὸν χρόνον. But only a few of them have regular τελετὰς ἡρώων: D. Chr. 31, p. 335 M. [i, 243 Arn.]. omnes qui patriam conservarint, adiuverint, auxerint become immortal: Cic., Som. Sci. 3, which also goes too far.

[59]   Pelopidas, Timoleon, Leosthenes, Aratos become Heroes: see Keil, Anal. epigr. et onom. 50–4. Kleomenes Plu., Cleom. 39. Philopoimen, Philop. 21. ἰσόθεοι τιμαί annual sacrifice of a bull and hymns of praise to Philop. sung by the νεοί: D.S. 29, 18; Liv. 39, 50, 9; SIG. 289. See Keil, op. cit., 9 ff.

[60]   In Sikyon Aratos is held to be the son of Asklepios who had visited his mother in the form of a snake: Paus. 2, 10, 3; 4, 14, 7–8 (favourite form of stories of divine parentage: see Marx, Märchen v. dankb. Thieren, 122, 2).

[61]   The very charming and characteristic story of Drimakos, the leader and law-giver of the δραπέται in Chios, is told by Nymphodoros (ap. Ath. vi, c. 88–90), as having happened μικρὸν πρὸ ἡμῶν. He had a ἡρῷον in which he was honoured under the name of ἥρως εὐμενής (by the δραπέται with the firstfruits of their plunder). He frequently appeared to masters to whom he revealed the οἰκετῶν ἐπιβουλάς.

[62]   Hsch. Γαθιάδας· ἥρωος ὄνομα, ὃς καὶ τοὺς καταφεύγοντας εἰς αὐτὸν ῥύεται [καὶ] θανάτου.

[63]   Pixodaros, a shepherd of Ephesos, discovered in a strange fashion a very excellent kind of marble, a discovery which he communicated to the authorities (for use in temple-building). He was made a Hero and renamed ἥρως εὐάγγελος: sacrifice was made to him officially every month, hodieque, Vitruv. x, 2.

[64]   Luc., Macrob. 21 (for Athenod. see FHG. iii, 485 f.).—In Kos an exedra in the theatre was dedicated to C. Stertinius Xenophon (court-physician to the Emp. Claudius) ἥρωι, Inscr. Cos, 93.—In Mitylene there was even an apotheosis of the historian Theophanes (the friend of Pompeius: cf. Γν. Πομπήιος Ἱεροίτα υἱὸς Θεοφάνης with full name, Ath. Mitt. ix, 87): Tac., A. vi, 18. Θεοφάνης θεὸς on coins of the city, and cf. Σέξστον ἥρωα, Λεσβῶναξ ἥρως νέος, etc., on the same city’s coins (Head, Hist. Num. 488).

[65]   On a stele in Messene there was a portrait of a certain Aithidas of the beginning of the third century B.C.; instead of whom a descendant of the same name is worshipped: Paus. 4, 32, 2. In the market place of Mantinea stood a heroon of Podares who had 560 distinguished himself in the battle of Mant. (362). Three generations before Paus. visited the place the Mantineans had altered the inscription on the heroon and dedicated it to a later Podares, a descendant of the original one, who lived in the Roman period: Paus. 8, 9, 9.

[66]   Cf. Keil, Anal. Epigr. 62.

[67]   Cult paid to king Lysimachos in his lifetime in Samothrake, SIG. 190 (Archäol. Unters. auf. Samoth. ii, 85, n. 2). “Heroizing” of Diogenes phrourarchos of Demetrios; in 229 B.C. he was bribed by Aratos to lead the Macedonian garrison out of Attica: see Köhler, Hermes, vii, 1 ff.—ὑπὲρ τᾶς Νικία τοῦ δάμου υἱοῦ, φιλοπάτριδος, ἥρωος, εὐεργέτα δὲ τᾶς πόλιος, σωτηρίας a dedication θεοῖς πατρῷοις, Inscr. Cos, 76. This is a decree made in the lifetime of the heros (or why σωτηρίας?), who is probably identical, as the editors suggest, with Nikias, tyrant of Kos in the Strabo’s time: Str. 658; Perizonius on Ael., VH. i, 29.

[68]   ἥρως applied to a living person occasionally on inss. of the Imperial age, CIG. 2583, Lyttos, Crete; 3665 ἡρωίς, living, Kyzikos second century; Ath. Mitt. vi, 121 (Kyzikos again) ἱππαρχοῦντος Κλεομένους ἥρωος also certainly living.

[69]   When Demetrios Poliorketes conquered and rebuilt Sikyon in 303 the inhabitants of the city which is now called “Demetrias” offer to him while still alive, sacrifice, festival, and annual ἀγῶνες as κτίστῃ (ἀλλὰ ταῦτα μὲν ὁ χρόνος ἠκύρωσεν): D.S. 20, 102, 3. Later this frequently occurred: Marcellea, Lucullea, etc., are well known. But the matter did not stop there. The inhabitants of Lete in Macedonia in the year 117 B.C. decree to a prominent Roman, besides other honours, τίθεσθαι αὐτῷ ἀγῶνα ἱππικὸν κατ’ ἕτος ἐν τῷ Δαισίῳ μηνί, ὅταν καὶ τοῖς ἄλλοις εὐεργέταις οἱ ἀγῶνες ἐπιτελῶνται (Arch. des miss. scientif. 3e série, iii, p. 278, n. 127). This implies that all εὐεργέται were by custom offered such games at this time.

[70]   D.S. 17, 115. Alexander after inquiry at the oracle of Ammon commanded that he should be worshipped as ἥρως (the oracle having granted in his case ἐναγίζειν ὡς ἥρωι, but not ὡς θεῷ θύειν): Arrian, An. 7, 14, 7; 23, 6; Plu., Alex. 72 (an ἡρῷον was immediately set up to him in Alexandria Aeg.: Arr. 7, 23, 7). This did not prevent the superstition and servility which flourished together in Alexander’s empire from occasionally worshipping Heph. as Ἡφαιστίων θεὸς πάρεδρος.—D.S. probably only exaggerates the truth: 17, 115, 6; cf. Luc., Calumn. 17–18. (The new heros or god immediately gave proof of his power by appearances, visions sent in dreams, ἰάματα, μαντεῖαι, ib. 17.)—Elaborate pomp at the funeral of Dem. Poliork.: Plu., Demetr. 53.

[71]   Cf. the Testament of Epikteta and other foundations mentioned above, this chap., n. 18, and chap. v, n. 126. Or cf. the elaborate arrangements which Herodes Atticus made for the funeral, etc., of Regilla and Polydeukes (but ἥρως Πολυδευκίων is only said in the weakened sense in which ἥρως had been current for a long time): collected by Keil in Pauly-Wiss. i, 2101 ff. The extravagant manifestations of grief that Cicero offered to the memory of his daughter were modelled on Greek originals (and upon the certainly Greek auctores qui dicant fieri id oportere: Att. 12, 81, 1). In Att. 12 he gives an account of their architectural side: he frequently calls the object that he meditates an ἀποθέωσις; cf. consecrabo te (Consol. fr. 5 Or.).—Cf. the Temple-tomb of Pomptilla, who like another Alkestis died instead of her husband, whom she followed into exile as far as Sardinia: her death was caused by breathing in the breath of the sick man. Her 561 temple is at Cagliari in Sardinia, and is adorned with many inss. in Latin and Greek: IG. Sic. et It. 607, p. 144 ff. (first century A.D.).

[72]   ὁ δᾶμος (occasionally also ἁ βουλὰ καὶ ὁ δᾶμος) ἀφηρώϊξε—Thera, CIG. 2467; Ross, Inscr. Gr. Ined. 203 ff. (and sometimes outside Thera: Loch, Zu d. gr. Grabschr. 282, 1) ὁ δᾶμος ἐτίμασε (τὸν δεῖνα) . . . ἥρωα. Cf. also (Thera) Ath. Mitt. xvi, 166; Epigr. Gr. 191–2.

[73]   φροντίσαι δὲ τοὺς ὀργεῶνας (the members of a collegium of Dionysiasts) ὅπως ἀφηρωισθεῖ Διονύσιος καὶ ἀνατεθεῖ ἐν τῷ ἱερῷ παρὰ τὸν θεόν, ὅπου καὶ ὁ πατὴρ αὐτοῦ, ἵνα ὑπάρχει κάλλιστον ὑπόμνημα αὐτοῦ εἰς τὸν ἅπαντα χρόνον, inscr. of Peiraeus, second century B.C.; CIA. iv, 2, n. 623e, 45 ff. In Argos a guild, apparently of tanners, puts up an inscr. τῷ δεῖνι, κτίστᾳ ἥρωι, CIG. 1134.

[74]   Like that Naulochos whom Philios of Salamis saw three times in a dream appearing in company with Demeter and Kore. The city of Priene thereupon ordered that he should be worshipped (ἥρωα σέβειν, Epigr. Gr. 774).

[75]   Κάρπος τὰν ἰδίαν γυναῖκα ἀφηρώϊξε (Thera) CIG. 2471. From the same place come many more exx. of ἀφηρωίζειν by members of a family: 2472b–d, 2473; cf. Ἀνδροσθένην Φίλωνος νέον ἥρωα . . . ἡ μήτηρ (Macedonia) Arch. miss. scient. iii, 1876, 295, n. 130.—This is probably how we should understand the matter when in sepulchral epigrams one member of the family addresses or refers to another as ἥρως: Epigr. Gr. 483, 510, 552, 674.—But ἥρως συγγενείας, CIA. iii, 1460, must have a fuller sense than the otherwise usual ἥρως. It distinguishes a true ἀρχηγέτης. Prob. this is also the meaning of Χαρμύλου ἥρωος τῶν Χαρμυλείων, GDI. 3701 (Kos). Something more than simple ἥρως is also probably intended by the language of the Pergamene inscr. (specially distorted to suit the ἰσοψηφία) Inscr. Perg. ii, 587, Ἰ. Νικόδημος, ὁ καὶ Νίκων (ᾳφιγ) ἀγαθὸς εἶεν ἂν ἥρως (ᾳφιγ).

[76]   It is true that it is difficult to find certain exx. of the identification of a dead man with an already existing and honoured heros of another name. Of the various examples generally quoted for this perhaps the only relevant is the Spartan inscr. Ἀριστοκλῆς ὁ καὶ Ζῆθος, Ath. Mitt. iv, tab. 8, 2. Identification with a god is of frequent occurrence: cf. imagines defuncti, quas ad habitum dei Liberi formaverat (uxor), divinis percolens honoribus: Apul., M. viii, 7. (Cf. Lob., Agl. 1002, who also thinks of the example given in the Πρωτεσίλαος of Eur.; but the resemblance is only a distant one.) The dead man as Βάκχος, Epigr. Gr. 821; Διονύσου ἄγαλμα, ib. 705; cf. the dead man of CIG. 6731, ἄγαλμα εἰμι Ἡλίου. Many similar exx. of the representation of the dead in accordance with the types of Dionysos, Asklepios, Hermes are given by Ross, Archäol. Aufs. i, 51; Deneken in Roscher, Lex. i, 2588.

[77]   See above, chap. iv, p. 128 ff.

[78]   See Keil, Syll. Inscr. Boeot., p. 153.

[79]   In Thespiai the inss. do not show the addition of ἥρως to the name of the dead until Imperial times: see Dittenberger on IG. Sept. i, 2110, p. 367.

[80]   Many exx. of ἥρως, ἥρως χρηστὲ χαῖρε, etc., are collected and arranged by Deneken in Roscher’s Lex. s. Heros, i, 2549 ff. See also Loch, Gr. Grabschr., p. 282 ff.

[81]   As Keil has already observed, loc. cit. [n. 78].—At any rate ἡρωίνη still preserves its full sense when the council and people of Athens, in the first century A.D., so describe a woman of position after her death, CIA. iii, 889. Or again, when the Athenian as well as the 562 Spartan decree calls P. Statilius Lamprias expressly ἥρως (see above, n. 6)—Fouilles d’Epid. i, n. 205–9.

[82]   It is curious how, much later, in Christian times, ὁ ἥρως is applied to one who has recently died (exactly synonymous with ὁ μακαρίτης): cf. ὁ ἥρως Εὐδόξιος, ὁ ἥρως Πατρίκιος, Ἰάμβλιχος in Schol. Basilic.

[83]   ὕπνος ἔχει σε μάκαρ . . . , καὶ ζῇς ὡς ἥρως καὶ νέκυς οὐκ ἐγένου, Epigr. Gr. 433; where it is evident that the ἥρως is something more living than the mere νέκυς. ἀσπάζεσθ’ ἥρωα, τὸν οὐκ ἐδαμάσσατο λύπη (i.e. who has not been made nothing by death), ib., 296. The husband τιμαῖς ἰσόμοιρον ἔθηκε τὰν ὁμόλεκτρον ἥρωσιν, 189, 3. The title ἥρως still has a stronger and deeper sense in inss. such as CIG. 1627 (referring to a descendent of Plutarch’s) and 4058 (. . . ἄνδρα φιλόλογον καὶ πάσῃ ἀρετῇ κεκοσμημένον εὐδαίμονα ἥρωα). Cf. Orig., Cels. 3, 80, p. 359 Lom.: οἱ βιοῦντες ὧσθ’ ἥρωες γενέσθαι καὶ μετὰ θεῶν ἕξειν τὰς διατριβάς. In 3, 22, p. 276, he distinguishes between θεοί, ἥρωες, ἁπαξαπλῶς ψυχαί (the soul can divina fieri et a legibus mortalitatis educi, Arnob. ii, 62; cf. Corn. Labeo ap. Serv., Aen. iii, 168).

[84]   ἄωροι, βιοθάνατοι, ἄταφοι see Append. vii.—θάπτειν καὶ ὁσιοῦν τῇ Γῇ, significantly, Philostr., Her. 714, p. 182, 9 f. K.

[85]   Plu., Dio, 2: some say that only children and women and foolish men see ghosts, δαίμονα πονηρὸν ἐν αὐτοῖς δεισιδαιμονίαν ἔχοντες. Plu. on the other hand thinks that he can confound the unbelieving by pointing to the fact that even Dio and Brutus had seen φάσματα shortly before their death.

[86]   Cf. the story of Philinnion and Machates in Amphipolis: Phleg., Mirab. 1. Procl. in Rp., p. 64 Sch. [ii, p. 116 Kr.; see Rohde in Rh. Mus. 32, 329 ff.]. The Erinyes in Aesch. are conceived as vampire-like: Eum. 264 f.: see above, chap. v, n. 161.—Souls of the dead as nightmare, ἐφιάλτης, incubo oppressing a man’s enemy: Soran. ap. Tert., An. 44; Cael. Aurel., Morb. Chron. 1, 3, 55 (Rh. Mus. 37, 467, 1).

[87]   The Φιλοψευδής is a genuine treasure-house of typical narratives of apparitions and sorceries of every kind. δαίμονας ἀνάγειν καὶ νεκροὺς ἑώλους ἀνακαλεῖν is a mere bagatelle, according to these sage doctors, to the magician: c. 13. An example is given of this conjuration of the dead (the seven-months dead father of Glaukias): 14. Appearance of the dead wife of Eukrates whose golden sandals they had forgotten to burn with her: 27 (see above, chap. i, n. 51). As a rule the only haunting ghosts are αἱ τῶν βιαίως ἀποθανόντων ψυχαί not those of the κατὰ μοῖραν ἀποθανόντων as the learned Pythagorean instructs us, c. 29. Then follows the story of the ghost of Corinth (30–1), which must be taken from a widely known ghost-story, as it agrees completely in its circumstances with the story told with such simple candour by Pliny (Ep. vii, 27). δαίμονάς τινας εἶναι καὶ φάσματα καὶ νεκρῶν ψυχὰς περιπολεῖν ὑπὲρ γῆς καὶ φαίνεσθαι οἷς ἂν ἐθέλωσιν (29) is the fixed conviction of these philosophers. The living too can sometimes catch a glimpse of the underworld: 22–4. A man’s soul can be detached from his body and go down to Hades, and afterwards, again reunited to his body, relate its adventures. Thus the soul of Kleodemos, while his body lay in fever, is taken down to the lower world by a messenger but then sent back again since he had been taken by mistake for his neighbour, the smith Demylos: 25. This edifying narrative is certainly intended as a parody of the similar story told in good faith by Plu. de An. fr. 1, preserved 563 ap. Eus., PE. 11, 36, p. 563. It is certain that Plu. did not simply invent such a story; he may perhaps have found it in some older collection of miraculous ἀναβιώσεις such as, for example, Chrysippos did not disdain to make. The probability that Plu. got this story of mistaken identity from a collection of folk-tales is made all the likelier since the same story occurs again in a popular guise. Of a similar character is what Augustine has to say on the authority of Corn. Labeo: Civ. Dei 22, 28 (p. 622, 1–5 Domb.). Augustine himself, Cur. pro Mort. 15, tells a story exactly like that of Plu. (about Curma the curialis and Curma the faber ferrarius), which, of course, is supposed to happen a little before his time in Africa; and once more at the end of the sixth century Gregory the Great introduces a vision of Hell by the same formula: Dial. 4, 36, p. 384 AB Migne. The inventive powers of ghoststory-tellers is very limited: they keep on repeating the same few old and tried motifs.

[88]   Plu., Dio, 2, 55: Cimon, 1; Brut. 36 f., 48.

[89]   Cf. above, chap. v, n. 23; chap. ix, nn. 105 ff.

[90]   ψυχὰς ἡρώων ἀνακαλεῖν among the regular arts of the magician, Cels. ap. Orig., Cels. 1, 68, p. 127 Lomm.

[91]   See Append. xii.

[92]   And in consequence we sometimes have the most surprising confusion of the two states of being. Lucian, e.g. (in D. Mort. frequently, cf. 18, 1, 20, 2, and Necyom. 15, 17; Char. 24) speaks of the dead in Hades as skeletons lying one upon another, Aiakos allowing them each one foot of earth, etc. (The Romans have the same confusion of ideas: nemo tam puer est, says Sen., Ep. 24, 18, ut Cerberum timeat et tenebras et larvalem habitum nudis ossibus cohaerentium. Cf. Prop. iv, 5, 3, Cerberus . . . ieiuno terreat ossa sono, etc.) There is also a confusion between the grave and Hades in such expressions as μετ’ εὐσεβέεσσι κεῖσθαι: Epigr. Gr. 259, 1; σκῆνος νῦν κεῖμαι Πλουτέος ἐμμελάθροις, 226, 4; cf. above, chap. xii, n. 95. Such a mixture of ideas was all the more natural seeing that Ἅιδης also occurs as a metaphor for τύμβος (see below, n. 135).

[93]   ὁ πολὺς ὅμιλος οὗς ἰδιώτας οἱ σοφοὶ καλοῦσιν, Ὁμήρῳ καὶ Ἡσιόδῳ καὶ τοῖς ἄλλοις μυθοποιοῖς περὶ τούτων πειθόμενοι, τόπον τινὰ ὑπὸ τὴν γῆν βαθὺν Ἅιδην ὑπειλήφασι κτλ., Luc., Luct. 2 (continued to c. 9). Plu., Suav. Viv. 27, 1105 AB, thinks that οὐ πάνυ πολλοί are afraid of Kerberos, having to fill broken pitchers and the other terrors of Hades, as being μητέρων καὶ τιτθῶν δόγματα καὶ λόγους μυθώδεις. And yet as protection against these things people are always seeking τελετὰς καὶ καθαρμούς.

[94]   See Griech. Roman, 261, Ettig Acheruntica (Leipz. Stud. 13, 251 ff.).

[95]   Man hopes that after death he will see τοὺς νῦν ὑβρίζοντας ὑπὸ πλούτου καὶ δυνάμεως κτλ. ἀξίαν δίκην τίνοντας, Plu., Suav. V. 28, 2, 1105 C. Reversal of earthly situation in Hades: τὰ πράγματα ἐς τοὔμπαλιν ἀνεστραμμένα· ἡμεῖς μὲν γὰρ οἱ πένητες γελῶμεν, ἀνιῶνται δὲ καὶ οἰμώζουσιν οἱ πλούσιοι, Luc., Catapl. 15; cf. DM. 15, 2; 25, 2: ἰσοτιμία, ἰσηγορία in Hades and ὅμοιοι πάντες. aequat omnes cinis; impares nascimur, pares morimur, Sen., Ep. 91, 16—a favourite commonplace: see Gataker on M. Ant. vi, 24, p. 235 f.

[96]   How far indeed this really happened is of course not to be answered decisively. The Celsus against whom Origen wrote his polemical treatise looks at the matter from the popular point of view on the whole. (He is no Epicurean as Orig. supposes; but neither in fact is he a professional philosopher of any kind, but rather 564 an ἰδιώτης with inclinations to philosophy of all sorts and esp. to the semi-Platonism current at the time.) He distinctly says μήτε τούτοις (the Christians) εἴη μήτ’ ἐμοὶ μήτ’ ἄλλῳ τινὶ ἀνθρώπων ἀποθέσθαι τὸ περὶ τοῦ κολασθήσεσθαι τοὺς ἀδίκους καὶ γερῶν ἀξιωθήσεσθαι τοὺς δικαίους δόγμα (ap. Orig., Cels. 3, 16, p. 270 Lomm.).—On the other hand, it is significant of the temper of the very “secular” Graeco-Roman society which was at the head of affairs at the end of the last century B.C., that Cicero at the end of his work, de Nat. Deor. (iii, 81 ff.), in discussing the various means of obtaining a balance between desert and punishment, virtue and reward, in the circumstances of human life, never even mentions the belief in a final balance and recompense after death. (He only mentions among other things the visiting of the sins of the father upon his descendants on earth—90 ff.—that old Greek belief [see above, chap. xii, n. 65] which really excludes the idea of an after life.) Between the days of Cic. and those of Celsus ideas had changed. We know this from innumerable indications; even the next world was looked at in quite a different light in the second century A.D. from what it had been two centuries earlier.

[97]   τιμωρίαι αἰωνιοι ὑπὸ γῆν καὶ κολασμοὶ φρικώδεις are expected after death by many (while others regard death as merely an ἀγαθῶν στέρησις): Plu., Virt. Moral. 10, 450 A. Horrible tortures in the κολαστήριον in Hades, fire, scourging, etc.: Luc., Necyom. 14 (carried still further in Plu.’s pictures of Hades, Gen. Soc. and Ser. NV.). Fire, pitch, and sulphur belong to the regular apparatus of this place of torment; already in Axioch. 372 A, sinners are scorched by burning torches ἀϊδίοις τιμωρίαις (cf. Lehrs, Popl. Aufs. 308 ff.). How far such horrors really represented popular belief it is difficult to say for certain (they became quite familiar to Christian writers on Hell from classical tradition: cf. Maury, Magie et l’astrol. dans l’antiq. 166 ff.). But Celsus, for example, though he himself believes in the punishments of Hell (Orig., Cels. 8, 49, p. 180) only appeals in confirmation of his belief to the teaching of ἐξηγηταὶ τελεσταί τε καὶ μυσταγωγοί of certain (not precisely defined) ἱερά: 8, 48, p. 178; cf. above, chap. vii, § 2; chap. x, n. 62.

[98]   See above, chap. ii, § 1.

[99]   Peleus, Kadmos, Achilles in the Islands of the Blest: Pi., O. ii, 86 ff. (Peleus and Kadmos the supreme examples of εὐδαιμονία: P. iii, 86 ff.). In Eur., Andr. 1254 ff. Thetis promises to Peleus immortal life Νηρέως ἐν δόμοις. An ancient poem must have spoken to this effect of Kadmos (and of Harmonia his wife); both are transported μακάρων ἐς αἶαν Eur., Ba. 1338 f.; ποιηταί and μυθογράφοι ap. Sch. Pi., P. iii, 153 (this would be after their “death” in Illyria where their graves were shown, and the snakes of stone into which they had been changed: see Müller on Scylax, 24, p. 31). Achilles and Diomedes are νήσοις ἐν μακάρων acc. to the skolion on Harmodios: Carm. pop. fr. 10 Bgk. (Thus we often hear that Achilles is in the Is. of the Blest or in the Ἠλύσιον πεδίον which was regularly identified with them—cf. Ἠλύσιος λειμών in the μακάρων νῆσος: Luc., Jup. Conf. 17; VH. ii, 14—e.g. Pla. Smp. 199 E; A.R. iv, 811; [Apollod.] Epit. v, 5. His special place of abode on the island of Leuke is also a μακάρων νῆσος and an older invention than the common Is. of the Blest of which we first hear in Hes., Op. 159 ff. Diomedes in the same way after his ἀφανισμός enjoyed immortal life in the island named after him in the Adriatic: Ibyc. ap. Sch. Pi., N. x, 12; Str. 283–4, etc.; but the skolion transferred him to the common dwelling-place of the blessed Heroes.) Achilles, sometimes in Leuke, sometimes on the Is. 565 of the Blest, is accompanied by his wife Medea (in Elys.: Ibyc. Simon. Sch. A.R. iv, 814; A.R. iv, 811 ff.) or Iphigeneia who had once been betrothed to him (in Leuke: Ant. Lib. 27 after Nikand.; different version by Lycophr. 183 ff.) or Helen (Paus. 3, 19, 11–13; Conon, 18; Sch. Pl., Phdr. 243 A; Philostr., Her. 211 ff. Kays.).—Alkmene after her body had vanished from the sight of those who were bearing the coffin (cf. Plu., Rom. 28) was translated to the μακάρων νῆσοι: Ant. Lib 33 after Pherecyd.—Neoptolemos is transported ἐς ἠλύσιον πεδίον μακάρων ἐπὶ γαῖαν, Q.S. iii, 761 ff.—Among the other Heroes there Agamemnon is also implied: Artemid. v, 16.—In all these fabulous accounts the Is. of the Blest (Elysion) remain invariably the abode of special and chosen Heroes (Harmodios’ translation there in the skolion is no exception; nor is Lucian’s jesting reference, VH. ii, 17). It was only later imagination that, under the influence of theology, made this kingdom of bliss the common dwelling-place of almost all the εὐσεβεῖς.

[100]   Fortunatorum memorant insulas quo cuncti qui aetatem egerint caste suam conveniant, Plaut., Trin. 549 f. Menand. Rh., Encom. 414, 16 ff. Sp., recommends the use in a παραμυθητικὸς λόγος of the words: πείθομαι τὸν μεταστάντα τὸ ἠλύσιον πεδίον οἰκεῖν (—and even καὶ τάχα που μᾶλλον μετὰ τῶν θεῶν διαιτᾶται νῦν); cf. p. 421, 16–17 Sp. And much later, χάριν ἀμείψασθαι αὐτὸν εὔχομαι τοὺς θεούς, ἐν μακάρων νησοις ἤδη συζῆν ἠξιώμενον, Suid. Ἀντώνιος Ἀλεξανδρεύς (410 B Gaisf.) from Damascius.

[101]   Sertorius: Plu., Sert. 8–9; Sall., H. 1, fr. 61, 62; Flor. 2, 10 (Hor., Epod. 16, 39 ff.). Some even thought that they had found (cf. Phoen. legends: Gr. Roman 215) the μακ. νῆς. off the west coast of Africa: Str. i, p. 3; iii, 150; Mela, iii, 10; Plin., NH. vi, 202 ff.; Marcellus, Αἰθιοπ. ap. Procl., in Tim., p. 54 F, 55 A, 56 B, etc. Islands inhabited by spirits in the north: Plu., Def. Or. 18, p. 419 F; fr. vol. v, 764 ff. Wytt. Procop., Goth. iv, 20 (the μακάρων νῆσοι are in the middle of the African continent acc. to Hdt. iii, 26; in Boeot. Thebes, Lyc. 1204 with Sch.). Ps. Callisth. makes Alex. the Great reach the land of the Blest, ii, 39 ff. There may have been many such fables which have been parodied by Lucian in VH. ii, 6 ff., where he and his company ἔτι ζῶντες ἱεροῦ χωρίου ἐπιβαίνουσιν (ii, 10). It was always natural to hope that at the Antipodes (cf. Serv., A. vi, 532) such a land of the Souls and the Blest might some day be discovered—as indeed many have thought they had discovered it in the progressive geographical discovery of the Middle Ages and modern times.

[102]   Leuke, to which already in the Aithiopis Achilles had been translated, was originally a purely mythical place (see above, p. 65), the island of the pallid shades (like the Λευκὰς πέτρη of Od. ω 11, at the entrance of Hades; cf. κ 515. It is the same rock of Hades from which unhappy lovers cast themselves down to death, ἀρθεὶς δηὖτ’ ἀπὸ Λευκάδος πέτρης κτλ. Anacr. 17, etc. [cf. Dieterich, Nek. 27 f.]. λεύκη, the white poplar, as the tree of Hades, was used to make the garlands of the Mystai at Eleusis; cf. λευκὴ κυπάρισσος at the entrance of Hades, Epigr. Gr. 1037, 2).—It was probably Milesian sailors who localized this island of Achilles in the Black Sea (there was a cult of Ach. in Olbia and in Miletos itself). Alc. already knows of the champion as ruling over the country of the Scythians: fr. 48b, ἐν Εὐξείνῳ πελάγει φαεννὰν Ἀχιλεὺς νᾶσον (ἔχει), Pi. N. iv, 49. Then Eur., Andr. 1259 ff.; IT. 436 ff.; finally Q.S. iii, 770 ff. Leuke was particularly identified with an uninhabited islet rising with its white limestone cliffs out of the sea at the mouth of the Danube: 566 Κέλτου πρὸς ἐκβολαῖσι, Lyc. 189 (probably the Istros is meant but the latest editor simply substitutes Ἴστρου πρὸς ἐκ.—a far too facile conjecture).—It stood, more exactly, before the ψιλὸν στόμα, i.e. the most northerly mouth of the river (the Kilia mouth): Arrian, Peripl. 20, 3 H.: [Scylax] Peripl. 68 prob. means the same island; cf. Leuke, εὐθὺ Ἴστρου, Max. Tyr. 15, 7. It has been proposed to identify it with the “snake island” which lies more or less in the same neighbourhood: see H. Koehler, Mém. sur les îles et la course cons. à Achille, etc., Mém. acad. S. Petersb. 1826, iv, p. 599 ff. It was only by a confusion that the long sandy beach at the mouth of the Borysthenes, called Ἀχιλλέως δρόμος, was identified with Leuke (e.g. by Mela, ii, 98; Plin., NH. iv, 93; D.P. 541 ff.); legends of Achilles’ epiphanies may have been current there too (as in other islands of the same name: Dionys. of Olbia ap. Sch. A.R. ii, 658); the Olbiopolitai offer a cult to Ἀχιλλεὺς Ποντάρχης there: CIG. 2076–7, 2080, 2096b–f (IPE. i, 77–83). But as a settled abode of Achilles only Leuke was generally recognized (there was a δρόμος Ἀχιλλέως there as well: Eur., IT. 437; Hesych. Ἀχιλλ. πλάκα; Arr. 21—hence the confusion mentioned above). Strabo’s remarks on the subject are peculiar (vii, 306 f.). He distinguishes the Ἀχ. δρόμος (which had already been mentioned by Hdt. iv, 55) from Leuke altogether; and he places that island not at the mouth of the Istros but 500 stades away at the mouth of the Tyras (Dniester). But the place where sacrifice and worship was made to Achilles, as the abode of his spirit, was definitely fixed; and this was, in fact, the island at the mouth of the Danube (κατὰ τοῦ Ἴστρου τὰς ἐκβολάς, Paus. 3, 19, 11), of which Arr. 23, 3, gives an account based partially on the evidence of eye-witnesses (p. 399, 12 Müll.). It was an uninhabited, thickly wooded island only occupied by numerous birds; there was a temple and a statue of Ach. on it, and also an oracle (Arr. 22, 3), which must have been an oracle taken by casting or drawing lots (for there were no human intermediaries) which those who landed on the island could make use of for themselves. The birds—which were perhaps regarded as incarnations of the Heroes, or as handmaidens of the “divinity of light” which Achilles was, acc. to R. Holland, Heroenvögel in d. gr. Myth. 7 ff., 1896—the birds purify the temple every morning with their wings, which they have dipped in the water: Arr., p. 398, 18 ff. Philostr., Her. 746, p. 212, 24 Kays. (Cf. the comrades of Diomedes changed into birds on his magic island: Iuba ap. Plin., NH. x, 127—another bird miracle: ib., x, 78). No human beings dared to live on the island, though sailors often landed there; they had to leave before nightfall (when spirits are abroad): Amm. Marc. 22, 8, 35; Philostr., Her. 747, p. 212, 30–213, 6. The temple possessed many votive offerings and Greek and Latin inss. (IPE. i, 171–2). Those who landed there sacrificed the goats which had been placed on the island and ran wild. Sometimes Ach. appeared to visitors; at other times they heard him singing the Paian. In dreams too he sometimes appeared (i.e. if a person happened to sleep—there was no Dream-oracle there). To sailors he gave directions and sometimes appeared like the Dioskouroi (as a flame?) on the top of the ship’s mast (see Arr., Peripl. 21–3; Scymn. 790–6; from both these is derived Anon., P. Pont. Eux. 64–6; Max. Tyr. 15, 7, p. 281 f. R.; Paus. 3, 19, 11; Amm. Marc. 22, 8, 35). (The account in Philostr., Her. 745, p. 211, 17–219, 6 Kays., is fantastic but uses good material and is throughout quite in keeping with the true legendary spirit—esp. in the story also of the girl torn to pieces by ghosts: 215, 6–30. Nor is it likely that 567 Phil. himself invented the marvellous tale laid precisely in the year 163–4 B.C.). Achilles is not regarded as living quite alone here: Patroklos is with him (Arr. 32, 34; Max. Tyr. 15, 7), and Helen or Iphigeneia is given him as his wife (see above, n. 99). Leonymos of Kroton, sixth century B.C., meets the two Aiantes and Antilochos there: Paus. 3, 19, 13; Conon 18; D.P. (time of Hadrian) says (545): κεῖθι δ’ Ἀχιλλῆος καὶ ἡρώων φάτις ἄλλων ψυχὰς εἱλίσσεσθαι ἐρημαίας ἀνὰ βήσσας (which Avien., Des. Orb., misunderstands and improves on: 722 ff.). Thus the island, though in a limited sense, became a true μακάρων νῆσος—insula Achillea eadem Leuce et Macaron appelata, Plin., NH. iv, 93.

[103]   Cic., speaking of the “translations” of Herakles and Romulus, says non corpora in caelum elata, non enim natura pateretur . . . (ap. Aug., CD. 22, 4); only their animi remanserunt et aeternitate fruuntur, ND. ii, 62; cf. iii, 12. Plu., Rom. 28, speaks in the same way of the old translation stories (those of Aristeas, Kleomedes, Alkmene, and finally Romulus)—it was not their bodies which had disappeared together with their souls, for it would be παρὰ τὸ εἰκός, ἐνθειάζειν τὸ θνητὸν τῆς φύσεως ἁμὰ τοῖς θείοις (cf. Pelop. 16 fin.); cf. also the Hymn (represented as ancient) of Philostr. dealing with the translated Achilles: Her. 741, p. 208, 24 ff. K.

[104]   Celsus and Plutarch both know and describe the ancient cult and oracular power of Amphiaraos (only at Oropos now) as still in existence; the same applies to that of Trophonios (like that of Amphilochos also in Cilicia). An inscr. from Lebadeia (first half third century A.D.) mentions a priestess τῆς Ὁμονοίας τῶν Ἑλλήνων παρὰ τῷ Τροφωνίῳ, IG. Sept. i, 3426.

[105]   Ἀστακίδην τὸν Κρῆτα, τὸν αἰπόλον, ἥρπασε νύμφη ἐξ ὀρέων καὶ νῦν ἱερὸς Ἀστακίδης (he has become divine, i.e. immortal): Call., Ep. 24. Of a similar character is the legend of Hylas: ἀφανὴς ἐγένετο, Ant. Lib. 26; and of Bormos among the Maryandynoi (νυμφόληπτος Hesych. Βῶρμον, ἀφανισθῆναι Nymphis, fr. 9). The Daphnis legend is another example, and even the story of Odysseus and Kalypso, who detains him in her cave and would like to make him immortal and ageless for ever, is in reality based on such legends of the Nymphs. (Even the name of the Nymph in this case indicates her power: to καλύπτειν her mortal lover, i.e. ἀφανῆ ποιεῖν.) Only in this case the spell is broken and the ἀπαθανάτισις of the translated lover is never carried out. For other exx. of legends of the love of Nymphs for a youth see Griech. Roman, 109, 1; a Homeric ex. in Ζ 21 of the νηὶς Ἀβαρβαρέη and Boukolion the son of Laomedon. The idea that a person translated by the nymphs did not die but lived on for ever, remained current: cf. inscr. from Rome, Epigr. Gr. 570, 9–10: τοῖς πάρος οὖν μύθοις πιστεύσατε· παῖδα γὰρ ἐσθλὴν ἥρπασεν ὡς τερπνὴν Ναΐδες, οὐ θάνατος. And again, n. 571: Νύμφαι κρηναῖαί με συνήρπασαν ἐκ βιότοιο, καὶ τάχα που τιμῆς εἵνεκα τοῦτ’ ἔπαθον.

[106]   In the extravagant and fanatical worship of Dionysos that was transplanted from Greece to Italy and Rome in the year 186 B.C. the miracle of translation was carried out in a very practical fashion (belief in its possibility was evidently firmly established). Machines were prepared upon which those whose disappearance was to be effected were bound; they were then transferred by the machine in abditos specus; whereupon the miracle was announced: raptos a dis homines istos: Liv. 39, 13. This only becomes intelligible in the light of such legends of the translation of mortals, body and soul, to immortality, of which we have been speaking. 568

[107]   Plainly so in the case of Berenike the consort of Ptolemy Soter: Theoc. 17, 46. Theocritus addresses Aphrodite: σέθεν δ’ ἕνεκεν Βερενίκα εὐειδὴς Ἀχέροντα πολύστονον οὐκ ἐπέρασεν, ἀλλά μιν ἁρπάξασα πάροιθ’ ἐπὶ νῆα κατελθεῖν κυανέαν καὶ στυγνὸν ἀεὶ πορθμῆα καμόντων, ἐς ναὸν κατέθηκας, ἑᾶς δ’ ἀπεδάσσαο τιμᾶς (as θεὰ πάρεδορος or σύνναος: cf. Inscr. Perg. i, 246, 8). Cf. also Theoc. 15, 106 ff. As a rule, however, this idea is not so definitely expressed (though it is plainly implied that translation is the normal way in which deified princes depart this life, in the story indignantly rejected by Arrian, Anab. 7, 27, 3, that Alexander the Great wanted to throw himself into the Euphrates ὡς ἀφανὴς ἐξ ἀνθρώπων γενόμενος πιστοτέραν τὴν δόξαν παρὰ τοῖς ἔπειτα ἐγκαταλείποι ὅτι ἐκ θεοῦ τε αὐτῷ ἡ γένεσις συνέβη καὶ παρὰ θεοὺς ἡ ἀποχώρησις—which is the regular and ancient idea of translation, exhibited e.g. in the story of Empedokles’ end; see above, chap. xi, n. 61: and Christian pamphleteers transferred the fable to Julian and his end). The Roman Emperors also allowed such conventional miracles to be told of themselves, in which at least they were imitating the practice of the Hellenistic monarchs and the “consecration” fables usual at their death (they do not die but μεθίστανται ἐξ ἀνθρώπων, μεθ. εἰς θεούς, SIG^1. 246, 16; Inscr. Perg. i, 249, 4; inscr. from Hierapolis given by Fränkel, ib. i, p. 39a). That the god is translated, his whole personality in caelum redit, is implied as occurring at the death of an Emperor on the coins of consecration, in which the translated is represented as being carried up to heaven by a Genius or a bird (e.g. the eagle which was set free at the rogus of the emperor: D.C. 56, 42, 3; 74, 5, 5; Hdn. 4, 2 fin.): see Marquardt, Röm. Staatsverw. 3, 447, 3. Nor were there lacking people who maintained on oath that they had actually witnessed the translation of the emperor body and soul to heaven, as had once happened to Julius Proculus and Romulus. Thus at the end of Augustus’ life: D.C. 56, 46, 2. and that of Drusilla: 59, 11, 4. Sen., Apocol. 1. It was the official and only recognised manner in which a god can leave this life.

[108]   Phdr. 246 CD. πλάττομεν . . . θεὸν, ἀθάνατόν τι ζῷον, ἔχον μὲν ψυχήν, ἔχον δὲ σῶμα, τὸν ἀεὶ δὲ χρόνον ταῦτα ξυμπεφυκότα. In acc. with the will of the δημιουργός body and soul in the gods remain joined together (though in itself τὸ δεθὲν πᾶν λυτόν. It is to this that Klearch. alludes ap. Ath. 15, 670 B, ὅτι λυτὸν [λύεται the MSS.] μὲν πᾶν τὸ δεδεμένον): hence they are ἀθάνατοι, Tim. 41 AB.

[109]   Hasisatra, Enoch: see above, chap. ii, n. 18. Moses, too, was translated acc. to later legend, and Elijah (cf. after the battle of Panormos Hamilcar disappears and for that reason is worshipped with sacrifice: Hdt. vii, 166–7). In Egypt too: D.S. 1, 25, 7, speaks of the ἐξ ἀνθρώπων μετάστασις, i.e. translation, of Osiris (for the expression cf. Κάστωρ καὶ Πολυδεύκης ἐξ ἀνθρώπων ἠφανίσθησαν, Isoc., Archid. (6), 18, etc., frequently).

[110]   Stories of the disappearance (non comparuit, nusquam apparuit = ἠφανίσθη) of Aeneas and Turnus, King Latinus, Romulus and others: Preller, Röm. Myth.2, pp. 84–5; 683, 2; 704. Anchises: Procop., Goth. iv, 22 fin.

[111]   So too Caesar in deorum numerum relatus est non ore modo decernentium sed et persuasione volgi, Suet., Jul. 88.

[112]   D.C. 79, 18.—It is natural to suppose that some prophecy of the return of the great Macedonian was current and encouraged the attempt to turn the prophecy into a reality and predisposed people to believe in it. This at least is what happened in the case of Nero 569 and the false Fredericks of the middle ages. This seems to have been at the back of the superstitious cult of Alexander particularly flourishing just at that time (cf. the story told of the family of the Macriani by Treb. Poll. xxx Tyr. 14, 4–6). Caracalla (Aur. Vict., Epit. 21; cf. Hdn. 4, 8; D.C. 77, 7–8) and Alexander Severus actually regarded themselves as Avatars of Alexander reborn and incarnated in themselves (the latter was first called Alexander at his elevation to the principate, certainly ominis causa, and was supposed to have been born, on the anniversary of Alexander’s death, in A.’s temple: Lamprid., Al. Sev. 5, 1; 13, 1, 3, 4. He paid special honour to Alex., and as we are expressly told by Lamp. 64, 3, se magnum Alexandrum videri volebat).

[113]   The Christian anticipation of the return of Nero (as Antichrist) is well known: he was supposed to have disappeared and not to have died. They based their expectation, however, on a widespread belief of the populace which the various Ψευδονέρωνες who actually appeared turned to their advantage (Suet., Ner. 57; Tac., H. i, 2; ii, 8: Luc., Indoct. 20).

[114]   This was the idea lying behind the deification of Antinous commanded by the Emperor; as may be seen from the connexion in which Celsus speaks of the matter (ap. Orig., Cels. 3, 36, p. 296 Lomm.): he mentions the disappearance of Ant. in the same context as the translation of Kleomedes, Amphiaraos, Amphilochos, etc. (c. 33–4).—The language in which the deification of Ant. is spoken of on the obelisk at Rome gives no precise idea of what happened: see Erman, Mit. arch. Inst. röm. Abt. 1896, p. 113 ff.—In this case, then, we have a translation effected by a river-god: cf. the water-nymphs mentioned above, n. 105. In the same way Aeneas disappeared into the river Numicius: Serv., Aen. xii, 794; Sch. Veron., Aen. i, 259; D.H. i, 64, 4; Arnob. i, 36; Ov., M. xiv, 598 ff.; Liv. i, 2, 6. cf. the fable of Alex. the Great’s translation into a river: n. 107. Euthymos in the same way vanished into the river Kaikinos (supposed to be his real father: Paus. 6, 6, 4); see above, chap. iv, n. 116.

[115]   Philostr., V. Ap. viii, 29–30 (not indeed from Damis as Ph. himself definitely asserts; but certainly from sincere accounts derived from the various adherents of Apoll.—none of the facts in the biography are Phil.’s own invention). Apoll. either died in Ephesos or disappeared (ἀφανισθῆναι) in the temple of Athene at Lindos or disappeared in the temple of Diktynna in Crete and ascended to heaven αὐτῷ σώματι (as Eus. adv. Hierocl. 44, 408, 5 Ks. rightly understands it). This was the legend generally preferred. His ἀφανισμός was confirmed by the fact that no grave or cenotaph of Apoll. was to be found: Philostr. viii, 31 fin. The imitation of the legends about the disappearance of Empedokles is obvious.

[116]   τοῦ Ἀπολλωνίου ἐξ ἀνθρώπων ἠδη ὄντος, θαυμαζομένου δὲ ἐπὶ τῇ μεταβολῇ καὶ μηδ’ ἀντιλέξαι θαρροῦντος μηδένος ὡς οὐκ ἀ θάνατος εἰη, Philostr. viii, 31. Then follows a miracle vouchsafed to an unbelieving Thomas to whom Apoll. himself appears.

[117]   Pre-existence of the soul, return of the souls of the good to their home with God, punishment of the wicked, complete ἀθανασία of all souls as such—all this belongs to the wisdom of Solomon. The Essene doctrine of the soul as described by Jos., BJ. 2, 8, 11, is also thoroughly Greek; it belongs to the Stoico-Platonic teaching (i.e. the Neopythagorean variety); see Schwally, Leben n. Todt n. Vorst. alt. Israël, p. 151 ff., 179 ff. [1892]. The carmen Phocylideum is the work of some Jewish author who obscurely mixes up 570 Platonic ideas with those of Greek theologians (cf. 104 where Bgk., PLG. ii, p. 95, rightly defends the MSS. θεοί against Bernays), and of the Stoics (108)—adding also ideas derived from the Jewish doctrine of the resurrection (115 at least is completely Greek: ψυχὴ δ’ ἀθάνατος καὶ ἀγήρως ζῇ διὰ παντός). In Philo’s doctrine of the soul everything comes from Platonic or Stoic sources.

[118]   e.g. in Sikyon as it appears: Paus. 2, 7, 2.

[119]   Perhaps in Epigr. Gr. ed. Kaibel (which will be referred to in this section as Ep.), 35a, p. 517; but this belongs to the fourth century B.C. A late example (in prose), IG. Sic. et It. 1702.

[120]   γαῖαν ἔχοις ἐλαφράν, Ep. 195, 4; cf. 103, 9; 538, 7; 551, 4; 559, 3; IG. Sic. et It. 229; Rhodian inscr., IGM. Aeg. i, 151, 3–4 (first-second century A.D.); ἀλλὰ σύ, δαῖμον, τῇ φθιμένῃ κούφην γαῖαν ὕπερθεν ἔχοις.—Eur. already has something similar: Alc. 463: see above, chap. xii, n. 121.

[121]   The confusion of ideas is evident, e.g. in Ep. 700, κοῦφον ἔχοις γαίης βάρος εὐσεβίης ἐνὶ χώρῳ, cf. 222b, 11–12.—The real meaning of such wishes is indicated by Luc., Luct. 18; the dead son says to his mourning father, δέδιας μή σοι ἀποπνιγῶ κατακλεισθεὶς ἐν τῷ μνήματι.

[122]   Φερσεφόνης θάλαμος, θάλαμοι, Ep. 35, 4; 50, 2; 201, 4; 231, 2; Anth. Pal. vii, 507–8 “Simonides”. φθιμένοις ἀέναος θάλαμος, Ep. 143, 2. δόμος Νυκτός, AP. vii, 232. (We need not hesitate to use the grave-epigrams in the Anthology side by side with the actual sepulchral inss. The former are sometimes the models of the latter, sometimes modelled upon actual epitaphic inscriptions, but always closely related to the more literary epitaphs.)

[123]   Λήθης παυσίπονον πόμα, Ep. 244, 10. ἢν καταβῇς ἐς πῶμα Λήθης, 261, 20. (Νύξ, λήθης δῶρα φέρουσ’ ἐπ’ ἐμοί, 312.) Μοῖραι καὶ Λήθη με κατήγαγον εἰς Ἀίδαο, 521. (Cf. AP. vii, Λήθης δόμοι, 25, 6; Λήθης λιμήν, 498; Λήθης πέλαγος, 711, 716.) Λάθας ἤλυθον εἰς λιμέας, Mysian inscr. BCH. xvii (1894), p. 532, n. 34.

[124]   οἱ πλείους = the dead (like the Latin plures: Plaut., Trin. 291, Petron. 42): ἐς πλεόνων in Hades, Ep. 373, 4; AP. vii, 731, 6; xi, 42. Already in Ar., Eccl. 1073: γραῦς ἀναστηκυῖα παρὰ τῶν πλειόνων. Call., Epigr. 5 (cf. Boisson. on Eunap., p. 309). Ancient oracle ap. Polyb. 8, 30, 7: μετὰ τῶν πλεόνων = τῶν μετηλλαχότων (Tarentum). Even in the present day: ’στοὺς πολλοὺς, Schmidt, Volksl. d. Neugr. i, 235.

[125]   Ep. 266, μὴ μύρου, φίλ’ ἄνερ, με· καὶ αὐτὸς ἐκεῖ γὰρ ὁδεύσας εὑρήσεις τὴν σὴν σύγγαμον Εὐτυχίην. Cf. 558, 5 ff.; 397, 5. Phrygian inscr., Papers American School, iii, 305 (n. 427): a father addressing his dead son καὶ πολὺ τερσανέω τότε δάκρυον ἥνικα σεῖο ψυχὴν ἀθρήσω γῆν ὑποδυσάμενος.

[126]   εἰ δέ τις ἐν φθιμένοις κρίσις, ὡς λόγος ἀμφὶ θανόντων, Ep. 215, 5. A mother boasts of the piety of her son to Rhadamanthys: 514, 5 (cf. 559, 3 f.). So too, in AP. vii there is little mention of a judgment (596 Agathias).

[127]   The division of the dead into two classes is implied where the pious departed is said to be about to dwell ἐν μακάρεσσιν, etc. But the distinct separation of the dead into two or three classes [see above, chap. xii, n. 62] is rare in the sepulchral inscr.: Ep. 650, 9 ff., is an exception (but there one company is ἐπιχθονίη, the other in the aither—a Stoic idea).—A peculiar arrangement, implying the three classes, is given in [Socr.] Epist. 27, 1 (they are in the τόπος εὐς. and ἀσεβῶν in Hades, and in the aither): τοῦ εἶτε κατὰ γῆν ἐν εὐσεβῶν χώρῳ ὄντος 571 εἴτε κατ’ ἄστρα (ὅπερ καὶ μάλα πείθομαι) Σωκράτους.—The same again in AP. vii, 370 (Diodor.) ἐν Διὸς (i.e. in Heaven) ἢ μακάρων.

[128]   There is perhaps no reference in the grave-inss. to the punishment of the ἀσεβεῖς, and scarcely any in AP. vii (but cf. 377, 7 f. Erykios).

[129]   ψυχὴ δ’ ἐς τὸ δίκαιον ἔβη, Ep. 502, 13; i.e. to the place to which it justly belongs.

[130]   ναίεις μακάρων νήσους θαλίῃ ἐνὶ πολλῇ, Ep. 649, 2; 366, 6; 648, 9. νῆσον ἔχεις μακάρων, 473, 2; 107, 2; AP. vii, 690, 4. μακάρων πεδίον, Ep. 516, 1–2. Ἠλύσιον πεδίον 414, 8; 150, 6. πεδία Ἠλύσια, 338, 2; 649, 3. χῶρος ἠλύσιος 618a, 8. μετ’ εὐσεβέων ἐσμὲν ἐν Ἠλυσίῳ, 554, 4.—ναίω δ’ ἡρώων ἱερὸν δόμον, οὐκ Ἀχέροντες· τοῖον γὰρ βιότου τέρμα σοφοῖσιν ἔνι, Ep. 228, 7–8. ἡρώων χῶρον ἔχοις φθίμενος, 539, 4. Λητογενές, σὺ δὲ παῖδας ἐν ἡρώεσσι φυλάσσοις, εὐσεβέων ἀεὶ χῶρον ἐπερχόμενος, 228b, 7 (p. 520). ᾤχετ’ ἐς ἡμιθέους, 699 (σοὶ μὲν ἕδρη θείοισι παρ’ ἀνδράσι, AP. vii, 659, 3).

[131]   Description of the charms of the μακάρων νῆσοι and the Elysian fields where οὐδὲ ποθεινὸς ἀνθρώπων ἔτι βίοτος, Ep. 649. More elaborate in the poem of Marcellus on Regilla the wife of Herodes Att.: Ep. 1046 (she is μεθ’ ἡρῴνησιν ἐν μακάρων νήσοισιν, ἵνα Κρόνος ἐμβασιλεύει, 8–9; Zeus had dispatched her thither with soft breezes, ἐς ὠκεανόν, 21 ff. Now she is οὐ θνητή, ἀτὰρ οὐδὲ θέαινα but a Heroine, 42 ff. In the χορὸς προτεράων ἡμιθεάων she serves as an ὀπάων νύμφη of Persephone, 51 ff.).

[132]   Clearly e.g. the place where Rhadamanthys holds sway in Hades, Ep. 452, 18–19.

[133]   The χῶρος εὐσεβέων clearly indicates Hades: Ἀίδεω νυχίοιο μέλας ὑπεδέξατο κόλπος, εὐσεβέων θ’ ὁσίην εὔνασεν ἐς κλισίην, Ep. 27, 3–4; cf. inscr. from Rhodes, IGM. Aeg. i, 141, of an old schoolmaster—εὐσεβῶν χῶρος [σφ’ ἔχει]· Πλούτων γὰρ αὐτὸν καὶ Κορη κατῴκισαν, Ἑρμῆς τε καὶ δᾳδοῦχος Ἑκάτη, προσφ[ιλῆ] ἅπασιν εἶναι, μυστικῶν τ’ ἐπιστάτην ἔταξαν αὐτὸν πίστεως πάσης χάριν.—Not infrequently Elysion and the place of the εὐσεβέες are identified: e.g. Ep. 338, εὐσεβέες δὲ ψυχὴν (sc. ἔχουσἰ) καὶ πεδίων τέρμονες Ἠλυσίων. τοῦτο σαοφροσύνης ἔλαχον γέρας, ἀμβροσίην δὲ (the immortality of her soul) σώματος ὑβριστὴς οὐκ ἐπάτησε χρόνος. ἀλλὰ νέη νύμφῃσι (thus the stone: Ath. Mitt. iv, 17) μετ’ εὐσεβέεσσι καθῆται.—If there is a judgment in Hades οἰκήσεις εἰς δόμον εὐσεβέων, Ep. 215, 5–6. Kore conducts the dead χῶρον ἐπ’ εὐσεβέων, 218, 15–16. κἄστιν ἐν εὐσεβέων ἣν διὰ σωφροσύνην, 569, 12. εὐσεβέων χῶρος, 296. εὐς. δόμος, 222, 7–8. εὐσεβέων ναίοις ἱερὸν δόμον, IPE. ii, 298, 11. ψυχὴ δ’ εὐσεβέων οἴχεται εἰς θάλαμον, Ep. 90 (CIA. ii, 3004). εὐς. εἰς ἱεροὺς θαλάμους, 222b, 12. εὐς. ἐν σκιεροῖς θαλάμοις, 253, 6. ἐσθλὰ δὲ ναίω δώματα Φερσεφόνας χώρῳ ἐν εὐσεβέων, 189, 5–6. μετ’ εὐσεβέεσσι κεῖσθαι, ἀντ’ ἀρετῆς, 259. θῆκ’ Ἀίδης ἐς μυχὸν εὐσεβέων, 241a, 18. εὐσεβίης δ’ εἵνεκεν εὐσεβέων χῶρον ἔβη φθίμενος, Ath. Mitt. xi, 427 (Kolophon). Late Roman inscr., IG. Sic. et It. 1660: a wife says of her dead husband περὶ οὗ δέομαι τοὺς καταχθονίους θεούς, τὴν ψυχὴν εἰς τοὺς εὐσεβεῖς κατατάξαι.

[134]   The χῶρος μακάρων in the sky: ψυχὴ δ’ ἀθανάτων βουλαῖς ἐπιδήμιός ἐστιν ἄστροις καὶ ἱερὸν χῶρον ἔχει μακάρων, Ep. 324, 3–4. καὶ ναίεις μακάρων νήσους . . . αὐγαῖς ἐν καθαραῖσιν, Ὀλυμπου πλησίον ὄντως, 649, 2, 8. The ἠλύσιον πεδίον outside the φθιμένων δόμοι, 414, 8, 6. Sometimes both the heavenly abode of the blessed and the Islands of the Blest occur together: [Luc.] Dem. Enc. 50. 572 Demosth. is after his death either in the μακάρων νήσοις with the Heroes, or else in the οὐρανός as an attendant daimon on Ζεὺς Ἐλευθέριος.

[135]   ψυχὴ πρὸς Ὄλυμπον ἀνήλλατο, Ep. 646a, 3. ψυχὴ δ’ ἐν Ὀλύμπῳ, 159, 261, 11. ἦλθεν δ’ εἰς Ἀιδαο δέμας, ψυχὴ δ’ ἐς Ὄλυμπον, AP. vii, 362, 3. (Ἀίδης here = the grave as often; so too in Ep. 288, 4–5, ψυχὴ . . . ἐς αἰθέρα . . . ὀστέα εἰς Ἀίδην ἄτροπος εἶλε νόμος.) μετὰ πότμον ὁρῶ φάος Οὐλύμποιο, AP. vii, 678, 5.—ψυχὴν δ’ ἐκ μελέων οὐρανὸς εὐρὺς ἔχει, Ep. 104b, 4. ἦτορ δ’ οὐρανῷ μετάρσιον, 462, 6. ψυχὴ μοι ναίει δώματ’ ἐπουράνια, 261, 10 (and frequently in this poem in various forms). ἐς οὐρανίας ἀταρποὺς ψυχὴ παπταίνει σῶμ’ ἀποδυσαμένη, AP. vii, 337, 7; cf. also 363, 3; 587, 2; 672, 1 and ix, 207–8. αἰθὴρ μὲν ψυχὰς ὑπεδέξατο, Ep. 21 (fifth century B.C., see above, chap. xii, n. 149). Εὐρυμάχου ψυχὴν καὶ ὑπερφιάλους διανοίας αἰθὴρ ὑγρὸς ἔχει, 41 (fourth century B.C. but the αἰθήρ is not “moist”—αἰθὴρ λαμπρὸς ἔχει is the more primitive version of the phrase given in the corresponding epigr. of the Πέπλος. The ἀήρ would be ὑγρός: την ψυχὴν ἀπέδωκεν ἐς ἀέρα, Ep. 642, 7). ψυχὴν μὲν ἐς αἰθέρα καὶ Διὸς αὐλάς, 288, 4. ψυχὴ δ’ αἰθέριον κατέχει πόλον, 225, 3. ψυχὴ δ’ αἰθέριον κατέχει πόλον, 325, 5.—ψυχὴ δ’ ἀθανάτων βουλαῖς ἐπιδήμιός ἐστιν ἄστροις, Ep. 324, 3. From Thyatira, BCH. 1887, p. 461: θάψεν δ’ ἀδελφὸς Ἀρχέλαος σῶμ’ ἐμόν, ψυχὰ δέ μευ πρὸς ἄστρα καὶ θεοὺς ΕΣI (read ἔβη). One company of the souls τείρεσσι σὺν αἰθερίοισι χορεύει· ἧς στρατιῆς εἷς εἰμι, Ep. 650, 11–12 (Diogenes) νῦν δε θανὼν ἀστέρας οἶκον ἔχει, AP. vii, 64, 4.

[136]   ψυχὴ δ’ ἐκ ῥεθέων πταμένη μετὰ δαίμονας ἄλλους ἤλυθε σή, ναίες δ’ ἐν μακάρων δαπέδῳ, Ep. 243, 5–6. καί με θεῶν μακάρων κατέχει δόμος ἆσσον ἰόντα, οὐρανίοις τε δόμοισι βλέπω φάος Ἠριγενείης, 312, 6.—τὴν σύνετον ψυχὴν μακάρων εἰς ἀέρα δοῦσα, πρόσθεν μὲν θνητή, νῦν δὲ θεῶ μέτοχος, 654, 4–5.—ἀλλὰ νῦν εἰς τοὺς θεούς IG. Sic. et It. 1420. ὡς δὲ φύσις μὲν ἔλυσεν ἀπὸ χθονός, ἀθάνατοι μὲν αὐτὸν ἔχουσι θεοὶ σῶμα δὲ σηκὸς ὅδε, AP. vii, 570; 61, 2; 573, 3–4.

[137]   See above, chap. xii, p. 436 ff.

[138]   See above, p. 500 f. πνεῦμα, Ep. 250, 6; 613, 6; πνεῦμα λαβὼν δάνος οὐρανόθεν τελέσας χρόνον ἀνταπέδωκα (cf. πνεῦμα γάρ ἐστι θεοῦ χρῆσις θνητοῖσι, Carm. Phoc. 106). 156, 2: πνοιὴν αἰθὴρ ἔλαβεν πάλιν, ὅσπερ ἔδωκεν (third century B.C.; see Köhler on CIA. ii, 4135).—This conception having become popular frequently occurs in the theological poetry of later times: e.g. χρησμός ap. Stob., Ecl. 1, 49, 46, i, p. 414 W.: τὸ μὲν (τὸ σῶμα) λυθέν ἐστι κόνις, ψυχὴ δὲ πρὸς αἴθρην σκίδναται, ὁππόθεν ἦλθε, μετήορος εἰς αἰθέρ’ ἁπλοῦν (read αἰθέρ’ ἐς ἁγνόν). Oracle of Apoll. Tyan. ap. Philostr., VA. viii, 31: ἀθάνατος ψυχὴ . . . μετὰ σῶμα μαρανθὲν . . . ῥηιδίως προθοροῦσα κεράννυται ἠέρι κούφῳ.

[139]   ψυχὴν δ’ ἀθάνατον κοινὸς ἔχει θάνατος, Ep. 35, 6 (CIA. ii, 3620, fourth century B.C.). IG. Sic. et It. 940, 3–4: ἀθανάτη ψυχὴ μὲν ἐς αἰθέρι καὶ Διὸς αὐγαῖς πωτᾶται. ib. 942: . . . ἐνθάδε κεῖμαι, οὐχὶ θανών· θνήσκειν μὴ λέγε τοὺς ἀγαθούς (from Call., Epigr. 11, τᾷδε Σάων . . . ἱερὸν ὕπνον κοιμᾶται. θνάσκειν μὴ λέγε τοὺς ἀγαθούς).—οὐκ ἔθανες, Πρώτη, μετέβης δ’ ἐς ἀμείνονα χῶρον Ep. 649.

[140]   This retains its full and original meaning (as in Call., Epigr. 11); cf. Ep. 559, 7, λέγε Ποπιλίην εὕδειν ἄνερ· οὐ θεμιτὸν θνήσκειν τοὺς ἀγαθούς, ἀλλ’ ὕπνον ἡδὺν ἔχειν. More often as a mere conventional phrase: 433; 101, 4; 202, 1; 204, 7; σ’ ἐκοίμισεν ὕπνος ὁ λήθης, 223, 3; 502, 2; AP. vii, 29, 1; 30, 2, 260.

[141]   Ep. 651: θνητὸν σῶμα . . . τὸ δ’ ἀθάνατον ἐς μακάρων ἀνόρουσε 573 κέαρ· ψυχὴ γὰρ ἀείζως ἣ τὸ ζῆν παρέχει καὶ θεόφιν κατέβη . . . σῶμα χιτὼν ψυχῆς (cf. Emp. 414 M. = fr. 126 D., σαρκῶν περιστέλλουσα χιτῶνι sc. τὴν ψυχήν)· τὸν δὲ θεὸν σέβε μου (the god in me, my ψυχή). 261, 6, τὴν ψυχὴν δ’ ἀθανάτην ἔλαχον· ἐν γαίῃ μὲν σῶμα τὸ συγγενές οὐράνιος δὲ ἤλυθεν ἡ ψυχὴ δῶμα κατ’ οὐ φθίμενον κτλ.; cf. 320, 6 ff.—594 (late epitaph of a doctor with philosophic leanings; found in Rome), 7 ff.: οὐδ’ ἄρα θνητὸς ἔην, ὑπ’ ἀνάγκης ὑψιμέδοντος τύμβῳ εἰναλέῳ πεπεδημένος ἤνυσεν οἶμον. ἐκ ῥεθέων δ’ ἄμα στειχων σεμνὸν ἔβη Διὸς οἶκον. No sense can be made of the passage if τύμβῳ is understood as the real grave and this has led to altering or straining the sense of εἰναλέῳ (εἰναλίῳ Franz, σιγαλέῳ Jacobs). But the poet means: the dead man was (in his real nature, his soul) immortal, only the will of the gods had caused him (his soul) to be bound to the body and to complete his course of life in the body, after the end of which he will rise immediately (and return) to the realm of the gods. Read therefore τύμβῳ εἰν ἀλαῷ πεπεδημένος, fettered in the “dark grave” of the body: σῶμα = σῆμα. (Exactly as in Verg., A. vi, 734, the animae: clausae tenebris et carcere caeco.)—603: he who lies buried here θνητοῖς ψυχὴν πείσας ἐπὶ σώμασιν ἐλθεῖν τὴν αὑτοῦ, μέλεος, οὐκ ἀνέπεισε μένειν. That is: he has persuaded his (previously living and bodiless) soul to enter into the realm of mortal bodies (to occupy a body), but could not persuade it to remain there long—in this earthly life.

[142]   Once at the most: εἰ πάλιν ἔστι γενέσθαι . . . εἰ δ’ οὐκ ἔστιν πάλιν ἐλθεῖν—Ep. 304 (cf. above, chap. xii, n. 138).

[143]   The epitaphs quoted in n. 141 have a theological meaning but do not allude to any specifically Platonic opinion or doctrines. There is no need to see Platonic influence (as Lehrs would: Pop. Aufs.2, p. 339 f.) in the numerous epitaphs that speak of the ascent of the soul into the aither, the stars, etc. (notes 135, 136). It is true that Alexis 158 K. inquires whether the view that the body decays after death—τὸ δ’ ἀθάνατον ἐξῆρε πρὸς τὸν ἀέρα—is not Platonic doctrine (ταῦτ’ οὐ σχολὴ Πλάτωνος). But he has no real knowledge of Platonic teaching and calls Platonic that idea of the ascent of the souls of the dead into the upper regions which had long been popular in Athens—even before Plato’s time. In fact Plato’s doctrine has only the most distant resemblance to the popular one, and the latter originated and persisted without being influenced at all by Plato or his school.

[144]   Ep. 650, 12. I belong to the company of the blessed which τείρεσσι σὺν αἰθερίοισι χορεύει, λαχὼν θεὸν ἡγεμονῆα. These last words must refer to a special relation of a pious kind to some god. We may note the conclusion of the Caesares of Julian (336 C): Hermes addresses the Emperor: follow the ἐντολαί of πατὴρ Μίθρας in life, καὶ ἡνίκα ἂν ἐνθένδε ἀπιέναι δέῃ, μετὰ τῆς ἀγαθῆς ἐλπίδος ἡγεμόνα θεὸν εὐμενῆ καθιστὰς σεαυτῷ. Cf. also the promise made in an Egyptian magic papyrus ed, Parthey, Abh. Berl. Ak. 1865, p. 125, l. 178 ff.: the ghost thus conjured up will after your death σοῦ τὸ πνεῦμα βαστάξας εἰς ἀέρα ἄξει σὺν αὑτῷ, εἰς γὰρ ᾄδην οὐ χωρήσει ἀέριον πνεῦμα συσταθὲν (i.e. commended) κραταιῷ παρέδρῳ. Cf. Pl., Phd. 107 D ff.: the souls of the dead are conducted each by the δαίμων ὅσπερ ζῶντα εἰλήχει to the judgment place: thence they go εἰς ᾇδου μετὰ ἡγεμόνος ἐκείνου οὗ δὴ προστέτακται τοὺς ἐνθένδε ἐκεῖσε πορεῦσαι. Afterwards yet another, ἄλλος ἡγεμών as it appears, leads them back again. A blessed abode hereafter is found by ἡ καθαρῶς τε καὶ μετρίως τὸν βίον διεξελθοῦσα καὶ ξυνεμπόρων καὶ ἡγεμόνων θεῶν τυχοῦσα, 108 C. The same idea occurs on the monument of Vibia (in the Catacombs of Praetextatus in Rome): Mercurius nuntius 574 conducts her (and Alcestis) before Dispater and Aeracura to be tried: after that a special bonus angelus leads her to the banquet of the blessed (CIL. vi, 142). There is nothing Christian in this, any more than in the whole monument or its inscriptions. (The “angel” as an intermediate being between gods and men had long been taken from Jewish religion by heathen belief and philosophy: they were sometimes identified with the Platonic δαίμονες: see R. Heinze, Xenokrat. 112 f. These intermediate natures, the ἄγγελοι, have nothing to do with the old Greek conception of certain gods as “Messengers” or of the Hero Εὐάγγελος, etc. [cf. Usener, Götternamen, 268 ff.].) With the fanciful picture of Vibia we may compare (besides the Platonic passages mentioned above) what Luc., Philops. 25, has to say of the νεανίας πάγκαλος who leads the souls into the underworld (οἱ ἀγαγόντες αὐτόν less precisely in the parallel narrative of Plutarch, de An. fr. 1, ap. Eus., PE. 11, 36, p. 563 D).

[145]   Hermes the conductor of the souls as ἄγγελος Φερσεφόνης Ep. 575, 1. Hermes brings the souls to Eubouleus and Persephone, Ep. 272, 9.—He leads the souls to the μακάρων ἠλύσιον πεδίον, 414, 9; 411; to the Islands of the Blest, 107, 2. He leads them by the hand to heaven, to the blessed gods, 312, 8 ff.

[146]   Ep. 218, 15, ἀλλὰ σύ, παμβασίλεια θεά, πολυώνυμε κουρά, τήνδ’ ἄγ’ ἐπ’ εὐσεβέων χῶρον, ἔχουσα χερός. 452, 17 ff. Of the souls of the dead man, his wife and children it is said: δέχεο ἐς Ἅιδου (Hades does not admit everyone: cf. the dead man who prays οἳ στύγιον χῶρον ὑποναίετε δαίμονες ἐσθλοί, δέξασθ’ εἰς Ἀΐδην κἀμὲ τὸν οἰκτρότατον, 624), πότνια νύμφη, κὶ ψυχὰς προὔπεμπε, ἵνα ξανθὸς Ῥαδάμανθυς. To be thus received and conducted by a god or goddess is evidently regarded as a special favour. The abode of the εὐσεβεῖς is reached by those who have honoured Persephone before all other deities: IG. Sic. et It. 1561. Zeus too conducts the souls, Ep. 511, 1: ἀντί σε κυδαλίμας ἀρετᾶς, πολυήρατε κοῦρε, ἧξεν ἐς Ἠλύσιον αὐτὸς ἄναξ Κρονίδης (θεός, 516, 1–2). Speaking of a Ptolemy who has died young, Antipater Sid. says (AP. vii, 241, 11 ff.) οὐ δέ σε νὺξ ἐκ νυκτὸς ἐδέξατο· δὴ γὰρ ἄνακτας τοίους οὐκ Ἀΐδας, Ζεὺς δ’ ἐς ὄλυμπον ἄγει. Apollo also: Parmenis buried by her parents says [νῦν μεγάλ]ου (to be restored in some such fashion) δέ μ’ ἔχει τέμενος Διός, ὅρρά τ’ Ἀπόλλων [λοιγ]οῦ (doubtful completion) ἄμειψεν, ἑλὼν ἐκ πυρὸς ἀθάνατον, IGM. Aeg. i, 142 (Rhodos).—Tibull. is clearly imitating Greek poetry when he says (1, 3, 57) sed me quod facilis tenero sum semper Amori ipsa Venus campos ducet ad Elysios (the poet himself explains why it should be Venus: he has specially honoured her. There is no need to imagine a Venus Libitina). Phleg., Mirab. 3, p. 130, 16 ff. West. [73, 1 Kell.]: Φοῖβος Ἀπόλλων Πύθιος . . . μοι ἑὸν κρατερὸν θεράποντ’ (the daimonic wolf) ἐπιπέμψας ἤγαγεν εἰς μακάρων τε δόμους καὶ Περσεφονείης.

[147]   Isidote, hierophantis in Eleusis (grand-daughter of the famous sophist Isaios) is called by her epitaph (Ἐφ. Ἀρχ. 1885, p. 149, l. 8 ff.) ἔξοχον ἔν τ’ ἀρεταῖς ἔν τε σαοφροσύναισ· ἣν καὶ ἀμειβομένη Δηὼ μακάρων ἐπὶ νήσσους ἤγαγε, παντοίης ἐκτὸς ἐπωδυνίης. (l. 20 ἧν καὶ Δημήτηρ ὤπασεν ἀθανάτοις.)

[148]   By their noble death the gods show ὡς ἄμεινον εἴη ἀνθρώπῳ τεθνάναι μᾶλλον ἢ ζώειν, Hdt. i, 31; cf. [Pl.] Axioch. 367 C; Cic., TD. i, 113; Plu., Cons. ad Apoll. 13, 108 E; cf. Amm. Marc. 25, 3, 15.—The epitaph of Isidote alludes to the legend, l. 11: δῶκε (Demeter) δέ οἱ θάνατον γλυκερώτρον ἡδέος ὕπνου πάγχυ καὶ Ἀργείων φέρτερον ἠϊθέων. 575

[149]   Γηραλέην ψυχὴν ἐπ’ ἀκμαίῳ σώματι Γλαῦκος καὶ κάλλει κεράσας κρείττονα σωφροσύνην, ὄργια πᾶσιν ἔφαινε βροτοῖς φαεσίμβροτα Δηοῦς εἰναετές, δεκάτῳ δ’ ἦλθε παρ’ ἀθανάτους. ἦ καλὸν ἐκ μακάρων μυστήριον, οὐ μόνον εἶναι τὸν θάνατον θνητοῖς οὐ κακόν, ἀλλ’ ἀγαθὸν, Ἐφ. Ἀρχ. 1883, pp. 81–2 (third century A.D.). Below the statue of a daughter of this Glaukos, at Eleusis, there is an inscr., Γλαύκου δὲ γνωτὴ θεοειδέος, ὅς τε καὶ αὐτὸς ἱεροφαντήσας ᾤχετ’ ἐς ἀθανάτους, Ἐφ. Ἀρχ. 1894, p. 205, n. 26, l. 11 ff.

[150]   As a conventional formula; [D.H.] Rhet. 6, 5: ἐπὶ τέλει (of the funeral oration) περὶ ψυχῆς ἀναγκαῖον εἰπεῖν, ὅτι ἀθάνατος, καὶ ὅτι τοὺς τοιούτους, ἐν θεοῖς ὄντας, ἀμεῖνον ἴσως ἀπαλλάττειν.

[151]   —τὸν ἀθάνατοι φιλέεσκον· τοὔνεκα καὶ πηγαῖς λοῦσαν ἐν ἀθανάτοις (we are reminded of the ἀθάνατος πηγή out of which Glaukos drew ἀθανασία: Sch. Pl., Rp. 611 C), καὶ μακάρων νήσους βάλλον ἐς ἀθανάτων, Ep. 366, 4 ff. There are two fountains in Hades, that (to the left) of Lethe, and (to the right) of Mnemosyne, from which cold water flows (l. 5): from the latter the guardians will give the suppliant soul water to drink καὶ τότ’ ἔπειτ’ ἄλλοισι μεθ’ ἡρώεσσιν ἀνάξει: sepulchral tablet from Petelia (about third century B.C.), IG. Sic. et It. 638 (Ep. 1037; Harrison, Proleg. 661 ff.). Mutilated copies of the same original have been found at Eleuthernai in Crete, BCH. 1893–4, p. 126, 629; cf. above, chap. xii, n. 62.—This, in fact, is the “water of life” so often mentioned in the folk-lore of many countries; cf. Grimm, D. Märchen, n. 97, with Notes iii, p. 178, 328; Dieterich, Abraxas, 97 f.; Nekyia, 94, 99. This is the fountain from which Psyche also has to bring water to Venus (Apul., M. vi, 13–14); and it is certain that in the original Psyche-story it was not the water of the Styx that was intended (as Apul. supposes, but of what use would that be?), but the water of the fountain of life in Hades. It is a speaking fountain, vocales aquae (Apul. vi, 14), and, in fact, precisely the same as that mentioned in a unique legend of Herakles given in [Justin.] πρὸς Ἕλληνας 3 (p. 636, 7, ed. Harnack, Ber. Berl. Ak. 1896); Herakles is called ὁ ὄρη πηδήσας (? πιδύσας, “making it gush forth,” would be more acceptable) ἵνα λάβῃ ὕδωρ ἔναρθρον φωνὴν ἀποδιδόν. Herakles makes the mountain gush forth by striking the speaking water out of the rock. This is exactly paralleled in the modern Greek stories given by Hahn, Gr. u. alb. Märchen, ii, p. 234; the Lamia who guards the water of life (τὸ ἀθάνατο νερό, the phrase often appears in these stories; cf. also Schmidt, Griech. Märchen, p. 233) “strikes with a hammer on the rock till it opens and she can draw the water of life”. This is the same ancient fairy tale motif. The proper home of this water of life is probably the lower world, the world of either death or immortality, though this is not expressly stated in the Herakles legend nor in the fairy tale of Glaukos who discovered the ἀθάνατος πηγή (but probably also in the magic country of the West. Thus Alexander the Great finds the ἀθάνατος πηγή at the entrance to the μακάρων χώρα acc. to Ps.-Callisth. ii, 39 ff.; his story shows clear reminiscences of the Glaukos tale, its prototype, in c. 39 fin., 41, 2).—The Orphic (and Pythagorean) mythology of Hades (see above: chap. xi, n. 96; chap. xii, nn. 37–8; chap. vii, n. 21) then proceeded to make use of the folk-tale for their own purposes. In Ep. 658 the prayer also refers to the Orphic fable (CIG. 5772) ψυχρὸν ὕδωρ δοίη σοι ἄναξ ἐνέρων Ἀϊδωνεύς, and 719, 11, ψυχῇ διψώσῃ ψυχρὸν ὕδωρ μεταδός. They mean: may you live on in complete consciousness. (The same thing in the negative: the dead man dwells ἅμα παισὶ θεῶν καὶ λήθης οὐκ ἔπιεν λιβάδα, 414, 10: 576 οὐκ ἔπιον Λήθης Ἀϊδωνίδος ἔσχατον ὕδωρ, so that I can perceive the mourning of the living for my loss, 204, 11. καὶ θνήσκων γὰρ ἔχω νόον οὔτινα βαιόν, 334, 5.—Poetical allusion in AP. vii, 346: σὺ δ’ εἰ θέμις, ἐν φθιμένοισι τοῦ Λήθης ἐπ’ ἐμοὶ μή τι πίῃς ὕδατος.—Perhaps something of the sort already occurs in Pindar; see above, chap. xii, n. 37.)

[152]   εὐψύχει κυρία καὶ δοίη σοι ὁ Ὄσιρις τὸ ψυχρὸν ὕδωρ, IG. Sic. et It. 1488; 1705; 1782; Rev. Arch. 1887, p. 201. (And once the line σοὶ δὲ Ὀσείριδος ἁγνὸν ὕδωρ Εἶσις χαρίσαιτο, inscr. from Alexandria: Rev. Arch. 1887, p. 199.) εὐψύχει μετὰ τοῦ Ὀσείριδος, I. Sic. et It. 2098. The dead man is with Osiris, Ep. 414, 5. Osiris as lord in the world of the blessed: defixio from Rome, I. Sic. et It. 1047; ὁ μέγας Ὄσειρις ὁ ἔχων τὴν κατεξουσίαν καὶ τὸ βασίλειον τῶν νερτέρων θεῶν.—It appears that the legend of the fountain of Mnemosyne and its cold water was independently developed by the Greeks and then associated subsequently with the analogous Egyptian idea or brought into harmony with it (certainly not as e.g. Böttiger, Kl. Schr., thinks, originally belonging to the Egyptians alone and thence imported into Greece from Egypt). Egyptian Books of the dead often speak of the cool water that the dead enjoy (cf. Maspero, Ét. de mythol. et d’arch. égypt. 1893, 1, 366 f.), as well as of the water drawn from the Nile and preserving the youth of the dead man: Maspero, Notices et Extraits, 24, 1883, pp. 99–100. The formula, “may Osiris give you the cold water” (everlasting life), does not seem to occur on original Egyptian monuments. It is prob. therefore modelled by Egyptian Greeks on their own ancient Greek formula.—On Christian inss. we often have the formula: spiritum tuum dominus (or deus Christus, or a holy martyr) refrigeret: see Kraus, Realencykl. d. christl. Alterth. s.v. refrigerium. This is probably, as has been frequently suggested, an imitation of the heathen formula, like so many features of early Christian burial usage.

[153]   On sarcophagi in Isauria the lion is sometimes represented on the lid with the inscr. describing the contents: ὁ δεῖνα ζῶν καὶ φρονῶν ἀνέθηκεν ἑαυτὸν λέοντα καὶ τὴν γυναῖκα αὐτοῦ προτέραν, etc. On another sarcophagus: Λούκιος ἀνέστησε (three names) καὶ ἑαυτὸν ἀετὸν καὶ Ἄμμουκιν Βαβόου τὸν πατέρα ἀετὸν τειμῆς χάριν, American School at Athens, iii, p. 26, 91–2. These expressions must refer to something quite different from the otherwise not uncommon practice of representing lions or eagles on graves. I can only explain them on the supposition that the dead persons represent themselves and the relatives named in the forms which had belonged to them in the mysteries of Mithras, in which lions and lionesses formed the fourth grade, and eagles, ἀετοί (or ἱέρακες) the seventh (cf. Porph., Abst. iv, 16); these are elsewhere called πατέρες.

[154]   The soul of a dead son (who as it appears from ll. 1, 2, 6 ff. had been killed by a flash of lightning and therefore removed to a higher state of being [see Append. i]) appears by night to his mother and confirms her own assertion, οὐκ ἤμην βροτός, Ep. 320. The soul of their daughter who has died ἄωρος and ἀθαλάμευτος appears to her parents on the ninth day (l. 35) after death, 372, 31 ff. (The ninth day marks the end of the first offerings to the dead: see above, chap. v, n. 84; cf. “Apparitions of the deceased occur most frequently on the ninth day after death”: a German superstition mentioned by Grimm, 1812, n. 856.) It is significant that the daughter who thus appears in a vision has died unmarried. The ἄγαμοι, like the ἄωροι, do not find rest after death: see Append. vii and iii. The 577 soul of another unmarried maiden says distinctly that those like herself are especially able to appear in dreams: ἠϊθέοις γὰρ ἔδωκε θεὸς μετὰ μοῖραν ὀλέθρον ὡς ζώουσι λαλεῖν πᾶσιν ἐπιχθονίοις, Ep. 325, 7–8.—It becomes more general, however, in 522, 12–13: σώματα γὰρ κατέλυσε Δίκη, ψυχὴ δὲ προπᾶσα ἀθάνατος δι’ ὅλου (thus the stone, Ath. Mitt. xiv, 193) πωτωμένη πάντ’ ἐπακούει (cf. Eur., Orest. 667 ff.).

[155]   ψυχὴ δὲ—says his son and pupil to the dead physician Philadelphos—ἐκ ῥεθέων πταμένη μετὰ δαίμονας ἄλλους ἤλυθε σή, ναίες δ’ ἐν μακάρων δαπέδῳ, ἵλαθι καί μοι ὄπαζε νόσων ἄκος, ὡς τὸ πάροιθεν, νῦν γὰρ θειοτέρην μοῖραν ἔχεις βιότου, Ep. 243, 5 ff. (Inscr. Perg. ii, 576).

[156]   There is a striking conjunction of the most exalted hope and the most utter unbelief on a single stone: Ep. 261.

[157]   εἴ γέ τι ἔστι (ἐστέ) κάτω, CIG. 6442.—κατὰ γῆς εἴπερ χρηστοῖς γέρας ἐστίν, Ep. 48, 6; 63, 3. εἴ γ’ ἐν φθιμένοισί τις αἴσθησις, τέκνον, ἐστίν—Ep. 700, 4. εἰ δέ τίς ἐστι νόος παρὰ Ταρτάρῳ ἢ παρὰ Λήθῃ, 722, 5. εἰ γένος εὐσεβέων ζώει μετὰ τέρμα βίοιο, AP. vii, 673.—Cf. above, chap. xii, n. 17.

[158]   Call., Epigr. 15; Ep. 646; 646a (p. xv); 372, 1 ff.

[159]   ἡμεῖς δὲ πάντες οἱ κάτω, τεθνηκότες, ὀστέα, τέφρα γεγόναμεν, ἄλλο δ’ οὐδὲ ἕν, Ep. 646, 5 f.; cf. 298, 3–4. ἐκ γαίας βλαστὼν γαῖα πάλιν γέγονα, 75 (third century B.C.); cf. 438; 311, 5: τοῦθ’ ὅ ποτ’ ὤν (the I that was once living has now become these things, viz.), στήλη, τύμβος, λίθος, εἰκών. 513, 2, κεῖται ἀναίσθητος ὥσπερ λίθος (cf. Thgn. 567 f.) ἠὲ σίδηρος. 551, 3, κεῖται λίθος ὥς, ἡ πάνσοφος, ἡ περίβωτος.

[160]   Ἕστηκεν μὲν Ἕρως (prob. on the monument) εὕδων ὕπνον, ἐν φθιμένοις δὲ οὐ πόθος, οὐ φιλότης ἔστι κατοιχομένοις. ἀλλ’ ὁ θανὼν κεῖται πεδίῳ λίθος οἷα πεπηγώς, εἰχώρων ἀπαλῶν σάρκας ἀποσκεδάσας—ἐξ ὕδατος καὶ γῆς καὶ πνεύματος (here evidently not in the Stoic sense, but simply = ἀήρ) ἠα πάροιθεν· ἀλλὰ θανὼν κεῖμαι πᾶσι (all the elements) τὰ πάντ’ ἀποδούς. πᾶσιν τοῦτο μένει· τί δὲ τὸ πλέον; ὁππόθεν ἦλθεν, εἰς τοῦτ’ αὖτ’ ἐλύθη σῶμα μαραινόμενον (inscr. in Bucharest; Gomperz, Arch. epigr. Mitt. a. Oest. vi, 30).

[161]   πνεῦμα λαβὼν δάνος οὐρανόθεν τελέσας χρόνον ἀνταπέδωκα, Ep. 613, 6. (This is a commonplace of popular philosophy: “life is only lent to man”; see Wyttenbach on Plu., Cons. ad Apoll. 106 F; Upton on Epict. 1, 1, 32 Schw.; cf. usura vitae Anth. Lat. Ep. ed. Bücheler, i, p. 90, n. 183.)

[162]   Epitaph from Amorgos: Ath. Mitt. 1891, p. 176, which ends: τὸ τέλος ἀπέδωκα.

[163]   δαίμων ὁ πικρὸς κτλ., Ep. 127, 3 (cf. 59). ἀστόργου μοῖρα κίχεν θανάτου, 146, 6. δίσσα δὲ τέκνα λιποῦσαν ἁ παντοβάρης λάβε μ’ Ἅιδης, ἄκριτον ἄστοργον θηρὸς ἔχων κραδίην (Tyrrheion in Akarnania, BCH. 1886, p. 178).

[164]   παύσασθαι δεινοῦ πένθους δεινοῦ τε κυδοιμοῦ· οὐδὲν γὰρ πλέον (ΠΑCIΝ the stone as stated) ἐστί, θανόντα γὰρ οὐδένα (read οὐδὲν) ἐγείρει κτλ., ins. from Larisa, Ath. Mitt. xi, 451. εἰ δ’ ἦν τοὺς ἀγαθοὺς ἀνάγειν πάλιν, ins. from Pherai, BCH. 1889, p. 404.

[165]   οὐ κακός ἐστ’ Ἀίδης—comfort being derived from the fact that death is “common”. Ep. 256, 9–10; 282; 292, 6; 298.

[166]   εὐψύχει, τέκνον, οὐδεὶς ἀθάνατος, IG. Sic. et It. 1531; 1536 (cf. 1743 ad fin.); 1997 and frequent; CIG. 4463; 4467 (Syria), εὐψύχει Ἀταλάντη, ὅσα γεννᾶται τελευτᾷ, IG. Sic. et It. 1832. καὶ ὁ Ἡρακλῆς ἀπέθανεν, 1806.—Even on Christian graves the formula is frequent: εὐψύχει (ἡ δεῖνα), οὐδεὶς ἀθάνατος (see Schultze, Die Katakomben, 251). 578

[167]   οὐκ ἤμην, γενόμην, οὐκ ἔσομ’ οὐ μέκει μοι· ὁ βίος ταῦτα. IG. Sic. et It. 2190 (the original form of the ending is probably οὐκ ἔσομαι· τί πλέον; see Gomperz, Arch. ep. Mitt. Oesterr. vii, 149; Ztschr. f. öst. Gymn. 1879, p. 437); cf. Ep. 1117, οὐκ ἤμην, γενόμην, ἤμην, οὐκ εἰμί· τοσαῦτα· (this τοσαῦτα, or more commonly ταῦτα, is frequent in epitaphs as a formula of resignation—a summary of existence: “all life comes to nothing but this.” See Loch, Zu d. griech. Grabschr. 289–95)—εἰ δέ τις ἄλλο ἑρέει, ψεύσεται· οὐκ ἔσομαι. CIG. 6265: εὐψυχῶ, ὅστις οὐκ ἤμην καὶ ἐγενόμην, οὔκ εἰμι καὶ οὐ λυποῦμαι (cf. also Ep. 502, 15; 646, 14; AP. vii, 339, 5–6; x, 118, 3–4). Frequent also in a Latin form: Non eris, nec fuisti, Sen., Epist. 77, 11 (see above, chap. xiv, pt. i, n. 68). Ausonius, p. 252, ed. Schenkl (ex sepulchro latinae viae): nec sum nec fueram; genitus tamen e nihilo sum. mitte nec explores singula, talis eris (probably this is how it should be read); cf. CIL. ii, 1434; v, 1813, 1939, 2893; viii, 2885, etc.; Bücheler, Carm. lat. epigr. i, p. 116.

[168]   γνοὺς ὡς θνατοῖς οὐδὲν γλυκερώτερον αὐγᾶς ζῆθι, Ep. 560, 7. Coarser admonitions to enjoy the passing hour, CIG. 3846 (iii, p. 1070). Ep. 362, 5. παῖσον, τρύφησον, ζῆσον· ἀποθανεῖν σε δεῖ, 439, 480a, 7. An ins. from Saloniki, second century A.D., Ath. Mitt. 1896, p. 99, concludes—ὁ βίος οὗτος. τί στήκ(ε)ις ἀνθρωπε; ταῦτα βλέπων ΥΠΑΛΟΥΣΟΥ (ἀπόλαυσον? Or ἀπολαύου?).

[169]   εἰ καὶ . . . φροῦδον σῶμα . . . ἀλλ’ ἀρετὰ βιοτᾶς αἰὲν ζωοῖσι μέτεστι, ψυχᾶς μανύουσ’ εὐκλέα σωφροσύνην, Ep. 560, 10 ff. σῶμα μὲν ἐνθάδ’ ἔχει σόν, Δίφιλε, γαῖα θανόντος, μνῆμα δὲ σῆς ἔλιπες πᾶσι δικαιοσύνης (and elsewhere with variations): Ep. 56–8. Or only: . . τέλεσεν δὲ καὶ ἐσσομένοισι νοῆσαι στήλην, Ath. Mitt. 1891, p. 263, 3 (Thessaly). Homeric: see above, chap. i, n. 88, and cf. σᾶμα τοζ’ Ἰδαμενεὺς ποίησα ἵνα κλέως εἴη . . . ancient inscr. from Rhodos: Ath. Mitt. 1891, p. 112, 243 (IGM. Aeg. i, n. 737).

[170]   From an earlier period (ca. third century B.C.), Ep. 44: ἢν ὁ σύνευνος ἔστερξεν μὲν ζῶσαν ἐπένθησεν δὲ θανοῦσαν. φῶς δ’ ἔλιπ’ εὐδαίμων, παῖδας παίδων ἐπιδοῦσα. Fine also are 67 and 81b. But something like them appears even late: 647, 5–10; 556: a priestess of Zeus congratulates herself εὔτεκνον ἀστονάχητον ἔχει τάφος· οὐ γὰρ ἀμαυρῶς δαίμονες ἡμετέρην ἔβλεπον εὐσεβίην.—To recover for a moment the taste of the old robust spirit we may remind ourselves of Herodotos’ story of Tellos the Athenian, the happiest of mankind. He was born in a prosperous city, had fine children and saw the children of all these children, none of whom died. And his happy life was crowned by a noble end. In a battle of the Athenians against their neighbours he was successful in putting the foe to rout and then he himself fell while fighting, so that his country buried him in the place where he fell and honoured him greatly. (Hdt. i, 30. Herodotos’ Solon does indeed assign the second prize of happiness to Kleobis and Biton and their fortunate end: c. 31. A changed attitude to life makes itself felt in their story.)

[171]   Mundus senescens, Cyprian, ad Demetr. 3 ff. The Christians lay the blame for the impoverishment and decay of life on the heathen. The latter in turn blame the recently arrived and now dominant Christianity for the unhappiness of the time: Tertull., Apol. 40 ff.; Arnob. 1; Aug., CD. It was already a vulgare proverbium—Pluvia defit, causa Christiani sunt, CD. ii, 3. The Emp. Julian found τὴν οἰκουμένην ὥσπερ λιποψυχοῦσαν and wished τὴν φθορὰν τῆς οἰκουμένης στῆσαι, Liban., Or. i, p. 617, 10; 529, 4.—The Christians returned the compliment: the reason why everything in nature and the life 579 of men was going awry is simply paganorum exacerbata perfidia (Leg. Novell. Theodos. ii, i, 3, p. 10 Ritt.).

[172]   We know of a certain Nikagoras Minuc. f. (significantly enough an ardent admirer of Plato) temp. Const. δᾳδοῦχος τῶν ἁγιωτάτων Ἐλευσῖνι μυστηρίων, CIG. 4770. Julian, even as a boy, was initiated at Eleusis: Eunap., V. Soph., p. 53 (Boiss.). At that time, however, in miserandam ruinam conciderat Eleusina, Mamert., Act. Jul. 9. Here again Julian seems to have restored the cult. Valentinian I, on the point of abolishing all nocturnal festivals (see Cod. Theod. iii, 9, 16, 7), allowed them to continue when Praetextatus Procons. of Achaea represented to him that for the Greeks ὁ βίος would be ἀβίωτος, εἰ μέλλοιεν κωλύεσθαι τὰ συνέχοντα τὸ ἀνθρώπειον γένος ἁγιώτατα μυστήρια κατὰ θεσμὸν ἐκτελεῖν, Zosim. iv, 3. (Praetext. was a friend of Symmachus and, like him, one of the last pillars of Roman orthodoxy: princeps religiosorum, Macr., S. i, 11, 1. He was himself sacratus Eleusiniis, and hierophanta there: CIL. vi, 1779; probably the Πραιτέξτατος ὁ ἱεροφάντης of Lyd., Mens. 4, 2, p. 148 R. [p. 65 W.], is the same person.) In 375 A.D. we hear of a Nestorius (probably the father of the Neoplatonic Plutarch) as ἱεροφαντεῖν τεταγμένος at the time (Zos. iv, 18). In 396 during the hierophantia of a πατὴρ τῆς Μιθριακῆς τελετῆς (whose oath should have excluded him from that office) the temple of Eleusis was destroyed by Alaric, incited thereto by the monks who accompanied him (Eunap., VS., p. 52–3). The regular holding of the festival must then have come to an end.—Evidence of later celebration of the Eleusinia is not forthcoming. The expressions of Proclus, which Maass regards as “certainly” proving that the festival was still being held in the fifth century (Orpheus, 15), are quite insufficient to the purpose. Proclus speaks of various sacred ceremonies of initiation from which we μεμαθήκαμεν something: of a φήμη, i.e. written tradition, of certain unspecified Eleusinian θεολόγοι; of what the Eleus. mysteries ὑπισχνοῦνται to the mystai (just as we might speak in the present tense of the permanent content of Greek religion). These passages prove nothing: whereas the imperfects which he uses elsewhere clearly show that neither temple nor festival existed any longer in his time. (He speaks, in Alc., p. 5 Crz., of what used to be in the temple of Eleusis and still more of what formerly occurred ἐν τοῖς Ἐλευσινίοις ἱεροῖς—ἐβόων κτλ., in Ti. 293 C.) The festival moreover cannot have gone on without the temple and its apparatus.

[173]   The Orphic hymns in the form in which we have them all belong as it seems to one period, and that can hardly have been earlier than the third century A.D. They are all composed for practical use in the cult, and that presupposes the existence of Orphic communities (see Schöll, Commun. et coll. quib. Graec. [Sat. Saupp.], p. 14 ff.; Dieterich, de H. Orph.).—It must be admitted that they were not purely and exclusively Orphic communities for which the poems were written. These hymns, called “Orphic” a potiori, make use in parts of older Orphic poetry (cf. H. 62, 2 f., with [Dem.] 25, 11).

[174]   Probably all these cults promised immortality to their mystai. This is certain in the worship of Isis (cf. Burckhardt, Zeit Constantins d. G.2, p. 195 ff.). Apul., M. xi, 21–3, alludes to symbolic death and reawakening to everlasting life as the subject of the δρώμενα in the Isis mysteries. The initiated is thus renatus (21). In the same way the mystai of Mithras are said to be in aeternum renati: CIL. vi, 510; 736. Immortality must certainly have been promised. Acc. to Tert., Pr. Haer. 40, the mysteries of Mithras 580 included an imago resurrectionis. By this the Christian author can only understand a real ἀνάστασις τῆς σαρκός. Did these mysteries promise to their ὅσιοι a resurrection of the body and everlasting life? This belief in the ἀνάστασις νεκρῶν (always a difficulty for the Greeks: Act Ap. xvii, 18; 32; Plotin. 3, 6, 6 fin.) is in fact ancient Persian (Theopomp. fr. 71–2; Hübschmann, Jb. Prot. Theol. v, p. 222 ff.), and probably came to the Jews from Persia. It is possible then that it may have been the essential idea of the Mithras mysteries.—Hopes of immortality as they appeared to the mystai of Sabazios are illustrated by the sculptures of the monument of Vibia (in the Catac. of Praetextatus), and of Vincentius: numinis antistes Sabazis Vincentius hic est. Qui sacra sancta deum mente pia coluit (Garrucci, Tre Sepolcri, etc., tab. i–iii, Nap. 1852).—It is difficult to see why Christian archeologists should regard this Vincentius as a Christian. He calls himself a worshipper of “the gods” and an antistes Sabazii (there cannot be the slightest objection to giving this meaning to numinis antistes Sabazis. The difficulties raised by Schultze, Katakomben, 44, are groundless: Sabazis = Sabazii is no more objectionable or doubtful than the genitives Clodis, Helis: see Ritschl, Opusc. iv, 454–6. The arrangement of words, n. a. Sab., is due to the exigencies of metre).

[175]   ἡ ὄρεξις τοῦ ἀγαθοῦ εἰς ἓν ὄντως ἄγει καὶ ἐπὶ τοῦτο σπεύδει πᾶσα φύσις, Plot. 6, 5, 1. πάντα ὀρέγεται ἐκείνου καὶ ἐφίεται αὐτοῦ φύσεως ἀνάγκῃ . . . ὡς ἄνευ αὐτοῦ οὐ δύναται εἶναι, 5, 5, 12; 1, 8, 2. ποθεῖ δὲ πᾶν τὸ γεννῆσαν (the νοῦς desires the πρῶτον, the ψυχή the νοῦς): 5, 1, 6.

[176]   αἱ ἔξω τοῦ αἰσθητοῦ γενόμεναι (ψυχαί), Plot. 3, 4, 6. In death ἀνάγειν τὸ ἐν ἡμῖν θεῖον πρὸς τὸ ἐν τῷ πάντι θεῖον, Porph., V. Plot. 2. Return εἰς πατρίδα, Plot., 5, 9, 1.

[177]   2, 9, esp. § 16 ff.

[178]   τὸ μὲν γὰρ αἰσχρὸν ἐναντίον καὶ τῇ φύσει καὶ τῷ θεῷ, 3, 5, 1.

[179]   Flight from the ἐν σώματι κάλλος to the τῆς ψυχῆς κάλλη, etc., 5, 9, 2. And again in the fine treatise, π. τοῦ καλοῦ, 1, 6, 8. Though even here it is in a different sense from that in which Plato speaks in the Symp. of the ascent from καλὰ σώματα to καλὰ ἐπιτηδεύματα, etc. Plotinos protests energetically against the idea that his own sense of beauty makes him any the less φεύγειν τὸ σῶμα than the hatred of beauty cultivated by the Gnostics: 2, 9, 18. He too waits here below, only a little less impatiently, for the time when he will be able to say farewell to every earthly habitation: ib.

[180]   . . . καὶ οὕτω θεῶν καὶ ἀνθρώπων θείων καὶ εὐδαιμόνων βίος ἀπαλλαγὴ τῶν τῇδε, βίος ἀνήδονος τῶν τῇδε, φυγὴ μόνου πρὸς μόνον, 6, 9, 11 fin.

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 582 “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 583 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 584 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 585 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 586 (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., 587 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 588 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 589 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.]. 590 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. 591 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 592 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. 593 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 594 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 595 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 596 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, 597 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. 598 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. 599 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). 600 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 = 6^3: 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 601 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).

[1]   What Diels, Parmenides, p. 15 (1897) says in support of his view might stand if we were willing to ignore the fact that Pythag., as has already been remarked, remembered his previous lives while he was still alive, and not in the ecstatic condition—not ἔξω γενόμενος τοῦ σώματος. But this is a fact, so that Diels’ view remains untenable.—I cannot see what there is of a “rationalist” character (Diels) in the fact that Pyth. saw Hesiod and Homer in Hades undergoing punishment ἀνθ’ ὧν εἶπον περὶ θεῶν (D.L. viii, 21). This is, in fact, an anti-rationalist, priestly invention (and so I see Dieterich also understands it, Nekyia, 130). This fact certainly does not tell against the view that the Hades poem had its origin in the sixth (or the first half of the fifth) century B.C.

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 602 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 603 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 604 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 605 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.).

INDEX

The figures indicate pages, except where they follow a Roman numeral, in which case they refer to the numbered notes.

Abarbareë and Boukolion, xiv, ii, 105.

Abaris, 300.

Abioi, 63.

Abipones in Paraguay, i, 30; viii, 28.

Academy, its doctrine of the Soul, xiv, 1.

Acheron, Ἀχερουσιὰς λίμην, i, 67; v, 25; 241.

Acheron, god of Hades, 591.

Achilles, i, 41; in Hades, 39; translated, 64 f.; on the μακάρων νῆσος, xiv, ii, 99; on Leuke, xiv, ii, 102; as Hero or God, 66; 126; iv, 3, 87, 137; xiv, ii, 42.

Admetos, xii, 40; ix, 90.

Adonis, iii, 30.

Adoption, 172; Ritual Act of Adoption in the Mysteries, 601 f.

Aeneas translated, xiv, ii, 110, 114 (ii, 3).

Aeracura, xiv, ii, 144.

Aeschylus, 157; vii, 12; 422 f.; Agam. 1235, 591 f.

Aether, the element of the Souls, 435 f.; dwelling place of Souls, 170–1; x, 45; xiv, 53, 69; 541.

Aethiopians, 63.

Ages, different, of Mankind (Hesiod), 67 f.; Golden Ages, ii, 49; vii, 18.

Agamemnon translated, xiv, ii, 99.

ἄγαμοι after death, 586; xiv, ii, 154.

Agathos daimon, v, 133.

Agides in Sparta, iv, 53.

Agon, see Funeral Games.

Agriania, viii, 28; ix, 11–12.

Agrianios, name of a month in Boeotia, v, 92.

Aiaia, ii, 14.

Aiakos, vii, 13.

Aias, Hero, 126; 137; xiv, ii, 55, 102; Sophokles’ Aias, xii, 88.

αἴδεσις, v, 151.

Ἅιδης = θάνατος, Θάνατος, xii, 4; = the grave, xiv, ii, 135; confusion of the two ideas, ib., 92; cf. Hades.

εἰς Ἀίδαο, Ἄϊδόσδε, i, 32.

Ἅιδου μήτηρ, 591 f.

αἱμακουρία, iv, 13.

Aipytos, 123; iv, 53.

Air, see Aether.

Aithalides, xi, 51; 599.

Aithiopis, 64; v, 166; xiv, ii, 102.

Akrisios, iii, 43.

Aktaion, 134.

Akousilaos, 593.

Alabandos, iv, 138.

Alaric, xiv, ii, 172.

ἀλάστωρ, v, 148, 178; xii, 73; 592, 595.

Albanians in the Caucasus, i, 30.

Aletes, ix, 66.

Alexander the Great reaches the land of the Blest, xiv, ii, 101; translated, ib., 107; Return of, and false Alexanders, ib., 112.

Alexander of Aphrodisias, xiv, 34.

Alexis, comic poet, xiv, ii, 143.

ἀλιτήριος, v, 176, 178.

Alkandros, iii, 56.

Alkmaion Hero, iv, 105, 136; Physician, xi, 28, 35, 40, 55; xii, 150; xiii, 22.

Alkmaionis, v, 17, 40.

Alkmene, iv, 134; translated, xiv, ii, 99.

Alkon, iii, 56.

ἀλλαθεάδες, v, 88.

Allegorical interpretation of myths, vi, 23.

Althaimenes, iii, 4.

Ambrosia, 58.

Ameinias (Pythagorean), xi, 30.

Amelesagoras, ix, 58.

ἀμεταστρεπτί, ix, 104.

Ampelius, Lib. Mem., viii, 3; iii, 12. 608

Amphiaraos, translated, 89 f., 92–3; (Zeus Amph.), 94, 101, 159; (not originally a god), iii, 57; (later cult of), xiv, ii, 104.

ἀμφιδρόμια, ix, 72.

Amphilochos translated, iii, 5, 13, 56; 133; iv, 105; xiv, ii, 104, 114.

Amphilytos, ix, 59.

Amphion, 238.

ἀμύητοι, 586 f.

Amyklai, 99 f.

ἀναβιώσεις, xi, 103.

Anæsthesia, see Insensibility.

Anagyros, Hero, 134.

ἀνάμνησις as taught by Pythagoras, Empedokles, Plato, xi, 96; 598 f.

Anaxagoras, vi, 23; 386; 432; xii, 143; fr. 6 [12], xi, 110–11.

Anaximander, x, 38; 366; xi, 98.

Anaximenes, 366; xi, 98.

Ancestor-cult, 10 f.; 27 f.; 77 f. (Hesiod); Ancestors in the cult of Heroes, 119 f., 527 f.; of the γένη, etc., 124 f. (with nn.).

Anchises translated, xiv, ii, 110.

ἀγχιστεία (in the cult of souls), v, 42, 141; 176; xiv, ii, 10.

ἀνιέναι (τὰ καλά, etc.), v, 120.

Anima and animus in Lucretius, xiv, 74.

Animals in cult of the dead, v, 105; care of animals enjoined, vi, 35 (and see Food); skin of, apotropaic use of, xi, 58 (v, 167); souls of, x, 45; xiii, 40.

Andronikos (Peripatetic), 512.

ἄνεμοι, x, 45.

ἀνεμοκοῖται, ix, 107.

Angekoks, of Greenland, 262; ix, 117.

Angels, xiv, ii, 144.

Anthropogony (Orphic), 341 f., (Hesiodic) 67 f.

Anios, iv, 102.

Anthesteria, 168; ix, 11.

Anthologia Palatina, xiv, ii, 122.

ἀνθρωποδαίμων, ii, 43.

Antichrist, xiv, ii, 113.

Antigone, 163; 426; xii, 94.

Antilochos translated, xiv, ii, 102 (p. 567).

Antinous translated, xiv, ii, 114.

Antiochos of Kommagene, his tomb, xiv, ii, 13 (p. 554).

Antiphon (of Rhamnous, the orator), v, 176; 588.

Antipodes, xiv, ii, 101.

ἀωροθάνατοι, 594 (add Phryn. App. Soph. in Bekk. Anecd., 24, 22).

ἄωροι, xiii, 36; 533; 553; 594; 604; xiv, ii, 154.

ἀωροβόρος Hekate, ix, 92.

Apis, ix, 68.

ἀποκατάστασις, x, 47; 519.

Apollo, 97 f.; 130; xii, 40; god of expiation, 180 f.; as leader of the Souls, xiv, ii, 146; and Dionysos, 287 f.; supplants Gaia, 290; Hyakinthos, 99 f.; Ἀτύμνιος, etc., iv, 99.

Apolline mantiké, 289 f.

Apollonia in Chalkidike, v, 92.

Apollonios of Tyana, ii, 18; xiv, ii, 115.

ἀπομαγδαλίαι, 595.

ἀπομάττειν, 589, 590.

ἀπόνιμμα, ix, 88.

ἀποπομπή (δαιμόνων), v, 168.

ἀπόταφοι, xiv, ii, 20.

ἀποτροπαῖοι (θεοί), v, 168.

Apparitions of the departed, xiv, ii, 154; see Ghosts.

ἄψυχα trial held over, iv, 118.

ἀραῖος (νέκυς, δαίμων), v, 148; xii, 107.

Aratos as Hero, xiv, ii, 57 f.

ἀρχηγοί, ἀρχηγέται, iv, 51, 55; 527.

Archelaos, the philosopher, 432; xii, 152.

Archemoros Vase, v, 40.

Archilochos, v, 173.

Archon Basileus at Athens, 178.

Areopagos, 162; v, 145; 178.

Argeios and Herakles, i, 35.

Argimpaioi, x, 78.

Arginousai, battle of, 162.

Aristaios, iii, 6.

Aristeas of Prokonnesos, 300, 596.

Aristogeiton and Harmodios in Hades, 237.

Aristogeiton, Speech against, vii, 15.

Aristomenes as Hero, 528.

Aristophanes Frogs, 240.

Aristophon, comic poet, 601.

Aristotle, 383; xiv, 1; 493 f. (An. 408b, 18; xiv, 27).

Aristoxenos, xi, 47, 52; 512.

Aristophanes of Byzantium, 583.

Arkesilaos, xiv, 1.

Art of the Greeks, 157; Cult of Souls as represented in, v, 105. 609

Askesis (Asceticism), vi, 35; 302, 338; Orphic, 343; Thracian, x, 78; Pythagorean, xi, 47; Empedokles, 381; practised in foreign mystery-religions, 546.

Asklepiades, doctor, xi, 69.

Asklepios, iii, 13; chthonic, mantic, 100 f.; his death by lightning, 582; Asklepiadai, iv, 92 f.

Asphalt (bitumen), apotropaic virtue of, v, 95.

ἀσφόδελος sacred to the χθόνιοι, ix, 115.

Associations: burial, xiv, ii, 4; religious, xiv, ii, 53.

Astakides, xiv, ii, 105; 582.

Astarte, iii, 30.

Astrabakos, 137.

ἄταφοι, restless wandering of, 163; v, 147; 595 (i, 33).

ἀτέλεστοι, uninitiated, lying in mud in the underworld, vii, 15; 586 f.

ἀθάνατος πηγή (in the underworld), xiv, ii, 151.

Athenaeus (139 E), iii, 48.

Athenaïs, ix, 59.

Athene ἀποτροπαία, v, 168.

Athenodoros, philosopher and Hero, 530.

Athens, 98; A. and Eleusis, 219 f.

Atlantes, x, 78.

Atomists, 385 f.; 506.

Atonement in Plato (Purgation), xiii, 36.

Attis, iii, 30; viii, 55; 546.

Augustine, xiv, ii, 87.

Augustus, ascent to Heaven, of, xiv, ii, 107.

Aurelius, M. Antoninus, xiv, 44, 63, 69; 504.

Ausonius, xiv, ii, 167.

Australian natives, religious dances of, viii, 55; 585.

Autolykos, iv, 101; xiv, ii, 43.

Authority, later Antiquity's need of, 545.

Axiochos, the pseudo-Platonic dialogue, vii, 15; xii, 120; 602 f.

Avenging spirit, v, 148, 176; cf. ἀλάστωρ.

Averting the eves from the sight of spirits, ix, 104.

Avoiding the sight of spirits, iv, 84; ix, 104.

Baal, ecstatic prophets of, viii, 43.

Babo, v, 19; 591.

Babylonia, i, 44.

Bacchanalia in Rome, xiv, ii, 106; viii, 54.

Bakchiadai, iv, 46, 47.

Βάκχος, viii, 10, 35; 335; cf. Dionysos.

Βάκχοι, viii, 31 f.

Bakis, Bakides, 292; ix, 58, 63, 66; 595.

Banishment, 163; in expiation of murder, 175 f. (v, 142 f.).

Banquet of the Pure (Orphic doctrine of), in the other world, vii, 18; x, 70.

Barathron at Athens, v, 32.

Barbarossa, legend of, iii, 16.

Βασιλίδαι, iv, 47.

Βασσαρεύς (Bassarides), viii, 10 f.

Batloka, viii, 30.

Baubo, 591 f.

Beans, see Food, prohibition of.

Beer known to the Thracians, viii, 38.

Bendis, Bendideia at Athens, x, 4.

Berenike, translated, xiv, ii, 107.

Bessoi in Thrace, 260; viii, 53–4.

βιαιοθάνατοι (βιοθάνατοι, βίαιοι), 175 f.; v, 148, 176; 594 f.; 604.

Birds (incarnations of Heroes), xiv, ii, 102.

Birth, pollution of, 295.

Birthday as day of remembrance of the dead, v, 89; xiv, ii, 18, 45.

Biton and Kleobis, xiv, ii, 148, 170.

Black objects (trees, fruit, etc.) sacred to χθόνιοι, and hence have kathartic properties, v, 61; ix, 81; cf. ix, 26; 590.

Blest, of the dead, 171; vii, 10; xiv, ii, 31; 541 (cf. μακαρίτης and Islands of the Blest).

Blindness follows the sight of a deity, xiv, ii, 41.

Bliss, life of, in Hades; see Utopia.

Blood = thought, 380.

Boccaccio, iv, 134.

Boëthos, xiv, 34 (fin.), 57.

Bones of Heroes, cult paid to, 122.

Born, better not to be, xii, 10.

Boukolion, xiv, ii, 105.

Βουκόλοι, Dionysiac, viii, 35.

Bouselidai, v, 69, 129.

Brahminism, 302; x, 83.

Brasidas, as Hero, iv, 20; 128.

Breathing out the soul, i, 25; 30.

Bride, contests for the hand of a, i, 19.

Bronze: see Noise, etc.

Brotinos (Pythagorean), x, 7. 610

Brutus, 515; xiv, ii, 88.

Buddhism, viii, 60; x, 83; xi, 54, 96.

Burial, i, 34; oldest customs of, 22 f.; coffinless, v, 61, 62; inhumation and burning in Attica, v, 58; within the house, at the hearth, v, 66; xiv, ii, 9; within the city, v, 68; xiv, ii, 8.

Burial societies, xiv, ii, 4.

Burning and inhumation, 19 f.; burning the possessions of the dead, i, 30, 51; burning the dead; see Cremation.

Butios of Antilles, 262.

Cæsar, deification of, xiv, ii, 111.

Calling home the Souls, 42.

Canosa, vase from, vii, 27.

Cannibalism, x, 54.

Caracalla as an avatar of Alexander, xiv, ii, 112.

Cato of Utica, xiv, 64.

Cave of Zeus in Crete, 96 f.

Cave-deities, 89 f.; viii, 68.

Caves, sleep in, ix, 116.

Catacombs, xiv, ii, 144, 166, 174.

Celsus, xiv, ii, 96.

Celts, x, 81.

Cenotaph, i, 88.

Ceremonial of funerals restricted, 165, 167; v, 135; 540.

Cities, Founders of, 127 f.; cf. ἀρχηγοί.

Chains attached to a sacred statue, iv, 108.

χαῖρε on tombstones, 526 f.

Chalkis, criminal law of, v, 145.

χάρισμα, 292.

Charon, 237.

Χαρώνιον, v, 23.

Charon's fare given to the dead, 18; 162; vii, 9.

Children, importance of, 172; xii, 7.

China, ancestor-worship in, v, 129.

χοαί, for the dead, v, 106, 120.

Choes, v, 95; ix, 11.

χρηστοί of the dead, xiv, ii, 29 f. (vii, 10).

Christianity; ascetics and exorcists, 292, xiv, ii, 171, 179; use of word ἥρως, xiv, ii, 82; violation of graves by, xiv, ii, 11; Hell, 242; future rewards and punishments, xiv, ii, 96; rebirth, 602; Antichrist, xiv, ii, 113.

Christi, Russian sect of, viii, 57.

Chrysippos, xiv, 40, 47, 60-1; xiv, ii, 87.

Chthonic deities, 158 f., 218 f.; vi, 29; groups of χθόνιοι, v, 19; invoked at marriage and birth, 171; ix, 91.

Chytroi, festival at Athens, 168; ix, 11.

Cicero, vi, 22, 23; xiv, 54; 519; xiv, ii, 71, 96.

Cliff of Leukas, xiv, ii, 102.

Closing the eyes of the dead, i, 25.

Coffin-burial, v, 60.

Collegia funeraticia, xiv, ii, 4.

Colonies, Greek, 27; 156.

Comedy, Descents to Hades in, 240.

Conscience, 294, 384.

Consciousness division of, 595; see ἔκστασις.

Consolationes, xiv, ii, 6, 100.

Corinth, criminal law of, v, 145.

Cornutus, 504.

Corpes devoured by a daimon (Eurynomos), vii, 25; (Hekate), ix, 92.

Cosmopolitanism, v, 34; 499 f.

Cosmos, 29.

Costume, see Dress.

Coulanges, Fustel de, iv, 48; v, 131.

Cremation, 8, 19 f., 28; i, 66; iv, 38; v, 33, 58; and burial in later period, v, 58.

Crete, cult of Zeus in, 96 f.; v, 167; ix, 113–14 (mantic and kathartic reputation).

Creuzer, 223.

Crossways, 216; ix, 88.

Crowning the dead body with garlands, v, 40.

Crowns (of flowers) for the dead, v, 40.

Crumbs, etc., left on the ground for the Souls, v, 114.

Cult-societies, 221.

Cure of diseases by prophets, 294 f.

Curses against tomb-violators, 526 f.

Curse-tablets; see Defixiones.

Cycle, Epic, 34, 64 f., 75, 90.

Cyclic poetry, editing of, x, 17.

Cynics, v, 34; 499.

Cypress at funerals, v, 39.

Daeira, Daira, Δαειρίτης at Eleusis, vi, 8.

daemonium meridianum, ix, 96; 592.

Daimones, deities of second rank, i, 56; distinct from Heroes, iv, 23; xii, 121; in Hesiod, 70 f.; Empedokles, 381; Stoics, 500. 611

δαίμων, personal, of individual men, xiv, 44; (= πότμος), xii, 26; xiv, 44; ἀγαθὸς δ., v, 133; cf. xiv, 44; δαίμων θνητός (ἀνθρωποδαίμων, νεκυδαίμων), ii, 43.

δαίμονες ἀποτρόπαιοι, v, 168; ἀραῖοι, v, 148; μειλίχιοι, v, 168; πλάνητες, 592; προστρόπαιοι, v, 148, 176; = Angel, xiv, ii, 144; δαιμόνων μήτηρ, 591.

Daites, Trojan Hero, iv, 3.

Damon, ix, 19.

Danaides, 242; 587.

Dances, religious, 257; viii, 55; ix, 19.

Dance, circular, in cult of Dionysos, viii, 15.

Dante, 33, 242.

Danube, mouths of, xiv, ii, 102.

Daphne, 100.

δάφνη, v, 38, 95; ix, 46; xi, 85.

Daphnis, xiv, ii, 105.

Days, unlucky, v, 158.

Dea Syria, viii, 55.

Dead, offerings to, 18 f.; 165 f.; v, 105; dirge for the, 18, 164; Banquet of, 168; sacrifices to (Patroklos), 12 f.; in Mycenean graves, 22 f.; in Od. λ, 36 f.; elsewhere, 116, 164, 167 f.; Oracles of the, 24; i, 73; Judges of the (Aesch. and Plato), 238 f.; (Pindar), xii, 34 f.; (Aesch.), xii, 77; (later), 541; classes of the, xii, 62; xiv, ii, 127; imagined as skeletons, xiv, 11, 92; exorcism, conjuration of, see Souls and Ghosts.

Death, 3; superior to life, 229, 542; causing pollution, 295; of gods, iii, 30; Black Death, 284.

Defixiones, ix, 92, 107; 534, 594, 603 f.

Deification of Rulers, 537 f. (cf. 530 f.).

Delos, purification of, ix, 119.

Delphic Oracle, regulates expiatory rites, v, 167; 180 f.; authority of, in the cult of Heroes, 128 f.; gives support to the cult of Souls, 174; to the Eleusinian worship, vi, 5; to the worship of Dionysos in Attica, vi, 9; sources of oracular inspiration, 289 f.; importance of D. in religious life of Greece, 157; grave of Python at D., 97; Delphic funeral ordinance, v, 45.

Delphinion at Athens, v, 172.

Demeter (and Kore), 160 f.; v, 168; 218 f.

Demetrios Poliorketes as Hero, xiv, ii, 69.

Demetrios, Cynic, xiv, 64.

Demigods (ἡμίθεοι), iv, 23.

δῆμοι called after γένη in Attica, etc., iv, 52.

Demokritos, xi, 35; 385 f.; xii, 150; xiii, 27; περὶ τῶν ἐν ᾅδου, xi, 103 (fragg. moral.).

Demonassa, vi, 35.

Demonology, 534.

Demophoön, i, 41.

De mortuis nil nisi bene, v, 81; 170.

Dervishes, viii, 15, 43; 262, 266.

Devil’s Bride, ii, 7.

Devil’s Mother, 591.

Dexikreon, ix, 111.

Dexion the Hero (Sophokles), iv, 71.

Diagoras of Melos, 240; xii, 65.

Diana = Empousa, 592; in the Middle Ages, ix, 101.

Diasia at Athens. v, 168.

Dies nefasti, v, 158.

Dikaiarchos, xi, 52; 512; 599.

Dikte, Mt. in Crete, 96.

Diochaites, Pythagorean, xi, 30.

Diogenes, of Apollonia, 432, 436.

Diogenes, Cynic, vi, 27; 239.

Diogenes Laertius (viii, 31), xi, 50.

Diomedes, 67; on the μακάρων νῆσος, xiv, ii, 99.

Dionysos, the Thracian, 256 f.; Greek god, 282 f.; Greek (not Thracian) name, ix, 1; Orphic, 335 f.; 340 f.

Διόνυσος μαινόμενος, viii, 4; Lord of Souls, 168, 271; ix, 11; at Delphi, 97, 287; Oracle of Dionysos, 260, 290; as Bull, viii, 19, 33, 35; x, 35; as βουκόλος, viii, 35; at Eleusis, vi, 9; Epiphanies of, 258, 279, 285; Worship of, in Rome, viii, 54; xiv, ii, 106.

Dioscuri, ἑτερήμεροι, xi, 51; translated, xiv, ii, 109.

Dipylon, cemetery at Athens, v, 58.

Dipylon vases, 165.

Dirge, 164.

Discovery, geographical, xiv, ii, 101.

Disease, origin of, in daimonic influence, 294 f.; ix, 81–2.

Division of consciousness, 595 f.

Dodona, iii, 14; ix, 42. 612

Dogs sacrificed to Hekate, 298, 589–90; Hekate appears as a dog, ix, 99; 595; on grave reliefs, v, 105.

Dorians in the Peloponnese, 27.

Drakon, 115, 176.

Drama, 285, 421; in cult, 222, 258; mystic drama at Eleusis, 227.

Dreams, visions of the dead in, 7 (proving survival); xiv, ii, 154; i, 55; see Incubation and Prophecy.

Dress in Dionysiac worship, 257.

Drimakos (Hero), 530.

Driving out the souls, v, 99, 100.

Druids, x, 81.

Drusilla (ascent to heaven), xiv, ii, 107.

Dryopes, v, 18.

Δύαλος, viii, 10.

Duty, as conceived by the Stoics, 498 f.

Earth = Hell, xi, 75.

Earth-deities; see Chthonic.

Earth, Oracle of, at Delphi, 97, 160; ix, 46.

Echetlos (Hero), 136.

Echidna, v, 23.

Eckhart, xiii, 75.

ἐγχυτρίστριαι, v, 77.

Eggs, kathartic use of, x, 55; 590.

Egypt, i, 5, 39; 242; 335; x, 8, 45; 346; xiv, ii, 109, 152–3, 144.

ἐκφορά of the dead body, v, 46, 50, 60.

ἔκστασις (ἐνθουσισμός, κατοχή), 30, 255; viii, 24; 258 f.; 284 f.; 293; 300 f.; 384; 471; 547; 595 f.

Eleatics, 371 f.

Elements, the four, xi, 28; 379.

Eleusinian Mysteries, 218 f.; secrecy at, 222; promises made by, 223; modern interpretations of, 223 f.; symbolism at, 226; later mention and end of (fourth century), 542; xiv, ii, 172; “Lesser Mysteries” at Athens, 220; and Morality, 228.

Eleusis, v, 19, 21.

Elijah, ii, 18; xiv, ii, 109.

ἐλλέβορος kathartic effects of, ix, 26, 75.

Elpenor, 17; i, 29, 33; 19; 20; 36.

Elysium, 55 f., 59 f., 75 f.; xiv, ii, 99; 541.

Embalming in Egypt, i, 39; in Sparta, iv, 46.

Empedokles, 378 f.; x, 72; xi, 28, 34, 42, 50, 56 f.; xii, 41; xiii, 40, 68; xiv, ii, 107; 597.

Empedotimos, ix, 111–12; xii, 44; xiv, 53.

Empousa, vii, 25; 591.

ἐναγίζειν, iv, 15, 86.

ἔνατα, an offering to the dead, v, 82–3.

Enemies of the gods in Hades, 238, 241.

ἐνιαύσια for the dead, v, 81, 90, 92.

ἔνθεος (ἐνθουσιασμός): see ἔκστασις.

ἐνθύμιον, 216.

Enlightenment in Greece, 79, 115, 292.

ἐνναετηρίς in expiation of murder, xi, 78; xii, 34, 40; 180.

Enoch, ii, 18; xiv, ii, 109.

Eoiai, Hesiodic, 593.

ἐπαγωγή (δαιμόνων), ix, 106–7.

Ephialtes (daimon), ix, 102; xiv, ii, 86; 592.

Ephyrai in Thesprotia, v, 23.

Epicharmos, vi, 5; 436 f.; xii, 151; xiv, 53.

Epidauros, iii, 13, 54.

Epidemics, religious, 284.

Epigenes, 597.

Epikteta, Testament of, v, 126; xiv, ii, 18, 71.

Epiktetos, 504; xiv, 3, 41, 44.

Epicurus, doctrine of the soul, 504 f.; foundation for the cult of his soul, v, 126, 137.

Epigrammata Graeca, ed. Kaibel, xiv, ii, 119 f. (No. 594: 141).

Epilepsy (see mental diseases), viii, 39.

Epimachos, v, 19.

Epimenides, 301; iii, 24; v, 57; 596; Theogony of, ix, 123.

ἐπιφάνεια of Dionysos, 258; viii, 68; 285.

ἐπιπομπαί (δαιμόνων), v, 168; ix, 107.

Epitaphs, 539 f. (see Anth. Pal.).

ἐπῳδαί, ix, 81–2, 107.

Erechtheus (Erichthonios), 98; 581.

Erinyes, ii, 6; v, 5, 97, 121; 178 f.; vii, 6; xii, 75; 592.

ἐρινύειν, ix, 58.

Eros, v, 112.

ἐσχάρα, i, 53.

Eskimo, manner of burial, v, 67.

Essenes, x, 78; xiv, ii, 117.

Esthonian cult of the dead, v, 99.

ἔται, v, 141.

Eteoboutadai, iv, 52.

εὐαγής, xii, 58.

Εὐάγγελος Hero, xiv, ii, 63, 144.

Euadne, 582.

Εὐάπαν, ix, 102 613

Eubouleus (Euboulos), god of the underworld, v, 7, 19; 220; xiv, ii, 145.

Eudemos, Ethics of, 512.

Euhemeros, iii, 28.

Eukleides (Socratic), xiv, 44.

Euklos, ix, 58.

Eumolpos, Eumolpidai, vi, 6, 16; x, 70.

Eunostos (Hero), 134.

Euodos (Hero), 529.

Eupatridai in Athens, iv, 47; v, 139; 602 f.

Euphemistic names for χθόνιοι, v, 5.

Euphorbos, 599.

Euripides, 432 f.; Alcestis, xii, 121; Bacchae, 286; Hecuba, viii, 70; orthodoxy of, xii, 135.

Eurynomos, Hades-daimon, vii, 25.

Eurypontidai, iv, 53.

Eurysthenidai, iv, 53.

εὐσεβῶν χῶρος, vii, 15; xiv, ii, 133.

Euthykles, iv, 117.

Euthymos, 135; 581.

Evil, speaking, of the dead forbidden, v, 115.

Evil, nature of, 470 (Plato); 498; xiv, 40, 60.

Exegetai, their advice sought in questions relating to the cult of Souls, v, 139, 174.

Exorcism, 604.

Expiation, gods of, v, 168; sacrifices of, made to χθόνιοι, v, 167; after murder, 180 f.

Eyes of the dead, closing of, i, 25.

Fainting (λιποψυχία), i, 9.

Fame, all that is left to the dead, 43; xii, 13, 20, 25; xiv, ii, 169.

Family graves in the country, v, 69, 70; 525 f.

Fate and guilt, 423 f., 426 f.

Fear of the dead, 16, 163, 169; of death, dispelled by Epicurus, 506; breaks out at the end of the classical period, 545 (xiv, ii, 170).

Feet of the corpse pointing towards the door, i, 26.

Fetishism in Greece, iv, 118.

Figs, kathartic uses of, 590.

Fire, kathartic uses of, i, 41; ix, 127.

Fish: see Food, prohibition of.

Flaminius as Hero, 531.

Folk-poetry, 25; belief about the souls, 524; legends about the “translated”, xiv, ii, 105.

Folk tales (Greek), iv, 115; xiv, ii, 151.

Food, Prohibition of certain foods (attributed to Eleusis), vi, 35; among the Orphics, x, 54–5; Thracian, x, 78; by Pythagoras, xi, 42, 47; Empedokles, xi, 76, 85.

Fountains in Hades, xii, 62; xiv, ii, 151; of Immortality, xiv, ii, 151.

Fravashi (Persian), i, 5.

Frederick, legend of the return of the Emperor, 93; xiv, ii, 112.

Freewill: see Will.

Friendship in the doctrine of the Epicureans, 506.

Funeral rites, in Homer, 17 f.; in later times, 162 f., 524 f.; of princes, i, 17; of kings in Sparta, Corinth, Crete, iv, 46; at public expense, xiv, ii, 5; refusal of, v, 32–3.

Funeral feast in Homer, 18; later (περίδειπνον), 167; games, in Homer, 15; for Heroes, 116 f.; procession, v, 60.

Furious Host, ii, 7; 298; xiii, 5; (593).

Fustel de Coulanges; see Coulanges.

Gabriel, the Archangel, iv, 134.

Gaia, 160, 168; v, 121; at Delphi, 290.

Gambreion, mourning period of, v, 86.

Games, 15, 116 f.; iv, 22; originally funeral ceremonies, 116 f.

Ganymedes, 58.

Garganus, mountain in Italy, iv, 92, 96.

Garlands for the dead, v, 40.

Gauls, x, 81.

Gello, 592.

γενέθλιος δαίμων, xii, 26.

Γενέσια, private and public, v, 15; 167.

Genesis, ii, 18.

Genetyllis, ix, 91.

γένη, 124.

Genius, i, 5; v, 132; xiv, 44.

γεννήτης τῶν θεῶν, 603.

German tribes, i, 34; 22.

Getai, 263.

Ghosts, 9; 21; 29; 134; v, 99, 104, 114; 534; xiv, ii, 154; 566; 590 f.

Γίγων, viii, 10.

Glaukos, xiv, ii, 151.

Gnostics, xiv, ii, 179. 614

Gods, in Homer, 25 f.; Olympians and others,i, 56; idea of divinity, xiv, ii, 107; Gods not immortal, 384; asleep or dead, iii, 30; buried, 96 f.; birthdays of, v, 89; in human shape, iv, 134; visiting men, ii, 38; compared with men, 253 f., 414; periodically appearing, viii, 28; of expiation, v, 168; amours of, iv, 134; conductors into the lower world, xiv, ii, 144 f.; unknown, iv, 62; statues of, 136; see Chthonic.

Goethe, xiii, 64.

Golden Age, 67 f.; ii, 49; vii, 18.

γονεῖς, iv, 49; v, 146.

Gorgias, pupil of Empedokles, 378.

Γοργύρα, Γοργώ, vii, 25; 591.

Grace of the gods (salvation), 342.

Grave and Hades confused, xiv, ii, 92.

Graves: see Burial, Family-graves, and Rock-graves; of Gods, 96; of Asklepios, 101; Erechtheus, 98; Hyakinthos, 99; Kekrops, iii, 41; Plouton, iii, 34; Python, 97; Zeus, 96; of Heroes, 121; cult of, 123, 166 f.; silence at, v, 110; curses attached to, xiv, ii, 13.

Grave-monuments, i, 28; v, 69 f.

Grave-robbers, 526.

Gregory the Great, xiv, ii, 87.

Grief, display of, disturbing to the dead, v, 49.

Guardian spirit of individuals, xiv, 44.

Guilt: see Sin and Fate.

Hades, 26, 35 f., 159, 223, 236 f.; xii, 4, 62; 500, 535 f., 540 f.; Picture of, painted by Polygnotos, 241 f.; on vases from Southern Italy, vii, 27; cult of, 159; mother of, 591; entrances to (Ploutonia), v, 23; Ferryman of, vii, 9; Descents to, 32 f.; i, 62, 65; iii, 8; 236 f.; 240 f.; (Epic), vii, 2–4; (Theseus and Peirithoos), vii, 3; (Herakles), 591; (in comedy), 240 f.; (vases), vii, 27; (Orphic), x, 60; (Pythag.), 600 f.; rivers of, 35, 237; vii, 21; Judges in, 247.

Hail: see Weather-magicians.

αἱμακουρία, iv, 13.

Hair, offering of, i, 14.

Hallucinations, 259; 262.

Haloa, 222; vi, 35.

Hamilcar, translation of, xiv, ii, 109.

Haokah dance of the Dakota, viii, 55.

Harmodios, translation of, xiv, ii, 99; and Aristogeiton in the other world, vii, 5.

Harmonia and Kadmos, xiv, ii, 99.

ἁρμονία (of the soul), xi, 52.

Harpocration on Ἄβαρις, ix, 108.

Harpies, 56; v, 124; 593.

Hashish, 259.

Hasisatra, ii, 18; xiv, ii, 109.

Hearth, earliest place of burial, v, 66.

Heaven (the sky), as dwelling place of the Blest, xii, 44, 62; xiv, ii, 134; ascent to, of Roman Emperors, xiv, ii, 107; of Apollonios of Tyana, xiv, ii, 115.

Hedonism, 492 (xiv, 3).

Hegesias, xiv, 3.

Heirs, their duties to the dead, v, 129.

Hekabe, ix, 99.

Hekate, v, 5, 88, 168; 297 f., 590 f.; (H. Hek., p. 289 Ab.), 594; Hosts of 593 f.; Banquet of, v, 97; 216; ix, 88, 103.

Ἑκατικὰ φάσματα, 590 f.

Hektor, as Hero, iv, 35; xiv, ii, 41 (still worshipped with sacrifice in the middle of the fourth century in the Troad: Julian, Ep. 78, p. 603–4 H.).

Helen, legend of her εἴδωλον, i, 79; translated, ii, 21; xiv, ii, 99, 102; given heroic honours, 137.

Helios in Hades, xii, 38.

Hell, punishment in, 40 f.; 238 f., 242, 344, 415, 536; creatures of, 25, 590 f. (see Kerberos).

Hemithea, iv, 103.

ἡμίθεος, iv, 23.

Hephaistion, xiv, ii, 70.

Herakles in the Odyssean Nekyia, 39; his descent to Hades, v, 25; vii, 4; 591; H. and Argeios, i, 35; H. and Eurystheus (Omphale), xii, 40; as Hero-God, 132; translated, 581; xiv, ii, 103.

Herakleides Ponticus, ix, 58, 60 (Sibyls), 108 (Abaris), 111, 96; xii, 44 (Empedotimos); xi, 61 (Empedokles); xiv, i, 53 (souls in the air); 599 f. (Pythagoras).

Herakleitos, 367 f.; xi, 5, etc., 101; xii, 137, 150; 464; xiv, 32; 499; 504; 597.

Hermes, conductor of souls, 9, 168; xiv, ii, 145. 615

Hermione, cult of χθόνιοι there, iii, 34; v, 18, 26.

Hermippos, 600.

Hermotimos, 300 f.

Hero of Alexandria, xii, 150.

Herodes Atticus, xiv, ii, 71, 131.

Herodikos, of Perinthos, vii, 3; x, 7.

Heroes, 74, 97 f., 115 f.; iii, 46; 254; 416; xii, 121; help in war, 136 f.; graves of, 121; v, 68; games for, 116 f.; bones of, transferred and worshipped, iv, 35–6; 529; as Birds, xiv, ii, 102; relation with θεοί and δαίμονες, iv, 25; become gods, 132; Homeric “Heroes”, iv, 26; in Hesiod, 74 f., 118; nocturnal sacrifice to, iv, 9; what falls to the ground sacred to, v, 114; in Pindar, 414 f.; legends of, 134 f.; later, 527 f.

ἥρως = a dead person, v, 110, 134; 531; (Christian), xiv, ii, 82; applied to the living, 530 f.; xiv, ii, 68; nameless or adjectival Heroes, 126 f., 529; xiv, ii, 61–2; ἡ. ἰατρός iv, 94–5; xiv, ii, 45; ἡ. συγγενείας, v, 132.

Heroized Kings and Lawgivers, 128; Kings of Sparta, Corinth, and Crete, iv, 46; Warriors of the Persian Wars, 528; prominent men of later times, 530; Heroizing easier in Boeotia, v, 134; in Thessaly, xii, 121; 532; becomes common, 531 f.; substitution of descendants for original Hero, xiv, ii, 65.

Hero-Physicians (Oracular), 133; xiv, ii, 45.

ἥρωες δυσόργητοι, v, 119.

ἡρῷα at the doors, iv, 105, 136; v, 68.

Ἡρωϊκός of Philostratos, xiv, ii, 41.

ἡρωῒς, ἡρωϊκά, ix, 11; xiv, ii, 50; Birthday festivals of H., v, 89.

ἡρωϊσταί, xiv, ii, 53.

Herodotos, 115; xii, 8.

Herophile of Erythrai, ix, 60.

Hesiod, The Five Ages, 67 f.; Op. et D. (124), ii, 34; (141), ii, 41; Theog. (411), ix, 95a.

Hesychos, vii, 6.

Hierapolis, its πλουτώνιον, v, 23.

ἱεροθέσιον, xiv, ii, 13 (p. 554).

Hierophant at Eleusis, εὐνουχισμένος, vi, 12.

ἱλασμός, v, 167.

Hippokrates, cult of, v, 89; xiv, ii, 45.

Hippolytos, iv, 38.

Hippon of Samos, 432.

Hippotes, xii, 40.

Herdsman (shepherd), type of God, xi, 36; (see divine apparitions), xiv, ii, 41.

Homer, 25 f., 157.

Homicide, state trials of, 176 f.; held over inanimate objects (in Athens), iv, 118.

Horace (Odes, iv, 2, 21), xii, 45.

Honey-cakes offered to the underworld, i, 13; v, 98; vii, 6.

ὥρια, ὡραῖα offered to the dead, v, 128.

Horse in the cult of the dead, v, 105.

Host, Furious, ii, 7; 298; xiii, 5; (593).

House, earliest place of burial, v, 66.

House-spirit, v, 132.

Human sacrifice, ix, 87; in the cult of Dionysos, 285; offered by Epimenides, ix, 121; in the cult of Heroes, xiv, ii, 49; replaced by animal sacrifice or ποινή, v, 144; 179–80.

Humanity: see Mankind.

Hunt: see Host.

Hyades, iii, 45.

Ὑακίνθια, 99 f.

Hyakinthides, iii, 45.

Hyakinthos, 99 f.

Hydromantia, 589.

Hydrophoria at Athens, v, 98.

Hylas, xiv, ii, 105.

Hylozoism, 365, 385, 432.

ὑποφόνια, v, 154.

Iamblichos, Vit. Pythag., viii, 77.

Iakchos, 220 f.

Ianthe, iii, 3.

Iaso, iii, 56.

Iatromantic, 133.

Iatros, Hero, iv, 94–5; xiv, ii, 45.

Iceland, i, 43.

Idaian cave in Crete, 96; 161.

Images, cult of, 136.

Immortal = godlike (becoming god), in Homer, 57; = being a god, 253 f.

Immortality, Belief in, connected with Dionysiac religion, 263 f.; among Orphics, 343 f.; in Philosophy, 365 f.; 463 f.; 496; xiv, 60; in Popular Religion, 538 f.; 542; 546; doubts of, xiv, ii, 157. 616

Imprecations: see Curses.

Incas, i, 30.

Incense in temples, viii, 39; ix, 19.

Incubation, iii, 8; 92; ix, 46; Heroic oracles of, 133.

Indians, Burial customs, 10, 21–2; cult of the dead, i, 75; v, 84–6, 90, 105, 123; Yama in Hades, vii, 6; religious anæsthesia, viii, 26; Yogis, viii, 43; kartharsis, ix, 78; Ascetics, 343; x, 78; philosophy (Jainism), xi, 16; (South American) mutilation of corpses, i, 34; (North American) cult of souls, v, 136.

Individualism, 117; 388 f.; 499 f.; 545.

Inheritance, laws of, v, 146.

Ino Leukothea, 58; iv, 104.

Insanity: see Madness and Mental.

Inscriptions (I.G. (xiv) Sic. et It. 641), xii, 49 f.; (IG. M. Aeg. i, 142), xiv, ii, 146; (Ath. Mitt.), xiv, ii, 164, 168.

Insensibility to pain, etc., in visionary states, viii, 43.

Inspiration, prophecy of, 92 f.; (in Thrace), 260; (in Greece), 289 f.

Intoxication, religious use of, viii, 39.

Invisibility (in Homer), 56.

Iolaia in Thebes, iv, 21.

Ionia, 27 f.

Iphigeneia, 64, 66; xiv, ii, 99, 102.

Iphis, iii, 3.

Iron keeps away daimones and the dead, i, 72.

Isaeus, v, 129.

Ischys, iii, 56.

Isis, mysteries of, xiv, ii, 174.

Islands of the Blest (Hesiod). 68 f.; (Pindar), 415 f.; translation of Heroes to, xiv, ii, 99; dwelling-place of all the pious, xiv, ii, 100, 130 f.; discovered by sailors, xiv, ii, 101; identified with Leuke, xiv, ii, 99, 102.

Isodaites, 271.

Isokrates, vi, 22; ii, 43.

Isthmian Games, iv, 22.

Isyllos, iv, 2.

Ixion, vii, 11.

Jainism (see Indian), xi, 16.

Japan, cult of dead in, v, 99.

Jaws of the dead, binding up the, xiv, ii, 2.

Jewish forgery of a Pindaric poem, xii, 45.

Jews, influenced by Greeks, xiv, ii, 14.

Jews influence Greeks, xiv, ii, 144.

Judaeo-Hellenistic doctrine of the soul, xiv, ii, 117.

Judgment in Hades, 238 f., 535 f., 541; Orphic, 344; Pindar, 415; Plato, xiii, 36.

Julian the Apostate, xiv, ii, 107, 144, 171.

Julius Kanus, xiv, 64.

jus talionis, x, 71.

Justin, πρὸς Ἕλλ., 3, xiv, ii, 151. (The emendation πιδύσας is already mentioned, as I see too late, in the Mauriner edition of Justin Martyr. The apparently traditional ὅρη πηδήσας is indeed possible on grammatical grounds [analogous constructions, otherwise peculiar to poetry, are not unknown in prose: see Lobeck ad Aiac.3, p. 69–70], but provides no satisfactory sense.)

Ka of Egyptians, i, 5.

Kadmos translated to Islands of the Blest, xiv, ii, 99.

Kaiadas at Sparta, v, 32.

Kaineus, iii, 3.

Kalchas, iv, 96.

Kalypso, xiv, ii, 105.

Kanobos, iii, 43.

Kanus Julius, xiv, 64.

Kapaneus, 581 f.

Καρκώ, 592.

Karmanor, ix, 113.

Karneades, xiv, 59, 61, 83.

καρποῦν, v, 126.

Kassandra, viii, 52; ix, 65.

καταδεῖν, κατάδεσμος, κατάδεσις in magic, ix, 107; 604.

καθάρματα given up to the spirits, ix, 88 (cf. 81).

Kathartic practices, etc., v, 36; 180; vi, 18; vii, 15; 294 f.; 302; 378; 582; 585; 589 f.

κάθαρσις μανίας (music), ix, 19; (of Pythagoreans), xi, 48; by Melampous, 287; Bakis, 294; Orphic, 338 f.; 343; Empedokles, xi, 85; Plato, 470.

καθέδραι, festival of Souls, v, 86.

κάτοχος, of magic, ix, 107.

κάτοχοι, κατοχή, κατέχεσθαι, of “possession”, viii, 24, 44.

Kattadias (Devil-priests of Ceylon), viii, 55.

Kaukones, v, 12. 617

Kaunians, v, 99.

Kausianoi, viii, 75, 77.

Kekrops, iii, 41.

Keos, funeral ordinance from, v, 42, 52, 56, 74, 76-7, 87, 92, 135.

Kerberos, vii, 6.

κῆρες = souls, i, 10; v, 100; ix, 92.

Kerkops (Pythagorean), x, 7; 597.

Kerykes, vi, 6, 16.

Key, keeper of, in Hades, vii, 13.

Kikones of the Odyssey, 42.

Kimon as Hero, 129.

Kirke, 32; v, 169.

Kissing the hand to a grave, xiv, ii, 26–7.

Kleanthes, xiv, 41, 47.

κλειδοῦχοι θεοί, 247.

Kleisthenes, 124.

Kleitos, 58.

Kleobis and Biton, xiv, ii, 148.

Kleombrotos, xiv, 3.

Kleomedes (Hero), 129; xiv, ii, 114.

Kleomenes as Hero, xiv, ii, 59.

Klymenos = Hades, v, 8, 18; reduced to rank of Hero, iii, 34.

Knossos, 96; iii, 25.

Kore, 160; v, 11; 219 f.; 224; xiv, ii, 146.

Koronis, iii, 56.

Korybantism, viii, 36, 52; 286 f.

Kos (Ge), v, 16.

Kotytto, 336.

Kouretes, v, 167.

κωλύματα, magic spells, ix, 81.

Kragos, iii, 30.

Krantor, xiv, 1.

Krataiis, 593.

Krates (Cynic), v, 34.

Kratinos, vii, 17.

Kratippos, 512.

κρείττονες = the dead, v, 65, 110, 117.

Krinagoras, vi, 22.

Kritias, Sisyphos, x, 54.

Kritolaos, xiv, 32.

Krobyzoi, viii, 65, 75.

Krokos, iii, 43.

Kronos, ruler in Elysium, 76.

κτέρεα κτερείζειν, i, 20, 29.

Kybele, 257; viii, 32, 43, 55; 286 f.; ix, 56; xiv, ii, 174.

Kychreus (πυχρείδης ὄφις), iv, 129.

Kydas, ix, 66.

Kyffhäuser, legend of, 93; xiv, ii, 112.

Kylon, at Athens, ix, 120.

Kyme, criminal law of, v, 145.

Kypria, 64.

Labyadai, their funeral ordinance in Delphi, v, 52, 85, 128.

Lamentation disturbs the dead, v, 49.

Lamia, vii, 25; 592 f.

Lanterns, feast of in Japan, v, 99.

Laodike, iii, 6.

Lar familiaris and Lares at Rome, v, 132.

Latinus, translation of, xiv, ii, 110.

Laurel, drives away ghosts, v, 95.

Law, unwritten, 163, 426; xii, 94.

Lebadeia, 90 f., 95; iii, 26; v, 19, 133; xiv, ii, 104.

Lectisternia, iii, 26; iv, 16.

Lekythoi, v, 38; 169; 170; 237.

Lemnos, feast of the dead in, ix, 76.

Lemuria in Rome, v, 99.

Leonidas (as Hero), iv, 20; 528.

Leosthenes (Hero), vii, 5; xiv, ii, 59.

Lerna, ix, 88; viii, 28.

Lethe, vii, 21; xii, 37; and Mnemosyne, fountains of, xiv, ii, 151.

Leto, iii, 46.

Leuke, I. of Achilles, 65, 66; xiv, ii, 102; Cliff of, ib.

Leukothea: see Ino.

Lie, justification of, xii, 72.

Life, 3, 31; repudiation of, viii, 75; only lent, xiv, ii, 161; 505; Water of life, xiv, ii, 151–2; Future Life, 236 f.; see Hades and Ways.

Lightning sanctifies its victim, iii, 39; 100; v, 68; ix, 127; xii, 54; xiv, ii, 154; 581 f.

Linos, iii, 43.

Lobeck, 222.

Local deities and their cults, 25 f.; 27.

λόγος, 499; xiv, 69.

Lokroi, criminal law of, v, 145.

Lot, oracles received by means of (Delphi), 290.

λουτροφόροι, 587.

Lucian, iii, 28; 236; de Luctu, xiv, ii, 2; Philops., xiv, ii, 87, 144; ix, 96.

Lucretius, 505.

Lydia, v, 167.

Lying-in-state of the dead, 165.

Lykaios, Zeus, v, 170.

Lykas (Hero), iv, 114.

Lykia, imprecatory tablets from graves in, 553.

Lykian language, iv, 99.

Lykos (Hero), iv, 114. 618

Lykourgos, King of Edonians, ix, 3; in Sparta worshipped as Hero and God, 132; sanctified by lightning, 581.

Lyric poetry of the Greeks, 157; 411 f.

Lysander as Hero, 531.

Lysimachos (Hero), xiv, ii, 67.

λύσιος Διόνυσος, ix, 21; λύσιοι θεοί, x, 50.

λύσις of the soul, x, 61, 66; xiii, 67.

Mâ, worshipped with ecstatic cult, viii, 43, 55.

Macedonians, viii, 31.

Machaon and Podaleirios, iv, 92.

Macriani, xiv, ii, 112.

Madness cured by magic, ix, 19, 81; cf. Mental diseases.

Magical papyri, xiv, ii, 144; 589; 592; 604; cf. Defixiones.

Magicians, among savage peoples, 261 f.; Greek, 294 f., 298 f.; xi, 58; 533 f.; 604.

Mahâbhârata, iii, 3.

μαινάς, 256.

μακαρίτης (of the dead), vii, 10; xiv, ii, 31.

μακάρων νῆσοι: see Islands of the Blest.

Manes, v, 99, 133.

μανία, divine, 255 f.; 286 f.; in the worship of Dionysos, 282 f.

Manichaeans, x, 83.

Mankind, origin of, according to the Orphics, 341 f.; generations (Ages) of, in Hesiod, 67 f.

μάντεις, ix, 41 f.; as magicians, ix, 68.

Mantiké (inspired prophecy), 260, 289 f.

Marathon, iv, 84; 136; Grave of the dead at, xiv, ii, 37.

Marjoram, kathartic, apotropaic uses of, v, 36.

Maron (Hero), xiv, ii, 41.

μασχαλισμός, 181; 582 f.

Massagetai, 259.

Materialism, 385.

“Matriarchy,” not Greek, xii, 75.

Medea translation of, xiv, ii, 99; (v, 169).

Medicine men (North American Indians), 262; ix, 68, 117; dance of the Winnebago, viii, 55.

μέγαρα, iii, 7.

μειλίχοι θεοί, v, 168; Διόνυσος μειλίχιος, ix, 21.

Meilinoe, v, 5; ix, 96.

Melampous, 89; 287.

Melanippides, xii, 1, 21.

Melesagoras, ix, 58.

Memnon, 64 f.

Menelaos (translation of), 55 f.; iv, 2; ii, 21.

Menestheus, iv, 100.

Mental diseases, origin and cure of, 286 f.; ix, 19, 81.

Metal, noise of, drives away ghosts, i, 72; ix, 83; see Iron, Bronze.

Metamorphoses, iii, 3; x, 82.

μετεμψύχωσις, x, 84; see Transmigration.

Metrodoros, allegorical interpretation of mythology, vi, 23.

Metrodoros (Epicurean), xiv, 85, 86, 97.

μὴ φῦναι, xii, 10.

μήνιμα θεῶν, v, 148; ἀλιτηρίων, v, 176.

μίασμα, v, 176; 295 f.

μιάστωρ, v, 178.

Michael, the Archangel, iv, 96.

Midas, 412.

Mid-day, spectres appearing at, ix, 96; xiv, ii, 41; 592 f.

Migrations, Greek, 27, 155, 161, 284.

Milky Way (abode of the souls), ix, 111; xii, 44.

Miltiades, as Hero, iv, 20.

Mimnermos, xii, 7.

Mind, 5, 29 f., 383, 387, 493 f.

Mingrelians, i, 30.

Minos (and Zeus, in Crete), 96; Judge in Hades, vii, 13.

Minyas, vii, 3; 237, 238, 282.

Miracle, 254; xiv, ii, 40–1, 45, 70; 537; desire for in later ages of antiquity, 546 f.

Missions, sent out from Eleusis, 161.

Mithras, Mysteries of, xiv, ii, 144, 153, 172, 174.

Mitylene, funeral ordinance of, v, 54.

Mitys, iv, 118.

μνήμη (Empedokles and Pythagorean), xi, 96; and λήθη in Hades (Pindar), xii, 37; xiv, ii, 151.

Mnemosyne, xii, 37; xiv, ii, 151.

μοῖρα, 29.

Moon and stars inhabited by souls, x, 75; xi, 116; xiv, 53.

Monism, 432; 500. 619

Mopsos, iii, 5, 13; 133.

Morality, 40; 228; 294 f.; 302; 376.

Μορμολύκη, Μορμώ, vii, 25; 592.

Moschion, x, 54.

Moses, ii, 18; xiv, ii, 109.

Motes in the sunbeam = Souls (Pythagoras), xi, 40; Emped. xi, 101.

Mountains, legends about, 263; viii, 68.

Mourning, period of, 167.

Mousaios, x, 70.

μύχιοι θεοί, iii, 35.

μυεῖν, vi, 16.

Murderer, excluded from religious worship, vi, 17.

Murder, action for, religious sense of, 180 f.; expiation of, 174 f., 138; xii, 34, 40.

Murder trials; see Homicide.

Music in Dionysiac worship, 257; as a cure for Korybantic frenzy and other diseases, 286 f.; ix, 19; xi, 48.

Musonius, v, 34; 503.

Mutterrecht, not Greek, xii, 75.

Mutilation of the dead, 582 f.

Mycenae, 22, 27, 122.

Mykonos (cult of Chthonic Zeus), v, 3, 7, 16.

Myrtle sacred to χθόνιοι, iv, 21; v, 40, 61.

Mysians, x, 78.

Mysteries: see Eleusinian M.; Orphic, 343 f.; Samothracian, vi, 34; (see also Isis and Mithras).

Mysticism, 225 f., 254 f., 262, 291 f., 344; xiii, 75, 104; xiv, 1.

Myth, allegorical interpretation of, vi, 23.

Name, calling the dead by, 42, 527; of Hero used in sacrificing, iv, 62; in invocation of avenging spirits, 604.

Nameless Gods, iv, 62; Heroes, 126 f.; 529; xiv, ii, 61, 63.

Namnites in Gaul, viii, 55.

Narcissus (Orphic?), x, 29.

νάρθηξ, viii, 22.

National Heroes: see ἀρχηγοί.

“Nature,” religion of, 223 f.

Naulochos (Hero), xiv, ii, 74.

Nectar, 58.

nefasti dies, v, 158.

Negro tribes, i, 34; v, 110; 271.

Nekyia of the Odyssey, 32 f.; iii, 8; 237 f.; 240 f.; 2nd Nekyia, i, 62, 65; N. in other epics, 237 f., (see Descents); on vases, vii, 27.

νεκύσια, v, 92.

Nemea, iv, 22.

νεμέσεια, νέμεσις, Νέμεσις, v, 91.

Neoplatonic writers, x, 27, 29, 38; 596 f.

Neoptolemos, translation of, xiv, ii, 99.

Nero, translated (Antichrist), xiv, ii, 113.

Neurotic diseases, cure of, 286 f.

New Zealand (method of burial), v, 67.

Nightmare, ix, 102; xiv, ii, 86.

Nine, sanctity of number, v, 84; xiii, 45; xiv, ii, 154.

Noise of bronze or iron drives away ghosts, i, 72; v, 167; ix, 83.

Nostoi, 66 f.

Novel (Greek, etc.), iv, 134; xiv, ii, 87.

Novemdialia: festival in Rome, v, 84.

νοῦς, in Anaxagoras, 387 f.; in Aristotle, 493 f.; cf. 383.

Numbers (Pythagorean mystical theory of), x, 9.

Nyktelios, Nyktelia, viii, 28; 285; ix, 36.

νυμφόληπτος, ix, 63.

ἐκ νυμφῶν κάτοχος, ix, 58.

Nymphs, agents of Translation, xiv, ii, 105.

Oath, religio-juristic significance of, 41 f.; v, 156; 238; xi, 77; xii, 40.

Oath-breaking punished in Hades; see Perjury.

Oath taken by both parties in a suit, v, 156.

Obolos for the ferryman of the dead: see Charon.

Ocrisia, v, 132.

Odyssey, 32 f., 55, 62 f., 236; 2nd Nekyia, i, 62, 65.

Odysseus, end of, ii, 30; oracle of, iv, 97; as Hero, xiv, ii, 41; O. and Kalypso, xiv, ii, 105.

Oedipus, 430 f.; xii, 85, 112 f.

Oikistes, 127 f.

Oinomaos, iv, 2.

Oknos, 241.

Olbia, xiv, ii, 102. 620

Olive, kathartic effects of, v, 36–7, 61; ix, 72.

Olympos as dwelling-place of souls, xiv, ii, 135.

Olympia, iv, 22, 62; 121, 160; v, 98.

ὠμοθετεῖν, 584 f.

ὀμφαλός at Delphi, iii, 31.

Onomakritos, 336–7, 338 f.; (the Lokrian), ix, 113.

Oracles of Heroes, 133 f.; of Earth, 160; see Delphi, Dodona, Incubation.

Orators, Greek, 413.

Orators’ official speeches of consolation, xiv, ii, 6.

Orestes, iv, 35; 178; 424, 426.

Orgeones, 124.

Orgiastic cults in Greece, ix, 56; in Thessaly and Phrygia, 257.

Orient influenced by Greece, 539.

Origen, c. Cels., iii, 20; xiv, 33.

Orion, 39; 58.

Oropos, 92; iii, 19, 56; xiv, ii, 104.

Orpheus, κατάβασις εἰς Ἅιδου, vii, 3, 27; x, 60; of Kamarina, x, 7; of Kroton, x, 7, 11.

Orphics, v, 99; 124; vi, 13; vii, 15, 18; 335 f.; xii, 137; xiii, 44; 70a; 586; alleged influence in Homer, x, 5.

Orphic cult of Bakchos, x, 1; poetry, authorship of, x, 7; Rhapsodical Theogony, ix, 123; 339–40; 596 f.; other Theogonies, x, 21; origin of mankind in, 339 f.; x, 77; six Rulers of the world, x, 40; Asceticism, 342 f.; kathartic doctrine, 338; ideas of Hades, 344 f.; doctrine of rebirth and Transmigration of souls, 345 f.; grave-tablets (Sicily), 417 f.; xiv, ii, 151; 598, 601; Hymns, xiv, ii, 173.

Orphica (fr. 120). x, 22; (fr. 226), x, 48.

Orphico-Pythagorean Hymnus on Number, x, 9.

Ὀρτυγίη, ii, 25.

Os resectum of the Romans, i, 34.

ὅσιοι, the Pure, vi, 18; 343.

Osiris, xiv, ii, 152.

Ostiaks, religious dances of the, viii, 55.

ὀξυθύμια, 216; ix, 88.

οὐκ ἤμην, γενόμην κτλ. on epitaphs, xiv, ii, 167.

Ouranos, x, 28.

Paetus Thrasea, xiv, 64.

Palamedes, xiv, ii, 41.

Palaimon, iii, 38.

παλαμναῖος, v, 178.

παλιγγενεσία, 224; vii, 21; x, 47, 81, 84; 519; xiv, i, 68, 142; 547.

Pan, ix, 56.

Panaitios, xiv, 24; 501 f.

Pandaemonism, 519.

Pandareos, daughters of, ii, 5.

Pantheism, 261, 498 f.; xiv, 60; 504.

Panchatantra, iv, 134.

Paradise, imaginary, in Hades, vii, 18.

παραμυθητικὰ ψηφίσματα, xiv, ii, 6.

Pardon for Homicide, v, 144, 151, 154.

Parentalia in Rome, v, 90.

Parmenides, 372; 408; 597.

Parsley used in cult of the dead, iv, 22; v, 40, 107.

Pasiphaë, iv, 104.

πάτραι, iv, 49; v, 131; in Rhodos, iv, 52.

Patroklos, Funeral of, 12 f.; Translation of, xiv, ii, 102.

πατρομύστης, 602.

Pausanias, Spartan King, v, 173; Periegeta, 126; 529; (4, 32, 1) 554; Doctor (pupil of Empedokles), 378; xi, 61.

Pehuenchen Indians (S. America), i, 26.

Peirithoös, vii, 3.

Pelasgians, v, 18.

Peleus, Translation of, xiv, ii, 99.

Pellichos, xiv, ii, 45.

Pelops, 121; iv, 37.

Penates, v, 132–3.

Penitents undergoing punishment in Hades, 40 f., 238, 241; vii, 27.

Pentheus, 283.

περίδειπνον, 167.

περικάθαρμα, 589.

περιμάττειν, 590.

Perjury punished in Hades, 41 f.; v, 156; 238; xi, 77; xii, 40.

Peripatetics, 512.

περιψῆν, 589.

Persephone, 158 f.; v, 5; 160 f.; 220; 222 f.; and see Koré.

Perseus and the Mainades, ix, 3.

Persian War, Heroizing of those who fell in, 131.

Persians, i, 5; 10; 22; v, 85–6; kathartic practice among, ix, 78.

Persinos of Miletos, x, 7.

Persius, i, 31; 504. 621

Personality, reduplication of, 595 f.; cf. ἔκστασις.

Peru, religious dances in, viii, 55.

Pessimism, 412, 545.

Petelia, grave tablet from, 417 f., 601 f., 598.

Phaeacians, 63; ii, 17, 46.

Phaënnis, ix, 59.

Phaëthon, iii, 35.

Phanes, x, 9; 598.

Pharisees, xi, 50.

φαρμακοί, ix, 87; 589 f.

φάσματα Ἑκατικά, 590 f.

Pherekrates, comic poet, vii, 17.

Pherekydes, 301; x, 79; xi, 51; vi, 25; 597.

Philippos of Opos, author of Epinomis, xiv, 1.

Philiskos, xii, 157.

Philo Judaeus, xiv, ii, 117; (ap. Gal. xiii, 268), iii, 43.

Philodamos of Skarpheia, his Hymn to Dionysos, vi, 9.

Philolaos, x, 44; xi, 35–6, 50, 55.

Philopoimen, as Hero, xiv, ii, 49.

Philopregmon (Hero), 529.

Philosophy, 362 f.; 432 f.; 463 f.; 490 f.

Philostratos, Heroikos, xiv, ii, 41; V. Apoll., xiv, ii, 115.

φιμοῦν, φιμωτικόν, 604.

Phokion, v, 66.

Pseudo-Phokylides, xiv, ii, 117.

Phormion, of Sparta, ix, 111.

Phratriai in Athens, 124 f.

Phrygians, v, 167; 257; viii, 52; 286; xiv, ii, 13, 174.

Phylai in Athens, 124 f.

Pig, in cult of the dead, v, 105.

Pitch, kathartic property of, v, 95; ix, 72.

Piety of the Greeks, 28 f.

Piety towards the dead, 16, 164, 169.

Pindar, 7, 115, 157; vi, 22; 238; 412; 414 f.; (O. 2, 57), xii, 35; (O. 2, 61), xii, 38; (P. 8, 57), iv, 105; (fr. 129–30), xii, 37; (fr. 132), xii, 45; (fr. 133), xii, 34, 41.

πίθος τετρημένος in Hades, 586 f.

Pittakos of Mitylene, v, 54.

Pixodaros (Hero), xiv, ii, 63.

Plato, ix, 107; 383; xi, 96; 463 f.; xiv, ii, 108; 547; Beauty in 473; influence of, on popular belief, xiv, ii, 143; doctrine of Ideas, 470 f.; different strata of the Republic, xiii, 8; 474; Laws, xiii, 36, 37; 476; Gorgias, vii, 13; xiii, 36, 96; Meno, xiii, 100; Phaedo, xiii, 36; 468 f.

Plants with souls, xi, 72, 82; 382; xi, 117; xiii, 40.

οἱ πλείους, the dead, xiv, ii, 124.

Plotinos, 547 f.

Plouton, iii, 34; 160.

πλουτώνια, v, 23.

Plutarch, v, 34; vi, 23; vii, 1; xiv, ii, 85, 87.

Pluto, iii, 34; 160.

πνεῦμα = soul, xii, 150; 498; 541 f.

Podaleirios, iii, 13; 133.

ποινή for homicide, in Homer, 175; forbidden, v, 154; and see Murder.

Polemon, xiv, 1.

Polemokrates (Hero), iv, 93.

Politics, Epicurean withdrawal from, 506 f.

Pollution, 294 f.

πολυάνδριοι δαίμονες, 604.

Polyaratos, ix, 111.

Polybios, 492.

Polyboia, 100.

Polygnotos’ picture of Hades, 241 f.; 586.

Polynesians, v, 161.

Pomegranate in the cult of the dead, v, 105.

Pomptilla, grave in Sardinia, xiv, ii, 71.

Poplar in the cult of the dead, v, 61; xiv, ii, 102.

Popular belief about the dead, 524.

Popular version of “Translation”, xiv, ii, 105.

Poseidonios, x, 78; xi, 35, 55; xiv, 40, 44, 51, 53–4; 502; xiv, 60–2.

Possession, 255; 595; see ἔκστασις.

Possessions of the dead burnt with the body, i, 30, 51.

Postponement of coming events by the gods, ix, 120.

Poulytion, 222.

Praetextatus, xiv, ii, 172.

Praise of the dead at the περίδειπνον, v, 81.

Pre-existence: see Soul.

Prophecy by Incubation (dream-oracles), 92 f., 289 f.; by Heroes, 133; in Thracian worship of Dionysos, 260; two kinds of (τεχνική and ἄτεχνος), 289; by “inspiration”, 289 f.; at Delphi, 289 f.; in Greek 622 worship of D., 289 f.; wandering prophets, 292 f.; by means of lots at Delphi, 289; in Leuke, xiv, ii, 102.

Prodikos of Keos, vi, 23; of Phokaia, vii, 3; of Samos, vii, 3; x, 7.

Proërosia, ix, 108.

Proitides, 282, 287.

Proklidai, iv, 53.

Prophecy: see Mantiké.

Prophetic power of the dying, i, 69.

προσφάγιον, v, 46.

προστρόπαιος, v, 148, 176.

Protagoras, 438.

Protesilaos, iv, 98.

Proteus in the Odyssey, 55.

πρόθεσις of the corpse, 164 (v, 41 f.).

Proverbs, Greek, v, 120; xii, 3; 586.

Prussia, cult of the dead in, v, 99, 114.

ψυχή in Homer, 4 f.; 30 f.; 364 f.; = alter ego, 6; in Pindar, xii, 32; in Philosophy, 364 f.; situated in eye or mouth, i, 25; = Life, i, 59; xi, 1.

ψυχαγωγός, ix, 106.

Psyche (of Apuleius), xiv, ii, 151.

Psychology, Homeric, 30 f.; of the philosophers, 364 f.

ψυχομαντεῖα, v, 23.

ψυχπομπεῖα, v, 23.

ψυχοστασία, v, 100.

Punishment of guilty through descendants, xii, 7, 65; xiv, ii, 96.

Purification: see Kathartic, κάθαρσις; after a funeral, v, 77; [after seeing a corpse: Jul., Ep. 77, p. 601, 20 f. H.]; carried out by ἐξηγηταί, v, 139; of murderers, 179 f.; 295; (this not Homeric), v, 166; ritual, in daily life, 295; of the new-born, ib.; by blood, 296; by fire, 21; by running water, 588 f.; removal of the polluting substance with figs or eggs, 589 f.

“Pure, the,” vi, 18; 343.

Purgation in Plato, xiii, 36.

Purple (Red) colour proper to the dead, v, 61.

Pythagoras, 374 f.; xii, 150; and Zalmoxis, viii, 68; and Abaris, ix, 108, 122; his previous births, 598 f.; descent to Hades, 600 f.

Pythagoreans, suicide, v, 33; bury the body on leaves, v, 61; and Orphics in Herodotos, 336; x, 8; in Athens, 337; psychology, xi, 55; Transmigration-doctrine, x, 79, 81; xi, 42; xiii, 40; ψυχή (Alkmaion), xi, 28, 35; and Parmenides, xi, 30; Empedokles and P. ἀνάμνησις, xi, 96; Υ Pythag., xii, 62; and Plato (divisions of the soul), xiii, 27; (transmigration of the soul), xiii, 40; and the Stoics (souls in the air), xiv, 53.

Pythia, viii, 52–3; ix, 45; 289 f.; 596.

Pythian Games, iv, 22.

Python, 97; 180 f.

Quietism, 380.

Ram, in cult of the dead, v, 105, 107; as expiatory sacrifice, v, 167.

Rationalism among the Greeks, 29 f.; 122; 492; 545.

Rebirth (see παλιγγενεσία), xiv, ii, 174; 602.

Recurrence, periodical, of everything, x, 47; xiv, 68.

Red colour belonging to the dead, v, 61.

Reduplication of Personality, 595 f.

Regilla, wife of Herodes Atticus, xiv, ii, 71, 131.

Relatives obliged to prosecute vendetta, v, 141.

“Release” of man from fate, etc., 342 f.; xi, 50; 384.

Religion, Homeric, 28 f.; of “Nature” 223 f.; Symbolic, ib.

Relics, cult of, iv, 2; 121 f.; 529.

Responsibility, moral, in Tragedy (Aesch.), 423 f.

Resurrection of the body, xiv, ii, 174.

Revenge and Vendetta, circle of those expected to carry it out (in Homer), v, 141; Vend. bought off (in Homer), v, 143; this later forbidden, v, 154; Vend. in Tragedy, 424 f., 434.

Rewards and punishments transmitted to descendants, xii, 65 (x, 47); exact equivalence, x, 71; xi, 44; in Hades, 40–1; 239 f.; 467 f.; 536.

Right and left, significance of, in Hades, xii, 62.

Rhadamanthys, 55 f.; ii, 17, 23; 247; xiv, ii, 132.

ῥάμνος, kathartic uses of, v, 95; xi, 85.

Rhea: see Kybele.

Rhesos, iv, 36; 557. 623

Rock graves, v, 62, 66.

Rome, genius, i, 5; v, 132; marriage ceremonies, v, 95; Lares, v, 66, 132; Lemuria, v, 99; Manes, ib.; v, 133; Novemdialia, v, 83–4; os resectum, i, 34; Parentalia, v, 90; Penates, v, 132–3; Cult of Souls in, v, 114; Cremation, i, 37, 39.

Romans, admitted to Eleusinian Mysteries, 226.

Romulus, translation of, xiv, ii, 103, 107, 110.

Sabazios (Sabos), viii, 10.

σάβος, σαβάζιος, viii, 32.

Σαβάζια in Athens, x, 12.

Sabazios Mysteries (late), xiv, ii, 174.

Sacrifice at graves, 167, 169; made to Heroes before gods, iii, 46; kathartic, 585.

Salamis, 136 f.

Salmoneus, 581.

Samothrace, Mysteries of, vi, 34.

Sappho, xii, 12

Sarpedon, ii, 28; iv, 99.

Satrai, viii, 53.

Scapegoat, ix, 87.

Schelling, 223.

Scheriê, ii, 46.

Schol. Aristoph. Vesp. 1038, ix, 102.

Scythians, 259; ix, 15; x, 78.

Second sight, 260; 293 (see ἔκστασις).

Second-sight of the dying, i, 69.

Secret cults, 219.

Sects, Orphic, 335.

Seers, ecstatic: see μάντεις and Prophecy.

Seirenes, ix, 102; 593.

σέλινον sacred to the dead, v, 40, 107.

Σέλλοι, iii, 14.

Semele, 581.

Seminoles of Florida, i, 25.

Semitic influence on Greeks, 60; 96.

Semonides (Simonides of Amorgos), xii, 4, 8, 15.

Seneca, xiv, 41, 56, 68; 503.

Sertorius, his search for the Islands of the Blest, xiv, ii, 101.

Severus Alexander, xiv, ii, 112.

Servius ad. Aen. vi, 324 (Poeta Anon.), xi, 77.

Sex, changes of, in legend, iii, 3.

Shamans, viii, 43; 262.

Sheep (or Ram), v, 105, 107, 167.

Sibyls, viii, 52; 292 f.; 596.

Sicily, xii, 47; 417 f.

Sikyon (limitation on the length of epitaphs), xiv, ii, 118.

Silenus, legend of, xii, 10 (viii, 15, 31).

Silence in passing graves, v, 110.

Simonides of Keos, xii, 1, 3, 11.

Sin, 294 f., 343, 381, (Plato) 466; consciousness of, 242.

Sisyphos, i, 82; 241; vii, 27.

Sit tibi terra levis, xiv, ii, 120.

Sithon, iii, 3.

Sitting (not reclining) at feasts in honour of the dead, v, 86.

Skedasos, daughters of, xiv, ii, 35.

Skeletons, the dead as, xiv, ii, 92.

σκίλλα, kathartic property of, ix, 115; xi, 85; 589 f.

Skiron, v, 168.

Skotos, vii, 6.

Skylla (daughter of Hekate), 593.

Slaves admitted to initiation at the Mysteries, vi, 14; when freed, bound to keep up the cult of their dead master, v, 128.

Slavonic cult of souls, v, 161.

Sleep and Death, ii, 28; Death only Sleep, xiv, ii, 140; of the Gods, iii, 30; “Temple-sleep”: see Incubation.

Snakes, form in which χθόνιοι appear, iii, 12, 33; 98; iii, 55; iv, 129; v, 105, 113, 133, 168; 602.

Societies: see Associations.

Sokrates, 463.

Solon, date of archonship, ix, 120; as Hero, iv, 38; limits funeral pomp, 4, 45, 57, 75; protects the memory of the dead, v, 115; his view of life, xii, 6; and Croesus, xiv, ii, 170.

Sorcery: see Magic and Conjuration of the dead.

Sortilege, oracle of at Delphi, 290.

Soul = breath (πνεῦμα), 500 f.; xiv, ii, 138; represented on lekythoi as winged, 170; Pre-existence of, taught by Pythagoras, xi, 49; by Plato, 465 f.; Aristotle, 495 f.; Stoics, xiv, 60; by Jews under Greek influence, xiv, ii, 117; Soul and Mind, in Aristotle, 496; “Poor Souls,” v, 114; x, 66; Souls become daimones (Hesiod), 67 f.; transition from Soul to daimon, v, 133, 148; 179; v, 176; assist growth of crops, v, 120; called upon 624 at marriages, v, 121; appearances after death, ix, 105; 533 f.; xiv, ii, 154; dissipated by wind after leaving the body, xiii, 5; xi, 102; xiv, 49, 77; of murdered men, 181 f.; kingdom of Souls in the air, in the Aether or in Heaven, 342; xi, 35; 436 f.; Stoic, 500 f.; 541 f.; cf. Hades; in popular belief, xiv, ii, 142; in Neoplatonism, 547; parts of the soul, acc. to Pythagoras, xi, 55; Plato, 466 f.; Peripatetics, 512; Stoics, xiv, 60; Epicureans, 505; conjuration of souls not known in Homer, 24; later, v, 23; ix, 106; xiv, ii, 87, 90; on Defixions, 594 f., 604 f.; Souls, Cult of, after burial, 22 f., 77 f., 158 f., 163 f., 166 f., 181 f., 253 f.; Rudiments of, in Homer, 12 f.; in the family, 172 f.; represented on sepulchral reliefs, v, 105; Souls, Festival of, 168; in cult of Dionysos, ix, 11; Soul, “Salvation” of the, 172.

Souls: Transmigration of Souls—Greek names for, x, 84; Thracian belief in, 263 f.; Egyptian belief in, 346; Orphic, 337; 342 f.; 346 f.; Pythagorean, 375; xi, 50, 55; in Pindar, 415 f.; Empedokles, xi, 75, 96; Plato, 467; Stoics (Poseidonios?), xiv, 60.

σῶμα—σῆμα: Orphic, 342; x, 73; Pythagoras, 375; xi, 50; Empedokles, xi, 75; Euripides, xii, 137; Plato, xiii, 44; in popular belief, xiv, ii, 141.

Somnium Scipionis, xiv, 53, 54, 62; xiv, ii, 58.

Sophists, 432.

Sophokles, vi, 22, 26; 426 f.; as Hero, iv, 71; Oed. Col. 1583, xii, 112.

σωτήρ (ἥρως), xii, 128.

Sparta; funeral of kings, iv, 46; burial customs, v, 61; reliefs representing feasts of the dead, v, 105, 86; criminal law of, v, 145.

Speaking ill of the dead forbidden, v, 115.

Spell: see Magic.

Spencer, Herbert, 6.

Spielhansel, folk-tale of, i, 82.

Spiritualism, 264 f.; 385; 500; 595.

Spirits: see Ghosts.

Spirits, island of (Leuke), xiv, ii, 102; nocturnal battle of, xiv, ii, 37; magical compulsion of, ix, 107.

Spitting, apotropaic effect of, 586.

Stars inhabited, xi, 116; by the souls of the departed, x, 75–6; myths, 58.

State: see Politics; State Funerals, xiv, ii, 5–6.

Statues of Heroes, miracles performed by, 136.

στέφανος, iv, 21.

Stertinius, C. Xenophon (Hero), xiv, ii, 64.

Stobaeus, Ecl. i, 49, 46; xiv, ii, 138.

Stoics, xi, 98; xii, 67; 497 f.; 542.

Stones (a soul attributed to), xi, 72.

Stormclouds, shooting at, viii, 63; cf. Weather-magicians.

Straton, xii, 150; xiv, 34.

Striking the ground in calling on χθόνιοι, iii, 10.

Styx, vii, 21.

Subterranean translation among the Greeks, 89 f.; xiv, ii, 104; in Germany, 93; in Mexico and in the East, iii, 17.

Sûfis of Persia, viii, 60; 266.

Suicide forbidden (Orphic), x, 44; suicides refused burial, v, 33.

Suidas on ἐμασχαλίσθη, 582 f.

Sulphur, kathartic property of, v, 95.

Swoon (πιοψυχία), i, 9.

Syrians, xiv, ii, 174.

Sybaris (Lamia), iv, 115; Orphic gold tablets from, 417 f.; 598; 601.

Symbolism in religion, 224, 226 f.

Symmachos, xiv, ii, 172.

Syncretism, 288; 534.

Syrianos, 596 f.

Syrie, 62 f.

Tacitus, xiv, 47.

Tahiti, funeral dirges of, v, 48.

Talthybios, 134.

Tantalos, 40 f., 241; vii, 27.

Tarantism, ix, 19.

Taraxippos (Hero), 127.

Tarentum, v, 68.

Tartaros, 76; vii, 6; 340; xi, 38.

Tasmania, cult of dead in, 585.

Ταῦτα, τοσαῦτα in epitaphs, xiv, ii, 167.

Teiresias, 36 f., 41; iii, 3, 8.

Telegoneia, 65, 90.

Teleology in Anaxagoras, xi, 104.

Tellos the Athenian, xiv, ii, 170.

Temesa, the Hero of, 135 f. 625

Temple-sleep: see Incubation.

Tenes, iv, 138.

Terizoi in Thrace, viii, 65.

Thales, vi, 25; 366.

Thamyris, 238.

Thanatos, xii, 4, 121; and Hypnos, ii, 28.

Thargelia, ix, 87.

Theagenes (Hero), 136; iv, 119, 134.

Thebais, 75, 90, 93.

θεῖος ἀνήρ, xiii, 68.

Themistokles as Hero, iv, 30.

Theognetos (Orphic), x, 7; 597.

Theognis, 411 f.; xii, 13.

Theogony of Epimenides, ix, 123; of Hesiod, x, 5; Orphic, 339 f.; 596.

Theokrasia, x, 24.

Theology, Homeric, 25 f., 31 f.; of the court in Hellenistic period, 538 (see Orphics).

Theophanes (Hero), xiv, ii, 64.

Theophrastos, xiv, 34; Testament of, v, 137.

Theopompos, on Abaris, ix, 108; Aristeas, ix, 109; Bakis, ix, 66; Epimenides, ix, 117; Hermotimos, ix, 112; Phormion, ix, 111.

ὁ θεός, ἡ θεά at Eleusis, v, 19.

Theosophy (Orphic), 336.

Theoxenia, 96; iv, 16, 71; festival at Delphi, iv, 82.

Theron, 416.

Theseus, transfer of his bones to Athens, 122; expiation of murder of Skiron, v, 168; Descent to Hades, vii, 3.

Thesmophoria, 222.

θίασος, Dionysiac, Thracian, viii, 31.

30,000 = innumerable, xi, 78.

θόλοι, iii, 31.

Thorn: see White-thorn.

Thracians, viii, 11; cult of Dionysos, 256 f.; belief in immortality, 263 f.; in Transmigration, 263 f.; Ascetic practices, x, 78.

Thrasea Paetus, xiv, 64.

θρόνον στρωννύναι for a god, iii, 26.

θρόνωσις (of mystai), ix, 19.

Thunder clouds driven away by noise, etc., viii, 63.

θύειν, iv, 15.

Thyme used in burial, v, 36.

θυμός and ψυχή, i, 58; xi, 1.

Thyrsos, viii, 22.

Tii of Polynesia, v, 161.

Timokles of Syracuse, x, 7.

Timoleon as Hero, xiv, ii, 59.

Titans (Orphic), 340 f.; x, 77 (cf. p. 76).

Tithonos, 58.

Tityos, 40 f.

Tragedy, Greek, 421 f.

Τράλεις, Thracian tribe of mercenaries, viii, 77.

Tralles in Karia, criminal law of, v, 150.

Translation, in Homer, 55 f.; subterranean, 89 f.; in Pindar, 414; in Euripides, xii, 127; Semitic, 60; xiv, ii, 109; German, 93; Italian, xiv, ii, 110; Tr. to Islands of the Blest, xiv, ii, 99; to the Nymphs, xiv, ii, 105; into a river, xiv, ii, 114; by lightning, 583; Tr. of Achilles, 64 f.; Alkmene, xiv, ii, 99; Althaimenes, iii, 4; Amphiaraos, 89 f.; Amphilochos, iii, 5; Antinous, xiv, ii, 114; Apollonios of Tyana, xiv, ii, 116; Aristaios, iii, 6; Aristeas (?), ix, 109; Berenike, etc., xiv, ii, 107; Diomedes, 67; xiv, ii, 99; Emperors, xiv, ii, 107; Empedokles, xi, 61; Erechtheus, 98; Euthymos, 136; Hamilcar, xiv, ii, 109; Helen, ii, 21; Herakleid. Pont., xi, 61; Iphigeneia, ii, 26; Kleomedes, 129; Laodike, iii, 6; Memnon, 64; Menelaos, 55; ii, 21; Oedipus, xii, 112; Phaethon, iii, 35; Rhadamanthys, ii, 17; Telegonos and Penelope, 65; Trophonios, 90; Tr. no longer understood in later ages, xiv, ii, 103; effected mechanically, xiv, ii, 106.

Trausians, viii, 75.

Trees planted round graves, i, 28; v, 73; sacred to the χθόνιοι, v, 61.

Τριακάδες, v, 86 f.; xiv, ii, 17.

Trieteric festival of Dionysos, 258, 285.

Triopion, ancient Greek cult there, ix, 89.

Triphylians, v, 11.

Triptolemos, i, 41; 220; vi, 35; as Judge in Hades, vii, 14.

τρίτα (sacrifice to the dead), v, 83.

τριτοπάτορες, v, 123 f.; x, 45.

Trophonios, 90 f., 101, 121, 159, 161; v, 133; viii, 68; xiv, ii, 104; Zeus Troph., iii, 18.

Trojan Heroes, xiv, ii, 41.

Tronis in Phokis, iv, 34. 626

Turning one’s back on spirits: see Avoiding, etc.

Turnus, translation of, xiv, ii, 110.

τυμβωρύχος, xiv, ii, 11.

Twelve Tables influenced by Solon, v, 47.

Typhon, vii, 6.

Tyrtaios, xii, 13.

Underworld, pictures of on vases, vii, 27; Polygnotos’ picture of, 241 f., 586 f.

Unknown gods, iv, 62; Heroes, 127.

Unlucky days, v, 158.

Utopia in Hades, vii, 18.

Vampyre, v, 161; xiv, ii, 86.

Vapour-baths used by Scythians and Indians to produce religious intoxication, viii, 39.

Varro, i, 21, 34; iii, 31; vi, 23; ix, 111.

Vendetta: see Revenge.

Venus, conductress of souls, xiv, ii, 146.

Vergil, i, 37; vii, 6; xi, 50; xii, 62; 535.

Vibia, tomb of, xiv, ii, 144, 174.

Vine, cultivation of in Thrace, viii, 38; branches used in burial, v, 37.

Virbius, legend of, iv, 38.

Visions, 30 f., 258 f. (and see ἔκστασις).

Visits of Gods to men, ii, 38 (iv, 134).

Voodoo, Negro sect in Haiti, viii, 55.

Wanderings: see Migration.

Water polluted by the neighbourhood of a corpse, v, 38; ix, 76; flowing, kathartic properties of, 588 f.; cold water in the lower world, xiv, ii, 151; of Life in folk-lore, ib.; speaking, ib.

Ways, Two, Three, in the lower world, xii, 62.

Weather-magicians, viii, 63; ix, 107.

Weregild, 175 f.; forbidden, v, 154.

Will, freedom of, 423 f.; 498 f.

Wind = Soul, xiii, 5; Spirits of, v, 124; Bride of, ii, 7.

Wine, belongs to later Dionysos, viii, 3.

Wisdom of Solomon, xiv, ii, 117.

White-thorn, v, 95.

Witches, etc. (see also Hekate), ix, 101.

Works of “supererogation” assist others, x, 66.

World, different Ages of, in Hesiod, 67 f.

World, withdrawal , in later Greek life, 546 f.; enjoyment of, in early period, 3, 63; xiv, ii, 170; hatred of, Christian-Gnostic, xiv, ii, 179; periods of (Orphic), 342.

Wolf-shape, of spirits, iv, 114; 590.

Wool, kathartic properties of, 590.

ξενικοὶ θεοί, x, 3.

Xenokrates, vi, 35; x, 39; xiv, 1.

Xenophanes, 371 f.; xi, 42; xii, 150; xiv, 53.

Xenophon C. Stertinius (Hero), xiv, ii, 64.

Yama, Indian god of the lower world, vii, 6.

Yogis of India, viii, 43.

Zagreus, 340 f.; viii, 28; x, 9, 12, 77; 598.

Zaleukos, v, 145.

Zalmoxis, iii, 13; viii, 10, 28; 263.

Zeno (Eleatic), 372 f.

Zeno (Stoic), xiv, 43.

Zeus in Crete, 97 f., 161; ix, 56; and Alkmene, iv, 134; as conductor of Souls, xiv, ii, 146.

Ζεὺς Ἀμφιάραος, iii, 19; χθόνιος, 159; v, 167; 220; Εὐβουλεύς, Βουλεύς, v, 7, 19; Λύκαιος, v, 170; μειλίχιος, v, 168; προστρόπαιος, v, 148; φίλιος, ii, 38; Σαβάζιος, viii, 10; Τροφώνιος, iii, 18.

Zopyros, x, 7, 11.

Zoroastrianism, 302.

Transcriber’s Note and Extended List of Abbreviations

This version follows the 1925 translation by W.B. Hillis, but with the following changes:

- A lot of quotations from Latin and some from French were left in ordinary type-face; here they have been italicised. The .txt version preserves the original text. If anyone wants the .htm version to reflect the original they can remove the lines for .latin and .french from the style declaration at the beginning of the .htm file.

- Except for three occasions early on, the English translation ignores Rohde’s emphases within quotations from Greek (and Latin). This version has restored Rohde’s “gesperrt” text.

- When there are minor differences (usually punctuation) between the German edition and the translation with respect to Greek or other quotations, this version follows the translation, unless a correction is indicated (by red dotted underlining). Corrections have restored the text in the German edition, supported where possible by reference to original versions online, such as at the Perseus Project.

- A similar comment can be made about the Index. No attempt has been made to correct its lapses from alphabetical order. It might be worth observing that when the Index picks out a footnote it is sometimes only clear why, if one follows the footnote back to the main text.

- This version has put an entry for the Index in the Table of Contents, as in the German editions. And one to these Notes. (Most other items in [ ] are Hillis’ doing.)

- Printed page numbers have been rendered in red within the text. When words were hyphenated across pages, the number has been put before the hyphenated word.

None of this would be possible without the materials so lavishly provided by the Internet Archive.

The English translation employed a lot of abbreviations in the footnotes, often without ever using a fuller form. In 1925 it may have been reasonable to assume that Lob. would call up Christian Lobeck (died 1860) and his major work published in 1829, but I have often found problems in tracking down such references so I am inserting here an extended version of Hillis’ list of abbreviations, to which I have added in many cases an online source for a version of the text (not necessarily the same edition as Rohde or Hillis used). Those sources are abbreviated thus: IA = Internet Archive (sometimes I give its ID for a work – putting that after the base URL should select the text in question, but as with the few complete URLs, these things are liable to change); Hathi = Hathi Trust; Migne = contained in one of the Patrologiae, texts of which are listed and linked to at various sites; Perseus = Perseus Project. For other sources I usually give only the basic website URL. For the most part I have not included abbreviations of works by ancient authors: they can be identified from the lists of works given for each writer at Perseus. Nor have I included abbreviations of English language texts.

A. (or Aesch.)

= Aeschylus. Perseus

A.

= Vergil’s Aeneid   . Perseus

AB.

= Anecdota Graeca   , ed. Bekker. Hathi

Abergl. d. bös. Blicks

= Der Aberglaube des Bösen Blicks bei den Alten   , Jahn. https://www.digitale-sammlungen.de/

Abh.

= Georg Zoegas Abhandlungen   , ed. Welcker. IA

Abh. Berl. Ak.

= Abhandlungen der Königlichen Akademie der Wissenschaften in Berlin   . https://de.wikisource.org/wiki/

Acherunt.

= Acheruntica   , Ettig. Hathi

Ach. Tat.

= Achilles Tatius. Isag. = Eἰσαγωγὴ εἰς τὰ Ἀράτoυ φαινόμενα, in Uranologion   , ed. Patavus. Google Books

Ac. Soc. ph. Lips.

= Acta Societatis philologae Lipsiensis   . Hathi

Acta Lud. Saecul.

= Acta Ludorum Saecularium   .

ad aureæ aet. fab. sym

= Ad aureae aetatis fabulam symbola   , Graf. Hathi

adnot. crit. ad Olymp.

= Annotationis criticae supplementum ad Pindari Olympias   , Tycho Mommsen. Hathi

Ael.

= Aelian. HA. = de natura [historia] animalium. IA

VH. = Varia Historia   . IA

Ael. Dionys.

= Aelius Dionysius, Aelii Dionysii et Pausaniae Atticistarum Fragmenta   , ed. Schwabe. IA

Aen. Gaz., Theophr.

= Aeneas Gazaeus, Theophrastus, ed. Boissonade. Aeneas Gazaeus et Zacharias Mitylenaeus de immortalitate animae ...   . Hathi

Aen. Tact.

= Aeneas Tacticus. IA

Aeschin.

= Aeschines. Perseus

Aesop.

= Aesopus. Fabulae Æsopicae collectae   , ed. Halm. IA

Aët.

= Aëtius.

Afric.

= Sextus Julius Africanus und die Byzantinische Chronographie   , Gelzer. IA

Agatharch.

= Agatharchides. On the Erythraean Sea (excerpta) in Karl Müller’s Geographi Graeci Minores   , vol. 1. IA

Akad. Abh.

= Gesammelte akademische Abhandlungen und kleine Schriften   , Gerhard, 2 vols. IA

Albertäten

= Denckwürdige Curiositäten Derer, So wohl Inn- als Ausländischer Abergläubischen Albertäten ...   , Männlingen. https://digitale.bibliothek.uni-halle.de

Alc.

= Alcaeus. In PLG.   , vol. 3, below.

Alciphr.

= Alciphron. Alciphronis rhetoris Epistolae   . IA

Alcm.

= Alcman. In PLG.   , vol. 3, below.

Al(ex). Aphr.

= Alexander of Aphrodisias. de An. = De anima liber cum Mantissa, ed. Bruns. IA

Prob. = Alexandri Aphrodisiensis quae feruntur Problematorum liber III et IIII   , Usener. Hathi

Alkmaionis fr.    Kink.

= Epicorum graecorum fragmenta   , ed. Kinkel. IA

Allg. Gesch. d. Relig.

= Allgemeine kritische geschichte der religionen   , Meiners. IA

Alltagsleben e. d. Frau im 18 J(ahr)h.

= Alltagsleben einer deutschen Frau zu Anfang des achtzehnten Jahrhunderts   , Schultz. IA

Altäre v. Olymp.

= Die Altäre von Olympia   , Curtius. IA

Altnord. Leben

= Altnordisches Leben   , Weinhold. IA

Alt- u. Neues Preussen

= Alt- und Neues Preussen   , Hartknoch. https://books.google.de/

Ameis

= Anhang zu Homers Odyssee   , Ameis. Hathi

Americ. Urrelig. (or Ges. d. ...   )

= Geschichte der amerikanischen Urreligionen   , J. G. Müller. IA

Amer. School

= Papers of the ...    below.

Amm.

= Ammonius, ed. Brand. = Commentaria in Peri hermeneias Aristotelis. IA

Diff. Voc. or Valck = De adfinium vocabulorum differentia   . Hathi

Amm. Marc.

= Ammianus Marcellinus. Perseus

Ampel., LM.

= Ampelius, Liber memorialis   . IA

An(al). Alex.

= Analecta Alexandrino-romana   , Knaack. IA

Anal. epigr. et onom.

= Analecta epigraphica et onomatologica   , Keil. IA

Anf. d. Dionysoscult in Att.

= Anfänge und Entwickelung des Dionysoscultus in Attika   , O. Ribbeck. IA

Andoc. Myst.

= Andocides, de mysteriis   . IA

Anf. Kunst

= Die Anfänge der Kunst in Griechenland   , Milchhöfer. https://digi.ub.uni-heidelberg.de

Anm. (z.) Od.

= Erklärende Anmerkungen zu Homer’s Odyssee   , Nitzsch, 3 vols. IA

Anon. de Incred.

= Anonymous, de Incredibilibus, in Mythographoi; scriptores poeticae historiae graeci   , ed. Westermann. Hathi

Anon., de Vir. Herb.

= Anonymous, De viribus (aut virtutibus) herbarum   . IA

Anon., P. Pont. Eux.

= Anonymi Periplum Ponti Euxini in Geographi Graeci minores   , vol. 2. IA

Annali d(ell’) Inst. (Arch.)

= Annali dell'Instituto di corrispondenza archeologica   . Hathi

Anth. Lat. Ep.

= Anthologia latina: sive poesis latinae supplementum, ed. Bücheler, in several parts. Refs. in the last chapter are to Carmina Latina Epigraphica   : IA (details/anthologialatin04lommgoog)

Anth. Pal.

= AP.    below.

Anthrop.

= Die Anthropologie der Naturvölker   , Waitz-Gerland, 6 vols. Hathi

Antig. Caryst.

= Antigonus Carystius, in Rerum naturalium scriptores graeci minores   , ed. Keller. IA

Antiph.

= Antiphon. Perseus

Ant. Lib.

= Antoninus Liberalis, in Mythographi Graeci   , ed. E. Martini, ii (1). IA (details/mythographigrae00partgoog)

Ant. Wald u. Feldc

= Antike Wald- und Feldkulte   , Mannhardt. IA

Anz. Wien. Ak.

= Anzeiger der Österreichische Akademie der Wissenschaften, Philosophisch-Historische Klasse   . Hathi

AP.

= Anthologia Palatina   . IA

Apollod.

= Ps.-Apollodorus, Bibiotheca (unless Epit. is added = Epitome   ). Perseus

Apollon., Mir.

= Apollonius Paradoxographus, Mirabilia, in Rerum Naturalium Scriptores   , ed. Keller, vol. 1. Hathi

Apollon., V. Aesch.

= Apollonius Biographus. Vita Aeschinis, in Aeschinis Orationes   , ed. F. Blass. IA

Apostol.

= Apostolius, in Corpus paroemiographorum Graecorum   , ed. Leutsch and Scheidewin, vol. 2. IA

App.

= Appian. Perseus

App. Prov.

= Appendix Proverbiorum in Corpus paroemiographorum Graecorum   , ed. Leutsch and Scheidewin, vol. 1. IA

Apul.

= Apuleius. Perseus, except for D. Soc. = de dea Socratis   . IA

A. R. (or Apol. Rhod.)

= Apollonius Rhodius. Perseus

Ar.

= Aristophanes. Perseus. For fr.   , ed. Bergk: IA (details/bub_gb_nTTgAAAAMAAJ)

Archaeol. Aufs.

= Archäologische Aufsätze   , Ross, 2 vols. IA

Archäol. Beitr.

= Archäologische Beiträge   , Jahn. IA

Archäol. epigr. Mitt(heil). a. Oest(erreich)

= Archäologisch-epigraphische Mitteilungen aus Österreich-Ungarn   . https://digi.ub.uni-heidelberg.de/diglit/

Archäol. Unters. auf. Samoth.

= Archäologische Untersuchungen auf Samothrake   , Conze, 2 vols. https://digi.ub.uni-heidelberg.de/diglit/

Arch. des miss. scientif.

= Archives des missions scientifiques et littéraires

Arch. f. Gesch. d. Philos.

= Archiv für Geschichte der Philosophie   . IA

Arch. Zeit.

= Archäologischen Zeitung   . IA

Archil(och).

= Archilochus. In PLG.   , vol. 2.

Areop. u. Epheten

= Der Areopag und die Epheten   , Philippi. IA

Aret.

= Aretaeus. IA

Arg. (or )Arg.   )

= [with Sch.] Argumenta. For Pindar, Pindari opera qvae supersvnt.   , ed. Boeckh, vol. 2. IA

Arist.

= Aristotle. Hathi has Bekker’s edition.

Ἀθπ. = Athenian Constitution   . Perseus

Arist.

= Aristides   , life by Plutarch.

Aristarch.

= De Aristarchi studiis Homericis   , Lehrs. IA

Aristid.

= Aristides, ed. Dindorff. Hathi

Aristonic.

= Aristonicus, Aristonici Peri sēmeiōn Iliados reliquiae emendatiores   , ed. Friedländer. Google Books

[Arist.] Pepl.

= Pseudo-Aristotle, Peplos, in PLG.   , vol. 2, below.

Arist. Pseudepig.

= Aristoteles pseudepigraphus   , Rose. IA

Arn(ob).

= Arnobius, adversus nationes   . IA [Most uses of Arn. refer to Hans von Arnim, who edited various writers.]

Arr.

= Arrianus. Anab. = Anabasis. IA.

Peripl. = Periplum Ponti Euxini in Geographi Graeci minores   , vol. 2. IA

Artem(id).

= Artemidorus, Onirocriticon libri v, ex recensione Rudolphi Hercheri   . Hathi

Assoc. relig.

= Des associations religieuses chez les Grecs: Thiases, Eranes, Orgeons   , Foucart. IA

Ath.

= Athenaeus. Perseus

A(th). Mitt(h).

= Mitteilungen des Deutschen Archäologischen Instituts, Athenische Abteilung   . https://digi.ub.uni-heidelberg.de/diglit/am

Att. Geneal.

= Attische Genealogie   , Töpffer. IA

Att. Grabinschr.

= Die attischen Grabschriften   , Gutscher. Hathi

Att. Proc(ess)

= Der attische Process: Vier Bücher   , Schömann and Meier. IA

Aug.

= Augustine. http://www.documentacatholicaomnia.eu/20_40_0354-0430-_Augustinus,_Sanctus.html

Aur. Vict.

= Aurelius Victor. Epit. = Epitome de Caesaribus. IA as De Caesaribus liber

Ausf. Gramm.

= Ausfuhrliche griechische Sprachlehre   , Buttmann. IA

Avien., Des. Orb.

= Avienius, Descriptio orbis terrae   . Hathi

Babr.

= Babrius. IA

Bacch.

= Bacchylides. The poems and fragments   , ed. Jebb. IA

Baring-Gould, Myths of M.A.

= Baring-Gould, Curious Myths of the Middle Ages   . IA

BCH.

= Bulletin de correspondance hellénique   . https://www.persee.fr/collection/bch

Ber(ichte) Ber(lin). Ak.

= Monatsberichte der Königlich Preussischen Akademie der Wissenschaften zu Berlin   . https://de.wikisource.org/wiki/

Berl. Phil. Woch.

= Berliner philologische Wochenschrift   . https://de.wikisource.org/wiki/

Beros. ap. Sync.

= Berossus in Syncellus, ed. Dindorff. IA

Ber. sächs. Ges. Wiss.

= Berichte Über die Verhandlungen der Königlich Sächsischen Gesellschaft der Wissenschaft   . https://de.wikisource.org/wiki/

Ber. Wien. Ak.

= Sitzungsberichte der Philosophisch-Historischen Classe der Kaiserlichen Akademie der Wissenschaften   . https://de.wikisource.org/wiki/

Besitz in Cl. Alt.

(or Bes. u. Erw.   )

= Besitz und Erwerb im griechischen Altertume, Büchsenschütz. [Cl.    seems Rohde’s mistake.] IA

Bgk.

= Bergk.

Biogr. d’Emp.

= La biographie d’Empédocle   , Bidez. IA

Bös. Blick

= Über den Aberglauben des bösen Blicks bei den Alten   , Jahn. https://opacplus.bsb-muenchen.de

Cael. Aur.

= Caelius Aurelianus, Morb. Chr. = De Morbis Acutis & Chronicis. IA

Tard. = Tardae or Chronicae Passiones   . IA

Caes.

= Caesar. Perseus

Call(im).

= Callimachus. Perseus

Bentley ad Lav. Pall.    = IA (details/callimachihymni00bentgoog)

Callin.

= Callinus. See PLG.   , vol. 2, below.

Callist.

= Pseudo-Callisthenes. http://www.attalus.org/info/alexander.html

Carm. Aur.

= Carmen Aureum. In Iamblichi De vita Pythagorica liber ... accedit epimetrum de Pythagorae Aureo Carmine   , ed. Nauck. Hathi

Carm. Phoc.

= Pseudo-Phocylides. In PLG.   , vol. 2, below.

Cassiod. Var.

= Cassiodori Senatoris Variae   . IA

Censor., DN.

= Censorinus, De die natali liber   . IA

Char.

= Charikles   , Becker, 2 vols. IA

Charis.

= Charisius. In Grammatici Latini,    Keil. IA

Chron. altgr. Epos.

= Zur Chronologie der altgriechische Epos   , Christ. Hathi.

Chthon. u. Todt.

= Stengel, Chthonischer und Todtencult in Festschrift für Ludwig Friedländer   , 414-432. IA

CIA

= Corpus inscriptionum Atticarum   , 1873. IA

Cic.

= Cicero. Perseus

CIG.

= Corpus inscriptionum graecarum.    Some parts at Hathi. More at https://www.deutsche-digitale-bibliothek.de

CIL.

= Corpus Inscriptionum Latinarum   . https://arachne.uni-koeln.de/drupal/?q=en/node/291

Claud. iv. Cons. Hon.

= Claudian, Panegyricus de Quarto Consulatu Honorii Augusti   . IA

Claud. Mamertus, de An.

= Claudianus Mamertus, De statu animae, in Opera Omnia   . IA

Clem. (Al(ex).)

= Clement of Alexandria. Hathi has Titi Flaui Clementis Alexandrini opera omnia   , ed. Klotz. Google Books has the Dindorff volumes.

Cod. Theod.

= Codex Theodosianus   . https://droitromain.univ-grenoble-alpes.fr

Com. Fr.

= Comicorum graecorum fragmenta   , ed. Kaibel. IA

Comm. Bern. in Lucan

= Commenta Bernensia   . Google Books

Commun. et coll. quib. Graec.

= De communibus et collegiis quibusdam Graecorum, Schöll. In Satura philologica. H. Sauppio obtulit amicorum conlegarum decas   . IA

Conon

= Conon, Narrationes   . IA (name Konon)

Corn(ut).

= Cornutus. Cornuti Theologiae graecae compendium   , ed. Lang. IA

Corresp. Würt. Gelehr.

= Correspondenz-blatt für die Gelehrten- und Realschulen Württembergs   . 1881 in Google Books

Cosm. ad Greg. Naz.

= Cosmae hieros, commentarius ad carmina S. Gregorii Nazianzeni. Original publication in Spicilegium Romanum   , vol. II, part ii. IA (details/spicilegiumroma00unkngoog)

Cratin.

= Cratinus. In Comicorum Atticorum Fragmenta   , vol. 1, ed. Kock. IA

Culturges.

= Allgemeine Culturgeschichte der Menschheit   , Klemm, 10 vols. IA

Culturg. Streifz. Geb. Islam

= Culturgeschichtliche Streifzüge auf dem Gebiete des Islams   , v. Kremer. IA

Culturpflanz.

= Kulturpflanzen und Hausthiere in ihrem Übergang aus Asien nach Griechenland und Italien sowie in das übrige Europa, Hehn. IA (English translation, The wanderings ...   , Hathi)

D. (or Dem.)

= Demosthenes. Perseus

Damasc.

= Damascius, Princ. = Dubitationes et solutiones de primis principiis, ed. Ruelle. Hathi

V. Isid. = Vita Isidori   .

D. ant. Mysterienw.

= Gr. Mysterienw.   , below.

Darst. d. Unterw(elt) auf unterit(al). Vasen

= Die Darstellungen der Unterwelt auf unteritalischen Vasen, Winkler. Also appeared in Breslauer philologische Abhandlungen   , 1888. IA

Darstell. a. d. Sitteng.

= Darstellungen aus der Sittengeschichte Roms in der Zeit von August bis zum Ausgang der Antonine   , Friedländer. IA

D. Atticismus

= Der atticismus in seinem Hauptvertretern von Dionysius von Halikarnass bis auf den zweiten Philostratus   , Schmid. IA

D. C.

= Dio Cassius. Perseus

D. Chr.

= Dio Chrysostom. Perseus

De acusmatis s. symbolis Pythag.,

= De acusmatis sive symbolis Pythagoricis   , Hölk. IA

de commun. et coll. Graecis

= De communibus et collegiis quibusdam Graecorum, Schöll. In Satura philologa, Hermanno Sauppio obtulit amicorum conlegarum decas   . IA

De Epim. Crete

= De Epimenide Crete   , Schultess. IA

de gentil. Att(ica).

= De Gentilitate Attica   , Meier. Hathi

de h(eroum ap. Gr.) cult(u)

= De heroum apud Graecos cultu   , Wassner. IA

de hymnis Orph.

= de hymnis Orphicis Capitula Quinque   , Dieterich. IA

de immort. animi

= Disputatio de Immortalitate Animi, Wyttenbach, in his Opuscula   , vol. 2. IA

de Lap.

= de lapidibus   , Damigeron, ed. Abel. IA

Delect.

= Delectus inscriptionum Graecarum propter dialectum memorabilium   , Cauer. Hathi

De lustrat.

= Epimenides s. de lustrat.    below.

Dem. fr.

= Democriti Abderitae operum fragmenta   , Mullach. IA

Dem. Phal.

= Demetrius Phalereus.

Dem. u. Pers(eph).

= Demeter und Persephone   , Preller. IA

Denkm.

= Denkmaler des klassischen Altertums   , Baumeister. IA

D. Enneakrunosepis. bei Paus.

= Die Enneakrunosepisode bei Pausanias   , Löschcke. IA

de Orphei Ep. Pher. Theog.

= De Orphei Epimenidis Pherecydis theogoniis quaestiones critica   , Kern. IA

de Pindaro theologiae Orph. censore

= De Pindaro theologiae Orphicae censore   , Lübbert. IA

de Pos. Rhod.,

= De Posidonio Rhodio   , Corssen. IA

de Rhiani stud. Hom.

= De Rhiani Cretensis studiis homericis   , Mayhoff. IA

Der Keilins. Sintfluthber.

= Der keilinschrifliche Sintfluthbericht   , Haupt. Hathi

Dessau

= Hermann Dessau, Inscriptiones latinae selectae   , vol. 2. IA

(de) soc. Pythag.

= De societatis a Pythagora in urbe Crotoniatarum conditae scopo politico commentatio   , Krische. Google Books

de Theogon.

= Griechische Mythologie   , vol. 1, Preller, ed. Kern. IA

de Theoxen.

= de Theoxeniis   , Deneken. IA

Deut. Volksabergl.

= Der deutsche Volksaberglaube der Gegenwart   , Wuttke. IA

D. Gl(aube) u. Brauch

= Deutscher Glaube und Brauch im Spiegel der heidnischen Vorzeit   , Rochholz. IA

Dgn.

= Diogenianus. In Corpus paroemiographorum Graecorum   . Hathi

D. H.

= Dionysius of Halicarnassus. Perseus

D. Hom. Epos aus d. Denkm. erl.

= Das homerische Epos aus den Denkmälern erläutert   , Helbig. IA

Dicaearch. (or Dikaiarch.)

= Dicaearchus. In Geographi graeci minores   , ed. Müller, vol. 1. IA

Did.

= Didymus.

Die Altäre v. Olymp.

= Die Altäre von Olympia   , Curtius. IA

Diels, Parm.

= Parmenides Lehrgedicht   , Diels. IA

Die W. u. T. des Hesiod

= Die Werke und Tage des Hesiodos   , ed. Steitz. IA

Digest.

= Digesta, in Corpus Iuris Civilis   . https://droitromain.univ-grenoble-alpes.fr/#22

Din(arch).

= Dinarchus, Perseus

Diod. Com. Ἐπίκληρ   .

= Diodorus Comicus Ἐπίκληρος, see Mein. Com.    below.

Diogen.

= Diogenianus. In Corpus paroemiographorum Graecorum   , ed. Leutsch and Scheidewin. IA

Dionysosc.

= Die Beziehungen des Dionysoskultus zu Thrakien und Kleinasien   , Rapp. Hathi

Dionysosdienst in Elis

= Das Kollegium der Sechzehn Frauen und den Dionysosdienst in Elis   , Weniger. Hathi

D(io)sc. MM.

= Pedanii Dioscoridis anazerbei De materia medica libri quinque   , ed. Sprengel. IA

Diph.

= Diphilus.

Diss(ert). (phil.) Halens.

= dissertationes philologiae Halensis. Zacher is in III: de nominibus graecis ...    IA

D. L.

= Diogenes Laertius. Perseus

D. Leben. nach d. Tode n. d. Vorst. d. a. Israel

= Das Leben nach dem Tode: Nach den Vorstellungen des alten Israel und des Judentums ...   , Schwally. IA

D. Myth.

= Handbuch der deutschen Mythologie   , Simrock. IA

Dox.

= Diels, Doxographi Graeci   . IA

D. P.

= Dionysius Periegetes. IA

D. S.

= Diodorus Siculus. Perseus

E. (or Eur.)

= Euripides. Perseus

Econ. of Ath.

= The Public Economy of the Athenians   , Böckh. Hathi

E. Gud.

= Etymologicum Graecae linguae Gudianum et alia grammaticorum scripta e codicibus manuscriptis nunc primum editam   , ed. Sturz. Hathi

Einl. (Ges. gr. Spr.)

= Einleitung in der Geschichte der griechische Sprache   , Kretschmer. IA

E.M.

= Etymologicum magnum   . IA

Emped.

= Empedocles. In Vors.    below.

Ench.

= Enchiridion of Epictetus   . Perseus

Ep. ad Cor.

= Paul, Epistle to the Corinthians   . Perseus

Ep. Cr.

= Epistola critica   , Ruhnken, 2 vols. Google Books

Ep. Cycl. (Cykl.)

= Der epische Cyclus, oder, Die homerischen Dichter   , Welcker, 2 vols. IA

Ἐφ. Ἀρχ.

= Ἀρχαιολογικὴ ἐφημερίς   . Accessible from http://ancientworldonline.blogspot.com/2020/01/open-access-journal.html

Ephor.

= Ephorus. In FHG.    below.

Ep(ic). Fr.

= Epicorum graecorum fragmenta   , ed. Kinkel. IA

Epich.

= Epicharmus. In PLG.   , vol. 2, below.

Epict(et).

= Epictetus. Perseus

Epidemics of the M. A.

= The Epidemics of the Middle Ages   , Hecker. IA

Epigr. Gr. (or Ep.    in part of the last chapter)

= Epigrammata Graeca   , ed. Kaibel. IA

Epiktet u. d. Stoa

= Epictet und die Stoa   , Bonhöffer. IA

Epimenides s. de lustrat.

= Epimenides sive de veterum gentilium lustrationibus syntagma   , Lomeier. IA

Epitaph.

= Epitaphius, in Hyperidis Orationes sex cvm ceterarvm fragmentis   , ed. Blass. IA

Ep., Sent.

= Epicurus, Sententiae   . IA

Erläut. zu Herodots 2. B.

= Herodots zweites Buch mit sachlichen Erläuterungen   , Wiedemann. IA

Ersch-Gruber

= Allgemeine Encyclopädie der Wissenschaften und Künste, Ersch, Gruber, et al.    IA

E.T.

= English Translation.

Ét. de mythol. et d’arch. égypt.

= Études de mythologie et d'archéologie égyptiennes   . Vol. 1 at https://gallica.bnf.fr/ark:/12148/bpt6k555206.texteImage

Eth. Eud.

= Ethica Eudemica   , Aristotle. Perseus

Eudoc., Viol.

= Pseudo-Eudocia, Violarium recensuit et emendabat, fontium testimonia subscripsit Ioannes Flach   . Hathi

Eun. VS.

= Eunapius, Vitae Sophistarum   . https://gallica.bnf.fr/ark:/12148/bpt6k62357919/f471.image

Eus. Arm.

= Eusebius (Armenian: text of Chronicon   ) see Hier. below.

Eust.

= Eustathius. IA has his commentaries on Homer.

Exc.

= Schliemann's excavations: an archaeological and historical study   , Schuchhardt. IA

Ἐξηγ.

= Ἐξηγητικόν   .

ἐξηγ. πυθόχρ.

= ἐξηγηταί πυθόχρηστοι   .

Fast. Att.

= Fasti Attici   , Corsini. IA

Fest.

= Festus, De Verborum Significatione   . Hathi

Festg. f. Ihering

= Festgabe der Göttinger Juristen-Fakultät für Rudolf von Jhering   . Hathi

FHG.

= Fragmenta Historicorum Graecorum   . http://www.dfhg-project.org

Firm. (Mat.)

= Firmicus Maternus. Error. P.R. = De errore profanarum religionum   . IA

Flor.

= Florus. IA

Forsch. zu Arist. Ἀθ. πολ.

= Literarische und historische Forschungen zu Aristoteles Athenanion POLITEIA   , Bauer. IA

F(ouil). d’Epid(aur).

= Fouilles d’ Epidaure   . https://gallica.bnf.fr/ark:/12148/bpt6k3174772.texteImage

Frag. Epic.

= Ep. Fr.    above.

Fr. Trag.

= Tragicorum graecorum fragmenta   , Nauck. IA

Gal.

= Galen. https://www.biusante.parisdescartes.fr/histoire/medica/

GDI.

= Sammlung der griechischen Dialekt-Inschriften   , Collitz. IA

Gebärden der Gr. u. R.

= Die Gebärden der Griechen und Römer   , Sittl. IA

Gell.

= Aulus Gellius. Perseus

Geog.

= Geographie von Griechenland   , Bursian. IA

Gesch. d. Abip.

= Geschichte der Abiponer, eine berittenen und kriegerischen Nation in Paraquay   , Dobrizhoffer, 3 vols. IA (E.T. at Project Gutenberg)

Gesch. Ideen Islam

= Geschichte der herrschenden Ideen des Islams: der Gottesbegriff, die Prophetie und Staatsidee   , v. Kremer. IA

Ges. d. Psychol.

= Geschichte der Psychologie   , Siebeck. IA

Ges. Schr.

= Gesammelte Schriften   .

Get.

= Getica, in Romana et Getica   , ed. Mommsen. IA

Gothofred. ad Cod. Theod.

= Gothofredus, De statu paganorum sub christianis imperatoribus: seu commentarius ad titulum X de paganis libri XVI codicis Theodosiani   . IA

Gottesdienstl. Alterth.

= Lehrbuch der gottesdienstlichen Alterthümer der Griechen   , Hermann. IA

Gött. Gel. Anz.

= Göttingische Gelehrte Anzeigen   . https://de.wikisource.org/wiki/

Gp.

= Geoponica   . IA

Graecoitalische Rechts.

= Graecoitalische Rechtsgeschichte   , Leist. IA

Gr. Alt.

= Handbuch der griechischen Staatsaltertümer   , Gilbert, 2 vols. Hathi

Gr. Culte u. Mythen

= Die griechischen Culte und Mythen in ihren Beziehungen zu den orientalischen Religionen   , Gruppe. Vol. 1 at IA

Gr. Dial.

= Die griechischen Dialekte auf Grundlage von Ahrens’ Werk: “De Graecae linguae dialectis”   , Meister. IA

G(ree)k Pap(yri) in B.M.

= Greek Papyri in the British Museum   , Kenyon. IA

Greg. Cor.

= Gregorii Corinthii et aliorum grammaticorum libri de dialectis linguae graecae   , ed. Schaefer. IA

Greg. Nz.

= Gregory Nazianzus. Migne.

Gr. Etym.

= Grundzüge der griechischen Etymologie   , Curtius. IA

(Gr.) Götterl.

= Griechische Götterlehre   , Welcker, 3 vols. IA has 1 and 3, all at Hathi

Gr. Gramm.

= Griechische Grammatik   , Meyer. IA

Griech. Märchen von dankbaren Thieren

= Griechische Märchen von dankbaren Tieren und Verwandtes   , Marx. IA

Griech. Personennamen

= Die griechischen Personennamen nach ihrer Bildung erklärt und systematisch geordnet   , Fick. IA

Griech. Sicil. Vasenb.

= Griechische und sicilische Vasenbilder   , Benndorf. IA

Grimm

= Grimm, Deutsche Mythologie, translated as Teutonic Mythology   , by J. S. Stallybrass, 1880. IA

Gr. Insc. in B.M.

= The collection of ancient Greek inscriptions in the British Museum   . IA

Gr. Lit.

= Griechische Literaturgeschichte   , Bergk, 4 vols. IA

Gr. Märchen

= Griechische Märchen, Sagen und Volkslieder   , Schmidt. IA

Gr. Mysterienw.

= Das antike Mysterienwesen in seinem Einfluss auf das Christentum   , Anrich. IA

Gr. Rechtsalt.

= Lehrbuch der griechischen antiquitäten: Lehrbuch der griechischen Rechtsaltertümer von Dr. Karl Friedrich Hermann   , revised Th. Thalheim. IA

Gr. Roman

= Der griechische Roman und seine Vorläufer   , Rohde. IA

Gr. Staatsalt.

= Lehrbuch der griechischen Staatsalteertümer, aus dem standpuncte der geschichte entworfen   , Hermann. IA

Gr. u. alb. Märchen

= Griechische und albanesische Märchen   , Hahn. IA

Gr. Vereinswesen

= Das Griechische Vereinswesen   , Ziebarth. IA

h. (Hom.   )

= [Homeric] Hymn. Ap. = Apollo; Cer. = Demeter; Merc. = Hermes; Ven.    = Aphrodite. Perseus

Halm

= Fabulae Æsopicae collectae   , ed. Halm. IA

h. crit. com.

= historiam criticam comicorum graecorum = Vol. 1 of Mein. Com.    below. IA

Harp.

= Harpocration. Perseus

Hcl.

= Heraclit. below.

Hdn. Gr.

= Herodianus Grammaticus, Herodiani Technici Reliquiae   , ed. Lenz. IA

Hdt.

= Herodotus. Perseus

[Hdt.] V. Hom.

= Pseudo-Herodotus, Vita Homeri   . Not at Perseus, some editions of Herodotus include it at IA

Hegesipp.

= Hegesippos. In AP.    above.

Heliod.

= Heliodorus, Aethiopicorum libri decem   , ed. Bekker. IA

Hellan.

= Hellanicus. In FHG.    above.

Hemst. Luc.

= Hemsterhuis, Lucani Samosatensis Opera   , 10 vols. Hathi.

Heort.

= Heortologie: antiquarische Untersuchungen über die städtischen Feste der Athener   , Mommsen. IA

Heraclid. (or Herakl(id).) (Pont.) Pol.

= Heraclides Ponticus, Politica   . IA

Heraclit.

= Heracleitus. In Vors.    below.

Heraklit. Briefe

= Die Heraklitischen Briefe: ein Beitrag zur philosophischen und religionsgeschichtlichen Literatur   , Bernays. IA

Herod(es) Att.

= Herodes Atticus. IA

Heroenvögel in d. gr. Myth.

= Heroenvögel in der griechischen Mythologie mit einem Anhange über Diomedes in Italien   , Holland. IA

Herond.

= Herondas. IA

Hes.

= Hesiod. Persius

Hier. Chr.

= Jerome, Chronicon   . IA

Hier. Rh. frag.

= Hieromymi Rhodii peripatetici fragmenta   , ed. Hiller. IA

Hiller v. Gärtr.

= Hiller von Gärtringen. Ref. in note 6 of chapter 3 is to https://de.wikisource.org/wiki/RE:Aristaios_1

Him.

= Himerius. Himerii sophistae quae reperiri potuerunt...    Google Books.

Hipp(ol). RH   .

= Hippolytus, Refutatio Omnium Haeresium   , https://www.deutsche-digitale-bibliothek.de

Hippocr.

= Hp. below. Hippocrates, π. παρθενίων    (Littré) is at https://www.biusante.parisdescartes.fr/histoire/medica/

Hippon.

= Hipponax. In PLG.   , vol. 2, below.

Hist. Num.

= Historia Numorum, a Manual of Greek Numismatics   , Head. http://hno.huma-num.fr

hist. Zeits.

= Historische Zeitschrift   . Hathi

H. Mag.

= Hymni Magici   .

H. Mag. Hec., Abel, Orph.   ,

= Abel, Orphica   . IA

Hom. = Homer, who is quoted by the majuscules of the Greek alphabet for the books of the Iliad, by the minuscules for the Odyssey. Perseus

Hom. Epos.

= Das homerische Epos aus den Denkmälern erläutert, archäologische Untersuchungen   , Helbig. IA

Hom. Schiffskat.

= Der homerische Schiffskatalog als historische Quelle betrachte   , Niese. IA

H(om). T(heol).

= Homerische Theologie   , Nägelsbach. IA

Hor.

= Horace. Perseus

H. Orph.

= De Hymnis Orphicis Capitula Quinque   , Dieterich. IA

Hp.

= Hippokrates. http://galen.bbaw.de/epubl/online/editionencmg_01.html

Hsch./Hesych.

= Hesychius. Lexicon   . IA

H. Smyrn.

= Hermippus of Smyrna. IA (details/hermippifragmen00hermgoog)

Hug, Plat. Symp.

= Platons Symposion   , ed. Hug. IA

Hyg(in).

= Hyginus. Hygini Fabulae   . Hathi

Hyp.

= Hyperides. Epit. = Epitaphios, Funeral Oration   . Perseus.

Iamb.

= Iamblichus, de Myst. = De mysteriis. IA

Protr. = Protrepticus. IA

Theol. Arith. = Theologumena arithmeticae. Hathi

VP. = De vita Pythagorica   . IA

IG.

= Inscriptiones Graeciae   .

IG. Ant.

= Inscriptiones graecae antiquissimae praeter atticas in Attica repertas   , ed. Roehl. IA

IGM. Aeg.

= IG., Vol. XII, Inscriptiones insularum maris Aegaei praeter Delum   , several vols.

IGS(ept).

= IG., Vol. VII, Inscriptiones Graeciae septentrionalis   . IA

IG. Sic. et It.

= Inscriptiones Graecae Siciliae et Italiae   . IA

Ind. Schol. Bonn. hib.

= Index scholarum quae, ..., in Universitate Fridericia Guilelmia Rhenana ... publice privatimque habebuntur. Commentatio de Pindaro dogmatis de migratione animarum cultore   , Lübbert. https://digitale-sammlungen.ulb.uni-bonn.de/periodical/titleinfo/5849103

Ind. Schol. Götting. hib.

= Index scholarum publice et privatim in academia Georgia Augusta....., Commentariolum Metricum II   , Wilamowitz--Moellendorff. Google Books

Ind. Stoic.

= Stóicorum Index Herculanensis, ed. Comparetti, in “Papiro Ercolanese Inedito”, Rivista di filologia e di istruzione classica    iii (1875). IA

Inscr. Cos,

= The Inscriptions of Cos   , Paton and Hicks. IA

Ins(cr). Perg.

= Inschriften von Pergamon    ed. Fraenkel. https://www.deutsche-digitale-bibliothek.de

Introd. to Scient. Myth.

= Introduction to a Scientific System of Mythology   , Müller. IA

IPE.

= Inscriptiones antiquae orae septentrionalis Ponti Euxini Graecae et Latinae   , ed. Latyschev. IA

Is.

= Isaeus. Perseus

Isig(on).

= Isigonus in FHG.    above.

Isoc.

= Isocrates. Perseus

Jahrb. arch. Inst.

= Jahrbuch des Kaiserlich Deutschen Archäologischen Instituts   . https://de.wikisource.org/wiki/

Jahr(b). (f.) Phil(ol).

= Jahrbücher für classische Philologie   . https://de.wikisource.org/wiki/

Jb. Philol. Supp.

= Jahrbücher für classische Philologie. Supplementband   . Gruppe is in IA (details/jahrbcherfrclas01flecgoog)

Jb. Prot. Theol.

= Jahrbücher für protestantische Theologie   . http://idb.ub.uni-tuebingen.de/opendigi/jpth

JHS.

= Journal of Hellenic Studies   . https://onlinebooks.library.upenn.edu/webbin/serial?id=jhellenicstudies

J. M.

= Justin Martyr. Hathi

Jos.

= Josephus. Perseus

Jul.

= Julian. Chr., = Iuliani imperatoris librorum contra Christianos quae supersunt, ed. Neumann. IA

Ep. = Epistulae, Or. = Orationes, both in Iuliani imperatoris quae supersunt praeter reliquias apud Cyrillum omnia   , ed. Hertlein, vol. 1. IA

Jul. Valer.

= Julius Valerius, Res gestae Alexandri Macedonis translatae ex Aesopo graeco   . IA

Justin.

= Justinus, historiarvm Philippicarvm T. Pompeii Trogi libri xliv in epitomen redacti. IA

Co. ad Gr. = Cohortatio ad Graecos   , attributed falsely to Justin Martyr. Migne

Kink.

= Kinkel. Usually referring to Epicorum graecorum fragmenta   , IA

Kl. S(chr).

= Kleine Schriften   .

Königsb. Stud.

= Königsberger Studien   . Vol. 1. Google Books

Kuhns Ztschr.

= Zeitschrift für vergleichende Sprachforschung auf dem Gebiete des Deutschen, Griechischen und Lateinischen   . 1860 at Google Books

Kynanth.

= Das von der “Kynanthropie” handelnde Fragment des Marcellus von Side   , Roscher. IA

Kypros u. Ursp. Aphrod.

= Kypros und der Ursprung des Aphroditekultus   , Enmann. IA

Laber.

= Laberius, in Comicorum Latinorum reliquiae, ed. Ribbeck (vol. 2 of Scenicae Romanorum poesis fragmenta   ). IA

Lac. Culte

= Lakonische Kulte   , Wide. Hathi

Lact(ant).

= Lactantius. Inst. = De divinis institutionibus. Hathi has Lucii Caecilii Firmiani Lactantii Opera omnia   .

(La) magie et l’astrol. dans l’antiq.

= La magie et l'astrologie dans l'antiquité et au moyen age   , Maury. IA

Lamprid.

= Lampridius. Alleged author of part of the Historia Augusta   . IA

Leben n. Todt n. Vorst. alt. Israël

= Das Leben nach dem Tode: Nach den Vorstellungen des alten Israel und des Judentums   , Schwally. IA

Leg. Novell. Theodos.

= Liber Legum Novellarum Divi Theodosii   . https://droitromain.univ-grenoble-alpes.fr/

Leg. Sacr.

= Leges Graecorum Sacrae ..., von Prott and Ziehen. IA (1906 edition, not 1896) (Dissert.    seems to be by von Prott alone.)

Leip(z). Stud.

= Leipziger Studien zur classischen Philologie   . https://de.wikisource.org/wiki/

Les lécythes blancs attiques à représ. funér.

= Étude sur les lécythes blancs attiques à représentations funéraires   , Pottier. https://www.persee.fr/doc/bch_0007-4217_1884_num_8_1_4109

les rel. des peuples non-civ.

= Les religions des peuples non-civilisés   , Réville, 2 vols. Vol. 1 at Google Books

Lex.

= Myth. Lex.    below.

Liban.

= Libanius, Orationes   . https://opengreekandlatin.github.io/libanius-dev/

Litt. Ztg.

= Deutsche Literaturzeitung für Kritik der internationalen Wissenschaft   . 1896 at IA

Lob.

= Lobeck. Agl. = Aglaophamus, 3 books. IA

Aj. = his edition of Sophocles’ Ajax. IA,

Paralip. = Paralipomena grammaticae Graecae, 2 vols. IA

Pathol. prol. = Pathologiae sermonis graeci, prolegomena. IA

Rhemat. = Rhematikon sive, Verborum graecorum et nominum verbalium technologia   . IA

Localsage von den Gräbern Agamem.

= Die mykenische Lokalsage von den Gräbern Agamemnons und der Seinen im Zusammenhange der griechischen Sagenentwicklung   , Belger. A pdf is available at https://tpsalomonreinach.mom.fr

Luc.

= Lucian. Perseus

Lucr.

= Lucretius. Perseus

Lustr.

= de Veterum Gentilium Lustrationibus Syntagma   , Lomeier. IA

Lyc.

= Lycophron. Perseus

Lyc. Inscr.

= The Lycian Inscriptions ...   , Schmidt. IA

Lycurg.

= Lycurgus. Perseus

Lyd. Mens.

= (John) Lydus, de Mensibus   . IA

Lys.

= Lysias. Perseus

Macr(ob).

= Macrobius. IA

Malal.

= Malalas, John. chronographia   . Hathi

M. Ant.

= Marcus Aurelius. De rebus suis, sive, De eis quæ ad se pertinere censebat, libri XII...   , ed. Gataker. IA

Marcellin. V. Th.

= Marcellinus, Vita Thucydidis   . Hathi

Marc. Emp.

= Marcellus Empiricus, De medicamentis liber   , ed. Helmreich. IA

Marin., V. Procli

= Marinus, Vita Procli   . IA

Mart.

= Martial. Perseus

Mart. Cap.

= Martianus Capella. De nuptiis philologiae, et Mercurii, et de septem artibus liberalibus libri novem   . IA

Max. T(yr).

= Maximus Tyrius. IA

Mein. Com.

= Fragmenta comicorum Graecorum   , ed. Meineke, 5 vols. in 7 parts. Vol. III IA (details/fragmentacomico11meingoog); Vol. IV IA (/details/fragmentacomicor04meinuoft)

Melanipp.

= Melanippides. In PLG.   , vol. 3.

Mém. de l’Inst. de Fr., Ac. des Ins.

= Mémoires de l’Institut national de France, Académie des Inscriptions et Belles-Lettres   . The article by Raoul-Rochette is here: https://www.persee.fr/doc/minf_0398-3609_1838_num_13_2_1291?q=Raoul+Rochette

Mém. sur les îles et la course cons. à Achille

= Mémoire sur les îles et la Course consacrées à Achille   , Koehler.

Menand.

= Menander. Menandri et Philemonis reliquiae   , ed. Meineke. Hathi.

Men(and). Rhet.

= Menander Rhetor. In Rhetores Graeci   , ed. Spengel, vol. 2. IA (details/bub_gb_g31KAAAAYAAJ)

Metrod.

= Metrodorus, ed. Körte. IA

Mimn.

= Mimnermus. In PLG.   , vol. 2.

Min(uc). (Fel.)

= Minucius Felix. Perseus

Mission arch. de Macédoine

= Mission archéologique de Macédoine   , Heuzey and Daumet. https://arachne.uni-koeln.de

Mit. arch. Inst. röm. Abt.

= Mitteilungen des Deutschen Archäologischen Instituts, Römische Abteilung   . https://www.digizeitschriften.de/en/dms/toc/?PID=PPN783873484

Mon. Germ., Chron.

= Monumenta Germaniae Historica; the quotation is from Die Limburger Chronik des Tilemann Elhen von Wolfhagen   , ed. Wyss. https://www.dmgh.de/mgh_dt_chron_4_1/index.htm#page/(25)/mode/1up

Mon(um). d(ell’) Inst(it).

= Monumenti dell' Instituto   .

Myth. Gr.

= ? Mythographoi scriptores poeticae historiae Graeci   , ed. Westermann. IA [the ? because the numbers in note 4 of ch. 7 do not properly fit]

Myth. Lex.

= Ausführliches Lexikon der griechischen und römischen Mythologie   , ed. Roscher, several volumes. IA (guide at https://de.wikisource.org/wiki/Ausführliches_Lexikon_der_griechischen_und_römischen_Mythologie)

Mythol. d. gr(iech). St.

= Mythologie der griechischen Stämme   , Müller. IA

Mythol. Forsch.

= Mythologische Forschungen   , Mannhardt. IA

Myth. v. d. Weltaltern

= Abhandlung über den Mythus von den fünf Menchengeschlechtern bei Hesiod und die indische Lehre von den vier Weltaltern   , Roth. https://publikationen.uni-tuebingen.de/xmlui/bitstream/handle/10900/44017/pdf/RothVerzeichnis-1860.pdf

Nachhom. Theol.

= Die nachhomerische Theologie des griechischen Volksglaubens bis auf Alexander dargestellt   , Nägelsbach. IA

Nek.

= Nekyia   , Dieterich. IA

Nemes., Nat. Hom.

= Nemesius, de natura hominis   . IA

Nep.

= Cornelius Nepos. Perseus

Neunzahl

= Die Neunzahl bei den Ostariern   , Kaegi. Hathi

Nic(andr). Th.

= Nicander, Theriaca et Alexipharmaca    ed. Otto Schneider. IA

Nic. Dam., Paradox.

= Nicolaus of Damascus, in Paradoxographoi. Scriptores rerum mirabilium graeci   , ed. Westermann. Hathi

Nicol. Prog.

= Nicolaus Rhetor, Progymnasmata   . IA

Nonn., D.

= Nonnus, Dionysiaca   . IA

Nordd. Sag.

= Norddeutsche Sagen, Märchen und Gebräuche   , Kuhn and Schwartz. IA

Nouv. annales des voyages

= Nouvelles annales des voyages   . https://gallica.bnf.fr/ark:/12148/cb32826375m/date

Novell. Valentin.

= Liber Legum Novellarum Divi Valentiniani   . https://droitromain.univ-grenoble-alpes.fr/

O.

= Orpheus. fr.    in Abel, see Orph. below.

Obs.

= Iulius Obsequens. Rohde used Julii Obsequentis quae supersunt ex libro de prodigiis   , IA; Hollis adds this version: https://documentacatholicaomnia.eu/03d/0300-0400,_Iulius_Obsequens,_Prodigiorum_Liber,_LT.pdf

Oinom.

= Oenomaus.

Onomakr.

= Onomakritos.

Opp., H.

= Oppian, Halieutica   . Perseus

Op(usc).

= Opuscula (Bergk: philologica = Kleine philologische Schriften, 2 vols. IA)

(Ritschl: philologica   , 5 vols. IA has vols. 1 and 4)

Opusc. Ac.

= Opuscula Academica   , Göttling. https://opacplus.bsb-muenchen.de

Orchom.

= Orchomenos und die Minyer   , Müller. IA

Orelli, Ins.

= Inscriptionum Latinarum Selectarum Collectio   , 2 vols. (1259 is in vol. 1). Hathi

Orig., Cels.

= Origen, contra Celsum   . (L. = Lommatzsch.) IA

Orph.

= Orpheus. Arg. = Orphei Argonautica, in Orphica, ed. Abel. IA

H. = Hymns. Ibid.

[Orph.] L. = Orphei Lithica, v. de Lap.    above, or ibid.

Or. Sib.

= Oracula Sibyllina, Alexandre. IA (The reference [and ii] seems more pertinent to his Excursus ad Sibyllina   , also IA.)

Ov.

= Ovid. Perseus

Pall.

= Palladius, de Re Rustica   . IA

P. Anastasy

= Papyri Anastasi.

Pantsch.

= Pantschatantra: fünf Bücher indischer Fabeln, Märchen und Erzählungen   , Benfey. IA

Pap. Mag.

= Prolegomena ad papyrum magicam Musei Lugdunensis Batavi, Dieterich. IA (also in his Kleine Schriften   , IA)

Paradoxogr.

= Paradoxographus Apollonius in Rerum naturalium scriptores graeci minores   , ed. Keller. IA

Paraphr. ant. Lyc.

= Lycophronis Alexandra, cum paraphrasibus ad codicum fidem recensita et emendata, indices subiecti   , ed. Scheer, 2 vols. IA

Papers of the Amer. School at Athens

= Papers of the American School of Classical Studies at Athens   . https://digi.ub.uni-heidelberg.de/diglit/ascsapapers

Parth.

= Parthenius. IA

Paul. Fest(i).

= Paulus = Sexti Pompei Festi, De verborum significatu quae supersunt com Pauli epitome   . IA

Paul., Sent.

= Paulus, Sententiae   . https://droitromain.univ-grenoble-alpes.fr/Responsa/paulus.html

Pauly-Wiss.

= Pauly-Wissowa, Realencyclopädie der classischen Altertumswissenschaft   . https://de.wikisource.org/wiki/

Paus.

= Pausanias. Perseus

Pers.

= Persius. Perseus

Pers.

= Auli Persii Flacci Satirarum liber   , ed. Jahn. IA [mostly a play by Aeschylus]

Petr(on).

= Petronius. Perseus

Pherecr.

= Pherecrates. In Comicorum Atticorum Fragmenta   , vol. 1, ed. Theodor Kock. IA

Philarg.

= Philargyrius. IA (details/commentariiinvi01servgoog)

Phil. d. Griech

= Die Philosophie der Griechen in ihrer geschichtlichen Entwicklung   , Zeller. Hathi

Phil. d. mittl. Stoa

= Die Philosophie der mittleren Stoa in ihrem geschichtlichen Zusammenhange   , Schmekel. IA

Philem.

= Philemon.

Philo

= Philo, Incor. Mund. = De Incorruptibilitate Mundi

Leg. ad G. = Legatio ad Gaium. http://www.documentacatholicaomnia.eu/

Leg. Alleg. = Legum Allegoriæ. IA (details/bub_gb__hQJAQAAIAAJ/)

Q. omn. Prob. = Quod Omnis Probus Liber. http://www.documentacatholicaomnia.eu/

Mund. Op. = De Opificio Mundi. http://www.documentacatholicaomnia.eu/

Q. rer. div. = Quis Rerum Divinarum Heres Sit. http://www.documentacatholicaomnia.eu/

Spec. Leg. = De Specialibus Legibus. IA (details/bub_gb_jTA1AAAAIAAJ/)

Vit. Cont. = De Vita Contemplativa. http://www.documentacatholicaomnia.eu/

Vict. Off. = de victimas offerentibus   . IA (details/operaomnia04phil)

Philoch.

= Philochorus. In FHG   .

Philod(em).

= Philodemus, Mort. = On death. In Academicorum philosophorum index herculanensis, ed. Mekler. IA

Piet. = On piety, Philodem über Frömmigkeit   , ed. Gomperz. Hathi

Philol.

= Philologus   . IA

Philos. d. Heraklit im Lichte der Mysterienidee

= Die Philosophie des Heraklit von Ephesus im Lichte der Mysterienidee   , Pfleiderer. Hathi

Philos(tr).

= Philostratus. Perseus

Phld.

= Philodemus. IA

Phlegon, Macr.

= Macrobii, in Rerum naturalium scriptores Graeci minores   , ed. Keller. Hathi

Phot.

= Photius, Lexicon. IA

Bibl. = Bibliotheca   . Migne

Phryn.

= Phrynicus, Phrynichi eclogae nominum et verborum atticorum   , ed. Lobeck. Hathi

Pi.

= Pindar. (PLG.   , vol. 1.) Perseus

Pl.

= Plato. Perseus

Platon. Frage

= Zur Lösung der Platonischen Frage   , Pfleiderer. IA

Pl(aton). Fr(age)

= Die platonische Frage   , Teichmüller. IA

Platon. Staat

= Der platonische Staat   , Krohn. IA

Plaut.

= Plautus. Perseus

Plb. (or Polyb.)

= Polybius. Perseus

PLG.

= Poetae Lyrici Graeci   , Bergk, 3 vols, ed. 4. IA

Plin.

= Pliny (the Elder), NH. = Naturalis Historia. Perseus

Ep. = Epistulae    of Pliny the Younger. Perseus

Plot.

= Plotinus. IA

Plu.

= Plutarch. Perseus

PMagPar.

= Paris Magical Papyrus, ed. Wessely. Actually in Denkschriften der Kaiserlichen Akademie der Wissenschaften. Philosophisch-historische Classe   , 1888. IA (details/DenkschriftenPhilHist36)

Poll.

= Pollux, Onomasticon   . IA

Polyaen.

= Polyaenus, Polyaeni Strategematon libri octo ex recensione Edvardi Woelfflin   . IA

Popul. Aufs

= Populäre Aufsätze aus dem Alterthum vorzugsweise zur Ethik und Religion der Griechen   , Lehrs. IA

Porph.

= Porphyrius, Abs(t). = De abstinentia ab esu animalium

Antr. = De antro nympharum

VP. = Vita Pythagorae. IA have these in Porphyrii Philosophi Platonici opuscula selecta, ed. Nauck

Ep. Aneb. = Epistula ad Anebonem. IA in a text by Iamblichus de Myst.

V. Plot. = Vita Plotini   .

Pos.

= de Pos. Rhod.    above.

Poseid.

= Poseidonius.

Prescott, Peru

= History of the Conquest of Peru   , Prescott. IA

Preuss. Exped. nach Ostasien

= Die preussische Expedition nach Ostasien während der Jahre 1860-1862   , Spiess. IA

Proc. Gaz.

= Procopius Gazaeus. Ep. in Epistolographi graeci   . ed. Hercher. IA

Procl.

= Proclus. On Hesiod, Gainsford (ed.), Poetae minores Graeci, vol. 2: Scholia ad Hesiodum. https://books.google.it/

For Chrest. see Ep. Fr.    above.

Procop.

= Procopius. Perseus

Proleg. zu Platons Staat

= Prolegomena Zu Platons Staat Und Der Platonischen Und Aristotelischen Staatslehre   , Dümmler. Hathi

Prop.

= Propertius. Perseus

Prud. Sym.

= Prudentius, Contra Symmachum   . Perseus

Psychol. d. Naturv.

= Die Psychologie der Naturvölker   , Robinsohn. IA

Quaest. Pseudohippocrat.

= Studia pseudippocratea   , Ilberg. IA

quaest. sacr.

= Quaestiones Sacrificales   , Stengel. IA

Quint. Decl.

= Quintilian, Declamationes   . IA

Q.S.

= Quintus Smyrnaeus. IA

R.

= Rose (for Aristotle: Aristoteles pseudepigraphus   , IA).

Realencykl. d. christl. Alterth.

= Realencyklopädie der christlichen Alterthümer Bd. II   , Kraus. IA

Reise d. Geg. nörd. Griechen

= Reise durch einige Gegenden des nördlichen Griechenlands   , Stephani. https://www.deutsche-digitale-bibliothek.de

Rel. d. Ved.

= Die Religion des Veda   , Oldenburg. IA. (IA also has the French translation Hollis often refers to.)

Relig. d. Afrikan. Naturv

= Die Religion der afrikanischen Naturvölker   , Schneider. IA

Rel. rom. d’Aug. aux Ant.

= La religion romaine d'Auguste aux Antonins   , Boissier. IA

Rev. Arch.

= Revue archéologique   . https://gallica.bnf.fr

Rhaps. Theog.

= Die rhapsodische Theogonie und ihre bedeutung Innerhalb der orphischen Litteratur   , Gruppe. Hathi

Rhes.

= Rhesus    play by Euripides.

Rh(et). Gr.

= Rhetores graeci   , ed. Walz, 9 vols. IA

Rh. Mus.

= Rheinisches Museum   . https://rhm.phil-fak.uni-koeln.de/suche

Röm. Myth(ol).

= Römische Mythologie   , Preller. IA

Röm. Staatsverw.

= Römische Staatsverwaltung   , Marquardt. IA

Ross, Arch. Aufs.

= Archäologische Aufsätze, Ross. https://digi.ub.uni-heidelberg.de/diglit/ross1855ga

Inscr. Gr. = Inscriptiones graecae ineditae   , several volumes. IA

Rufin., Vit. Patr.

= Rufinus, Vitae Patrum   . IA

Ruhnk., Tim.

= Tim. Lex.    below.

S. (or Soph.)

= Sophokles. Perseus

Sall.

= Sallust. Perseus

Sallust., de Dis

= Sallustius, De Dis et Mundo   . IA

Samml(ung) Sab(uroff).

= Die Sammlung Sabouroff: Kunstdenkmäler aus Griechenland   , ed. Furtwångler. https://digi.ub.uni-heidelberg.de

Sarkophagstud.

= Sarkophag-Studien, Fredrich. In Nachrichten von der Gesellschaft der Wissenschaften zu Göttingen. Philologisch-Historische Klasse   , 1895. IA (details/nachrichten1895akaduoft)

S. (or St.) Byz.

= Stephani Byzantii Ethnicorum quae supersunt   , ed. Meineke. IA

Sch.

= Scholium.

S. E.

= Sextus Empiricus. IA

Semon.

= Semonides of Amorgos. In PLG.   , vol. 2. [spelt Simonides].

Sen.

= Seneca. Perseus

Serv.

= Servius. Perseus

Sicil. u. unterital. Vasenb.

= This seems to be a mistake for Griech. Sicil. Vasenb.    above (whose p. 33 addresses what is missing on vase paintings of funerals).

SIG.

= Dittenberger, Sylloge Inscriptionum Graecarum   . IA

Simon.

= Simonides of Keos. In PLG.   , vol. 3 above.

Simp., de An.

= Simplicii in libros Aristotelis De anima commentaria: consilio et auctor ...   , ed. Hayduck. IA

Sitzb. Berl. Ak.

= Sitzungsberichte der Königlich Preußischen Akademie der Wissenschaften zu Berlin   . https://de.wikisource.org/wiki/

Sitzb. Wien. Ac.

= Sitzungsberichte der Philosophisch-Historischen Classe der Kaiserlichen Akademie der Wissenschaften   . https://de.wikisource.org/wiki/

[Socr.] Epist.

= Epistulae Socraticae. In Epistolographi graeci   , Hercher. IA

Sol.

= Solon. In PLG.   , vol. 2.

Solin.

= C. Ivlii Solini Collectanea rervm memorabilivm   . Hathi

Sop.

= Sopater. In Rh. Gr.    above.

Sophr.

= Sophron.

Soran., V. H(ip)p.

= Soranus, Vita Hippocratis   . http://cmg.bbaw.de/epubl/online/cmg_04.php?p=197

Soz., HE.

= Sozomen, ecclesiastica historia   . Hathi

Spec. Leg.

= De specialibus legibus   , Philo. https://opengreekandlatin.github.io/philo-dev/

Spracheinh. d. Indog. Europ.

= Die ehemalige Spracheinheit der Indogermanen Europas   , Fick. IA

Staat in Il. u. Od.

= Der Staat in der Ilias und Odyssee   , Fanta. IA

Steph. Baluz., Vit. Pap. Avinion.

= Vitae Paparum Avenionensium   , Stephanus Baluzius. IA

Sts.

= Stesichoros. in PLG.   , vol. 3.

Stob.

= Stobaeus. Hathi

Sto. Vet.

= Stoicorum veterum fragmenta collegit Ioannes ab Arnim   . IA

Str(a).

= Strabo. Perseus

Struve, Opusc. Crit.

= Caroli Ludovici Struve opuscula selecta edidit Jacobus Theodorus Struve   , Vol. 2. IA

Stud. u. Charact.

= Studien und Charakteristiken zur griechischen und römischen Literaturgeschichte   , Teuffel. IA

Stud. z. Ges. d. Begr.

= Studien zur Geschichte der Begriffe   . Teichmüller. IA

Suet.

= Suetonius. Perseus

Suid.

= Suidas. IA

Syll.

= Sylloge epigrammatum Graecorum, ex marmoribus et libris collegit et illustr. F.T. Welcker   . IA

Syll. Insc. Boeot.

= Sylloge inscriptionum Boeoticarum   , Keil. IA

Sync.

= Syncellus, ed. Dindorff. IA

Synes., Aeg.

= Synesios des Kyrenaeers Aegyptische Erzählungen über die Vorsehung: Griechisch und Deutsch   , Krabinger. Hathi

System d. Vedânta

= Das System des Vedânta   , Deussen. IA

Tab. Defix.

= Tabellae Defixionum ed. Wünsch (Appendix to CIA   .). IA

Tac.

= Tacitus. Perseus

Tat. Gr.

= Tatian, Oratio ad Graecos   . Hathi

Tert(ul).

= Tertullian. https://www.tertullian.org

Th.

= Thucydides. Perseus

Theb. Held.

= Thebanische Heldenlieder   , Bethe. IA

Themist., de An.

= Themistius, In libros Aristotelis De anima paraphrasis ...   . IA

Theoc.

= Theocritus. Perseus

Theod. Met. Misc.

= Theodorus Metachites, Miscellanea philosophica et historica   . IA

Theodoret. Gr. Aff. C.

= Theodoreti Graecarum affectionum curatio. IA [The reference is to page 207 of the IA version, edited by Raeder, in which it is chapter vii; it was sermo viii    in Sylburg’s edition. I do not know what 599 is doing.]

Theogon.

= De Orphei Epimenidis Pherecydis theogoniis quaestiones critica   , Kern. IA

Theol. Lehr. d. Gr. D(enker)

= Die theologischen Lehren der griechischen Denker   , Krische. Hathi

Theol(ogum). Arith(m).

= Theologumena arithmeticae   . IA

Theopomp.

= Theopompus.

Thgn.

= Theognis. IA

Thphr.

= Theophrastus. Perseus

Tibull.

= Tibullus. Perseus

Tim. Lex.

= Timaeus, Lexicon vocum Platonicarum   , ed. Ruhnken. IA

Treb. Poll.

= Trebellius Pollio. Alleged author of part of the Historia Augusta   . IA

Tylor

= Primitive Culture   , Tylor, ed. 4. IA

Tyrt.

= Tyrtaeus, in PLG.    above.

Tz.

= Tzetzes. On Lycophron, Google Books.

on Homer, IA (details/tzetzaeallegori00pselgoog)

Val. Max.

= Valerius Maximus. Perseus

Verh. der Philologenvers. zu Rostock

= Verhandlungen der dreißigsten Versammlung deutscher Philologen und Schulmänner in Rostock vom 28. September bis 1. October 1875   . IA

Verh. Wien. Philol.

= Verhandlungen der zweiundvierzigsten Versammlung deutscher Philologen und Schulmänner, Wien, vom 24 bis 27 Mai, 1893   . IA

Vg.

= Vergil. Perseus

Vitruv.

= Vitruvius. Perseus

V.M.

= Valerius Maximus. Perseus

Volksl. d. Neugr

= Das Volksleben der Neugriechen und das hellenische Alterthum   , Schmidt. IA

Volksthüml. a. Schwaben

= Volksthümliches aus Schwaben   , Birlinger, 2 vols. IA

Vors.

= Diels, Fragmente der Vorsokratiker    ed. 4 (vol. i unless otherwise indicated). IA

Voy. en Perse

= Voyages du Chevalier Chardin en Perse, ...   . https://books.google.fr/books?id=lwgPAAAAQAAJ

W. (or Wachsm.)

= Wachsmuth, Curt.

West.

= Westermann, Antonius.

Woch. Klass. Phil.

= Wochenschrift für klassische Philologie   . https://de.wikisource.org/wiki/

Wyttenb.

= Wyttenbach. Most references are in IA

X. (or Xen.)

= Xenophon historicus. (HG. = Hellenica   ) Perseus

Xen. Eph.

= Xenophon of Ephesus. Perseus

Xen(ok).

= Xenokrates   , Heinze. IA

Zeit Constantins d. G.

= Die Zeit Constantins des Grossen   , Burckhardt. IA

Z. Ges. Wegebaus Gr.

= Zur Geschichte des Wegebaus bei den Griechen   , Curtius. Hathi

Znb. (or Zenob.)

= Zenobius. IA

Zos.

= Zosimus. IA

Zschr. f. Ethnologie

= Zeitschrift für Ethnologie   . https://de.wikisource.org/wiki/

Ztsch. f. Gymn.

= Zeitschrift für das Gymnasial-Wesen   , 1880 IA (details/sokrateszeitsch21berlgoog)

Ztschr. f. öst. Gymn.

= Zeitschrift für die östereichischen Gymnasien   . https://de.wikisource.org/wiki/

Ztschr. vergl. Sprachf.

= Zeitschrift für vergleichende Sprachforschung auf dem Gebiete der indogermanischen Sprachen   . https://de.wikisource.org/wiki/

Ztschr. Völkerpsych.

= Zeitschrift für Völkerpsychologie und Sprachwissenschaft   . https://www.digi-hub.de/viewer/ppnresolver?id=BV041216885

Zu d. gr(iech). Grabschr(iften)

= Zu den griechischen Grabschriften, Loch, in Festschrift für Ludwig Friedlånder   , 275-295, 1895. IA

. . . . . .

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Table of Contents

The Project Gutenberg eBook of Psyche, by Erwin Rohde

Psyche

CONTENTS

PREFACE TO THE FIRST EDITION

PREFACE TO THE SECOND EDITION

PRELIMINARY NOTE TO THE SEVENTH AND EIGHTH EDITIONS

TRANSLATOR’S NOTE

PART I CHAPTER I ΒELIEFS ABOUT THE SOUL AND CULT OF SOULS IN THE HOMERIC POEMS

I

§ 1

§ 2

§ 3

§ 4

§ 5

§ 6

§ 7

§ 8

II

§ 2

§ 3

III

§ 1

§ 2

§ 3

§ 4

§ 5

NOTES TO CHAPTER I

I

II

III

CHAPTER II ISLANDS OF THE BLEST TRANSLATION

§ 2

§ 3

§ 4

§ 5

§ 6

II

§ 2

§ 3

§ 4

§ 5

NOTES TO CHAPTER II

CHAPTER III CAVE DEITIES: SUBTERRANEAN TRANSLATION

§ 1

§ 2

§ 3

§ 4

NOTES TO CHAPTER III

CHAPTER IV HEROES

§ 1

§ 2

§ 3

§ 4

§ 5

§ 6

§ 7

§ 8

§ 9

§ 10

§ 11

§ 12

NOTES TO CHAPTER IV

CHAPTER V THE CULT OF SOULS

I CULT OF THE CHTHONIC DEITIES

§ 2

II FUNERAL CEREMONIES AND WORSHIP OF THE DEAD

§ 2

§ 3

§ 4

§ 5

III TRACES OF THE CULT OF SOULS IN THE BLOOD-FEUD AND SATISFACTION FOR MURDER § 1

§ 2

§ 3

§ 4

NOTES TO CHAPTER V

I

II

III

CHAPTER VI THE ELEUSINIAN MYSTERIES

§ 2

§ 3

§ 4

§ 5

NOTES TO CHAPTER VI

CHAPTER VII IDEAS OF THE FUTURE LIFE

§ 2

§ 3

§ 4

NOTES TO CHAPTER VII

PART II CHAPTER VIII ORIGINS OF THE BELIEF IN IMMORTALITY THE THRACIAN WORSHIP OF DIONYSOS

§ 2

§ 3

§ 4

§ 5

NOTES TO CHAPTER VIII

CHAPTER IX DIONYSIAC RELIGION IN GREECEITS AMALGAMATION WITH APOLLINE RELIGION. ECSTATIC PROPHECY. RITUAL PURIFICATION AND EXORCISM. ASCETICISM

§ 2

§ 3

§ 4

§ 5

§ 6

§ 7

NOTES TO CHAPTER IX

CHAPTER X THE ORPHICS

§ 2

§ 3

§ 4

§ 5

NOTES TO CHAPTER X

CHAPTER XI THE PHILOSOPHERS

§ 2

§ 3

§ 4

§ 5

§ 6

§ 7

NOTES TO CHAPTER XI

CHAPTER XII THE LAY AUTHORS

§ 2

§ 3

§ 4

§ 5

§ 6

NOTES TO CHAPTER XII

CHAPTER XIII PLATO

§ 2

§ 3

§ 4

NOTES TO CHAPTER XIII

CHAPTER XIV THE LATER AGE OF THE GREEK WORLD PART I PHILOSOPHY

§ 2

§ 3

§ 4

§ 5

§ 6

NOTES TO CHAPTER XIV PART I

CHAPTER XIV PART II POPULAR BELIEF

§ 2

§ 3

§ 4

§ 5

§ 6

NOTES TO CHAPTER XIV PART II

APPENDIX I

APPENDIX II μασχαλισμός

APPENDIX III ἀμύητοι, ἄγαμοι AND DANAÏDES IN THE UNDERWORLD

APPENDIX IV THE TETRALOGIES OF ANTIPHON.

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

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

APPENDIX VII

APPENDIX VIII DISINTEGRATION OF CONSCIOUSNESS AND REDUPLICATION OF PERSONALITY

APPENDIX IX THE GREAT ORPHIC THEOGONY

APPENDIX X PREVIOUS LIVES OF PYTHAGORAS. HIS DESCENT TO HADES

APPENDIX XI INITIATION CONSIDERED AS ADOPTION BY THE GOD

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

INDEX

Transcriber’s Note and Extended List of Abbreviations

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